Archive for Bullshit

Project Fear says butter and cheese will be luxury items after Brexit

July 20, 2018 Bullshit No comments

Try not to laugh but the Independent have run a headline today claiming that cheese and butter will be luxury items after Brexit because (they claim) dairy products will be more expensive to import from the EU.

Image result for milk me i dare you

We’re something like the 10th largest producer of dairy products in the world but because we export such a lot we have the second largest dairy trade deficit in the world. As a consequence, the UK is one of the world’s most valuable dairy markets and around 20% of EU dairy exports go to the UK. Where the UK buys its milk and cheese makes or breaks a country’s dairy industry and the EU as usual stands to lose most by punitive restrictions on trade with the UK. The overnight withdrawal of the average 36% tariffs on dairy imports from outside the EU will certainly see buyers looking outside the EU for their butter and cheese on independence day and there is no shortage of countries on our doorstep producing dairy at relatively low cost who will no longer be priced out of the market by EU tariffs.

Dairy production in the UK has decreased over the last couple of decades because it is unprofitable on anything but an industrial scale thanks to supermarkets paying below cost price for their milk. If the cost of importing dairy products from the EU does go up (and it’s a big if) then that will make imports less economically viable for large retailers and domestically produced products more profitable for them. They will buy more UK produced dairy which will grow the domestic industry and drive up exports as we have already seen with the manufacturing sector following the drop in the value of the pound.

It was the threat of importing cheap Polish milk that helped Tesco break the dairy farmers when they played hardball over wholesale milk prices a few years ago. If Polish milk becomes more expensive to import then that leverage disappears and UK dairy farmers could end up turning a profit on their dairy produce. The supermarkets of course tell us that paying a fair price for milk will drive up prices for consumers but it is in reality an investment in the dairy industry that will allow producers to benefit from economy of scale and reduce costs.

Leaving the EU isn’t going to result in a shortage of cheese and butter, nor is it likely to make it more expensive to the consumer. This is just more ridiculous Remainer scaremongering.

The gender pay gap is a myth

April 8, 2018 Bullshit No comments

Woman know your place

More than 10,000 large companies have been forced to publish figures on their gender pay gap and unsurprisingly more than three quarters of them have a higher median average salary for men than women.

But what does this mean? It’s easy to say what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that companies are paying men more for the same job as women. That would be illegal. What it means is that 78% of the 10,000 or so large companies have more male employees doing jobs with higher salaries than women. And on the flip side, 14% of those companies employ more women in higher paid jobs than men with the other 8% having the same median average salary.

So are the figures useful? Put simply: no. More men are in higher paid jobs for a number of reasons, primary of which is decades of historical male dominance of the workplace before legislative and cultural changes brought about workplace equality. Add in maternity leave taking women out of their chosen careers for a year at a time and often seeing a return to a different role and choices made about work/life balance when starting a family and you start to understand why there is an apparent gender pay gap.

But more fundamentally there is the the flawed methodology of calculating the gender pay gap. Let’s say a logistics company employs 10 office staff, 20 warehouse staff and 50 drivers. Assume the majority of the office staff are women (because most of the people who applied for the jobs were women, not because of a conscious or unconscious bias) and the majority of the warehouse staff and drivers are men (again, not because of bias but because most applicants were men). The warehouse job is manual labour in a relatively hazardous environment so they are paid more than the office staff. The drivers work longer hours and have HGV licences so they are paid more than the warehouse staff. For simplicity, let’s say the office staff are on £10 an hour, the warehouse staff on £15 and the drivers on £20 an hour. That means the office staff who are mainly women are collectively being paid £100 an hour, the warehouse staff £300 an hour and the drivers £1,000 an hour. That’s a median of £18.57 per hour for the predominantly male warehouse staff and drivers against a median of £10 per hour for the predominantly female office staff. On paper that’s a massive gender pay gap but in reality the male and female employees are being paid the same wage as each other for doing the same job and short of illegally sacking half the staff in each department and only recruiting men for the office and women for the warehouse and as drivers, that gender pay gap will rightly and justifiably remain.

There will never be a gender balance in the workplace because men don’t take time off to have babies. I’m not being misogynistic, just stating a fact. You can’t hold a man back in their career for every woman that takes a year out to have a baby because that is unlawful discrimination, not to mention bad for the company and a frankly ridiculous prospect (so expect Harriet Harperson to announce it as a policy for the next Labour manifesto). It is often difficult – if not impossible – for a woman returning to work following maternity leave to return to the same role after a prolonged absence and more so if they were in a senior position within the company. This isn’t me saying women have it coming to them because they have babies, it’s just that a lot changes in 12 months and a man returning to work after 12 months on the sick (or even paternity leave) would face exactly the same problem. But over time the ratio of women to men in senior (and higher paid) jobs will continue to get closer to 1:1 through natural attrition until it reaches the point where, though still slightly balanced in favour of men for the preceding reasons, it is equal.

