Behind Blue Eyes has written a superb post about the problems in this country—and he maintains that the biggest problem is that people are, in general, disinterested, ill-educated, ignorant fuckwits.

Many dystopian novels have, as part of their premise, a tyrannical government that hides from public view information and opinions that could embarrass the authorities. In Fahrenheit 451 an elite squad of “firemen” go around burning down any house down which is discovered to contain books. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the newspaper archives are altered retrospectively to ensure the state’s narrative is maintained. Some say that in the information age such restrictions could never be enforced.

In reality, the government does not need to go to any effort to hide the truth or subversive texts. All it has to do it ensure that sufficient numbers of people are not interested in the world around them. Make sure enough people get a shit education so that they grow up lacking curiosity in the way things work, make sure enough people are comfortable with their mundane existences, make sure that mass entertainment is sufficiently banal to stop people from opening their eyes and engaging their brains. As long as the number of people who can be bothered to keep themselves informed and are experienced enough to be able to form their own opinion is kept small enough, who cares what those people think?

If you want “power” in this country, you don’t need to have the best thought-out policies, you don’t need to be the brightest mind. This is socialism’s legacy: a nation so ill-educated that many haven’t even heard of the classics, where vast swathes of society don’t have to engage their brain to feed and clothe themselves, where generations of parents don’t feel the need to encourage their children to explore the world. This country is no longer run by a patrician elite, but by a cynical class of populist authoritarians who pander to every ignorant desire of the largest minority. Britain is a tyranny of the ignorant.

Do go and read the whole post, because it is pretty much spot on—it chimes, of course, with my oft-expressed contention that education is the most important way of progressing. However, Blue Eyes makes the wider point that people just don't want to educate themselves at all.

Naturally, your humble Devil would lay some of the blame for this at the feet of the Welfare State and of various governments. After all, if the Welfare State is going to molly-coddle you, and protect you from the consequences of your actions, why bother learning about how other people fared?

And when the government keeps protesting (in the face of all of the evidence) that today's kids are better educated, cleverer than ever before, surely those kids are going to assume that they have nothing more to learn.

Some, of course, would say that affluence has a lot to do with it—a theory that Blue Eyes also advances.

Authoritarian government is much easier when the populace is materially rich, I opined. Hardly an original comment, but one that I felt had been ignored in the libertarian blogosphere’s discussion of New Labour’s legacy.

But it is really an attitudinal thing: only an arrogant idiot would think that they have nothing to learn from the writings of others—no matter how rich said idiot was.

Partly to blame is an educational system that has left 50.4% of the country with low literacy levels—something that cannot help in the pursuit of knowledge. But also to blame are anti-aspiration fuckwits like Polly Toynbee—does anyone remember this?

However, [Polly] attacked Murray’s argument and said that to tell children that they could achieve greatness was to fill their heads with fairy tale nonsense.

There's your problem, right there. People like Toynbee—the type with which the education system is stuffed to the gills—don't believe that people should learn for themselves. After all, not only might people get ideas above their station, but they might also start asking themselves why they need all of these stupid, over-qualified teachers. And that would never do.

So, we will continue to be ruled by the stupid, and the ignorant, and the Left. People who know nothing and who even lack the equipment to work things out for themselves.

Fucking hellski.

Labels: blogging, education, fucking stupid little wankstains, idiots are worse than crooks, musings, really astonishing stupidity

Emily Thornberry MP: a very stupid and thoroughly unpleasant person who should be severely punched in the cunt, and then thrown into the sea.

Via Samizdata, I see that some lassie called Nichola Pease has warned that maternity pay—and other benefits—risk making women effectively unemployable.

Nichola Pease, a top City executive, caused a stir last week when she said that state-enforced maternity leave "rights" for women - and for that matter, paternity leave - was a cost that had a bad consequence. If you tell a company that it must pay a woman her full salary for a year while she is not working and raising her child, say, then, other things being equal, fewer women will be employed in the first place, however hard one tries to enforce so-called equal opportunity hiring practices.

