HyperAngry

Amy Winehouse

2011-07-24T09:00:00.001+01:00

Singing junkie dies. So what?

Pity the Pope doesn't do likewise.

2010-09-15T20:00:00.004+01:00

'A senior Papal adviser has pulled out of the Pope's UK visit after saying arriving at Heathrow airport was like landing in a "Third World" country.

Cardinal Walter Kasper reportedly told a German magazine the UK was marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".'

Better that than an old and aggressive fuck up the arse by a priest, eh?

Fuck you, "Holy" "Father"

2010-08-14T10:13:00.005+01:00

Joseph Ratzinger, otherwise known as the Pope is visiting the UK. This makes me angry for lots of reasons, but none of them sufficient to provoke hyperanger until today. Yes, he's an old fart who believes in sky fairies, but there are lots of those. Yes, the organisation of which he is head has many reactionary policies, but that's not unusual. Yes, he believes in the oppression of women, but he's quite a long way down the queue there, behind assorted Ayatollahs. Yes, he refuses to allow people control over their own reproduction. Yes, he's an ex-Nazi. Well, I suppose he didn't realise what came over him. It wasn't even enough that he has conspired to allow child rapists to evade justice, something for which I entirely agree with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins' campaign to have him arrested the moment he steps onto British soil. No, what's provoked my rage is the campaign by his supporters against criticism of all the above things in the Press while he's here. (See http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2010/08/pope-british-catholic-world if you don't believe me).

Well, here's some criticism, Ratzo, you old fart; fuck you. Fuck your child raping priests. Fuck your arrogance, fuck your fascist policies, fuck your mindless followers, fuck your stupid grasping organisation. Fuck you and fuck off back to fucking alterboys in the fucking cess-pit you live in, you paedophile fascist, we don't want you in this country. Get the hint?

Where's the beef?

2010-04-23T10:23:00.004+01:00

So, I watched the first "Prime Ministerial" debate, more out of curiousity than in the expectation of enlightenment, and it was much as I expected; a beauty contest. I too thought Nick Clegg "won" it. I wonder how many people realise that he is far to the Left of the Labour Party (and no more a "Liberal" in the classical sense than Attila the Hun was?) I do wonder how many people followed me and didn't bother with the second debate? After all, I can only sit and listen to 90 minutes of empty lies so many times.

And the reason I say that their utterings are empty (I assume the reason I say they are lies is obvious; they're politicians, their mouths are moving, ergo they are lying) is that no-one has mentioned the elephant in the room. Elephant? More like a herd of the damn things. The budget deficit. The National Debt. Like it or not, this is all that matters. And it's all that matters because if it is not dealt with, nothing else will. There will be no money. Britain will default on its debt, have to be rescued by the IMF whose gaulieters will enforce the kind of austerity that will make what the Government should be doing look like a summer holiday.

And this is not news, or indeed even new. Read this and ask yourself when it was written;

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest {the State} become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Give up?

That was written in 55BC by the Roman commentator Cicero. Isn't it about time that politicians took some notice of him? Oh, hang on. They're politicians. They don't take any notice of anyone.

The Big Freeze

2010-01-09T13:58:00.004Z

God, I'm sick of the weather. Actually, not the weather, but the media coverage of it. Has anything else happened other than it being a bit snowy in the UK? Unremitting footage of closed schools, car accidents and empty salt depots (incidentally, it's rock salt, not grit). Endless shots of swaddled reporters standing in the High Streets of "cut off" villages (how did they get there if the villages are cut off, eh?) We don't need to see this - all we have to do is look out of our windows.

Although I was amused to hear stories of local authorities going on bended knee to one of the more reviled portions of the citizenry to beg for help. Yes, 4x4 owners, you aren't baby killers after all. At least, not for the next few days anyway.

Taxpayer's money for political parties.

