I'm sorry, what??

Sometimes, it's the little things in big stories that make you stop:

Bimlenbra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, told the Business select committee that the UK had "structural weaknesses" that made the UK steel industry uncompetitive.

Business rates and high energy costs were top of the list.

On energy, he said that if Tata was operating in Germany, its energy bill would be £40m a year lower. The Tata chief defended the company's decision to put the business up for sale saying that the company and its shareholders could not continue to bleed. The business is estimated to be losing £1m a day.

OK, let's break this down. The civil service think man-made climate change is a big thing, therefore the government has instituted massive energy taxes to discourage people from making stuff that needs a lot of energy. Making steel takes a fucktonne of energy. Closing down Port Talbot will be a non-trivial step towards meeting our civil service approved emission reduction targets.

In other words, whether or not you agree with climate change being a thing, and our fault, and something that we can fix, and are fixing in the right way, the fact of the matter is that saying "tata to Tata" is exactly the the kind of outcome you would expect and want from our climate change policies.

However, despite the fact that it's only Morlocks losing their jobs, of course, there are votes to be had here, so now everyone has to panic and pretend to care. It's the usual fiasco of a planned economy.

Hidden away further down, though, was this little nugget:

Mr Javid said steps had already been taken to help on energy costs with £130m paid out since 2013 to compensate high energy users who incur environmental surcharges.

Just think about that: the glorious state has decided that we need saving from ourselves, so let's make energy more expensive. We start to get saved from ourselves, but suddenly we need to compensate businesses who have to pay the environmental surcharge.

What the actual fucking fuck is that all about? Make someone pay a tax and then give them a fucking handout to say sorry? I'm really dying to know which fucking retarded spastic cunt thought this was a remotely sensible fucking idea.

Plus ça change, etc.

Good Lord, it's not the first time I've used that as a blog post title, is it?

Well, here's some good stuff from the Tories:

Diabetes remains one of the largest challenges to our healthcare system, with around 3.7 million sufferers in the UK and almost a million more estimated to have the condition but who do not know it. This is likely to get worse. Unhealthy lifestyles in the UK put a further 7 million people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and in ten years’ time we may see the number of patients pass the 5 million mark.

All this places a significant burden on the NHS, with an estimated spend of £10 billion per year on diabetes related treatments. A great deal of this spend is unnecessary. Diabetics far too often suffer from late diagnosis, preventable complications and variations in care. They are often overlooked for specialist care when being treated for other conditions, particularly in hospitals, and they can be prevented from accessing treatment by the short term financial ethos embedded in far too many Care Trusts across the country.

Some studies have found that around 80 per cent of the spend on diabetes is avoidable so the main focus the Government needs to take is how to deploy resources effectively to help people manage their diabetes and even more importantly, prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes-the type related to lifestyle-in the first place.

This is being made more challenging by the NHS reforms, which, even if they were perfect, would cause disruption, and the fear that the new commissioners will take something of a short term approach to managing budgets in light of the priority for deficit reduction.

Wow, this is all good stuff, isn't it? Stuff we've been saying all along: you can get the same or better results without spending as much money, too much is wasted. And why is it wasted? Because of insane bureaucratic procedures which explain all too well why visiting a GP in this cuntry feels like you're interacting with a call centre operator in a foreign land who'd like nothing more than to tell you to switch it off, wait five minutes and then switch it on again.

But given that the problem is a massive surfeit of bad guidance that causes people to waste money in a bureaucratic, checkbox manner, guess what the solution proposed to this is?

Go on, guess.

The problem is too much bureaucratic guidance, what solution could you propose that would guaranteed to make me want to strangle myself with my own testicles?

Yes:

The Government can rectify some of these problems through national leadership. The National Service Framework, which has guided diabetes care since 2001 is due for renewal and it is a very appropriate time for Ministers to look at how to spend wisely now, and disseminate best practice across the NHS to reduce long term costs. Achieving this would have the happy coincidence of better patient outcomes; arguably what the priority should always be for Ministers and officials.

Kill me now.

A twatter conversation with a Labour supporter

RT @EricPickled: Some cracking policy ideas in the Daily Mail today, I've cut them out and sent them to David.

