STFU, Prole.

Just in case you still had any remaining doubts, just in case you were not certain if our politicians placed any value or import in our voice or opinion, just in case you wondered if our Prime Minister was a man of his word and capable of critical thought, I bring you this:

A SENIOR aide to David Cameron says the Prime Minister has ruled out a referendum on EU membership because Britain delivered a “very clear result” on the issue 36 years ago.

When we were never asked if we wanted this.

. . . he said Britons should be grateful for the EU’s “useful work” on global warming and global poverty. . .

Really? Really? Because when I last looked we were still being threatened with the bogeyman of Warble Gloaming and people were still living in tarpaulin shelters around the world. Perhaps the EU isn’t as wonderful as we’ve been led to believe?

These are compelling arguments why we believe Britain should be an active member.

No. They’re not. And I can state many more compelling arguments as to why we should get out. But there’s no point, because Cameron has made it clear that he has not the slightest interest in listening to what anyone has to say. He’s the PM, what he says goes, sit down, shut up, do as you are told, you disgusting little peasant.

Who was this letter to? Well, that’s the good bit:

His letter was sent to Anita Segar, a senior Conservative Party member in Mr Cameron’s home county of Oxfordshire and president of the Society for Graduates at Oxford University.

She had written to the Prime Minister last month threatening to resign from the party in protest over his “betrayal” to fulfil manifesto pledges and demanding a referendum.

She urged him to “stand up to the imperious, bombastic and arrogant pirates in Brussels” who are “plundering what remains of our heritage”.

So, he’s not even prepared to listen to the people that have come through the very same institutions as him. (The full text of the letter is here)

Meanwhile, Tottenham burned last night. The media is telling us that a few hundred people rioted because the police shot some bloke. Uh-huh, from what I can gather, this man was not exactly a pillar of the community. It seems unlikely to me that a few hundred would be so outraged by his death that they would go on the rampage.

My suspicion is that a small number were reacting to the shooting, the rest of them joined in because they are very very angry, and they don’t know why.

They’ll figure it out eventually. Could it be that they are angry because they feel they don’t matter, because nobody cares about them, because the system is not only incapable of caring about them but actively fears and despises them?

The markets are tanking, the EU is hanging by a thread, the politicians have been caught stealing, the media have been caught spying on the vulnerable as well as the ‘elite’ and the old bill have been caught helping them. We are constantly bullied, nagged and hectored, we are all treated as potential paedophiles and suspected criminals, we are told what to eat, drink and think. We look at the news and see the Arabs rising up, and our governments bombing the people who swat them down, yet our governments speak to us in a way not too far removed from the way the very people we bomb act. Closer to home in Spain we see protesters treated in a shocking fashion by their police.

People are angry and confused, and I can’t help the feeling that we are counting down to something big, it goes further than a PM’s slavish devotion to the EU and the police shooting a not very nice man dead.

Call out the instigators. . .

Also available on thesnowolf.com

Dinner Time

I was awoken this morning by the someone on the radio talking about an investigation into how British schoolboy could possibly have been eaten by a polar bear. No doubt the investigation will be conducted with suitable gravitas by a thoroughly credible and competent Norwegian administration, but I’ll tell you now that the correct answer will not be forthcoming. There’ll be talk of better training for the guides on trips such as this, improved security, more accessible communications and so forth. But the real answer is simple.

What happened was a group of kids ventured onto the turf of the world’s largest land predator.

The problem is the human race is arrogant. Deeply assured of its own magnificence and excellence. We think we’re the pinnacle of evolution. We’re not. Oh sure, we’re the most intelligent, the best communicators, the most inventive. But top of the tree? Not even close.

We’re not the best in the Arctic, those polar bears survive and thrive in an environment where we need specialist kit to make sure we don’t freeze to death.

We’re certainly not the best in the sea. Get into a fight with a great white shark in his back yard and there will be just one winner.

In the jungles of India a Tiger can rip your throat out before you’ve even realised he’s close.

The African savannah plays host to the lion. Mr Lion is a huge beast who can finish you off in a heartbeat, his wife is even more deadly, and they’ll hunt you in packs.