2010-01-08T17:03:00.003Z

The Labour Party are so useless at running their own finances that they've raised the idea of having taxpayer funding for political parties. This particularly loathsome idea creeps out from under a rock every few years although fortunately up until now it's always been promptly booted back under it again.

How about instead of stealing yet more money from the taxpayer, the Labour Party learn to run their finances sufficiently well such as to not need taxpayer's largesse? When you or I are short of a bob or two, we cut back. Turn the heating down. Cancel the Carribean holiday and go to Margate instead. Buy a smaller car. Sell an organ. What we do not do is go out and mug a few more old ladies to make up the difference. Or at least, that's what those of us who aren't lying criminals do. Surprise, surprise, the Labour Party are lying criminals!

I suspect that the only thing stopping them from this particular mugging is the thought that this means giving the BNP money, too. Members should pay for political parties, not taxpayers. And if there isn't enough money, tough titty.

Jonathan Ross

2010-01-07T22:30:00.002Z

Jonathan Ross is leaving the Beeb. Good. Let's hope the tedious, talentless, lisping, giggling idiot isn't seen on TV ever again. Pity we can't get the (our) money back.

The Greens are right

2010-01-07T09:22:00.003Z

But for all the wrong reasons. Yes, we're destroying our environment, exhausting the earth's resources, running an ecological debt we cannot repay. We're running out of food, water, living space, energy and places to put all the garbage that we create. We're fouling the oceans and atmosphere with our excreta. There's probably nowhere on the planet without its drift of plastic bottles and Q-tips.

But the answer isn't to go back to some mythical agrarian past where excessively clean smiling peasants with good teeth live in (imaginary) harmony with the world (after all, such lifestyles are actually grindingly hard work, nasty, brutish and short). And even if it were the answer, it's only going to work for a short time.

You see, the real problem is simply that there are too many of us. Malthus was right. Even if he got the timings a little wrong. We breed and breed and breed and breed. Amusingly, this was summed up perfectly by a character in a film, Agent Smith in "The Matrix", to be exact;

"I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. "

And the solution? Stop breeding. Stick that thing into whoever and wherever you like, but stop squeezing out babies. Reproduction should be regarded like driving and driving, or smoking. Nasty and antisocial. The Government could make a good start by scrapping subsidies for babies. No more Family Allowance, or whatever it's called these days. That was introduced to boost the population after WW2. Big news! WW2 is over. And so should breeding subsidies be. Indeed, we should be adopting the opposite strategy; have more than two and your tax bill goes up.

There is no money

2010-01-06T10:35:00.003Z

Do our politicians imagine we're completely stupid? Oh, hang on. Stupid question. Of course they do. Do they really imagine we're going to be fooled by the pathetic school-boy arguing about who's going to spend the most money on what? Oh, hang on. Stupid question. Of course they do.

Because otherwise they'd have to admit the truth. There is no money. "Great" Britain is all but bankrupt. The world's largest bond traders have recently rated UK Government bonds ("gilts") as a "sell". That means they think there's a good chance of a default - the Government not being able to pay its debts. (Just as an aside for those not familiar with how the Government borrows money; they sell bonds on the open market. Having sold them, the Government has to pay interest on those bonds, and eventually redeem them. If they are seen as riskier due to the chance of a default, the interest rates rise, and as a consequence, so does the amount of money the Government has to pay out.)

And how does the Government pay its debts? It steals the money from you and I. Can anyone tell me the difference between a Government and a robber baron? There isn't one; they both steal money from you and spend it on things they want and you don't. And don't come whining to me about the NHS and education. The Robber Barons^W^WGovernment always spend money on things that someone doesn't want. Neither bleat about the "social contract"; there's no such thing. And democracy? Don't make me laugh. No matter who you vote for, the Robber Barons^W^WGovernment get in. And they're all the same; utterly convinced they can spend your money better than you can.

