The One That Will Probably Go To France. . .

November is less than 24 hours away, and with November comes an increase in the money taken from people by holding them upside down and shaking them when they arrive at a UK airport.

planned rises in APD [. . .] will add up to £4 to the cost of a short-haul flight and up to £90 to the cost of a long-haul flight.

£90? Jesus, if you are a family of four going to Disney in Florida, that amounts to buying a ticket for a fifth member of the party and just tearing it up.

This is the new tithe to the religion of Warmism. I'm pretty bloody far from convinced about the whole shooting match, but even if it is right, what good is this tax going to do? The planes will still take off, full or empty, they have to, it is in their contracts with the airports. Nor do I see the connection with taking money off people and what that money actually does to 'save' the planet.

From Novmeber 2010, they are set to rise again!

It is a cynical attempt at emotional blackmail to take money off people to bankroll the explosion of public sector non-jobs that have proliferated since the economy went south.

Mrs. Snowolf and I were going to go to Gatwick and fly to North America in the spring.

We're probably not going to do that now. If they think they're getting any tax out of me, they can think again. We'll go to France instead. I can get a foot passenger ticket from Dover to Calais for about £4 each, and then for about another £20 can get a TGV ticket from Calais Ville to Paris CDG airport. They do flights to North America from there you know, plus I can have a fag in an indoor lounge whilst I wait for my flight to take off as well.

Those of you living in the South West and Wales would probably save £40 by going Pembroke - Rosslare and getting the train to Dublin. Those in the North could save cash by going Stranraer - Dun Laoghaire and then hopping over to the airport.

It's bit of extra faffing around, but I'm buggered if I'm going to give the government my cash if I can get away without doing so. Then of course, there's the e-borders scheme, in my experience the ferry ports will be a good deal behind the airports in its implementation, so you get to remain a private citizen rather than a chattel of the state.

Fuckers.

The One That Says 'Ooooh, They've Done It Now'. . .

I can't work out if this government is actually barking mad or really wants to lose the next election. Such is the rate at which things designed to piss people off are trotted out, that I'm starting to think it is the latter, there must be something big and very very bad 18 months down the road, so bad that not even Labour with their sociopathic desire for power want to be a part of it.

It really is the only conclusion to draw. Can they really be so divorced from reality that they think telling people that their Facebook, Bebo and MySpace activities must be monitored will win them support? The anti-crime and anti-terror excuse is pathetic. 'Osama Bin Laden is planning a fiery death for the infidel, lol' 'Fingers Freddie is turning over the NatWest tonight! OMFG!' No, I don't think so.

In the grand scheme of things this is a tiny issue, especially when records of all our phone calls, emails and browsing history will be kept, just in case we do something wrong, even if that something wrong is perfectly legal now. However what hasn't happened thus far is any real coverage in the MSM, there's been a couple of flickers (or should that be flickr? Sorry) but nothing to really suggest that this might, you know, be a bad thing.

Well, look at the comments on the Pravda article about this story, as I write this there's only one comment which doesn't have a problem with this. We'll see how Pravda's moderation policy balances this out.

Have Labour learned nothing from the last few months? A very large number of the votes picked up by Obama in the American election were won in the blogosphere and on social networking sites. As each General Election here becomes more like a Presidential election you'd have thought that the Labour spin doctors would have realised that cyberspace is the new battleground, not against terrorism but for votes.

How many people between 18-30 turn out to vote? How many from that same age range use social networking, blogging and email as one of their primary methods of communication? The internet has always been about liberty, it empowers the media consumer and gives the individual a voice. In the case of this blog, it may only be that 20 or so people a day hear my voice, but if every one of those 20 people speak to 20 more people themselves and so forth, that is a huge number of people.

Recently the outcry amongst social networking site users about the rights to uploaded photographs caused these sites to back down. Internet users have real power, perhaps that is what really scares the government, there's no boozy paper editor with a skeleton or two in the cupboard that can be leant on or manipulated, instead there is a large collection of individuals who will say and write what they want, not what they are told.

I'll tell you this, you can piss around with recording people's itinerary when they go abroad, put chips in their bin and so on, but piss around with their Facebook and they'll mobilise in their tens of thousands; you're screwed.

Labour, you are so screwed. But please, tell me, why are you doing it on purpose?