Monday, August 11, 2008

Eco-Warriors, Please Don't Represent Me

This weekend (9th – 10th August 2008) has been marked by reports in the newspapers (Sky News, The Guardian, The Telegraph, etc.) of a mass protest at Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. Apparently these “pals of the planet” are trying to stop the building of a new, coal powered generation facility on the site.

When will this bunch of Eco-Wallies realise that they do not represent the vast majority of the rest of us? No one voted for them, no one asked them, so why do they think they are empowered to represent "The People". They have obviously been deluded into thinking, just like our current excuse for a government, that they are our nanny and that nanny knows best. Now I know that the average member of the Great British Unwashed is barely capable of coherent speech let alone a cogent thought process, however they are I strongly suspect, happily content to be cocooned in the warmth, luxury and convenience of the benefits of twenty first century living. They don't need a bunch of alternative lifestyle extremists telling them how they should live their lives and frankly neither do I.

Ask any typical member of the common heard if they want to be Green and Eco-Friendly and they will probably answer in the affirmative. This is I suspect only because they have been brainwashed by our Big Brother “Central Soviet” government and their media spin doctors into accepting the “green – good, carbon –bad” doctrine. The government really doesn’t give a toss about saving the world, a superhero team Gordon Brown (PrattMan) and Alistair Darling (Dobbin) they certainly are not. What they and their leftie lackies are really concerned with is what label or cause can they use to introduce a whole range of new taxes and other revenue raising measures. What the underclass don’t of course realise is the actual cost to them of adopting the policies of the Gaia Fathers and Earth Mothers.

Leaving aside the direct and indirect tax burden for a moment (after all if you are on benefit you're not paying taxes anyway and the black market economy of illegally imported tobacco, alcohol and drugs are largely exempt) most people want to be able to switch on the light and the TV whenever they want. They want to turn up the central heating when it gets cold and the air conditioning when it’s too hot, they want chillies from India to make their curries and cheap designer trainers and hoodies from China. Taking on the doctrines of the Eco protesters would, for most of them, mean having to give up most of the supporting pillars of their sink estate lifestyle. Now ask the question if they want to be green or not – I suspect you’ll get a very different answer. It’s not just the lower orders either. The middle classes are also starting to count the cost of going green. Rising fuel costs, higher motoring taxes, the cost of air travel, are starting to make going green look a little like appearing sickly bilious. Just like the lower orders these parvenu's want things only a power and fuel rich economy can provide; strawberries for their dinner party in November, a skiing holiday in July and while hybrid cars many be the fashion accessory of the moment imagine dear Amanda telling Justin and Jocasta that they may have to swap their Range Rover Sport for a Toyota Prius for the school run. No; ask most non-involved, non-activists to pay the real cost of adopting the green agenda and any change to their lifestyle that would impose and support for it would evaporate even faster than a labour government can tax and spend.

I for one don’t want to live in a felt tepee in the middle of a muddy field subsisting on a diet of roots and berries which is what the adoption of the so called green agenda would ultimately mean. Personally I want it hot, air conditioned, microwaved, broadband, gas powered and preferably delivered in a 4X4 supercharged hummvee.

No; the shiftless, whining, pewling Eco warriors don’t represent the majority of us, they have just conned us into believing that they do by only telling us half the story. We should stand up and tell these weirdo members of a minority group to go back to their lentil stew and get back to knitting a bicycle from their beards. We do want an answer to the energy crisis, most of us however I suspect want that answer to involve us producing more energy not less.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Sod Your Bike - Mind My Car!!

Cyclists – when are these pathological parasites going to get off our roads and stop being what the medical fraternity call “A Thrombosis” (Definition: THROMBOSIS – a clot which blocks the whole of the bleeding system). How often have you had to crawl along in a stream of traffic because one or more of these lycra clad loonies are hogging more than their fair share of the carriageway?

At a time when the motorist is being taxed, fined and regulated beyond penury and perdition, these so called Eco-busting planet savers continue to clog up our highways and byways with their selfish egocentric meanderings. All of this without paying a penny for the roads, or even cycleways, they arrogantly commandeer, seemingly to the exclusion of everyone else. I wouldn’t mind so much if they were made to make a contribution to the provision and/or the upkeep of the infrastructure they seem to feel is theirs by right, however they continue to demand all the benefits of free access without bearing any of the costs. Not even the so called pedestrian footways are safe and they seem to have almost completed their invasion and domination of the canal towpaths.