Not having a gender balance doesn’t mean there is discrimination or inequality of the sexes in a company. Forcing large employers to publish fundamentally flawed aggregated data without context and requiring them to present it as if it were evidence of inequality is wrong. It is damaging to the reputation of the companies involved and it will almost certainly result in legislation to legalise discrimination to allow companies to meet arbitrary quotas so politicians can be seen to be doing something to address a problem that doesn’t exist.

Lawful Rebellion is a myth

October 24, 2015 Bullshit, Constitution 60 comments

With irritating frequency people post crap on Facebook about Article 61 of Magna Carta and “lawful rebellion”, claiming to be able to legally avoid paying taxes and operate outside the law as long as they write to the Queen to pledge their allegiance and tell her they’re lawfully rebelling against the government.

It’s bollocks.

The fundamental flaw in this lawful rebellion nonsense isn’t that the fascist state will deny people their constitutional right to rebel it’s that such a right doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed since 1297, if ever.

To understand why this lawful rebellion rubbish is … well, rubbish … you need some background. There have been four different versions of Magna Carta, each one being replaced by the next until the 1225 version was reaffirmed by decree of Edward I. There was an Article 61 in the original version of Magna Carta that was issued in 1215 but by the time Magna Carta was reissued in 1216 Article 61 had been removed. It lasted less than 12 months. Magna Carta didn’t actually end up on the statute roll until it was reaffirmed in 1297.

The lawful rebellion cranks come up with a variety of reasons why Article 61 should still be in force but they’re nonsense. A common claim is that parliament can’t repeal Magna Carta because it’s part of the Common Law. Parliament is sovereign, it can and does repeal or amend whatever it chooses whether it’s part of the Common Law or not. The universal right to trial by jury has been abolished and Habeas Corpus has been suspended by Act of Parliament several times. Whether it is considered to be part of the Common Law or not, Magna Carta became a statute in 1297 when it was entered onto the statute roll.

Another one is that Magna Carta is a treaty so it can’t be repealed by parliament. Magna Carta isn’t a treaty which is a contract entered into by sovereign states or international organisations. It was a contract under common law between the King and a group of barons signed at the point of sword. If it was a treaty – which it isn’t – then it was signed under duress and would be invalid under Articles 51 and 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Magna Carta is a statute and parliament has jurisdiction over it in the same way it has jurisdiction over Acts of the English, Scottish and (pre-Republic) Irish Parliaments, Acts of the Rump Parliament and other proclamations and statutes from before and after the civil war.

The oldest statute still on the books – the Distress Act 1267 (otherwise known as the Statute of Marlborough) – predates the British Parliament and the Rump Parliament of Cromwell’s republic yet it is still in force. It doesn’t matter whether the law was made by a King, Lord Protector, English Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Irish Parliament or British Parliament – the law is the law and parliament has jurisdiction over all laws.

To put it quite simply, there is no Article 61 of Magna Carta and rebellion is unlawful. There is no smoking constitutional gun that means you don’t have to pay taxes or fines or obey the law. There is, in fact, only one way to lawfully rebel and that is to be on the winning side so you’re the one who decides what is and isn’t lawful.

Whether you choose to believe me on this is your choice. I have nothing to gain from telling the truth – it’s not like I’m asking for donations to spread the word after all. You can carry on reading the rubbish these cranks put on their websites, try your hand at tax evasion and end up in court where you’ll try refusing to stand for the magistrate to deny him his authority because the same websites tell you that the courts are operating under admiralty law and they only have jurisdiction if you stand up for them and end up getting fined anyway because none of this stuff works. But for the love of FSM, please stop posting this crap on Facebook, starting petitions and sending round robin emails trying to find more gullible people to keep it all going!

Mass Delusion for Dummies

Housing benefit reforms target the wrong people

January 2, 2014 Bullshit 32 comments

A woman in Merseyside has been told she is losing some of her housing benefit because the sensory room for her severely disabled daughter is classed as a spare bedroom.

Picture: Liverpool Echo

I absolutely agree with the removal of housing benefit for spare bedrooms – if someone else is paying your rent then the house you live in should be absolutely what you need, nothing more – and I won’t call it the bedroom tax because it’s not a tax, that’s just a phrase the Labour Party propaganda machine invented. The problem is that the changes have been poorly implemented as usual and that’s led to so much injustice that the majority of the population thinks that it’s a bad idea and would gladly see a return to the system where the taxpayer is subsidising a middle aged couple whose kids have left home to live in a 4 or 5 bedroom house that they don’t need and can’t afford. Of course, if you frame it in those terms most people would say it shouldn’t happen but this is why benefit reform needs to be done right first time, because if you get it wrong the heart overrules the head and people will agree to virtually anything to end the injustice caused by it being done wrong.

