Clucking Hell

Rejoice chickens! From midnight tonight all throughout the EU you shall be free as the European Union has banned battery hen cages.  Well. Kinda.

Now I am all for an end to all intensive farming and battery hen egg production in particular. I keep chickens and they are all ex-battery hens that I get from the folks at the British Hen Welfare Trust. When you get your hens they look bloody awful, weak legs, most of their feathers missing and looking like the inhabitants of some avian Bergen-Belsen. The good news is that with a bit of feeding, running around and time they get back most of their feathers and soon start pecking, scratching, having dust baths and generally doing that chickeny thing. Oh and the eggs taste better than anything you'll get in the supermarkets too so they well pay you back for your £5 a bird donation.

Soeven though I'll probably have to source my chucks from elsewhere in the future I'll be a happy dragon if I know there aren't going to be any more fucked up featherless chickens, so (grits teeth) well done EU.

Ah, no, actually strike that... not so well done after all:

[Jane Howarth, from the British Hen Welfare Trust] said: "The British egg industry has really stepped up to the mark and they are ready. But at the moment we're looking at a situation where there could be 80 million hens still in illegal cages in Europe."

...

Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: "It is unacceptable that after the ban on battery cages comes into effect, millions of hens across Europe will still remain in poor conditions.
"We have all had plenty of time to make these changes, but 13 EU nations have not done so. The UK egg industry alone has spent £400million ensuring hens live in better conditions.

So as ever the UK has rolled over to the mighty EU and done everything our master in Brussels have told us to do but 13 countries out of 27, nearly half the EU,  have just gone "fuck you" and carried on just as they bloody well please.

And do you know what the EU will do about that? Sweet fuck all, that's what.

And do you know what the EU will do if we have the temerity to ban egg imports from those 13 countries? Fine the shit out of us for daring to break trading rules no doubt.

As millions will be saying at new years eve parties throughout the land tonight "Do you think we can just leave yet?"

"Cluck, motherfucker"

... and by the rulers as useful.

You would have thought that politicians in the country would know to steer well clear of religion by now wouldn't you; I might not have liked the last incumbents of No. 10 but they were at least wise enough to "not do God". But nope, here comes Dishface at the weekend banging on about Christianity and "[calling] for a revival of traditional Christian values to counter Britain's "moral collapse"."

I cannot helped be reminded of the words of Seneca:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

 as yet again one of our leaders who by his own admission is ""full of doubts" about big theological issues" (read "Of course I don't believe in this twaddle") tells all the little people what's good for them; in this case they have to believe in the big fairy in the sky who, if you riot and steal TV's from Comet, will put you on the naughty step when you die. I mean it truly is pathetic isn't it that he could even attempt such a pitch. And what's equally annoying is that maybe he really does think you can't be "good without god" - failing to realize that what we call "good", compassion, altruism and so on, come about because we are social animals and we get this kind of thing from our evolution. Sure we are still savage little monkeys not very well equipped to live in together in the huge numbers we do since Civilization* kicked off 6000 odd years ago so we need policemen and jails but even in the most religious countries you'll find those institutions. 

But with that said he is right in that we do for better or worse, and even as an atheist I am prepared to say generally "better', have a rich heritage of Christian tradition in this country. It has given us art, music, architecture, jurisprudence and the poetry of the King James Bible. I would hate to see this country turn into a place where I have to start wishing people the anodyne "Happy Holidays" rather than a hearty "Merry Christmas". We do "do God" here, but Britons tend in the main to regard overt displays of religiosity rather suspiciously. As an example there American Football player who is famous for doing a full kneel down hands together prayer whenever he scores a touchdown; a display like that from a rugby or football player here would be quite rightly regarded as crass. That's why all Cameron pontificating about "what the proles need is a good dose of the Fear of the Almighty, fire and brimstone style" is going to cost him, despite how well it plays to the blue rinse brigades in his ranks.



* i.e. "Living in cities"

Canada spots naked emperor

I read today that Canada has gone "Hey, that guy's not wearing any clothes!" and withdrawn from the Kyoto Treaty

Good for them. Now Dishface, how about we do the same? Kyoto was always a complete crock of shit in my opinion. I mean what use is a treaty that the biggest CO₂ emitters (China and the USA) don't agree to and that actively hampers actually finding a solution. All Kyoto was was a bunch of eco nutters and white liberals wringing their hands about mummy planet and feeling guilty that we had shit and poor people in Shitholestan didn't and the General Mwombawomba's of places like Shitholestan holding out their hands asking for more money to develop low carbon economies buy more gold bathrooms and Lear Jets.

Now regulars will know I'm not a "climate change denier" but I can see that fucking up your economy and lifestyle by impossible to obtain carbon reduction targets isn't going to work. Our climate has always changed, that's what it does with or without our input and it's no use at all trying to keep it the same like some museum exhibit. We need to do what we've always done in the face of changing climate and that is adapt and mitigate. We are at a stage in human evolution where we don't just have to migrate in the face of changing crop growth and sea levels, we can do things about it. By all means cut waste and pollution as much as you can but we need to harness the power of industry, science and technology to give us solutions. Better flood defenses, crops that can tolerate drier (or wetter) conditions better, more advanced power generation systems, tank-grown meat made from stem cells, tiny pet unicorns that can live for a week on a lettuce leaf*.

Sure the planet gets a little warmer (or is it cooler, I keep getting mixed messages) and maybe the cutesy polar bears might have to be fitted with water wings and some species may even die off but they will be replaced by other species. That's what happens in a biosphere, they are not static, they adapt and change. 

Taking billions out of a first world economy and shoving it to some third world bottomless money pit will not and could not save a single bloody life, human or animal.

And as I see that the Durban conference (bet all the delegates flew there rather than paddled down in canoes made from recycled tofu) seems to be realizing this and has kicked the can down the road a few years much to the howling and gnashing of teeth of the usual suspects.   Maybe the message is getting through that we need an new approach.

Not holding my breath, mind you.


* top of my list, that one.

How Long is a Piece of String?

I was chatting to some of my Dutch and German friends on IRC last night (well it was that or watch that bloody singing competition) and the subject of the Euro came up. "You're in finance Dragon," someone said, "How long do you think the Euro will last"

Well just to be clear I may work for a financial organization (thanks for all that taxpayer's money guys!) but I'm not a trader, I just work with the shouty braces types and the bespectacled chaps with Aspergers and maths PhD's* to come up with clever trading and risk management applications. I'm quite good at it too, my systems have won industry awards.

What I'm not good at is divination. To be honest I have no idea if the Euro will survive or if not how long it will live and what will be the manner of its demise. But I'm not alone, nobody does. My own belief is that the markets (well equity** markets at least) will just in the end get fed up with looking at bond rates and endless politicos preening themselves at crisis conference after crisis conference and Nick Clegg throwing his rattle out of the pram and having a tantrum and will go back to doing what they do, looking at company fundamentals, share price relative to earnings, that kind of thing.

Personally I hope the Euro goes and the EU with it. I am no wrap myself in the Union Flag and parade with a bulldog little Englander, far from it, I am very pro-European. I've worked all around Europe, speak four European languages (two of them well enough to do business in) and am all for co-operation that brings us peace and mutual prosperity. However the EU has become none of these things and is seems obvious to me that it is becoming more and more of a tyranny of oligarchs and apparatchiks, unelected, remote and hostile to the liberal ethics which made Europe's nations great in the first place. It needs to go.

And my Dutch and German friends agreed. And they said they would still be able to sell me Stollen and Grolsch perfectly well without the EU and could I bring some PG Tips and Tiptree's marmalade when I come over at New Year. 



* Come on, when did you ever meet a quant who was in any way or shape normal!
** Shares to you and me

For now we see through a glass, darkly

Last night's Channel 4 drama "Black Mirror - The National Anthem", written by Charlie Brooker, was quite superb; by turns hilarious, suspenseful, horrifying and illuminating. It certainly lived up to its title, holding up a dark reflection of ourselves in the age of 24 hour rolling news, social networks and the hive mind.

I don't want to spoil the plot too much if you haven't seen it (you can get it from 4OD) but the story revolves around a Kate Middleton figure who has been kidnapped; the kidnappers don't want money, their demand is that the Prime Minister has sex with a pig, live on TV.

