There's been some bizarre things Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi PM, has spraffed since George Bush had them shoes thrown at him. Maybe he's having a bit of a mid-life crisis. First, he got a military unit under his personal control to arrest a bunch of interior ministers and military officials; then a government spokesman said it was because they were in cahoots with a dodgy Ba-athist group planning a coup. But then Maliki himself waded in and said there was no attempted coup, and that the officials in question were just a great bunch wih a "patriotic spirit" - God knows what he's on.
Now:
"Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday said that investigations have revealed that a man involved in the “slaughter” of several Iraqis was behind the shoe-throwing incident.
“We will not oppose the court’s decision if al-Zaydi is acquitted,” Maliki told reporters in Baghdad.Last week, Muntadher al-Zaydi, a correspondent for al-Boghdadiya TV, threw a pair of shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush at a Baghdad-based joint press conference with Maliki."
Does Maliki honestly think anyone is going to believe his demented babble that this lone, desperate nationalistic shoe-throwing journo al-Zeidi was in cahoots with some shadowy Iraqi-slaughtering terrorist? There was no convoluted plan, no one "behind" what happened - all that was behind the incident was the emotion and anger of a man come face-to-face with the arrogant hubristic leader who ordered his armed forces into the country he loves, decimating it, and humiliating and killing his countrymen.
Quit talking rubbish, Nouri.
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Saturday, 20 December 2008
That Fool Forbes: Clueless
Credit Crisis: The Worst is Over.
Where have we heard that before?
In other news from Bizarro World, the economic fundamentals are sound, monetary policy is spectacular, the Credit Crunch is being way overblown, Merrill Lynch is an astonishingly well-ran company, the US economy has never been in better shape, and Forbes actually has a clue.
Von Mises is being vindicated daily, while these rich elite Keynesians have proven themselves ignorant, baffled, and about as useful as economic forecasters as eating a sandwich with shit as its filling is for maintaining personal hygiene.
Where have we heard that before?
In other news from Bizarro World, the economic fundamentals are sound, monetary policy is spectacular, the Credit Crunch is being way overblown, Merrill Lynch is an astonishingly well-ran company, the US economy has never been in better shape, and Forbes actually has a clue.
Von Mises is being vindicated daily, while these rich elite Keynesians have proven themselves ignorant, baffled, and about as useful as economic forecasters as eating a sandwich with shit as its filling is for maintaining personal hygiene.
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Wake up, Polly, you're wrong again
Thinking of turning the above blog title into a little jingle.
Anyway, Polly Well-Orf Toynbee is at it again. You can tell it's going to be another cracker, when, in the first paragraph we get this lovely dash of partisan:
"Yesterday David Cameron made the speech Gordon Brown should have made months ago, an opportunist theft."
How is it theft if Gordon Brown didn't make the speech? This is something new entirely to partisan bickering - the Tories haven't just stolen Labour's ideas, but this time they've stolen what should have been their ideas! Ingenious. The speech being referred to, is of course David Cameron's rather good speech about "a day of reckoning" for the banks. Polly continues:
"It was strong stuff, though uncharacteristically Cameron delivered it with all the fervour of a dead fish. He read monotonously from his script as if unfamiliar words had to be dragged out of him. You can see why he lacked a certain vigour as he read out: "Some people working in the financial services industry paid themselves vast financial rewards - salaries and bonuses beyond the comprehension of most of us." Well, not actually beyond his comprehension at all."
That's right, Polly - if a politician you don't like says perfectly reasonable things that you wish Gordon Brown had said instead, he must have just been given a script to read, and doesn't really mean it! Then she descends into pathetic classism - Cameron can't talk about huge salaries and bonuses for bankers: he's rich too! Of course, Polly is a filthy hypocrite here too, being the great-granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle, earning a handsome wage for spewing her bile into the Grauniad and owning a nice villa in Tuscany.
That rich harridan! - you know something, she's put all the fervour into this article of a dead fish. You can see why Polly lacked a certain vigour as she wrote: "of course there are different rules for the rich and the poor - and everyone knows it."
I venture old Toynbee certainly knows the rules for the rich, but as for the poor, hmm ... anyway moving on, DC's speech, apparently:
"...sounded phoney from the mouth of a trustafarian princeling of deep old aristocracy with his blue-blooded trustafarian wife."
What a nasty sentiment (and hypocritical, but we've already touched base there). I'm no lover of David Cameron, but I least have the decency to judge him on his words and actions, not his family origins. Polly's a classist, pure and simple. Why is that any better than racist?
"Why else has the Department for Work and Pensions paid a small fortune for a massive television, newspaper and poster campaign with "We're closing in" on benefit thieves plastered all over bus shelters in poor areas?"