In the case of this woman in Merseyside, her 28 year old daughter is registered blind, mentally handicapped and uses a wheelchair. The spare bedroom in their bungalow has been converted into a sensory room with a ball pool, a TV and lights and is also used to store her wheelchairs. Because it’s still classed as a bedroom though, she loses part of her benefits which leaves her in a situation that there is no real way out of. She can’t move to a smaller place because she needs the extra space to store the wheelchairs and sensory equipment and if she finds a part time job to pay the rent shortfall she’ll need a carer for her daughter which the local authority will have to pay for.

Local authorities have been given £150m by the Department of Work & Pensions so they can clear up the mess the benefit reforms have left behind which is a tacit admission that the British government knows it got it wrong and knew in advance that the legislation was poorly written but this isn’t a secure funding source and it’s unlikely that £150m actually covers the costs. This woman in Merseyside has been given a discretionary award to cover the shortfall in her housing benefit for the start of the year but it still leaves her in limbo, knowing that at some point in the near future she’s going to have to go cap in hand to the local authority again and hope that there’s some money available to help her.

People who are using a spare bedroom as sensory rooms or as storage for medical equipment or for some other type of necessary facility for a disabled person shouldn’t have their housing benefit cut for that room. Nor should couples who have to sleep in separate rooms because of a disability or medical condition (such as one of them being too restless, kicking out, etc. in the night). Part time parents (such as weekend dads and mums) who have overnight contact with their children shouldn’t have their housing benefit reduced for a spare room for their children either because in a great many cases that means that the agreed contact with their children can’t happen. Nor should housing benefit be reduced for parents who are keeping a bedroom for their child who normally lives at home who is currently serving overseas in the armed forces and will return home after their tour.

These exclusions could easily have been written in to the legislation to prevent the injustice we’re seeing now and the abolition of the spare bedroom subsidy would have been better received and would be better perceived by the majority. Instead, it is seen as an attack on the sick and disabled and it will be years before the public are willing to support benefit reform again.

Met Office can’t predict tomorrow’s weather but can predict it in 10 years’ time?

February 22, 2012 Bullshit, Climate Change, Technology 3 comments

The British government’s Science and Technology Committee yesterday said that the Met Office needs to spend lots of money on new supercomputers to enable them to more accurately predict the weather 5 days in advance.

Met Office DartboardDespite being one of the top three weather prediction services in the world, the Met Office struggles to predict tomorrow’s weather.  Only a couple of weeks ago they predicted several inches of snow overnight and we got nothing at all.  The other day they predicted no snow at all and we had snow.  How often have you watched the weather forecast, gone on a day trip and been caught in a deluge despite the Met Office predicting a glorious day?

People have very little faith in the Met Office’s ability to predict the weather and rightly so.  The media are slowly turning away from the Met Office because of their poor track record and turning to alternative providers.  According to Chaos Theory it should be possible to predict the weather from any event – a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, it’s all cause and effect.  The computing power required to calculate an accurate weather prediction based on the small amount of data available is phenomenal though and it’s never going to be possible to get a completely accurate forecast.

With enough technology and accurate data, it would be possible for the Met Office to produce weather forecasts with an acceptable margin of error.  But the technology doesn’t exist yet, the data isn’t accurate enough and the costs involved in developing the technology required would be prohibitive.

All of this raises an important point: the Met Office, by its own admission, can’t predict the weather 5 days in advance but they are one of the primary sources of data for the British government’s global warming tax scams.  It’s hard to believe that the British government would employ fund managers to manage UK Plc’s investments if they had a track record of losing more money than they made or economists at the Treasury who’ve consistently been unable to budget more than a week in advance so why do they employ the Met Office, who can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with more than 70% accuracy, to tell them what the weather is going to be like in 10 years’ time?

Jeremy Clarkson apologises to unions for poking fun at BBC

December 1, 2011 BBC, Bullshit, Come the revolution, Unions One comment

Jeremy Clarkson has caved in and apologised for making a joke about the anti-government strikes.

Jeremy ClarksonDuring an interview on the One Show, Clarkson was asked what he thought of the strikes to which he replied that they were brilliant, he could dart around London and there was no traffic and it reminded him of the 1970s.  He then went on to joke that because it’s the BBC there has to be balance and said that he would take them outside and shoot them and would have them executed in front of their families.

The joke was actually at the expense of the BBC and its charter obligation to remain balanced and impartial which sometimes makes for bizarre statements from newsreaders and chat show hosts.  The unions, however, were consumed with mock outrage with UNISON actually going as far as taking legal advice as to whether he could be reported to the police for incitement to hatred!