What we see is a government, and it could be any government, utterly at a loss at how to cope with the new world that's been created under their feet, unable to control their citizenry empowered as they are with the new tools of the social network age. "Why haven't you taken it down" says the PM when informed the ransom demand video is on YouTube. "We have," says a Whitehall mandarin "but every time we take one down ten more spring up in its place". This is a world where government can issue as many D-Notices and super injunctions and subtle (and not so subtle) leaning on journalists and it makes no difference. In the past the saying was that a lie could be half way round the world before the truth got its boots on , in the Twitter age an embarrassing truth can be three times round the world and have nipped down to the pub for a pint before the government censorship machine has even woken up.

In the drama even when the story leaks with Fox News and Al Jazeera (who,lets face it, wouldn't give a shit about a UK Government D notice at the best of times) broadcasting first the networks are coy, referring to "an indecent act'. "What indecent act" says a drayman to a barmaid as he makes a deliver "'e's got to do it wif' a pig" says the landlady's kid, hardly looking up from his BlackBerry. Now not only is it impossible to hide the story it's impossible to edit out the gory details.


I believe Charlie Brooker's main point he was trying to make is make us ask "well if this did happen, would you watch it, would you really watch, on live TV, a man utterly humiliating himself in a depraved spectacle... of course you would you sick fucks, we all would, we're human, this is what we do" and we see deserted streets as the minutes tick down to the deadline, crowds gathering round TV's giving lecherous cheers and "go on my son" encouragement which morphs into a sort of horrified cross between revulsion and fascination; a worldwide "Two Girls One Cup" reaction video*

But for my money what is more interesting is the what this drama says about the power we, the common man, the sixty million to their six hundred, now carry around in our pockets. We have seen this year that this shit can bring down governments in the so-called Arab Spring. Our lords and masters must be truly afraid.




* for the love of Fafnir if you are at work and you don't understand the reference  DO NOT Google that!

Shush, don't tell the government

For various reasons I found myself in the market for a 3G broadband dongle last week to replace the ancient Vodafone PCMCIA card version I have been using for years* and a look at the coverage maps showed my best bet was Three and a pay as you go would work out fine instead of a contract.

So off I flapped down to the Three shop and just out of curiosity I wondered if in out surveillance society you could still buy communications equipment anonymously. And it turns out that, yes, you can. Picked up a dongle pre-loaded with a 1Gb allowance for 20 or so quid cash, no names, no registration, nothing. You can buy top-up allowances at a tenner a time again for cash in plenty of places so I have an anonymous internet connection, and it's pretty fast too.

This got me thinking what would you have to do to be virtually undetectable using this, and its not that hard. There are location services, you might have seen these advertised as "find where your kids are" services that use data from mobile phone masts and triangulation to identify the location of a mobile device and the networks will of course give this information to the police but a bit of research indicates that they are not that accurate. Plod would have you believe that they could go "Yep, Dragon's on his 3G searching for ocelot porn again, he's at his house behind the water pipes, in the back bedroom" but they can't. Even in a city with a dense collection of masts it's only accurate to 100 meters at best, in rural areas that drops to kilometers.

Traffic analysis would be a way to work out its you of course. If anyone really was interested in finding me they would be able to work out the dongle gets used most mornings on a particular train into London just by watching what masts it connects to so you would probably need to use it in one space or adapt a usage pattern that makes no sense and can't be attributed to you.  Dumping the dongle every 3 or 4 months as well and getting a new one, ideally on a different network, would probably be prudent as well.

Combine this with strong encryption and the use of proxies like TOR and darknets and you're as undetectable as an undetectable thing.

I'm amazed we can still get away with this, really amazed. I would have thought that our lords and masters would have pointed at those modern horsemen of the apocalypse, Terrorist and Peedofils, and gone "waaaah! all communication equipment must be registered for your own protection citizens".

Of course all the information presented above is just a thought experiment, if you choose to act on any of this I take no responsibility. But here's a link so you can find your nearest Three store...



* "Tiamat" - my lovely old T60 is laid up awaiting repairs and the Compaq 6720 (named Voliatus as it's not the smartest lappy in the world) I've borrowed doesn't like the old card it seems.

Dragon's Magic Pianos - The Korg 707 - an occasional series

I know a lot of my visitors come here from Old Holborn's Blog and expect a bit of right of centre libertarian politics (or just a dragon stomping around and swearing at stuff) but just for a change here's a little piece on what might become an occasional series on old synthesizers which, since Mrs Dracunculus bought me a Yamaha DX7 for my birthday last year I have become an occasional collector of.

The first one I'd like to tell you about is a real little gem of a keyboard, the Korg 707. Made in the late 80's it was very much aimed at the budget synth market with a 49 key keyboard and a rather cheapy looking plastic case. Its an FM synth with 4 operators and 8 voice polyphony and like all FM and digital synths of that era its a git to program (although lots easier than the DX7) although Korg, with an eye to live performance, put three sliders on the front so you can tweak the two envelope generators and the "Timbre" (basically the resonance Q) in real time. Play this little puppy and you start to use these controls a lot and very nice they are too.  If you really want to go for that 80's synthpop band look you can run it on batteries and it comes with studs on the side so you can sling a guitar strap on it and wear it over you shoulder for that "I am an utter cockwallet" look.

This is my beast, its a bit tatty and the bottom C doesn't sound but as I picked it up for 35 quid on eBay I really can't complain.

Like any FM synth its very good at metallic and bell tones and I have to say although most of the presets suck donkey balls there are some real gems in there, especially the "Tine Piano" which you can hear in this little bit of music I composed.

November 707 - Dracunculus


All that is recorded directly from the 707 on the presets (no sequencing) and fiddling with the performance sliders (and a bit of reverb and compression in Reason) - yeah I know I'm about a good a musician as I am a blogger.

One of the nicest things about it is that the keyboard has full size velocity sensitive keys and, amazingly for something in this price range, full aftertouch, so it works surprisingly well as a MIDI controller and given that these go for 50 to 70 quid on eBay if you're in the market for a 4-octave  controller you could do a lot worse than get one of these.

I like mine so much I'm thinking of getting a tidier one.

Happy birthday to Grumpy Dragon

Happy birthday to my blog, which turned 5 yesterday, which means it should be forming sentences of a few simple words and can ask to go to the toilet.

According to Google the stats are 13205 pageviews - 479 posts and 1,247,419 gratuitous uses of the word "fuck".

Thanks for reading my drivel over all these years and here's to another 5 years.  It may have learned to spell and use punctuation correctly by then.

My liver, not yours.

Here we go again. Having demonised the smokers out of existence The Righteous are, as we have come to expect, training their guns on anything else that, heaven forfend, might give us some kind of pleasure and of course the next demon to be slain is the drink.

Latest on the block are pseudo-charity the British Liver Trust. Pseudo charity? Well when did you last see these people rattling a tin on the street or were accosted by a cheery Aussie chugger demanding you sign over your children yea unto the seventh generation to them? You didn't because they are funded largely by the Government, this from their most recent filing at the Charities Commission:

Key fundraising successes of the year include a three year grant amounting to a total of £489,506 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Communities Programme to expand our support group network ...

OK so not funded out of taxes but its a reasonable supposition that they're not going to be wanting to piss off Whitehall any time soon or no Lottery cash for you Mr Hepatitis.

But look, you could say, they are having a go at the government, it's all over the BBC...

Government-led policies on alcohol throughout the UK have been branded a joke by the chief executive of the charity the British Liver Trust.

"We need to see direct action to prevent the daily death rate from liver cancer increasing," said Mr Langford. "At the moment all we are seeing are weak policies or no action at all. However, there are so many solutions to the problem."

And rather conveniently, up pops a government spokesman to say...

"We will shortly be setting out how we will tackle all the health and social impacts of alcohol in our alcohol strategy," he said.

 Well wasn't that convenient?

And you know, you just know, that "our alcohol strategy' will be "tax the fuck out of the dragon because he's got the money and he likes glass or two of wine when he gets home". But all for my own good of course, see the Liver Trust says we have to do these things to help you; you're only a dragon, you can't possibly be trusted to make your own descisions about your health. Trust us, we are The Worthy, we are The Righteous.