This is a simple fact. If you raise the cost to a company of employing a person or increase the risk that employing a woman will be more expensive than employing a man, say, then fewer women will be employed. It is a fact as undeniable as a the laws of gravity.

Quite. Here's more from the original article...

Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro capital management and a mother of three, said excessive maternity leave and eye-watering sex discrimination payouts could backfire on women.

She denied allegations of sexism in the City, claiming most women did not rise through the ranks because of their own choices rather than any prejudice against them.

And she suggested bosses were reluctant to employ women for fear they could go on to have lots of children supported by Britain's over-generous maternity leave system.

'We have got to be realistic and make sure the protection around women doesn't end up backfiring,' she told a parliamentary hearing into sexism in the financial sector. 'That is actually one of my greatest worries.'

Mrs Pease, 48, said women were 'a really capable, practical and driven bunch of multi-taskers'.

But their contribution to the workforce risked being overshadowed by a nightmare of 'legislation and protection'.

'I think we have got too long maternity,' she told MPs.

'A year is too long and sex discrimination cases that run into the tens of millions are ridiculous.'

Women in Britain currently have the right to 52 weeks maternity leave.

One gets tired of repeating the same old mantra—incentives matter, you morons—but it seems that these idiot socialists just don't get it. It is one of the things that make me so angry with these stupid bastards: they seem to think that—if you just wish (or legislate) hard enough—then you can change both human nature and reality.

Here's news for you, you fucking socialist morons—you cannot change human nature. All of your fucking around just creates perverse incentives and your legislation has unintended consequences.

And then these nitwits pass more and more legislation which tries to compensate for the previous screwy laws. For instance, socialists enable maternity pay for women; then they realise that this makes women less employable, so they then have to pass laws making it illegal to discriminate; but these laws don't fucking work because no business person is going to risk crippling their company. And so we wait for the next round of stupid legislation—usually auteured by that disgraceful, lawless bitch, Harpy Harmperson.

Mrs Pease, who is said to earn around £3.5million, enraged equal rights campaigners who warned that maternity leave was vital if women are to compete on equal footing with men.

That sentence actually makes no fucking sense at all. None. As Mrs Pease points out, maternity leave and other bonuses make women less employable: they most certainly do not allow them to "compete on equal footing with men"—not least because companies aren't forced to pay for men to take a year off whilst being compelled to keep their job open.

Mrs Pease is obviously one of those women who absolutely understand that incentives matter; Emily Thornberry MP, however, does not.

Labour MP Emily Thornberry said: 'I am absolutely horrified to hear such an old-fashioned view expressed by someone who should know better.

Is that the extent of your argument, Emily—this piss-weak attempt to talk down to a woman far more successful and intelligent than yourself? Do you have any logical, economic argument to present?

No? Well, what a fucking surprise, Emily. You see, just another socialist moron attempting to change the world to fit her own deluded mindset and without even the slightest grip on the reality of humanity.

'The rights that Labour have given to women are extremely important - especially to women who do not have a £10million cushion to sit on.'

And this, of course, is typical NuLabour: if you don't have any reasonable counter-argument, just sneer at your opponent, smear them and demonise them.

Look, Emily, Mrs Pease may have a lot of cash but she fucking well earned it; you, on the other hand, get your salary through picking other people's pockets, and then last year you managed to steal an extra £132,390 from the taxpayer. So, why don't you shut your fucking face, you repulsive parasite?

Of course, Emily Thornberry is the kind of person who would support this piece of crap (found via Timmy).

Women without children should be allowed maternity leave, survey says

Women who do not have children should be allowed to take maternity leave, allowing them time off from the workplace, according to a study.

It found that 74 per cent of women would be in favour of being allowed to take a six-month break, or even longer, as mothers are allowed to do when they give birth. More than two-thirds of those in favour were mothers themselves.

All that this survey shows is that 74% of the people surveyed are absolute fucking morons. Well, either that or they are absolutely determined to ensure that no woman gets a job ever again. This is an devastatingly stupid idea—indicated, I think, by the fact that it is referred to as "maternity leave" when there is no maternity. But I bet Emily Thornberry supports it. Because she's a thick bitch.