And where has that conviction got us? Bankrupt. In hock for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder that the sight of their oleaginous gobs, spouting lies and platitudes make me sick? And, of course, very angry. All my life I've scrimped and saved. I really have been prudent, unlike those lying scum in Westminster. And where's it got me? Nowhere. I might as well not have bothered.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-29T12:19:00.003+01:00

I can't possibly be the only person on the planet who is sick to death of the coverage of the death of Michael Jackson & more-or-less indifferent to that death? Perhaps we could call it "Princess Di(e) Syndrome"? How empty are the lives of those weeping in the street and leaving flowers in vaguely relevant places?

Let's face it, Jacko was definitely a has-been, not having made a record for 8 years, and a decent one for 20 years, likely a paedophile, despite having escaped prosecution twice, and most certainly madder than a box of frogs; addicted to surgery and painkillers, apparently determined to turn himself into Gollum. There appears to be no part of his life untainted by his bizarre "lifestyle"; his inability to deal with money, despite having more of it than most of us will see in a lifetime, his tenuous grasp on concepts such as "truth", the fact that the only thing you could rely on him for was to let you down.

OK, he made some good tunes, but that's all he was; an entertainer, a strolling mummer. Not someone worthy of world-wide gnashing and wailing. Did he solve world hunger? Bring peace in the Middle East? No. He entertained a few people who couldn't be bothered to read a book.

Save your energy for someone worthy of the effort, people.

MP's expenses, again.

2009-05-10T08:53:00.004+01:00

Yes, I know I wrote about this already. But I haven't properly vented yet.

Scum. Lying, thieving, corrupt, evil scum. Hypocritical, grasping, rapacious, greedy scum. And the hypocrisy. Having the cheek to think they can tell us how to run our lives while at the same time shuffling their main and second residences to maximise their profit, building huge property portfolios at the taxpayers expense, and it now turns out, telling the HoC Fees Office one thing and the Inland Revenue another, again to maximise the amount they can steal from their employers.

When I heard the Police had been called to investigate the matter, I assumed it was for the real criminals in this case; the MPs, but no, the thieves and liars (MPs), having been caught with their hands in the till, now want to persecute those who found them out.

Many years ago, I had a heated argument with an aquaintance when I said that I thought all politicians were corrupt liars and he thought otherwise. It appears I was right, to a very large extent.

MP's expenses

2009-04-20T04:06:00.000+01:00

Actually, I had to wait to write about this until I calmed down to the point where I no longer just pounded on the keyboard with my clenched fists while screaming obscenities.

MPs; lying, cheating, thieving, hypocrites. I'm surprised you can hear anything in the Commons Chamber above the grunting and slurping as they jam their snouts into the tax-payer provided trough and hoover up as much largesse as their piggy little mouths will accommodate. The combination of greed and arrogance is breath-taking; first they claim for every little thing they think they can get away with, and then when found out, they refuse to do anything substantive about it.

The excuse is made that not every MP is exploiting the system. You know what? I don't believe them. And neither did Henry Kissinger. As he once said "90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name." Perhaps the apologists are right, perhaps they aren't, but I no longer care. If the Home Secretary is stealing from the taxpayer (and have no doubt, that's exactly what she's doing) then you can bet your bottom dollar that obscure back-benchers are doing exactly the same.

And people wonder why I have no time for Parliamentary "democracy". We should chuck the whole bunch of lard-arsed, time-serving bureaucrats out. Billy Connolly once suggested that we should sneak down to the Houses of Parliament while they were in Summer Recess and change the locks. And you know what? I agree with him.

Majesty? Yeah. Right.