Clarkson has now apologised to the unions for making a joke at the BBC’s expense and UNISON have magnanimously accepted his apology and won’t be trying to get him arrested for being funny.

Just in case anyone from any of the unions is wondering, if I was in charge I wouldn’t have you executed, I’d take your leaders and agitators and put them in a hard labour camp until they stopped being such bloody stupid pricks.  When people like Dave Prentis (UNISON), Mark Serwotka (PCS) and Bob Crow (RMT) hand over some of their huge salaries (they all have pay and perks of £100k+)  to set an example they might deserve some respect but until they do, they deserve all the contempt that’s directed at them, the useless champagne socialist troublemakers.

Apparently the BBC received a large number of complaints which they believe have been made as part of an orchestrated campaign (no doubt organised by the unions).  I have made my own complaint tonight at the BBC’s decision to apologise to the unions when they were obviously taking the piss for publicity:

I am disgusted that the BBC and Jeremy Clarkson have been forced to apologise to the unions over Clarkson’s joke on the One Show.  No offence was intended and none was caused – the unions were expressing mock outrage at a joke that was made at the expense of the BBC, not the unions and not strikers. The BBC should have told the unions to grow up and do something useful, not waste everyone’s time pretending to be offended by a joke aimed at the BBC for publicity.

Wednesday’s strikes are anti-government, not anti-cuts

November 28, 2011 Bullshit, Come the revolution, Unions 4 comments

The head of Unison says there is no way a public sector strike on Wednesday can be avoided, even if the British government wanted to do a deal.

UNISON placard: Tell the Tories to stuff the pay cutsThis is hardly a shock announcement – the strikes would have gone ahead whether they caved in to every unreasonable demand the unions issued because this isn’t about pay and conditions, it’s a union protest against the Tories.  Even the BBC can’t avoid showing pictures of anti-Tory slogans on official union placards because they’re everywhere.  The protests are being backed by the far left extremist Socialist Workers Party and senior Labour politicians.

This is a party political campaign, not a grassroots one.  The public sector have pensions that most of us can only dream of and perks like guaranteed pay rises and being paid by the mile to drive to work are a public sector invention, the majority of us that work in the sector don’t get anything like the pay and conditions the public sector get.  The strikes on Wednesday aren’t about keeping the pay and conditions – even the economically illiterate unions understand that it’s simply not sustainable – they’re about trying to overthrow the ConDems and installing a puppet Labour government in its place.

Not all public sector workers are highly paid of course – cleaners, lollypop (wo)men, dinner ladies, etc., don’t get paid a great deal – but that doesn’t mean that all public sector workers should keep their gold-plated pensions and expensive perks at the expense of some of the poorest, low-paid workers in the country.  The public sector and unions are infested with communists who bang on about wealth redistribution and capitalist greed so I’m sure the highest paid public sector workers such as the 447 civil servants that earned more than £100k last year will be more than happy to redistribute their wealth to the low paid public sector workers they’ll be striking with on Wednesday.  As, I’m sure, will the champagne socialist union bosses who earn at least three times the median salary for the public sector workers they are supposed to represent (the list is out of date – the head of the FBU is on £82k per year).

I wish I was in Telford this week instead of away on a training course so I could find a picket line to cross just for my own little protest.  I object to having so much of my money taken off me on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment to to fund pay and conditions for “professional” public sector workers that I could never realistically expect in the private sector.  The country is broke, we are too highly taxed already and it’s time the public sector got a dose of reality.

EU referendum not a priority but line of succession is?

October 28, 2011 Bullshit One comment

David Cameron told us that now wasn’t the time for a referendum on the EU, saying it was more important to sort out the economy and that most people were more interested in jobs and the cost of living than having a referendum on the EU.

Queen with the PopeSo it’s not the right time to sort out the cause of our doom-spiralling economy, high unemployment and high cost of living but it is apparently the right time to sort out the laws governing succession to the throne to allow the monarch to marry Catholics, girls to accede to the throne ahead of boys and to remove the requirement for the monarch to authorise royal marriages.

I wonder how many people have written to their MPs asking them to make these changes?  I reckon most MPs will have had somewhere in the region of zero letters about this and quite rightly so – it doesn’t matter.

But the changes that are being made are.  The monarch is the head of the Anglican church, how can they marry a Catholic?  The changes require amendments to Act of Settlement and the Bill of Rights – I just don’t trust the British government to make changes to the English constitution.  They’re already talking about a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities again, is this going to be used as an opportunity to do away with the English Bill of Rights and replace it with an inferior British alternative?

This is a pointless distraction, an unnecessary tinkering with the English constitution and a complete waste of time and money.

