Winston Smith, Mind Your Back

It comes to something when Big Brother's big brother warns about Big Brother. Wacky Jacqui Smith's proposals to monitor every communication in the UK and store this information on, what the press are calling, an uberdatabase have come under fire from one of the people you'd expect to be right behind such a move. Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has issued a warning to the Government not to create irreversible powers that could be misused to spy on individual citizens. It just goes to show how far Ms Smith has travelled down the road to 1984. Do you think, perhaps, Jacqui Smith may be related to Winston Smith who must've been a terrorist given his inexplicable fear of rats who as we all know are nice cuddly animals not the voracious, disease ridden, faithless, sewer-dwelling quadrupeds of fable . Link.

KYC Extends UK Paranoia

Jesus H Christ it's getting worse by the day in the cradle of democracy. Has the whole world gone stark raving mad? Timesonline is reporting news that you will need to present a passport to obtain a mobile phone in future. So that's great. Now as well as having to present two (or is it three now) forms of identification to a person who's been taking my bank deposits for nearly ten years in case I'm money laundering, parroting some laughable excuse for a security check every, repeat every, time I want to discuss my meagre pension with some call-center exotic, being told that my call may be recorded for 'training and security purposes', I now have to produce a passport if I want get a mobile phone which is not much more than a glorified radio tag anyway. Well I've had about enough of this bollocks. Jaqui 'if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear' Smith has gone too far this time and this worm is ready for turning. I'm about as likely to vote Conservative as I am to stick a loofa up my arse and fart the Marseillaise but David Cameron is looking ever more appealing as the New Labour machine moves into Wermacht territory with Ms Smith as Goebbels goose stepping to the tune of the far right. What the hell happened to the Labour Party? Did someone scoop out their principles and replace them with those of the tin pot ruler of some banana republic. How did we let this happen and how can we reverse it? If Osmam Bin Laden had designed the best possible outcome for his personal jihad he couldn't, in his wildest dreams, have thought that all his desires would have been enacted voluntarily by the free society he so vehemently opposes. Game, set and match Osama Bin L. say I.

Flash Gordon Saves The World

I am gobsmacked by Gordon Brown's chutzpah. Not only is he claiming credit for saving the planet from the results of a financial disaster which has happened partly as a result of the so-called 'light touch regulation' for which his government was responsible but he now has the unmittigated gall to stand in front of a British electorate and claim that unfettered capitalism is responsible for the disaster and that greater regulation is the answer. This is like an arsonist throwing water on a fire he himself stared and then claiming credit for putting it out. 

Un-f**king-believable. Link.

On Size and Why It Matters

When I first saw this I thought someone had unearthed some more gen on the Rolling Stones/Marianne Faithful tale, a modern urban myth with much to recommend it. Or that maybe there had been a 21st century parallel that had passed me by in my webside trawlings. But then I realised that the modern Mars confection was way to small for even the most modest popshot and on further investigation (i.e. reading the blog) that the actual story was far more mundane. Shame.

Flann O'Brien - Years Ahead of His Time

This item via Make about photographs of a jeans distressing factory in Kentucky made me realise what a true visionary the Irish writer and satirist Flann O'Brien really was. O'Brien, whose Myles na gCopaleen column in the Irish Times raised titters at Dublin breakfast tables from the 1940s for some decades, observed in one of his myriad flights of fancy, that many owners of newly commissioned mansion houses ordered, as part of the decor, books by the yard and that the observant visitor might deduce, by the obvious lack of use of said books, the owner's Philistine nature. He proposed to fill an evident gap in the market with a Book Distressing Service in which, for varying reward, he and a team of carefully trained distressers would punish the books in as an artistic fashion the owner could afford so that they might be spared the embarrassment of a virgin tome adorning their carefully tasteful libraries. The stages of distressing ran from the basic (worrying by small but determined terriers specially trained for the job) to erudite dedications by the author in the flyleaves to the current owner of the book complete with wine stains and railway tickets from exotic locations placed as 'forgotten' bookmarks. I've no doubt that he has a wry smile on whatever passes for a face now and is at this moment perparing a law suit claiming copyright on his brilliant idea.

Annals of NSS Vol.1

In the No Shit Sherlock awards October 2008 special mention must surely go to the piece of research published in Clin. J. Sports Medicine, September 2008 in which it was noted that sliding head first down a water slide could, mind you could, result in devastating spinal chord injuries. Who'd have guessed?

You Can Take A Pitbull out of Alaska...

There's been great fun had at the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party and her seeming inability to string together a sentence without a folksy wink or a 'you betcha!' Quite what the McCain team thought would be the up-side of their selection is anyone's guess but as the McCain campaign staggers and lurches from one indecisive statement to the next you can't help but remember that pitbulls are generally rather loyal mutts with an ineffable good humour. These don't seem to be qualities that Ms Palin has in a superabundance so the term may well be misplaced. However, they do have a very high pain threshold, a very thick skin and an unfortunate propensity for turning on their owners with somewhat painful results. So perhaps not so misplaced then and McCain would do well to keep his particular attack dog on a very short chain.