Let’s face the truth here; cyclists make no contribution to the costs of providing them with any of the roads or paths they have selfishly usurped. They don’t pay any fuel duty like the rest of the road users, they have no licence to pay and, of course, they have no compulsory insurance cover. Remember, if one of these idiots damages your car or your property where is your recourse for damages or reparation?

In recent months we have had reported cases of cyclists killing pedestrians and causing road traffic accidents. In most cases I believe it was the cyclists themselves who were at fault by either blatantly disregarding the rules of the Highway Code, or blithely assuming their god like status and superhuman powers would grant them supreme deference from those other road users who have to pay for the privilege.

Let’s lobby to get this menace banned from our roads until they are forced into obeying the rules like the rest of us and, more importantly, are made to pay for their privilege of sharing the roads with us.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

The Heresy Of Gnosticism. A Time For Reformation In The Church Of IT?

One definition of Gnosticism is “The doctrine of salvation by knowledge”. The Gnostics however only reserve their salvation for the special few who are privileged not only to view this special knowledge, but also to understand, practice and implement it. Why then has the computer industry always been a thoroughly Gnostic church?

It has always been easy to draw comparisons between computing and religion. The divisions between PC users and Mac devotees can be as passionate and fundamental as those between Hindus and Sikhs and the internecine warfare amongst PC users as they fight for the merits of Microsoft versus Linux, or Outlook over Lotus Notes, can rival anything as bloody and violent as the Christian reformation had to offer. As with most religious doctrinal arguments however; the real loser in these disputes is always the poor; the masses in the pews, or in IT’s case the humble user.

The computer industry has always adopted the attitude that; “In order to be a user you must learn, understand and then implement our special knowledge”. Users, in the religion of the IT it seems, must always conform to the strictures of the rules and doctrines of their chosen Operating Systems (OS) or application. The OS and the applications that run on them always seem to be written by the expert, aimed solely at the cognoscenti, with the average “user in the street” being forced to keep up. Why is it never the other way around?

The industry would argue that as the systems become more and more complex and sophisticated, the interfaces and controls provided to use them must also grow more complex and sophisticated too. This has not been the case, however, in two of the most user intensive industries on the planet, both of which have a “User Base” far in excess of those using computers.

Our global telephone network is, without argument, the largest and most pervasive IT system on the planet. The complexity of the system and the increasing amount of sophisticated services it offers to the individuals that use it are obvious to all; however the user interface could not be simpler. Pick up the receiver, check for a dial tone, enter an 11 digit number and; “Hey Presto” you are connected. You don’t need to know anything about how the underlying system works; all you need is the ability to push a button.

Automobiles too are today hugely complex and sophisticated systems compared with the Ford “Tin Lizzy” of yesteryear. However, actually operating the modern car is a much easier task than it was even ten or fifteen years ago. You just turn the key, put it in “Drive”, and off you go. The traction control, the ABS and the Engine Management Systems, not present on the cars of yesterday, all play their part but without forcing the user to take on a whole bunch of new skills to implement them.

Not only has the computer industry forced people to adopt an ever more complicated user interface, where getting the user up to speed has failed, it has replaced education with a network of “Expert Priests” or (forgive the expletive) “Consultants”. Just as with the heresy of Gnosticism the masses are increasingly excluded from access to the most sacred mysteries, or the salvation of actually being able to use the stuff, by the complexities of “specialist knowledge”. Users don’t want to have to learn new techniques just to use a computer, access the internet or program their VCR.

I think that it worth pointing out that for many potential IT users even using a mouse (and the complexities of understanding the difference between an icon and a shortcut; not to mention mastering the double click) is considered the learning of a new technique too far. This resistance is not Ludditeism. The mass of ordinary folk want to be part of the broad IT church, they just feel excluded from it by an unfamiliar and unfriendly user interface.

From within the security of the IT industry it is safe to imagine that we are in the majority, or if we aren’t now we will be when the “saved” are counted. Surely everyone knows how to use a mouse? The majority are familiar with a QWERTY keyboard? Everyone knows the way files are saved in folders and folders are stored within each other? The truth is, however, that there are many more people out in the real world for whom those things which we take for granted, are mysteries as deep and impenetrable as Transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, String Theory or Schrödinger’s cat.