Uh, maybe because benefit fraud is wrong?
"There are no such posters in the City, Canary Wharf, Notting Hill or Mayfair suggesting "We're closing in" on insider traders, bonus-fuelled reckless risk-takers or those purloining monstrous pay and private jets from the shares of everyone else's pension funds. The DWP's blurb for the campaign says sanctimoniously, "Stealing from the benefit system takes money from the pockets of hard working taxpayers." "
Polly, do you need a poster to prove the enforcement of every government policy? What is sanctimonious about the DWP telling the truth - that stealing from the benefit system is stealing from us? Are you demented? Are you trying to suggest that because of greedy bankers ripping off the tax system, ordinary folks should be allowed to rip off the benefits system?
"It certainly does - but not a fraction of the sums stolen, squandered, tax-avoided in tax havens or pilfered in unjustified perks by the directors and CEOs of public companies, now paying themselves 75 times the pay of their average worker. Each HM Revenue and Customs tax fraud investigator brings in a great deal more than each benefit fraud investigator. That's just one example of one law for the rich and another for the poor."
Okay, the first part about greedy CEOs, granted - but then why have you, and the Labour Party, supported the bail-outs of these very companies and CEOs? The whole point of properly functioning markets is that they stop reckless and greedy idiots from surviving because the more prudent out-compete them. That's what would have happened in this financial crisis if the banks had been left alone - e.g. Lehman Brothers, liquidated and taken over by more profitable and more efficient companies. The crisis should have been the market-created "day of reckoning" for all the banks who took drunken gambler risks during the credit boom, but instead governments actively prevented that from happening, citing ludicrous apocalyptic scenarios. Polly, you and Labour have essentially been saying "never mind moral hazard at all", and letting these idiotic bankers off scot-free! We have the mostly state-owned RBS jetting off for six-figure figure holidays to the States as a "reward" - surely moral hazard at its most hideously evident.
"It should have been Gordon Brown making that speech yesterday. He could have had a resonance and conviction utterly lacking in Cameron."
How exactly would the man who presided over the false prosperity and casino-banking of the credit boom with smiles and nods of encouragement have the "resonance and conviction" to call for a day of reckoning? Oh yes, I forgot, the Tories have been in power for the past 11 years, with David Cameron as Chancellor for the first 9 before becoming Prime Minister.
"It should be Brown calling for an end to the bonus culture: Cameron doesn't mean it, he's simply proposing token action. Labour could effectively end it by disallowing bonuses to be set against a company's tax as a legitimate expense."
Again, Brown had 11 years to do that. But no, it's ol' Cameron who's proposing the "token action". Cos e's a narsty aristocrat, innit?
"Playing the best AA scout on the road is paying off in the polls. The worse things get, the stronger the trust in the government."
Sadly, she's actually got a point there, defying all logic. How messed up is that?
Polly concludes:
"Right now Labour action versus Tory laissez-faire is the winning story. But in bitter February and March winds, when all the fixing has been done but unemployment keeps rising, companies keep collapsing and state debts mount, Labour will need an angrier story about what went wrong and who is to blame."
Labour action? Deepening our debt beyond all precedent, slashing interest rates with Greenspan-like idiocy, setting us up for quantative easing and hyperinflation, destroying the pound, nationalising banks - hell, I'll take laissez-faire any day of the semester. Then again, I am a Libertarian. And I think Hayek, who won the Nobel economics prize in the 1930's for showing that government action prolonged and deepened the Great Depression, would agree with me in saying that should the UK government, in cahoots with Obama, follow its present course of calamitous "action", the chances of a long, protracted sequel to the Great Depression are pretty likely.
As for Labour going with the "what went wrong and who is to blame" narrative, I can't see that happening somehow: Gordon Brown may not be best pleased with the answers.
Wake up Polly, pleased! As far as she's concerned, it's always the rich's fault - never mind that if we lost our top 1% earners, our government would lose most of its money, and never mind that most of them don't make a living from scamming people. It's always the fault of greedy corporations - never mind the number of ex-corporation employees and CEOs who go through the revolving door into government, who use the black-out on political lobbying to make shady deals with, again, the government. Never mind that, in a truly unfettered free and honest market as proposed by the Libertarian Party, political lobbying would be open and transparent.
Nooo nooo, Gordon's a saintly son of the Manse trying to help out the poor, but the rich with their ... their evil nasty rich-guy schemes in their rich nasty uh ... evil banks keep being nasty and ooo they're all financed by the Tories, and David Cameron, he's evil nasty and rich too, and ooo I'm a classist authoritarian bigot with all the economic, political, social and historical insight of an unborn foetus, and ooo the poor have no aspirations, so just let them steal a little from the public kitty, come on now, be nice, and ooo do you like my new diamond-encrusted handbag, I bought it in Tuscany, and ...
