Brilliant data journalism from Simon Rogers at the Guardian Datablog:

There’s a map of all the Windfarms in the UK, which is at the top of the post.

And it includes all the Windfarms in the UK at all the stages of the planning cycle, except the ones which are missing, as – for example – Mynydd Mynyllod Windfarm in North Wales (say that after a bottle of wine) with 25 x 500ft tall wind turbines:

(from KarenSTEMM in the comments)

Thank you for this and I’ve checked it carefully but the massive wind farm planned for Mynydd Mynyllod in North Wales isn’t on the list. I wonder how many more aren’t on there?

but it does include the windfarms in the UK in the Middle East:

(From top left clockwise: Orchard End Resubmission, Mars Complimentary Petcare, South Sharpley, Boardinghouse Farm, Burntwood Sewage Treatment Works.)

and it includes the windfarms in the UK in Finland:

(West Browncastle)

and it includes the windfarms in the UK in Atlantis:

(Crocknamona, Dunaree Hill, Binnwaooda)

Why can’t these MSM people even do basic ‘whoops’ checks on their data – such as looking at the whole map before they sign off the article?

What is so difficult?

Even if you are using somebody else’s map you surely owe it to your own reputation and professionalism to look at the article from the viewpoint of a reader at least once.

Or am I being a silly early middle-aged old coot?

Guardian Datablog Ooops: Windfarms in the UK is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Delicious!

I have taken the precaution of some screen shots, perchance the BBC should realise what they have done before you read this.

It all started so innocently. Leo Kelion, one of their technology ‘experts’ discovered that feeds from thousands of Trendnet home security cameras have been breached, allowing any web user to access live footage without needing a password. Nice story.

He illustrated it with some of the comments he found on internet sites such as:

“Someone caught a guy in Denmark (traced to ip) getting naked in the bathroom.”

OK so far, but then:

One user wrote “Baby Spotted,” causing another to comment “I feel like a pedophile watching this”.

‘Some screenshots have also been uploaded’ pants our Leo….and then adds:

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.

Would it be a kindness to advise Leo of the provisions of the Protection of Children Act, specifically the incitement to transmit such photographs, or shall we just let him stew in his own juice until the law catches up with him?

Feel free to retweet this to any BBC contacts you have. I shall have more fun monitoring the court case…some hefty prison sentences have been handed out recently for this sort of thing!

Exclusive: BBC incites offences under the Protection of Children Act? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The Treasury has had a nasty shock this week, bought on a fit of the vapors, it has.

“Claims for clinical negligence outstanding at 31 March 2010 could cost £15.7 billion, or 15 per cent of the government’s total provision for future expenses arising from events that have happened in the past,” the report warns.

“The Treasury … did not know that clinical claims recorded by the NHS Litigation Authority had increased by some 31 per cent in 2010/11 or what plans were in place to reduce liabilities for clinical negligence.”

A large proportion of the clinical negligence bill is the result of errors that have left babies brain damaged – an area where the cost is rising as advances in medicine mean these children live longer and therefore cost more.

To which I would say that actually, a large proportion of this £15.7 billion bill is the result of believing that having a baby is like getting your Toyota serviced. Something that can be quantified in advance and should have a manual for technicians – any deviation from the manual, and wallop, multi-million pound settlement. You ‘deserve’ a perfect baby, haven’t you gone through nine months of pregnancy to achieve it? – and now you are as aggrieved as any purchaser of a Gucci handbag with the seams coming undone.

NOW! PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING.

I do not in any way suggest that the State – and society – should not help to bear the cost of supporting a badly disabled child where needed.

However, I am totally against the notion that the sad birth of such a child should be the occasion for a windfall if the lawyers can point their fingers in the right direction, to illustrate some deviation from the manual.

Fault! Fault! Fault they scream – and if they have got it right, some 12 years, Yes! 12 years on average, later around 6 million (on average) will be removed from the NHS budget and passed to the Court of Protection, pausing only to drop off around £2 million into the hands of the lawyers. Once in the court, it will be administered by a stream of ‘equal opportunity/free movement in Europe’ men and women who signed on at the job centre six weeks ago, who will decide in their wisdom what you can use the money for. More often than not it will be administered by the same lawyers who already took a £2 million rake off, in return for a regular dip into the pot each year.

That is the reality that you are supporting should you wish to say ‘its only right that they should get compensation’.

When/if the child dies, the balance of the pot, carefully costed to include the prohibitive projected cost of supporting said child in 2075 or whatever date they managed to find experts to convince the judge that this child ‘could’ live to, will be handed to the parents.

Since the ‘assets’ are held in the Court of Protection, they are not ‘under the control of’ the child, they are not considered ‘assets’ by Social Security – and so Disability Living Allowance and all the other State run schemes to support the disabled, still apply. I was amused to see the Daily Telegraph the other day holding their nose and pointing a sneering finger at a couple of Lottery millionaires still claiming Disability Living Allowance; they should take a peek inside the Court Funds Office, there they will find literally hundreds of ‘millionaires’ being supported by the state…

On the other hand, if they can’t find anyone to ‘blame’ – there is no compensation. The child ends up sleeping in exactly the same sort of bed, sitting in the same wheelchair, attending the same ‘special school’ as the child who received millions; and is just as disabled. Ah, I forget – the parents don’t get to buy a hideously expensive house in the name of the child, and cover the floor in shag pile carpet…

Money doesn’t compensate these sorts of situations. I feel fully qualified to expound that view, since I was also the ‘victim’ of a medical ‘accident’ 40 years ago. I went into hospital for a simple gynae op, and thanks to someone with a similar name, came out minus my womb. For a 23 year old girl, that was pretty devastating – but what difference would money have made? Anyone in the same position today would be knee deep in lawyers – to what avail? Should I have bought some children?

There are some situations where money can alleviate the problem – again, another declaration of conflict of interest, before someone brings it up. I sued the government when it quite deliberately put me in a position where I lost thousands of pounds. I won too, or at least they came second! But suing for breach of a contractual matter is quite different from suing because a birth didn’t go as you would wish – something that cannot be put right with money. Nor would I have sued had I been able to 40 years ago.

People do make mistakes. It is human nature. The Captain of the Costa Concordia made a mistake, Fred Goodwin made a mistake,  the man who fitted your oil filter may well have made a mistake, Gordon Brown made mistakes, handing over a tump of money to the victims of these mistakes, and their lawyers doesn’t put them right, it merely denudes, in the original matter, the NHS of the funds to do what it is supposed to be doing, curing sick people.

If it stopped the mistakes happening in some magical manner, there might be some logic to the compensation culture, but then if it did that, we wouldn’t still have massive claims for the same sort of mistakes 20 years later, would we?