Well you can all go and fuck yourself with the biggest dildo Bad Dragon make*  Look it's not as if I don't know what alcohol does, you tell me often enough. Do I drink more than your reccomended 21 units a week? You bet on Fafnir's scaly tail I do, but that's my call, not yours. I will take that risk.

And it's not that much of a risk when you look at it...

In 2010, an estimated 3,788 people died from liver cancer across the UK, equating to an average of 10 people each day

... to put that into perspective that's 0.006% of the population.

"But the problem is growing!' screams Dr Liver...

Mr Langford said the condition seemed to be the poor relation to the other big killers, but was the only health problem out of the big five - cardiovascular, respiratory, circulatory and general cancers are the other four - showing an increasing trend.

Well how about the reason for that is that people are surviving some cancers and dying from others, that and we are all living longer so we're more likely to get rarer cancers, plus the rise, since 1977 which is their baseline in the report, of HIV/AIDS and associated conditions such as Hepatitis? You can't just point at the booze and say "that's your cause, right there, outlaw that and you'll see liver cancer rates drop" - that's just bad science.

Look I'm sure the British Liver Foundation do good work supporting people with liver disease and the like but will you please stop using dodgy statistics and cozying up to government giving the po faced arseholes an excuse to demonise and tax the fuck out of one of the few affordable pleasures we have left.

Or I could come round to your place, douse you in a fine XO Armagnac and sneeze in your direction; up to you.



* it's the Sea Dragon in aquamarine with the integral spooge-tube in case you're interested

"Remember what happened to Anjem Choudary" they whisper

I see over at Max Farquar's blog everyone's favourite uppity mussie Anjem Choudary has been frothing at the mouth again, this time inciting his fellow rugbutters to kick off at armistice day parades and bad-mouthing the military as muslim baby killers, etc, etc.

Well quite frankly that's his right and good luck to him. In a working democracy all the voices of the demos should be heard, even if, particularly if perhaps, what they have to say is unpopular.

Where of course the likes of Chowdray and his ilk cross the line is of course they don't just talk and seek to persuade. There is always the implicit, and more often explicit, threat of violence pointed at anyone who "upsets muslim sensibilities"*... "Remember Theo van Gogh" they whisper, "Look what happened to Charlie Hebdo's offices" they write.

Well Anjem and your pals, maybe you should remember that with your right to free speech comes your responsibility to bear the consequences of that speech and I would point out that you are upsetting an awful lot of people and in particular a lot of people who are trained at great expense to fuck you up in 197 ways before you even realize its happened. Of course I am not advocating violence against you, that would be stooping to your level, I am merely making an observation. But maybe you and your ilk had better take a good hard look at yourself and have a serious think about what you're before you flap your gob in public again, because if you carry on as you are I fear that what will be being whispered in your "community" is "Remember what happened to Anjem Choudary"



* pointing out that their prophet was a pedophile is always a good way to do this.

Strangled at birth

Rather unwittingly the last spendthrift Labour government thew the middle classes a nice little bone in their bid to be all green and cuddly. This was something called the Feed In Tarrif (FIT) which basically meant that if you generated your own electricity from a solar photovoltaic array on your roof you would get paid to do so and at a very generous rate of 43p per kWh as well. That's guaranteed for 25 years and index linked.

Oh and as there's no way to actually measure how much you generate gets back into the grid, you get 3p per 0.5kWh on top of that.

And you get to use all the electricity you generate too, so a household bill like mine of around £800 a year would come down to around £200 a year.

So with a 4kW array costing around £14k to install it works out that over the 25 years you'll make around 10 to 12% return and break even around the 8 year mark. And with my current investments making 2 or 3% at best its an absolute no-brainer. So last month some men crawled over my roof and I now have my own little power station that's  generated over 100kWh of nice clean energy and enriched me to the best part of fifty quid in the couple of weeks its been running.

What's that Mr Government? Middle class people with disposable income making a profit? Oh no, that will never do, never never never! You're there Mr Middleclass to pay your taxes that we will spend on services you'll never use and give your money away to those poor developing nations with space programmes and nuclear weapons like India and China. We can't have you doing that, you're supposed to be installing solar because you can afford it and to make us in government look all green and answer the problem of Warble Gloaming! You're not actually supposed to treat this as an investment!

So in six weeks time the coalition are going to cut the FIT to 22p, and that's only if you've got a "C" energy rated house already (which is nigh on impossible to get if your house is more than 20 years old) . I did a quick back on an Excel spreadsheet calculation and the ROI on a 4kW rig like mine drops to around 2% and the payoff period almost triples to 21 years.

Now a small but significant industry has grown up in this country over the last 2 years to service the demand for Solar PV; it's estimated that it employs around 25,000 people. This is not to mention the ancillary services it supports like the team of scaffolders who shoved a load of metal poles round my house (and then took 2 weeks to come and take them down again!) - I was chatting to Mr Scaffolder and he said solar PV was around half their work these days.

Well Mr Scaffold is probably going to have to lay off some of his staff and there's going to be 25000 people heading for the dole office come December because nobody is going to want Solar PV now. A new industry, supporting thousands of people has been strangled at birth because oh my god we can't have people making money out of Eco-Wibble can we. Those people on the social are going to cost way fecking more than the feed in tarrif money ever would.

Sure, the high rate was to kick start the solar business in the UK and it was unsustainable at 43p but why the hell didn't you cut it back slowly and on the dates you promised? All the hoons in Whitehall have done by cutting the FIT in half is to strangle one of the very private enterprises that was supposed to hoover up all these public sector jobs at birth.

Fucking idiots.

Church of England "Threatens" on porn.. oh noes!

I think being "threatened" by the C of E must be like being savaged by a half dead chinchilla; bizarre, not dangerous and you just end up feeling sorry for the chinchilla.

So what are the men who go around wearing frocks getting all hot under the dog-collar about today? Well if that bastion of accurate and unbaised reportage the Daily Fail is to believed "War on web sleaze: Church of England threatening to withdraw millions invested in ISPs over rise of internet porn. OK so you have "invested" these "millions" how exactly? That would be largely through shares sold in the open market I would expect, so you sell your holding and lose all that lovely dividend income, depress the share price which provides a buying opportunity to other investors who purchase these shares and raise the price. Your net contribution to "stemming the tide of these sick and depraved images" is the square root of fuck all.

Look, we have had porn forever, and "extreme" porn at that; there is a cave painting in southern France that is tens of thousands of years old, well before any form of civilisation existed, it depicts a crude stick figure of a human shagging some kind of animal. Porn isn't going to go away despite what you think your sky fairy would want. Rather amusingly and sticking with animals for a moment the much heralded "Extreme Porn" laws introduced last year get a mention along with the fact that hardly anyone has been proscecuted under these laws; well that's for a reason, it's nigh on impossible, with the exception of bestiality, to mount a case as to what is "grossly offensive... and realistic" (and you only get bestiality under the wire because it's pretty obvious its an animal and not a human) so all the cases have been for possession of bestiality images, and even there one case got dropped as the video clip in question was a CGI render (and cartoons don't count - so all you Furry and My Little Pony rule 34 fans are in the clear).

Of course the reason why this has all come to the surface is the recent Vincent Tabak conviction for murder where it transpires he'd been looking at "violent porn". The usual suspects in the Daily Wail and elsewhere start their knee jerk "It was the porn what made him do it" blissfully ignoring the fact that presumably these websites were not solely set up just for Vince and therefore tens if not hundreds of thousands probably paid these left handed mousing sites a visit and then didn't go on to strangle their neighbor. If you're the sort of person who would take someone's life I would posit that you're that kind of person and watching some S&M porn isn't going to make a blind bit of difference if you are going to act on your impulses - in fact I would say and the studies bear out that having a safety valve of knocking one out over some staged smut might just act as a safety valve*

The bishops might want to consider that before they sell their ISP shares and buy cassock futures and tofu bonds.


* incidences of sexual assault have decreased in countries such as Denmark and The Netherlands after the legalisation of porn.