The human lives in an environment that it has a degree of control over. We have to, we’re actually quite puny. Even our close cousins the chimpanzee, orang-utan and gorilla would beat seven bells out of us in short order. When lesser creatures encroach on ‘our’ territory we chase them down. Yet, we’re not even particularly good at that. Rats and other vermin abound.

No, we’re not the super-beings we imagine ourselves to be.

Yet the cry goes up, ‘bad polar bear! How dare you kill one of us? Now you must die!’ You see the same off the Australian coast when someone gets chomped by a great white. Granted the shark spits you out, having discovered you aren’t nearly as tasty as you looked. The boats will leave port, bent on killing the beast that so offended us. ‘He’s a killer!’ they’ll cry. Well, of course he’s a killer, he’s a bloody shark.

And therein lies the hint, a great white shark doesn’t need a boat and a rifle to do its killing. It just swims up and bites. Human arrogance attributes fault at the door of the animal. No, the animal is doing what is meant to do, what it lives to do, the only thing it knows how to do.

If you go into a part of the world which is ruled by fecking enormous predators, then you run the risk of meeting them. They may not be pleased to see you. Don’t take it personally, it is just business. They don’t answer to politicians and committees. There is no moral and ethical debate about their actions. Policemen and the law are unknown to them. Except the oldest law of all; I’m bigger and better than you.

If you don’t want to run into a polar bear, lion, tiger or shark then stay in Berkshire. If a polar bear walks down the street in Windsor, knocks on your door and punches you in the face, you may have cause for complaint.

This planet doesn’t belong to the human race, and that means that sometimes you have to give up centre stage and deal with the fact that you aren’t number one.

It doesn’t make what happened any less tragic, but it is the way the world is.

Also available at thesnowolf.com

Could this be it?

Things must be getting bad. Sky News this evening has the stock market ticker going in the top corner of the screen, and it’s in black.

The Italians have been on the blower to the US treasury, and the Spanish have been on the phone to Sarkozy.

There is only one way this is going to go; Spain and Italy are going down. I fail to see how the Germans are going to be able, let alone willing to dip into their pockets here. To rescue one of them would be almost impossible, to rescue both? Forget it.

Barroso, so bullish when it was suggested a plan b was needed is now backtracking at an alarming pace.  ”We are no longer managing a crisis just in the euro-area periphery.” He has said. Even the Maoist knows the gig is up. But still, it isn’t the fault of anyone in the EU, oh no. It is apparently the fault of the authorities for failing to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from spreading.

Yes. You read that right. The head of the organisation which has done nothing beyond strip the sovereignty of it members has now thrown that sovereignty into a bush and said ‘Sovereignty? What sovereignty? None of that here. This is nothing to do with us!’ They make Gordon Brown look self-aware and contrite.

No, this is the evil markets, sullying the pure political ideal with their grubby dealings. Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial affairs (and it would seem pure delusion) has branded the market’s actions as ‘unjustified’ and ‘incomprehensible’. You can almost hear him stamping his feet and whining that it isn’t fair.

Well, listen to me, you detestable little shits, you’ve lorded it over us since the 1960′s, and you’ve finally run out of our money. God help you, and any national politician who backs you up. Yes, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, I’m looking at you.

Your project isn’t dead yet, but it is lying on the floor, bleeding to death. There’s no point in attempting a transfusion, the lacerations are such that any blood that is pumped in will seep out immediately.

Your arrogance, your hubris, your chasing of your own agenda – to the exclusion of everything and everyone else – has ruined us all. I despise you for it. You have imposed your will on us, against the wishes of the majority of a whole continent, you have insulted us, belittled us, accused us of the most unspeakable crimes and perverse predilections and you have charged us for the privilege. You have stolen from us, you have lied to us, you have appropriated the fruits of our toil and you have squandered it.

I defy you. I spit on you. I hope beyond hope that your hateful organisation comes crashing down around your ears, and I hope you find yourself as bereft and destitute as the continent you have defiled and raped for the last four decades.