Forget about the recession, let’s change the law of succession

October 12, 2011 Bullshit, WTF? 3 comments

The world is in recession, the Bank of England have had to magic another £75bn out of thin air to try and stimulate the economy, unions are threatening to bring the country to its knees and what’s David Cameron’s number one priority?  Changing the laws of succession.

Apparently what we really need to concentrate on is not sorting out the economy, making sure that people have a roof over their heads, jobs and something to eat but changing the law to make sure women can inherit the throne ahead of younger men and that future monarchs can marry catholics.  How can the head of the Church of England marry a catholic?

Unbelievable.  Well done Dave.

Another Steve Uncles libel: I do NOT support his anti-Northern Ireland campaign

June 30, 2011 Bullshit, Come the revolution, EDP No comments

Once again I have to defend myself against the de facto leader of the English Democrats, Steve Uncles.

Some time ago Uncles wrote a letter to Sinn Féin offering to change English Democrats policy (that’s how policies are made in the EDP – Steve Uncles comes up with some batshit idea and hey presto it’s policy) to one of kicking Northern Ireland out of the UK and forcing them into unification with the Republic of Ireland in return for a bribe from Sinn Féin for his bankrupt party.

Naturally, Sinn Féin ignored him as he and his party are both non-entities and even convicted terrorists have some standards when it comes to dealing with lowlifes.

But as part of his fascist campaign against Northern Ireland, Uncles started a Facebook page called “Campaign to get Northern Ireland out of the UK”.  I wanted to make sure everyone who came across it knew who was behind the page so I posted the following comment on the wall of the page:

This page is the work of Steve Uncles of the English Democrats who wrote to Sinn Féin offering to adopt a policy of uniting NI with the Republic of Ireland in return for them bankrolling his party. There’s not a lot Uncles won’t do to get his £26,241 back from the party which isn’t surprising given that they are so heavily in debt and still got beaten by the Monster Raving Loony Party not long ago.

Steve Uncles doesn’t speak for England, most English people wouldn’t force a nation of 2m people to join another country against their will in return for a bribe from the political wing of a terrorist organisation.

As users of Facebook will know, before you can post a comment on the wall of a page you have to “like” it.  Which I did for as long as it took me to post the comment and then I immediately clicked the “unlike” link and removed myself from the page, leaving the comment exposing this terrorist-appeasing lowlife on the wall.

Predictably, the comment was soon taken off the wall of the Facebook page by Uncles but in order to try and damage my reputation, he has taken a screenshot of his status update showing me “liking” the page so I could post the comment and posted it on his English Passport blog without telling people that I only did it to post the above comment on the wall which he has deleted and telling them that I support his fascist campaign.

And of course he has mentioned the fact that I am in UKIP (which he tried to defect to this year but was knocked back) and the Campaign for an English Parliament (which he got thrown out of this year for bringing the campaign into disrepute) to try and damage their reputations with his lies as well.

Here is the comment I posted in response to Uncles’ libel on his English Passport blog which he still hasn’t approved (and probably never will because he’s a dishonest little turd):

Comment Pending on English Passport libel

And here is a screenshot of the wall of the Victims of Steve Uncles page on Facebook posted straight after I commented on Uncles’ page:

Victims of Steve Uncles Wall

So will Steve Uncles, the lying, fascist, terrorist-appeasing lowlife failure be man enough to admit that he has deliberately mislead people and libelled me?  A complaint has been made to WordPress about the libel Steve Uncles has made in contravention of their Terms of Service and an email will be sent off to his attack poodle, the ineffectual “technically” leader of the English Democrats (and practising solicitor) Robin Tilbrook who I assume is Uncles’ personal solicitor as he is the one who makes all the threats and complaints against anyone who criticises the terrorist-appeaser nowadays.

Update:
Not content with libelling me, the terrorist sympathiser is now impersonating me rather than publishing my comments exposing his deception.  This is the best thing about terrorist sympathising scum like Steve Uncles – give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.  I think you’re going to need a better solicitor than Robin for this one Steve.  He couldn’t even manage to win a racial discrimination case for his own party when the bank admitted to racially discriminating against you, I don’t fancy his chances of getting you off this one!

Uncles Impersonating Me

Union? What union?

April 29, 2011 Britishness, Bullshit, England 2 comments

Ok, the wedding is over and done with and we’ve got our new princess.

Watching the wedding made me feel quite happy really – I love the royals and I’m sure William and Kate will turn more than a few borderline republicans into monarchists.  The run-up to the wedding has been absolutely horrendous though – days of inane chatter, clueless hypothesising and utter bollocks from people trying to imply they have some inside knowledge of the wedding because they know the Middleton’s gardener’s milkman’s postman’s next door neighbour.

The big downside of the royal wedding, though, is the proliferation of the union flag and people declaring their pride in being “British”.