Anyway, Polly Well-Orf Toynbee is at it again. You can tell it's going to be another cracker, when, in the first paragraph we get this lovely dash of partisan:
"Yesterday David Cameron made the speech Gordon Brown should have made months ago, an opportunist theft."
How is it theft if Gordon Brown didn't make the speech? This is something new entirely to partisan bickering - the Tories haven't just stolen Labour's ideas, but this time they've stolen what should have been their ideas! Ingenious. The speech being referred to, is of course David Cameron's rather good speech about "a day of reckoning" for the banks. Polly continues:
"It was strong stuff, though uncharacteristically Cameron delivered it with all the fervour of a dead fish. He read monotonously from his script as if unfamiliar words had to be dragged out of him. You can see why he lacked a certain vigour as he read out: "Some people working in the financial services industry paid themselves vast financial rewards - salaries and bonuses beyond the comprehension of most of us." Well, not actually beyond his comprehension at all."
That's right, Polly - if a politician you don't like says perfectly reasonable things that you wish Gordon Brown had said instead, he must have just been given a script to read, and doesn't really mean it! Then she descends into pathetic classism - Cameron can't talk about huge salaries and bonuses for bankers: he's rich too! Of course, Polly is a filthy hypocrite here too, being the great-granddaughter of the Earl of Carlisle, earning a handsome wage for spewing her bile into the Grauniad and owning a nice villa in Tuscany.
That rich harridan! - you know something, she's put all the fervour into this article of a dead fish. You can see why Polly lacked a certain vigour as she wrote: "of course there are different rules for the rich and the poor - and everyone knows it."
I venture old Toynbee certainly knows the rules for the rich, but as for the poor, hmm ... anyway moving on, DC's speech, apparently:
"...sounded phoney from the mouth of a trustafarian princeling of deep old aristocracy with his blue-blooded trustafarian wife."
What a nasty sentiment (and hypocritical, but we've already touched base there). I'm no lover of David Cameron, but I least have the decency to judge him on his words and actions, not his family origins. Polly's a classist, pure and simple. Why is that any better than racist?
"Why else has the Department for Work and Pensions paid a small fortune for a massive television, newspaper and poster campaign with "We're closing in" on benefit thieves plastered all over bus shelters in poor areas?"
Uh, maybe because benefit fraud is wrong?
"There are no such posters in the City, Canary Wharf, Notting Hill or Mayfair suggesting "We're closing in" on insider traders, bonus-fuelled reckless risk-takers or those purloining monstrous pay and private jets from the shares of everyone else's pension funds. The DWP's blurb for the campaign says sanctimoniously, "Stealing from the benefit system takes money from the pockets of hard working taxpayers." "
Polly, do you need a poster to prove the enforcement of every government policy? What is sanctimonious about the DWP telling the truth - that stealing from the benefit system is stealing from us? Are you demented? Are you trying to suggest that because of greedy bankers ripping off the tax system, ordinary folks should be allowed to rip off the benefits system?
"It certainly does - but not a fraction of the sums stolen, squandered, tax-avoided in tax havens or pilfered in unjustified perks by the directors and CEOs of public companies, now paying themselves 75 times the pay of their average worker. Each HM Revenue and Customs tax fraud investigator brings in a great deal more than each benefit fraud investigator. That's just one example of one law for the rich and another for the poor."
Okay, the first part about greedy CEOs, granted - but then why have you, and the Labour Party, supported the bail-outs of these very companies and CEOs? The whole point of properly functioning markets is that they stop reckless and greedy idiots from surviving because the more prudent out-compete them. That's what would have happened in this financial crisis if the banks had been left alone - e.g. Lehman Brothers, liquidated and taken over by more profitable and more efficient companies. The crisis should have been the market-created "day of reckoning" for all the banks who took drunken gambler risks during the credit boom, but instead governments actively prevented that from happening, citing ludicrous apocalyptic scenarios. Polly, you and Labour have essentially been saying "never mind moral hazard at all", and letting these idiotic bankers off scot-free! We have the mostly state-owned RBS jetting off for six-figure figure holidays to the States as a "reward" - surely moral hazard at its most hideously evident.
"It should have been Gordon Brown making that speech yesterday. He could have had a resonance and conviction utterly lacking in Cameron."
How exactly would the man who presided over the false prosperity and casino-banking of the credit boom with smiles and nods of encouragement have the "resonance and conviction" to call for a day of reckoning? Oh yes, I forgot, the Tories have been in power for the past 11 years, with David Cameron as Chancellor for the first 9 before becoming Prime Minister.
"It should be Brown calling for an end to the bonus culture: Cameron doesn't mean it, he's simply proposing token action. Labour could effectively end it by disallowing bonuses to be set against a company's tax as a legitimate expense."
