Other people have noticed that Nadine Dorries is a huge lying crackpot!
"According to one Tory source, party officials have rebuked Ms Dorries on more than one occasion for her “increasing tendency to make wild and eccentric statements”. "
Yeah! Damn right! I bet they noticed that when they realised she had her own tag on this blog. Hey, I can dream.
This time, Nadine has been claiming that all the furore over MPs' expenses (I'm sorry, there is NOTHING ELSE in the English press. Except swine flu, which we've already decided is no big deal, and suddenly Madeleine McCann again, whom I absolutely will not write about because the whole saga with the disappearance and the press and the the desperate need for it to be All Someone's Fault depresses me more than I can say, and I just don't have the strength) is going to drive someone to suicide. Nobody in particular, just someone. Which is all our fault, as the baffled and angry public, and if we don't all shut up we'll have killed someone. Nadine is always going around accusing me of murdering people when nobody's actually dead. You can tell me abortion is murder as many times as you like, it won't make it true.
Of course, this may all be a plot by David Cameron to make me agree with him on something. Well done, Dave, it worked. I have a good bit of stuff to say about him in light of recent events, so look out for that soon.
A consensus has been reached! By the admission of her own fucking party, Nadine Dorries IS a huge lying crackpot! Looks Like Satire has accomplished its first goal of what will hopefully be many! Come join me in imaginary wine and muffins!
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Lord Foulkes the Blog Troll
So, the expenses row. In case you’re not aware, the expenses claims of some of our MPs have been leaked and they’ve been claiming for some – ahem – spurious items, such as swimming pool maintenance. I did love the explanation for that one: "The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it. Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents 'value for money' for the taxpayer." Snerk. He couldn’t possibly have paid for his own pool maintenance, of course.
That’s not the point. The point is this.
A quick recap: a peer of the realm goes on TV to defend Michael Martin (who could have introduced reforms over the way expenses are dealt with and didn’t, so... zzzzzz. It’s dull, isn’t it? Sorry. This is why I haven’t written about it. Or read about it, excluding amusing anecdotes about swimming pool maintenance. We’ll be done with the dull background stuff in a minute, I promise). He goes on the news to talk to an interviewer about something that has made a lot of people pretty angry. And then he’s outraged that she asks him some questions he doesn’t particularly like.
This is classic:
He added that BBC presenters such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."
I’m really glad he said that, because until now I never knew that 'democracy' meant 'never questioning those in authority'. I sort of thought that the sign of a good democracy was that the men with the power would be held accountable if they misbehaved. Now I know better. If MPs do something that could be considered questionable, we have absolutely no right to question it, because that constitutes undermining democracy. I’m glad that Lord Foulkes is helping me with my vocabulary, and teaching me how to be a better citizen. I’ve obviously got some way to go, because I still think he’s a pillock. Is that wrong?
I’ve worked it out – Lord Foulkes is a blog troll. Think about it:
He said there were "far more important things going on in the world"
Does this look familiar? How many of us have got sucked into an argument with a troll who tells us that we should be ashamed for going on and on about slut-shaming or the abortion debate or sexism in the workplace or appallingly low rape conviction rates because someone else has it worse or how can you waste time on this when such-and-such is going on or you should be ashamed of yourselves. We all know what it means – I am massively uncomfortable! I do not want to think about this! Deflect! Deflect! Deflect!
Perhaps one of these days you'll do a thing about how much the BBC is being paid.
Don’t look at me! Look at yourselves! I’m clearly aware that criticism is well-deserved here, because otherwise I would be answering your questions instead of making inappropriate inquiries about your salary (nobody is complaining about how much MPs get paid, they’re complaining that the taxpayer is funding things that we probably shouldn’t be funding. Like horse manure. No, really, horse manure). There might already be a serious discussion about a relevant subject going on, a discussion which I have come here specifically to participate in, but I, with the breathtaking arrogance of a rich white aristocratic male, am going to waltz in and demand that everyone stop and have the conversation I want to have instead. I’m only pretending to be him as a journalistic device, and I have deep feelings of self-loathing at this point.
You're not at all sorry to interrupt me - every time an MP comes on you constantly harass them.
We all love this guy. You’re harassing me and it’s not fair! The nasty bitchy woman is asking me reasonable questions! Well, I’m a rich white aristocratic tosspot, and I don’t have to put up with that, no sir!
I feel I must also point out that in response to her questioning him on expenses claims as a general matter (and not even his expenses claims), he chooses to inform her that she is not worth her salary. He reduces her career to working three days a week and "talk[ing] nonsense". If anyone is doing any undermining of anyone or anything, it’s Shithead McGee here, the Troll of the Lords. He’s a small-minded, petulant bully. Hear that, Lord? You smell.
On another topic, apologies for the long absence. I just got promoted! Yay for me!
That’s not the point. The point is this.
A quick recap: a peer of the realm goes on TV to defend Michael Martin (who could have introduced reforms over the way expenses are dealt with and didn’t, so... zzzzzz. It’s dull, isn’t it? Sorry. This is why I haven’t written about it. Or read about it, excluding amusing anecdotes about swimming pool maintenance. We’ll be done with the dull background stuff in a minute, I promise). He goes on the news to talk to an interviewer about something that has made a lot of people pretty angry. And then he’s outraged that she asks him some questions he doesn’t particularly like.
This is classic:
He added that BBC presenters such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."
I’m really glad he said that, because until now I never knew that 'democracy' meant 'never questioning those in authority'. I sort of thought that the sign of a good democracy was that the men with the power would be held accountable if they misbehaved. Now I know better. If MPs do something that could be considered questionable, we have absolutely no right to question it, because that constitutes undermining democracy. I’m glad that Lord Foulkes is helping me with my vocabulary, and teaching me how to be a better citizen. I’ve obviously got some way to go, because I still think he’s a pillock. Is that wrong?
I’ve worked it out – Lord Foulkes is a blog troll. Think about it:
He said there were "far more important things going on in the world"
Does this look familiar? How many of us have got sucked into an argument with a troll who tells us that we should be ashamed for going on and on about slut-shaming or the abortion debate or sexism in the workplace or appallingly low rape conviction rates because someone else has it worse or how can you waste time on this when such-and-such is going on or you should be ashamed of yourselves. We all know what it means – I am massively uncomfortable! I do not want to think about this! Deflect! Deflect! Deflect!
Perhaps one of these days you'll do a thing about how much the BBC is being paid.
Don’t look at me! Look at yourselves! I’m clearly aware that criticism is well-deserved here, because otherwise I would be answering your questions instead of making inappropriate inquiries about your salary (nobody is complaining about how much MPs get paid, they’re complaining that the taxpayer is funding things that we probably shouldn’t be funding. Like horse manure. No, really, horse manure). There might already be a serious discussion about a relevant subject going on, a discussion which I have come here specifically to participate in, but I, with the breathtaking arrogance of a rich white aristocratic male, am going to waltz in and demand that everyone stop and have the conversation I want to have instead. I’m only pretending to be him as a journalistic device, and I have deep feelings of self-loathing at this point.
You're not at all sorry to interrupt me - every time an MP comes on you constantly harass them.
We all love this guy. You’re harassing me and it’s not fair! The nasty bitchy woman is asking me reasonable questions! Well, I’m a rich white aristocratic tosspot, and I don’t have to put up with that, no sir!
I feel I must also point out that in response to her questioning him on expenses claims as a general matter (and not even his expenses claims), he chooses to inform her that she is not worth her salary. He reduces her career to working three days a week and "talk[ing] nonsense". If anyone is doing any undermining of anyone or anything, it’s Shithead McGee here, the Troll of the Lords. He’s a small-minded, petulant bully. Hear that, Lord? You smell.
On another topic, apologies for the long absence. I just got promoted! Yay for me!
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
You Don't Count
I shall attempt to post something festively cheerful later today, but first this needs a little attention:
"Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008."
YOU ASSHOLE. You nasty, weasly little piece of pond scum. I'm quite happy to fuck up your lives because you're not really people. You don't count.
It really, really pisses me off. These people go on and on about the breakdown of scoiety and how horrible the divorce rate is and why can't couples just stay together and work things out for the children, but they'll quite happily force it on eighteen thousand couples who don't want it. Look through that slideshow. Tell me those people aren't really married. Tell me their love doesn't matter. Tell me they're screwing up our society by doing something that makes no difference whatsoever to you. Tell me any of those things, and I will kill you.
"Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008."
YOU ASSHOLE. You nasty, weasly little piece of pond scum. I'm quite happy to fuck up your lives because you're not really people. You don't count.
It really, really pisses me off. These people go on and on about the breakdown of scoiety and how horrible the divorce rate is and why can't couples just stay together and work things out for the children, but they'll quite happily force it on eighteen thousand couples who don't want it. Look through that slideshow. Tell me those people aren't really married. Tell me their love doesn't matter. Tell me they're screwing up our society by doing something that makes no difference whatsoever to you. Tell me any of those things, and I will kill you.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Why Isn't She Dead Yet?
I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and was reminded to do so this morning when the BBC reported on Margaret Thatcher's funeral plans. Is she dead? No. Has her health worsened? No. Have any decisions been made as to whether or not she will get a state funeral? Again, no. So, perhaps, this is not technically news. But the BBC has learnt that people love to read about Thatcher's impending death. At the time of writing it's the most-read story on the website. And for a long time, probably since her stroke or maybe before, there has been an unmistakeable whiff of "Why isn't she dead yet?"
I was born during Thatcher's government, and I quite like that I got to come into the world during the reign of the first female Prime Minister (when I was seven or so, I did a quiz which asked "Who was the first female Prime Minister?". Thatcher was the only one I'd heard of, but I was convinced that couldn't be right as there must have been female PMs back in the 18th century, mustn't there?). I was still very young when she was kicked out, so I don't remember much about the way the country was under her, but I was always keenly conscious of the fact that everybody hated her. It was so acceptable to hate her that newspapers could call her a damnable bitch with no fear of complaint - except from a few reactionary Conservatives, but who cares about them, right? - and praying for her death on stage would earn you a huge round of applause. But this was the way the world was, so I didn't think about it much.
This all came back into my head during one of my frequent bouts of insomnia, when I decided to hell with the sleeping and I would watch comedy videos on Youtube. My first port of call was Room 101, with guest Mark Steel. I am quite the Mark Steel fan; he's the sort of comedian who will be invited onto Question Time to make serious points. He makes politics funny, he makes history funny, and he never has to resort to slurs based on gender, race, sexuality or physical appearance, unlike the legions of comedians who think they're being terribly clever and edgy in doing so. Anyway, Steel talked about Bono and Ben Elton and bad teachers, and I nodded and laughed merrily. He then said he would have chosen Thatcher, but that it was "too obvious". He told a story about how he was sitting at home watching the news on the day Thatcher had her stroke - the Very Serious Music played, the newsreader had his Very Serious Face on, and a picture of Mrs Thatcher flashed up: "I must have been one of about a million people who leapt out of their seats and shouted 'Dead?!'" He went on to talk about the disappointment of it being "only a stroke".
In a similar vein, Jeremy Hardy on QI (whom I am not a fan of the way I am of Steel, but he's usually funny and I consider both of them part of Linda Smith's lot, which gets them quite a lot of points automatically) remarked, "Thatcher's grave is going to be a permanent urinal to all decent people, isn't it?" Let's look at that. First of all, Thatcher wasn't the topic of conversation - this was the first thing that came into his head when someone mentioned graves. Her grave is going to be a permanent urinal - she will never, ever, ever be forgiven. And to all decent people - she is so horrible that pissing on a grave becomes not a sign of horrendous, deliberate and malicious disrespect, but a badge of honour, and if you don't fancy pissing on the woman's grave, you're not a decent person. Neither Steel nor Hardy are proponents of the "haha, I can swear and toss out tired old stereotypes" style of what is apparently terribly sophisticated comedy, so I can only conclude that yes, they do bear that kind of ill-will towards Thatcher, and they do genuinely believe that she was such a force of evil that she ruined the country. They genuinely see her death as being 'justice'.