If the lawyers weren’t taking a third of that £15 billion, think how many more nurses we could have on the wards, how many more medications we could afford for sick people, how much more help we could give to the disabled? I’m no great supporter of the NHS, but I do think they should be immune from these compensation claims – and ‘uman rights claims.

Would it not be better if a budget was set aside from the health budget for ‘no fault’ compensation and the money used to help those with direct physical and financial need?

What think you?

The Compensation Culture and the NHS. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Roncesvalles, Spain, Thursday Feb. 2, 2012

Now that global warming has covered the whole of Europe in a thick blanket of snow, will the Prime minister finally accept that the thousands of pensioners who moved to Europe over the past two decades do NOT live in a ‘hot’ country?

As recently as last December, we had the Daily Mail trotting out the tired old chestnut of :

‘Pensioners who have emigrated to warmer climes for their retirement are still receiving their winter fuel payments. It means that more than £13m a year is being paid abroad’ – dutifully illustrated by a photograph of two pensioners sitting in deckchairs on a summer beach.

Pensioners in Britain don’t need winter fuel payments if you wish to award them on the basis of summer temperatures! Nor do all British Pensioners living abroad – and specifically in France and Spain – receive a winter fuel allowance.

If you find yourself made redundant in Dover six months or six years before retirement, you will receive the winter fuel allowance when you get your pension. Live 25 miles away in Calais, and you won’t. So much for Europe.

This anomaly, whereby 80% of the House of Lords receive a winter fuel payment, whether they need it or not, whilst thousands of British pensioners, many of whom are now suffering real hardship thanks to the 25% reduction in the value of their pensions, are left to fend for themselves in this extreme cold weather, is ridiculous.

It is not helped by the subtly xenophobic comments of Liberal-Democrat Peers such as Lord Oakeshott.

‘It is farcical to be spraying out winter fuel payment cheques all around the Mediterranean.

‘The toast as they sip their sangrias in the sun at the Malaga golf club must be David Cameron and George Osborne.’

Surely more farcical to be spraying winter fuel payments round the House of Lords than to be penalising British pensioners for living in Europe?

Many of those pensioners would be entitled to far more in the way of benefits and pension top-ups if they were able to return to Britain – too many of them bought into the European dream, and are now trapped in penury in unsaleable apartments. Mocked by the MPs they still pay British tax to support – and denied a vote in elections.

Ms Raccoon is keeping warm!

Global Warming and British Pensioners. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Like a couple of days off?

Nothing divides the Serfs from the Masters so much as whether your working ‘week’ includes Saturday and Sunday or not.

In the Hospitality Industry, expecting a day off to occur at the ‘week-end’ would have them rolling on the floor laughing. Wanting a Bank Holiday free from work would reduce them to an apoplectic fit.

‘People need to eat at the week-end, as they do during the week, that is our business, we are there when our customers need us’.

In the Hospital Industry, the old rules of only the Serfs work on Saturdays and Sundays still apply.

Patients are 16 per cent more likely to die if admitted on a Sunday as opposed to a weekday. [...] Fluctuating staff levels are the major cause, particularly with consultants and senior staff being only ‘on call’ at weekends. The JRSM also suggests that limited access to diagnostics and a reluctance among patients to admit themselves during the week are contributing to the trend.

Even the Serfs are revolting:

Nurses working for NHS Direct have lodged a collective grievance after being told they will have to work more weekends in a bid to improve the organisation’s performance.

What on earth is so special about having your days off on a Saturday and Sunday? Maybe years ago when church attendance was more prolific – at present it is estimated that only 6% of the population attend church on a Sunday – and a third of them are past retirement age anyway!

We accept that it is important for people to eat on a Saturday and Sunday, we think the emergency services should be on standby; and God help any squaddie who trotted out the ‘but it’s Sunday, Sarge’ line – yet hospitals think that the answer ‘because it’s Sunday’ is perfectly acceptable as a reason to wait to diagnose or operate on your body?

Surely time that the class war is stamped out in Hospitals and Serfs and Masters both work staggered rotas?

And the GPs too.

What think you?

Something for the Week-end, Sir? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Mention the name Enoch Powell, and within minutes someone will reference his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. Arguably, and sadly, that speech did nothing to change the marching speed of the progressives.

It was not the only speech Enoch made, another, that had a dramatic effect on the British social history, is rarely mentioned.

Enoch was the Father of ‘Care in the Community’- indeed it might come as a surprise to you that this iconic piece of legislation, much beloved of the Left leaning liberals, was actually the result of determinedly right wing, heartless Tories, messing with the NHS.

Announcing the first wave of mental hospital closures at the Conservative Party Conference in 1961, Enoch Powell, then health minister famously evoked the brooding “water towers and chimneys” of the old asylums:

[I] imply nothing less than the elimination of by far the greater part of this country’s mental hospitals as they exist today. This is a colossal undertaking [...] There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside – the asylums which our forefathers built with such immense solidity to express the notions of their day.

I doubt that any other ‘notion of the Victorian day’ received as many hand wringing column inches as the many and varied tales of unmarried Mothers who had been incarcerated for life following the birth of a baby. As the Civil Rights movement and the Philosophy of Personalisation gathered pace throughout the 1960s, the notion that anybody could ever, ever, have thought they had the right to infringe on human dignity and self worth to the extent of dictating whether or not they could enjoy such a basic human pleasure as Sex took centre stage. It was unthinkable to the new waves of Social Workers emerging from the red brick universities.

Fast forward 50 years, and we are once again locking up the sexually promiscuous. There may even be some merit in this notion – why should children be born to those who have not sufficient intellect to care for them runs one argument. However, where this argument had merit in the days pre-1960 when birth control was not an option easily available, and the moral argument was strongly bound up in the wishes of a society that still trooped out to worship on a Sunday morning and avow their adherence to the bible, today we are using the ‘extension of autonomy’ argument to achieve the same result.

The ‘extension of autonomy’ argument, for those who have not been around this blog long enough to get bored to tears with my obsession with the Court of Protection, is the means by which the Labour Government passed the Mental Capacity Act 2005, a Machiavellian piece of legislation which allows the government to make decisions on behalf of those they consider are making unwise ‘choices’ in life. (Beware smokers and the obese….!)

Yes, they have been at it again. Deciding who can have Sex and who can’t.

As with the earlier ‘Too stupid for Sex’ case, the decision turns on the ability to understand the health risks, rather than on moral grounds or the risks of pregnancy.

Health authorities and councils have previously asked judges to force women to take contraception and undergo surgery which would prevent conception – but in the latest case, Mr Justice Hedley was asked by a local authority to declare that a young woman, referred to only as H, lacked mental capacity to consent to sexual relations. He ruled that:

Moreover, she clearly had difficulty saying no but that is not the same as understanding that she had a choice: she understood that but had found it very difficult to practice.

In my judgment one can do no more than this: does the person whose capacity is in question understand that they do have a choice and that they can refuse?

