Under Saturday morning Extreme Trivia, I’ve just been reminded of two Twitter incidents from way back in 2009.

Firstly, Armando Iannucci’s reaction when he was listed as a “Guest Contributor” by Labour List for this article:

Who is the twat-thumper who put me down as a 'contributor' to the Government's weep-rag LabourList? I want his or her cock for a salad.

May 7, 2009 16:18 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Aiannucci

Armando Iannucci

Secondly, Nick Lezard the Guardian / Observer’s reflector-in-circles, on why Twitter is only for:

idiots with a steadily decreasing attention span

Nick joined Twitter last week as @nicklezard.

Nicholas Lezard: So you’re eating lunch? Fascinating

Where does one start with the momentous news that Stephen Fry was considering leaving Twitter? Apparently someone, although broadly sympathetic to Fry in general – no, better, someone who admired and adored him – complained that some of his tweets, as I gather they are called, were “a bit… boring.” Fry took hurt, and announced his intentions before having a re-think.

Now, I have nothing against Stephen Fry, although one questions the wisdom of someone with an easily-bruised ego telling 800,000 people that he’s eating a sandwich and expecting every one of them to be thrilled by the news, but I certainly have something against Twitter.

The name tells us straightaway: it’s inconsequential, background noise, a waste of time and space. Actually, the name does a disservice to the sounds birds make, which are, for the birds, significant, and for humans, soothing and, if you’re Messiaen, inspirational. But Twitter? Inspirational?

No – it’s inspiration’s opposite. The online phenomenon is about humanity disappearing up its own fundament, or the air leaking out of the whole Enlightenment project. In short, I feel about Twitter the way some people feel about nuclear weapons: it’s wrong. It makes blogging look like literature. It’s anti-literature, the new opium of the masses.

Its unreflective instantaneousness encourages neurotic behaviour in both the tweeters and the twatted (seriously, the Americans have proposed that “twatted” should be the past participle of “tweet”, which is the only funny thing about the whole business); it encourages us in the delusion that our random thoughts, our banal experiences, are significant. It is masturbatory and infantile, and the amazing thing is that people can’t get enough of it – possibly because it IS masturbatory and infantile.

Answering the question: “Why do so many people seem to like Twitter?” Twitter itself does not say: “Because people are idiots with a steadily decreasing attention span, and 140 characters is pretty much all anyone has space for in their atrophied brains any more,” but instead, “People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple.”

Twitter asks one question: “What are you doing?” (It also adds, in the next paragraph, that “Twitter’s core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features”, and I hope that clears everything up for you.)

Oh God, that it should have come to this. Centuries of human thought and experience drowned out in a maelstrom of inconsequential rubbish (and don’t tell me about Trafigura – one good deed is not enough, and an ordinary online campaign would have done the trick just as well). It is like some horrible science-fiction prediction come to pass: it is not just that Twitter signals the end of nuanced, reflective, authoritative thought – it’s that no one seems to mind.

And I suspect that it’s psychologically dangerous. We have evolved over millions of years to learn not to bore other people with constant updates about what we’re doing (I’m opening a jar of pickles … I’m picking my nose … I’m typing out a message on Twitter …) and we’re throwing it all away. Twitter encourages monstrous egomania, and the very fact that Fry used Twitter to announce that he was leaving Twitter shows his dependence on it. He was never going to give it up. He’s addicted to it.

(There’ll be a real post along soon.)

How Twitter Times Change 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

Mark Zuckerberg had it all.

Most successful social media company in the world.

Umpteen-billionaire in his 20s.

Beautiful girlfriend.

And presumably a Philippe Starck Lemon Squeezer.

And then he got the Hippy, Hippy Shake, and innoculated himself with Social Management-Speak:

Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.

By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.

….

We believe building tools to help people share can bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.

By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.

Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.

Ugh.

I would print some more,  but there’s 2200 words of the damned thing.

A punt on which to put your pension?

Cartoon Credit: Gaping Void, 2007.

Zuckerberg was on a roll … is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Today is February 2 and it marks Groundhog’s Day, the annual celebration of Marmota monax‘s interaction with his shadow.

What’s that got to do with this blog you ask. Well the connection is raccoon. For raccoon is a word from the Algonquian language, 3000-years old. Now it’s true that Groundhog is not an Algonquian word, but the other common name for these fat little animals is Woodchuck. Just to confuse the issue they don’t chuck or throw wood around though they do hog the ground. That’s because Woodchuck is the anglicized version of the Algonquian word wuchak. As English likes to nick words from other languages, there are a few other words taken from the Algonquian language, such as chipmunk, caribou, hickory, squash, hominy, moose, and opossum.

Groundhog Day is a post from: Anna Raccoon

So bus drivers aren’t allowed to be friendly any more. That seems to be my impression of the news that Brighton and Hove‘s bus drivers have been banned from uttering friendly greetings. Not just told to only say such words to their regular customers or to their friends, but actually banned. It is now verboten to say words the words love, babe or darling on a bus. What hasn’t been mentioned is what the result of uttering such words is. Is it a verbal reprimand, a written warning or the sack. Seeing how other companies run by faceless bureaucrats act I wouldn’t be surprised if is the last case.