I hope that you take the domestic politicians across Europe who pander to your every whim and massage your egos whilst committing the most appalling treasons against their own countries with you. I hope you take a financially and politically bankrupt American president, who is cut from exactly the same cloth as you, down as well.

Make no mistake, I would have preferred a moderate, political dissolution to the EU. This is going to hurt. A lot. It will likely hurt me personally as a public sector employee. I care not. My disdain for you is such that I will grit my teeth and gladly pay the price of freedom for my country and the other countries who have been so comprehensively betrayed. We all of us, from the western most tip of Ireland to the eastern most island of Greece, the far north of Finland to the southern beaches of Malta, deserve better than you.

You have failed, utterly. You have left us in a level of debt unimaginable at the end of the second world war, and you’ve done it without firing a shot.

Your Fabian window lies smashed on the ground. And, as it suits your baseless prejudices against me, I shall cheer like a thug on Kristallnacht. Yet it is you who best reflect the perpetrators of that evening, you are the destroyers of nations, races, religions, creeds and cultures. You spread fear, hatred and suspicion. If Stalin and Hitler were alive today they would embrace you as brothers.

Begone. You can still walk away, just. Leave it too long and the entire continent will be chasing you, and it will get damn ugly. It is no more than you deserve, but unlike you, I have the qualities of humanity and compassion. Perhaps even forgiveness.

Take the opportunity and leave. Now.

Also available on thesnowolf.com

The Hempen Rope.

As alluded to in an earlier post, The Sun has a campaign running to re-introduce capital punishment. Anna has had a couple of articles about the same subject over at her place. I had starting composing a comment before I realised it was going to go on a bit, so decided to express myself here instead.

There are several points as to why I oppose the death penalty completely;

Firstly – If someone were to kill someone close to me, and I went and killed them, I would be, quite rightly, charged with murder. I see no difference between me going and killing someone and the State going and killing someone on my behalf.

Secondly – Taking the above into account, I see no distinction between the two acts, yet if I were to do it, it would be described as revenge. If the State did it, it would be described as ‘justice’. How is it just? It is not justice, it is revenge. Revenge carried out in the heat of the moment is bad enough, but revenge as a dish served cold? That really is chilling.

Thirdly – The signal it sends out is clear; you belong to the State. If the State has the power to decide to let you live or to condemn you to death then it takes the ultimate in power over our lives. Oh, sure there’ll be conditions and qualifiers and what-not, but things change. Remember the free trade block we joined? That’s all it was. How’s it looking now? No. I belong to me and no-one, no-one at all has the authority to say if I deserve to live or die.

Fourthly – It simply doesn’t act as a deterrent. It just doesn’t. Figures from the US show that the number of people on death row in 1968 was 517. In 2010 it was 3242. Granted, you are most unlikely to be executed in the year of your conviction, but even so, if the death penalty was effective we should still expect to see that 1968 figure decreasing, or at least holding steady.

Fifthly – How does locking someone up for 15 years in prison and then killing them constitute justice? If someone’s been sentenced to death, then take them down and kill them. Keeping them hanging around for a decade is expensive, and I would submit, perverse. What are we doing? Teaching them a lesson? Surely the point of doing that is so the offender can see the error of their ways and not do it again of their own free will. Teaching them the lesson and then killing them is a lesson wasted.

Sixthly – For what offences will the death sentence be handed down? The Sun goes for killing children and policemen. Well, what about little old ladies, what about terrorist attacks? How about planning terrorist attacks? Drug smuggling? Human trafficking? Rape? Arson? How about a crime of passion? Showing dissent and disrespect to the State? Eco-crimes? Being a pain in the arse? As I said earlier, that which is implemented today can look very different tomorrow. Once you give them that tool, they will use it and they will expand its use.

Seventhly – What when (and it will be when, not if) you get it wrong? Is it really acceptable to kill an innocent person? This all comes about because an innocent person has been killed, does killing an innocent person in return make it OK? Will ‘sorry’, a posthumous pardon and a compo payout to the relatives make that better? The phrase ‘for the greater good’ looms large in my mind here – that is a phrase which means individuals are worthless, and that if a mistake is made it is regretful but irrelevant, it is for some greater good.