I increasingly think that the world is going absolutely insane: we are seeing more and more people coming out with ideas that are, quite simply, unworkable. Has everyone gone completely batshit mad?

Nope: they're just socialists.

Labels: barking insanity, business, culture, economy, really astonishing stupidity, sex, what the fuck?

In response to yet another stupid article on Liberal Conspiracy—a piece that claims that because some people who aren't libertarian claim to be libertarians all libertarians are not libertarian—the lovely Bella Gerens has written a scintillating explanation of what libertarianism actually entails.

The wife has a talent not only for coming at things from a perspective different from that of your humble Devil, but also for putting it in a rather succinct, clear way.

The truth is that advocates of freedom are found all over the political spectrum, but the only true libertarians are the ones who advocate it at all times in all circumstances, from the bedroom to the wallet—who believe that ‘freedom from’ is the only state of being consistent with the dignity and majesty of humankind.

‘Freedom from’ is the most important part of that ideology. Freedom from coercion. Freedom from interference. Freedom from oppression.

‘Freedom to’ is where the misunderstandings enter. People on the right think libertarians are advocating freedom to burgle, rob, rape, murder—because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’

People on the left think libertarians are advocating exploitation, pollution, callousness, and the primacy of making (and keeping) money above all else—because they read ‘freedom’ to mean ‘freedom to do whatever you please.’

And both sides think libertarians consider the laws we have prohibiting these activities to be a restriction on freedom.

When will they realise that they don’t understand?

Libertarians believe you should be free from coercion—and that you must not coerce anyone else. Libertarians believe you should be free from interference—and that you must not interfere with anyone else. Libertarians believe you should be free from oppression—and that you must not oppress anyone else. Because these are to be universal freedoms: what you do not wish done to you, you must not do to anyone else.

For the libertarian, there is no ‘freedom to.’ Freedom represents an absence, the absence of force and fraud. It does not represent a licence to do anything, or a right or entitlement, except the absolute human right not to be forced or defrauded.

As Bella points out, it is in the area of "freedom to" that conflicts happen.

But the whole point of libertarianism is this "do as you would be done by" attitude: a person who demands freedom from the state and then demands that this same state oppresses others is not a libertarian.

Anyway, do go and read the whole thing...

Labels: blogging, freedom, good deeds, libertarianism, politics

As Guido highlights, a good number of the expenses that MPs claimed were not actually "within the rules".

Sir Thomas Legg has outlined his approach to expenses in a note to MPs which is now in the public domain [PDF]. Legg confirms that payment of the second homes allowance under the Green Book rules was subject to “fundamental principles of propriety”:

The fundamental principles required MPs personally to ensure that their use of the ACA was: (a) necessary for the performance of their parliamentary duties; (b) not extravagant or luxurious; (c) in accordance with the Nolan principles of selflessness, accountability, honesty and leadership; (d) strictly in accordance with the rules governing the allowance; (e) above reproach; (f) took account of the need to obtain value for money; and (g) avoided any appearance of benefit, or a subsidy from public funds, or diversion of public money for the benefit of a political organisation. These principles together amount to a general requirement of propriety.

Quite a high bar for our porcine political class.

Absolutely. It is worth remembering—as we consider the colossal amounts of cash that MPs have stolen from us in "expenses"—that we have only seen the claims for one year.

The vast, vast majority of these bastards have been in the House for nearly five years. That's five years of fleecing the taxpayer, five years of rampant theft.

An awful lot more of these venal fucks have been in the House of Commons—living high on the hog using our money—for much longer. Just how many hundreds of thousands of pounds have they stolen from us?

Even were they being asked to repay the money, this would not be enough: those who have broken the rules must be prosecuted for fraud.

I want to see those smug smiles wiped off their faces as the handcuffs go on; I want to watch the sense of entitlement dissolve from their stance as they are led away from the dock; and I want to see their arrogance repeatedly and painfully fucked out of them by a huge, mass-murderering bugger—possibly nick-named "Bubba"—who has the word "retribution" tattooed on the back of his neck.

