ireadthenews2dayohboy

Have I just got terminally miserable ? or am I missing the point somewhere ?

Over the last few days my newspapers have been full of tales about two women

Amy Winehouse and Diana The late Princess of Wales

The huge coverage seems to assume that we care, er why?

In the first example Amy Winehouse, where is the interest in just one more sad and inadequate person with fairly limited talent commiting suicide slowly, painfully and in public, frankly mam I don't give a damn.

Oh and for Christs sake can we stop the endless column inches given over to Diana, she was a damaged, very manipulative and not very bright woman who was briefly married to another person from a similar background with similar baggage. The marriage didn't work, she went off and shagged everything in site and so did he, eventually going back to the woman he should have married in the first place.Sounds like a normal marriage break up to me.

The only good thing that seems to have come from the whole sorry episode are their two sons who are surprisingly level headed and normal.

thats it, she died 10 years ago, yes thats a personal tragedy for her family but enough is enough.

Could someone tell me why the tabloid press have not got hold of something that Harry has touched eaten or smoked so that a DNA test could be run and compared to Hewitt

I have been banging on for years about the inadequacies of Government computer systems - basically they do not work efficiently, if at all, and consume vast sums of money.
yet again this morning a report is quietly slipped in to the public domain, a good day to bury bad news, that the DNA ( do you know what DNA stands for? its the National Association of Dyslexics) Database contains half a million errors, no change there then.

This follows on the early trials of the NHS system that showed it to be so insecure that they may as well just publish everyones personal details on the internet in a health version of wikipedia.Anyone could just look up anyone. lets see Blair A - pathological liar but good actor tendency to send British military personnel to their death in a futile gesture to make him look good.

Just cannot wait for the ID card system.

Todays pieces of useless information - the ID card systems in the World that come close to working come from Israel

Afghanistan now produces orders of magnitude more heroin than when the Taliban were in control

Suddenly the UK has noticed that Ian Duncan Smith did actually do a very thorough and competant job with his Broken Society document.

I no longer hear the patronising sneering coming from the likes of the Guardian and the BBC. The lurch to the right jibes have been silenced.

Why ? because the truth suddenly burst through the veneer of half truth and propaganda that politicians had hidden it with for years.

There is of course a very very simple solution that cures not only the epidemic of gang, gun and knife culture but addresses that other politician created mess - Iraq & Afghanistan.

It would take about 14 days to recall Parliament and bring to the Statute Book a law that required those found guilty of carrying, let alone using, an offensive weapon with out justification to be sent immediately to the front line in Iraq or Afghanistan.

OK sonny so you think its hard to carry a gun do you, lets see how you hard you are when the person who disses you is a Taliban fighter with an AK47 who is determined to cut you limb from limb and spread the pieces all over the desert.

The little shits would also get their much desired 15 minutes of fame in a video on Al Jazeera being beheaded by a bigger thug than them hacking at their throat with a great big knife, while they screamed for mercy and demanded their rights - justice in deed

The best solutions are always the simplest

Well I had a few days off and what happens, the whole media goes into bias overload.
Its a job to know where to start, lets start with the most irritating.

The Conservative Party publish the latest of their, surprisingly well considered, policy reviews. This one on Economics, written by John Redwood so how do the BBC react, well no surprise there the rabid pinkos just couldn't control themselves and just had to preface the piece on the economic review with a 12 or 13 year old clip of John Redwood trying manfully, but failing,to pretend he knew the words of the Welsh National Anthem (who does)
er what possible relevance does that have other than being a very nasty attempt on the part of Browns Broadcasting Company to slur a political opponent.

Ah lets look at the melt down of the " financial markets " I think it was Soviet President Kruschev who took one look at the London Stock Exchange and said it was a casino and thats exactly what it is.
I have long found it incomprehensible that a company grows and prospers because it does well at what ever it was it did. Those that work in it do perhaps passably well, then it floats on the Stock Exchange and the vultures, lawyers, accountants, analysts, etc descend insisting that they must make orders of magnitude more than those that created the company in the first place.
I well recall the stunned silence when I pointed out to a band of pompous accountants that they were part of an occupation thats only skill was measuring the achievements of other people.