Considering that normally bus drivers are a surly lot, to have a driver greet you in a friendly manner is a nice thing to have. Not something to push down and extinguish.

But how has it come about? Have loads of people being continually complaining about the friendly attitudes of Bright and Hove’s bus drivers and how it upsets and offends them that they are treated as people rather than cattle on the bus. No. It’s a very simple reason. One person complained. Yep, one. 1. Uno. yksi. один. This one person of the female persuasion felt so offended by being treated nicely that she actually took pen to paper (or more likely email) and took the effort to write to the company to complain. She considered that being called something other than “madam” is being sexist and demeaning.

But is the person wrong for doing so. No. For anyone who has worked in a customer facing role it’s not surprising that you might get a few odd customers with strange complaints or requests. For anyone who has spent any time in a customer facing role you would normally filter out such occasions.

So who is wrong to impose this draconian rule? The customer service department at B&H bus company and the HR department for taking the suggestion from their colleagues at face value.

Way to go Brighton and Hove bus company for creating a lot of bad publicity for yourselves.

.
.
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But how about you lot. Which terms of greeting do you use? And are you offended in the slightest by them if you are on the receiving end?

How do pet! 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

An intervention from a makeup artist at slightly the wrong moment on Sky News.

The presenter is Samantha Washington, who used to work for BBC Breakfast.

via @liarpoliticians.

Off Colour is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In the NHS, we face a conflict of interest
No pilot studies from a market fundamentalist
Losing all the benefits of aggregate demand to the invisible hand
At least one company can’t procure and provide at the same time
Oh wait, they can
Don’t be surprised by the quality of fake hips
Competition reminiscent of the Scottish Premiership
Clegg thinks his grandfather would vote yes
I think he’d probably be on Bupa’s much shorter waiting list
Shorter now that they can use half the public beds, but I digress
The point I’m trying to make is that there’s a conflict of interest

You want a crime commissioner?
You think they’re gonna listen to ya?
You think they won’t use propaganda on the villagers?
Utilitarian policing is the intent
No incentive to represent the 49%
Consider turnout in Hackney and then you’ll understand
Why in London they’ll reject east for west like Ayn Rand
BNP candidates, to whom are they accountable?
Just to the racist motherfuckers that made this possible
Which unlucky group will be the next scapegoat?
Turned into an urban myth overnight like Raul Moat
It won’t make a difference to the CPS
They’ll process the victims of these conflicting interests

Maybe look at the financial system
If you want to see the ability of corruption to yield a lot of victims
S&P rate Greek bonds on the trading floor
Next assignment, short sell them even more
How can they say that it’s ok to profit either way?
A David and Goliath story that will never see the light of day
Still, Greece feels the pain of slavery like Monrovia
As the reins remain at the feet of the Troika
It’s a forced takeover like Wells Fargo and Wachovia
You still got assets? Then it’s not over yet
Seriously
It’s not just me
The ECB need to put away the handcuffs and stay off the PCP
Still, they’ve got the backing of the fourth estate
Sustaining what appears to be a conflict of interest rates

I’m not playing a financial instrument
No derivatives or appellants
I’m not in the housing market, which requires better judgement
Turn the clock back to 2004
House prices higher than anybody could afford
Got a cash injection, an enormous loan
110% subprime methadone
It’s no surprise that after a rise
The bubble will burst, with a subsequent price demise
Now your house is worth less than what you owe
An inconvenient time for your job to go to Mexico
CDO, there you go, it’s their M.O.
And now they’re cleaning up like Tony Drago
So now you see why you and me
Can’t trust the banks with impartiality
And it’s no different with elected representatives
For the next campaign I’m donating sedatives
There’s a revolving door between the banks and the democratic process
And this lament makes no dent in the current extent of such conflicts of interest.

Criminonymous

Photo credit  by chillhead

Conflict of Interest 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

The Labour Party has clasped the clitorally vulnerable victim-hood of the Feministas to its bosom and bitterly resents any attempt to portray an ideologically opposed female as representing ‘Feminism’ at any level. Witness last night’s riveting Newsnight battle between Louise Mensch and dear little Laura Penny, sometimes known as ‘PennyRed’ (for good reason).

Laura ‘there’s no reason why I shouldn’t sport a bloodstained rat over my left eye, I’m not to be judged on my hairstyle’ was off to a flying start of denigration, by pointing out that Oswald Mosley supported the Suffragettes ‘therefore it was possible to be both a Fascist and a Feminist’ – not that she was accusing Louise of being a Fascist, no, no, perish the thought. She just wanted us to know the association of Feminists, Fascists and Tories that lay in her mind. There was, she opined, such a thing as ‘wrong Feminism’, a lame opinion which rivals British Rail’s ‘wrong kind of snow’.