It's the only language these cunts understand.

Labels: endemic corruption, general hilarity, justice, more corruption, stinking hypocrisy, thieving bastards

Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone is most certainly not a liberal. Today she is wittering on about the hideous intrusions into the lives of home-schoolers—and, incredibly—trying to justify them. [Emphasis mine.]

So–a really interesting conundrum–where everyone is trying to do their best by the children - but the state feels it isn't safe to leave them to their parents alone and the parents think the state should butt out.

No, Lynne, there is no fucking conundrum here. At all. As Bishop Hill points out most eloquently...

You see, this kind of issue is easy for a liberal. This is first principles stuff: the state needs to prove reasonable grounds before it can enter someone's home; it has to get a warrant first; you are innocent until proven guilty. That kind of thing.

These are simple concepts that have been the bedrock of British freedoms for centuries. These are fundamentals. I'm therefore struggling with the idea of a Liberal Democrat MP–a Liberal Democrat MP–in a quandry over whether warrantless searches should be permitted or not. Imagine that–an MP who declares themselves a liberal can't work out whether a fundamental civil liberty, fought and died for over the centuries, is a good thing or not!

His Ecclesiastical Eminence then asks the same question that we all do...

What is the point of the Liberal Democrats if not to speak up for liberalism?

Good fucking question.

Labels: freedom, lefty fuckwits, LibDems, really astonishing stupidity, what the fuck?

Jacqui Smith: officially a lying thieving shit.

Jacqui Smith has been found to have defrauded the taxpayer, lied about her housing arrangements and been utterly dishonest.

Jacqui Smith faces political ruin as a result of the damning verdict that a Commons watchdog passed on her expenses claims and because police support officers contradicted her account of her movements.

The former Home Secretary offered a grudging apology to the Commons yesterday after the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled that she was wrong to nominate her West Midlands property, where her family lives, as her second home.

Ms Smith said that the report vindicated her claim that she spent substantial amounts of time in a house in London owned by her sister, which she designated as her main home.

But John Lyon revealed that police guarding the property questioned the veracity of the former Home Secretary’s evidence, with their records showing that the number of nights she had spent in London was at odds with Ms Smith’s account. He says that last year the police figures suggested that Ms Smith spent 37 more nights in Redditch than she had in London; her estimates based on her diary suggested that the difference was nine nights. Figures for the previous year suggest that she had spent 12 more nights in Redditch than in London.

Her punishment is truly traumatic.

Former home secretary Jacqui Smith has apologised in the House of Commons for breaching expenses rules.

She designated her sister's house in London, which she shares, as her "main home" and then claimed second home allowances on her Redditch family home.

A standards inquiry found that she "wrongly" designated her home but had followed officials' advice at the time.

Ms Smith said she accepted the findings and apologised to the Commons and to her constituents.

She will not have to repay any money as the standards committee ruled that "no further action" be taken.

That's right: she had to apologise to the House of Commons. Fuck me: what a punishment that is.

Because, let's face it, the only thing that those shysters will condemn her for is getting caught—after all, the Right Honourable Members have been stealing from us for years.

As, effectively, has Jacqui Smith.

The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics do not intend to let the matter rest there—they have written to darling Jacqui...

Dear Ms. Smith,

Today the Committee on Standards and Privileges ruled against you for your use of the accommodation allowance between 2004 and 2009. Both the Commissioner for Standards and the Committee have concluded that you were in breach of the rules: "Jacqui Smith has been found to be in breach of the House of Commons rules governing the use of the accommodation allowance from 2004 to 2009. She wrongfully classified her main family home in Redditch as her second home, and was therefore able to claim around £20,000 a year towards its running costs."

Up to 2007, it could perhaps be argued that your wrongful designation of your Redditch house as secondary was inadvertent - although most common sense indicators suggested that Redditch was your main home, you were still technically spending more nights in London overall. While we think that parliamentarians have a clear duty to make sure they are within the rules governing personal use of public money, we accept that mistakes happen.