The reality of the Financial markets is that they are little more than a huge confidence trick, the USA is bankrupt, financially and morally. it owes more money than it has just to the Chinese let alone the rest of the World, The UK is bankrupt because it has accumulated debts to future state employee pensioners that again dwarf its reserves.
The EU is bankrupt and its accounts have not been accepted for years and years and years.
When you get down to cold hard financial reality the only people with money in the bank are the Chinese and a handful of smaller nations that traditionally live within their means, countries like Australia and New Zealand.
It makes me smile when I read the Times Rich List and see that so and so has shares " worth " millions or even billions, No, a share is like anything else in this world, it is only worth what someone else will give you for it on the day you want to sell it. Until that point it is all but worthless.

I am a great supporter of the UK armed forces, they are made up of some of the finest examples of mankind that you are likely to see.
I have utter and total contempt for the politicians who seek to treat them as morons who will die just to create todays positive headlines.
The UK should not be in Iraq or Afghanistan, should never have gone there and should leave immediately.
The UK has no strategic interest in the area, is receiving no present or future advantage in being there and because they have their hands tied behind their backs the military are achieving absolutely nothing other than premature and painful death of people on both sides.
Interesting to note that the UK parliaments committee that suggested a similar plan was not reported by the BBC.
Can someone please explain to me how a country, Afghanistan, that the UK Government is " sorting out" can massively expand its heroin production and subsequent export to the streets of the UK ?

On a lighter note, I see the political leaders of the Scots are mouthing off again because they want to be Independent, I only have one word of comment - Goodbye

So this idea has bubbled back to the surface again,( good time to sneak the news through while the MPs are away) and the UK Government are " inviting tenders " for a National ID card scheme to " deal with terrorism"

Words almost, but not quite, fail me.

Lets look at this proposal bit by bit.
First
Cost, It is suggested that the scheme will cost £6 billion, yeh just like the Dome was going to cost £50 million and cost £1 billion,
the little boys club and debating chamber otherwise known as the Scottish Parliament Building, originally going to cost £10 million, actual cost £450 million

or perhaps the IT system that is most similar in scope to the ID card scheme - the NHS IT system - this too was originally going to cost £6 billion.

The scheme is now years and years late, doesn't do any of the things that were promised, very well if at all and the final cost is unknown but " probably in excess of £31 billion"

If you know where to look you will find legions of failed IT schemes embarked upon by Government that failed totally and were quietly taken behind the barn and shot, away from public view. The casual way in which expenditure like £40 million on, say Trawlerman, was just abandoned is quite breathtaking and thats just one out of hundreds of similar failed projects.

Looking back I can only think of one Government IT project finished on budget and on time, coincidentally its also the only occassion I can think of where the civil servant responsible got fired, obviously Jane let the side down by doing the job properly.

Back to ID cards - in summary the costs will be astronomic and not controlled.

Lets look at the technology, simple really, the technology to do what is wanted does not exist any where in the World - period

So lets look at the setting up of the system
there are somewhere around 60,000,000 Brits, so just entering the data, in a 100% reliable and accurate manner will not only involve something north of 20,000 man years of work, the chances of it being correct are absolutely zero. A good example of the hurdles to be jumped is that there are at least 15 ways of spelling Mohammed, I choose that as an example as it is now in the Top 10 given names in the UK.

Finally " it will help defeat terrorism" give me a break please,what just like the USA system did with the 9/11 bombers.(it is ironic that a nation like the USA that spends trillions on defence and security was humiliated for the cost of a few air tickets)

Any, and I mean any, piece of IT gadgetry that the UK introduces will be made up of components from all around the World, that will be very easy for those so minded to obtain. My estimate is that it will take about one month for the first forged ID cards to appear, thus negating the whole system.

ID cards, we cannot afford them, we don't need them and they won't work, so why are we even talking about them.

Oh I forgot we have a control freak as PM and the faceless ones that control the EU have instructed that we have to.

You have to hand it to The Brown One, he really does show what a complete amatuer Bliar was when it came to spin.
TBO announces that the UK is demanding the release of 5 inmates held by the USA in the Cuban Guantanamo bay prison and the whole British media fall into a supine position and praise him for "standing up to the Americans" well actually No thats not what is happening.

Bush is now a lame duck President and unable to sustain the illegal activities, that he only got away with before because they were happening in a piece of another country illegally occupied by the US. He is bowing to US political pressure to quietly defuse the Guantanamo problem and disperse the individuals held there.
So no standing up to, just a significantly better form of spin.
Well done that man

BUT, and there is always a but, don't forget the very old maxim
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time

There is also the subject of what the hell are we in the West doing condoning the illegal occupation of a piece of Cuba in the first place, but having said that there are chunks of the UK that have been handed over to the US - Memwith Downs for instance

I have to hand it to the Brown One, his slightly creepy softly softly approach does seem to be lulling the UK voters into a dreamy " it must be OK Gordon says so" reminds me of the snake in Jungle Book.

