Classic comment on Ritchie’s blog

Over at TaxResearchUK (oxymoron if there every was one for a blog name) there is a great comment that pretty much says it all for Richard Murphy and his attitude to the state/government. Why does it indicate Ritchie’s attitude if he didn’t write it? Because he hasn’t deleted it and his moderation policy is unique amongst all the blogs of the universe – he will delete anything that disagrees with him even if the person is extremely polite and courteous.

Click to see in all it's glory.

“Everyone knows that the government never really wastes money, and is actually better at looking after us than we are.”

Police dumbwit of the day

In Oxford, Police are calling for taxis to display ID numbers on their roofs. They claim that criminals occasionally use taxis and it would make it easier to track such taxis by helicopters and maybe the new UAVs.

There is so much wrong with it. Firstly, it’s worth mentioning the name of the Police sergeant responsible, Det Sgt John Linsdell, because normally such stupidity gets hidden behind anonymous committees. If he is to have his name linked with an idea he must also be taught that you have to think about the idea thoroughly otherwise you get pointed out as being a bit of a nitwit. He’s personally come across two occasions where a criminal got into a taxi and because the taxi didn’t have a number on its roof it took time to track down the car.

If taxis are used occasionally by criminals then because criminals will occasionally use buses and cars and motorbikes then all of these will need to carry an ID on their roof (don’t know how that’s going to work with bikes, but a civil servants think of more stupid things so I’m sure they can work some method out). Why not just remove the registration plate from the front and back of cars and put it on the roof. ANPR cameras are already high up and so can easily be re-configured to scan the roofs of cars.

Why not just go a step further and put a number on everyone’s head so that UAVs continually flying overhead can easily track everyone so that if someone is occasionally a criminal they can easily be tracked down.

And a nice quote from the article “He also said CCTV in the city did not always pick up number plate details.” So not much use for having CCTV then. Why not just put more policemen on the street instead of filling out forms in triplicate on triplicate on every interaction with a member of the public (the enemy to the average policeman).

Shroud waving over 4-day school week

A better example of shroud waving I haven’t seen.

So North Ayrshire Council is considering cutting back school days to 4 a week for primary children. All to save £2m. I would have thought it would be a lot easier to save that amount by getting rid of a few managers or cutting back on grants given to minority groups who could fend for themselves such as the LGBT community.

Harriet Harman’s QoD

Harriet Harman was such a brilliant politician that she dreamed up the Equality Act which has these fantastic definitions in them. We need more politicians like her – to make the UK’s legal system a laughing stock of the world.

A reference to an age group is a reference to a group of persons defined by reference to age;
A reference to a disabled person is a reference to a person who has a disability;
A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.;
A reference to a person’s racial group is a reference to a racial group into which the person falls;
Religion means any religion and a reference to religion includes a reference to a lack of religion;

And the best one which covers sex is

a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;

Daily Fail SafeStyle

It’s not often that you can prove that the Daily Mail really is the Daily Fail. They can’t even get a good page to do a screen grab on.

One size doesn’t fit

From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/03/great-moments-in-snow-removal/ a comment by agimarc:

“The one size fits all EPA clean water rules lead to some real bizzaro local solutions to the new costs. There is an EPA rule that waste treatment plants must remove 30% of organic waste from incoming sewage. This is a problem if your incoming water is very clean, as it is here in Anchorage. Around 20 years ago, the requirement was going to lead to a $135 million new treatment plant, which we couldn’t afford. So the local solution was to dump fish waste from commercial fishermen into the inbound stream so the existing treatment plant would meet the 30% requirement. EPA was just fine with that solution.”

This is why state enforced national rules and guidelines don’t generally work.

Richard Curtis – money launderer

Richard Curtis in response to a request for a quote on a story about fraudsters on the BBC One Show – “The fraudsters should hand the money they got to Comic Relief”.

So Curtis is happy for a charity to money launder and to be party to a crime then?

I think Richard needs some lessons in morality. It probably explains his “No Pressure” eco-fascist film.

Fraudsters should return the money they got from their crimes to the victims not to a charity.

Overindulgence is good (in moderation)

Some thoughts from Dick Puddlecote’s post on Christmas:

1. DRINKING ALCOHOL…
Everything in moderation is OK. The fact that something doesn’t kill us in small quantities doesn’t mean that we should overindulge in it.

2. OVEREATING…
Same point. Though it has been shown that calorie restricted mice do live longer than morbidly obese mice. Though the kinds of food eaten are probably a major factor too.

3. FATTY FOODS…
Fatty foods are good for you. The human body needs fat to work. Just as it needs loads of other vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, etc as well to function properly.

4. CHOCOLATE…!!
Pure chocolate, not the british chocolate and definately not american chocolate.

5. ENJOY BEING LAZY…
Sleep is definately necessary. Not just for the body but for the brain too. Don’t sleep for a week and you go mad.

6. OR, WALK IT OFF…
And exercise is good too – in moderation. Doing too much exercise doesn’t make you any better than doing just enough.

7. ALL IN THE FAMILY
8. LAUGHTER’S STILL THE BEST MEDICINE
9. KEEP THE CARDS COMING
Humans are social animals. They thrive in their own group. And knowing that they are liked by their own tribe means that stress levels aren’t raised as there is no need to fight or argue.

10. POWER OF PRAYER
Prayer or any other form of meditation (not yoga stuff) such as just doing nothing is just as good. It seems the human brain needs some faith to allow it cope with the real world without going mad.

So enjoying yourself in moderation over a long period means that you can over indulge for certain times when you can really let your hair down and enjoy being alive. Anyone who tries to ban and stop you is only jealous because they can’t enjoy it – usually due to some chemical imbalance from not over indulging.

America was created by extremists

From the BBC’s own correspondent –

After De Tocqueville, just about every European sent to the United States has treated the posting as an invitation to help diagnose the country’s faults and suggest ways in which they might be fixed.

Americans find this a little puzzling.

After all, they reason, theirs is a country founded and created by migrants who had left the old world behind them.

And it is generally the most energetic and resourceful people who flee old lives to build new worlds, leaving their less enterprising fellow-countrymen behind them.

Actually, America wasn’t founded by those most energetic and resourceful. It was founded by those who hated their fellow-countrymen and escaped to a place where they could do what they want. So it was founded by extremists. So it is right and proper that the old world looks on America and tries to persuade them of the error of their ways and that the European model has done quite well and they should use it too.

Though seeing how the European model is attempting to be next USSR the Tea Party might have a point.

Disable the tube

Inspired by this post by Underdog  and Jody’s calls to have the whole tube network modified for him and others like him.

He doesn’t take into account any cost benefit analysis. Only that everything must be modified for the disabled no matter what the cost to the public purse even in this strained times. Not public not private, they don’t expect to pay a dicky bird towards the modifications they demand.

It would be cheaper if people like Jody had free taxis everywhere they go than modify the tube network.

All this modification for disabled is fine, but sometimes it doesn’t make much difference anyway.

For instance building regulations means that you have to have a downstairs loo in a new house with a wide door to allow a wheelchair access amongst many other rules. How many households have wheelchair visitors? Very very few. How many households have wheelchair occupants? Even less. How many new houses are being built compared to the overall housing stock? A tiny proportion. So the likeyhood of a disabled person being able make use of the downstairs look is extremely small.

It would be cheaper to remove all the legislation about disabled access from building control and fund the odd conversion where necessary totally from public funds. All disabled people will have very individual needs so it would be better to make their house totally suited to their particular needs than make all new houses just about ok for the disabled and not suitable for the minority disabled who have exceptional needs and then have even more changes made to the house for them.