Why? She's an old lady. She has had no power of any kind for more than fifteen years. She is ill and frail, and looks it. Will it be 'justice' to see an old lady die nearly two decades after she last did anything? Tony Blair took us into war under false pretences, but nobody was praying for his death - they just wanted him to leave power. Now that he has, we don't care what happens to him. When he does die, there will undoubtedly be people who say "I'm not sorry he died, he caused thousands of others to die" but nobody will be hanging around his deathbed screaming for him to piss off and die already, we're tired of waiting, you soldier-killing bastard, you Iraqi-massacring bastard, why won't you die? Even from parents of the dead, this would be unacceptable and, well, pretty damn weird. Politicians make bad decisions and we hate them for it, but they're rarely criminals (well, of the non-profiteering type, anyway). Mrs Thatcher was not a serial killer, she was not a rapist, she was not an abductor of children. And I have no truck whatsoever with people who say things like "well, she raped the miners" or "she abducted our children's future" (both of which I have heard recently), because using language intended for violent crimes to describe a political decision you disagreed with is frankly vile.
Is death 'justice'? I don't think so. I can see, however, how some might think that Ian Huntley's death would be justice, or Josef Fritzl's (when they're not pissing themselves laughing about it, of course), or any other real criminals who directly inflict real abuse on others, but this does not describe Margaret Thatcher. It just doesn't. Her policies may have caused great difficulties for great numbers of people, sure, but to compare her to a violent criminal is grossly offensive. "Thatcher did worse things to the miners" is a LIE. And to anticipate her death with the eagerness of Christmas Day, to look upon it as a gift, the shiny toy in the shop that will finally, finally make you happy, finally make you truly believe that Father Christmas exists, is just ghoulish. And yes, whether you like it or not, misogynistic. The same show that laughs at Josef Fritzl's actions talks with unconcealed disgust about Thatcher and the desperate wait for her death. There are few figures in the world, criminals or not, who inspire such gleeful reflections about their eventual death, and it is hard not to conclude that Mrs Thatcher, an uppity woman who dared to believe in power for herself, is in her old age a victim of men who wish they could have cut her down to size when she was powerful and are now taking the opportunity to do so in her weakness.
I believe that there are a lot of lovely men in the world. I also believe there are a lot of down-and-dirty misogynist assholes, who know they are misogynist assholes and enjoy it. The majority of men, I think, believe that they are good guys who love women, but have never dealt with their internal misogyny because they simply don't see it. Most Thatcher-hating men believe themselves to be totally open to a woman running the country, and they hate her that much because she is Just That Awful (Hillary Clinton has seen a similar thing in the last few months: "I've got no problem with a female President, but why does it have to be that bitch? I'm not sexist, I just hate her. Jesus, you fucking hysterical feminists, what's wrong with you?"). But she's not Just That Awful. A man in her position would not be subjected to this. He might have been disliked at the time, sure, but once he got out of power nobody would care. There would be no close watch on his health, looking for signs of the Reaper. There would be no comedy routines predicated on the blissful day when he finally passed on. There would be no large-scale defacings of his image. In fact, his death would be treated the same way as that of any other Prime Minister - we would look in the papers and say: "Oh, is he dead? He was the guy with the miners, wasn't he? That was a bit crap. Oh well." Then we would look at some cartoons.
All this fuss about a state funeral, too - who cares, really? I'm not sure anybody does. People are just frightened that she'll have a funeral in public and nice things will be said. People don't want good things said about her, and crucially, they don't want her to be remembered as anything other than a useless evil bitch. A state funeral is an endorsement. An endorsement of the first female Prime Minister who managed to get elected three times, despite her apparent useless evil bitchery. The Auditor, currently, is a fair picture of "useless" - wasn't elected in, and will probably be elected straight back out again. And if she was an evil bitch, so fucking what? What choice did she have? You can't be a woman in charge and be a moderate, or be "nice", especially if you're in the Tory party, where women are there to make the tea, thank you, sweetheart. You have to fight them all the damn way. You have to take them to war, you have to tell them to toe the fucking line or you'll fire them, no excuses, no nothing. And to the watching public, that's not what women do. The papers tell us that women are embracing their destiny as nurturers, and want to stay at home with the babies. If this is what you're being told constantly, and then along comes a Mrs Thatcher who is going to do what she's decided to do, you can't use human interest stories to appeal to her feminine side, because she doesn't care. She will not have it. She is busy. People perhaps start to think, maybe she doesn't have a feminine side. Maybe she's some sort of mutant. She's weird.
And now the evil bitch is old and sick, withering away. Just getting out of power wasn't enough to satisfy the misogyny that dare not speak. She ran the country, and she ran it like a man. She must be destroyed, utterly and completely. After all this time, the scars run deep. How dare she? I hope I live to see her die, and all decent people will piss on her grave. Well, fuck that. No decent person pisses on anyone's grave. I don't care whose grave it is. And no decent, self-aware person waits with delight for the death of someone they never met. Hate her policies, hate her actions, whatever. But if you're desperate to see her die, you're just a creep.
I was born during Thatcher's government, and I quite like that I got to come into the world during the reign of the first female Prime Minister (when I was seven or so, I did a quiz which asked "Who was the first female Prime Minister?". Thatcher was the only one I'd heard of, but I was convinced that couldn't be right as there must have been female PMs back in the 18th century, mustn't there?). I was still very young when she was kicked out, so I don't remember much about the way the country was under her, but I was always keenly conscious of the fact that everybody hated her. It was so acceptable to hate her that newspapers could call her a damnable bitch with no fear of complaint - except from a few reactionary Conservatives, but who cares about them, right? - and praying for her death on stage would earn you a huge round of applause. But this was the way the world was, so I didn't think about it much.
This all came back into my head during one of my frequent bouts of insomnia, when I decided to hell with the sleeping and I would watch comedy videos on Youtube. My first port of call was Room 101, with guest Mark Steel. I am quite the Mark Steel fan; he's the sort of comedian who will be invited onto Question Time to make serious points. He makes politics funny, he makes history funny, and he never has to resort to slurs based on gender, race, sexuality or physical appearance, unlike the legions of comedians who think they're being terribly clever and edgy in doing so. Anyway, Steel talked about Bono and Ben Elton and bad teachers, and I nodded and laughed merrily. He then said he would have chosen Thatcher, but that it was "too obvious". He told a story about how he was sitting at home watching the news on the day Thatcher had her stroke - the Very Serious Music played, the newsreader had his Very Serious Face on, and a picture of Mrs Thatcher flashed up: "I must have been one of about a million people who leapt out of their seats and shouted 'Dead?!'" He went on to talk about the disappointment of it being "only a stroke".
In a similar vein, Jeremy Hardy on QI (whom I am not a fan of the way I am of Steel, but he's usually funny and I consider both of them part of Linda Smith's lot, which gets them quite a lot of points automatically) remarked, "Thatcher's grave is going to be a permanent urinal to all decent people, isn't it?" Let's look at that. First of all, Thatcher wasn't the topic of conversation - this was the first thing that came into his head when someone mentioned graves. Her grave is going to be a permanent urinal - she will never, ever, ever be forgiven. And to all decent people - she is so horrible that pissing on a grave becomes not a sign of horrendous, deliberate and malicious disrespect, but a badge of honour, and if you don't fancy pissing on the woman's grave, you're not a decent person. Neither Steel nor Hardy are proponents of the "haha, I can swear and toss out tired old stereotypes" style of what is apparently terribly sophisticated comedy, so I can only conclude that yes, they do bear that kind of ill-will towards Thatcher, and they do genuinely believe that she was such a force of evil that she ruined the country. They genuinely see her death as being 'justice'.
Why? She's an old lady. She has had no power of any kind for more than fifteen years. She is ill and frail, and looks it. Will it be 'justice' to see an old lady die nearly two decades after she last did anything? Tony Blair took us into war under false pretences, but nobody was praying for his death - they just wanted him to leave power. Now that he has, we don't care what happens to him. When he does die, there will undoubtedly be people who say "I'm not sorry he died, he caused thousands of others to die" but nobody will be hanging around his deathbed screaming for him to piss off and die already, we're tired of waiting, you soldier-killing bastard, you Iraqi-massacring bastard, why won't you die? Even from parents of the dead, this would be unacceptable and, well, pretty damn weird. Politicians make bad decisions and we hate them for it, but they're rarely criminals (well, of the non-profiteering type, anyway). Mrs Thatcher was not a serial killer, she was not a rapist, she was not an abductor of children. And I have no truck whatsoever with people who say things like "well, she raped the miners" or "she abducted our children's future" (both of which I have heard recently), because using language intended for violent crimes to describe a political decision you disagreed with is frankly vile.
Is death 'justice'? I don't think so. I can see, however, how some might think that Ian Huntley's death would be justice, or Josef Fritzl's (when they're not pissing themselves laughing about it, of course), or any other real criminals who directly inflict real abuse on others, but this does not describe Margaret Thatcher. It just doesn't. Her policies may have caused great difficulties for great numbers of people, sure, but to compare her to a violent criminal is grossly offensive. "Thatcher did worse things to the miners" is a LIE. And to anticipate her death with the eagerness of Christmas Day, to look upon it as a gift, the shiny toy in the shop that will finally, finally make you happy, finally make you truly believe that Father Christmas exists, is just ghoulish. And yes, whether you like it or not, misogynistic. The same show that laughs at Josef Fritzl's actions talks with unconcealed disgust about Thatcher and the desperate wait for her death. There are few figures in the world, criminals or not, who inspire such gleeful reflections about their eventual death, and it is hard not to conclude that Mrs Thatcher, an uppity woman who dared to believe in power for herself, is in her old age a victim of men who wish they could have cut her down to size when she was powerful and are now taking the opportunity to do so in her weakness.
I believe that there are a lot of lovely men in the world. I also believe there are a lot of down-and-dirty misogynist assholes, who know they are misogynist assholes and enjoy it. The majority of men, I think, believe that they are good guys who love women, but have never dealt with their internal misogyny because they simply don't see it. Most Thatcher-hating men believe themselves to be totally open to a woman running the country, and they hate her that much because she is Just That Awful (Hillary Clinton has seen a similar thing in the last few months: "I've got no problem with a female President, but why does it have to be that bitch? I'm not sexist, I just hate her. Jesus, you fucking hysterical feminists, what's wrong with you?"). But she's not Just That Awful. A man in her position would not be subjected to this. He might have been disliked at the time, sure, but once he got out of power nobody would care. There would be no close watch on his health, looking for signs of the Reaper. There would be no comedy routines predicated on the blissful day when he finally passed on. There would be no large-scale defacings of his image. In fact, his death would be treated the same way as that of any other Prime Minister - we would look in the papers and say: "Oh, is he dead? He was the guy with the miners, wasn't he? That was a bit crap. Oh well." Then we would look at some cartoons.
All this fuss about a state funeral, too - who cares, really? I'm not sure anybody does. People are just frightened that she'll have a funeral in public and nice things will be said. People don't want good things said about her, and crucially, they don't want her to be remembered as anything other than a useless evil bitch. A state funeral is an endorsement. An endorsement of the first female Prime Minister who managed to get elected three times, despite her apparent useless evil bitchery. The Auditor, currently, is a fair picture of "useless" - wasn't elected in, and will probably be elected straight back out again. And if she was an evil bitch, so fucking what? What choice did she have? You can't be a woman in charge and be a moderate, or be "nice", especially if you're in the Tory party, where women are there to make the tea, thank you, sweetheart. You have to fight them all the damn way. You have to take them to war, you have to tell them to toe the fucking line or you'll fire them, no excuses, no nothing. And to the watching public, that's not what women do. The papers tell us that women are embracing their destiny as nurturers, and want to stay at home with the babies. If this is what you're being told constantly, and then along comes a Mrs Thatcher who is going to do what she's decided to do, you can't use human interest stories to appeal to her feminine side, because she doesn't care. She will not have it. She is busy. People perhaps start to think, maybe she doesn't have a feminine side. Maybe she's some sort of mutant. She's weird.