It is plain from the judgement that ‘H’ had a long and extensive sexual history that involved group sex, animals, and were possibly exploitative. At least one man had been convicted of attempted rape. However, Mr Justice Hedley has ruled that this was by choice, she ‘had difficulty’ in saying ‘NO’ but had the capacity to understand the concept.

You might think that this should have been the end of the case. You may wonder why ‘H’ is today under lock and key, deprived of her liberty, banned from having sex to the extent that should she do so, any man would automatically be charged with rape. You may even pause to wonder what is the difference between being locked up in a Victorian asylum for the moral sin of having sex whilst unmarried and being under lock and key in a Northern town for having sex whilst unmarried.  Indeed, thanks to this ruling, ‘H’ will never be able to marry, since consent to having sexual relations is a requisite part of the marriage act.

To so ponder would be to underestimate the skill of the legal wordsmiths.

For the consultant psychiatrist, Dr. Xenitidis, extended his investigation into ‘H’s capacity to understand, from ‘understanding the nature of choice in having sexual relations’ to ‘understanding the health risks associated with various sexual practices’. There ‘H’ floundered. She didn’t fully understand the health risks. As so many of us don’t – to wit the various government health pamphlets and advertisements foisted upon us.

Mr Justice Hedley has ruled that:

I have therefore come to the conclusion that H lacks capacity to consent to sexual relations on two specific bases: first, that she does not understand the health implications of sexual relations, a matter made more serious in this case by her history of multiple partners indiscriminately accommodated; and secondly, that she cannot deploy the information she has effectively into the decision making process.

As a direct result of ‘H’ not being au fait with current health information:

H is supervised on a 1:1 basis at all times whether in or out of the property and she is not free to leave it on any other basis. Those who may enter the property are also carefully regulated. It is not that H does not have much to do, (she has a number of outside activities including two part time jobs) but that she cannot do it without 1:1 supervision.

This highly regulated regime evokes two observations: first, that it clearly constitutes a deprivation of liberty and indeed a DOLS standard authorisation under Schedule A1 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is in force and its renewal will be sought; and secondly, the purpose of these restrictions is to prevent H from engaging in sexual relations (which she would otherwise willingly do) because she does not have capacity to consent and they will be potentially exploitative and damaging.

We have come full circle. Once again we are locking up young women (and men) who are having sex that the authorities disapprove of, the only difference being that we no longer use the Bible as the basis of our deliberations, now we pretend that they have had their ‘autonomy extended’, and that they have asked the law to impose the ‘self-discipline’ that it judges they should have imposed for themselves.

Too Stupid for Sex – Episode 2. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Huhne Dun It? A Liberal Judge Sums up in the Trial of a Liberal Politician. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Stripping Fred the Shred of his honour and vilifying Stephen Hester shows politicians at their most irrelevant.

An effective banking system is essential for a healthy economy. The free movement of capital in has funded the projects and industries which over the last 200 years have, with some obvious calamities along the way, driven the steady rise of living standards for the great majority of the citizens of the Western World. Until now, when there is a real prospect that for the first time in decades children may well be worse off than their parents, burdened by colossal government debt caused in part by profligate politicians and in part by a banking sector that had to be rescued from near meltdown.

This has been a bad week for bankers. Fred “the Shred” Goodwin has been returned to the status (as one wag had it) of “Fred the Pleb”. And Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland hired to try to clear up the mess made by Goodwin and others has “agreed” to fore go his “bonus” of a £963,000, which itself was half the original proposal. He will therefore have to struggle along on his meagre basic salary of £1.2 million a year for now.

What to make of these events?

I see both as symptoms of a banking system which is dangerously out of control and of a political class which is unable to grasp and confront the real issues and settles for grandstanding and posturing instead.

I heard an interesting observation last week from a commentator who pointed out that prior to the so called Big Bang deregulation of the City in 1986 a great deal of lending and speculation was carried on through syndicates of individuals, much as Lloyd’s syndicates are still organised today. That meant that if is all went wrong then the individuals involved paid the ultimate price of financial ruin; no new pony for Maisie, and little Tarquin would be hauled out of Eton and sent to the local “comp.” After Big Bang risk was always managed through corporate vehicles and the individual was thus insulated from the ultimate wreck should greed be matched with incompetence.

Of course the financial crisis which so nearly brought not just recession but deep depression is international, and was just one factor, but you have my point; The tendency to take risk increases.

Perhaps one of the most insightful takes on the crisis I have heard came from an interview with the author Robert Harris.

Harris’ recent book, “The Fear Index” deals with the shadowy world of hedge funds and the greed culture and importantly the technology which drives them.

In the book Harris sets up a plot in which a physicist is employed by a hedge fund to create a computer programme based on algorithms which predicts fear as a motivation for behaviour, and sells stocks “short” on the back of these predictions. Naturally the programme goes very well for a time, and billions are made, until something goes wrong….

Robert Harris is not only an exceptional writer, but an exceptional researcher, and as he explained in his interview, the real world hedge funds of which we hear, and which play such a huge role in the global markets in terms of trading debt, pretty much do this already. In fact they do employ a great number of very highly gifted academic physicists mathematicians and the like to analyse date and trends, create algorithms, and feed information into computers which trade with each other on a 24-7, 352 days a year basis, making trades in volumes and at speeds which human beings simply cannot match.

We are living in an automated worldwide betting exchange.

In the interview Harris explained that one of the many causes of the banking crisis was that the computers doing the trading had in effect been programmed to accept that there could not be a collapse of the property market in the United States. This had never happened before, and therefore logically would never happen. It therefore posed no risk. Until, of course, it did.

Harris was gloomy about the prognosis. It seemed to him, as it seems to me, that a system operating in such a way is sooner or later going to suffer another hiccup of gargantuan proportions.

The real issue which has to be confronted is that the principles of prudent banking balanced by aggressive and flexible lending for investment have been abandoned in favour of an international financial system which bears all the hall marks of being little more than institutionalised spread betting. This, combined with government debt, is the crisis of capitalism. And the two are intimately entwined, because government debt means governments are in thrall to the markets in which these funds operate.

What then of the Goodwin affair or Hester’s bonus in the light of all this?

So Fred Goodwin joins the ranks of luminaries such as Ceausescu, Mugabe, and Anthony Blunt by being stripped of his knighthood. I have no brief at all for Mr Goodwin, and indeed what little I know of him leads me to suspect that I would dislike him very much on a personal level, but what an utterly posturing petty and pointless irrelevant act. Not one penny of the £45 billion pounds of your and my money needed to bail out RBS from Fred’s follies is recovered, and no one is sanctioned for the grossly reckless strategies. His massive and ill justified pension remains untouched.

As contributor Matt Wardman has pointed out, there are plenty of others in politics who have dirtier linen to wash, and nothing is done.