Again, Brown had 11 years to do that. But no, it's ol' Cameron who's proposing the "token action". Cos e's a narsty aristocrat, innit?
"Playing the best AA scout on the road is paying off in the polls. The worse things get, the stronger the trust in the government."
Sadly, she's actually got a point there, defying all logic. How messed up is that?
Polly concludes:
"Right now Labour action versus Tory laissez-faire is the winning story. But in bitter February and March winds, when all the fixing has been done but unemployment keeps rising, companies keep collapsing and state debts mount, Labour will need an angrier story about what went wrong and who is to blame."
Labour action? Deepening our debt beyond all precedent, slashing interest rates with Greenspan-like idiocy, setting us up for quantative easing and hyperinflation, destroying the pound, nationalising banks - hell, I'll take laissez-faire any day of the semester. Then again, I am a Libertarian. And I think Hayek, who won the Nobel economics prize in the 1930's for showing that government action prolonged and deepened the Great Depression, would agree with me in saying that should the UK government, in cahoots with Obama, follow its present course of calamitous "action", the chances of a long, protracted sequel to the Great Depression are pretty likely.
As for Labour going with the "what went wrong and who is to blame" narrative, I can't see that happening somehow: Gordon Brown may not be best pleased with the answers.
Wake up Polly, pleased! As far as she's concerned, it's always the rich's fault - never mind that if we lost our top 1% earners, our government would lose most of its money, and never mind that most of them don't make a living from scamming people. It's always the fault of greedy corporations - never mind the number of ex-corporation employees and CEOs who go through the revolving door into government, who use the black-out on political lobbying to make shady deals with, again, the government. Never mind that, in a truly unfettered free and honest market as proposed by the Libertarian Party, political lobbying would be open and transparent.
Nooo nooo, Gordon's a saintly son of the Manse trying to help out the poor, but the rich with their ... their evil nasty rich-guy schemes in their rich nasty uh ... evil banks keep being nasty and ooo they're all financed by the Tories, and David Cameron, he's evil nasty and rich too, and ooo I'm a classist authoritarian bigot with all the economic, political, social and historical insight of an unborn foetus, and ooo the poor have no aspirations, so just let them steal a little from the public kitty, come on now, be nice, and ooo do you like my new diamond-encrusted handbag, I bought it in Tuscany, and ...
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
This must be a joke ...
This, right here:
"Bloomberg News last week reported that the chairman- designate of the National Economic
Council, Lawrence Summers, had been conferring with conservative icon and Columbia
Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard about a housing plan Hubbard designed with Columbia
colleague Christopher Mayer. Obama’s economic advisers appear to have embraced the
proposal, which is already “on a fast track at the Treasury,” according to the story.
The Hubbard-Mayer plan calls for the government to revive the moribund housing market by providing just about everybody with access to a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 4.5 percent interest rate. That’s almost a full percentage point lower than the average national rate of 5.47 percent currently.
Buyers could borrow as much as 95 percent of the value of the home they purchase. The plan might extend to those with existing mortgages, allowing them to refinance and get the same terms. When either type of deal is complete, the lender will place the loan with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac."
First, and most pertinent question: are Lawrence Summer, Dean Glenn Hubbard and Christopher Mayer all completely deranged? The answer seems to be yes, and so is the President-Elect and his stalwart economic team.
There is no other possible explanation for this plan, which scales new heights of idiocy that even the most prolific fool would never dream possible.
Let me get this straight ... the root cause of this financial crisis was a huge housing bubble, inflated by easy credit caused by artificially low interest rates, in which mortgages were handed out with little to no credit checks, to tons of people who couldn't afford to pay them back ... and Obama's response to that is to create a new huge housing bubble, and basically repeat the whole thing over. "Come on guys, don't you see? - the real problem here is that not enough poor people took out dodgy loans! I mean, duh!"
How could anyone possibly think that is a good idea? Surely even the most faithful Keynesians can see the utter rank stupidity of pursuing a policy such as this?
Funnily, this whole housing crisis has brought to mind the rather prescient comments of Mark Renton in Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting:
"One thing the cunts doon here (London) had swallayed, wis the idea thit aw ye hud tae dae wis tae look the part, n it wid aw come your way, which wis fuckin shite. Ah've known schemie-junkes in Edinburgh wi a healthier asset-tae-debt ratio thin some two-waged, heavily-mortgaged couple doon here. It'll hit the fan one day. Thir are a sack load ay repossession orders in the post."
"Bloomberg News last week reported that the chairman- designate of the National Economic
Council, Lawrence Summers, had been conferring with conservative icon and Columbia
Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard about a housing plan Hubbard designed with Columbia
colleague Christopher Mayer. Obama’s economic advisers appear to have embraced the
proposal, which is already “on a fast track at the Treasury,” according to the story.