10 Billion Elephants in the Room

I had a play on the beeb's "work out your human sequence number" gizmo the other day and apparently I am the 77,191,204,131st person to have existed. All a bit silly really but the truly scary number comes when I saw that since I hatched in Blackpool back in the mid 60's the population of the world has doubled.


Now I am no Malthusian. Thomas Malthus, as you may recall, predicted that population growth would outstrip food supply which to be fair to him and the mathematics of the day did appear to be the case. However population didn't grow in quite the way Malthus' models had predicted and, being clever monkeys, we cam up with new and improved ways of food production. We continue to do that today and there's no reason to think that we can't support the predicted 10 billion peak population; sure the meat you're eating will probably be being grown from stem cells in a tank and your wheat and veg will have been highly genetically modified but at least we'll be spared from Charlton Heston yelling "Soylent Green is made of people" to anyone who'll listen.

No that's not the issue, the issue is one which the warble gloaming alarmists seem to have been rather quiet about, the 10 billion elephants in the room. Even if we cut out carbon emissions all those new people will still be consuming resources that'll need producing and transporting , they'l all be breathing out carbon dioxide and, at the risk of being crude, breaking wind and releasing tons of methane into the atmosphere. Sure we may be able to feed everyone but at what cost?


And I was just, you know, curious as to when the Global Warming lobby was going to start to calling for mandatory sterilization, people culls, and yes maybe the opening of a few centres where Edward G Robinson can commit suicide whilst watching deer frolic to Beethoven's Pastoral symphony.


Just asking.

The Devil is in the details.

So our lovely leaders are all patting themselves on the back having "saved" the Euro and if you believe the hyperbole from the German Chancellor, saved Europe from hearing the ring of marching jackboots again.

What they have done of course is merely kick the can a bit further down the road. There's still no way even a trillion Euros can prop up the failing economies of Europe who bought into the idea you could buy prosperity with other people's money.

A couple of details behind the headlines that your average layman would most likely miss, if they could find them at all, point to what a fudge this is and which will, in all likelihood, make the problem worse. Firstly not only do the banks take a 50% hit on any Greek debt they own they are being asked to "Recapitalise" to the tune of 160 billion Euro in the next 8 months. Essentially this means the banks have to hold cash or other highly liquid asset classes on their books and they can't lend it. Get that bit, they can't lend this money. Now cast your mind back to last year and the credit crunch which was caused by, right, banks not being in a position to lend money.

The other little weasel word I spotted is the real person-of-colour in the woodpile, that word is "leverage"...

The firepower of the main euro bailout fund - known as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) - is to be boosted from the 440bn euros set up earlier this year to 1tn euros. There is about 250bn euros left available in the EFSF, which the summit statement said could be leveraged 4-5 times.

Put simply this means that this much trumpeted 1 trillion Euro is not actually there, what they are going to do is put up the 250 billion they do have (from your and my taxes) and basically borrow 4 or 5 times that amount, that's essentially what leverage means. And of course if you borrow money, you have to pay interest on it.

So they have commited us to, yet more and more borrowing. An endless cycle of debt backed up only by the promise it can be paid back through future tax revenues, that's money out of our pockets.

All Merkel and Sarkosy have done is put us and our children in hock to the Chinese for years and years.

How long will this madness go on because as sure as I have wings and a tail it's gone on too far and too deep for it all to end in sweetness and light and I fear all Merkel and friends have done is make those jackboots even more of a racing certainty.

The Lads from Lagos don't miss a trick

Was wondering when I was going to see my first Gaddafi trunk box 419 scam...

Sir,

I got your info from a diary to one of my fathers aide.You understand my father (Muammar Gadaffi) is dead. I would need to secure some of my funds overseas to enable me get a good legal defence in the coming months,as I anticipate I and my brothers shall face.

I have some money safely kept in a vault somewhere in Europe.I ask you to be my TRUSTEE to retrieve this fund.Basically you will take care of ALL the necessary expenses to formalize the papers in your name to secure the fund,as i am presently incapacitated to do so.

Please,if you do not have the capacity to secure such large amount as it,do not bother replying.Be sure You will also take back whatever you have spent afterwards.

If you have our sympathy on this,please contact our attorney in UK immediately.

Name: John Gerspach
Email: gadaffiaffairs@johngerspach.info
City: London
Country: United Kingdom

Thanks,
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi

Feel free to email him and mess him around... safe scambaiting tips and tricks can be found here, tell them that the Grumpy Dragon sent you.

... And I Feel Fine

Remember Harold Camping? He was the American preacher who said the world was going to end back in May and convinced a whole bunch of fools to spend every penny they had on advertising the fact and trying to get us heathens to convert.

As the world didn't end he had to come up with an excuse and as I recall it was something along the lines of Gawd had actually ended the world and decided who was going to get to sit on a cloud playing a harp and who was going to be toasting marshmallows and singing camp-fire songs with Beelzebub but the actual demolition squads would roll up later in the year.

Today in fact, the 21st of October. Due to some oversight The Almighty has neglected to inform Harold of what time he's going to kick off on his smiting binge.

I'm actually really looking forward to what his explanation is this time. I'm betting it'll be along the lines of "Actually the world has been destroyed and you are now in hell, which just happens to look exactly like where you were before. Those of you who are residents of Basildon will be perfectly aware of this already".

Whatever his excuse such is the depth of human stupidity is that he will still have followers and there will remain millions of people who really do believe that the world will literally end in their lifetimes....

Professor Farid Esack, head of the religious studies at the University of Johannesburg, likened Rapture believers to "those who stockpiled food on the eve of a new South Africa", but warned against dismissing them as "fanatical loons"

Actually he's right, we should be medicating them as dangerously delusional mental patients. Regrettably I don't think we could physically manufacture the volume of anti-psychotics we'd need

And a new bunch of lefty cunts

Ah, a lovely morning, bright, cold and crisp. But what's that disgusting smell? Ah that would be the launch of another left wing hand wringing pseudo-charity, this one going by the name of "The Intergenerational Foundation" bleating on about "fairness" and "equality" by which of course they mean the usual Fabian bullying, fucking around with your life and, of course, taking your money.

This lot are coming for your house. You have worked hard all your life, brought up your children and have got yourself a nice house with three or four bedrooms; maybe like me you have a spare room for when relatives stay over and have converted one former bedroom into an office / study. Ah but now you are a " clinging to your home long after it has outlived its usefulness" citizen. You are hoarding resources that need to be "reallocated". It's all in the interests of "fairness" of course so just pack one small suitcase, that's your cattle truck over there grandad, kommen Sie bitte mit uns. Raus Opa! Raus!.

Of course they are using very soothing words at first; it's all about encouragement...

IF suggested encouraging older people to downsize by exempting over-60s from stamp duty when they sold to move to a smaller home

... but pretty much in the same breath as they wave a small carrot they go on to wield a fucking big stick...

The campaign group also urged the government to consider replacing council tax with "a proper land tax, to reflect the social cost of occupying housing, particularly housing that is larger than one's needs".

 
And it seems that founder Angus Hanton has previous, here's an interview he did with Pravda The BBC recently...

“Let’s take my own house [which] I bought 16 years ago for £160,000. It’s in south-east London. It’s now worth about £1.15m.”
“So I’ve gained a million pound windfall to which I do not feel entitled, and that windfall, at the moment, is tax-free. Were I to sell [the house], there’s no tax on that gain.”
“It may appear very lucky for me, but the reality is when I sell, it will probably be to a younger person who’ll be getting a mortgage and spending most of their working life paying off that windfall which went to me. I don’t think that’s fair.

Well if you don't feel entitled to it then maybe I suggest you sell up and donate the money to a soup kitchen or whatever charity assuages your disgusting middle class white male guilt. Don't for one fucking second presume to tell me what I can and can't do with my money you odious collectivist shit.

And just in case you think this bunch of twats are pissing in the wind ask yourself why this is the second story on the BBC's website this morning, the lead article on the Today programme and why the inaugural speakers at their launch are shadow minister Tessa Jowell, and Labour life peer Baroness Bryony Worthington?

Bastards the lot of them. 