In the 17th century society forced some elemental changes on the European Christian church, forcing them to remove some of the more obvious barriers, like Latin texts, altar rails, and the strictures that only “professional priests” could administer the sacraments. All this meant that the church was forced to change its user interface from one of sacred mysteries and specialist knowledge, to one the ordinary people could understand. More fundamentally, to achieve these changes, people were forced to challenge the very way people think. Doctrines and things which had for hundreds of years had been taken as “gospel truths” had to be examined and, in some cases overturned.

These reforms (hence the period being called The Reformation) lead to an explosion in exploration, art, science, politics and social changes, which we called The Renaissance, which in turn has given us many of the benefits of the open society we enjoy today. Surely it is high time for the designers of the user interfaces, application controls, and so called “help manuals” that increasingly make up the everyday fabric of our modern world, to be shaken by some Martin Luther or John Calvin from their cosy positions as the dispensers of “special knowledge” to a point where they stop producing arcane mysticism and give us something that ordinary people can understand and use.

Users today want access to IT for all. They want access to the Internet, the use of email, digital cameras, printers, scanners, PC's and all the rest, to be as easy as making a phone call or driving to the grocery store. Let the brothers and sisters of the broad church of IT rise up and demand a new and better way, let us cry out for prophets and programmers who can give us salvation through technology solutions that are as simple to use as the box they came in.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Who Takes The Risk?

I never thought I would say this but today is the day to applaud a bank.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is making the radical move of announcing that it intends raising additional capital it needs from its SHAREHOLDERS rather than gouging the money from its CUSTOMERS by raising charges. If only they would go on to cut the bonuses paid to the bosses and perhaps reduce the dividend paid to shareholders they wouldn’t need to raise charges ever again?

Maybe the water companies and other privatised industries could remember that it is shareholders who should provide “Risk Capital”; they shouldn’t just impose price rises on their monopoly customers every time they need more money.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Don't Send The Buggers Back - Make 'Em Pay!

A report by the upper parliamentary house's Economic Affairs Committee rejected the government's argument that current record immigration levels provide economic advantages and said ministers have used "irrelevant and misleading criteria".

Ah, so, The Central Soviet’s spin doctors have once again been “economical with the actualité” – Quelle Surprise!!

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that I’m xenophobic and I’m not going to argue for totally closed borders, or a “send the buggers back” policy. What I would argue for though is that we had a government that actually had and implemented a real, actual, Immigration Policy.

The problem, at one level anyway, appears to be that Comrades Blair and Brown have implemented their totalitarian, total control policy over the decent hard working, tax paying people of this country to the point where anyone with half a brain and a reasonable amount of cash are, increasingly rapidly, choosing to abandon ship. This means that, because we have no way of regulating who comes here, even with the mass exodus of the middle classes the flood of economic migrants arriving on our shore there is a nett increase in our overall population. Many (possibly the majority) of these people simply disappear into the 'Black Economy' emerging only to burden over pressured services like the NHS and the education system.

Those who are leaving are not necessarily the wealth producers of our nation but "the hewers of wood and the drawers of water"; the 'ordinary' bulk of our population who, in times past, actually made the country work by their labour and their taxable contributions. What will we then be left with when they're all gone and the flow of migrants goes on unchecked? At one extreme, a disconnected, non-tax paying, benefit dependant; lawless ‘Underclass’, while at the other we will have a tax avoiding ‘Uberclass’ separated from the rest in cocooned gated community luxury. Those people who have not managed to realise the capital from the economic good times brought about from the sound fiscal management of the last Tory government and fled will increasingly be squeezed by Chairman Gordon's 'Tax & Spend', 'Boom & (increasingly) Bust' approach. The Iron Chancellor has an Iron Grip when it comes to squeezing taxes from the middle class.

I can see that immigration is one alternative if we want those practical jobs done, the ones that are essential to making our society function. If however we had a government which had a proper immigration policy then those coming here would be registered and integrated into the tax system so that they actually contribute to the economy rather than, as most people perceive, being a burden on it. We don’t need so called sociological multiculturalism, we do though need integration into the tax system. If, also, we did not tax and regulate the middle classes with such a communistic zeal maybe more of them would stay?

Call me simple but if those illegal immigrants living within the ‘Black Economy’ were actually contributing then maybe the rest of us wouldn’t have to pay as much?