The Hubbard-Mayer plan calls for the government to revive the moribund housing market by providing just about everybody with access to a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 4.5 percent interest rate. That’s almost a full percentage point lower than the average national rate of 5.47 percent currently.
Buyers could borrow as much as 95 percent of the value of the home they purchase. The plan might extend to those with existing mortgages, allowing them to refinance and get the same terms. When either type of deal is complete, the lender will place the loan with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac."
First, and most pertinent question: are Lawrence Summer, Dean Glenn Hubbard and Christopher Mayer all completely deranged? The answer seems to be yes, and so is the President-Elect and his stalwart economic team.
There is no other possible explanation for this plan, which scales new heights of idiocy that even the most prolific fool would never dream possible.
Let me get this straight ... the root cause of this financial crisis was a huge housing bubble, inflated by easy credit caused by artificially low interest rates, in which mortgages were handed out with little to no credit checks, to tons of people who couldn't afford to pay them back ... and Obama's response to that is to create a new huge housing bubble, and basically repeat the whole thing over. "Come on guys, don't you see? - the real problem here is that not enough poor people took out dodgy loans! I mean, duh!"
How could anyone possibly think that is a good idea? Surely even the most faithful Keynesians can see the utter rank stupidity of pursuing a policy such as this?
Funnily, this whole housing crisis has brought to mind the rather prescient comments of Mark Renton in Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting:
"One thing the cunts doon here (London) had swallayed, wis the idea thit aw ye hud tae dae wis tae look the part, n it wid aw come your way, which wis fuckin shite. Ah've known schemie-junkes in Edinburgh wi a healthier asset-tae-debt ratio thin some two-waged, heavily-mortgaged couple doon here. It'll hit the fan one day. Thir are a sack load ay repossession orders in the post."
I took the quiz
Via Mark Wadsworth, I discover an "impartial" quiz informing me that I am a closet UKIPer.
And 42% Green? You what? Was I high? No, don't think so.
Ah well, this doesn't change anything.
Monday, 15 December 2008
Oh, I love it I love it - but I'm so angry
Following Brown and Miliband's utter rubbish about Germany following Britain's lead on the economic crisis by borrowing and spending billions and billions and blasting it off unaccountably into the stratosphere, and their dismissal of Peer Steinbrück's criticism of the UK's "crass Keynesiam" as mere internal German politics, we have this wonderful approval of Steinbrück's words by the budget spokesman for the German CDU - Chancellor Angela Merkel's party:
YAAAAS. Get it up ye Gordon you lying, smarmy, greying fool. You need to learn that all your economic plan is going to bankrupt our children. God he infuriates me. The whole Nu-Labour club infuriates me almost beyond words. The reasons are so numerous that in my haze of red mist it is difficult to recall them, so I feel a colourful poem will be cathartic enough:
"There was once a man called Gordon Brown,
Who sold all our gold and destroyed our pound,
He spent and borrowed like a drunken sailor,
He ran a government of total failures,
And if, one day, in the years to come,
I should chance upon this pensions-hijacking piece of scum,
The man who paid so our children could leave,
To die in pointless wars in the Middle East,
The man who has the astonishing gall,
To piss right up yon bloody wall,
As much of our money as he possibly can,
With barely any benefit for the working man
The man, who, when the shit hit the fan,
Blamed America, the bankers, where the crisis began,
But refuses to take his share of the blame,
What the Fed did, the Bank of England did just the same,
The banks here handed out mortgages like sweets,
Encouraged by Gordon, so that the poor and meek,
Could buy houses that no way in hell could they afford,
It was a reckless and stupid Labour-voter reward
And now we've basically found ourselves with socialism,
In our banks, and in our wasteful statism
Where Gordon tells us what we can do,
What we can eat, and what we can consume
So if I should ever meet this man down the road,
When he's a frail lonely old man, with a begging bowl,
Reviled by every single person who walks past,
For destroying all the good we used to have,
Liberty, wealth, pensions and gold,
A proud, equipped army, and a low tax threshold,
I'd shout in his ear with a megaphone
"Gee thank you so much for saving the world." "
"Peer Steinbrück's comments have nothing whatsoever to do with internal German politics as Prime Minister Brown has suggested. In questioning the British Government's approach, Peer Steinbrück is exactly expressing the views of the German Grand Coalition. After years of lecturing us on how we need to share in the gains of uncontrolled financial markets, the Labour politicians can't now expect us to share in it's losses. The tremendous amount of debt being offered by Britain shows a complete failure of Labour policy."
