Oh Great!

BBC

Make no mistake, this is going to be catastrophic. Already a couple have written to the BBC saying that their account had been emptied of £2800 by someone pretending to be the wife of the household and using child benefit information to convince the bank. Both the customer and the bank were at a loss as to how anyone else could be in possession of this information. There is no doubt that the government have been negligent as the Badger has effectively admitted this today in The Commons and the floodgates will open for claims. The chances of sifting the real from the fraudulent claims are remote and this is going to cost all of us a great deal of money (on top of bailing out Northern Crock).
If the data has made it's way to the criminal element, the real damage will be done by the issuing of ID documentation such as driving licences, passports and the opening of bank accounts by the invisible immigrants. Pandora's box has been opened and as the legend goes, the only thing that didn't get out was Hope!

A patent up for grabs?

Sometimes you almost don't notice... you sort of shrug with resignation at the announcement of another 'ban', but today I did a double-take at the radio.. The Flawed One in Downing Street has said that he wishes to ban "plastic carrier bags which are not re-usable".
You see, you almost let it go and then you hear it again...
Not "Recyclable" but "Re-usable". So the 'great' initiative will not actually prevent the production or use of a single carrier bag, as I don't believe anyone has actually designed one that isn't 're-usable'. You open the bag, put things in it, take them home and then take the things out of it and hey presto - the bag can now be re-used.
Why don't the idiots on BBC News add the words "not re-usable - whatever the fuck that means" to their reports instead of regurgitating the crap they are fed by this pointless administration.
Fuckers all.

'A' Level Time Travel

Look there's a perfectly simple way to answer the 'debate' about whether or not A Levels have become easier.

Take 1000 of this year's A level students and ask them to sit the exam papers that were set 20 years ago. Mix their answers in with those submitted at the time (I'm sure they've been archived somewhere) and look at the results.

My suspicion is that a statistician will not be required to validate the significance of the results - I doubt that the current bunch will break the half way mark.

I don't blame the students by the way - they have been let down and betrayed by the political meddling in education.

"Children living in poverty"

What the fuck does that mean? (and WHY doesn't anyone in the media ask?)
Presumably no one is suggesting that there are children living alone in poverty, or that there are poor children living with parents who are not poor?
So what we are talking about is poor families.
And poverty is defined as having an income of less than 60% of the average wage.
So if the average wage goes up so does the number of people defined as poor.
And if they have more children there will be more children in poor families (see above).
And the answer is - spend more money propping up poor people who want to have more children. The message is 'have as many children as you like - the productive tax-paying members of society are only too delighted to pick up any extra costs you might incur.'
I don't fucking think so.

Who made you fucking God Almighty Jan?

Jan Moir has wound me up.

How dare she patronise Kelly Taylor with this disgusting piece in The Telegraph today? With the headline

Kelly Taylor deserves pity, but not euthanasia

she wastes no time in presuming to know what this woman 'deserves'. How in the name of hell would you know what she deserves? What she most certainly does deserve is to be spared your righteous, cruel brand of pity that does nothing to alleviate or end her suffering but presumably helps you to sleep at night (God knows how you do) by lecturing us and her about what she deserves.

Kelly Taylor wants to die. Last year, she tried to starve herself to death, but after nearly three weeks found it too painful to continue. She still wants to die, but is she right to demand that doctors kill her? It may be unpalatable to some, but the only civilised and sane answer is "No".

Of course she demands no such thing. If you had listened to the interview with her devoted husband you would have learned that she has no shortage of doctors who respect her judgement and wishes and would administer the necessary dosage of morphine to put her in a coma. She wil then be in a similar position to other people who have stipulated that they should not be nourished or hydrated while in that condition, and thus be allowed to die. What she is demanding is that these compassionate professionals should not be prosecuted should they carry out her wishes.

Oh and wouldn't the fact that she kept going for three weeks starvation in an attempt to end her own life and gave up because it was too painful be just a teeny weeny clue to the magnitude of what she is suffering? My God, anyone who has the strength, courage and determination to come out of that hell and then say "Right, now I'm going to take my case to the High Court and battle all the arrogant pricks who will tell me that my end is not my business but theirs", has my admiration in spades. You, on the other hand, have my contempt in whatever beats spades by a bloody mile.

Doctors and medical workers spend a lifetime learning how to cure and heal. To ask them to administer lethal injections, not dissimilar to those given to dying household pets by kindly vets, is not only unethical and unlawful, it is morally wrong. Yet many people do not believe this to be the case; they are putting pressure on the British Medical Association to ensure that just such a provision is available in this country - and sooner rather than later.