And now the evil bitch is old and sick, withering away. Just getting out of power wasn't enough to satisfy the misogyny that dare not speak. She ran the country, and she ran it like a man. She must be destroyed, utterly and completely. After all this time, the scars run deep. How dare she? I hope I live to see her die, and all decent people will piss on her grave. Well, fuck that. No decent person pisses on anyone's grave. I don't care whose grave it is. And no decent, self-aware person waits with delight for the death of someone they never met. Hate her policies, hate her actions, whatever. But if you're desperate to see her die, you're just a creep.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Bootstraps Cameron: It's All Your Fault
I am becoming extremely nervous about the prospect of this man running the country. I think it's more than likely, given the impression the Auditor has left on the public, but I am seriously considering leaving the country rather than living under Cameron's government. Poverty is poor people's fault. Obesity is all about dumb lazy fuckers stuffing their faces. It's terrible that we don't judge people anymore and we should be all about attacking people. Cameron himself is uniquely gifted to tell us what is right and what is wrong, with no reference to the law whatsoever. Cameron has also got where he is today by sheer hard work, nothing to do with private schools and Oxford and extremely expensive elitist clubs and being wafted into the leadership because he had hair. Good old Bootstraps Cameron, a shining example.
Listen, Bootstraps. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pull yourself out of poverty? When poverty is all you've ever known, you've gone to a substandard state school that failed to teach you anything useful, you left school at sixteen because education held no value for you, you were never encouraged to explore career options and you grow up exactly the same way your parents grew up because that's all you ever knew and all they ever knew, unless you're seriously exceptional, with brains, talent and drive, you're kind of stuck. Not that you would know.
What really worries me is that Cameron seems to think politicians are supposed to dictate a country's morals. This from the party of Jeffrey Archer! Bootstraps says: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth about what is good and bad, right and wrong." Erm, what? No, David. Just because you aren't telling people what's right and wrong doesn't mean the morals are leaking out of the country. We are hugely, hugely judgemental
EDIT: Blogger seems to have lost the end of this one. Not sure why. Bah.
Listen, Bootstraps. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pull yourself out of poverty? When poverty is all you've ever known, you've gone to a substandard state school that failed to teach you anything useful, you left school at sixteen because education held no value for you, you were never encouraged to explore career options and you grow up exactly the same way your parents grew up because that's all you ever knew and all they ever knew, unless you're seriously exceptional, with brains, talent and drive, you're kind of stuck. Not that you would know.
What really worries me is that Cameron seems to think politicians are supposed to dictate a country's morals. This from the party of Jeffrey Archer! Bootstraps says: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth about what is good and bad, right and wrong." Erm, what? No, David. Just because you aren't telling people what's right and wrong doesn't mean the morals are leaking out of the country. We are hugely, hugely judgemental
EDIT: Blogger seems to have lost the end of this one. Not sure why. Bah.
Monday, 7 July 2008
The "20 Weeks" Shootdown
Nadine Dorries must be stopped. I mentioned this briefly earlier in Feminist Issue Week, but I feel it could use a more comprehensive attack.
So, the site linked has her "20 reasons" why abortion is all bad and wrong and kills babies and shit.
Reason One: "Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63% of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit."
Bollocks: No source for any of this information is provided. Not even a link to highly biased anti-abortion site. For all we know, she could just have made this up. And if 63% of MPs support a reduction, why didn't Dorries' previous limit-reduction bill go through? Could it be that this is a big fat lie? Could it be that the only link marked "evidence" links to an article in the Telegraph written by Dorries herself? No, surely not.
Reason Two: "High profile cases of babies surviving well below 24 weeks like Manchester's Millie McDonagh, born at 22 weeks, and the world's most premature baby, Amillia Taylor, who was born a week younger, both in October 2006."
Bollocks: Ooh, two babies. Two! That's quite the case, Nads. Notice there is no mention here of severe medical problems, or the fact that - hmmm - one cannot in fact painlessly remove an unwanted live foetus from a woman, stick it in an incubator for four months and then put it up for adoption. Women are not incubators.
Reason Three: "High resolution 3D ultrasound images, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell, have shown babies in amazing detail 'walking', yawning, stretching and sucking their thumbs in the womb."
Bollocks: So fucking what? This isn't an argument, this is a stupid woolly "oh, but it's a baybeeeee!" line of reasoning. Foetuses are not doing these things in the way babies do them. This is the horrible emotional blackmail of trying to make vulnerable pregnant women believe that as soon as the egg implants, it's a real live baby. It's disgraceful, frankly.
Reason Four: "In top neonatal units, such as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 80% of babies born at 24 weeks and 66% of babies born at 23 weeks will survive. Recent figures from University College London are similar."
Fucking MINNEAPOLIS. They'll survive in MINNEAPOLIS. For fuck's sake. We're already getting into the repetitive stuff: babies cannot be removed and incubated at this point, which means the woman would still have to go through an unwanted pregnancy for MONTHS and give BIRTH. Also, she yet again links to an article in a right-wing paper in which she herself is quoted extensively. If you're trying to get the law changed, you can't be so fucking sloppy.
Reason Five: "Recent research, such as that by Professor Sunny Anand from the University of Arkansas, has shown that fetuses are well enough developed to feel pain down to 18 weeks gestation."
Bollocks: Yet again, her link is a Daily Mail article which is mostly about her. Not the actual research. Oh, no, we couldn't have that. Also, you can find one person with the title "Professor" who supports any crazy belief. And really, you'd think she could find more than one, because a lot of research goes into this stuff, and why is 80% of her data American? Minnesota? Arkansas?
Reason Six: "Mothers first feel their babies kick at 19 weeks in a first pregnancy and at 17 weeks in a later pregnancy."
Bollocks: That's not an argument. That's stupid emotional blackmail. She just wanted to get "mother" and "baby" into it somewhere. Next.
Reason Seven: "Stories of babies born alive after botched abortions, as young as 16 weeks, are increasingly common and have understandably shocked the public."
Bollocks: All this says to me is that doctors aren't getting enough training. She implies with this that actual live children are produced, as opposed to almost-dead foetuses with no chance whatsoever. Also, this didn't shock me. Frankly, I'd never heard of this, and I keep a pretty close watch on this stuff.
Reason Eight: "The number of abortions carried out between 20 and 24 weeks has been rising in recent years. Lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year."
Bollocks: What do you mean "young lives"? It's not a kid, it's a foetus. This one depends entirely on you already believing that it's a kid and has always been a kid. I don't. I'd rather the abortion rate rose than the number of unwanted kids rose. Also, the Telegraph article she links is the most disgusting piece of misogynistic crap. The thrust of it is essentially "women are dirty sluts and unfeeling bitches".
Reason Nine: "Leading public figures including Opposition leader David Cameron are calling for a cut to at least 20 weeks."
Bollocks: Ha! David fucking Cameron is her next reason! I don't even understand why this is important. She's already pretended, sorry, stated using hard, well-sourced and appropriately-linked data, that at least two thirds of everyone supports her campaign, so why does she need to say, "Oh, and he does, too! You've heard of him!"
Reason Ten: "Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. A termination can be obtained up to 24 weeks of pregnancy - double the limits in France and Germany and six weeks later than in Sweden or Norway."
Bollocks: Erm, so what? Again, this only works if you already think it's an awful, horrible thing. I think this reflects badly on France and Germany (12 weeks? Really? I'd love to know stats for death-by-illegal-abortion from these countries), and it makes me proud that my country is supporting women's rights better than our friends across the channel. It also makes me nervous about the EU, to be honest.
Reason Eleven: "The methods required to abort a post 20 week baby are abhorrent. To avoid a live birth a lethal injection is given into the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdominal wall. The baby is then delivered stillborn or is surgically dismembered and removed from the uterus limb by limb."
Bollocks: More fucking emotional blackmail, and only works if you believe all abortion is infanticide, which it's NOT. Jesus, Nads. Must try harder.
Reason Twelve: "A recent Royal College of Psychiatrists report acknowledges a link between abortion and mental illness. This is worse with late abortions, especially those for fetal abnormality."
Bollocks: What the fuck does that mean? Well, it's a proper link (as in, it takes you to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and not the Daily Mail), and says nothing of the sort. It says "mental disorders can occur for some women during pregnancy and after birth." So, perhaps, it's just that pregnancy can be a pretty bloody traumatic thing to go through. It also says there is no conclusive evidence about links between abortion and mental disorders (NOT mental illness - depression is a mental disorder, but our Nads makes it sound like abortion gives you schizophrenia) and says nothing at all about late abortions or foetal abnormality. She's even spelling 'foetal' the American way, for God's sake. I now know why she hasn't given proper links for any of her other 'reasons'.
Reason Thirteen: "The vast majority of late abortions (after 16 weeks) take place in private clinics but are classified as ‘NHS Agency’ (ie charged to the NHS). Abortions over 20 weeks cost from £1,300 to £1,600 each and there are inevitably financial vested interests involved."
Bollocks: This one is an absolute fucking disgrace. It's like saying that hospitals try to convince you that you need major operations when you don't, because they'll get paid more. This borders on libel, frankly. How dare she accuse doctors of putting off abortions to get more money? Ugh.
Reason Fourteen: "Babies are now undergoing surgery in the womb under 24 weeks, the photograph of Samuel Armas having surgery at 21 weeks for spina bifida has received international attention."
Bollocks: This has nothing to do with anything, except that she wanted to crowbar another real kid in here. That's not a reason. It also reinforces the idea that women aren't really people when they're pregnant, because that must have been a terrible experience for her.
Reason Fifteen: "Very few if any UK graduates are now willing to perform abortions beyond 16 weeks. Almost all doctors performing late abortions in the UK, in BPAS clinics, are from overseas."
Bollocks: And suddenly, we run out of links. How does she know this? Apparently, that's not important. It seems pretty xenophobic to me - "it's those bastard foreigners! You hate foreigners, right?"
Reason Sixteen: "A Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) guideline, supporting an upper limit of 24 weeks, was published in 2004 and needs to be updated in line with the latest evidence on fetal sentience, ultrasound and neonatal survival."
Bollocks: No links to this 'latest evidence'. I maintain that ultrasound is irrelevant, neonatal survival is irrelevant given that the foetus (you're British, Nadine! It's got a fucking O in it!) will generally have to remain in the unwilling woman's body for months on end. I think foetal sentience is bollocks, too, since she seems to relate that directly to the ultrasound stuff. Notice that an actual medical body supported 24 weeks and some crazy MP with no actual fucking work to do is claiming it's wrong. Was she supporting 24 weeks in 2004? I might have to go a-hunting for that information.
Reason Seventeen: "The British Medical Association’s opposition to lowering the limit is not supported by the majority of its members and almost 1,000 BMA members recently signed a petition against attempts to further liberalise BMA policy."
Bollocks: What a confusing sentence. She offers no evidence of the limit not being supported by the majority of BMA members. She does link to the petition, however. The petition invited ME to sign it, and I don't have squat to do with the BMA. This has nothing to do with the Associaton's members at all - it can be signed by any arse on the internet. This woman is such a fucking liar.
Reason Eighteen: "Pregnancy testing kits are freely available at chemists and there is now little excuse for not diagnosing pregnancy long before 20 weeks."
Bollocks: What the fuck? Ooh, because Superdrug sells pregnancy tests, there's 'little excuse' for not knowing you're pregnant. Well, if you're not looking for a fucking pregnancy, that's not necessarily true, is it? Some women don't put much weight on. Some women still have periods. Oh, and you know that foetal abnormality thing? Not so easy to diagnose early. But we can't say that, because then you couldn't blame all the stupid women, could you? Fucking hell, the tone of that 'reason'! I feel like a nine-year-old at a Catholic school being told off by a nun for not doing her homework.
Reason Nineteen: "The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report recommending retention of the 24 week upper limit was heavily influenced by pro-abortion witnesses."
Bollocks: She links to a Times article. The article talks about the report which was published (it also recommended scrapping the "two doctors must give permission" law and allowing nurses to perform the procedure), which two MPs disagreed with. Can you guess the name of the female one? That's right, Nadine is linking to her own opinions YET AGAIN. For fuck's sake.
Reson Twenty: I can't write this one out, because Reason Twenty is a picture of a foetus face.
Bollocks: Nadine has run out of ideas, and has to resort to pictures. Her brain has melted from all this meticulous research she's been doing. A picture of a foetus face is not an argument. The foetus face comes from the Life Institute. That'll convert the waverers nicely, Nads.
Then she says that all evidence points to cutting the limit, and links to her own fucking article. Really, Nadine. If "all evidence" points that way, show me some of it. Show me any of it. "Evidence" is neither your opinion nor legitimate sources which say nothing related to what you claim they say. If you're going to try and wrest control of my body and hand it over to David Cameron, you're going to have to try harder than that.
So, the site linked has her "20 reasons" why abortion is all bad and wrong and kills babies and shit.
Reason One: "Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63% of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit."