Louise ‘just because I pose for GQ magazine I shouldn’t be labelled Tory Tottie’ put up a spirited defence, more intelligent than I had previously given her credit for; neatly nipping Paxo round the ankles when he chastised her for straying from ‘the point’ and she belted back ‘I should know my place I suppose’. Indeed Louise. PennyRed can stray from the point because she is the right sort of Feminist in Paxo’s eyes, not the Nadine Dorries variety who want to give women a choice in the counselling they receive regarding abortion, but the sort who only display strength of mind on behalf of those victimised women who truly believe that sex and pregnancy is something which just ‘happens’ to them, inflicted on them by brutal uncaring men. It’s OK to be strong and opinionated on behalf of the vulnerable, but woe betide you should be strong and opinionated for your own sake.

The synchronised Feminista wimmin haven’t merely contented themselves with giving Newshite a chance to re-run old footage of ’1960s Tory women in hats’; in the past few days they have mounted a full frontal attack on the Leveson Inquiry. Tuesday saw the massed forces of Four groups – Eaves, End Violence Against Women, Object and Equality Now – hijack the end result of the Guardian’s claim that News of the World journalists had hacked ‘dead Milly’s phone’, thus setting in progress a sequence of events which resulted in 500 first class journalists and editors losing their jobs.

Now that the Guardian’s speculation has been found to have no evidence to support it, the massed harridans of the Left have abandoned their Feng Shui and candle making classes to badger poor Leveson into agreeing that ‘something must be done’ about the ‘highly sexualised images’ of women which appear in newspapers. They apparently have no objections to highly sexualised images of David Beckham in his knickers…..

First up was Marai ‘dedicated to the creation of an equal world. Committed to ending violence against women and girls’ Larasi, who seems to have no problem with violence against men in her equal world. She wanted a regulatory body set up to ensure that women were portrayed in a different light by the media.

Then we got Anna van Heeswijk, from Object, a lobby group against the ‘objectification’ of women. She wants legislation banning pictures of naked or semi-naked women in newspapers, arguing the images would not be allowed in the workplace because of equality legislation, and should not be sold in an “unrestrained” manner at “children’s eye-level”.

Leveson was dutifully polite, saying his powers were limited and such a change would require “rock-solid legislation”, thus neatly avoiding a caustic comment such as ‘this has naff all to do with this inquiry’ which would not have gone down well in the pages of the Guardian. The man deserves a medal.

All of these off-side assaults were enthusiastically cheered on during the day by a series of Tweets from the Boiler-Suit-In-Chief, Vera Baird.

She, of course, is smarting from the mighty smack down administered by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge who allowed the appeal by Jon-Jacques Clinton. Clinton will now face a retrial that can include the evidence that his wife’s ‘goading’ regarding her sexual infidelity can form a partial defence to a charge of murder. Vera was particularly proud of the legislation which stated that those accused of murder cannot use evidence that their victim was unfaithful to them as part of the reason why they snapped and killed them, she had no problem with the fact that women are allowed to use premenstrual tension as a mitigating factor in sentencing – testosterone is the ‘wrong sort of hormone’ and not an acceptable defence in her book.

They are such hypocrites these women, proud of their campaigning strength on behalf of the rest of the sisterhood which must remain dependant on them, and through them, the State. They want to see true equality as much as Diane ‘racist Tweets’ Abbott.

Good grief – I just noticed, Vera’s banging the ‘Female Bloggers Cry Rape’ tambourine.

Cause and effect Vera, cause and effect; if you, and dear little Laurie, want to bang on endlessly about men being such utter bastards that should be neutered at birth, you can expect them to respond, and yes, it is liable to be as sexist as your views were in the first place. Just as Diane Abbott is likely to engender racist comments to her racist Tweets, or those who claim superiority of one religion over another.

It’s not Equality the synchronised ‘wimmin’ are after, it’s Superiority.

Men should know their place. Test tube. Fridge. Now.

Synchronised Wimmin. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

When the Data Protection Ombudsman opens his mail in the morning.

If you’re reading this news article using your O2 mobile phone, you’ll be pleased to know that O2 have already sent me your mobile phone number within the HTTP headers which normally contain information about how content can be displayed on your device.

Fortunately for you, I am not technically savvy enough to retrieve this information, nor bitchy enough to send you a text message on your mobile phone in the middle of Coronation Street this evening apparently from the local STD clinic or worse…

Other web sites you visit might not be so well mannered or considerate.

For example, if you open an e-mail which includes references to external images, the mere action of opening the e-mail would divulge your phone number. This could be used by anyone undertaking a phishing attack or other scam to get more information from you. The opportunity to abuse this is potentially endless.

This glitch in O2s software was allegedly revealed by the thinkbroadband site this afternoon, but worryingly, a little research reveals that it was identified 12 months ago by a young hacker at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. Quite amazing that a full year later, the same glitch existed.

There is a site here where you can check whether O2 are handing out your mobile phone number to every Tom, Dick and Harry you surf to meet…..it means potentially giving your phone number to Lewis Peckover but at least you will know who you’ve given it to!

O2 be a fly on the wall… is a post from: Anna Raccoon