I'm just guessing here, but "EricPickled" must be the Labour troll who tries to take the piss out of Eric Pickles. Unfortunately, DING and his team of useless fuckwits have no fucking policies at all, let alone anything as concrete as an Op Ed piece in a newspaper. Plus, on the strength of this effort, EricPickled is as funny as face cancer.

So, we're not off to a good start. But, as I pointed out to the original twat:

@jachartuk Too bad the Gorgon gets all his ideas from Nick bloody Griffin.

Provocative, but what the hell. It's only most of his policy ideas he gets from Griffin, not all of them.

@obotheclown how on earth did you readh [sic] that conclusion?

Ah. Hopes of an intelligent conversation here.

@jachartuk "British jobs for British workers" ring any bells?

Casting the line ... and there's a bite!

@obotheclown plenty of bells - but if you actually knew what you were talking about you wouldn't look so foolish...

Eh? What's to know? Every national newspaper picked up on that, as did every part of the blogosphere except for the most slavish of Labour acolytes.

Let's try another BNP policy nicked by Gordon:

@jachartuk How about "gulags for slags"? Remember that one?

There are any number of newspaper articles about this one, and Nick Griffin issued a press release congratulating Colostomy Brown for adopting their policies.

The response? A withering:

@obotheclown no wonder I don't follow you... #FAIL

What? I've pointed out two BNP policies lifted pretty much word-for-word from BNP literature by the Labour Party, and the rebuttal consists of an juvenile attempt at discomforting me and a vacuous invocation of the "fail" hashtag.

This is what passes for debate among Labour supporters (and, I suspect most Cuntservatives and Limp Dumbs as well.) When presented with uncomfortable facts, they simply attempt to shut you down, as though you're the uncool kid in the playground and they're part of the cool clique (or whatever it's called nowadays!)

Rather than trying to engage me and show me why I'm wrong, they just flounce off to discuss the salami at the local deli or fantasise about a three-way with Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey.

So, much like David Osler (who can at least construct an argument and turn a phrase) this useless sack of shit will be voting Labour until he draws his last breath, no matter how "un-Labour" their policies may be and no matter what misery they inflict on us, him and his.

Still, at least he didn't try to beat me up. Yet.

Dear Facebook

Could you please stop fucking around? It seems like we just get used to your last fucking shambolic cuntwaftery and then you fuck it all around again!

Cunts!

Facepalm

While trawling a couple of forums I frequent, I came across this little gem. The forum in question has a section devoted to group buys. Whenever a group buy is in progress, the buy will be made into an "announcement" and then people can either partake or not.

It's been like that since the forum opened more than five fucking years ago.

Today, a group buy was about to close when this gem of an exchange took place:

Spazmong: Is it worth sticking a post about this group buy in the General Discussion section? I think the Group Buys section's Announcements is a little out of the way for how people usually read the forum. I was completely unaware of it until I heard about it from Pete.

These people actually breed, you know.

So, he's not a libertarian, then?

A curious argument:

The real division between me and the druggies - who can't see it because the concept that anything *they* do might be wrong is foreign to them - is this: I contend that it is morally wrong to stupefy yourself, and morally wrong to damage yourself or take a conscious risk of damaging yourself, with the aim of getting physical pleasure.

Dude, seriously? You do know that this applies to skiing, jogging, swimming, scuba diving, hang gliding, sky diving, knitting and macramé as well?

It's strange how someone who can construct so many intelligent arguments can also chuck something so banal and fatuous out there.

Tech companies and their webshites

What is it about tech companies and their ina-fucking-bility to create a website that doesn't make you want to track down their coding monkeys and peel them and roll them in salt?

Because I work with Informix, I spend a lot of time on IBM's website. 'Nuff said.

But it's not just them. Today, I was advised that there was a new release of the VMware player available. OK, I thought, let's get that then. Try and reg up a new account. No, you're already registered. Use my normal password. Nope. OK, try the "forgot password" link.

Now remember, this is to fucking download VMware player, nothing else.

They send me some entirely random password, one I definitely would never have chosen. So I didn't set that. So I log in. And it asks me a whole shitload of questions, which I answer. It then sends me ANOTHER fucking email that contains the download link.

So I click the link and ... it asks me to fucking log in AGAIN.

And don't get me FUCKING STARTED ON THEIR FUCKING INSTALL PROCESS WHICH TAKES HALF A FUCKING DAY AND REQUIRES A CUNTING REBOOT!!!!

Fucking useless cunt monkeys...

