The One That Knows In This Country, She'd Be Charged With Murder. . .

An Indian farmer's daugher disarmed a terrorist leader who broke into her home, attacked him with an axe and shot him dead with his own gun.

Fantastic. He'll not be doing that again.

Rukhsana Kausar, 21, was with her parents and brother in Jammu and Kashmir when three gunmen, believed to be Pakistani militants, forced their way in and demanded food and beds for the night.

Militants often demand food and lodging in nearby villages.

When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked.

His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.

She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.

In this country she'd up before the courts for breaking their Yoomanrites.

Miss Kausar said she had never fired an assault rifle before but had seen it in films and could not stand by while her father was being hurt. “I couldn’t bear my father’s humiliation. If I’d failed to kill him, they would have killed us,” she said.

One less of them . . .

The One That Bought A Paper. . .

For the first time in a long, long time, I went out and bought one of the national daily papers today. For the first time ever, that paper was The Sun. I just wanted to see with my own eyes that hatchet job on Brown. And it is one hell of a hatchet job (I like the poster especially). It also seems to be railing solidly against Brown rather than Labour as a whole, and I can't help wondering what would happen if he was shown the door before the election.

I think the answer is probably that The Sun's stance would soften slightly, but that Labour would still lose the election. No-one is going to oust Brown now, no-one wants to be the person that took over and the took the party on to an absolute paggering at the polls. They'll all start sidling away during the campaign. Come the inevitable bun-fight in June it will all be, 'Me? No, it was nothing to do with me, I was nowhere near it. Well, I suppose I could have stepped in before Christmas, but the loyalty of the rank and file is paramount, no-one wanted to see Gordon go. The Tories ran a despicable campaign, it hurt Gordon badly, and someone has to step up now he's stood down.'

With some of the squawking in the media you'd have thought that the job of PM is awarded by The Sun. It isn't. The Sun backing Cameroid isn't going to win the Tories the election. One truism that is, errr, true, is that oppositions do not win elections. The Sun isn't telling people how to vote or think, they've known for plenty long-enough that New Labour is done. They've done this now to cause as much damage to Brown as possible.

The Sun hasn't announced its support to influence the outcome, it has done it to sell papers. The Sun was never going to back Labour, because they will lose. It won't want to be seen backing a loser. Can the Sun influence a winning margin? Yes. If they press the right buttons then a lot of those who don't vote may just turn out to put the boot in. The Sun can turn a big victory into a huge victory, but it cannot turn a large defeat into a narrow win. Even if The Sun indulged in the sort of partial pro-Labour reporting that would make the BBC blush, it wouldn't change the result.

On the morning after the election, when The Sun says something along the lines of 'It Was The Sun Wot Won It', that's just to persuade people that it is more influential than it really is.

Brown will be furious, Campbell on Sky News this morning gave the air of a man who was about to stamp his feet and claim that it isn't fair, but it doesn't really matter. The Tories won't win because they're best - I'm expecting a policy free zone at their conference next week, indeed their manifesto may just as well be Cameroid and chums in matching knitwear holding kittens, The Tories won't win because of The Sun. Labour will lose because of their complete contempt and disregard for the public. Labour will lose because they continually nag and mither us, because they insult us, because they take our money and waste it, spend it on themselves, because they are incapable of admitting fault or responsibility, because they make promises they have no intention of keeping, because they snoop upon us and criminalise us for no other reason than they can.

Alternative vote? Give me a break. You would have done that in '97 if it was worthwhile. Now you stare down the barrel of a gun you think that people's second choices are important?

Slut's Huts/Gulags for Slags? Yeah, nice. Bring back homes for fallen women so you can indoctrinate them and their kids. That's the sort of the thing the BNP would do. . . Oh.

Take your ball and fuck off. You've had your chance, and you have squandered it. It's over. Finished. Gone. Your attitude of entitlement to win this time would be truly offensive if watching it wasn't so funny. You make Comical Ali look like an incisive commentator.

