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.