YAAAAS. Get it up ye Gordon you lying, smarmy, greying fool. You need to learn that all your economic plan is going to bankrupt our children. God he infuriates me. The whole Nu-Labour club infuriates me almost beyond words. The reasons are so numerous that in my haze of red mist it is difficult to recall them, so I feel a colourful poem will be cathartic enough:
"There was once a man called Gordon Brown,
Who sold all our gold and destroyed our pound,
He spent and borrowed like a drunken sailor,
He ran a government of total failures,
And if, one day, in the years to come,
I should chance upon this pensions-hijacking piece of scum,
The man who paid so our children could leave,
To die in pointless wars in the Middle East,
The man who has the astonishing gall,
To piss right up yon bloody wall,
As much of our money as he possibly can,
With barely any benefit for the working man
The man, who, when the shit hit the fan,
Blamed America, the bankers, where the crisis began,
But refuses to take his share of the blame,
What the Fed did, the Bank of England did just the same,
The banks here handed out mortgages like sweets,
Encouraged by Gordon, so that the poor and meek,
Could buy houses that no way in hell could they afford,
It was a reckless and stupid Labour-voter reward
And now we've basically found ourselves with socialism,
In our banks, and in our wasteful statism
Where Gordon tells us what we can do,
What we can eat, and what we can consume
So if I should ever meet this man down the road,
When he's a frail lonely old man, with a begging bowl,
Reviled by every single person who walks past,
For destroying all the good we used to have,
Liberty, wealth, pensions and gold,
A proud, equipped army, and a low tax threshold,
I'd shout in his ear with a megaphone
"Gee thank you so much for saving the world." "
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Ah, Mash-time
I haven't written about everybody's favourite website for UK political satire in a while, but sometimes I come across one that is just excellent, and encourages me to think, with their seeming opposition to the national curriculum as shown in this article, that The Mash's authors are in fact closet libertarians.
"SCHOOL SUBJECTS TO BE DICKED ABOUT WITH
BRITAIN'S primary school curriculum is to be radically reformed after ministers realised they hadn't dicked about with it for at least a year.
From next year the school day will be split into broad themes including noises, shapes, colours, feelings and relentless political indoctrination.
Educational experts say it is too early to tell whether the system will improve standards of literacy and numeracy, but insist it has given them something to do for a few weeks.
The six new subject areas are:
Noises: Moo. Baa. Grrr. Vroom. Plop. These are all noises. Make three of them before lunch.
Shapes: What shape is a lesbian? Are circles French? What rights does a triangle have? Will also cover the shapes of numbers, although the sound of numbers will be covered in Noises.
Colours: The children will be encouraged to mix blue with yellow and green with orange as a way of understanding contraception and exotic sexual positions.
Feelings and Flavours: Does seven taste of cheese? How do you feel about two plus two? Does spelling make you sad and angry? Let's not do it then.
The Labour Party: Will cover the ideology, evolution and structure of Britain's Natural Party of Government and why the Conservatives want to touch you in the bad place.
Nintendo: Everything else is probably covered by some sort of Nintendo game, so from 10.30am until 3pm each day the children will be given a Wii and left to get on with it while the teachers stand at the back door smoking cigarettes and booking holidays.
The Conservatives last night attacked the proposals and set out their own curriculum, including money, standing up straight, poof-spotting, advanced money and remembering the names of staff."
Oh deary me, still laughing. It has everything, doesn't it? Government interference, slipping educational standards, party-political indoctrination (I can vouch for that, having gone to a state-school in Scotland. The study of Modern Studies really was an Animal-Farmsesque case of "Labour good, Tories bad"), and namby-pamby attempts by teachers to reach out to us emotionally. I remember such an incident from my own school-days, as a third-year:
TEACHER: We have in today a fifth-year who used to be a bully, and has bravely agreed to come here and chat to you all about why bullying is bad ... so Gary, why did you decide to bully?
GARY: Uh ... I dunno ... just ... uh ... felt like it.
TEACHER: Was it anything to do with the way you felt inside? Angry, or depressed, or - or were you being bullied yourself?
GARY: Nah, everyone was scared of me. Guess ... uh ... guess I felt a bit angry.
TEACHER: Tell me, how did you feel after you bullied someone?
GARY: *shrugs then catches eye of teacher* Uh, bad. Yeah ... bad. Guilty.
"SCHOOL SUBJECTS TO BE DICKED ABOUT WITH
BRITAIN'S primary school curriculum is to be radically reformed after ministers realised they hadn't dicked about with it for at least a year.
From next year the school day will be split into broad themes including noises, shapes, colours, feelings and relentless political indoctrination.
Educational experts say it is too early to tell whether the system will improve standards of literacy and numeracy, but insist it has given them something to do for a few weeks.