I'll leave the last word to 22 year old Keeley from Bromley, who for some reason left the house wearing nothing but a small pair of blue knickers and a pout.

'He [Cameron] can't possibly do this instantly as he will inherit huge, long-term, deep-rooted problems. We need to allow him time to implement fresh ideas and policies that will get the country off its knees.'

Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? When did glamour models become so politically aware?

The One That Wishes He'd Thought Of It . . .

Old Holborn has been sloganeering and has come up with the following slogan to describe the essence of Libertarianism. It is a thing of beauty:



Do as you want, or do as you are told.

Perfect.

He then follows it up with this:

Think wisely when you have your chance to vote and always ask the question:

"Will they let me do as I want, or will they force me what to do what they want?"

I have nothing to add to this.

The One That Is Reading You A Story. . .

Re-read this yesterday, from one of the volumes in probably my favourite series of books. You'll see why I've put it here:

There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.
Vimes wondered if he'd sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn't believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he's been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don't much care, has an understandable tendency to arrest people who won't instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he can personally afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that.
Admittedly some of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens. That was Assault on a City Official, a very heinous and despicable crime and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere.
It wasn't that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn't offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn't seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough and ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he'd taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang.

Excerpt taken from 'Night Watch' by Terry Pratchett, Doubleday Books, 2002.

There's not really much to add to that, beyond my deep sadness about Pratchett's alzheimers, my immense respect for his work and my recognition of one of the greatest English satirists of all time. If you've not read any of his work, then you really have missed out.

I will say though, his point about taking honest men and turning them into criminals is particularly apt.

Doctors in the UK should tell police every time they treat a victim of gun and knife crime, new guidelines from the General Medical Council will state.

One would imagine the next step would be for the threat of prosecution against the victim if they don't tell whodunnit. Then:

They are also told they can breach patient confidentiality by giving police information if they believe a crime has or will be committed.

If a patient is diagnosed with a genetic disease doctors will be able to tell relatives, without consent.

Just goes to show that you do not belong to you. You belong to the State.

Leg-Iron writes about Underdogs today, and he's right. When the Underdog bites, he'll bite you in the soft fleshy parts, and it will hurt.

The One That Would Have Loved To Have Been A Fly On The Wall. . .

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson was initially refused entry to the Labour Party conference in Brighton because of a problem with his security pass.

You can just see the little jobsworth standing there, can't you?

No matter, what's good enough for the rest of us. . .

Lord Mandelson had to wait 10 minutes at the conference's security entrance before he was allowed to enter.

And how I would have loved to have seen him waiting. Curiously, the Nanny Beeb report doesn't report how he bore this loss of face. I'm betting he didn't stand there with the attitude, 'well, it IS security, it is for own protection', I'm betting he had a hissy fit of proportions that would have made Elton John wander off muttering 'drama queen' under his breath.

Please, please, please, let the security guard in question be an overstayer, visa counterfeiter or an illegal of some kidney, that would be great.

The One That Is Blessed With Clairvoyance. . .

I blogged a little while ago about an entertaining conspiracy theory surrounding the Government's intentions for t'internet.

Well, bless my barnacles. . .

A controversial broadband tax should be law before the next election, according to Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms.

Now there's a surprise. Didn't see that one coming.

The 50 pence a month tax applies to everyone with a fixed line telephone.

Speaking at a debate in London, Mr Timms said the tax will be presented to parliament as part of the Finance Bill.

So, £6 per year, doesn't sound that bad does it?

I'm betting any office will have to pay for each and every phone on their premises, even if it is on a switchboard. More cost which business won't have to bear, because it will be passed on to those who use their services or buy their products.

And what will the money be used for? Making sure everyone has broadband. The next stop will be a modem licence.

Why?

So they can get us all on to Cloud. That means that ALL your files, contacts, emails and browsing history will be centrally stored, and you'll only be able to access websites which the controllers feel is appropriate for you to access.