Jaw-dropping

Fascist? Us? Never!

Down in Brighton for Labour Party Conference one thing that was noticeable was the large amounts of alcohol consumed over the weekend - and not just by the conference delegates.

Most people are responsible users and are able to have a few drinks and enjoy themselves without causing damage to either others or the local environment.

However, not all drinkers and users of other substances are able to handle their use of booze in such a responsible manner. At weekends, most A&E departments house those suffering from alcohol poisoning, assaults and drink related accidents. It takes much needed resources from the NHS which could be used for other purposes.

Prohibition of alcohol, like any other drug, does not work. It was tried in the 1920s in the US and resulted in making the likes of Al Capone rich men.

One possible solution could be an entitlement card that people would carry and swipe when every time they buy Alcohol or Tobacco and record their usage. Is that too radical? I don't think so. For a long time the Government have controlled motorists with a system of licences where people enjoy the right and freedom to drive - as long as they conform to certain rules.

With the card, people who got into trouble for, say, minor crimes or drunk and disorderly conduct in public would receive a fixed penalty notice and 3 points on their entitlement card with points disappearing over time for in the same way works on driving licences.

More serious offences would result in endorsements on the entitlement card and the cardholder would not be able to purchase alcohol, tobacco or other drugs available for sale through the entitlement card scheme.

The main benefits of the policy would be reduction in the health care and crime costs associated with use of substances hopefully leading for more better functioning society.

Holy fucking fuck! What? The? Fuck? Huh? Jesus fuck, did this cunt really just suggest that we need state sanction to buy a beer or a fag? And punishing us for damaging ourselves?

Fucking WHAT? WHAT? AAARGH! I think my brain is trying to leap out of my skull and strangle this fucking little fascist cunt weasel. I'm fairly certain this cocksucker is nasty little middle-class Guardianista who secretly wanks over the Daily Mail.

That, my friends, is the Labour Party, the party that looks after the common man. Because clearly, the common man cannot be trusted to look after himself.

Tip of the clown wig and a dropped jaw to Old Holborn. I'm certainly not linking to such egregious fascism myself.

Fisking Dominic Grieve

Over at the future-prediciting ConHome, Dominic Grieve will apparently say later today how he intends to reverse state surveillance:

1. Scrapping the National Identity Register and ContactPoint database.

Well, that's off to a good start. But what about all the other snooping databases, Dominic?

2. Establishing clear principles for the use and retention of DNA on the National DNA Database, including ending the permanent or prolonged retention of innocent people's DNA.

Well, there are already clear principles here, they're just shit principles. But getting rid of innocent people's DNA is another good step forward.

3. Restricting and restraining local council access to personal communications data.

It sounds good, but how much restraining are they actually going to do? I would be happier if he said: "councils can go fuck themselves and get a court order if they want to spy on someone". This sounds like bullet point fodder, words that say nothing but sound vaguely good.

4. Reviewing protection of personal privacy from the surveillance state as part of a British Bill of Rights.

Ugh. This is a horribly statist thing to say: "the state will give you these rights and freedoms". What I'd far rather the "British Bill of Rights" said was "the state is entitled to manage those things enshrined by law, you can do whatever you like outside that. And equally, outside that, the state can go fuck itself." Which is, in effect, the bill of rights you have today.

5. Strengthening the audit powers and independence of the Information Commissioner.

Sounds nice, but really, so fucking what? He's done absolutely nothing so far, and we're practically living under the Stasi already. Increasing his audit powers is going to mean more jobs for the Information Commissioner. W00t. Just what we fucking need, more state. Yay. Go Dominic!

Cunt.

6. Requiring Privacy Impact Assessments on any proposals for new legislation or other measures that involve data collection or sharing at the earliest opportunity. Require government to consult the Information Commissioner on the PIA and publish his findings.

Or in other words, "more paper shuffling jobs for the state's boys". It's clear from this kind of crap that Grieve has no minarchist tendencies whatsoever.

7. Immediately submitting the Home Office's plans for the retention of, and access to, communications data to the Information Commissioner for pre-legislative scrutiny.

Woo. Well, given that the useless cunt is just another government-appointed stooge dependent on having at least some surveillance to justify his job, I can see this is going to be really, really useful.

Not.