2009-03-28T10:52:00.000Z

The economy is in flames, Gordo is busily spending our great-grandchildren's money propping up the businesses of people who should be in prison, the crusties are preparing to riot in London's streets against the system that provides them with everything they wear, eat, own, live in, drive, drink and travel in and what's on the front pages? The Act of effing Settlement. Yes, while real things are happening in the world, a lot of people are spending time, effort and (our) money debating who should be allowed to become Their Majesty the Chief Parasite. Apparently, it matters which kind of Sky Fairy you believe in. (OK, there's a tiny amount of merit to the argument that it shouldn't matter if your genitals are innies or outies). I don't have words to describe how little I care about any of this, and how little it matters in the real world. After all, the Royal Family is essentially a soap opera, of interest only to the subscribers of "Hello!" magazine and similar arsewipe. If Gordo absolutely must devote any time to this, it should be to abolishing the Royalty and chucking the entire useless parade of parasitical, inbred, moronic, jugeared, horsefaced wasters on the dole.

"I'm sorry ..."

2009-03-12T15:22:00.000Z

No you aren't. You're a bloody recording. How dare organisations "apologise" for their shortcomings with a recording?! Of course, this merely demonstrates how little they actually care about you and I. As if it isn't bad enough that they have offloaded all their administration onto us via their web sites, getting the customers to do all the data entry that used to be done by their staff, they now "apologise" for their shortcomings via an answering machine. If I'm going to be apologised to, I want it to be by a human being, and I want them to mean it, too. Otherwise that apology is worth precisely nothing.

Failure of capitalism?

2009-03-07T12:09:00.001Z

The favourite mantra among those who think they can run your life so much better than you can (politicians) at the moment is "market failure" or "the failure of capitalism". Pay no attention to these morons. Capitalism hasn't failed. It's done what it always has and will; punished those who think they can escape its invisible hand. Those who talk about "market failure" just mean that the markets haven't done what they wanted; make them rich. One of the multitude of reasons we're in the mess we're in is because those aforementioned idiots were well aware that they could skim off the cream in the good times and be protected by the State (that's you and me) in the bad. Instead of bankers being imprisoned, stripped of their pensions, homes and Bentleys, they're being paid off, rewarded for failure, protected, aurically parachuted. In a real capitalist society, the actual owners of their businesses, the shareholders, would be pursuing them relentlessly for retribution for what they've done. And the State would stand by and make sure that contracts were observed, and not provide a safe haven for those whose fault it is. Of course, the politicians are no better. If allocation of blame was being fairly made, they would be due their just desserts[sic], and it wouldn't be green custard, either.

Waterless toilets

2009-03-07T12:02:00.000Z

Whose dumbshit idea were those? As if public toilets didn't reek of piss enough already. Now we have pools of stale urine in the pissoirs and even bigger pools on the floor. I really like having to wade through a pool of someone else's excreta in order to do my business. Not. And the reason those pools are there (other than the complete inability of some men to aim that damn thing inthe right direction)? Having dispensed with flushing, the operators of these mephitic facilities then do away with the cleaners. Yes, there's a list on the wall with the reassuring message that they are inspected every hour, with a supposed list of the initials of those who held their breath long enough to scrawl on that list. But actual cleaning? No. The evidence is overwhelming - or at least it is if you're unfortunate enough to inhale.

No, I don't want to buy a shoe horn.

2009-03-04T17:44:00.000Z

Whinge, whinge, whinge, bleat, bleat, bleat. This is the sound of the ever-lengthening queue of whiners with their hands out wanting your money (and mine - I pay taxes too) to bail out their businesses. I can't say as I blame them (unusually for me) - after all, they've looked at the banks, who've pissed away the entire GDPs of medium sized countries, and got rewarded for doing so, and thought to themselves "I'll have some of that". Today's rant was prompted by some (ex-journo) MP on Radio 4's "World at One" asking for money for print journalism. Perhaps while he's about it, he should ask for money for the buggy whip industry? Or maybe the whale-bone corset makers? Or, more recently and for similar reasons, the makers of vinyl records? Or indeed, any kind of records. You see, these people are in industries which are Going Away. No amount of bleating is going to make the slightest difference; if you produce something that no-one wants to buy, you're doomed. Yes, the State can prop you up for a while, but why should it? That merely hastens the end, since you no longer have any need to pay any attention whatsoever to your customers (remember them?) and once the State gets sick of pouring money down your hole (as it surely will), you'll have to find something else to do anyway. So, people in businesses that are Going Away (or, as the business consultants would have it, with "dysfunctional business models") shut the f**k up and start doing things people want to pay money for.