After 2007, however, you started to spend more time in Redditch, in the location where your children attend school, where you are registered to vote and where you pay a mortgage. As the Committee states: "From that point on there was little room for doubt, but it should have been sufficiently clear to Ms Smith even before then that she was probably an exception to the rule."

Out of the £106,738 wrongfully claimed over the 2004-2009 period, the £42,130 paid to you since 2007 was, without doubt, inappropriately used for the maintenance of your family home. As a result of this breach, the Committee has asked you to apologise to the House.

Public opinion on this issue is strongly of the view that saying sorry is not enough. We ask you to pay back to the public purse the £42,130 wrongfully claimed and we feel obliged to inform you that, if you fail so to do, we will not let the matter rest here.

Jacqui Smith is a fucking fraud, and a cunt to boot.

Prosecute the fucker.

Labels: endemic corruption, filthy corruption, justice, law and order, liars, thieving bastards, what the fuck?

The server running fakecharities.org has fallen over. Both the server chaps and I are trying to get the machine back up.

I am sure that it is entirely coincidental that the server did come under an attack a few weeks ago, and that a malicious script affecting Apache was found to be running on it last week.

I am working on migrating the database and am confident that we will be back up and running again within a few days.

UPDATE: fakecharities.org is back up, but I am working on a more secure fix.

Labels: bloody annoying, just not fucking funny, technical, technology

The wife has just kindly pointed out that whilst Jackart's position may be technically correct, there is another aspect to all of this. Or, rather, a couple.

The first is that—no matter what the rules say—MPs should have known when it was morally wrong to claim expenses, they should have known that it was morally wrong to flip their designated homes.

"Ah," I hear you cry. "You might have made that moral judgement, but those are your morals, o Devil, and not theirs. And we thought that you disagreed with forcing your personal morals onto others."

And you would be completely right: I do disagree with forcing my morals onto others. But these cunts don't; their entire political lives are spent forcing us to live by their personal mores—one could argue that this is a bit of tit for tat.

I would also argue that someone who breaks the most fundamental of the rules that I believe in—that you shall not steal^*—should have no moral authority over me.

The second point is somewhat less abstract and it is quite simply this: that much of the money that was spent—even when it was within the rules—would not have been spent were it not claimed on expenses.

Would Gordon Brown really have spent £10,716.60 of his own money on cleaning? Would Nick Clegg really have spent £910 on roses if he were not claiming the money on expenses?

I seriously doubt it.

And this is the reason, claims Sir Thomas Legg, that he is imposing these "retrospective rules".

Sir Thomas's letters have been accompanied by a note in which he explained his decision.

He told MPs that there had effectively already been a limit on the amount that could be claimed for mortgage interest, because the total additional cost allowance budget prevented an annual claim of more than about £24,000 last year.

Household goods, he said, were also subject to limits. The so-called "John Lewis list", which was kept secret from MPs, told Commons officials that they could allow, for example, up to £750 for a television and £10,000 for a new kitchen.

However, Sir Thomas said that he could find nothing in the existing rules setting out the maximum allowable for other large expenses, including cleaning and gardening. Therefore, he believed that limits must be imposed retrospectively.

"Some limits must be regarded as having been in place to prevent disproportionate and unnecessary expenditure from the public purse," he said.

In other words, where no limits were set, MPs have basically bought goods and services, the prices of which were far in excess of what they would have paid out of their own pockets—simply because they were able to get the poor bloody taxpayer to stump up the cash.

Sir Thomas Legg has determined that this is absolutely wrong, and has penalised the thieving fuckers accordingly. Good.

I seriously hope that these bastards are made to pay back every penny. And I hope that many of them leave office with their spirits broken, their reputations in tatters and their bank accounts empty.

Because, frankly, I was promised suicides and, disappointingly, there hasn't been a single one yet...

^* To steal life is murder; to steal freedom is to enslave; and to steal property is theft.