Having some fun with the recruitment consultants

Recruitment consultants are one of those necessary evils in my line of work. Sure there are some good ones out there but there's a lot of them that seem to think that the way to do their job is essentially by using the same method as a Nigerian 419 scammer. You have a list of email addresses and you simply fire whatever role you happen to have at everyone on that list regardless of suitability, location or anything else for that matter.

I have one company that does this about three or four times a day. However one of them has got smart and titled his email as "This is a personal email..." rather than "Here's a Java gig you're going to ignore"...

Dear Grumpy Dragon,

Thank you for registering with us even if it was a while ago. I am the .Net specialist (not technically like you) within the Thames Valley area solely working on permanent placements. I expect to be speaking to you all in the near future.

I currently have a number of exciting opportunities in Guildford, Reading and their surrounding areas. If you haven’t already sent this message to your junk folder then I would love the opportunity to find out your current situation and interest.

If you could drop me a quick email stating whether you’re looking (or not) and location then I can make sure that I focus my attention to relevant opportunities that would be good for you.

"Exciting" and "Guildford" don't go together in my book. 


Hello Recruitment Consultant

Thanks for your mail.

Yes I did register on your site some time ago and with what must have been quite an old CV as I keep getting offers of 25k coding jobs in Portsmouth from a variety of agents at your company.

Quite frankly I wouldn't get out of bed for 25k, and certainly not if I had to work in Portsmouth.

And to be honest a similar gig in Slough or Reading isn't exactly going to be getting me champing at the bit either.  I mean have you actually been to Slough? It's like having the will to live sucked out of you with a striped bendy straw.

All in all I think it would be best if you could either remove my profile from your database or point me in the direction of a link on your website where I can do this myself. Whereas it's been amusing to hear the likes of Ceris and Melanie trying to big up a 30k J2SE job in Southampton every week, the novelty factor is starting to wear off and I find myself increasingly tempted to hit the "junk' button.

I know you'd like me to send in a current CV but I'm not going to as I know you and your colleagues would simply then start firing equally irrelevant 50k C++ development team leader in Guildford jobs at me with all the enthusiasm and accuracy of an artillery crew at their first day on the job.

Thanks

Grumpy

 I'm fully expecting a phone call from him this morning. They are like The Terminator these people, completely unstoppable.

Thinking of the chiiiildren, again.

Ah yes, the Tories. Just like Labour always ready with their ban-hammer when it comes to the thought that someone out there is having a good time. Following on from a report from that bastion of all things blue rinse and prudery the Mother's Union (whose leader appears to be a bloke called "Reg" for some unfathomable reason) your lovely nanny state will insist that the main broadband providers will offer a block on "adult content" to all subscribers.

Of course there's no detail on this but I would imagine it'll be some sort of BT Cleanfeed and so easily subvertable by any moderately tech savvy twelve year old (and they all are) who can configure a proxy.  In  other words this is a fig leaf, a sop to those members of the party faithful bluenoses who wander around with a disapproving expression and looking for all the world like someone has just rammed a pine cone up their arse.

And how is this going to work in terms of opt in or opt out? The Daily Fail is saying "opt in" whereas everyone else reporting the story is non-commital on that point.  Mind you opt in is going to make for some amusing conversations in PC World.

"Do you want porn with your new Dell laptop?"
"Er, yes please."
(Turns on tannoy) "Mr Verity to the checkout please. Can you bring a porn opt-in form. Gentleman wants internet filth on his PC. Now sir, what sort of porn do you want? Straight, gay, midgets, horses, horses with midgets..."

And who, exactly, is going to administer this list of what is "adult material"? Sure so it's a fair bet that a website with a name like "HotSexyDragonsDoingItWithAnythingThatMoves.com" will end up on the list¹ but how about some gay advocacy sites that offer advice to to teenagers struggling with their sexuality? What about stuff that's not actually sexual or illegal in any way but maybe you really would not want your kids looking at such as these "pro anorexia" sites?  What about "dangerous" political sites that you find distasteful such as those from extreme right and left wing parties or Muslim extremists?

See where as it's nice an easy to block something obvious that we can pretty much all agree on a definition of such as child porn² it starts to end up like a quagmire of The Dead Marshes proportions as soon as you try to categorise what's "adult" and what isn't.

And as ever, with politicians in charge, they are bound to monumentally fuck this up.

¹ memo to self: register that domain name ASAP.
² and even there, if the spam I get in my mailbox inviting me to come to sites with names like "hot-teens.grubbysmut.org" is to be believed, where I am sure the models are of legal age but are pretending not to be so, where do we stand with the ban-hammer on this one?

What do we want? Unicorn sex slaves! When do we want them? Now!

You might have noticed that over in the US of A a bunch of the usual eco-weenies, lefty dreamers and, well anyone who wants to "stick it to The Man" has taken a leaf from our home grown crusties this side of the pond and have "organised" (for a given value of "organise") "Occupy Wall Street" to, well,  just have a grumble about the "eeeeevil nasty bankers" and get the opportunity for a ruck with New York's finest as far as I could work out.

But as it happens they have a set of demands, or rather a proposed list of demands that will no doubt be decided on after a good circle drumming session and a couple of herbal jazz cigarettes.Go and have a laugh at the utter naivete on display over here.

A couple of my favourites

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

I think you'll find that those insurers actually, you know, use the premiums and shit to kinda build hospitals, buy medical equipment and pay the salaries of those doctors and nurses.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Yea, and with a minimum wage at twenty bucks an hour causing production costs to spiral and hobson's choice about where you get your goods from as you don't have any imports your average citizen is going to be able to afford anything how, exactly?

And anyway, who is going to bother working because:

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

everyone's going to be sat on their arse and getting $20 to do so.

But the best one has got to be this:

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Awesome. Truly awesome. This stands as a shining pillar of "What the fuck?" in an already sparkling sea of cuntwittery.

I am going to demand a unicorn sex slave¹. I want it here, and I want it now.




¹ Not fussy about gender, I'm an enlightened 21st century dragon.

Vade retro, Satana

Now I don't watch the X Factor, come to think of it I doubt the buttons "1", "0" and "3" have ever been pressed in that sequence on the Sky remote so until this morning I had never heard of someone called Jade Richards.

Anyway I stumbled on a little story in the freebie paper The Metro about Miss Richards who has apparently been thrown off this talent show, not because she can't sing or anything but apparently because she's a Satanist.

Apparently wearing black lacy clothes and posting stuff like "I'm so goth I fuck bats" on your Faceache page makes you a Satanist these days.

I will put good money on her never having heard of Anton Szandor LaVey, showman and inventor of the actual Church of Satan (and even that's not really what you could call Satanism, more a sort of night out for your more extreme libertarians). No this is just another nauseating adolescent who had dabbled in a spot of occult lite and is trying to be "edgy"

If she ever met any real theistic Satanists (as I have back in my misspent youth) she would not be fucking bats she'd be squeaking like one; those guys are proper full on scary.

However she's missing a trick here. You've been discriminated against because of your religion love, start kicking off about "respect my beliefs" and shit and haul the producers of the show up before some human rights tribunal. I'm sure that bunch who pay the legal bills of uppity Christians who won't stop wearing crosses or won't marry gays will be happy to fund a religious person like you.

So you actually don't want to solve the problem.

So climate change, what we used to call global warming, or was it cooling (I recall in the 70's we were all going to freeze to death "Day After Tomorrow" style), lets call it climate wobblyness just for fun.

Look I'm not a "denyer", you shove a load of CO₂ into the atmosphere and it will have an effect - and you can trust me on that because I have a BSc Hons in Earth Sciences^* - as to exactly what that effect is we're rather unsure but one thing is for certain the science is not "settled", as the whole sodding point of science is that it's never settled, and I certainly don't buy into the catastrophic alarmist crap which would mean that I'd have to be equipping the ponies with flotation devices in a couple of years. We also know that most of the alarmist pundits don't believe it either as otherwise Al Gore wouldn't have bought himself a beachfront property would he.

But anyway, lets for now accept there's a problem, so wouldn't you like to come up with a fix for this? Well it turns out someone has done here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15132989 basically by making little volcanic clouds. Not sure how you'd scale this up to planet size but one step at a time.

Only we're not making that step. Why?