These doctors and medical workers also presumably learn how to care for people in the event that healing and cure are no longer possible. They no doubt agonise over the moral boundaries between ignoring patients wishes and striving to prolong life at any costs, despite the agony inflicted on the person in their care, and the provision of pain management therapies that require larger and larger, and possibly finally fatal, doses of drugs. How dare you presume to be the only one who knows where these boundaries lie!

This week, Mrs Taylor has taken her fight to die on demand to the High Court, with all the usual media barrage and hysteria that sad cases such as hers now routinely attract. On the courthouse steps, pressure groups such as Dignity in Dying miss no opportunity to highlight Mrs Taylor's intolerable and painful condition, while the Care Not Killing alliance advocates better palliative care for those, such as her, who need it.

Of course her application to the courts, and the media hysteria (your article included presumably) would not be necessary if we had the courage to put in place a sensible structure to allow people in her condition to request fatal treatment rather than forcing each brave individual to re-run the arguments and be forced to die in agony by arrogant cunts such as you. Do you think these organisations exist for their own amusement? They are there because we are cowards and the people they seek to help are brave. We avoid the question, dither, delay and avoid responsibility while these brave people fight for others who may follow them. My God you do seem so small in comparison with them!
By the way, why is it that I find the slogan "Dignity in Dying" so much more symapthetic that the dictatorial "Care Not Killing"? Perhaps because the former is simply asking for something which we would all hope to have but is being denied to this person, and the latter is presuming to tell that same person what we 'know' is best for them.

For her part, Mrs Taylor insists that her husband and her parents support her in her decision to end her life, but one can only guess at the long nights of anguish and tears that are behind that statement, and the unshed tears that lie ahead, whatever the outcome.

Again you presume to know what the relationship is between husband and wife in this situation, instead of considering (not that it's any of your business) that her husband supports her position because he loves her and cares what happens to her.

There is no doubt that Mrs Taylor has suffered from terrible illness. Her body has been twisted and racked by two debilitating syndromes - Eisenmenger's and Klippel-Feil - and she has endured much pain and disability.
For this life, she deserves much sympathy, although she does not ask for it; all she wants now is an opportunity to end it. Yet I fear she will not be successful, for no enlightened country could ever be allowed to finish the job she started with her self-imposed hunger strike.

If she isn't asking for sympathy then don't give it (and certainly not the pity you mention in your headline), but don't presume to tell her how and when she can end her suffering.

I wouldn't normally wish suffering on anyone, but I truly hope that one day you find yourself in her position and this still unenlightened country will force you to endure an agonising, drawn out, desperate death.

I am my own employee!

For a long time now the tax laws have meant that contractors are deemed to be earning a salary, rather than a fee if they only have one client at a time. This was to stop the practice of contractors evading income tax by providing their services through limited companies, paying themselves small incomes and taking the rest in dividend payments from the company. Debatable but let's go with the flow for the sake of it...

So.... Contractors now use umbrella companies, who's only task is to receive the money paid by the client, run a payroll calculation and pass on the net pay to the contractor. Since I am anxious to pay all my dues and sleep soundly at night, this is what I do and I pay about £60 a month for this company to run the payroll.

And here comes the clever bit....

Because I am technically employed by this company, and they have to pay an employer's NI contribution in respect of my salary, I pay both employee's and employer's National Insurance payments on my gross income!!!

That's £287.92 National Insurance because I earned some money and an extra £643.35 because the chancellor reckons that I employ myself. Nearly a grand a month of Treasury revenue that isn't even called tax.

What the fuck is all that about?

The Bexhill goose step

Rother District Council plan to introduce 'Control Orders' (what the fuck are they anyway?), to prevent people letting their dogs off a lead in a public place, oh and forbid them from walking more than 3 dogs at a time. A 'spokesman' said "It's only possible to control a dog when it is on a lead.". Oh really? Perhaps they should widen their consultation to include visiting any of the numerous shoots in the area where they may see teams of gundogs being handled at considerable distances without the use of a lead. Alternatively they could just perforate their 'control orders', roll them round a tube of cardboard and put them to better use.

Fucking jumped-up little control freaks.

Bad Noose

I feel that I should organise a whip-round to raise an internet subscription for the Iraqi Judicial service. They obviously don't have access to this table of drop distances for use in efficiently killing people by dropping them on the end of a rope. The level of incompetence of these people is pitiful, but doesn't really come as a surprise.

What I can't really get my head round is the indignation being spouted by all and sundry about the 'manner' of the executions. There seems to be an abhorrence of anything which might affect the 'dignity' of those who are about to be killed. I'm sorry but I just can't see that putting a rope round someone's neck and dropping them through the floor so that their neck is broken (or severed) is perfectly acceptable behaviour but taunting them is somehow deplorable.

*Sigh*