Corpus Christi - Trimble

2009-02-28T13:13:00.001Z

Could it be that one of the symptoms of the degradation of this country is the way we treat those who are intelligent and pretty? Certainly, it is interesting to compare the media reporting of Jade Goody, an unattractive, boorish, ignorant chav whose sole "claim to fame" is to have accidentally become a millionaire and then to do something we all do, die; with that of Gail Trimble, who more-or-less won University Challenge single-handed for Corpus Christi. Bouquets for the former and brickbats for the latter make no sense in a rational world. Still, at least Goody has done one thing for the world she is leaving; there are queues of women in doctor's surgeries requesting cervical smears.

The surveillance society

2009-02-28T12:50:00.000Z

There was an absolutely fabulous article in the The Times recently by Philip Pullman about the Government's attitude towards those who pay their generous salaries and feather-bedded pensions; you and I. I would suggest you read it. Except you can't, because it has been pulled from the Times web-site. I was going to post excerpts from it, but here's the full thing, instead. Hear, hear, Philip.

"Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms"

Philip Pullman

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don't know who you are

You're mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don't want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation's dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don't mind if we are. They don't think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

Banks and bank bailouts

2009-02-28T12:36:00.000Z

I am sick to death (and needless to say, spitting with rage) over the collapse of the banking industry, the politicians response to it and the media coverage of it. Put it this way - we're all to blame; the banks loaned too much money, we borrowed it and the politicians allowed it.

Greed and fear, fear and greed; of course the banks loaned too much money to dodgy borrowers. They were all in a race to the bottom. If your colleague is doing something that makes lots of money, you do it too. If your competitors are doing something that makes lots of money, you do it too. If you didn't, your shareholders would want to know why. Indeed, banks were harrassed by so-called "activist shareholders" who wanted to know why they weren't doing the very things that have got us into this mess. Hopefully Knight Vinke are hanging their collective heads in shame - but I doubt it. And now the banks have failed, the hypocrisy of their remuneration schemes is revealed for all to see. OK, in good times big bonuses. But in bad times, there should be sackings, disgrace and ignomony, not golden parachutes.

Greed and fear, fear and greed; we borrowed too much. We knew it. People getting equity release loans to spend on Mercedes and plasma TVs? It had to end in tears. Perhaps that's why we're so puffed up with rage at the bankers; we know in our heart of hearts that we're in part to blame.

Greed and fear, fear and greed; the regulators let all this go on. The politicians allowed the regulators to let it all go on. What politician is going to tell his electorate that the days of Mercedes & plasma TVs have got to stop for people's own good? Yet again, when we needed our politicians to do the right thing, they let us down. What use are they?

And as for the bailouts ... In what way is more (fictitious) money and more (real) debt a solution to too much money and too much debt? The politicians have spent our forebears money, they've spent our money, and now they're spending our children and grandchildren's money. There are not words to express the stupidity of this attempt to reflate the very bubbles that got us here.

As is obvious ...

2008-11-24T20:59:00.001Z

I don't take this blogging lark very seriously, but I'm going to start trying. There is, after all, a lot to be angry about. Primarily the world economic situation in which politicians, having spent our money and our ancestors money, are now going to spend our (metaphorical) children's money, too. It would be nice if we could somehow go back and assassinate JM Keynes before his bonkers ideas got any traction with the unqualified morons who now run our lives. Spending your way out of recession, indeed. Perhaps they shouldn't have got us into this mess to start with?

Die, Di.

2007-09-01T11:29:00.000+01:00

In what way is the fact that this vacuous clothes horse is still dead, news? Had she been some chav from a council estate, killed when her drunken boyfriend smashed up his car, she'd have been forgotten long since, and rightly so.