The resurgence of the English flag over the last few years has been great.  Passing rows of houses with English flags in their gardens and hanging out of their windows is a gratifying sight but the last few days has seen English flags taken down and replaced with the flag of our imperial masters.  Even St George’s Day has been largely ignored by shops who decked out their stores with red, white and blue bunting weeks ago.  There is a very real danger that people will fly the BNP flag now that they have bought them instead of the Cross of St George, putting back the cause of progressive English nationalism by years.

And as for this ridiculous pride in being “British” – how does that work?  How can English people – the citizens of the last colony of the British empire – feel any pride in a non-country that has failed to build an inclusive national identity in over 300 years of existence?

The so-called “United” Kingdom is anything but.  The union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been superficial from day one and we are no more united now than we were in 1707.  This union of four nations has five governments, five flags, four languages, four constitutions, three legal systems, two judiciaries and two royal families – Prince William will be King William V of England and William III of Scotland.   “British” is a three century old failed experiment in social engineering that is as irrelevant now as it was before the Act of Union.

I used to describe myself as English first and British second.  Now I’m just English.  And isn’t it time we had a Prince of England?  A much better title for Prince William that Duke of Cambridge!

Paedophile zombie aliens will eat your babies if you vote for AV

April 2, 2011 Bullshit, Propaganda One comment

No2AV have produced some “research” claiming that changing to the Alternative Vote system will mean the BNP getting into power.  Well, that’s how some in the No2AV camp (such as Witchfinder General Warsi and Guido) are painting it but that’s not what their “research” says.

Yes2AV LogoThe “research” says that in 35 seats, the votes of “extremists” would decide the outcome of the election.  Or to use their words, “35 seats could be in the gift of extremists under AV”.

So what do they mean when they say the seats could be in the gift of extremists?  Reading the three and a half pages of “research” which contains no verifiable facts, no numbers and no explanation of how they did their research, what they are saying is that the second preference votes of people whose first preference is the BNP or National Front could make the difference between a win or loss for the candidate that would have won if those people were disenfranchised.

My first question is how do they know what BNP and National Front voters’ second preferences are going to be?  We’ve never had an election under AV so nobody knows what second preferences would look like.  It’s pure guesswork.

My second question is how do define an extremist?  Is an 80 year old woman casting a protest vote for the BNP because the housing estate she’s live in all her life has been taken over my immigrants an extremist?  What about an 18 year old student voting for the BNP because his parents do?  What about the thousands of ordinary people who don’t hate foreigners and don’t want to “send the darkies home” but vote BNP in the mistaken belief that their protest vote will force the LibLabCon to change their ways?  Are they extremists?

My third and final question is why are the second preference votes of anyone who puts a tick in the BNP box automatically “wrong”?  Why should their choices be ignored because they vote for the “wrong” party?  No2AV’s “research” makes it clear that a candidate winning because of the votes of an  “extremist or fringe” voter is wrong, the implication being that the candidate that gets their second preference votes must automatically be unsuitable.  I vote UKIP so I presumably fit into the “fringe” category because I don’t vote for the LibLabCon so why is my vote worth less than someone who votes for one of the establishment parties that are full of liars, crooks and warmongers?

A “no” vote in the AV referendum will be deemed to be a “no” to any form of electoral reform.  AV isn’t the answer to the current system of unrepresentative and unaccountable government but it’s better than First Past the Post which ignores the votes of most of the electorate.  The answer is AV+ or STV but that’s not on offer so we have to set the ball rolling with plain old AV.

It does no credit to the No2AV campaign when they so obviously misrepresent facts and misrepresent opinion as fact.  They don’t have a clue what AV will mean at elections so they have to resort to trying to scare people about the non-existent threat of the BNP getting into power.  The simple fact of the matter is that under AV, the votes of more people will matter than under First Past the Post and the fact that elections will be more unpredictable under AV is no reason not to try it.  Far from it – the LibLabCon will have to start doing something about the issues that drive people to vote for “extremist and fringe” parties if they want to win elections and anything that makes politicians listen to voters can’t be a bad thing.

Gray and Keys lose jobs for sexism, what about Loose Women?

January 27, 2011 Bullshit, Free Speech, Political Correctness 7 comments

So Sky Sports presenter, Andy Gray and Richard Keys, have lost their jobs for making off-air sexist comments.  Why?

They haven’t made any sexist comments on the air, only privately.  Someone has deliberately and vindictively leaked recordings of their private conversations to destroy them.  Why were the cameras recording private conversations and how did someone manage to accumulate a collection of recordings of off-air, private conversations and get them on the internet?

Will the presenters of lunchtime trash TV programme, Loose Women, come under similar scrutiny for their on-air sexism?  Every episode of Loose Women consists of a couple of interviews, a bit of gossip and the rest is made up of sexist comments and jokes about men.  Why is it acceptable for a gaggle of middle aged women to base an entire TV programme around slagging men off but it’s a sackable offence for a TV presenter to make sexist comments off the air to male colleagues who clearly took no offence at them?