What point was there in lumping Fred Goodwin in with the various other dictators, tyrants and traitors who have fallen out with the nation?

This act is simply a gesture by the political classes who so loved the City Casino and have so flagrantly let it run out of control. The same political classes that have been cosy-ing up to the banks for some time, and who granted “Sir” Fred his knighthood in the first place.

Far better to have let Fred keep his title as a lasting mocking irony, a bitter reminder that our Lords and Masters who actually hand out these titles are for the most part, short sighted, and greedy.

And what of Hester’s bonus? Should he have been pressured to give up?

Your writer’s view on this is that Hester is entitled to be paid what he was told he would get, not a penny more or less. If he was entitled to his “bonus” he should be paid it. If he was not it should not have been offered.

Whilst Ed Milliband may think he has scored a triumph by jumping on the nearest bandwagon in an outstanding piece of political hypocrisy, this may yet come back to bite him. If it was wrong for Hester to claim his “bonus” in the circumstances in which he did, then there must have been something wrong with the contract that was drawn up. Step forward Lord Myners, former Labour Treasury Minister. Myners claimed there was nothing mandatory about the bonus; it was a matter for the board, and it was for the government to block it.

Not good enough. No one, I think, would complain if a top man was hired, and a heavy salary paid to turn it around. £1.2 million a year is a heavy salary. I am tempted to say that if one is being paid a million pounds a year, then the issue of “incentivisation” should not really be on the table. And sources suggest that there is in fact a £500 million “bonus pool” due for distribution in the near future, with dozens of executives expected to receive more than £1 million each. And the true scale of Mr Hester’s potential bonuses remains entirely unclear; estimates of the various options and vary from £8 million and rising.

If Mr Hester is worth a huge pay packet, all well and good. I have no problem with him being paid £1.2 million a year on a flat rolling contract, with the right to leave if he wishes and the right to sack him if he makes a mess, but I think that should be enough. Frankly, I suspect that I could find a reasonably prudent and financially astute person to do it for that. The governor of the bank of England Mervyn King has a salary of £302,000 per year for example and has had his pay frozen.

I rather hope he is competent.

In the great scheme of things the Goodwin Knighthood and the Hester bonus are barely worth the title side shows. The real scandal is that the political classes are still subjugated to what they perceive as the magical money making power of the City.

Granting Goodwin a knighthood was akin to granting a loan shark an award for services to household budgets on council estates. Granting Hester such an open ended pay scheme was just unnecessary, stupid, criminally insane and immoral. It also highlights that there is an intense moral issue which the government is not addressing.

We are not “all in this together”. There is a political and financial elite which is immune from the tribulations of the ordinary people; tribulations which this very elite has so often engineered with recklessness in the first place.

Fundamentally the Goodwin and Hester debacle tell us only this; politicians have been hypnotized by the glamour and apparent wealth of the international financial markets, but they still fail to grasp the real problems or take a balanced view. They seem to be taking no action to address real concerns about the structure and practices of the international financial market. They do not perceive that there are wider moral issues about the way some tiny sections of society prosper to obscene levels, seemingly without merit. They occasionally flail haplessly at the leaves of evil, but the roots are untouched.

Gildas the Monk

Bankers, bonuses, bandwagons, the crisis of capital and the failure of government is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Not for Vicky Pryce the tried and tested methods of revenge; prawns in the curtain rail, dialing the speaking clock in Lagos, nor even the more exotic version perfected by Lady Sarah Moon: cutting off one arm of all his suits and delivering his wine to grateful villagers. She resisted the potentially criminal ‘Bobbit’ manoeuvre.

No, the lady has class. She merely let it be known how much she had enjoyed being a panellist at a December 2003 debate held by the London School of Economics – and the leisurely dinner held afterwards.

It was for others to speculate as to how she had managed to be held responsible, and thereby collected points on her licence, for driving a car owned by the couple which was seen speeding towards their home, co-incidentally from the direction of Stanstead airport where Chris Huhne had recently landed on a flight from Strasbourg.

Should Vicky be convicted of perverting the course of justice, along with Chris, she will still emerge victorious in the annals of ‘Perfect Revenge’ as the victim of his perfidy. Her many friends in the Liberal-Democrat party will have done all the work for her.

Her political skills deserve a more substantial challenge than merely landing Carina Trimingham with the Booby prize of the year. Perhaps a safe seat could be found for her?

*Ms Trimingham’s ongoing case (IHJ/11/0860) against the Daily Mail whereby she claims damages for ‘invasion of privacy’ because the Daily Mail published pictures and stories concerning her previous very public wedding to a Ms Julie Bennett was amended by application on the 14th December 2011. It should explode nicely in the tabloids around the time that Chris Huhne can expect this one to die down…that’s what happens when you leave your wife and run off with a bisexual PR expert.

*Update: The charges will be ‘Perverting the Course of Justice’ against Huhne and Pryce. 16th February is the court date.

Climate Change as Huhne Speeds towards Dock. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Skunk: A person regarded as obnoxious or despicable.

Sir Fred has been shredded.

But it was done with considerable input from a political lynch mob, and as a symbol of the banksters (= banker + gangsters), and I’m left with more questions than answers.

Was it a correct decision, and was it made on a correct basis, and should it apply to Peers as well as Knights, and where should we draw the lines, if any?

Let me try a few examples.

Should Sir Richard Branson have his Knighthood quashed because he launched his career with a significant Purchase Tax fraud, for which he was never charged.

Does it make much difference that he’s raised significant charitable funds, in addition to his own profile, since, and built a major business?

Should Lord Hanningfield be expelled for having been locked up for 9 months for False Accounting?

What about Lord Paul, who overclaimed £38,000 but paid it back?

What about non-financial offenders, such as  Lord Bell, who masturbated (without any requests, it should be noted) to several women through his bathroom window in Hampstead in 1977, and was convicted of indecency?

Or Baroness Uddin, who lied about her circumstances, but was found guilty by the House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee, rather than by a Court of Law? Her intention was to return to the Lords, so that her fiddled expenses would be paid off from more expenses claimed from the taxpayer.

Should former Ministers, who have been found to have fiddled significant sums, be prevented from receiving the traditional Life Peerage which comes up with the rations for Cabinet  Expenses?

Jacqui Smith, for example, admitted on Question Time that she had disgraced herself with her excessive claims for £116,000, and stated that she would be unlikely to go to the Lords.

And what about more trivial offences? Should shoplifting have cost Antony Worrall-Thompson a Knighthood if he had one?

Alistair Darling that we need a process, and one outside rough and tumble politics, to the risk of this becoming a method of political assassination of opponents:

“I’m not here to defend Sir Fred… I just think we’re getting into awful trouble here if we go after people on a whim and we don’t have a clear set of principles against which we can judge people, it’s not right.”

But where do we draw the lines and how do we define the principles?