Finally – What method do we use? Stoning? Oh, no, that’s too barbaric. No, no, you want a method that does the job, but doesn’t actually make someone feel like they’re killing another person, even though that’s what they’re doing. It means the executioner will not get upset and add a veneer of respectability to proceedings. Firing squad? Too military? Oh, OK. Guillotine? Too French. Hanging? A bit old school. Electric chair? Yeah, well, I’ve seen The Green Mile. Lethal injection, then. Yes, that’s nice and clinical, isn’t it? Again, I don’t know which is more horrific, the blind fury of a public stoning, or the cold calculated practice of tying someone to a table and injecting them with a cocktail of fatal chemicals.

If we absolutely have to have the death penalty, then I suggest it must be at the unanimous request of the immediate family of the victim and with the agreement of both judge and jury in unanimity. The entire immediate family of the victim (including children) and the entire jury and judge must be present at the execution, and the condemned must be killed by way of beheading, and the beheading must be carried out by a member of the family of the victim no more than three years from the date of conviction or dismissal of appeal. The family member will be obliged to take breakfast at the same table with the condemned on the appointed day. The remaining family, judge and jury must stand face on to the condemned as the sentence is carried out, in the same room, and at a distance of no more than four metres.

There will be no repeat performances, and any failure to meet the conditions above will lead to an automatic commuting to a life sentence.

Also available on thesnowolf.com

Disperazione a Roma e Bruxelles.

Silvio Berlusconi as he realises he’ll not be able to afford those high class whores any more.

Herman Van Rumpoy as he figures out what this means to him.

And as the penny drops for the Italian premier’s new austerity squeeze, she asks, ‘why me?’

 Also available on thesnowolf.com

What is it not?

More than 2,000 charities across England have had their funding cut or withdrawn altogether by local councils, according to research.

Then they’re not charities, are they? Not for profit organisations, certainly. Quangos, probably. But charities, no.

A quarter of all charities receive funding from the state and for some groups – such as employment and training organisations – it can make up the bulk of their income.

*thud*               *thud*               *thud*               *thud*                  *thud*

That’s the sound of me hitting my head off the desk. Look, a charity is an organisation that an individual donates money or time to voluntarily. An organisation which takes money purloined from me under the threat of prison, without my having any say so is not a charity. It just isn’t. We already have employment and training organisations, they are called schools and colleges. Throwing money at organisations to right their wrongs is not the answer. Address the problems in the education system. This is a system that is little more than a stat generating organisation so politicians can throw brickbats at each other. Come on, why not really think about the children, instead of the next election or management ‘teaching’ post? As for organisations who get the bulk of their income from public funds, well, where’s the accountability? Where’s the democracy? If I’m not happy with the way the Home Office or FCO is being run, I at least get the chance to vote for someone else to have a go, with these ‘charities’, where is my say? It’s my bloody money.

Research for the False Economy website [. . .] found it was charities related to children and young people that were most affected, with more than 200 receiving cuts in funding.

Look, the party is over. I’m sure you’ve been doing very important work and I’m sure it’s made you feel very important. But the fact is that our national debt is running at £900 billion, we simply do not have the money. You may as well shriek that the sun isn’t green and that our rivers don’t run with ginger beer.

Voluntary Action South Leicestershire (VASL) has lost £20,939 state funding for its befriending service, which supports those those who are isolated and lonely.

And that is a scandal, not that the funding has been cut, but that people are isolated and lonely and relying on ‘support’, whatever form that takes, from perfect strangers. I find myself wondering how much support a group can provide. How often are these people visited or taken out? Once, twice a week?

The problem is not a lack of public funds. The problem is a system which squeezes so much out of people financially that they have to work and work and work to keep their heads above water. A system which has spent the last twenty years telling people there is no problem that cannot be solved by state funding and intervention, when the truth is that there isn’t a problem which cannot be made worse by state funding and intervention.