Bollocks: No source for any of this information is provided. Not even a link to highly biased anti-abortion site. For all we know, she could just have made this up. And if 63% of MPs support a reduction, why didn't Dorries' previous limit-reduction bill go through? Could it be that this is a big fat lie? Could it be that the only link marked "evidence" links to an article in the Telegraph written by Dorries herself? No, surely not.
Reason Two: "High profile cases of babies surviving well below 24 weeks like Manchester's Millie McDonagh, born at 22 weeks, and the world's most premature baby, Amillia Taylor, who was born a week younger, both in October 2006."
Bollocks: Ooh, two babies. Two! That's quite the case, Nads. Notice there is no mention here of severe medical problems, or the fact that - hmmm - one cannot in fact painlessly remove an unwanted live foetus from a woman, stick it in an incubator for four months and then put it up for adoption. Women are not incubators.
Reason Three: "High resolution 3D ultrasound images, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell, have shown babies in amazing detail 'walking', yawning, stretching and sucking their thumbs in the womb."
Bollocks: So fucking what? This isn't an argument, this is a stupid woolly "oh, but it's a baybeeeee!" line of reasoning. Foetuses are not doing these things in the way babies do them. This is the horrible emotional blackmail of trying to make vulnerable pregnant women believe that as soon as the egg implants, it's a real live baby. It's disgraceful, frankly.
Reason Four: "In top neonatal units, such as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 80% of babies born at 24 weeks and 66% of babies born at 23 weeks will survive. Recent figures from University College London are similar."
Fucking MINNEAPOLIS. They'll survive in MINNEAPOLIS. For fuck's sake. We're already getting into the repetitive stuff: babies cannot be removed and incubated at this point, which means the woman would still have to go through an unwanted pregnancy for MONTHS and give BIRTH. Also, she yet again links to an article in a right-wing paper in which she herself is quoted extensively. If you're trying to get the law changed, you can't be so fucking sloppy.
Reason Five: "Recent research, such as that by Professor Sunny Anand from the University of Arkansas, has shown that fetuses are well enough developed to feel pain down to 18 weeks gestation."
Bollocks: Yet again, her link is a Daily Mail article which is mostly about her. Not the actual research. Oh, no, we couldn't have that. Also, you can find one person with the title "Professor" who supports any crazy belief. And really, you'd think she could find more than one, because a lot of research goes into this stuff, and why is 80% of her data American? Minnesota? Arkansas?
Reason Six: "Mothers first feel their babies kick at 19 weeks in a first pregnancy and at 17 weeks in a later pregnancy."
Bollocks: That's not an argument. That's stupid emotional blackmail. She just wanted to get "mother" and "baby" into it somewhere. Next.
Reason Seven: "Stories of babies born alive after botched abortions, as young as 16 weeks, are increasingly common and have understandably shocked the public."
Bollocks: All this says to me is that doctors aren't getting enough training. She implies with this that actual live children are produced, as opposed to almost-dead foetuses with no chance whatsoever. Also, this didn't shock me. Frankly, I'd never heard of this, and I keep a pretty close watch on this stuff.
Reason Eight: "The number of abortions carried out between 20 and 24 weeks has been rising in recent years. Lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year."
Bollocks: What do you mean "young lives"? It's not a kid, it's a foetus. This one depends entirely on you already believing that it's a kid and has always been a kid. I don't. I'd rather the abortion rate rose than the number of unwanted kids rose. Also, the Telegraph article she links is the most disgusting piece of misogynistic crap. The thrust of it is essentially "women are dirty sluts and unfeeling bitches".
Reason Nine: "Leading public figures including Opposition leader David Cameron are calling for a cut to at least 20 weeks."
Bollocks: Ha! David fucking Cameron is her next reason! I don't even understand why this is important. She's already pretended, sorry, stated using hard, well-sourced and appropriately-linked data, that at least two thirds of everyone supports her campaign, so why does she need to say, "Oh, and he does, too! You've heard of him!"
Reason Ten: "Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. A termination can be obtained up to 24 weeks of pregnancy - double the limits in France and Germany and six weeks later than in Sweden or Norway."
Bollocks: Erm, so what? Again, this only works if you already think it's an awful, horrible thing. I think this reflects badly on France and Germany (12 weeks? Really? I'd love to know stats for death-by-illegal-abortion from these countries), and it makes me proud that my country is supporting women's rights better than our friends across the channel. It also makes me nervous about the EU, to be honest.
Reason Eleven: "The methods required to abort a post 20 week baby are abhorrent. To avoid a live birth a lethal injection is given into the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdominal wall. The baby is then delivered stillborn or is surgically dismembered and removed from the uterus limb by limb."
Bollocks: More fucking emotional blackmail, and only works if you believe all abortion is infanticide, which it's NOT. Jesus, Nads. Must try harder.
Reason Twelve: "A recent Royal College of Psychiatrists report acknowledges a link between abortion and mental illness. This is worse with late abortions, especially those for fetal abnormality."
Bollocks: What the fuck does that mean? Well, it's a proper link (as in, it takes you to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and not the Daily Mail), and says nothing of the sort. It says "mental disorders can occur for some women during pregnancy and after birth." So, perhaps, it's just that pregnancy can be a pretty bloody traumatic thing to go through. It also says there is no conclusive evidence about links between abortion and mental disorders (NOT mental illness - depression is a mental disorder, but our Nads makes it sound like abortion gives you schizophrenia) and says nothing at all about late abortions or foetal abnormality. She's even spelling 'foetal' the American way, for God's sake. I now know why she hasn't given proper links for any of her other 'reasons'.
Reason Thirteen: "The vast majority of late abortions (after 16 weeks) take place in private clinics but are classified as ‘NHS Agency’ (ie charged to the NHS). Abortions over 20 weeks cost from £1,300 to £1,600 each and there are inevitably financial vested interests involved."
Bollocks: This one is an absolute fucking disgrace. It's like saying that hospitals try to convince you that you need major operations when you don't, because they'll get paid more. This borders on libel, frankly. How dare she accuse doctors of putting off abortions to get more money? Ugh.
Reason Fourteen: "Babies are now undergoing surgery in the womb under 24 weeks, the photograph of Samuel Armas having surgery at 21 weeks for spina bifida has received international attention."
Bollocks: This has nothing to do with anything, except that she wanted to crowbar another real kid in here. That's not a reason. It also reinforces the idea that women aren't really people when they're pregnant, because that must have been a terrible experience for her.
Reason Fifteen: "Very few if any UK graduates are now willing to perform abortions beyond 16 weeks. Almost all doctors performing late abortions in the UK, in BPAS clinics, are from overseas."
Bollocks: And suddenly, we run out of links. How does she know this? Apparently, that's not important. It seems pretty xenophobic to me - "it's those bastard foreigners! You hate foreigners, right?"
Reason Sixteen: "A Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) guideline, supporting an upper limit of 24 weeks, was published in 2004 and needs to be updated in line with the latest evidence on fetal sentience, ultrasound and neonatal survival."
Bollocks: No links to this 'latest evidence'. I maintain that ultrasound is irrelevant, neonatal survival is irrelevant given that the foetus (you're British, Nadine! It's got a fucking O in it!) will generally have to remain in the unwilling woman's body for months on end. I think foetal sentience is bollocks, too, since she seems to relate that directly to the ultrasound stuff. Notice that an actual medical body supported 24 weeks and some crazy MP with no actual fucking work to do is claiming it's wrong. Was she supporting 24 weeks in 2004? I might have to go a-hunting for that information.
Reason Seventeen: "The British Medical Association’s opposition to lowering the limit is not supported by the majority of its members and almost 1,000 BMA members recently signed a petition against attempts to further liberalise BMA policy."
Bollocks: What a confusing sentence. She offers no evidence of the limit not being supported by the majority of BMA members. She does link to the petition, however. The petition invited ME to sign it, and I don't have squat to do with the BMA. This has nothing to do with the Associaton's members at all - it can be signed by any arse on the internet. This woman is such a fucking liar.
Reason Eighteen: "Pregnancy testing kits are freely available at chemists and there is now little excuse for not diagnosing pregnancy long before 20 weeks."
Bollocks: What the fuck? Ooh, because Superdrug sells pregnancy tests, there's 'little excuse' for not knowing you're pregnant. Well, if you're not looking for a fucking pregnancy, that's not necessarily true, is it? Some women don't put much weight on. Some women still have periods. Oh, and you know that foetal abnormality thing? Not so easy to diagnose early. But we can't say that, because then you couldn't blame all the stupid women, could you? Fucking hell, the tone of that 'reason'! I feel like a nine-year-old at a Catholic school being told off by a nun for not doing her homework.
Reason Nineteen: "The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report recommending retention of the 24 week upper limit was heavily influenced by pro-abortion witnesses."
Bollocks: She links to a Times article. The article talks about the report which was published (it also recommended scrapping the "two doctors must give permission" law and allowing nurses to perform the procedure), which two MPs disagreed with. Can you guess the name of the female one? That's right, Nadine is linking to her own opinions YET AGAIN. For fuck's sake.
Reson Twenty: I can't write this one out, because Reason Twenty is a picture of a foetus face.
Bollocks: Nadine has run out of ideas, and has to resort to pictures. Her brain has melted from all this meticulous research she's been doing. A picture of a foetus face is not an argument. The foetus face comes from the Life Institute. That'll convert the waverers nicely, Nads.
Then she says that all evidence points to cutting the limit, and links to her own fucking article. Really, Nadine. If "all evidence" points that way, show me some of it. Show me any of it. "Evidence" is neither your opinion nor legitimate sources which say nothing related to what you claim they say. If you're going to try and wrest control of my body and hand it over to David Cameron, you're going to have to try harder than that.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Don't Worry Your Pretty Head About It
I just noticed that I didn't post about it at the time (something I apparently make quite a habit of - your up-to-date news! Three weeks after it's of any use!), but there's some stuff that I think needs saying about the Lisbon Treaty.
As you may or may not know, the Lisbon Treaty was created to replace the rejected EU Constitution, and so as not to have the same trouble again, most of the MEPs decided not to put the treaty to referendum in their countries. The only exception was Ireland, whose laws make a referendum on matters such as this compulsory. And, of course, the Irish voted No. Despite the fact that all member states have to ratify the treaty in order to be enacted, I believe the current EU plan is to pretend Ireland didn't say anything, though some have suggested changing three words and making them vote over and over again until they get sick of it.
I don't understand why the EU is so surprised at the Irish No. The Constitution was roundly rejected and the Lisbon Treaty looks quite a lot like the same old thing in shiny new packaging, and nobody seems willing to dispossess us of the notion in any specific terms. Nick Clegg (aka Cameron 2.0) of the Lib Dems said the treaty was "very different" to the Constitution, and Gordon Brown said the treaty wasn't the same as the Constitution because it said it wasn't (I don't have a link for this, because it's from a speech he made on the Breakfast News). Apparently, the first page of the treaty says something like, "This is not a constitution, because the people said no to a constitution, so this is something else instead." I'm sorry, but that is hair-splitting, manipulative guff. I could say "I don't speak English" but it wouldn't make it true. Writing "Not A Constitution" (I am so sick of typing that word) at the top in big letters doesn't make any difference to the contents at all.
We simply do not trust anything that comes out of Europe these days - I speak of Europe as a Parliament as opposed to a continent - because they simply do not see the need to tell us anything. Oh, they complain loudly about the "misinformation" distributed by the Irish No campaign, but they don't offer any specific refuting evidence. The BBC informs us that the treaty is indeed largely similar to the Constitution (argh), including the same loss of veto powers and redistribution of voting weights, which was a huge problem last time. The BBC, I assume, has read the treaty. I tried reading the (insert C-word) when it first became available for public reference. I planned to read the whole thing, translate it into human language and post it on my website. I got about sixty pages in before my head exploded. It was not written with the intent of being read. I came across numerous ambiguously suspicious passages, but I could not say with any degree of certainty whether a certain passage meant the end of autonomy for national banks or meant absolutely nothing. You cannot read it and extract the intent behind it - it has been written with the express purpose of concealing intent. You have to know what it means before you read it. Were we told what it meant? Were we hell. We were told it was no big deal, just a silly little document, something about trade, don't worry your pretty little head about it. The big men in suits will take care of all the nasty words. And frankly, even if it was just a silly little document with no wider ramifications whatsoever, we do not take kindly to being told that, and we assume, quite sensibly, that they're trying to hide something. Now, I don't think it's necessarily the case that the public has to know everything about the way the country is run. In fact, it's probably a bad idea more often than not. What's also a bad idea is making it quite obvious that you're not telling them ANYTHING. Here it is in dramatised form:
The British public: The treaty is pretty much the same as the Constitution.