"We are certainly not ready to carry out experiments, and this project should not just be delayed, but should be cancelled immediately," [Eco weenie who wears batik dresses and has probably named her kid Galadriel Moonbeam, Helena Paul] told BBC News.

"This is particularly important because while the scientists involved keep saying that reducing emissions is the primary necessity, they risk distracting attention from that necessity at a crucial moment."

Because there's only one solution isn't there. That's the one that involves us giving up on the material benefits of progress, turning our societies into some agrarian collectivist monstrosity the very idea of which gets Helena moist and chasing after a small green dragon because he drives a 4x4 and lit up his patio heater this weekend.

You don't want a solution because actually solving global warming doesn't fit your agenda.



^* OK so I specialised in what mud does and how water flows through rocks but I'm a damned sight more qualified that 99% of the people spouting off of the subject.as I have at least done some climate modelling.

Love and Marriage

Right back in the blogging saddle after my 3 weeks off wandering around Europe and at one point getting married.

Yes I have done the deed and after 18 years of being the unofficial Mrs Dragon, Mrs Dragon is now the official Mrs Dragon and we have a green piece of paper shoved in the back of a drawer to prove it.

But dear sweet banjo picking Jesus what a bloody fuss. Look if it were down to me this would have been done weeks ago when we both had to go and fill in the official forms with the registrar in the civil version of "Reading the Banns" which I blogged about here. After all they have all the information they need, we spoke individually and together to a registrar, surely that would be enough? All they would need to do is put the notices up and if nobody objects in three weeks you get your chitty, kind of like a planning application.

No chance. You have to hire the venue (fifty quid if you get the early bird version and turn up for the 10am slot) and have some council numpty read a bunch of words and before that another council numpty fills in your form using EXACTLY the same information that she had in front of her but we actually have to tell her the information all over again. I mean talk about feather-bedding and waste in local government.

After the round of form filling we are allowed to enter the official registry room where you have to go because if they read the magic words in the car park it doesn't count for some reason, maybe it's a magic spell and the Tennyson Room at Ely registry office is some sort of Hogwarts annexe. The special effects are not as good as Hogwarts mind as the first thing I see was a load of plastic flowers with a string of LED fairy lights wrapped round them and a cheap HiFi playing a bit from The Four Seasons and my brother in law's arse in the air as he fiddles about with the volume control - really classy.

And I mean is it really necessary for the registrar to wear her huge plastic name badge with "Ms. Important McOfficial - Cambridgeshire County Council" on it through the proceedings? Look it's galling enough that I have to abase myself before local sodding government without you rubbing my nose in it. I'm surprised she didn't insist on wearing a fluorescent green tabard with "WEDDING OFFICER" emblazoned on the back to make the point.

I then get told I'm stood on the wrong side of the future Mrs Dragon and that I need to be to her right "so as her knight I can draw my sword to defend her." I dragonfully* apply some tact under the circumstances and refrain from advising Ms Important McOffical that any knights drawing any swords in my presence are going to get both nostrils set to "roast at gas mark 8 for 2 hours".

Fortunately we had the shortest form of marriage blurb but that still went on for a good 10 minutes worth of "These lovely lovely people who are lovely and starting their new lovely life of love together and we'll pretend that they haven't been all over each other like wyverns in heat for the past 18 years" sickly sweet yuk from Ms McOfficial who had resorted to that Princess Diana coy head on her shoulder stance complete with stapled on smile before we get to take a few pics and bugger off back home for a very sun not yet above the yardarm champers

I'm definitely staying married to the new official Mrs Dragon. If that's the hassle you have to go through to get wed I dread to even think about what divorce is like.


* like "manfully", only done by a dragon.

If you follow my Twitter feed you'll know I'm gallivanting around Europe at the moment and in a couple of weeks I'm getting married so blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two or three weeks. 

So here are some horse pictures from the Bundeschampionate held at Warendorf, Germany over the week... if you're into horses prepare to drool (and no, you can't afford them)

And just for giggles:

Claudia Hat 'nen Video Spiele

17 years after its release Germany has "unbanned" the famous first person shooter game "Doom". The funniest thing reading about this was becoming re-acquainted with the German government ministry that originally did the banning, the fabulously named Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien literally "Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons"

Germany actually has this organisation that goes beyond rating media like games and films but can actually completely ban an item from sale or distribution if it is deemed "Harmful to Minors" which they define as:

Objects are considered harmful or dangerous to minors if they tend to endanger their process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality.

What actually happened in practice was that items on the "index" were only available through certain outlets like sex shops.

I first came upon this "Won't somebody think of the chiiiiildren!" nightmare organisation some years ago through a German punk outfit "Die Ärtze" (The Doctors) who had one of their songs banned by the blue noses at the BPjM; it was a lovely little ditty about a girl called Claudia and her German Shepherd dog, went something like this...

Claudia hat nen Schäferhund
und den hat sie nicht ohne Grund,
Abends springt er in ihr Bett
und dann geht es rund!

Yes, it's rather rude but it really does beggar belief that some serious, educated people sat around in a room and went "Yes this song will encourage our young women to experiment with bestiality, better ban it."

So as a result of the ban Die Ärtze were forbidden to sing this song at their concerts. 

But as technically only the lyrics were banned what they used to do was play the song as an instrumental.  The audience used to sing it.

I can just imagine some Mary Whitehouse type watching thousands of teenagers singing..

Claudia mag keine Jungs
Und sie ist auch nicht lesbisch,
am allerliebsten mag sie es,
mit ihrem Hundchen untern Esstisch!

... at the tops of their voices as she slowly turned purple with impotent rage.

Dura lex sed lex

So the Dale Farm do-what-you-likey-pikeys are about to recieve a little visit from Mr and Mrs Bulldozer and their son Master Wreckingball.

Good. Although they seemed quite happy to resort to the law to keep their illegally built eyesore the have been handed their arses on a plate and found out that the law works both ways and it really doesn't matter if you don't think that the law applies to you or you should be allowed to do whatever the fuck you like with land you own, the law says it does apply to you and you can't. Dura lex sed lex; the law is hard but it is the law.

Look I'm no great fan of the state and many planning laws are just bloody stupid - for example when building my stable block I had to prepare and submit a flood evacuation plan, for a horse, on land that last flooded when it was a swamp back in the eighteenth century. However I would posit that the planning rules serve a purpose to stop selfish bastards doing what the hell they like with no thought for the misery it causes other people If I'd wanted to build an open air nightclub with a gigawatt sound system then it would only be right and proper that my neighbours would have the right to make representation to a planning body of the harm such an action would cause to their lives and freedoms and for that body to weigh the evidence and maybe decide that my freedom to party does not outweigh my neighbours freedom to get a decent night's kip and so no you can't have your nightclub.

And I differ from my more extreme libertarians on this notion that if you own something then it is yours to do with as you wish. For example as many of my readers know I own horses and there are various things I can't do with them, for example use certain kinds of harness or shock collars for training or, coming back to our friends in the "travelling community", take it into a river in Appleby and drown the poor beast. This is because we, as a society through our elected representatives, have decided that to do so is not acceptable and because we know some callous git would do these things we make laws and erect a system of justice to ensure people are held to those laws.

And whilst the law is hard it is moveable. Remember bottysex used to be illegal and now it isn't? The law can be changed by people agitating and petitioning the lawmakers for a change. The residents of Dale Farm and their fellows are perfectly at liberty to make their case to change the law and, if by some miracle and in a parallel universe where your average traveller is a nice, polite, honest person who actually gives a shit about other people, they get opinion on their side then the law will eventually change.

It's not a perfect system by any means as there are always those, usually with money and power, who will subvert the law, or set themselves up above the law, but given the nature of human beings it's probably the best we can do. You can always break the law, or ignore it, but you have to be aware that there will be consequences.

And in this case the consequences are large, yellow and have "JCB" written on the side.

Hiding the bodies.

It's clean, it's green, its the body dissolving machine! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14114555

OK so this hi-tech version of John George Haigh's acid bath might be a very clever way of turning granny into soup but its still using up energy (you don't get to 180 Celsius and 10,000 hPa for free) so how about we do this the old fashioned way, it's called "burial".

