Comment of the week - April 2008...

Dear Reader,

Apologies for the non-existent blogging - the Angel of Pestilence has been visiting the Brennan household. Only my hamster died, so it's not so bad (although R****** G*** is a bit upset, especially as F****** S*** ate it...).

Anyway, gave me a chance to visit an old friend, aka the Beast. Although he hasn't posted recently (other than on Guido's comments, I was revisiting a classic sick / funny post about the disabled. Personally, I think it's a sign of civilisation when we support the disabled to be productive members of society. But I have to agree with Leg-Iron for this comment, which I think is self-explanatory - and deserves a wider airing:

Most of the disabled are only helpless because people tell them they're helpless. There is a big difference, never stated because it's not PC, between 'disabled' and 'useless'.

To any of those who say 'Oh, I'm disabled, you must feel sorry for me and look after me for the rest of my days because I'm unable to do anything for myself', I have one name to drop.

Stephen Hawking.

He's the most severely disabled person I've ever seen, and he's also the most brilliant scientist in the country. No benefit-scrounging for this guy, he makes all the money he needs through his own efforts.

If you're happy to sit back and live off benefits for the rest of your life, it's not because you're disabled.

It's because you're useless. Wallowing in self-pity is not a viable career choice.

I blame the PC crowd. They love to make people feel dependent. Gives them a steady stream of saps to partonise.

His posts on Old Holborn aren't bad either...

Ride the buses...

Well, I would if they could cope with a bit of snow...

Anyway, I'm bored, being stuck at home and all, and DK has found a bus slogan generator... As my mind is always in the sewer, I came up with this...



Ridicule is always mightier than the sword...

The rise of the pleblic*

*Term coined by The Filthy Smoker, commenting on Devil's Kitchen.

Well, the signs have been there for some time... England's white, 'working' classes are rising up in support of 'British jobs for British workers'.

And, whilst Mandy Pandy tries to stand up for Free Trade and against protectionism (as, to be fair, he did in Brussels, pissing off the French - well, the man can't be all bad!), the reality is that it is his party, the Prime Mentalist that he is supporting, the economic policy which he has supported all along, the EU policy which he has helped implement as well as supported, the adoption of an effective open border policy to immigrants and the rejection of policies to reduce the power of trade unions that are responsible for the rising tide of union action that we're seeing now.

Frank Field - one of the few Labour MPs that I have any time for - writes today about the consequences of the open doors policy in particular - and the stupidity of the 'British jobs for British workers' soundbite that the Great Gobshite in Downing St used a few months ago. Whilst the article is flawed - not least in its call for Splash Gordon to actually adopt a position of British jobs for British workers - it shows the sheer alarm in the Labour Party about the loss of their core supporters and the concommitant rise of the BNP - Labour voters are switching to them, illustrating that they are a left-wing party, not a right-wing one, no matter what idiots on Liberal Conspiracy try to claim...

But is it the 'white, working class' who should be angry - or those of us who have seen our taxes pissed down the toilet (strange and incongruous, I know, given this week's stories that suggest that Gordo can't actually manage to get to the toilet...) by this useless, ideologically-driven Government? Note - they're not just incompetent. They are deliberately fucking our country up.

One example: schools. Because they can't even get schools to teach our kids to read, write and count, they've given up. Instead, schools are to become a core part of 'children's services' policies to tackle 'inequality' - not, as Grammar schools used to, by teaching them useful skills and knowledge, but by telling them that it's not their fault if they don't learn... even if it's because they're fucking lazy bastards. Don't believe me? Have a look at 21st Century Schools: A World-Class Education for Every Child / A School Report Card. It simply beggars belief.

And some people actually thought Brown would be better than Blair. Although, to be fair (and to borrow a phrase), this isn't Brown, it's Balls.

Not enough for you? How about this from Thursday's Times:

There have been intense discussions on Labour’s National Executive Committee about how to help the 4.5 million people waiting for social housing and to get the construction industry back to work, The Times has learnt.