The British government: No, of course it isn't. We rejected the Constitution and this is something entirely different.
The British public: What makes it different?
The British government: Oh, this is just a little something about trade, not even important enough for you to vote on. Don't worry about it.
The British public: This is hugely suspicious.
The British government: Suspicious? It's not suspicious! Who's been spreading these lies?
So when the time came for the Irish to vote on it, were they going to trust the people who said, "Don't read it, just sign it!" or the people who told them actual stuff that was actually in the document? Perhaps these people exaggerated, or were scare-mongering. Yeah, maybe. But they were giving out information. The European Parliament could easily have given out a few sheets of easy-to-read facts about the more boring stuff included in the treaty, but they chose to tell us instead that thinking too much will give us wrinkles. So there's really no call for them to be surprised when Ireland decides to take the only information it's got. To most of us, the whole thing smacks of taking the old Constitution round to the tradesman's entrance and pretending it's just the potato man.
Public: We weren't expecting a potato man.
Government: Oh, come on! It's just potatoes! What harm can that do?
Public: Is he going to charge for these potatoes?
Government: Oh, sweetie, we take care of the money. Go and knit a nice rug, that would be productive.
Public: This potato man looks weird.
Government: RELAX! Jesus, you and your damn prejudices.
So, really, guys, let's have a little more respect around here. We're already vaguely suspicious of anything you do because you're politicians. Telling us not to worry about it is both insulting and counter-productive, since we all immediately start wondering what we have to worry about. I am interested to see where we go from here - I want to know exactly how respectful Europe will be towards the Irish No. I could imagine some serious problems if they decide to ignore it, but somehow I really don't see that stopping them. Watch this space - I'll attempt to make it interesting. Possibly with more dramatisations and some one-line comic relief characters.
As you may or may not know, the Lisbon Treaty was created to replace the rejected EU Constitution, and so as not to have the same trouble again, most of the MEPs decided not to put the treaty to referendum in their countries. The only exception was Ireland, whose laws make a referendum on matters such as this compulsory. And, of course, the Irish voted No. Despite the fact that all member states have to ratify the treaty in order to be enacted, I believe the current EU plan is to pretend Ireland didn't say anything, though some have suggested changing three words and making them vote over and over again until they get sick of it.
I don't understand why the EU is so surprised at the Irish No. The Constitution was roundly rejected and the Lisbon Treaty looks quite a lot like the same old thing in shiny new packaging, and nobody seems willing to dispossess us of the notion in any specific terms. Nick Clegg (aka Cameron 2.0) of the Lib Dems said the treaty was "very different" to the Constitution, and Gordon Brown said the treaty wasn't the same as the Constitution because it said it wasn't (I don't have a link for this, because it's from a speech he made on the Breakfast News). Apparently, the first page of the treaty says something like, "This is not a constitution, because the people said no to a constitution, so this is something else instead." I'm sorry, but that is hair-splitting, manipulative guff. I could say "I don't speak English" but it wouldn't make it true. Writing "Not A Constitution" (I am so sick of typing that word) at the top in big letters doesn't make any difference to the contents at all.
We simply do not trust anything that comes out of Europe these days - I speak of Europe as a Parliament as opposed to a continent - because they simply do not see the need to tell us anything. Oh, they complain loudly about the "misinformation" distributed by the Irish No campaign, but they don't offer any specific refuting evidence. The BBC informs us that the treaty is indeed largely similar to the Constitution (argh), including the same loss of veto powers and redistribution of voting weights, which was a huge problem last time. The BBC, I assume, has read the treaty. I tried reading the (insert C-word) when it first became available for public reference. I planned to read the whole thing, translate it into human language and post it on my website. I got about sixty pages in before my head exploded. It was not written with the intent of being read. I came across numerous ambiguously suspicious passages, but I could not say with any degree of certainty whether a certain passage meant the end of autonomy for national banks or meant absolutely nothing. You cannot read it and extract the intent behind it - it has been written with the express purpose of concealing intent. You have to know what it means before you read it. Were we told what it meant? Were we hell. We were told it was no big deal, just a silly little document, something about trade, don't worry your pretty little head about it. The big men in suits will take care of all the nasty words. And frankly, even if it was just a silly little document with no wider ramifications whatsoever, we do not take kindly to being told that, and we assume, quite sensibly, that they're trying to hide something. Now, I don't think it's necessarily the case that the public has to know everything about the way the country is run. In fact, it's probably a bad idea more often than not. What's also a bad idea is making it quite obvious that you're not telling them ANYTHING. Here it is in dramatised form:
The British public: The treaty is pretty much the same as the Constitution.
The British government: No, of course it isn't. We rejected the Constitution and this is something entirely different.
The British public: What makes it different?
The British government: Oh, this is just a little something about trade, not even important enough for you to vote on. Don't worry about it.
The British public: This is hugely suspicious.
The British government: Suspicious? It's not suspicious! Who's been spreading these lies?
So when the time came for the Irish to vote on it, were they going to trust the people who said, "Don't read it, just sign it!" or the people who told them actual stuff that was actually in the document? Perhaps these people exaggerated, or were scare-mongering. Yeah, maybe. But they were giving out information. The European Parliament could easily have given out a few sheets of easy-to-read facts about the more boring stuff included in the treaty, but they chose to tell us instead that thinking too much will give us wrinkles. So there's really no call for them to be surprised when Ireland decides to take the only information it's got. To most of us, the whole thing smacks of taking the old Constitution round to the tradesman's entrance and pretending it's just the potato man.
Public: We weren't expecting a potato man.
Government: Oh, come on! It's just potatoes! What harm can that do?
Public: Is he going to charge for these potatoes?
Government: Oh, sweetie, we take care of the money. Go and knit a nice rug, that would be productive.
Public: This potato man looks weird.
Government: RELAX! Jesus, you and your damn prejudices.
So, really, guys, let's have a little more respect around here. We're already vaguely suspicious of anything you do because you're politicians. Telling us not to worry about it is both insulting and counter-productive, since we all immediately start wondering what we have to worry about. I am interested to see where we go from here - I want to know exactly how respectful Europe will be towards the Irish No. I could imagine some serious problems if they decide to ignore it, but somehow I really don't see that stopping them. Watch this space - I'll attempt to make it interesting. Possibly with more dramatisations and some one-line comic relief characters.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Brits for Hillary!
I just want to link this to remind myself that it's not just me who doesn't want to see President Obama. He's the American David Cameron, just catering to a slightly different crowd. And Obama's supporters frighten me. Thank Christ Cameron doesn't have supporters (well, I'm sure he does, but we support our politicians by telling them they're crap, which is much less scary).
Despite every news source telling me that Obama has this wrapped up, I'm still pro-Clinton. I don't have eight hundred policy reasons for this, because I'm British and don't really have to. Quite aside from the fact that Clinton has been portrayed as the kind of uppity bitch I expressed my sympathy for here, Obama worries me. He put me off with his "marriage is between a man and a woman, unless I've been blinded by society's prejudices" thing. He then proceeded to piss me off by saying that the mistake pro-choicers make is to overlook the anti-choicers' 'moral' arguments and that a woman's pastor should be involved in the decision-making process. As you know, religion + politics = Angry Jen. He further went on to shock me by interviewing, quite astoundingly, that he once knew a gay guy but liked him because he "wasn't proselytising all the time". What the fuck, man? He sounds afraid that he might catch The Gay. Oh, and after Bush, I would appreciate a candidate with a basic knowledge of human biology. You can't make people gay, ass. It would be like trying to talk someone into switching gender. Or saying, "oh, go on, grow an extra limb! It'd be great!" You just can't do it. It concerns me that he has such a fundamentally flawed view of the human race, and such an apparent fear of so many of the people he's hoping to govern.
Despite every news source telling me that Obama has this wrapped up, I'm still pro-Clinton. I don't have eight hundred policy reasons for this, because I'm British and don't really have to. Quite aside from the fact that Clinton has been portrayed as the kind of uppity bitch I expressed my sympathy for here, Obama worries me. He put me off with his "marriage is between a man and a woman, unless I've been blinded by society's prejudices" thing. He then proceeded to piss me off by saying that the mistake pro-choicers make is to overlook the anti-choicers' 'moral' arguments and that a woman's pastor should be involved in the decision-making process. As you know, religion + politics = Angry Jen. He further went on to shock me by interviewing, quite astoundingly, that he once knew a gay guy but liked him because he "wasn't proselytising all the time". What the fuck, man? He sounds afraid that he might catch The Gay. Oh, and after Bush, I would appreciate a candidate with a basic knowledge of human biology. You can't make people gay, ass. It would be like trying to talk someone into switching gender. Or saying, "oh, go on, grow an extra limb! It'd be great!" You just can't do it. It concerns me that he has such a fundamentally flawed view of the human race, and such an apparent fear of so many of the people he's hoping to govern.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Prescott Has Bulimia (and Jen Swears a Lot)
John Prescott has suffered from bulimia. Good grief.
I'm impressed that he's talking about it. In his position, I certainly wouldn't. "John Prescott is fat" jokes have long been a staple of British political humour (example: "He can't wear a tie and a belt at the same time, or he'll turn into sausages"), and I'll be keeping a close watch on next week's edition of Have I Got News For You to count the bulimia jokes. Because bulimia is funny. It's a fat joke and a vomit joke, all in one handy little package.
He says it was brought on by stress:
"The only break I ever took was to eat. That’s all I did. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food. So what I did was stuff my face with anything around, any old rubbish, burgers, chocolate, crisps, fish and chips, loads of it, till I felt sick - but at least I’d had the pleasure of stuffing my face and feeling really full. Then there would be a weird kind of pleasure in vomiting and feeling relieved."
I had terrible trouble with comfort eating as a teenager. I never threw up, but I was a binger for years. I still find a sick sort of comfort in a giant bar of chocolate. With that fully disclosed, I bring you the comments left on the article, horrible spelling and grammar left intact.
"Ah poor Prescott... not. He ought to be grateful that he could pay the bills unlike the 5 million poor people [blah blah blah fishcakes]."
"All that taxpayers' money down the drain, literally, as you can be sure that the food bills would have been paid out of expenses." Seriously, what does that have to do with it? Why are they harping upon about taxpayers? Gah.
"Even as a bulemic [sic] he is a failure." GAH.
"What a cheek to try and gain public sympathy by blaming the stress of office for his greed and his Neanderthal lavatory etiquette. It seems from some of the earlier posts that a few gullible souls have already been taken in." GAAAHHHH.
"...talk about a Big Girls Blouse." (I feel ever so slightly comforted that none of these idiots can spell or punctuate. Don't ask me why. It's Big Girl's Blouse, ass.)
"Bulimia - what a laugh - who has ever seen such a gross overweight, over eating man like Prescott suffering from Bullimia - what a load of rubbish." Oh, fuck off. Fuck. Off. Take your horrible sentence formation and your nasty views and fuck off.
I'll stop there. I'll ignore the tremendously amusing man who compares bulimia to throwing up a kebab when you're pissed and all the other posts talking about "greed". This really frightens me. He's too fat to be bulimic? Huh? Most of the time I love this country. I love the people, I love our collective attitude towards life. I love that no politician is too high or too important to take the piss out of. The one thing I truly hate about the British is our refusal to have personal sympathy with someone whose professional decisions we don't agree with. It disgusts me that people are proudly claiming they'll never feel sorry for him because taxes are going up (bear in mind the man is now retired and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Auditor's new tax plans), or because he's got more money than them, or because he's got a memoir coming out. "Ooh, what a coincidence," says someone sarcastically, having not bothered to read the article. This is IN the memoirs. That's where the story came from. The memoirs are about to be serialised by this newspaper. Dipshit. I hate these people.
