As seen on cracked

 Intermission  No Responses »
Jan 252012
 

Have just been pointed to a rather amusing article on cracked.com the first bit of which reminded me of a conversation OH and others had with some anarchists at the rally against debt:

8 Historic Symbols That Mean The Opposite of What You Think

“#8. Guy Fawkes

Misunderstood By:
Anarchists, 4Chan.

Despite anarchists’ general failure to unite long enough to make any meaningful progress against their ideological enemies (democracy, capitalism, communism and Internet forum moderationism), they do have a few running themes and symbols in common. One of the most prominent symbols is the 17th century English revolutionary, Guy Fawkes, whose famed exploit was his attempt to blow up Parliament in order to destabilize the British government.

The comparison is probably most recognizable to popular culture as the basis of the graphic novel/box office catastrophe V For Vendetta, in which a dude dresses up like Fawkes and brings down an evil dystopian theocracy. In recent years, through some bizarre online game of Chinese whispers, Fawkes has also come to somehow represent Internet teenagers’ struggle against Scientology.

While anarchists may be right that Fawkes was the only person ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions, they’ve forgotten what those intentions were. Fawkes wasn’t trying to destroy an evil theocracy, he was trying to install one.

Fawkes was a fighter for Spain and the Catholic Church. His goal was to end the slightly more egalitarian Protestant revolution in England by restoring Catholic domination. If the Gunpowder Plot had actually succeeded, Britain would probably look less like an anarchist commune and more like the fascist police state Alan Moore warned us about.”

The rest are worth reading as well enjoy.

 Posted by Giolla at 23:47  Tagged with: ,

Amusement for Monday morning

 Intermission  No Responses »
Jan 232012
 

Well it made me laugh, via Facebook:
Turn it off and back on again

 Posted by Giolla at 10:15  Tagged with:

Are they related?

 Intermission, MSM  No Responses »
Jan 172012
 
Quooker in the eye Ad Nauseum Private Eye 1305
Hot on the heals of forcing up the costs of DVD’s and all sorts of gadgets for the rest of us by closing a vat loophole. Private Eye proudly reports that the Quooker is a “quook of shite” thus getting egg on the face of many upmarket newspapers that advertised it (P11 Eye 1305). Sadly for reasons of space it would seem they didn’t have time to report that a certain well known satirical magazine has also been more than happy to take the advertisers shilling for the self same product (Eye passim). As the two scans above show (I can do a scan of open rag if people doubt the validity of the back cover scan). I’m sure this unfortunate oversight will be corrected in the next edition of Private Eye.
 Posted by Giolla at 22:35  Tagged with: , ,

Just sayin’…

 Intermission  No Responses »
Jan 082012
 

Mayan calendar actually ends in 2012 due to Tory cuts in calendar development funding.

 Posted by Giolla at 08:24  Tagged with: ,

Seasons greetings

 Intermission, religion, Video  1 Response »
Dec 282011
 

So having avoided the computer quite well for the last four days I thought I’d just pop back briefly to hope you all had a wonderful time, doing what ever it is people do these days. Also as I have a penchant for obscure and forgotten holy days/festivals I would observes that today is the feat of the Holy Innocents, in honour of which was written what I think is one of the most beautiful English hymns (not strictly a carol). So hear for you delectation is the Westminster Cathedral Choir singing the Coventry Carol. Enjoy – normal lack of service will resume shortly.

 Posted by Giolla at 00:58  Tagged with: ,

How laws really work

 Civil Liberties, Intermission, laws  No Responses »
Dec 172011
 

Once more I’m stealing content via the much better informed Katabasis, but hey it’s easier than writing my own content :)

So without further ado, “The Ugly Face of Tyranny” by Matt Giwer (which means Katabasis borrowed it as well).

  1. Any law the electorate sees as being open to being perverted from its original intent will be perverted in a manner that is worse than the manner of perversion seen at the time.
  2. Any law that is so difficult to pass it requires the citizens be assured it will not be a stepping stone to worse laws will in fact be a stepping stone to worse laws.
  3. Any law that requires the citizens be assured the law does not mean what the citizens fear, means exactly what the citizens fear.
  4. Any law passed in a good cause will be interperated to apply to causes against the wishes of the people.
  5. Any law enacted to help any one group will be applied to harm people not in that group.
  6. Everything the government says will never happen will happen.
  7. What the government says it could not foresee, the government has planned for.
  8. When there is a budget shortfall to cover non-essential government services the citizens will be given the choice between higher taxes or the loss of essential government services.
  9. Should the citizens mount a successful effort to stop a piece of legislation the same legislation will be passed under a different name.
  10. All deprivations of freedom and choice will be increased rather than reversed.
  11. Any government that has to build safeguards into a law so that it will not be abused is providing guidelines for abusing the law without violating it.
 Posted by Giolla at 14:48  Tagged with: , ,