If things stay as they are in the Lords, my poster child for expulsion from the Peerage is none of the above, but Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn.

To my eye Martin’s most serious offences are not his own highly questionable expenses, nor his attacks on individual MPs, nor that he behaved as a bastard child of Captain Mainwaring and Compo.

His most serious offence was to facilitate corruption of the processes within Parliament, from his vigorous defence of the ability of MPs to hide their expenses, to his allowing officials to shred receipts for MP Expenses from 2001 to 2004 while High Court action about access to Expenses Receipts was in full swing.

Looking through the list above, I don’t care about Knighthoods, and I’m tempted to suggest a scorched earth solution to the Lords.

Or should we solve it by starting from scratch with an elected Lords, so that the whole apparatus of determining acceptability can be swept away.

Which would allow crooks can be elected to the Lords on the same basis that they can currently be elected to the Commons.

Hmmm.

Skunk as a Lord? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

An absolutely barking quietly eccentric neighbour of mine was going home one day when he spied a baby buzzard sitting by the roadside. He thought he’d take it home with him; as you do. Once at home, he had great enjoyment out of training it to fly back to him for the reward of a piece of chicken liver. So proud was he of his achievement, that when his solicitor invited him out to lunch to discuss some skullduggery entirely innocent caper that he’d unfortunately naively become involved in,  he took the bird with him in a cardboard box.

There it sat quietly as they perused the menu in one of our famed local  gastronomic restaurants (when you are a wealthy client, solicitors round here do invite you to lunch – and expect you to pay!). The other side of the restaurant, two clients were watching and quietly drooling as the waiter approached their table with a covered silver salver. With great fanfare, the waiter lifted the lid and lowered the dish, the better that his clients could appreciate the thinly sliced Fois Gras, interspersed with truffles, that they had planned to consume.

OK, it wasn’t chicken liver, but chicken, schmicken, goose, schmose, it’s all the same to a hungry Buzzard. He flapped his mighty wings and swooped low across the restaurant, scattering wine and customers alight; collected the Fois Gras between his talons and settled on the corner of the buffet to chomp his way merrily through it.

How was he to know that the Fois Gras owners were two senior policemen, or come to that, anything to do with the French legislation preventing possession of wild birds?

Which is how my neighbour and his solicitor came to share a cell for the next 18 hours, and eventually share a criminal record and an entirely reasonable bill for 3,000 euros for possession of said wild bird, and damage caused thereby.

I was reminded of this totally useless shaggy dog bird tale, when I read of the trials and tribulations of Darrell Littlewood, former owner of Scarborough Football Club. When Scarborough Football Club, ahem, failed to make any money, our Darrell thought up a new venture. Charging people to find out if they were paying too much council tax.

In the first prosecution of its type in the country, 45-year-old Littlewood, now of Dewsbury, admitted 14 charges involving 12 complainants, five of whom were too elderly or infirm to attend the court hearing.

Bradford Crown Court heard that Henry’s firm had sent out misleading flyers, failed to make applications on behalf of clients and had not made refunds to people who had cancelled their contracts within a seven-day “cooling-off” period.

Serious stuff. It demands a top flight barrister. The sort of man trusted to prosecute in serious fraud committed by bank managers. The sort of man who might prosecute in cases involving Premier League Footballers. A “Premier League” barrister indeed. The sort of man who is highly thought of by the Jewish community.

What could go wrong? Well, you could end up with your trial being delayed whilst this paragon of virtue who is supposed to be defending you gets banged up himself  for defrauding his chambers of £81,000.

Then you could get even more unwelcome publicity whilst questions were asked in parliament on Tuesday as to how come convicted criminals are allowed to act as officers of the court.

Mr Mulholland said: “I was astonished when I found that a barrister had been allowed to carry on defending people having been convicted of a serious criminal offence. This is a ridiculous loophole that must be closed.

“The fact that [this] case was actually delayed, whilst his own barrister’s criminal case was heard, is a farce.

“Then for David Friesner to toddle back to defend Mr Henry [akaLittlewood] , as a convicted criminal himself, is just extraordinary.”

That David Friesner could quite possibly have ended up defending, or even prosecuting, in the court of Mr Justice Singh is even more ridiculous.

David Friesner

Friesner, 46, appeared on January 12 at Leeds Crown Court, where he admitted stealing £81,500 from his own chambers. He will be sentenced on February 10 when he is likely to be jailed.

Takes One to Know One. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

What a delicious pickle the BBC and the left wingers have got themselves into. In a desperate attempt to portray the hardship that the proposed benefit cap will inflict on the most vulnerable in society, they have managed to enshrine smoking in the unofficial list of ‘human rights’ that tax payers must work to finance, and without which the vulnerable will slide into a pit of despair…..

It all started so well. Their researchers had found them a family in deepest Wales who weren‘t living in an eight bed-roomed mansion in Bishops Avenue, but would still be ‘forced to move’ thanks to the benefit cap. So unfair.

The graphics department spent all day conjuring up a natty little diagram showing the hardship they would face if they were forced to cut £4,284.80 a year from their £30,284.80 benefits package to comply with the cap.

Then the project was handed over to a ‘safe pair of hands’, one Julian Joyce, to flesh out the words.

First establish that their reliance on benefits is entirely unavoidable…..why husband Raymond has been out of work for eleven solid years. He’s a software writer. An IT expert. Ah, in Educational software, and for eleven years there has been no call for Educational software in deepest North Wales; he has broadband of course, paid for by the tax payer, and he couldn’t possibly be expected to retrain to write Agricultural software, or any other sort of software could he? He’s an Educational software writer.

Then again, his wife suffers from bi-polar disorder, so she can’t work…..like wot Frank Bruno, Catherine Zeta Jones, Florence Nightingale, Bill Oddie do…need I go on?

Undeterred, Julian ploughs on, proving with every word just why this deserving family shouldn’t have four grand cut from their benefits -

“We have three teenage boys living in one room that barely fits their bunks and a chair-bed in it and two teenage daughters in a smaller room that barely fits their bunks in it.

“In the third bedroom we have ourselves and a five-year-old boy.”

Julian thinks they will have to chose between ‘heating and eating’ next year. Nice soundbite Julian. Pat on the back lad.

Then a sharp eyed reader took a closer look at the graphics – something Julian really should have done.

Turns out the ‘essential food bill’ contains receipts for 24 cans of lager a week, 200 cigarettes, and a large pouch of tobacco.

Which neatly add up to more than the proposed benefit cut…

Cue 1260 comments and rising asking why the BBC are supporting Raymond’s ‘right to smoke’ at our expense. You can’t add to the comments sadly – the BBC have just given in and closed the comments down!

BBC supports the ‘right’ to smoke… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

‘Fat is a Feminist Ishooo’ ran the old joke. Many a true word spoken in jest.