Look, I'm no John Prescott fan. I thought he was incompetent as a politician, terrible as a public speaker - like the wonderful Linda Smith, I suspect language isn't his first language - and awful PR for Labour both as a party and a government. If you're an MP, you don't punch protesters. Even if they have thrown an egg at you (ooh, egg! That's food! Look out for a "Why Prescott Really Threw That Punch" bulimia joke coming soon to a comedian near you!). I thought he was completely useless. I still think that, as a professional politician, he was completely useless. However, it doesn't follow that he deserved to get an eating disorder because he was so useless. His uselessness doesn't preclude my now admiring his courage to be honest about it. He's a 69-year-old gruff Northern man with a big stomach. Eating disorders, in the public imagination, are the province of skinny, whiny suburban teenage girls. A man who gets an eating disorder is pathetic. A fat man with an eating disorder is just asking for it. I intend to make a John Prescott Bulimia Bingo card for my personal use when watching TV for the next couple of weeks.
To John Prescott, I say: Well done, that man. Well done. And I apologise for the utterly shitty quality of this post.
I'm impressed that he's talking about it. In his position, I certainly wouldn't. "John Prescott is fat" jokes have long been a staple of British political humour (example: "He can't wear a tie and a belt at the same time, or he'll turn into sausages"), and I'll be keeping a close watch on next week's edition of Have I Got News For You to count the bulimia jokes. Because bulimia is funny. It's a fat joke and a vomit joke, all in one handy little package.
He says it was brought on by stress:
"The only break I ever took was to eat. That’s all I did. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food. So what I did was stuff my face with anything around, any old rubbish, burgers, chocolate, crisps, fish and chips, loads of it, till I felt sick - but at least I’d had the pleasure of stuffing my face and feeling really full. Then there would be a weird kind of pleasure in vomiting and feeling relieved."
I had terrible trouble with comfort eating as a teenager. I never threw up, but I was a binger for years. I still find a sick sort of comfort in a giant bar of chocolate. With that fully disclosed, I bring you the comments left on the article, horrible spelling and grammar left intact.
"Ah poor Prescott... not. He ought to be grateful that he could pay the bills unlike the 5 million poor people [blah blah blah fishcakes]."
"All that taxpayers' money down the drain, literally, as you can be sure that the food bills would have been paid out of expenses." Seriously, what does that have to do with it? Why are they harping upon about taxpayers? Gah.
"Even as a bulemic [sic] he is a failure." GAH.
"What a cheek to try and gain public sympathy by blaming the stress of office for his greed and his Neanderthal lavatory etiquette. It seems from some of the earlier posts that a few gullible souls have already been taken in." GAAAHHHH.
"...talk about a Big Girls Blouse." (I feel ever so slightly comforted that none of these idiots can spell or punctuate. Don't ask me why. It's Big Girl's Blouse, ass.)
"Bulimia - what a laugh - who has ever seen such a gross overweight, over eating man like Prescott suffering from Bullimia - what a load of rubbish." Oh, fuck off. Fuck. Off. Take your horrible sentence formation and your nasty views and fuck off.
I'll stop there. I'll ignore the tremendously amusing man who compares bulimia to throwing up a kebab when you're pissed and all the other posts talking about "greed". This really frightens me. He's too fat to be bulimic? Huh? Most of the time I love this country. I love the people, I love our collective attitude towards life. I love that no politician is too high or too important to take the piss out of. The one thing I truly hate about the British is our refusal to have personal sympathy with someone whose professional decisions we don't agree with. It disgusts me that people are proudly claiming they'll never feel sorry for him because taxes are going up (bear in mind the man is now retired and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Auditor's new tax plans), or because he's got more money than them, or because he's got a memoir coming out. "Ooh, what a coincidence," says someone sarcastically, having not bothered to read the article. This is IN the memoirs. That's where the story came from. The memoirs are about to be serialised by this newspaper. Dipshit. I hate these people.
Look, I'm no John Prescott fan. I thought he was incompetent as a politician, terrible as a public speaker - like the wonderful Linda Smith, I suspect language isn't his first language - and awful PR for Labour both as a party and a government. If you're an MP, you don't punch protesters. Even if they have thrown an egg at you (ooh, egg! That's food! Look out for a "Why Prescott Really Threw That Punch" bulimia joke coming soon to a comedian near you!). I thought he was completely useless. I still think that, as a professional politician, he was completely useless. However, it doesn't follow that he deserved to get an eating disorder because he was so useless. His uselessness doesn't preclude my now admiring his courage to be honest about it. He's a 69-year-old gruff Northern man with a big stomach. Eating disorders, in the public imagination, are the province of skinny, whiny suburban teenage girls. A man who gets an eating disorder is pathetic. A fat man with an eating disorder is just asking for it. I intend to make a John Prescott Bulimia Bingo card for my personal use when watching TV for the next couple of weeks.
To John Prescott, I say: Well done, that man. Well done. And I apologise for the utterly shitty quality of this post.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Personal Lexicon: The Auditor
I didn't want to tack this on the end of my last post, because I'm still pathetically excited about the idea of having a series. So just a short one this time.
The Auditor: Gordon Brown. After Terry Pratchett's Auditors. For when Brown is pissing me off and being a bit scary.
Prime Minister FridgeVoice: Gordon Brown. For when he's pissing me off and I'm feeling especially juvenile.
The Auditor: Gordon Brown. After Terry Pratchett's Auditors. For when Brown is pissing me off and being a bit scary.
Prime Minister FridgeVoice: Gordon Brown. For when he's pissing me off and I'm feeling especially juvenile.
Thoughts on Gordon Brown
This... isn't really relevant. I just wanted to pretend Gordon Brown had done something interesting so I could talk about it. But no, he hasn't. He's gone to America, he's spouted a few nice cliches, he just lurves Bush and McCain and Clinton and Obama, he has no opinions that he'll state out loud, and I STILL can't take in a word he says because that man's voice is exactly like the hum of a fridge. I try to listen to him, I really do. I sit in front of the news and I concentrate hard. I take in the first sentence. I'm so pleased that I've taken in the first sentence that I miss the next couple of sentences. Then I realise I've forgotten what the first sentence was. Since he's become Prime Minister, I've tried to listen to numerous speeches he's made, and I've retained two things: "The EU treaty is not a constitution because it specifically says it's not a constitution" (as though that will have any effect on the content, which most people say is essentially the same - I tried to read the proposed constitution when the French were voting on it, planning to do a easy breakdown of it for my website, but they've deliberately made it unreadable. I think I got fifty pages in and went loony. What happened to the notes I made, I've no idea) and, from the other day, "Oh yes, I love American TV." Come on, Gordon, you do not. Unless you mean you love the craftsmanship on the fine American-made TV set in your hotel room.
I have a troubled love for politics. I wish I could be one of those people who think all politicians are the same so it doesn't matter who you vote for. Actually, I kind of do think that. For some reason that makes it worse. It's vital to me that David Cameron never gets within whipping distance of Number 10, even though he'd probably be, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as Tony Blair. I don't say Brown, because he's a different bucket of aardvarks. I don't hate him as much as Cameron, because Brown actually knows what he's doing. Problem is, I really don't like what he's doing. I've finally worked out why he makes me so uncomfortable: Gordon Brown is an Auditor.
There just aren't enough Pratchett references in political blogging, and I think it's a damn shame, so this is the first of my attempts to correct it. I fully expect to have a lot of explaining to do. Stephen Fry and QI will help me. I love QI. Somewhere in my Top Ten Most Used Phrases is "It's true. Stephen Fry told me." Stephen Fry told me and BBC viewers in general that 90% of the universe is missing. We don't know where it is. It's slightly embarrassing. Terry Pratchett, who is one of the great unacknowledged philosophers of our time (he is. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it should be disregarded) suggests in Thief of Time that "nine-tenths of the universe is the paperwork." Said paperwork is done by the Auditors. The Auditors are basically grey robes, with nothing visible inside the hoods. They have no real voices - should they wish to communicate, the words arrive in the other person's brain without passing through the ears. This is exactly how I feel about Gordon Brown's voice, although I clearly have some sort of reverse Babel fish in my brain which immediately translates everything into intangible nonsense. The Auditors also hate humanity, because humans are irrational and irregular. If they could eliminate humanity, they could get the filing finished.
I would swear that Gordon Brown wishes there were no people in Britain so he can finish the filing. He always seems so affronted when we object to something. Blair would sigh, grit his millions of teeth, and tell us that he understood where we were coming from, but this was very important and we must trust him. And yeah, that was irritating. It's not as irritating as Gordon Brown's "What do you mean, no? You can't say no. I have decreed that this is what will happen. You can't object to it. I'm Gordon Brown. How dare you attempt to disagree with me?" Which, in turn, is less irritating (though scarier) than David Cameron's "You disagree? Oh no! Panic! Well, you're right, of course. Of course you're right, I totally screwed that up. Sorry. We'll try it your way instead!" Repeat ad nauseam when it turns out that not everybody agrees on everything. Dumbass. More about him another time.
Gordon Brown is scary. He's fundamentally scary. His default expression may be, "oh bugger, we're out of loo roll again. Why are we always out of loo roll?" but when he attempts some sort of expression, it always looks like some variant on "man who is going to kill you, probably because he thinks you took his loo roll." His 'happy' face looks like that. His 'angry' face looks like that. His 'neutral but relatable politician' face looks like that, and he's been practicing it a lot the past few days. It doesn't translate well, because Americans don't say 'loo roll'. It was a nice image, him and Bush strolling around together. Bush stole an election, Brown didn't even bother to have an election.
Goddammit, Liberal Democrats, why did you have to draft in Baby Cameron as your leader? Anyone else and you would have had my vote! I'd even have voted for old Ming above Brown and Cameron, and he was a corpse on wheels! Anyone except Baby Cameron! You know I can't support anyone who bears any political resemblance to Cameron! (I'm looking at you, Obama.) Alright, I wouldn't vote for Lembit Opik, but that's because he's shagging a Cheeky Girl and expects us not to laugh. I used to quite like him, but really, a freakishly thin Transylvanian in silver hot pants who was rejected in the first round of Popstars who sang a song called Touch My Bum written by her mother and a twisty-faced Lib Dem obsessed with doom-mongering asteroid theories, and we're not supposed to laugh? He seems to think he's too important to be laughed at. For fuck's sake, Lembit. You're in fucking Britain. One, you're never too important to be laughed at here. Two, you're not actually important at all. Three, it's hilarious! Have some self-awareness, man, yikes. (Sorry.)
Attention anyone who may be reading: For the headline "Thoughts on Gordon Brown", kindly read, "Thoughts on Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Terry Pratchett and his works, Lembit Opik, that whole stupid situation with the Cheeky Girl, and the state of Britain today if politicians forget that their entire purpose is to be criticised and laughed at." Thank you.
I have a troubled love for politics. I wish I could be one of those people who think all politicians are the same so it doesn't matter who you vote for. Actually, I kind of do think that. For some reason that makes it worse. It's vital to me that David Cameron never gets within whipping distance of Number 10, even though he'd probably be, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as Tony Blair. I don't say Brown, because he's a different bucket of aardvarks. I don't hate him as much as Cameron, because Brown actually knows what he's doing. Problem is, I really don't like what he's doing. I've finally worked out why he makes me so uncomfortable: Gordon Brown is an Auditor.
There just aren't enough Pratchett references in political blogging, and I think it's a damn shame, so this is the first of my attempts to correct it. I fully expect to have a lot of explaining to do. Stephen Fry and QI will help me. I love QI. Somewhere in my Top Ten Most Used Phrases is "It's true. Stephen Fry told me." Stephen Fry told me and BBC viewers in general that 90% of the universe is missing. We don't know where it is. It's slightly embarrassing. Terry Pratchett, who is one of the great unacknowledged philosophers of our time (he is. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it should be disregarded) suggests in Thief of Time that "nine-tenths of the universe is the paperwork." Said paperwork is done by the Auditors. The Auditors are basically grey robes, with nothing visible inside the hoods. They have no real voices - should they wish to communicate, the words arrive in the other person's brain without passing through the ears. This is exactly how I feel about Gordon Brown's voice, although I clearly have some sort of reverse Babel fish in my brain which immediately translates everything into intangible nonsense. The Auditors also hate humanity, because humans are irrational and irregular. If they could eliminate humanity, they could get the filing finished.