Now, how the fuck, after a boom lasting 15 years or so, are there 4.5 million people on the waiting list for social housing?! Are there that many useless Brits? Probably... Or is it that we have imported 4.5 million people from Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc. - well, they all seem to live near me, in my rapidly-depreciating tiny flat in Chav-ville. But weren't we told that these people were generating an economic benefit? So it 'can't' be them!

And what about our wonderfully generous benefits system - generous, that is, to frauds, cheats, liars and other scumbugs (strange that this also fits the description of most members of Parliament...), but not if you are old and need social care, having paid taxes for others' care throughout your working life. Or you've become unemployed in your 50s, after paying taxes all your working life. Just have a look at Ms Snuffy's, errr, heart-warming modern day story about a benefits scam, albeit one perpetrated by an Indian family, rather than by white trash.

So, I ask. What have the striking twats got to strike about?

- They largely voted for this Government of all the Gobshites - or at least funded it, given their membership of Trade Unions like Unite.
- It is the middle classes that are paying for them and their families. The 'poor' cheat the benefits system and / or don't earn enough, whilst the truly rich can get around paying tax. The sods in the middle get (financially) fisted by Gay Gordon and his merry band of cunts.
- They've priced themselves out of the labour market by demanding wages and benefits (wages in all but name) which are out of kilter with their productivity.

It is people like me, who've been paying for all this shite - and will pay for it in the future (although I can move abroad and escape) - who should be going on strike and protesting in the street. Not BNP-voting muppets who believed that Gordon the Moron was some kind of economic genius...

One of those irritating but have-to-do quizes...

Via Obnoxio, another one of those annoying quizes...

You are a right social libertarian.
Right: 7.23, Libertarian: 3.68



Apparently, I am a moderate libertarian - but with a neo-con twist :-)

Clearly, my pro-gay marriage, being able to say what you like about any ethnic group, etc. and violent video game but anti-abortion and pro-banging up criminals for life views completely fuck up their American-based 'Culture War' thingy though...



This has probably been debated to death on the interwebby, but what is it that makes someone a libertarian, i.e. what are 'core' libertarian views?

I would say:

- Belief in negative rights - free speech, freedom of association, all equal before the law, etc. This includes proper punishment for those who infringe those rights, not 5 seconds of 'community service'.
- No such thing as 'positive' rights
- Belief in a small state
- Economic liberalism (which might mean regulation when markets fail, provided the government failure isn't even worse)

Clearly, not all would agree with me though:

- The Chicago School libertarians take what is a useful simplification for analytical purposes - that markets work - and make it into dogma. Whereas markets do sometimes fail. What is then important is whether state intervention can make it any better, without imposing massive costs or distortions, and without infringing basic liberties. I think that it can in some cases.
- Some also have some slightly mad (in my view) opinions on returning to the gold standard and the like. I like to think that I'm radical, but... Basically, human psychology means that wages can't easily drop - they're not sufficiently flexible. So we're stuck with some inflation as the price...
- Many libertarians dislike /hate my more interventionist views with regard to foreign policy, e.g. in principle, I support the intervention in Afghanistan, although we're fucking it up somewhat...
- It is very difficult to deal with irrational individuals, particularly Islamists who want to make the UK into an Islamic state, by force - I tend to feel that they should go live in an Islamist country and leave us alone; whereas a classic libertarian would allow them to live here and simply imprison those who commit crimes. My problem with this is that I don't think a rational approach works with people who cannot be appealed to with reason;
- Most libertarians rather idealistically believe in open borders - I don't think this is practical in a world where most countries don't practice this and there are such disparities of wealth.

Still, libertarianism's a broad church... isn't it? :-)

Next stop for the UK police?

Apparently, some Nigerians think a thief has shape-shifted into a goat, and their local police force has been forced to take it into custody!