It is no secret that I have long believed Lynne Featherstone to be the only Liberal-Democrat worthy of being allowed anywhere near Government, so it was a disappointment this morning to read her latest offering on the subject of ‘body image’ and her reasons for supporting government intervention in the images we are allowed to compare ourselves to.

Every day people are confronted with images of the ‘perfect’ body that just don’t reflect the diverse society we live in. These unrealistic images set an impossible standard, potentially damaging self esteem and crushing confidence.

People have been confronted with idealised images since man first figured out how to paint on a cave wall. Some were daft enough to paint their dark skin with lead in an effort to conform to this idealised image – others quietly buried them and learnt the lesson. It didn’t require Government intervention.

Probably the best thing this Government has done is NOT to offer to replace all those Silicone breast implants. A salutary lesson is being absorbed out there in teenage land. But Lynne is swimming against this tide of sanity on the subject of body image. She believes:

that ‘as a government minister it is my responsibility to address them’.

She wants to see an updated Governmental control of cave paintings, presumably depicting dark skinned women for the light skinned to risk their lives roasting themselves to conform to, light skinned women for the dark skinned to continue painting themselves with lead in a similar effort, and a scattered few depicting leprosy so that some daft bint can chop off her nose to emulate.

I want to see a wider spectrum of body shapes represented in popular culture, to include all ages, all shapes, all sizes and ethnicities. This is something that we need to work with industry to achieve.

It’s not just confined to women of course, ’10% of boys said they would start taking steroids to build muscle if they were unhappy with the way they looked’. Noooo, how are we going to counter that? Are we going to insist that every Premier league football match has at least three overweight middle aged men puffing round the pitch so that teenage boys shouldn’t be confronted by a ‘relentless diet’ of images of bodily perfection? Shall we have Formula One cars adapted to hold the Paraplegic so that those in an iron lung are no longer forced to solely gaze at the snake hipped and nimble miniature men best suited to sitting astride a mobile petrol can?

Where are you planning to stop Lynne? Repainting Ruben’s idealised women in every stately home? Banning the reprinting of Victorian adverts showing women with impossibly small waists? Or is this just a back door attempt to introduce censorship into modern publishing?

What puzzles me is that you claim all these surveys show ’50% of women feel under pressure to look good at all times and 46% of women feel under pressure to lose weight’ and yet each time I turn on the Television I am confronted by acres of rolling flesh in every direction belonging to the 54% who obviously don’t feel obliged to lose weight. It would seem that the great British public is only too well equipped and dealing only too successfully with ‘the pressure to lose weight’. Is somebody forcing them to eat against their will?

All the major clothing manufacturers are stealthily increasing their idea of the ‘standard sizes’ – with the result that if you order something in a size 12 on-line it turns up fully equipped to house a family of Kosovan refugees.

I want more people to recognise that emotional qualities – character and individuality – are equally expressive of beauty as narrow, physical appearance.

That would seem to be happening very successfully already. Every time I see one of these lard mountains, male or female, they appear to be accompanied by a raft of children – suggesting that more than sufficient people of the opposite sex are overlooking their lack of compliance with ‘idealised’ beauty.

Jo Swinson MP has added her ten penn’orth. “Low self-esteem, depression and eating disorders are all increasing, along with unhealthy behaviours: half of young people have been on a diet”

Could that be something to do with the increase in Government interference in what we eat, when we eat, how we eat? The constant ‘nannying’ adverts telling us what children should have in their lunch-box, how many green vegetables we should eat every day?

I see no evidence that this Commission is looking at Governmental behaviour as the defining influence on alleged body image anxiety – merely seeking a back door route to apply Feminist censorship regulation to the Advertising industry, Health and fitness sector, Media, Youth organisations, and the Fashion and beauty sector.

Do find yourself something useful to do Lynne, there’s a good girl. Stop meddling. We elect to buy goods from manufacturers because we like the way they advertise them – if we didn’t, we wouldn’t buy. Do you really think I’m likely to buy ice-cream from the two pictured above this post? Really?

Body Image and the Feminist Agenda. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Not a post I expected to be writing this afternoon; it was to be about Laurie’s interesting  comments on Channel 4 News last night.

However, that’s been trumped, and this is now about online harrassment.

One of the Youtube video’s of one of Laurie’s TV appearances over the weekend received this comment from a Twitter user called @regul, which account has now been deleted:

Brian Whelan, of Yahoo Ireland, who was prominent in summer 2011 as one of the bloggers who helped expose writer Johann Hari as a fraud, rapidly tracked down the commenter from his supposedly ‘anonymous’ account name and other breadcrumbs which were lying around the internet – Facebook accounts, Amazon accounts and others, and posted an article.

This is not particularly difficult to do in most cases.

While not an active death threat, this comment is utterly unacceptable, and seems to me to come within the category of online harassment, defined in the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act:

Prohibition of harassment.

(1) A person must not pursue a course of conduct—
(a) which amounts to harassment of another, and
(b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other.and would come within the category of stalking if repeated.

There is also a Civil Remedy (i.e. damages) available under the same Act:

3  Civil Remedy

(1) An actual or apprehended breach of section 1 may be the subject of a claim in civil proceedings by the person who is or may be the victim of the course of conduct in question.

(2) On such a claim, damages may be awarded for (among other things) any anxiety caused by the harassment and any financial loss resulting from the harassment.

To my eye it may also qualify as an offence under the Public Order Act 1986:

4A Intentional harassment, alarm or distress.

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he—
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

There’s been something of a campaign over the last several months, particularly in the New Statesman, particularly for harassment of female writers.

I’d like to see this kind of offence prosecuted or at least reported to the police, and I’m in support of Laurie should she choose to do so, although there are also other remedies available, such as in this case a report to @regul’s University.

There can be opposition to a writer, satirical comparisons, demonstrations of incompetence, insults, even expressions of contempt. In my book those are all acceptable, even when officious law makers try to regulate them away. This one is way over any line of acceptability.

My support is not entirely altruistic, because of hoary old myths which have become attached to the anti-harassment campaign.

Julia Hobsbawm has written that the key problem is not misogyny but anonymity:

The key issue here is not actually misogyny – although it is clearly prevalent, on the increase with particularly violent and criminal intent, one writer having both her home address and a threat to rape her published in a single comment  – but anonymity.

This is wrong, and I wouldn’t completely agree that it is misogyny either, but that is one for another day. Brian Whelan has demonstrated in this case that anonymity is much harder to maintain than a lot of people think, and it is only thought to be a problem rather than being a significant real one.

It is possible to be difficult to find online, but it usually takes so much effort and so many adminstration overheads in maintenance of accounts, emails, diversions, proxies and the rest as to not be worthwhile. And if it is worthwhile, then treating an offence seriously – by involving the legal authorities – makes anonymity even harder to maintain, as most internet companies will comply with legal demands from Police or Courts.