Labels: endemic corruption, filthy corruption, general hilarity, good deeds, justice, shameful corruption, thieving bastards

The blogosphere has, predictably, been up in arms about the fact that MPs are being asked to repay expenses after Sir Thomas Legg audited their expenses and sent begging demands to the honourable members.

For what it's worth, I do think that Jackart's position is technically correct.

At the moment the Tax Man cannot retrospectively charge you for taxes that you paid correctly last year. (I know the appalling misuse of the 'Proceeds of Crime' act by the HM R&C; can bankrupt you for a £400 VAT tax error, but that's a different matter). Nor can an employer claw back wages if you turn out to be rubbish at your job.

That is, a Government cannot come in and say "it's appalling that income over £100,000 isn't and wasn't taxed at 50%". There are a lot of people—a lot—who think that high salaries without high marginal tax rates are "unfair". Immagine if the revenue could say that not only were they taking the new, higher rate taxes on your future income, they were applying it retrospectively to the previous couple of year's income too, on the basis of "fairness", were delivering a bill to you for money you'd already spent on the mortgage and the Kids' school fees?

For that is what is happening to MPs. The rules they "obeyed" were grossly flawed and they have been changed. That is not in question. If you're pissed off with your MP (mine's squeaky clean, I'm pleased to say) then there's an election coming and you can stuff envelopes for his opponents, effectively firing the bastard. But just as the Tax man cannot go after income you earned in the previous year after you've been taxed on it, MPs should not be forced to pay money already received if it was within the rules as they existed at the time.

So now, of course, we are forced to give MPs the benefit of the doubt.

No, your humble Devil might be a terrible old cynic, but I cannot help thinking that that was the entire point of this measure. They have quite deliberately told Sir Thomas Legge to go beyond the remit of his report and, again, quite deliberately to apply the rules retrospectively.

In this way, all of the actual cases of disgusting fraud get obscured, obfuscated and buried beneath the deluge of claims and counter-claim. The report is then declared a waste of time, and our wastrel MPs opine that to hold another would be a waste of taxpayers' money—and we cannot possibly allow that in these straitened times.

The results, of course, are that the public can never be sure quite who is guilty of fraud and theft and who is not (bar the few who have obviously been thrown to the wolves); the majority of MPs have to repay precisely bugger-all; and there is no fall-out for the honourable members, apart from the tedium of having to mutter a few meaningless platitudes about how they are shocked at all this troughing and that they are sorry for any "honest mistakes" that they may have made.

But we cannot let this pass: we really can't—for the reasons that The Appalling Strangeness articulates.

Yes, I know I am a zealous ranter when it comes to the issues of MPs' expenses fraud, but they did rinse the public purse for all it was worth under the guise of being public servants. Frankly, they deserve as much abuse as we can throw at them. The thieving fucks. Particularly when they are quick to get out the world's smallest violin and start manically playing it for a bit of completely undeserved sympathy:

One unnamed MP told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "An accountant will always find errors in the expenses claims especially on claims of such magnitude over a long period but the only ones publicised are the over-claims, no-one ever mentioned the under-claims."

No. No-one does mention the under-claims. Because the point of expenses isn't that you have to spend them - rather, there is an allowance there if you need it. And given MPs work directly for the public purse, and are supposed to represent the British people, you might have thought they'd be less keen to spend, spend, spend. When your expenses are paid by an already grossly over-stretched taxpayer, frugality becomes a virtue.

"The need to please the press and get back in their good books has produced a total over-reaction and it has been very badly handled. We were treated despicably today when we were waiting for our letters, we felt as though the sword of Damocles was hanging over us."

I don't give the first fuck whether MPs get back in the good books of the press - they should want to get back into the good books of the people they have so badly betrayed. And expecting MPs to pay money back to the public purse isn't an over-reaction; it is actually quite a moderate response. I'd like to see everyone of them who abused the system sacked and facing prosecution, and the worst offenders locked up. And that isn't an over-reaction either; it is what would happen to anyone who got involved in this sort of swindle but didn't have the good fortune to be employed as an MP.

I really couldn't have put it better myself. It is that first quote that so absolutely enrages me—so here it is again.