Successive governments have launched shocking and devastating attacks on the old bastions of family, friends, neighbours and community, and reduced them to rubble. They’ve told us for over a generation that only the state can provide your needs, desperate to make us reliant on them, and they simply cannot deliver the goods. Dave’s Big Society is a con, he wants people to provide the services for free, but I get the impression he’s wanting to make sure it is all carefully overseen and controlled. Governments don’t like people doing things for themselves.

These people aren’t isolated and lonely because of some nebulous ‘social decay’, they’re isolated and lonely because of a social vandalism that is nothing short of criminal.

Well, now they’ve run out of our money. Again. Giving people our cash to do stuff that has always been done by friends and family was never going to work, will never work and can never work.

The problem is, the system is so comprehensively destroyed, I don’t know if it can ever be repaired; looking after the people is now the job of the state and the state is incapable of love, tenderness or humanity – it will always be reduced to numbers on a sheet of paper.

How? How can you quantify compassion? It certainly can’t be expressed in pounds and pence and checklists.

Also available on thesnowolf.com

You could just, you know, deliver it.

I was going to write about the whole reporting anarchists thing, but I'm so late to that particular party that all that is left is a warm bottle of supermarket brand hock and the funny yellow dip that nobody trusts. Angry Exile, Muffled Vociferation, Captain Ranty and Uncle Marvo have it covered in spades, so head on over there.

I'm going to talk about something else. Something a little more esoteric.

When I got back from work at just after lunchtime (don't worry, I started waaaaay before breakfast time) there was a knock at the door and stood in front of me was a man, wearing civvies, holding one of those little electronic pad things where you sign for parcels. I was not surprised to see him, even though I was not expecting anything, because my next door neighbour, who is very pleasant woman, has been embroiled in a little bit of a battle with an on-line retailer about a self assembly garden shedette she'd bought, but which had arrived missing a few of the components. She's currently down at her late parents' house sorting it out prior to sale, and she asked if I wouldn't mind taking custody of the missing items in her absence.

It wasn't the shed bits she was expecting. It was a package for a house, eight doors down and over the other side of the street. I have never set eyes on the people that live there and it transpires that, shockingly, at about half two in the afternoon, they're out, probably at work.

Would I mind taking the package for them?

Well, yes. I would actually.

Firstly, I have better things to do with my time than continually traipsing half way down the street to see if these people were in. That's the delivery man's job.

Secondly, if I'd ordered something and then some total stranger turns up on the doorstep saying 'this was left with me for you' I'd be a little miffed. Not as miffed as I'd have been had it been dropped off with a perfect stranger and they didn't turn up on my doorstep with it.

Thirdly, I don't know what is in the parcel. It could be that the old bill have been keeping tabs on the parcel of crack that Mr Big has sent out. I don't fancy having my front door kicked in.

Finally, and re-visiting point one, it is the delivery man's job. He was most put out by the fact that I wouldn't take it. In fact, he got a little bit cross. He got even crosser when I asked if he wanted me to take the rest of his parcels and see if they were in whilst he sit on my sofa, put his feet up and watch the cricket. I apologised for not doing his job for him, gratis, and making him complete the task which he's fucking paid to do.

The supermarkets manage it when you buy online from them. You don't get the bloke from Tesco ringing your doorbell asking if you wouldn't mind taking in the weekly shop for old Mrs. Miggins' down at number 37 do you? Is it so difficult for online retailers to stick a bit on about date and time of delivery? OK, granted it may take a day or two to get the order together, but here's the clever bit, you'll normally send the customer an email to tell them their order has been despatched, perhaps you could send them a link to your site where they can nominate a date and time. Then the person can receive their goods at a time convenient for them, because they have after all paid for the delivery as well the goods.

Why the hell is it so difficult to provide or receive a decent service these days?

And don't even get me started on the Royal Mail 'We've got a parcel, but we couldn't even be arsed to bring it to your door, you can come to us where you'll have to provide seven forms of ID and a DNA sample before the surly bloke behind the 6" thick safety glass will even think about giving a despairing sigh and stomping off to find your parcel with as little grace as can be mustered' card through the door. 