It's coming people, and it won't just be us, this will be global.

The One That Is Surprised And Not Surprised . . .

Sky News (TV, can't find a link) have just reported this morning that Baroness Scotland has been find £5000 by the UKBA for employing an overstayer.

The comment from Eamonn Holmes was that she 'will accept the fine.' Well that's gracious of her, isn't it? Is that a line we can all take? Or is it only senior politicians that can decide whether they accept a fine or not?

It matters not, she'll probably claim it on her expenses, anyway.

Of more concern is the report that she doesn't see this as a resigning matter.

Riiiight.

So the government's senior legal officer breaks a law that she was instrumental in pushing through and as the highest legal figure in the country, doesn't see it as an issue when she breaks the law she is sworn to uphold.

So, if breaking the law isn't cause for a resignation, what the hell is?

It isn't one law for us and one law for them, it is one law for us and no law for them.

The One That Thinks That Was Entirely Predictable. . .

More than one third of British people have not heard of the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, a poll conducted for BBC Newsnight suggests.

Tomorrow night Newsnight will reveal that the Pope has an impressive collection of odd hats, and they have a special report on Thursday night about the distressing increase in the number of bears shitting in the woods.

The One That Is Quivering With Anticipation. . .

I'm not going to go over old ground, especially as Mac the Knife has done such a capital job.

EU leaders are said to be furious that the Czech Republic is planning to delay signing the Lisbon treaty for up to six months even if the Irish vote "yes" in their referendum next month

I've commented before about the huge respect I have for Vaclav Klaus, as Mac points out he's seen tyranny and supression before, he's got the T-shirt and can see the EU for what it really is.

And what is it?

Nicolas Sarkozy, who helped to draw up the treaty after the French and Dutch voted against its predecessor, the EU Constitution, has warned Prague that it faces "consequences" if it does not swiftly follow an Irish "yes" with its own ratification.

Yeah, that's about right. This will be free and democratic, unless we don't like what you do. Did you notice the fact that an Irish yes is a certainty? Even if they say no, they'll say yes. Eventually. Or there'll be 'consequences'.

Well fuck you, you shortarsed little twat. One would have thought, given your father's tribulations with the Red Army in Hungary during the war and the Soviet's actions in Budapest in 1956, that you'd have a fairly sympathetic attitude towards those who fear the worst with the EU. But of course, there's a big difference here, isn't there, Nicolas? This time it is you in the big chair with the machinery behind you.

If only our politicians had the brass balls that Klaus has shown. Once again I take my hat off to him, and wonder if Cameron has the integrity to keep his promises.

The One That Is Struggling To Understand. . .

Confused, confused, confused.

I’m finding it hard to get a handle on the Sunday political posturing this week. There are two explanations for this. Either, I am too dim and would be better off watching the Sunday omnibus edition of Hollyoaks, or the reason I’m getting confused is that the three main parties have no clue about what it is they actually want, beyond the keys to Number 10.

Where to start?

OK, I’ll start with the LimpDems. My old mate Mac the Knife, who in a previous life had some dealings with the party, is of the opinion that so desperate for power are they that they would sodomise each other in a high-street shop window if they thought it would give them access to the levers of power. Cleggy, obviously keen to be seen as a man of substance on the eve of his party’s conference, has come out with all guns blazing.

Firstly announcing a policy that includes the following cuts:

Cutting the number of government departments to 14 (saving £314.2m per
year)
Halving the number of departmental spin doctors (£7.44m)
Culling or
merging 90 quangos and capping all senior salaries at the Prime Minister’s wage
(£1.182bn)
Cutting the number of ministers to 73 and freezing their salaries
(£1.88m)
Abolishing taxpayer-funded salaries for the leader of the Opposition
and party whips (£0.96m)

Great, go Cleggy! All you need to do now is drop your slavish devotion to the EU, HRA, warmist religious inclination and about two dozen other issues so that you really ARE liberal and democratic and perhaps we can do business.