8. Requiring new powers of data-sharing to be introduced into law by primary legislation, not by order.

Really? Why not just fucking make it illegal, Dominic? We got as far as 1997 without needing widespread data-sharing at all. But since Labour have created a bunch of made-up threats we now have state-created excuses for state sharing of data. How fucking convenient!

You don't need to share data with fucking councils, or the National Potato Board or OffFuck. So just don't fucking do it.

Idiot.

9. Appointing a Minister and senior civil servant (at Director General level) in each Government ministry with responsibility for departmental operational data security.

Ahhh, I love the smell of jobs for the boys in the morning. Tell me, Dominic, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO ACHIEVE?

It just means you're going to have someone to sack or someone who is Teflonned enough to avoid it. It's not going to do a single fucking thing to actually improve security.

Here's how to actually prevent data loss by incompetent civil servants (and MPs!) -- you'll like this, Dominic, because it's a) cheap; b) easy to fucking do and c) absolutely foolproof:

DON'T COLLECT THE FUCKING DATA IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

10. Tasking the Information Commissioner to publish guidelines on best practice in data security in the public sector.

Ooh, "guidelines on best practice", that will make it all better. Listen, fuck features, I've actually done a bit of data security consulting in my life and "guidelines on best practice" don't mean fucking shit if you allow people to take the data out of the building. In fact, they don't mean fucking shit ever.

Proper security is bloody fucking difficult. It's a pain in the arse for every fucker concerned. The best security also means they worse usability. The best usability means the worst security. The easiest way to make sure that you have good data security is to drastically reduce the amount of sensitive data that you hold. Since no fucker has made the case for the reams of data that you do want to hold, just stop trying to keep it.

Some fucking "best practice guidelines" will be as much fucking use as Airmiles.

11. Tasking the Information Commissioner to carry out a consultation with the private sector, with a view to establishing guidance on data security, including examining the viability of introducing an industry-wide kite mark system of best practice.

A kite mark? You fucking idiot! You fucking, fucking imbecile! The fucking "industry" doesn't need a fucking kite mark, you fucking spazmong! We already have fucking Sox compliance, HIPAA compliance, any fucking number of PCI requirements along with whatever industry regulatory requirements there may be (and some of these are frighteningly onerous.)

So the absolute last fucking thing "industry" needs is another pile of of fucking requirements from a bunch of interfering fuckwits who really do need to "remove the beam from their own eye", as it were.

And there we have it: the Tories are going to reverse the surveillance state by doing a couple of half-hearted twiddlings around the edges, creating a whole bunch more "jobs for the boys" and having the sheer fucking gall to hector the private sector into doing more to protect our data.

Colour me unimpressed

Update: Carswell is also unconvinced.

Come on Telegraph

Check your fucking facts!

Even Trixy can't defend him any more

Surely?

As The Daily Mail reports, when asked by presenter Matthew Parris whether terrorism can ever be justified, Miliband stated:

“Yes, there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective.”
“The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: it looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down.”
“It is hard to argue that, on its own, a political struggle would have delivered. The striking at the heart of a regime’s claim on a monopoly of power, which the ANC’s armed wing represented, was very significant.”

Er, hello? Is that an open invitation to Al Qaeda or fucking what? Come here David, I have a practical use for that banana.

You useless, gurning fuckwit.

Hard-headed Diplomacy

Via Mr E., this salutary tale of how fucking useless uk.gov is:

It had indicated its displeasure at the events of the past two months by witholding the customary letter of congratulation. It calls this “hard-headed diplomacy”.

Holy fuck, I bet the Iranians are fucking shitting themselves right now.

Cunts.

Johann Hari: what a fucking mong

See?

This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations – but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents – and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it.

He then goes on to say:

Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist – and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels – is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes.

Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive, but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, then they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years. Nobody else can make it.

Ooh, it all sounds so horrid. So what does he propose is the solution?

This is where the solution to the swine flu mystery comes in. Ordinary democratic citizens were so disgusted by the attempt to deprive South Africa of life-saving medicine that public pressure won a small concession in the global trading rules. It was agreed that, in an overwhelming public health emergency, poor countries would be allowed to produce generic drugs. They are the exact same product, but without the brand name – or the fat patent payments to drug companies in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

And what about all those drug companies, what do they do?

drug companies squander a fortune developing "me-too" drugs – medicines that do exactly the same job as a drug that already exists, but has one molecule different, so they can take out a new patent, and receive another avalanche of profits.