One unnamed MP told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "An accountant will always find errors in the expenses claims especially on claims of such magnitude over a long period but the only ones publicised are the over-claims, no-one ever mentioned the under-claims."

I really don't think that this cunt has got the point of expenses, has he? Look, you terrible little bastard, let me explain the concept of expenses to you.

Expenses are just that: they are a recompense of the monies expended in the direct pursuit of your work duties. If you spend £2.50 on a train ticket to your constituency, then you can claim £2.50—not fucking £50! Do you see?

If the rules say that you can claim up to £10,000 on communicating with your constitutents, that does not mean that you have to spend the entirety of that £10,000, you feckless fuck. If you only spent £10.40 then you only claim £10.40; but if you spent £12,468 then you can still only claim £10,000. Do you fucking get it yet?

The idea that you should get some kind of prize—or even any fucking credit—for not spending the absolute maximum (or, in many cases, way over the maximum) is absolutely fucking laughable.

It is this kind of fucking arrogance and quite blatant sense of entitlement that makes your humble Devil want to abandon his principles and hang the lot of you whether the rules have been retrospectively applied or not.

Don't you understand? It. Is. Not. Your. Money. It is our money.

Every few pounds that you spend is an hour of a someone's life spent working rather than playing.

Every few pounds that you spend represents yet another hour that someone must toil in order to put food in his mouth, or to afford a roof over his head, or to buy an unsubsidised drink.

Every few pounds that you spend is another waste of money, another punch in the face for an ordinary person, another fruitless period of someone's life passed.

So don't think that you will be able to bury your misdemeanours in a mire of confusion; don't think that you can obscure your crimes in a slurry of retrospective excuses.

You have been revealed as thieves and liars, charlatans and harlots, bullshitters and conmen. Our time will come, and then you had better be ready to defend yourselves with something rather more concrete than limp excuses and whining rhetoric.

Labels: endemic corruption, justice, more corruption, patronising fuckwits, pompous demagogues, rule of law, thieving bastards, wild speculation

UPDATE: The situation has now been resolved and the Guardian ungagged. Read to the bottom of the post for further details.

Author's note: I am not the Devil's Kitchen. Cross-posted from Mr Eugenides.

Looks like Carter-Ruck solicitors should be in the PR business, because neither I nor, I'll wager, you, had ever heard of Trafigura until they allegedly slapped an injunction on the Guardian prohibiting them from - get this - reporting proceedings in Parliament in which Trafigura's name had, apparently, been mentioned.

Well, get comfy, guys, because you're big time now; everyone who's anyone (as well as those of us who aren't) are busily writing about you, and directing baffled readers to articles like this one, in the Independent. In no particular order, you're now famous to the readers of, inter alia, Iain Dale, Guido, Dizzy, Next Left, Unity, Chicken Yoghurt, Harry's Place and Timmy, who between them can't be a kick in the arse off having a higher daily readership than the paper you've tried to gag. (This outbreak of blogospheric solidarity, to put it into context, is akin to the Russians and the Germans taking a time-out from slaughtering each other to erect a big sign in downtown Stalingrad telling everyone that Cary Grant was a poof.) Add Alex Massie at the Spectator and Nick Cohen and Joshua Rozenberg at Standpoint magazine, and this is quickly becoming an online clusterfuck of epic proportions.

One day these highly-remunerated libel lawyers are going to wake up and realise that they aren't being paid in guineas any more and that, thanks to this thing called the Interwebs, they can't shut down freedom of speech the way they used to in the old days. On the contrary; as Barbara Streisand found to her cost, 99% of people don't give a shit about 99% of stuff, right up the moment when you start waving your arms up and down telling them to stop reading about it.

If I were you, I'd ask Carter-Ruck to itemise the bill.

UPDATE: The Guardian have now been ungagged after a tsunami of online publicity, and after having requested (though before receiving) an urgent hearing to discuss the gag order.

Labels: blogging, free speech, idiocy, justice, libel, really astonishing stupidity

... though not literally, thankfully—via Guido.