Populism and democracy

 Intermission, politicians, politics  No Responses »
Dec 152011
 

Despite all the fun and games happening in Europe I’ve been rather quite on the matter, and am actually going to continue with that with this post. So many other people are doing a much better job of commenting all I could really add is a “what they said”. I am however going to use the EU crisis and a post about it to pose a question that’s puzzled me for years and which The Snowolf just expressed in a far more eloquent fashion than I’d manage. What the Snowolf said was:

“Politicians get very sniffy about populist policy decisions, this is no surprise, because as far as they’re concerned, it is our job to accept their decisions, not their job to act on our wishes. But of course doing the popular thing makes you, well, popular.”

Which sums up rather what’s puzzled me for so long about politicians being “populist”, after all isn’t populism the whole basis of at least our electoral system if not democracy as a whole?* The theory is as I understand it that the wannabe politician makes loads of promises and the most popular or populist gets elected and then ignores those promises.

Then when they want to be elected again they do the whole popular thing again, and oddly we believe them. It’s just in between times both the politicians, the media and all sorts of activists seem to think that populism is a terrible terrible thing. Almost makes one suspect that they do view us as an inconvenience.

So what’s puzzling me is what exactly is the difference between bad evil “populism” and “representing the majority”? Or is it one of those irregular verbs, like:
I’m erotic
You’re kinky
They’re perverted
So:
I represent the silent majority
You’re populist
They’re a rabble rouser?

I do of course welcome both other explanations and improvements to my irregular verbs.

* Both populism and democracy have roots in words meaning the people? demos and populous?

 Posted by Giolla at 00:42  Tagged with: , ,

Wind turbine adds to global warming

 climate change, Intermission  No Responses »
Dec 082011
 

Wind turbine adds to global warming Having just finished reading a a missive to Mr Huhne about his windmills over at the < ahref="http://foggy-mirror.blogspot.com/2011/12/and-then-little-inconvenient-science.html">Foggy Mirror I was rather relieved to see that wind turbines can make a positive contribution towards the fight against the next ice age.

As they say in the popular* story “A game of thrones” -
winter is coming

Update: I suppose I should link to the actual story

* I am at least reliably informed it’s popular.

 Posted by Giolla at 17:47  Tagged with: , ,

One to share

 Intermission  No Responses »
Oct 182011
 

From the wall of Roberto Joele:

I am free

 Posted by Giolla at 09:01  Tagged with:

How to bring back smoking in pubs?

 Civil Liberties, Drinking, Intermission, laws, smoking  5 Responses »
Aug 182011
 

Shant and a smokeAn article in the register the other day has given me an idea as to how one might bring back smoking in pubs without any need for a change in the law.

The article reports that an American bar has gone self service by use of RFID cards (contactless payment cards) and flow control pumps. So tap the pump with your card and it will let you dispense so much beer. Now sadly this won’t work for real ale but what I can’t help but wondering is this.

If no one is in the pub working because it’s entirely self service, then it’s not someone’s place of employment so surely they’d be nothing to stop people smoking there. The barrels etc. could be in a separate building so that wouldn’t be a problem, if the pub wanted to use it’s own cards then they could sell them and top them up in a separate building as well.

So the only person who’d ever need to work in the pub would be who ever cleans the place up, which would be done when it was shut and no one was smoking there, so again surely not a problem?

Of course the legislation does cover “all public places” which could be a snag but if it were a private club? It wouldn’t fall under the auspices of people working there, it’d be interesting to argue that you’re “seeking or receiving goods or services from the person or persons working there” as no one works there.

It would sadly be prohibitively expensive to test just how farcical this law is. I suspect ASH would probably claim that the 60 a day cleaner was still at risk of second hand smoke.

Of course it’s worth noting that:
“The appropriate national authority may make regulations providing for specified descriptions of premises, or specified areas of them, not to be smoke-free despite section 2.”
So under current laws it would actually be trivial to allow smoking in all sorts of places without any need to change anything at all.

 Posted by Giolla at 22:30  Tagged with: , , ,
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