Julia has also exhumed the old “Mainstream Media Professionals Good; Amateurs Bad” hobby-horse and taken it out for a canter round the stableyard:

The hundreds of thousands of words a day written by paid commentators has been hard-won and designated, paid-for editing and sub-editing time is devoted to it. What has not happened in a decade in which the public’s voice has been used to add riposte to comment is the emergence of much new prized comment voice. Why not? Because of its quality as well as brevity.

This is quite a bold claim in the year of Hari and Hackgate, and it does not deserve house room for even ten seconds.

In addition to the paid media having more than it’s fair share of fools with wage packets, many of the recent crops of good new journalists start out as amateurs blogging. Many excellent writers also remain as unpaid or occasionally paid commentators.

But, while they are attached to a loud campaign about harassment, these myths may attain some traction.

So I’d like to see some of these harassment cases prosecuted to begin to close down the problem, and our day by day freedoms left alone, rather than having a lot of hot air produced about harassment, and our politicians introducing ill though-out new restrictions.

Tomorrow I may have a go at Laurie’s accuracy, reliability, competence, or sensationalism.

Today she has my full support.

In support of Laurie Penny is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In my good friend Dr. Fraud’s Psychotic Wagehike Development theory, which extrapolated his Bonus Envy thesis, the ‘too late to cancel’ stage (approximately 3.5 to 6 months before the Olympics are held) is the first period of development in which the Union focus is primarily on the wallet area.

Prior to this stage, the Grabitformedido (broadly defined by Fraud as the primary motivating energy force within the mind) focuses on other physiological areas. For instance, in the oratory stage, Grabitformedido tends to concentrate on the desire to strike, boycott, and threaten to work-to-rule.

The theory suggests that the Bonus becomes the organ of principal interest to all classes in the ‘too late to cancel’ stage. This becomes the catalyst for a series of pivotal events in wage-hike development. These events, known as the ‘Obscene Bonus’ for Bankers, and the ‘Ground Breaking deal’ for Union members, result in significantly different outcomes for each category because of differences in media coverage.

Thus Stephen Hester’s £963,000 share bonus on top of his £1.2 million annual salary – an increase of 80% – is an ‘obscene bonus’ for merely taking over the running of a complicated and near bankrupt banking system.

Whereas, pro rata, Bob Crow’s Train drivers, driving fully automated trains, receiving an extra £2,500 for the three weeks of the games – an increase of 120% – becomes:

“a truly groundbreaking deal raising the bar in the industry and putting £2,500 in our members’ pockets as a reward for the extra workload and pressure they will carry throughout the Olympic and Paralympics period. The deal also reflects the hard work of our negotiating team and shows yet again the organising strategy of the RMT delivers the best pay and conditions time and time again.”

Fraudian theory is a wonderful way in which to view these apparent discrepancies.

Bonus Envy. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Martin Porter QC, Champion of the 'vulnerable'.

There is a presumption amongst the guerrilla army of neo-Marxist, Guardian reading, sanctimonious commuters known as cyclists that the only motor driven vehicle they should be forced to share our roads with is State owned.

Livingstone’s Bendy buses, running to a bureaucratically decided route and timetable are OK, but those owned by freewheeling, road tax paying capitalists should be crushed in a government scrap yard.

In their luminous jackets, lycra far-too-shorts, and coal scuttle helmets, they weave self righteously in front of irate motorists, joyously reducing the traffic to a snail’s pace, hurling blistering comments on the parentage of motorists over their left shoulder.

Should the motorised traffic finally come to a standstill, one of those inconveniences that only affect the petrol powered, traffic lights at red for instance, they rear up like the Lone Ranger on Silver and mount the pavement, take off the wrong way down a one-way street, or scrape their way down the inside of your 4 x 4.

Woe betide the motorist who dares to suggest that something might be amiss with their own parentage, or offer suggestions as to how their life might be prematurely shortened. All is not fair between Porsche and Pedal power.

Especially when that Pedal Power turns out to be a humourless barrister on two wheels.

Pedal Power, in the form of Martin Porter QC, having successfully held up motorist Scott Lomas on the A315 near Hounslow for some miles, was apparently ‘harassed, alarmed and distressed’ when Mr Lomas leant out of his car window and said ‘do that again and I will *ucking kill you’. You can imagine how such language would ‘alarm and distress’ a barrister with some ten years experience of working with those on the wrong side of the law.

Pausing only to have a fit of the eco-fanatical vapours, (and probably a quick swig of tofu flavoured yogurt) Martin Porter QC checked that the web camera fitted in his helmet had been working and hurried down to the local police station to demand that Mr Lomas was charged with ‘using threatening words or behaviour’.

Unfortunately he was attended upon by a sane policeman who declined to take the matter any further.

Undaunted, Porter complained directly to the Crown Prosecution Service.

“I am pleased justice has now been done and that the Crown Prosecution Service had the moral fibre to reverse the Metropolitan Police’s attempts to drop this case notwithstanding the strength of the evidence.”

Who would have suspected that it required moral fibre to persecute prosecute motorists?

A helping hand from a fellow member of the Cycling Mafia does no harm it transpires.

“I emphasise that this case would have got nowhere if it had not eventually landed on the desk of a Crown Prosecutor highly endowed with both integrity and competence. I am grateful to prosecuting counsel (a cyclist it transpires!) who dealt with the case today both efficiently and courteously.”

Treacley words Mr Porter!

The price to Mr Lomas of venting his feelings about being held up by our Lycra clad barrister?

A stonking total of 565.00. That’s on top of the road tax he pays to maintain the road that Porter believes should belong to him and his fellow *rick cyclists alone.

Ah, diddums, Mr Porter, did the big bad motorist say some naughty words?

In case anyone thinks I am being unnecessarily harsh on the eco-loons on wheels, I would just point out that even the largest cycling charity, London Cycling Campaign, has back-pedaled away from involvement with some of the highly politicised multi-spoked Marxists that infest our streets, calling their tactics ‘too forceful’. Recently, 80 of the little cross-bar fanatics blocked the rush hour traffic at King’s Cross for an hour, cycling in circles ‘and tinkling their bells’ (sweet) to mark the death of one of their number and demand yet more motorists be forced off the road in retribution.

*rick Cyclists is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Labour’s publicity sous-chef, Kenny Young, expert on all matters Glaswegian, must be whistling softly through his teeth this morning. A narrow escape.

A scant few hours before the thinned ranks of the faithful turned up in Castlerigg to hear their beloved ‘tipped to be a future leader’ Miliband expound on his theory of denuding the country of the ‘have and the have nots’ – another Labour ‘tipped to be a future leader’ was being hauled away in ignominy to spend the night in Stewart Street Police Station.