Seriously, Yvette Cooper is such a sexless, screeching harridan that it almost makes me feel sorry for Ed Balls. Almost.

However, I think that the best outcome is, surely, for a meteorite to destroy their house whilst they are both in it...

Labels: economy, general hilarity, good deeds, NuLabour, stinking hypocrisy, taxes

Via Timmy, I see that M'Lord Mandelson is interfering in a car company.

In a move that reflects the deep concerns within Government about the threat to UK jobs and the viability of Magna's plans, the Business Secretary hired PwC to scrutinise the arrangements separately from a German study.

PwC, one of the "big four" accountancy firms, is believed to have confirmed Lord Mandelson's fears that Magna's restructuring proposals for General Motors Europe are not the most commercially viable and that a buyer taking a fresh look at the business would pursue a different approach.

So, the NuLabour government—having examined an offer to buy an ailing car company—now believes that someone, anyone, else would be better for the great British worker and the once-great British economy.

You know, there's something really familiar about this situation and I just can't think what it is...

Labels: economy, low-grade bureaucratic meddling, musings, pointless wastes of time and money, trade, travel

The new myConservatives site has a very laudable campaign to Save The Great British Pub.

So, how does that square with Chris Grayling's announcement of the Tories' intention to ladle yet more deeply illiberal costs and burdens onto pubs and clubs?

Oh wait...

Yes, I see: a "great British pub" is the type of pub that Chris Grayling likes. If you aren't one of those, then you are about to get screwed. Oh, yes, and if you like different sorts of pubs to Chrissy-baby, then your opinion is worth less than fuck-all too.

I think that Behind Blue Eyes does the summing up quite well.

What I want to know is what now separates the authoritarian nannying we have come to know under Labour and the authoritarian nannying proposed by Cameron’s Conservatives. Very little, I suspect, because that viewpoint now reflects the prevailing consensus in this once free country.
...

I think we should take personal responsibility for our decisions, but perhaps I am just old fashioned.

That's right, Britain: get ready for another five years of being rampantly arse-raped by out-of-touch authoritarians who base policy on lies and who would rather enact a succession of new, illiberal laws than enforce the ones that we already have.

Fucking great.

Labels: drinking, drugs, patronising fuckwits, peddlers of misery, thieving bastards, Tories, total and utter bastards

... comes from Bob's Head Revisited's review of the Buttered New Potato's Conference speech. [Emphasis mine.]

Cameron hiring Bono, the Smugmeister-General, to suck his cock via video link, was almost as bad as Sarah Brown’s, “My Hero”, toe-curler. But not quite. During that painful episode my toes were so tightly curled that you could have turned my lounge upside down and I would have been hanging there from the carpet like a fucking bat.

Now there's an image...

Labels: blogging, Call Me Dave, general hilarity, humour, patronising fuckwits, The Gobblin' King, thieving bastards

Once again via Bob's Head Revisited, here is the second video in this series...

"There is a great font called Comic Sans in Microsoft Word."

Just in case you don't know how graphic designers—who tend to be colossal snobs at the best of times—feel about Comic Sans, here's a clue.

Remember, only you can stop the bunny-punchings...

Labels: DK professional, general hilarity, humour, musings

Rachel Sylvester: miserable, pointless twat.

Rachel Sylvester is wibbling on in the pointless fucking way that so many MSM columnists seem to.

The rows over Europe matter because they reinforce the view that these are the “same old Tories” who are self-indulgently obsessing about their private concerns.

Look, you stupid fucking bitch, the rows over the EU matter because the EU is not some "private concern". Let me spell it out for you, since you are obviously far too stupid to work it out for yourself.

The EU is an entity that generates laws.

Parliament is an entity that generates laws.

As has been tested in our courts, EU laws have primacy over those created by our Parliament.

Therefore, the EU is more important than our Parliament. Get it?

Seriously, what the fuck is the point of you, Rachel? Why don't you fuck off and buy some shoes or something...?

Labels: cunts, EU, MSM, pointless wastes of time and money, really astonishing stupidity