Ah, you didn’t actually say those cuts would be passed on to us though, did you? I see, so as far as you’re concerned, my money is still actually yours. But then in a separate article from a similar source he states that he will:

‘fight the next general election with a pledge to cut income tax bills by £700 for people on low and middle incomes.’

Some headway then, although there is still this policy of spite that you have more than me, so I’m going to get my friends together and we’re going to take it. The maths is so simple, rich people earn more money. Rich people get hit with high tax. Rich people then either pay an accountant to hide their money in a ridiculously complicated tax system or take it abroad. Charge everyone a sensible and smaller amount of tax, everyone will pay it. You get more money from rich people. 10% of £1m is more than 50% of £100,000. People have more money to spend, so they spend it. This creates jobs, which means you have more people paying the tax.

Anyhow, Clegg is also being tough to those nasty Tories. He’s called Cameroid a ‘con-man’. He

‘accused the Tory leader of saying anything to win the next general election,
saying: "He's put the con back into the Conservatives."

Hmmm, saying anything? What like giving people £700 a year in tax cuts? Wiping out billions of pounds of government spending? Things like that?

For some reason, Cameroid thinks that his Tories and the LimpDems share a lot of common ground.

Mr Cameron urged the Lib Dems to join the Tories in a new "national movement"
claiming there was "barely a cigarette paper" between them on many issues.

Bloody hell! Really? Go and ask your party members about that. Ask them especially about Europe and tighter financial regulation. And you mentioned cigarettes and didn't denounce them as Satan's pencils, you'll probably pay for that, as well.

In an article for The Observer, Mr Cameron said the two parties shared the same views in areas like civil liberties (squash ‘em), education (keep ‘em dim) and climate change (scare ‘em to death whilst emptying their wallets).

Yes, not too much difference there. But why the overture? Does Call me Dave think that the Tories might need some friends? Does he think it will be that close?

Either way, Cleggy isn’t about to act like some school-prom slut, he’s keeping his legs firmly shut. He’s not committing to either side, he obviously wants to inspect the love tackle before jumping into the sack.

But why would he want to join up with a Labour party who only underline that after 12 years in power, they haven’t managed to accomplish anything that one would consider close to their traditional goals. Cue Alan Milburn and Pat McFadden (who?).

The report says those who come from middle and working class families are still at a disadvantage when they enter the jobs market, and that access to professions like law and medicine is becoming increasingly socially exclusive.

Ah, and why is that, then?

The panel found more than half of top professional jobs are still taken by candidates who were independently schooled, even though they account for just 7% of all school children.

It’s the rich! Those bastards, spending their money on making their lives better, that’s why it all has to be taken from them! Or is it because whilst generations of inbreeding has produced offspring who are as thick as bottled shit and have faces which are twelve eighths teeth, they get a proper education rather than the socially engineered politicised rubbish spewed out in the publicly funded education system to those with access to a decent gene pool?

Kids in schools where they are actually taught useful things, actually learn useful things. They probably can’t decorate a Ramadan cushion, or bake a Yom Kippur cake, but then Corpus Christi probably don’t want that in an entrance exam, they want answers to questions that show the prospective student sort of, y’know, knows useful stuff.

You’ve had twelve bloody years, an entire school career. I wouldn’t say the time has been wasted though, as they’ve certainly got richer. Oh look! Here comes Baroness Scotland again!

Now, the beleaguered lawyer is facing claims she had wrongly been paid £170,000 in Parliamentary allowances.

There’s a bloody surprise. The worst of it is, the bastards are claiming this cash and then not even paying their bar bills.

I don’t ask for much in life, but next May, I’d like to see about 400 seats overturned in Parliament and some real people put in.

The message to those who are pissed off with the established liggers: Don’t bloody vote for them!

Lend your vote to the minority party or the Indy. You’ll be amazed how less craven they are, and how things will be no worse than they are now.