I’ve said it before: straight, white English men are the most discriminated against section of society.

Switch on your lights for Earth Hour tonight at 20:30

March 27, 2010 Bullshit, Climate Change, Propaganda One comment

WWF has jumped on the global warming band wagon and organised Earth Hour, where it hopes people around the world will switch off their lights to save the planet.

They’re hoping lots of fools with nothing better to do with their time will get out their solar-powered laptops, connected to their wind powered telephone exchanges and sign the pledge on WWFs website which is, I expect, hosted on recycled servers in a carbon neutral data centre powered by a fast breeder reactor.  What, you mean people don’t solar powered laptops? And the internet doesn’t run on wind power?

I don’t imagine it will come as any great surprise to my regular readers that I will be going round the house turning on all the lights just to piss off the global warming scammers.  I know I won’t be the only one.

So who else is going to be “celebrating” Earth Hour with a big switch-on?  I would have burnt a few tyres in the front garden to try and combat the global cooling we’re currently experiencing but Mrs Sane wouldn’t be best pleased and have you seen the price of tyres lately?  You’d have to buy new ones because they recycle all the old ones!

Danish police beat back climate change nutters at Cophenhagen

December 16, 2009 BBC, Bullshit, Climate Change, Come the revolution, Propaganda 5 comments

Hundreds of eco-terrorists and assorted left wing fruitcakes and swivel-eyed loons have had to be beaten back by police in Copenhagen after they tried to break through a perimeter fence designed to keep the unwashed nutters away from the terribly important politicans that are going to save the world at the Copenhagen World Government Climate Change Conference.

No Mandate Brown was on BBC Breakfast this morning spinning like a maniac, telling us that “there is no doubt about the science”, that the first climate change refugees have already emerged and our children will be living in floods and droughts.  Presumably he doesn’t mean at the same time although that wouldn’t be the most bizarre claim the environmentalists have come out with.

He didn’t say exactly where these mythical climate change refugees were but he was talking about Bangladesh which has, of course, been experiencing terrible and unsual flooding this year which is all caused by global warming climate change CO2 pollution.  And in 2007.  And 2005.  And 2004, 1998, 1991, 1988, 1987 … in fact, according to Wikipedia, there have been 18 major floods in the last century in Bangladesh but let’s not let facts get in the way of an outrageous lie.  This explanation of the Bangladeshi climate from the perspective of disaster planning and prevention draws on pre-global warming hysteria reports and indigenous knowledge to explain the flooding in Bangladesh.

Or he may have been talking about Ethiopia which has been talked about this last few days with the droughts and desertification it is suffering being blamed on global warming climate change CO2 pollution.  Again, some basic research and a reasonable memory for anyone over the age of 30 will confirm that the droughts and famine of the last few decades were caused by war and deforestation and that much of Ethiopia is desert.  But once again, let’s not let facts get in the way of an outrageous lie.

Anyway, back to the fruit loops in Copenhagen.  They were apparently trying to break into the compound because they’re angry about the lack of progress at the conference.  And at the lack of access to information about what’s going on at the conference.  But let’s not let a lack of facts get in the way of some mindless violence.

The Africans have been throwing their teddies out of their prams again today, complaining that the Danes have been tailoring the agenda to fit the pre-determined outcome decided by their EU masters.  They walked out of the conference the other day because people weren’t throwing enough money at them.

Despite the large number or world leaders at the conference talking about a subject they’re completely uneducated in and unqualified to talk about, the chances of the promised “global deal” on climate change actually materialising are looking pretty slim at the moment.  The only openly-stated objective of the conference that is likely to be achieved is- keeping global warming to below 2 degrees, on account of the earth cooling for the last decade and the hockey stick graph being a load of bollocks.

All these protesters seem to be having lots of fun getting angry, waving their placards and shouting at people which made me wonder today how many of the sensible majority in this country who see through the global warming scam would turn up to a climate change non-believer’s protest.  I might even organise one for a laugh, who’s up for it?

Biased BBC: no mention of climate change fraud

November 24, 2009 BBC Bias, Bullshit, Climate Change, Propaganda One comment

Don’t you just love the BBC?  Balanced reporting?  Na, that’s something for amateurs.

The BBC News website is reporting that “three UK groups studying climate change” have pronounced that “the science underpinning climate change is more alarming than ever” and are warning that carbon emissions must be cut.

These three groups say that persistent droughts in Australia – you know, that huge continent in the southern hemisphere that’s been mostly desert for the last few thousand years – are because of man-made climate change.    They also warn that the Maldives – the island chain that is asking for billions of pounds in international aid to combat climate change because it is sinking – could soon disappear under the sea because of man-made global warming.  They go on to say that evidence for “dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change” is growing.