In the early hours of this morning, just 500 yards from Miliband’s speech venue today, that rising star of transparency, fairness, and equality for all, Steven Purcell, was celebrating the news he would not face charges over claims of cronyism and drug abuse. The Crown Office announced on January 20 there was “insufficient evidence of criminality at this time” in Purcell’s case and “no further action is currently appropriate”.

Being the ‘misunderstood’ soul that he is, Steven celebrated this with 50 friends at the expensive Lorne Hotel in Glasgow’s West End. The night ended, as it often does with Steven, with an ‘emotional speech’ where he claimed to be a drama queen. He then left to continue the celebrations with an unnamed man in his bachelor flat. Things got out of hand, and by 5.30am, both men were claiming to have been assaulted. Neither man needed hospital attention, despite an ambulance being called.

At 7.30 this morning he was wandering ‘tired and with sunken eyes’, like the ghost of Glasgow past, towards the scene of Miliband’s hoped for triumph today.

The politician, who left his wife and came out as gay in 2006, quit his council post in March 2010.

He checked into a rehab clinic, then went to Australia and Ireland, where he admitted in an interview to taking cocaine and having a serious booze problem.

A miss is as good as a mile for Calamity Kenny. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

From the thrumming intellectual engine at the heart of the Occupy movement, earlier this month:

(Davane)

I just wanted to point out that I found the Sack Boris Campaign website the other day, and took the opportunity to donate some cash to get some Sack Boris Oyster card wallets. A friend of mine works in the TFL Lost Property Office, so I am thinking of “accidentally losing” a few and asking if he has found them.

…

With the TFL fare increase, and the state of the economy, one way to give back to the community might be to look into handing out free PAYG oyster cards with the wallets. We could top them up with say £5 each, and let people hand in their old PAYG oyster cards (and wallets, naturally) to be topped up and donated. That’s a free day’s fare in and out of the city, to visit Occupy London.

We all know TFL/Boris did this to try and prevent support for Occupy London, by pricing the poor off of public transport, and thus limiting their access to the camp and the facilities that they provide. We shouldn’t let them get away with this. Instead, we should turn it to our advantage.

(No exaggeration of their own importance here. Oh no.)

(Hairyloon)

Really!?

(Davane)

Okay, maybe this is just a conspiracy theory of mine, but fares are something Boris has direct control over, and if you have a registered Oyster card, then your journeys are tracked, so TFL can see how many people are travelling to the sites closest to the Occupy camps. You don’t think they would be monitoring that sort of information?

…

In fact, the Oyster card itself, while convenient, is also a thinly disguised means of tracking people’s movements. This is WHY they offer a discount on journeys made using Oyster – they want people to use Oyster, so they can track what people are doing. Now, it has always been my philosophy that you cannot hide what you are doing, rather you should always act and be prepared as if you are being watched. In my case, I generally don’t care whether people see me or not. If something needs to be done, I will do it, and it doesn’t matter if I am being watched or not.

(I have a certain sympathy for the ‘tracking people’s movements’ concern, but more because I think that such a large database will be likely to be cocked-up, misinterpreted in error out of context in ways which will harm people, and possibly stolen.)

…

Maybe I should run for London Mayor this year? As an Occupy candidate?

(Hairyloon)

Go for it.

Until you played your card as a conspiracy theorist, all of your posts have been pretty sensible: even I might have voted for you… Except I am not registered in London.

(Davane)

I think most conspiracies are a matter of perception myself – There are many theories, and I am a theorist. It comes from being a psycho-sociologist. It’s just that sometimes they happen to be about conspiracies. All the good conspiracy theories do actually have sense in them, which is why it can be so hard to work out whether they are true or not. My attitude is to always keep an open mind and an open eye. I come across a lot of interesting information all the time.

Watch out, Ken.

You may have competition in the mad Mayor of London stakes.

(* Pyscho-Sociology: the study of subjects, issues, and problems common to psychology and sociology. )

Photo credit: Sugarmelon.com.

Occupy Psycho-Sociology is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Wigs Maketh Not Wisdom is a post from: Anna Raccoon

“Millions of cancer carers missing out on benefits“

I shall overlook, on this occasion, the oxymoron of the Telegraph headline – they go on to say that 5% of the 1.1 million cancer sufferers in the UK ARE claiming benefits, which leaves just a shade over one million – not “millions’ who are not claiming.

No, what has really got my goat, on a subject which is close to my heart, was the conclusion which has been drawn from MacMillan’s survey.

The figures could explain why 46 per cent of carers, who help cancer sufferers by administering medication, assisting around the house and offering emotional support, suffer from mental health problems including stress, anxiety and depression, the charity said.

I’m all for MacMillan helping those in financial need to access the complicated benefits system, which after all, only provides the magnificent sum of £55.55 a week (providing you are not already in receipt of a pension or other income….) but to suggest that all the stress, anxiety and depression of caring for someone you love who happens to be suffering from cancer will magically disappear if you just sign up to be a paid State employee ‘doing a job’ is madness.

Apparently, if I was in the UK, I would automatically qualify for weekly DLA of £129.45 and £55.55 for Mr G – irrespective of my financial circumstances – i.e. whether I actually needed that money or not! – and Macmillan think I should be claiming it.

Why?

The key problem, Macmillan said, could be that only four in ten people who look after cancer sufferers identify themselves as “carers”, meaning they may be unaware of the support they are entitled to, or reluctant to claim it.

Or put another way – 6 out of 10 people are quietly getting on with looking after someone they care for without bothering to find out about their ‘entitlement’ to turn their act of love into a job as a State drone. That is not to denigrate those who need the financial support, they deserve all the help they can get – and they are likely to get far more help if Macmillan don’t drain the national handbag by putting forward the theory that failing to ask for financial help that they don’t need is somehow the key to avoiding the perfectly natural anxiety and depression that comes from watching someone you care about go through Hell.

Cancer is a terrifying illness; partly because of its historic reputation as the harbinger of a slow and painful death. It is not death most of us fear, I certainly don’t – but dying. Cancer itself is a relatively natural occurrence, the bodies response to certain stimuli. It has always been around, probably always will be. We may be able to cure some cancers, we are unlikely to eradicate its occurrence altogether.

Quite why the State has chosen to award Cancer special financial status in this way – almost a case of ‘whoopee, you’ve hit the jackpot, pass Go and collect your bonus’ is hard to ascertain. Why Macmillan would want to remove probably the only consolation available to anyone with cancer – the knowledge that their last months will be made tolerable by the presence of someone who will put up with all the vomit, crap, and tears simply because they love you and are acting from the heart with a person who is merely carrying out their duty and collecting their ‘entitlement’ is a total mystery.

Macmillan should stick to what they do best – counselling those who need it, supporting those who need it, and leave the social engineering of stubbing out family values and replacing them with State entitlements to the Fabians.

Another Assault on Family Values. is a post from: Anna Raccoon