I would swear that Gordon Brown wishes there were no people in Britain so he can finish the filing. He always seems so affronted when we object to something. Blair would sigh, grit his millions of teeth, and tell us that he understood where we were coming from, but this was very important and we must trust him. And yeah, that was irritating. It's not as irritating as Gordon Brown's "What do you mean, no? You can't say no. I have decreed that this is what will happen. You can't object to it. I'm Gordon Brown. How dare you attempt to disagree with me?" Which, in turn, is less irritating (though scarier) than David Cameron's "You disagree? Oh no! Panic! Well, you're right, of course. Of course you're right, I totally screwed that up. Sorry. We'll try it your way instead!" Repeat ad nauseam when it turns out that not everybody agrees on everything. Dumbass. More about him another time.
Gordon Brown is scary. He's fundamentally scary. His default expression may be, "oh bugger, we're out of loo roll again. Why are we always out of loo roll?" but when he attempts some sort of expression, it always looks like some variant on "man who is going to kill you, probably because he thinks you took his loo roll." His 'happy' face looks like that. His 'angry' face looks like that. His 'neutral but relatable politician' face looks like that, and he's been practicing it a lot the past few days. It doesn't translate well, because Americans don't say 'loo roll'. It was a nice image, him and Bush strolling around together. Bush stole an election, Brown didn't even bother to have an election.
Goddammit, Liberal Democrats, why did you have to draft in Baby Cameron as your leader? Anyone else and you would have had my vote! I'd even have voted for old Ming above Brown and Cameron, and he was a corpse on wheels! Anyone except Baby Cameron! You know I can't support anyone who bears any political resemblance to Cameron! (I'm looking at you, Obama.) Alright, I wouldn't vote for Lembit Opik, but that's because he's shagging a Cheeky Girl and expects us not to laugh. I used to quite like him, but really, a freakishly thin Transylvanian in silver hot pants who was rejected in the first round of Popstars who sang a song called Touch My Bum written by her mother and a twisty-faced Lib Dem obsessed with doom-mongering asteroid theories, and we're not supposed to laugh? He seems to think he's too important to be laughed at. For fuck's sake, Lembit. You're in fucking Britain. One, you're never too important to be laughed at here. Two, you're not actually important at all. Three, it's hilarious! Have some self-awareness, man, yikes. (Sorry.)
Attention anyone who may be reading: For the headline "Thoughts on Gordon Brown", kindly read, "Thoughts on Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Terry Pratchett and his works, Lembit Opik, that whole stupid situation with the Cheeky Girl, and the state of Britain today if politicians forget that their entire purpose is to be criticised and laughed at." Thank you.
Thursday, 10 April 2008
For Future Reference
The BNP occasionally seizes upon an issue of the moment - usually immigration or some such - to try and appeal to those of us who are white British. We would never treat you like that. Under a BNP government, you come first. Yes you do. Oh, you're worried about the non-white British? No, we're fine with them [snigger]. It's just those immigrants. We hate them.
I've seen this almost work on a couple of my friends. So I just wanted to link this, just so I don't forget.
"Rape is simply sex (I am talking about 'husband-rape' here)... Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal... To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence."
That is the sort of stuff that members of the BNP think. These people are racists ("show these ethnics the door?" What the hell was that?) and want non-whites returned to "their lands of ethnic origin". These people know that since they're excluding a large percentage of the population with their policies, it's not within their interests to alienate half their target demographic with such sentiments as the above, but those thoughts are there, within the party. Oh, and Nick? Force-feeding IS a heinous offence. If someone force-fed me anything, even if it was a tasty pudding, they would be guilty of assaulting me. Rape is a crime. Force-feeding is a crime. I'm almost tempted to make a "force-feeding you a knuckle sandwich" joke, but I'll just tell you to fuck off instead. Nick? Fuck off.
So for my future reference: The BNP are racist, sexist, stuck in the past, have absolutely no sense of empathy and must never, ever, ever be allowed within sniffing distance of power. EVER. Thank you.
I've seen this almost work on a couple of my friends. So I just wanted to link this, just so I don't forget.
"Rape is simply sex (I am talking about 'husband-rape' here)... Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal... To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence."
That is the sort of stuff that members of the BNP think. These people are racists ("show these ethnics the door?" What the hell was that?) and want non-whites returned to "their lands of ethnic origin". These people know that since they're excluding a large percentage of the population with their policies, it's not within their interests to alienate half their target demographic with such sentiments as the above, but those thoughts are there, within the party. Oh, and Nick? Force-feeding IS a heinous offence. If someone force-fed me anything, even if it was a tasty pudding, they would be guilty of assaulting me. Rape is a crime. Force-feeding is a crime. I'm almost tempted to make a "force-feeding you a knuckle sandwich" joke, but I'll just tell you to fuck off instead. Nick? Fuck off.
So for my future reference: The BNP are racist, sexist, stuck in the past, have absolutely no sense of empathy and must never, ever, ever be allowed within sniffing distance of power. EVER. Thank you.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Personal Lexicon: The Davidson Effect
Today, the BBC informs me that there is no point in allowing mass immigration because it has little to no positive effect on our economy. I think this is an interesting subject, mainly because there is absolutely no answer that won't make you a) naive or b) a bigot. For example, clearly if the entire world immigrates to Britain, Britain is screwed. Whilst the entire world is obviously not going to immigrate to Britain, but there will come a point where there are just too many people coming in. If you disagree, you're naive. Someone will do an impression of a floaty, brainless hippy who thinks people can survive with no food is only they love each other. If you agree, you're a bigot. Someone will do an impression of a Nazi.
I do believe, for example, that immigrants should have to learn English. I won't even go abroad without learning at least "hello" and "thank you" in my destination country's language. I wouldn't dream of moving there and expecting them to accommodate me, even though most people do speak English now. Some people thought it was bigoted of Gordon Brown to suggest mandatory English classes for immigrants. You won't often find me standing up for Brown, but how on earth is this a problem? I'd hate to live in a country where I couldn't understand what was going on. If someone offered me free language classes, brilliant. Reading back over that last paragraph, I can see that it may, to some people, appear that I am bigoted against immigrants.
I have a term for this - The Davidson Effect. Named after World's Most Terrible Comedian, Jim Davidson. When writing the above, I worried all the time that my sentiments were ones Jim Davidson would agree with. For those who don't know (lucky bastards), Davidson makes racist, sexist, homophobic jokes (he also hates the disabled, but I'm not sure what the right word for that is), and commits the worst crime of all by not even bothering to make said jokes funny. Some comedians can make nasty jokes of this kind and be hailed as "pushing comedy's boundaries" and "having a refreshing disregard for political correctness". Davidson, however, is regarded as a pathetic, out-of-touch '80s throwback. If a new stand-up's comedy stylings are compared to Jim Davidson's, you can be certain that it isn't a compliment. Jim Davidson's fans are regarded in much the same light as he is. For example, if I were to admit to liking America's Next Top Model (sorry, it really is entertaining), people would just think I was suffering from a lapse in taste. They wouldn't assume that I was everything the show was - i.e. shallow, fluffy, camp and a waste of most people's time - but Jim's fans are assumed to be exactly like him.
In his stand-up, Dara O Briain told his audience that he'd made a very bad joke that had offended the gay community. I think he made it when he hosted Have I Got News For You, and was a really shit joke about Elton John and Billy Elliot. He received an angry letter from OutRage ("For those of you who don't know, one of the previous targets of one of their campaigns was Robert Mugabe. And now me.") and explained that once he realised he'd fucked up, he backed down immediately "because if I hadn't, I might just as well have started playing golf with Jim Davidson." If the joke itself didn't offend you, and the letter from OutRage didn't sway your thoughts, then this line tells you all you need to know: it's wrong because Jim Davidson thinks it's right. Golf has often been shorthand for exclusion and bigotry, and it only serves to ram the point home. If he hadn't backed down once he knew he'd been offensive, he would be a sad old loser with absolutely no place in the modern world. "Playing golf with Jim Davidson" has entered my personal lexicon as the actions of someone who has embraced his or her own bigotry. O Briain was also disturbed to receive a letter of support from some "concerned citizens" who wanted to praise his "comments on the link between paedophilia and homosexuality." They ended by expressing their support for his "stance against the forces of sodomy". Yes, forces of sodomy. O Briain finished reading the letter and added a sardonic, "Yours sincerely, Robert Mugabe", which is an extremely handy phrase to throw into a conversation when someone has said something particularly shocking.
I can't call this a regular feature yet, because I've done that with half my entries so far and haven't yet done a second one for any of them. Oh well.
I do believe, for example, that immigrants should have to learn English. I won't even go abroad without learning at least "hello" and "thank you" in my destination country's language. I wouldn't dream of moving there and expecting them to accommodate me, even though most people do speak English now. Some people thought it was bigoted of Gordon Brown to suggest mandatory English classes for immigrants. You won't often find me standing up for Brown, but how on earth is this a problem? I'd hate to live in a country where I couldn't understand what was going on. If someone offered me free language classes, brilliant. Reading back over that last paragraph, I can see that it may, to some people, appear that I am bigoted against immigrants.
I have a term for this - The Davidson Effect. Named after World's Most Terrible Comedian, Jim Davidson. When writing the above, I worried all the time that my sentiments were ones Jim Davidson would agree with. For those who don't know (lucky bastards), Davidson makes racist, sexist, homophobic jokes (he also hates the disabled, but I'm not sure what the right word for that is), and commits the worst crime of all by not even bothering to make said jokes funny. Some comedians can make nasty jokes of this kind and be hailed as "pushing comedy's boundaries" and "having a refreshing disregard for political correctness". Davidson, however, is regarded as a pathetic, out-of-touch '80s throwback. If a new stand-up's comedy stylings are compared to Jim Davidson's, you can be certain that it isn't a compliment. Jim Davidson's fans are regarded in much the same light as he is. For example, if I were to admit to liking America's Next Top Model (sorry, it really is entertaining), people would just think I was suffering from a lapse in taste. They wouldn't assume that I was everything the show was - i.e. shallow, fluffy, camp and a waste of most people's time - but Jim's fans are assumed to be exactly like him.
In his stand-up, Dara O Briain told his audience that he'd made a very bad joke that had offended the gay community. I think he made it when he hosted Have I Got News For You, and was a really shit joke about Elton John and Billy Elliot. He received an angry letter from OutRage ("For those of you who don't know, one of the previous targets of one of their campaigns was Robert Mugabe. And now me.") and explained that once he realised he'd fucked up, he backed down immediately "because if I hadn't, I might just as well have started playing golf with Jim Davidson." If the joke itself didn't offend you, and the letter from OutRage didn't sway your thoughts, then this line tells you all you need to know: it's wrong because Jim Davidson thinks it's right. Golf has often been shorthand for exclusion and bigotry, and it only serves to ram the point home. If he hadn't backed down once he knew he'd been offensive, he would be a sad old loser with absolutely no place in the modern world. "Playing golf with Jim Davidson" has entered my personal lexicon as the actions of someone who has embraced his or her own bigotry. O Briain was also disturbed to receive a letter of support from some "concerned citizens" who wanted to praise his "comments on the link between paedophilia and homosexuality." They ended by expressing their support for his "stance against the forces of sodomy". Yes, forces of sodomy. O Briain finished reading the letter and added a sardonic, "Yours sincerely, Robert Mugabe", which is an extremely handy phrase to throw into a conversation when someone has said something particularly shocking.
I can't call this a regular feature yet, because I've done that with half my entries so far and haven't yet done a second one for any of them. Oh well.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Oh, Good, It's Cardinal Arsehole
He's back. And he's still annoying me.
I've done a little ranting about this elsewhere, in times of yore (well, last week, actually). The Embryology bill is getting on my nerves partly because of Gordon Brown - more on that another time - but mostly because Cardinal Arsehole keeps butting his cassock into political affairs and telling Catholic MPs how to vote. This was a particular horror. But Cardinal Arsehole (no, he doesn't get a name. If he wanted me to use his proper name he wouldn't have compared abortion in Scotland to the Dunblane massacre) has been running his mouth about this new bill, particularly in his Easter sermon. Now, I admit that the last time I was in a church for anything other than a wedding or a christening I was nine and in the Brownie Guides, but isn't an Easter sermon supposed to talk about, well, Jesus? Is he not the point of Easter sermons? Crucifixion, resurrection and all that jazz? I have read the Bible, and I'm fairly sure the story doesn't go, "And Jesus said, Fear not, for I shall rise again, spliced with the DNA of an Easter bunny." That's actually not a bad metaphor for Easter, though.