Er, Johann ... what, exactly, do you think a "generic" drug is?

This is the FRONT PAGE and LEAD ARTICLE in the Indescribablystupid today. Do these fuckwitted cocktards not have a fucking editor?

Ooh, yes, please!

If these three cretins want to take the In Your Shoes scheme further, however, perhaps we could arrange for their homes to be burgled so they know how millions of their fellow countrymen feel when they come home to see that their homes have been violated? Or for them to be stopped and searched pointlessly when they are going about their lawful business one evening? Or for their cars to be stolen? Or for the peace of their neighbourhoods to be shattered by yobs terrorizing locals?

Works for me!

Labour: the smell of desperation

Via Mrs Dale, I see that Labour have come up with another brilliant election-winning strategy:



Someone should tell these fuckwits that every time they do something this fucking stupid, God kills a kitten.

Idiots.

I have been to this party, too!

Carpsio, well worth a read again:

If you’re designing for a purpose - make sure you know what that fucking purpose actually is before even you start.

If someone in the team has a great idea, make sure it's useful before you start bollocksing around with it. I've been the guy who has had to pick up the pieces of stupidity like this all too often.

Miliband Jr

Wow! The younger Millipede, untarnished by the expenses scandal has come up with some zinging ideas to reform Parliament:

• More power for parliamentary select committees to scrutinise legislation.
  And who, pray tell, has ridden roughshod over the power these committees had before?
  
  
• More power to be devolved to local government.
  What, like the valuable Welsh Arsembly or the Scotch Parliament? Fuck off!
  
  But wait! There's even more genius at work here:
  
  
• The language of the chamber – such as calling MPs "my right honourable friend".
• The ceremonial garb of Commons officials.
• The amount of time the Commons sits during the year. Miliband said he would be open to the idea of September sittings.
• The format of PMQs.

Yes, folks: that powerhouse genius of the Labour Party, that intellectual giant, Ed Millipede, has decided that if the "members" of Parliament stop all that flowery language, dress differently, sit for more time and have a different way of doing PMQ's, everything will be better.

No, you fucking moron: until your shower of modernising shitehawks arrived on the scene, Parliament was a much better representation of the people and much more effective at countering the most egregious stupidities of the executive.

Your party has fucked with Parliament over and over again and made it fucking worse each and every fucking time. And now your big plan to fix this is to fucking fuck with it some fucking more? You fucking useless fuck-faced fuck, do us all an immense favour:

GO FUCK YOURSELF FOR A CHANGE!

100 years ago, again

Hahahahaha:

'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'

Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 38, this is my 17th consecutive Labour Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.

It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2007. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Bournemouth bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.

This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.

Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.

That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.

But for the rest, the officer class as much as the rank and file, it’s a daunting inheritance. The decade to date has been a long march to sustain. Those who led it have changed and re-changed, been shuffled and sidelined, died and retired from the field. But we – the poor bloody soldiers - are still here. Our boots are fresh and our uniforms re-supplied. We are rested and invigorated. Morale, if it anywhere was, can only be high. Yet still it’s a decade since we have been home. As we prepare to strike out again from our camp, we don’t wonder which army will triumph, but begin to ask what we will do if this march never ends.

For, that, indeed, is what this madness is: it’s the hour that we see that the march never ends.

We’ve learned that we cannot be killed. And we’ve come to accept that we’ll never go home. But now is the light headed dance, the fretful mazurka, of an army that knows it can never arrive.

Hmmm ... I wonder what Sion Simon's expenses look like ...

Decades of effort, study and critical thought

... went into the political evolution of Rachel Reeves, PPC for Leeds West (over at LabourLost):

I remember back in 1987, my dad putting on the Six o'clock News and pointing out Neil Kinnock to my sister, Ellie, and me. He told us that was who we voted for, and we've both known we were Labour since then (I was eight and Ellie was six).

Jesus wept. And I'm sure the history of vast majority of tribal voters is not in the least bit different.

I guess we should just be grateful her dad didn't support Hitler.

Come on, sunshine

Fuck me, what a load of old cobblers:

"Light is only one of many factors in the complex tragedy of suicide," say Björkstén and the others, "but this study shows that there is a possible relationship between light and suicide".

Fuck all to do with the fact that you don't get enough sleep then?

Twats!