Of course, what is really going on is just as devious and nasty as anything he perpetrated with his mate Bliar.

Judge them by what they do not what they say.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

Inheritance Tax, a particularly nasty tax this,it is the method by which Brown steals my lifes work from my grandchildren.

In 1997 the average house price in the UK was £68,000, the point at which Inheritance Tax became payable was £215,000 thats 3.6 times the house value.With the house only going 32% of the way towards an Inheritance Tax liability it was way beyond most peoples dreams of their ultimate wealth

Now in 2007 the average house price in the UK is £200,000 and the point at which Inheritance Tax becomes payable is £285,000 and still rising fast, thats now 1.4 times the house value. We now have a situation in which the house on its own takes you 70% of the way to an Inheritance Tax liability, Add a few savings and the assetts that have been accumulated during a life time and guess what it now gets everyone who owns a house. Of course the idle and feckless are exempt but thats how things are in New Labours Britain

In 1997 the average brits view was " its only the rich bastards who have to pay it so I don't care" but oh so quietly the Brown One has crept up behind them, silently sliding in the knife between the shoulder blades and now its going to be them that pay, well actually its their children and grandchildren.

NOW The Brown One wants to steal the contents of savings accounts that have been dormant for more than 10 years as well, I don't know about you but I have savings accounts that just sit there with a small sum of money waiting for a rainy day. so when I need it I will find its been stolen by the Government, yes I know there will be a procedure to get it back, you can just imagine how complex and expensive that will be.

Oh and just to show Browns real intent this only covers private money, he wants the, coincidentally very similar sums held dormant in the State owned National Savings schemes to be exempt.

So the quietly delivered message is I can steal yours but I'm not touching the money that I hold for you.

The more they change the more they remain the same

I wrote earlier about the inadequacies of the Governmental organisations Pirbright Research and DEFRA.
After I had put down my virtual pen it got me thinking about my experiences with employees of the Government at all levels, in recent years a lot of them like to describe themselves as a Manager or as Managers. Going on to complain about the level of stress they are forced to endure. Apart from the obvious reply of what effing stress there is the perhaps more pressing question of what is a Manager.

Well the Dictionary says: manage - be successful; achieve a goal;

Not a good start there then for the average numpty in Local or Central government.

As any manager in the real world of industry or commerce will tell you the role of manager means that you spend most of the day out on the end of a limb, trusting that the decision you made, based on education, training and experience will actually work out as planned. You, of course, are the point at which the buck stops and know that if your decision doesn't have the desired effect there is no one else to blame.

By stark contrast the so called managerial role of the local or central Government person is no more than an Administrator, one piece of a bureacratic process working against a defined set of rules with the huge added bonus of zero responsibility.

It is this style of organisation that spawned the Human Rights Act with gives everyone, even those who do not deserve them Rights but says nothing, zero, zilch about responsibilities.

Any one fancy a Human Rights & Responsibilities Act

Am I the only one who asks why we bother to employ the thousands and thousands of Civil Servants that we do.

We now have the situation where it appears the the bright bastards at Pirbright Research are responsible for starting another Foot & Mouth outbreak.

Look you incompetant band of shits, just because you have nice easy little jobs with huge salaries and gold plated pensions, don't forget that the rest of us actually have to graft for an income. When your mistakes lead to the destruction of our animals not only is it personally traumatic, the animals stay dead and our businesses stay bust.
What happens to you, nothing, no sackings,no reduction in your income not even a reprimand. the best we will get out of the complacent arseholes at Pirbright or DEFRA will be a meally mouthed statement say something like " we have learned from this, but now we must move on "

tell you what Gordon old boy, I'll do a deal, you properly punish the so called managers of Pirbright and DEFRA oh and not " naughty boy don't do it again" but sacked,stripped of pension and prosecuted under the Terrorism Act for spreading a dangerous disease and I will vote for you, so I imagine would all the other non town and city dwellers in the UK. yes I know its a surprise but apparently there are people living outside the M25, its true we are all a bit common and don't eat much polenta but we still , just, have votes