Get lives, people. You didn't know her (in reality, she was of course a neurotic, promiscuous air-head with poor choice in friends) and she didn't know you. And even if she had, she wouldn't have cared about you.

Who am I?

2006-02-16T11:20:00.001Z

No, not who is Hyperangry, that's of no consequence, but who are you? The UK Government wants us all to carry a card saying who we are. Why? They say it will cut down on terrorism, except that the 7/7 bombers made no secret of who they were. They say it will cut down on illegal immigration, except that illegal immigrants make no secret of who they are; the problem is finding them, not identifying them. They say it will cut down on identity theft, except that most ID theft is remote from the user and hence any card they may carry. They say the Police want it, except the Police say they don't. They say it will ... well they say anything they think we might believe. It is, of course, all lies.

So, why do the politicians really want ID cards? Ask yourself what it is politicians do? No, not what they say they do, but what they actually do. The answer comes in this fabulous quote from Proudhon;

"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assesed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrased, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured.

That is government; that is its justice, that is its morality."

So now we know. ID cards are for the control of the law-abiding. They have nothing to do with crime & terrorism, since criminals and terrorists by definition don't obey laws. ID cards are to tighten the grip that the politicians have on the law-abiding public at large.

Well, they can stuff their ID cards. I won't be carrying one. See you in prison!

Those cartoons

2006-02-12T12:31:00.000Z

How interesting that cartoons showing Islam to be the religion of choice for violent, intolerant morons is responded to with violence and intolerance.

When I can buy a beer in Jeddah, then I might pay attention to what some weird beard with an over-active belief in fairy stories thinks. Until then, burn whatever roll-mops you like, but do it in whichever benighted shithole of a country you come from. Not mine. OK?

Rucksacks

2005-08-03T15:36:00.000+01:00

Look, arseholes, not only are rucksacks the container of choice for crazed looney suicide bombers, but they're a pain. Not a pain in the arse, at least not your arse, but a pain for the people you regularly and routinely smash into with them, as you blindly and unknowingly bash your way down the Tube carriage. Have you forgotten you have them on, or something? What gives you the right to jam your damn luggage in my face, just because you're too selfish or stupid to worry about where it is?

Buy a bloody briefcase. And throw away the stupid bottle of water attached to the aforementioned rucksack. This isn't the Kalahari and you don't need to carry supplies with you.

Snot

2005-04-12T10:49:00.000+01:00

Look, people, snot is snot.

Snot is not a breakfast food. I don't want to sit on the train in the morning listening to you snorking up and gobbling half a pound of boogers. If you want breakfast, buy toast.

Snot is not a moisteriser. Wiping the snot drooling from your nose onto your face adds nothing to your essential beauty.

Snot is not hair gel. Running your hand up your face, collecting a couple of ounces of docker's oyster and rubbing it into your hair not only does nothing for your essential beauty, but is unhygienic and makes me want to puke.

Snot is not for sharing. Don't sneeze it into the air, to be breathed in by your fellow commuters, or gob it onto the pavement, like some mysteriously oversized amoeba.

Snot is not cocaine. So don't sniff it up like it was finest Peruvian Marching Powder.

Snot is not a decorator's accessory. So don't wipe it on walls.

Buy a handkerchief. And blow your damn nose.

Ticket Barriers

2005-04-08T11:44:00.000+01:00

Look, bozo, don't stop in front of the ticket barrier, then start looking for your ticket. We don't give a shit which pocket/handbag you put it in. Just get the f*ck on with it.

The Pope is Dead

2005-04-08T11:43:00.000+01:00

Why didn't the Shrub fly in a crack team of doctors and lawyers to make sure the Pope didn't die?

Leave Terri Alone

2005-04-01T10:31:00.000+01:00

How about the world's Press, flacks, political weenies and that war-mongering moron the Americans foolishly elected as President leave the Schiavo issue to the person who is legally and personally responsible; Michael?