Friday, March 28, 2008

Radical Fundamentalist Launch Another Attack

What should we do when a radical, fundamentalist group of religious zealots launch a direct attack on our law making bodies, parliament, the democratic process, and our general Western way of life? I speak of course of the Catholic Church which is, at the moment, seeking to do all of the above by launching a media and parliamentary offensive against the proposed Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The Catholic Church has a long and undistinguished history of interfering with the lives of both its adherents and those who choose to live outside its auspice. If you don’t think that the church influences the lives of those who don’t join you should speak to the victims of the Inquisition and those scientists, like Galileo, whose search for truth has brought them into conflict with the church’s perceived wisdom. Okay, so the Catholic Church is not seeking to impose its will by the gun, suicide bombers and other direct terror tactics, it is however just as guilty of trying to impose a theocracy as are the radical Muslims. I also find it interesting that the United States, which initiated the so called “War On Terror” and set itself implacably against Islamic fundamentalism (dragging us by proxy and by Tony Blair along with them) is letting the radical, Evangelical Christian right establish its own theocratic regime.

In what is supposed to be the enlightened times of the twenty first century shouldn’t we completely disavow any religious or ethical system access to the power to impose its will on those who choose not to subscribe to their particular brand of beliefs and ethics?

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Are Balls Making A Comeback?

For the first time, in certainly my living memory, a legal divorce settlement has gone in favour of the husband. The judge in the Sir Paul Vs Heather McCartney case clearly and publicly came down on the male side stating in his judgement:

"The husband’s evidence was, in my judgment, balanced. He expressed himself moderately though at times with justifiable irritation, if not anger. He was consistent, accurate and honest.

"But I regret to have to say I cannot say the same about the wife’s evidence. Having watched and listened to her give evidence, having studied the documents, and having given in her favour every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting her own case) I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness."

For too long in my opinion, ever since the rampant anti-masculine feminism of the early 1970’s, the main crime in the divorce court appears to be having been found in possession of a pair of testicles. A claim supported by the organisation “Fathers For Justice”.

I hope that the pressures in our society will now swing back toward the middle ground so that the testosterone carrying half of our population can once again approach the sad and stressful break-up of a relationship without the fear of emasculation from an often bitter and vindictive partner.

One other point to make here is that Heather McCartney made a fatal error in not engaging the services of a lawyer. This case not only endorses the old saying “that anyone who represents themselves in court will have a fool for a client. But also, I think, proves that all lawyers do is gouge as much money (out of both partners) as is possible.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Sir Arthur C Clarke

Yesterday marked the death of Sir Arthur C Clarke the science fiction writer. Many I suppose fail to understand or appreciate the significance of Science Fiction as a genre and, therefore, the impact the loss of such a visionary as Sir Arthur represents.

Clarke co-wrote or edited over 100 books where, in many of which he predicted, with remarkable accuracy, such developments as the moon landings, space travel, communications satellites, compact computers, cloning, commercial hovercraft and a slew of other scientific developments – though sometimes he was also, inevitably, wide of the mark. It is this ability, to shine a light, however dim, into the future that makes Science Fiction such a fascinating area of fiction. When I was first introduce to this type of writing, back in the 1960’s, people often scoffed at me for reading such “rubbish” asking how could I take seriously an imagined world where the hero, in his spaceship, takes an entire meal from the freezer and heats it up, ready to serve, in minutes? How could I believe that anyone would have, in their pocket, a universal communicator that would not only enable them to speak with almost anyone on the planet but would also mean that they were reachable almost anywhere?

Not only does Sci-Fi have this uncanny ability of showing us how future technologies may develop, it is also provides a fantastic ‘futurescope’ for looking at trends in our society. Sir Arthur C Clarke, like many Science Fiction authors, he also investigated the strange new worlds of an almost mystical or metaphysical sort, in which advanced cultures, often benevolent, allow humanity to transcend their Earth-bound beginnings. In this area of its field Science Fiction writers can ask us uncomfortable questions about the world we are creating and the destinations we are, socially, headed towards. In this light George Orwell can also be considered a Science Fiction writer.

So, the next time you are tempted to dismiss that brightly covered paperback with the alien monster on the cover remember it may contain an uncanny and often unsettling picture of what our society could be like if we don’t make a change.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A Cure for Alzheimer’s Disease

Is it possible that someone has found a cure for Alzheimer's disease and just forgotten where they put it??

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Taxation and Legislation: It's No Way To Run A Railroad

Alistair Darling delivers his first budget today with one of the most popular ‘leaks’ being that he will defer the 2p petrol tax rise until the autumn. Why are we expected to hail a deferment of a tax hike as some sort of good news? The Central Soviet (which I believe is a more accurate name for our current government) has not cancelled this tax; they are just waiting for a more propitious time to load this extra burden upon us. Let’s face it, this increase in duty on fuel has nothing to do with global warming or attempting to control climate change, it’s about raising revenue but, more importantly, it’s about trying to get us to “change our behaviour”.