In my world it would work like this. You build a few big frozen storage places around the country and when people croak they get sent there, medical and dental students get to have a bit of practice at taking out the metal fillings and granny's hip replacements and then the bodies are put on ice in a dimly lit freezer. These facilities would pay for themselves as they could be rented out to the BBC every year for yet another episode of Torchwood which always seems to be set in places like this. This would have the added benefit of giving comfort to the relatives of the deceased as they would be able to picture their loved ones lying there whilst John Barrowman runs past them in tight-fitting trousers, an RAF coat and a hammy American accent.

Anyway once you have enough bods you go out to a big plantation, dig a bunch of holes, put a body in each one and then plant a tree on top. The body rots, fertilises the young tree so it gets off to a good start and in 50 years you can cut down the tree and use the wood, dig up any remaining bones and crush them up - the resulting grit is handy for spreading on ice in the winter.

All in all 100% eco-friendly and carbon neutral.

It's what granny would have wanted

Religious idiot in a silly robe gets a legal slap

Just for a change this time the religious loon wasn't a member of one of the various kiddy-fiddling christian factions, nor even one of the "Religion of Peace"® but this chap.



Yep, it's Arthur Pendragon. Self-appointed Druid leader (which is kind of like those "Community Leaders" who pop up all puffed up with their sense of self importance and everyone around them going "don't recall voting you into office matey") and head of the "Loyal Arthurian Warband" (all four of them - I met them once when I was on the same bill as "Arthur" here and all they were up to making war on was several pints of beer)

Actually he's pretty harmless, just eccentric in the finest British tradition. But it's important that any believers in any flavour of sky-fairy nonsense get a slap when then start to come out with crap like:

Pendragon, who represented himself, said the bones were remains of members of the "royal line" or "priest caste" who could have been the "founding fathers of this great nation".

for which of course he has the square-root of fuck-all's evidence. However it is a threat to him if the clever chaps with their DNA sequencers and electron microscopes up in Sheffield can actually find out who these bodies belong to and it turns out they were, lets say, executed prisoners thrown in a pit to pacify whatever sky-fairy the locals were in terror of 5000 years ago.

And whoever that sky-fairy and whatever his/her religious practices were it's a racing certainty that they would be utterly alien and unrecognisable to the modern cuddly pagans and druids we have today.


(Disclaimer: Back in my 20's I used to believe in all that pagan stuff... I grew out of it)

Pockets of Resistance

Well our latest foray in military meddling in the Middle East is coming to a close. Even if, as it looks, the Gaddafi loyalists have fallen back to make a last stand in Tripoli this is the end game; no resupply of food or weapons, it's now just a matter of time. Everyone's favourite comedy dictator is probably pacing around his bunker, throwing coloured pencils at a map of Tripoli and ranting at his remaining generals "Downfall" style.

Now as we are all aware Gaddafi is as mad a box of frogs and may really believe all of Libya loves him and will rise and fight to the bitter end but I don't think he's that batshit crazy. So why didn't he flee when it was obvious that he'd lost? Well maybe the fact that the International Criminal Court have already said they would like a quiet chat with him over tea and ontbijtkoeken in The Hague with regard to, you know, war crimes and stuff might have had more than a part to play.

Back in the day when the gig was up your average dictator went round to the central bank, hoovered up everything in transferable assets and flew the presidential plane to some equally totalitarian state and proceeded to live a quiet life with just the occasional interviewer from "Time" magazine to break the monotony. Sure not very comforting to the relatives of said dictator's victims but it did tend to mean that revolutions when they happened were relatively short.

The trouble I think with these courts is that they don't really seem to work. They don't act as a deterrent as the people committing war crimes don't every think they'll have to stand trial because, well, they're going to win the war of course. It also smacks of "victor's justice" - if perhaps a certain Mr Blair were to stand trial for engaging in a war of aggression on a false pretext then the courts might seem to be at least fair and impartial. Finally if anything they maybe are costing lives, prolonging conflicts as leaders who are shoe-ins for a few weeks of stand-up freeform ranting in a perspex box somewhere in Holland, decide they have nothing to lose so might as well hang on to the last bullet.

I can see why there's a desire for a war trials court, it's a noble ideal, but I can't help think that is this case like many other noble ideals done out of the finest motives it's just making things worse

What a doughnut

The first of the looters in Manchester are being hauled before the beak this week. Now down in the smoke it was kids kicking in the windows of Currys and strolling off with a Sony Bravia. Not in Manchester:

A man who helped himself to doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme shop during riots in Manchester city centre has been jailed for 16 months.

Apparently his excuse was he was hungry:

He was not involved in rioting but took the doughnuts because he was hungry, having spent his money on tobacco

oh and before he bought his tabs:

Thomas Downey, 48, was released from HMP Manchester at 19:30 BST on 9 August when he became caught up in the riots. The serial offender went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous before downing a bottle of sherry.

That 12 step programme is working a treat I see.

According to the article on the Beeb's website this bloke has over 100 convictions for 233 offences.

You know I try to feel sorry for people like this, I really do (deep down I am actually quite a caring dragon) but I have to ask myself wouldn't it be better if people like Thomas and the few thousand other Thomases out there, you know the 0.1% of the population that cause 95% of the trouble, could just be put somewhere away from the rest of us? Hell give them access to booze, drugs and 24/7 porn or something but isolate the infection so the rest of us can just get on with doing our everyday stuff without Mr Sherry and Doughnuts wandering into view and kicking off on a booze and sugar rush.

Mind you the one man I do not have any sympathy for is this loser:

Father-of-four Anthony Winder, 38, looted the Swarovski Crystal store and smashed a display cabinet to get an ornamental dog, the court heard.

You actually wanted a Swarovski crystal dog? You deserve to be executed for crimes against taste.

Showers, moderate becoming cabbages later

... Channel Light Vessel Automatic: south west variable 3 or 4, 1012 falling slowly, showers, good...

You know you are up far, far too early when the comforting ritual words of the Shipping Forecast are on Radio 4 as you drive to the station. So why am I up at crack of sparrow-fart today. Well for a start it's August and that means everyone on the team who has rugrats absolutely must have a couple of weeks off with their spawn. Consequently those that don't like me end up holding the fort whilst the Project Manager, Team Lead and one of the senior developers bugger off en famille to Lanzagrotty, Disney World in an American Swamp or Bournemouth respectively. Even the intern has buggered off for the week as he needs to resit a couple of exams he cocked up. So its down to me to be the "senior manager" (hah!) on the ground to mop the fevered brows of our traders should they take a dislike to the particular shading of an "OK" button on any of our applications this morning.

So there I am on the train, another wage slave, with a few other bleary-eyed companions trundling through Cambridgeshire in some clapped-out carriage we'll all have to pay 13% more for next year.

Now I don't know if you know the area between Ely and Cambridge, it's called "The Fens" and up until the 1800's it was just marsh, bog and shifting rivers. Then the happy collision of a clever Cloggie called Vermuiden and a load of free labour in the shape of prisoners of war from the little spat we were having with Napoleon came together to construct drainage channels (and these are no mere ditches, one is called "The Hundred Foot River" because that's how wide it is, it's 18 miles long and straight as a die, you can see it from space) and turned the area into fertile, productive land to feed the growing cities of the 19th century.

It was this I was bimbling through now. Flat as a pancake and acre upon acre of every kind of salad crop you can think of. It was before 6am and already there is plenty of activity; these big rectangular tents on wheels moving back and forth which house the pickers and packers working the rows of lettuce.

And I can tell you now every single of those will be from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, anywhere but here.

I don't begrudge them the work, they work bloody hard; the ones I've met in the market towns around here, Wisbech, Downham Market, Ely, are all polite and don't cause any bother.

But why the hell am I paying for a whole fecking underclass of zero-achievement ferals who have a sense of entitlement but no sense of responsibility who right now are tucked up in bed sleeping off the booze, dope and a hard night's looting of the local branch of JD Sports whilst I'm hauling my green scaly tail into London at 5 in the bleeding morning? There's work out there, tons of it, but it's been done by the aforementioned Eastern Europeans. Take a look at this from the Telegraph today

This is just not bloody on. If the state is to have a role here it is as a facilitator and broker. You have no job but you are fit and healthy, well here's a job, 50 hours a week picking cabbages. Here's your bus fare, your new employer will sort out some temporary housing.