Inner workings of the church aside, why is Cardinal Arsehole now getting to act all magnanimous that he's willing to talk to scientists? Why should they have to convince him of anything, so he'll allow Catholic MPs to vote for the bill? I really don't have a problem with politicians voting their conscience (not in this country, anyway - if I were an American it might make me a teensy bit nervous), but I sure as hell don't want them all voting Cardinal Arsehole's conscience. If you read the article, the guy pushing for this meeting is a Catholic who wants to support the bill. But Cardinal Arsehole needs to say it's OK before he votes for it. NO. Keep your damn religion out of my government. As a guidance for your own personal morals and ethics, fine. If I were an MP I would always keep feminist principles in mind when voting on a tricky bill, but I wouldn't call up Gloria Steinem and ask her what the right answer is. If you're involved in running the country, you should be able to make your own damn mind up.
The BBC's comment page, which is a bit of a breeding ground for ill-informed opinions and improper use of the shift key, had some real gems when Cardinal Arsehole first started throwing his weight around. I won't pretend to know too much about embryonic research, but I have managed to grasp that no, scientists will not be creating some sort of man/cow hybrid which will lumber around in a field and shit on the floor of the bus. The most annoying comment, though, and it recurs a lot, is that "England is not a secular country, so the Cardinal has every right to interfere."
First of all, ARGH. Second, we are pretty darn secular, actually. Third, in case you haven't noticed, Catholicism and the Church of England are DIFFERENT FUCKING FAITHS. The Queen is head of the Church of England. She doesn't have squat to do with Catholicism. Catholics are legally banned from becoming monarch and/or advising the Queen about state and religious matters. Cardinal Arsehole is a Catholic, and so has absolutely no right to interfere with the government. Jesus. Admittedly, I'd be no more impressed if an Anglican leader tried it, and oddly enough everyone was quick to call for his resignation in that case. He doesn't seem to have done that, by the way - I knew I wasn't kicking up enough of a stink for it remain in the forefront of everyone's mind. Please note: dammit.
The British, it has to be said, don't like religion, although we don't mind people believing in God or praying or going to church or what have you. What bothers us is religion in the mind of someone powerful. Tony Blair is Catholic, but he waited until he'd left office to officially convert because he knew we wouldn't like it (just to be clear, nobody could care less now). He said that the English believe if you're religious, you're a nutter, and I'm very happy he thinks so. Particularly as this lovely bishop immediately informed us all that if Blair had been inclined to discuss his faith, it would have influenced a lot of his decisions.
Now, one would assume that if Blair's faith has been so vitally important to him over the years, he would have used Catholicism as a moral guide anyway. Yes? So why is it such a shame that he never talked about it? Why would it matter? I don't think it has anything to do with Blair's personal leadership; it's about the public knowing that He's One Of Us. And you have to admit, he'd have been a much more effective display piece than Ann Widdecombe, who incidentally also made comment about Blair's Catholicism. He'd voted against Church teachings on various issues, such as abortion, and her implication is that perhaps he isn't, or wasn't, a proper Catholic. This is my point: Blair was a pro-choice leader. The only way he could stick to this conviction in public was to keep his Catholicism quiet. Cardinal Arsehole, Ann "Celebrity Fit Club" Widdecombe and other guardians of Catholic decency would have hounded him mercilessly. How can you be Catholic and say that? How can you be Catholic and vote that way? How can you be Catholic and claim that anything is an individual's choice? (sorry, that was snide). They could quite easily hound his minister, who could quite easily start refusing communion just as Cardinal Arsehole recommends for MPs who won't do as he says. It's an easy form of blackmail.
For clarity's sake, I'm not trying to rag on the Catholics here. I don't care what people believe. What I believe, as I said in my first post, is that whatever it is should be kept firmly to themselves. I don't want to have to deal with religion becoming as intertwined with politics as it is in the US. Apart from anything else, when the religions start moving in - and chances are, as the Matthew Parris article up the page suggests, that when one starts all the rest will follow - it pushes out those of us without a man in power to speak for us. Pagans don't have it, atheists don't have it, people who believe in something but have no specified church don't have it. So when this kind of thing crops up, I will get a little mean. But it's Life of Brian all over again - it's not your religion, it's the way you're dealing with it. And I'm not having it. No way.
I've done a little ranting about this elsewhere, in times of yore (well, last week, actually). The Embryology bill is getting on my nerves partly because of Gordon Brown - more on that another time - but mostly because Cardinal Arsehole keeps butting his cassock into political affairs and telling Catholic MPs how to vote. This was a particular horror. But Cardinal Arsehole (no, he doesn't get a name. If he wanted me to use his proper name he wouldn't have compared abortion in Scotland to the Dunblane massacre) has been running his mouth about this new bill, particularly in his Easter sermon. Now, I admit that the last time I was in a church for anything other than a wedding or a christening I was nine and in the Brownie Guides, but isn't an Easter sermon supposed to talk about, well, Jesus? Is he not the point of Easter sermons? Crucifixion, resurrection and all that jazz? I have read the Bible, and I'm fairly sure the story doesn't go, "And Jesus said, Fear not, for I shall rise again, spliced with the DNA of an Easter bunny." That's actually not a bad metaphor for Easter, though.
Inner workings of the church aside, why is Cardinal Arsehole now getting to act all magnanimous that he's willing to talk to scientists? Why should they have to convince him of anything, so he'll allow Catholic MPs to vote for the bill? I really don't have a problem with politicians voting their conscience (not in this country, anyway - if I were an American it might make me a teensy bit nervous), but I sure as hell don't want them all voting Cardinal Arsehole's conscience. If you read the article, the guy pushing for this meeting is a Catholic who wants to support the bill. But Cardinal Arsehole needs to say it's OK before he votes for it. NO. Keep your damn religion out of my government. As a guidance for your own personal morals and ethics, fine. If I were an MP I would always keep feminist principles in mind when voting on a tricky bill, but I wouldn't call up Gloria Steinem and ask her what the right answer is. If you're involved in running the country, you should be able to make your own damn mind up.
The BBC's comment page, which is a bit of a breeding ground for ill-informed opinions and improper use of the shift key, had some real gems when Cardinal Arsehole first started throwing his weight around. I won't pretend to know too much about embryonic research, but I have managed to grasp that no, scientists will not be creating some sort of man/cow hybrid which will lumber around in a field and shit on the floor of the bus. The most annoying comment, though, and it recurs a lot, is that "England is not a secular country, so the Cardinal has every right to interfere."
First of all, ARGH. Second, we are pretty darn secular, actually. Third, in case you haven't noticed, Catholicism and the Church of England are DIFFERENT FUCKING FAITHS. The Queen is head of the Church of England. She doesn't have squat to do with Catholicism. Catholics are legally banned from becoming monarch and/or advising the Queen about state and religious matters. Cardinal Arsehole is a Catholic, and so has absolutely no right to interfere with the government. Jesus. Admittedly, I'd be no more impressed if an Anglican leader tried it, and oddly enough everyone was quick to call for his resignation in that case. He doesn't seem to have done that, by the way - I knew I wasn't kicking up enough of a stink for it remain in the forefront of everyone's mind. Please note: dammit.
The British, it has to be said, don't like religion, although we don't mind people believing in God or praying or going to church or what have you. What bothers us is religion in the mind of someone powerful. Tony Blair is Catholic, but he waited until he'd left office to officially convert because he knew we wouldn't like it (just to be clear, nobody could care less now). He said that the English believe if you're religious, you're a nutter, and I'm very happy he thinks so. Particularly as this lovely bishop immediately informed us all that if Blair had been inclined to discuss his faith, it would have influenced a lot of his decisions.
Now, one would assume that if Blair's faith has been so vitally important to him over the years, he would have used Catholicism as a moral guide anyway. Yes? So why is it such a shame that he never talked about it? Why would it matter? I don't think it has anything to do with Blair's personal leadership; it's about the public knowing that He's One Of Us. And you have to admit, he'd have been a much more effective display piece than Ann Widdecombe, who incidentally also made comment about Blair's Catholicism. He'd voted against Church teachings on various issues, such as abortion, and her implication is that perhaps he isn't, or wasn't, a proper Catholic. This is my point: Blair was a pro-choice leader. The only way he could stick to this conviction in public was to keep his Catholicism quiet. Cardinal Arsehole, Ann "Celebrity Fit Club" Widdecombe and other guardians of Catholic decency would have hounded him mercilessly. How can you be Catholic and say that? How can you be Catholic and vote that way? How can you be Catholic and claim that anything is an individual's choice? (sorry, that was snide). They could quite easily hound his minister, who could quite easily start refusing communion just as Cardinal Arsehole recommends for MPs who won't do as he says. It's an easy form of blackmail.
For clarity's sake, I'm not trying to rag on the Catholics here. I don't care what people believe. What I believe, as I said in my first post, is that whatever it is should be kept firmly to themselves. I don't want to have to deal with religion becoming as intertwined with politics as it is in the US. Apart from anything else, when the religions start moving in - and chances are, as the Matthew Parris article up the page suggests, that when one starts all the rest will follow - it pushes out those of us without a man in power to speak for us. Pagans don't have it, atheists don't have it, people who believe in something but have no specified church don't have it. So when this kind of thing crops up, I will get a little mean. But it's Life of Brian all over again - it's not your religion, it's the way you're dealing with it. And I'm not having it. No way.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Open Prisons Are Crap
Oh, for fuck's sake. What on earth was this man doing in an open prison in the first place? Especially considering he'd already escaped once before. In light of this blog being entitled "Looks Like Satire", I present you with a few choice quotes from the above articles:
"The court heard Foye had promised not to abscond again [well, that's alright then] and had tested positive for drugs before absconding for a second time." An untrustworthy prisoner! Who'd have thought?
"[MacAskill] again warned that any prisoners absconding in future were likely to be sent back to a normal jail." Now it might just be me, but I am reminded of being caught skipping lessons at school and being threatened with detention "next time". It reminds me of that because we all knew our school didn't actually do detentions. Ever.
No prisoner is going to be sent back to a regular jail because a) it's too much hassle and b) there's no damn room in the regular jails! Remember this? Followed by his imprisonment when he "forgot" or "wasn't told" to sign the sex offenders' register? Until they find some way to sort this prison shortage out - and God knows I don't have any ideas - no prisoner is going to be put off by the threat of regular jail because there's nowhere to put them. They can meet the criteria for transfer to an open prison even if they're classified as "high risk" and likely to re-offend.
I'm not sure I understand the last linked story at all. The investigation says they couldn't have predicted the rape because Foye wasn't in jail for rape in the first place. He had a history of "dishonesty and car crime". Right, but he was in jail for attempted murder, not a parking ticket. He'd absconded before, had a history of drug use and was supposed to be going to Alcoholics Anonymous when he absconded this time. Surely these factors put together resemble some sort of warning signal? It's not as though nobody knew he was violent.
Meanwhile, a young girl's life has been fucked up, and the government can only apologise.
"The court heard Foye had promised not to abscond again [well, that's alright then] and had tested positive for drugs before absconding for a second time." An untrustworthy prisoner! Who'd have thought?
"[MacAskill] again warned that any prisoners absconding in future were likely to be sent back to a normal jail." Now it might just be me, but I am reminded of being caught skipping lessons at school and being threatened with detention "next time". It reminds me of that because we all knew our school didn't actually do detentions. Ever.
No prisoner is going to be sent back to a regular jail because a) it's too much hassle and b) there's no damn room in the regular jails! Remember this? Followed by his imprisonment when he "forgot" or "wasn't told" to sign the sex offenders' register? Until they find some way to sort this prison shortage out - and God knows I don't have any ideas - no prisoner is going to be put off by the threat of regular jail because there's nowhere to put them. They can meet the criteria for transfer to an open prison even if they're classified as "high risk" and likely to re-offend.
I'm not sure I understand the last linked story at all. The investigation says they couldn't have predicted the rape because Foye wasn't in jail for rape in the first place. He had a history of "dishonesty and car crime". Right, but he was in jail for attempted murder, not a parking ticket. He'd absconded before, had a history of drug use and was supposed to be going to Alcoholics Anonymous when he absconded this time. Surely these factors put together resemble some sort of warning signal? It's not as though nobody knew he was violent.
Meanwhile, a young girl's life has been fucked up, and the government can only apologise.
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