Nanny State says that one of the reasons for increasing the costs of private motoring is to encourage us all to abandon our individual motor cars and use public, mass transport instead. (It occurs to me to ask; with over 100 people on every one, why aren’t airplanes considered as 'mass transport' and therefore a ‘Green’ alternative?). This crude attempt at behavioural change, or social engineering to give it its more correct title, is just another example of the fundamentally flawed thinking of a government bent not on ‘management’ of “UK Plc” but on ‘Social Engineering’ on a scale last seen emanating from the depths of The Kremlin during the darkest days of Stalin. Westminster seems to be determined to socially engineer an entire population which obeys only the rules it lays down. Unfortunately for us it has chosen the two bluntest, crudest, most ineffective, and inefficient tools available to it to supposedly achieve its ends; Taxation and Legislation

Why has New Labour, during its ten year tenure, introduced more laws and more taxes than any previous administration in our history? It is because it is trying to make each of us conform to their world view of what a model citizen should be (whether it’s what we want to or not). As an aside; notice that they continually use the word ‘citizen’, implying a faceless drone who is a member of a state or a republic, rather than ‘subject’, who is an individual who owes allegiance through a personal relationship to a monarch.

George Santayana the Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist famously said in his treaties The Life Of Reason (Vol. 1) “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As far as I can see there is no evidence to suggest that taxation or even legislation have every successfully achieved long term social change, except by eventually fermenting violent revolution. Perhaps the ‘Old Labourites’ are trying to generate a climate where Fredric Engel’s doctrine of “Continual Revolution” pertains?

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Nanny Government Wants To Ban Alcohol

In a further erosion of civil liberties the centralised Labour Soviet appears to me to be on a mission to introduce some limited form of prohibition. Nanny Government has already begun manipulating the press and media with a whispering campaign designed to demonise drink to the point where a gullible sheep like electorate will accept yet a another law designed to do nothing other take away individual choice in favour of dour Scottish Presbyterianism.

As an example of the media spin being applied to this I would cite the recent horrific car crash in the Cotswolds that killed six people on Friday 7th March 2008. All of the reports have made much of the fact that one of the drivers had a previous conviction for ‘Drink Driving’ with headlines such as “Six die in road horror blamed on convicted drink-driver” and “Crash man 'had drink conviction'”. All the reports clearly imply that ‘Drink’ was the cause of the accident, however there is no report that the driver concerned was over the legal limit at the time of the crash. I am not advocating that drinking and driving is in any way acceptable or that anyone should be allowed to irresponsibly kill others on our roads my point is that there is no evidence that alcohol was the cause or was even a contributory factor to this accident.

The Labour media spin masters have let this rumour and innuendo (for that is all it is) persist as it is another plank in the platform they are building to limit alcohol sales.

Monday, March 10, 2008

I'll Huff & I'll Puff....But Nobody Falls Down

Well, once again the government and their pet weather forecasters have just got it wrong.

All through yesterday (Sunday 9th March 2008) the government had its pet stooges warning us of dire doom and disaster as “The worst storm of the year so far” tracked across the Atlantic. We were all warned to stay at home and “Only Travel If It Was Absolutely Necessary”.

Well there were some heavy winds and lots of rain but where is the devastation we were all promised?

Another occasion then when the government seeks to control us by issuing warnings about things that don’t exist.

Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go.....

Here I am, sat with the writers most dreaded nemesis, the blank page! However having now slain the mighty white virgin beast, by means of the mighty pen stroke (or in this case ‘keystrokes’), I guess I can just dive into creating my first blog?

Government Control
One of the major things to exercise my mind these days is the amount of control this present Labour government wants to impose on all of our individual lives. We appear to be run by autonomous, over zealous, “Nanny-type” control freaks who think that it is their business to engineer even the minutest portions of our individual lives and liberties. I am convinced that, if it had its way, this government would introduce legislation mandating what we should, on any given day, or part of the day, eat, drink, read in the newspapers, watch on television, listen to on the radio or even think.

The sooner we loose these Soviet style, Centralist, Orwellian control freaks the better it will be for all of us.

Well, there it is! I have got my first rant off my chest – now let me continue.