The six new subject areas are:
Noises: Moo. Baa. Grrr. Vroom. Plop. These are all noises. Make three of them before lunch.
Shapes: What shape is a lesbian? Are circles French? What rights does a triangle have? Will also cover the shapes of numbers, although the sound of numbers will be covered in Noises.
Colours: The children will be encouraged to mix blue with yellow and green with orange as a way of understanding contraception and exotic sexual positions.
Feelings and Flavours: Does seven taste of cheese? How do you feel about two plus two? Does spelling make you sad and angry? Let's not do it then.
The Labour Party: Will cover the ideology, evolution and structure of Britain's Natural Party of Government and why the Conservatives want to touch you in the bad place.
Nintendo: Everything else is probably covered by some sort of Nintendo game, so from 10.30am until 3pm each day the children will be given a Wii and left to get on with it while the teachers stand at the back door smoking cigarettes and booking holidays.
The Conservatives last night attacked the proposals and set out their own curriculum, including money, standing up straight, poof-spotting, advanced money and remembering the names of staff."
Oh deary me, still laughing. It has everything, doesn't it? Government interference, slipping educational standards, party-political indoctrination (I can vouch for that, having gone to a state-school in Scotland. The study of Modern Studies really was an Animal-Farmsesque case of "Labour good, Tories bad"), and namby-pamby attempts by teachers to reach out to us emotionally. I remember such an incident from my own school-days, as a third-year:
TEACHER: We have in today a fifth-year who used to be a bully, and has bravely agreed to come here and chat to you all about why bullying is bad ... so Gary, why did you decide to bully?
GARY: Uh ... I dunno ... just ... uh ... felt like it.
TEACHER: Was it anything to do with the way you felt inside? Angry, or depressed, or - or were you being bullied yourself?
GARY: Nah, everyone was scared of me. Guess ... uh ... guess I felt a bit angry.
TEACHER: Tell me, how did you feel after you bullied someone?
GARY: *shrugs then catches eye of teacher* Uh, bad. Yeah ... bad. Guilty.
Why Work?
I mean seriously. From Citizen Stuart we have this little personal anecdote on his own employment situation:
"I've been in and out of work this year. Since being laid off from what was supposed to be a permanent job in January, I've been alternating periods of unemployment with various temporary jobs, though employment agencies. My last job that lasted a few months ended about two and a half weeks ago. When you're unemployed, the first day off work's a novelty, but after that it becomes a bit of a drag - especially if you've got a pile of debts, which isn't exactly an unusual situation these days. So after a fortnight out of work, I didn't mind taking a temporary job. Just two days doing a bit of data entry work that was urgently needed at a factory a few miles from where I live. The work was repetitive, but most work is, and it made a change to work in a place where people actually make things (as opposed to pushing money around or trying to sell people credit cards). I had a bit of trouble getting to work yesterday because of the snow and ice (and our useless council seem to have neglected to get the gritters out), but I still got there on time and it was an OK place to work. It made a pleasant break from the daily grind of job hunting.
"I'm still not sorry I took the job, as it got me out of bed early and gave me something more productive to do than endlessly scanning the job sites."
Sadly, I feel he may be in the minority there.
"I've been in and out of work this year. Since being laid off from what was supposed to be a permanent job in January, I've been alternating periods of unemployment with various temporary jobs, though employment agencies. My last job that lasted a few months ended about two and a half weeks ago. When you're unemployed, the first day off work's a novelty, but after that it becomes a bit of a drag - especially if you've got a pile of debts, which isn't exactly an unusual situation these days. So after a fortnight out of work, I didn't mind taking a temporary job. Just two days doing a bit of data entry work that was urgently needed at a factory a few miles from where I live. The work was repetitive, but most work is, and it made a change to work in a place where people actually make things (as opposed to pushing money around or trying to sell people credit cards). I had a bit of trouble getting to work yesterday because of the snow and ice (and our useless council seem to have neglected to get the gritters out), but I still got there on time and it was an OK place to work. It made a pleasant break from the daily grind of job hunting.
Of course today I'm back to being one of Brown's millions, so I had to go down to the JobCentre to declare the two days I'd earned. I was given a short statement form to fill in and sign, no problem. Then I asked the woman at the JobCentre how it would affect my JobSeeker's Allowance. She said I would be allowed to keep the first £5 from my earnings and the rest would be docked from my JSA. Wonderful. What should I do with the £5? Buy another yaught? Put an extension on the house?
Really, is this is what people pay their taxes for? We have a system that is overcomplex, overexpensive and - worst of all - actually discourages people from working."
Another potent example of how our benefits system is designed to favour the unemployed and idle. Seriously, why bother getting of your arse to do anything productive when you're actually, in so many cases, better of not? Presumably, Labour are trying to turn Stuart into one of their core voters, with the old predictable technique of fostering one's dependence on the State.