[This might explain a lot... After all, Harriet Harperson can't be human - perhaps she's that famous Sudanese goat that was married off to some peasant after he was caught, ahem, engaging in marital relations with it. Might explain her hatred of men and the idea that they might enjoy having sex...

On the other hand, maybe she's just a man-hating lesbian who has been forced into a sham marriage with a 'man' (using the widest definition of 'man' possible, given that it is Jack Dromey we're talking about here...)...]

Anyhooo... it's just so easy to go off-topic when it comes to the utter cunts that 'Govern' our country...

I think the point of raising this - apart from the fact that it's a tad amusing - was that it could never happen here... could it?

Personally, I'm not so sure... with the Government's anti-Darwinian scheme to reduce average intelligence, otherwise known as the 'Welfare State', funded by piling ever more taxes on hard-working individuals (whether they have families or not), whilst the likes of Paul Myners get rich courtesy of the taxpayer (via shorting banks, something which he is now slagging off, the hypocritical cunt) and pay very little tax...

And the outcome? How about this, for starters...

Fake charities

An eagle-eyed reader may have noticed that Devil's Kitchen has launched the fakecharities.org website, after yet another 'charity' was revealed to be nothing of the sort, but rather a front for the Government to claim popular support for imposing yet more illiberal legislation on us.

Like the Devil, I am thoroughly pissed-off with this state of affairs - it's bad enough that businesses do this (see, e.g. The Truth About Drug Companies for examples of how Big Pharma uses charities to persuade the sheeple to lobby for ineffective drugs, like Herceptin for early stage breast cancer). But now the illiberal cunts in Government are using the same dirty tricks, cunts that they are.

So I have volunteered to help this noble cause. And I urge you to do the same.

My first contribution: some FoI requests:

To: info@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I would be grateful if you could let me know which charities received funding from the DCSF and its agencies:

- In 2008; and
- In 2007.

Yours sincerely,


Paul Brennan

To: dhmail@dh.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I would be grateful if you could let me know which charities received funding from the Department of Health and its agencies:

- In 2008; and
- In 2007.

Yours sincerely,


Paul Brennan

And:

To: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I would be grateful if you could let me know which charities received funding from the Home Office and its agencies:

- In 2008; and
- In 2007.

Yours sincerely,


Paul Brennan

Etc........

Let's see if the cunts respond with some answers, or dodgy excuses... Not holding my breath...


PS I see the Devil is talking about the alcohol 'limits' which some 'scientists' invented in the 1980s, and which Government uses 'charities' - and dumbass 'liberal' democrat MPs - to promote. Did you know that they also made up '5 a day' - apparently, it's actually 3 a day.

Update: All Depts have promised to respond within 20 days, other than HM Treasury...

Tim Ireland - Necessary Evil or Just a Knob?

I guess I am not the first to blog about this... and I'm sure I won't be the last :-(

I have had the unfortunate 'pleasure' of reading comments from Tim Ireland on various blogs over the last week, having only heard about him second-hand via Guido and Iain Dale.

My instinctive reaction, as I put it on Recess Monkey, was to tell him to get a life. And his response was martyrdom!

And I see he is being his usual irritating self on Labourist.org - self-appointed fount of righteousness in the blogosphere that he is.

The guy is clearly a knob... and yet I am inclined to believe that there is a place for all, even for the most nakedly self-righteous, in all of our 'occasional' blogrolls. Even though Guido is clearly a million miles from the level of power exercised by Rupert Murdoch, we should always think about the underlying interests of all those whose opinions we read, because they can all have an influence over our developing views. Well, obviously with the exception of the genuinely stupid and self-serving (Polly Toynbee springs to mind, as the Devil illustrates nicely in his latest post).

But... Tim - and I mean this in the nicest way - could you at least try to be a little less pompous and self-satisfied in the way that you perform your important social function? After all, we all have to eat fibre - but it can be in the form of tastier fare like rye bread rather than the cardboard taste of bran flakes (and you can even put sugar on those!).