So who are these three groups?  Well, there’s the Met Office – a British government department with a huge climate change budget that was part of the IPPC report on climate change that has been proven to have been based on fraudulent data and predictions.  Then there’s the Royal Society, also with a huge climate change budget, that has been criticised for bullying and unscientific behaviour in closing down debate that doesn’t support climate change theory.  The third is the Natural Environment Research Council, a British government funded quango with a huge climate change budget and is responsible for advising the British government on crackpot climate change policies.

So no vested interests there then.

The science if fraudulent and the only thing that is growing more alarming is the way the lies and fraudulent data and predictions these “scientists” are paid to make up are actually still being taken seriously, even when their own words have exposed them.

Balanced reporting from the BBC?  Don’t make me laugh.  There’s not one single mention of the fact that the “science” these British government funded global warming propaganda merchants are quoting is a fraud.

Yeah, good luck with that

November 23, 2009 Bullshit No comments

I’m not going to make a habit of this, don’t worry, but I’ve read something on Socialist Unity that I actually agree with.

A London couple is applying to have a civil partnership.  Nothing unusual in that, thousands of couples have entered into civil partnerships.  Iain Dale has done it, Matt Lucas did it (and got “divorced”), even Elton John has had a go.  But there is something unusual about this couple from London – they’re straight.

Just as gay people are banned from getting married, straight people are banned from entering into a civil partnership.  It’s all a bit daft really and these two are aiming to highlight how daft it is.

Best of luck to them.  They’ll need it because the law doesn’t protect anyone who isn’t part of a minority.  If they chop their legs off, convert to Buddhism and claim to be albino transexuals from Burkina Faso they’re probably in with a chance.

A very inconvenient truth

November 21, 2009 Bullshit, Climate Change, Come the revolution, Corruption, Propaganda, Sleaze One comment

So, the wheels are coming off the global warming bandwagon at last and not a moment too soon.

With the Copenhagen Climate Summit almost upon us, some enterprising hackers have managed to find their way into the University of East Anglia’s network and copied over 1,000 emails, data files and code from their climate change propaganda department.  And they make interesting reading …

One “scientist”, Tim Osborn, told his colleagues to delete data rather than release it under the Freedom of Information Act.  Another “scientist”, Phil Jones, explained how he used a “trick” pioneered by another “scientist” to hide cooling trends.

Michael Mann, another “scientist”, said he would be contacting the BBC to find out why a journalist was allowed to write a vaguely sceptical article.  Another one, Kevin Trenberth, admits that they can’t explain why there is no global warming.

The Information Commissioner has apparently advised “scientists” on how to avoid releasing information under the Freedom of Information Act.  Tom Wigley, another of the “scientists” admits that “scientists” have been dishonestly claiming their predictions fit the IPPC climate model.

We’re being taxed and regulated into the dark ages in the name of climate change and here we have evidence that it’s nothing more than a scam motivated by hundreds of millions of pounds of government funding available for “scientists” that come up with the right answers.

Some excellent reading on Climategate:

Queen’s Speech a load of bollocks again

November 18, 2009 Bullshit No comments

The British government’s Queen’s Speech will be read out today in what is becoming an increasingly ridiculous tradition in which the Queen reads out a carefully prepared script witten entirely in the bullshit dialect of management-speak.

Most of the content of the Queen’s Speech is, as usual, on devolved matters over which the Scottish Prime Minister and his British government has no moral or democratic mandate.

The Queen’s Speech is expected to include:

  • A bill to legally oblige the British government to halve the budget deficit – a Canute-like instruction to the budget to halve in defiance of the laws of nature and pointless in that no parliament can bind a future parliament (Whole of UK)
  • A bill to allow the FSA to ignore employment contracts and change the bonuses paid to bankers (Whole of UK but mainly affecting England)
  • A bill to give English local authorities more powers to prevent floods (England only)
  • A bill to give elderly English people care in their home (England only)
  • A bill to tinker with the police and private security and put more people in the DNA database (Mostly England only)
  • A bill to allow OFGEM to set prices gas and electicity companies can charge (Whole of UK)
  • A bill to make bribery of a foreign official illegal (Whole of UK)
  • A bill to make broadband internet available universally (Whole of UK, mainly benefiting Scotland and Wales)
  • A bill to ban cluster bombs (Whole of UK)
  • A bill to change school league tables and literacy and numeracy strategies in English schools (England only)

As much as it pains me tosay this, I have to agree with Nick Clegg-over that the Queen’s Speech is a farce and that the bill to cut the budget defecit in half is a joke.  As Clagg-over says, they may as well say they’re going to pass a law to make the sun shine next Tuesday.