As a Libertarian, they may be fighting a losing battle with young Stuart, who thankfully values a work ethic:"I'm still not sorry I took the job, as it got me out of bed early and gave me something more productive to do than endlessly scanning the job sites."
Sadly, I feel he may be in the minority there.
I Love Justin Raimondo!
Not in that way. Though I understand he is in fact gay, my feelings for him are purely platonic.
No, what has exercised my outburst of emotion is this wonderful commonsense article in his antiwar.com column, on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Obama, and the Mumbai atrocity. Here he says of the Taliban and al-Qaeda:
"How, exactly, are we threatened by a bunch of terrorists living in caves in the most godforsaken terrain known to man, where they can neither reach us nor hurt us in any way? Indeed, having them there, we at least know where they are. It's when they get out into the world – say, the streets of New York – that they pose a real danger. So why not quarantine them? Why not make it impossible for anyone to leave Afghanistan, ever? Why go in there, police the country for a decade or so, and pipe in billions of taxpayer dollars to make the Afghan farmers and sheepherders feel good about America? They'll take our money and hate us anyway, and everybody knows it.
The danger to America – that is, the continental United States – is not going to be eliminated by invading countries, blowing up cities, and setting up little Abu Ghraibs everywhere we go. Quite the contrary: it's going to make things much worse. Fighting terrorists effectively rather than politically – that is, with an eye to the voting public – is like a toxic cleanup: you want to consolidate the nasty stuff and keep it all in one place, not spread it around. Yet that is precisely what our invasion – and occupation – of Afghanistan has done.
Bin Laden and his crew are nowhere near Afghanistan, if the terrorists have an ounce of sense – and they do. This whole phony argument that we need to "get bin Laden" and that's why we're in Afghanistan is pure malarkey; that is, it's pure politics. The real reason we're in Afghanistan is because President-elect Obama inherited a war he doesn't have the courage to end."
No, what has exercised my outburst of emotion is this wonderful commonsense article in his antiwar.com column, on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Obama, and the Mumbai atrocity. Here he says of the Taliban and al-Qaeda:
"How, exactly, are we threatened by a bunch of terrorists living in caves in the most godforsaken terrain known to man, where they can neither reach us nor hurt us in any way? Indeed, having them there, we at least know where they are. It's when they get out into the world – say, the streets of New York – that they pose a real danger. So why not quarantine them? Why not make it impossible for anyone to leave Afghanistan, ever? Why go in there, police the country for a decade or so, and pipe in billions of taxpayer dollars to make the Afghan farmers and sheepherders feel good about America? They'll take our money and hate us anyway, and everybody knows it.
The danger to America – that is, the continental United States – is not going to be eliminated by invading countries, blowing up cities, and setting up little Abu Ghraibs everywhere we go. Quite the contrary: it's going to make things much worse. Fighting terrorists effectively rather than politically – that is, with an eye to the voting public – is like a toxic cleanup: you want to consolidate the nasty stuff and keep it all in one place, not spread it around. Yet that is precisely what our invasion – and occupation – of Afghanistan has done.
Bin Laden and his crew are nowhere near Afghanistan, if the terrorists have an ounce of sense – and they do. This whole phony argument that we need to "get bin Laden" and that's why we're in Afghanistan is pure malarkey; that is, it's pure politics. The real reason we're in Afghanistan is because President-elect Obama inherited a war he doesn't have the courage to end."
Bush Confesses
A bit.
The Washington Times reports that outgoing President George Bush is taking "a measure of responsibility" for the Abu Ghraib scandal.
It's too little, too late. He should have taken responsibility from the start.
He should now take responsibility for the entire war. Today, 20 Iraqis were killed. The day before, 12. The day before that, at least 15. This is with the situation, apparently, "improving". The scale of carnage for innocent Iraqi citizens, men, women, children, day in day out, for the past five years, is incomprehensible and frightening. We shouldn't ignore these facts. We shouldn't shirk from recognising them.
The Washington Times reports that outgoing President George Bush is taking "a measure of responsibility" for the Abu Ghraib scandal.
It's too little, too late. He should have taken responsibility from the start.
He should now take responsibility for the entire war. Today, 20 Iraqis were killed. The day before, 12. The day before that, at least 15. This is with the situation, apparently, "improving". The scale of carnage for innocent Iraqi citizens, men, women, children, day in day out, for the past five years, is incomprehensible and frightening. We shouldn't ignore these facts. We shouldn't shirk from recognising them.
Scottish Libertarians
We have a new blog up and running for Libertarians north of the border, ran by yours truly:
Scottish Libertarians
Scottish Libertarians
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