What's that? It's demeaning? How are you supposed to use your DJing and Hip Hop dance skills in a cabbage field? Well fucking boo-hoo, let me call the whaaaaaambulance for you. Walk off the job and no money for you matey.

But you're unemployable because you perpetually skipped school and the only way you know how to talk is in a language that is a cross between pseudo Jamaican patois and the sounds a rutting pig makes? Just how much do you need to communicate to be able to pick a lettuce?


---
PS: Welcome to everyone who's arriving here from Old Holborn's blog and a big thanks to the masked maker of mischief and all-round thorn in the side of government for the link.

Haunted by the ghost of Macpherson

So now we cower in fear of a bunch of 100 or so teenage hoodies smashing up the place and nicking phones and tellies.

Well we let it happen, you and I. Sure some black kid got stabbed by a bunch of white thugs and plod make a horlicks of the investigation and so along comes the Macpherson report and lo and behold the police are "institutionally racist" and for years afterwards it's diversity this and kid-gloves that, maybe it needed to happen but it went way, way too far. Then along comes NuLabour with a new law every 32 nanoseconds and anyone who so much as raises his voice at anyone doing wrong or breaching the peace is descended on like the proverbial ton of bricks and hauled away as the miscreant.

"The police will protect you," we were told, "do not get involved, call the police, that is what they are there for, they're trained you see and have been on the relevant diversity and health and safety courses and wear florescent jackets. You, citizen, are not qualified. And don't you even dare think of arming yourself to protect your life, family and property. Trust in us, the police will be there."

Only now we see that Faustian bargain was just that. The police aren't there, they're not going to help, they will not stand there and protect your property or your life. Sure they might trawl facebook when this is over and nick the few mouthbreathers who were stupid enough to put "this is me an' me mates looting PC World innit" photos online but that's scant comfort to the asian corner shop keeper who's seem his livelyhood taken from him by the feral youth that decades of softly-softly policing, lefty pandering to the feckless, celebrity above talent and hard work culture and, quite frankly, not one us feeling we are able to stand up to insolent and loutish behaviour has created.

The scumbags perpetrating these mass lootings don't just think they are immune, they know they are untouchable. There are no consequences, even if caught they'll jet some token community sentence and an ASBO badge of honour.

This has, I would posit, gone too far for any remedial tinkering by our spineless politicians. If we want our communities back we will have to fight for them. What you won't see in the mainstream media today is the reports of mainly Turkish shopkeepers arming themselves with baseball bats and banding together to protect their businesses. Of 400 mainly asian young men fighting off 100 or so mainly afro-carribean youths in East London who were set on looting and causing mayhem. You need the very tools the rioters themselves use to get these stories.

We do have an answer. It's quite an old one, dates back to 1791 and it goes like this:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I predict a riot

Well we have riots, recession and a Tory lead government so I guess all we need now is for OMD and Duran Duran to be back in the charts and it'll be just like that '80s

I find it rather telling that the good citizens (ha!) of Tottenham can get all antsy and smashing up the place when The Babylon put a cap in one of their local criminal entrepreneurs but when said criminals are shooting each other up then you don't hear a bloody peep from them. And what is it with rioters and looters, I mean you live there so why do you trash your own streets and shops? I mean I've been to Tottenham and it is a complete shithole so I'd be surprised that this morning apart from a few shoe boxes formerly containing trainers scattered around the high street anyone would notice a difference but why not nip down the road and smash up somewhere else?

And why on earth of all places did you want to loot a branch of discount carpet retailer Carpet Right? What the feck got into your head that said "I want justice, I want an end to police brutality, and I want a free roll of axminster for my granny's flat"

Apparently they queued up to loot JD Sports. Well we may be having a riot but we never forget we are English and queueing up is what we do.

Loldragon and the most incompetent phishing attempt ever

This has to be the lamest phishing attempt ever. As you can probably guess from the language it's from the Lads from Lagos and they're attempting to get their hands on accounts so they can pull the "Hi I'm stuck in wherever and lost my wallet please send me $$$$ many through Western Onion" scams.

Yahoo! Mail

VERIFY YOUR YAHOO MAIL ACCOUNT NOW TO AVIOD IT CLOSED

This Email is from YAHOOMAIL Customer Care and we are sending it to very EMAIL YAHOO User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of YAHOO accounts so we are shutting down some of the accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all YAHOO users and removal of all unused YAHOO Accounts, We would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
Yahoo! Mail

* Username: .....................................
* Password: ......................................
* Date of Birth: ................................ .
* Country Or Territory: .................... .


After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Sincerely,
The YAHOO Webmail
VERIFY YOUR YAHOO MAIL ACCOUNT NOW,

I don't normally reply to these of course because they have almost no scam-baiting potential but just for once...

Oh noes! This is the very badness! Noooo they be taking my accounts!

U not to close or I be mads at U very much yes!

Here is logons!!!!

name: etheliusthedragon@yahoo.com
password: ihavesexwithgoats
date of bith: I hatch on 21 March 1324BC on moyntin in Syria from egg (I is draggon!)
country: is amerrica (but I flys here myself so not have green card or anything, you not be tell INS OK or I sets you on fire!)

Ok

Peeace!

Ethelius
(I really is draggon too! srsly!)

Loldragon FTW

Jaded

I wander back to my desk this afternoon having made myself a cup of tea to find the team leader of the mob across the corridor from us (let's call him Berk for now) excitedly chatting to my project manager.

What is the cause of all this excitement.

Well it turns out that Berk has had this brilliant idea (that he's nicked from Failbook - so you know this isn't going to end well) to get a team together to deliver some application to our users in one 24 hour period, that is starting first thing in the morning, working all day and then pulling an all nighter.

I was just about to say "what the fuck have you been snorting Berk" when I see my PM nodding his head faster that the Churchill Insurance dog on crystal meth. "Wow yeah, it's great, we can really show what we can deliver."

What you will deliver if you go ahead with this is a pile of cack built of compromise, quick hacks, hard coded "variables" and so many fudges you could open a branch of Thorntons; further more said "product" will perform like a mastodon on quaaludes and have all the grace and functionality of a 1960's era Trabant. And this abomination you are going to put onto a trader's desktop 24 hours after the project starts and expect them to use it live??? Jesus this just has "EPIC FAIL" written all over it in eight foot high neon pink letters.

I just could not believe sane IT Professionals were seriously going to go ahead with this - this fuckup in the making already has a venue booked where the 8 "volunteers" will be doing the coding - but there they were, thinking this is the greatest thing since the invention of the database. Bert has even got the head IT manager to stump up for the pizzas and coke.

I think they could tell by my expression that I wasn't really buying into this plan so Bert tried "Well we'll be strictly using Extreme Programming techniques! Paired programming! Test driven development!" - Yeah cut your hands on keyboards by 50% before you even start, why not handicap the team even further by paying someone to come round and kick them in the goolies every hour whilst you're at it. "Oh and I'm going to be making a time lapse film of the 24 hours" Hey and why not put that Benny Hill "Yakety Sax" music over the top of it, that'll make us all look like the highly trained and experienced artisans we are won't it.

Anyway after a while my PM started to realise that I wasn't going to stop making my "If Berk says one more fucking word he's getting a dose of the breath weapon set to 'Heart of the Sun'" face and decides to save Berk from immolation and goes "Oh maybe this would be a good thing for our graduate coder of all of 2 years experience". I nod and project passive-aggressive body language making it clear that everybody better leave my workspace right now and leave the grumpy dragon to his tea.

I don't know, maybe I've been too long in this gig and I'm just jaded. I just cannot see this being anything other than a stupid stunt to raise Bert's profile which will end up being a complete train wreck and will take a hell of a lot longer than 24 hours and more than 8 people to put right. Maybe when I was younger this might have seemed interesting to do but at my age there is no way on this little ball of mud and rock that at my age I am going to voluntarily put in a 24 hour shift, certainly not for a day off in lieu and a "bonus" of a 50 quid M&S voucher and a mention in some "What IT did this week" bit of the company website nobody reads anyway.