Also available on thesnowolf.com

It may not be THE answer, but it is AN answer.

Top Gear got me thinking this evening. For those of you who didn’t see it, Clarkson and May conducted an uncharacteristic sober and objective review of the two 100% electric offerings from Nissan and Peugeot. Nicely made cars, on the expensive side (the Peugeot especially which was monumentally ugly and prohibitively expensive for what you get at £30k) but the consensus was positive. Except for the electro-motors Achilles heels – range and charge rate.

The distances that electrical cars are capable of covering are just too limited to be of practical use for anyone looking to cover much more than 30 miles a day, and the charge times (around 12 hours from flat to full charge) are just too long for most users.

With the best will in the world we have to accept that reserves of oil are very definitely finite, bugger the ecological aspect, just for logistics and economics we need to develop alternatives and develop them now.

I’m far from convinced that electrically powered cars are the answer. Not just for reasons of practicality, but also the cost of the unit, the cost of charging (they have to be charged from the mains and electricity bills are soaring almost as much as the charges we see for petrol and diesel) and the fact that the electricity has to come from somewhere. The juice flowing from the wall to the car does not magically appear from nowhere, there is a power station at the end of the line, either burning coal or gas – themselves using limited fossil reserves, or nuclear. Nuke stations I have no problem with, but plenty of the people who will gladly shell out the extra for a leccy car will have a very real problem with it, and sorry, wind and solar just ain’t gonna provide the power.

James May reasonably made the point that Honda have the answer in hydrogen powered cars. Yes, getting the hydrogen into a tank and powering a motor isn’t an easy task, but is it really much more difficult than the extraction, refining and distribution process for crude oil?

In the short term, if we do need to wean ourselves off petrol electric cars then electric is the only answer, if only we could get around the range and charging issues. Well, that and the decidedly ecologically unfriendly way the cars have to be made.

The Top Gear guys came up with the tongue-in-cheek idea of running a dodgem style wire grid over the top of the road. Obviously and intentionally ridiculous. But there is a solution to the problem, and it is a very old solution as well.

Back in the days before cars and trains there was a network of horse drawn stagecoaches around the country, in order to keep to some semblance of a timetable, once you factored in the bloody awful roads, cracked wheels axles and people holding you up for your lupins, at points on the route, the tired horses would be changed for fresh ones with the old horses being stabled, given some oats and some kip before being hitched to another stagecoach when they were ready.

How difficult would it be for the car producers to use a battery of uniform dimension and connection? How much of a cushion against the oil running out would it be for the petrol stations and oil companies to offer a service where you pull up onto the forecourt, remove your expiring battery, place it into the charging rack, take a fully charged one, insert it into the car, pay up and drive off?

Yes, there would be logistical issues, but surely it couldn’t be that difficult, could it? The USB has done the same for computing, why not a similar interface for cars?

Just saying.

Also available on thesnowolf.com

Comments.

Housekeeping notice.

I am naturally uncomfortable about the moderation of comments here (the new .com site). I’m perfectly happy for people to disagree with me, I don’t mind if you want to call me an idiot – although I’d prefer it if you qualified the accusation.

Been having a few problems with spammy comments on here, you can stick your hair straighteners, webcams and sleeping aids where the sun shineth not. As a result, I’m engaging the least worst option on here. That being your first comment on here will be held for moderation – unless you do something completely overstepping the mark, it will be passed for publication. Once your first comment has been approved, your subsequent comments will be posted without the rigmarole. I don’t like it, but I’m already getting narked off with removing comments from spammers. If you want to advertise on here, feel free to drop me an email, I’m sure we can come to some mutually beneficial arrangement.

As for the old blogspot site which is acting purely as a mirror to guard against any unforseen tech issues – the comment capacity will now be disabled. Traffic for the two sites has now reached parity, and I’m expecting the .com site to get more traffic from here in. So if you’ve something to say please come and say it over at thesnowolf.com, more people will read it, the comments over at the old house will not be imported, and it will make me feel special.

Cheers old chaps and chapesses.

Wolfers.

Also available on thesnowolf.com