That's alright then

Government departments spend £6m on search engines

Four government departments spent almost £6m ensuring their websites appeared on search engine results pages in the last two financial years, according to newly released figures.

The Department of Health was the biggest spender, running up a bill of £4.4m in "paid search" fees.

It said the money was spent supporting campaigns on smoking and the flu pandemic.

Well that's alright then I suppose, long as it was for the children.

Where does any government department that's already blowing so much of our money on advertising to hector us get off on blowing another load on placements on Google?

Listen fucknuts, if your content is relevant to what people search for, then Google shows it, that's how it works, and if people aint interested enough in your pet projects to find them when they search for what they are into, ditch them.

Why am I not surprised to find Act on CO2 listed among the bilge I've now paid to see promoted at me? Another example of government pushing an agenda at us.

Where is that oil?

I said to Mrs Niggurath when this happened, please show me the pictures of the dead birds and fish.

I'm not trying to suggest that there have been none, but then again where are the pictures of the dead birds everywhere else that climate change is killing them. Oh that's right. Those pictures don't exist.

What about the birds killed by windmills? Oh. Sorry, doesn't happen.

I also asked my good lady to show me the dead creatures that I killed by my addiction to oil.

But it appears that that evil witch Gaia is destroying all evidence of an oil spill. Who'd a thunk it?

Politics: Showbusiness for ugly people #3

Vince Cable always looks as though his nose it too near his arse to me.

The day the coalition stood still

Back in May, it was widely reported that the new coalition government intended to hold a consultation on repealing draconian and unnecessary parts of the law which the previous administration had enacted (many people think there were a lot of these).

Part of the Deputy PM's speech was this:

"As we tear through the statute book, we'll do something no government ever has: we will ask you which laws you think should go,"

"Taking people's freedom away didn't make our streets safe. Obsessive lawmaking simply makes criminals out of ordinary people. So, we'll get rid of the unnecessary laws, and once they're gone, they won't come back. 

All very laudable I'm sure.

They even set up a website to let us tell them.

In typical politician fashion though, this is just a box-ticking exercise so that they can claim to have listened, but instead just do what they want.

So Nick Clegg turns up with the one-liner that 'of course' the smoking ban will not be amended.

What people have been consistently requesting on the site with regards to the smoking ban is that the blanket ban on smoking in enclosed spaces is amended so that private businesses can be allowed to choose whether or not to allow smoking on their premises.

No one is petitioning for a complete repeal, just for a sensible approach to the issue. I haven't even seen anyone asking that the smoking ban be amended for railway stations, cinemas or workplaces. Really it's just pubs. One type of business, one type of amendment. Not to allow smokers to smoke wherever they want, just where the business owner would allow.

The search for smoking on the site yields 345 results as of just now. More than for climate change for example (there's a peachy climate one if your interested where someone is demanding 'deniers' be sent abroad on forced labour schemes).

This is the point the coalition stopped listening, took them all of two months. I've seen plenty of cynicism and criticism of the coalition so far, but the truth is many people were just relieved to be shot of Brown and so were taking a breather and perhaps even hoping to aim criticism at targets where they were failing. So I guess now the coalition might have to get used to losing popularity. And not having an overall majority that's a big risk for them. The simple act of agreeing to look at the smoking ban in the lifetime of this parliament (meaning a couple more years of the status quo) could have given them  a lot of Brownie points from the 20 percent of the adult population who do smoke, maybe not all, but enough to matter.

Idiots.

He's got big balls, I'll give him that.

Edward Michael Balls tells us that the economic policy he supported as a cabinet minister was a mistake.

Cuts pledge was a mistake - Ed Balls

Labour leadership hopeful Ed Balls has said he believes it was a "mistake" for Labour to promise to halve the deficit in four years by cutting spending.

He told the BBC News Channel he "didn't think it could have been done" but had accepted "collective responsibility" when Labour was in government.

Mr Balls has previously said it "made no sense" for Labour not to rule out raising VAT ahead of the election.

He was Gordon Brown's chief economic adviser for his 10 years as chancellor.

Happily using the idea of collective responsibility as though he was some kind of junior member and not instrumental in forming policy. Undoubtebly taking credit when it suits his agenda.

Oh! And this:

In the interview Mr Balls also said it was "not true" he had briefed against other MPs and had "no time for that sort of nasty politics".

Hahahaha.

And so it begins

We always knew that it had to happen, Labour have managed to hold it together for a lot longer than I thought they ever could before the inevitable spats that party politics inevitably causes turned ugly.

They managed 16 years of outward unity in the face of the egos of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seeking the same job, the drip-drip-drip spite of Peter Mandelson who much prefers to be the power behind the throne and the positioning of the up and coming apparatchiks Balls and the Miliband brothers.

All the rest was just the behaviour of ordinary politicians - Jaqui Smith, Prescott, Blears, Hewitt, Hoon and all the others just grandstanding for their own benefit, some financial, most just ego strokers.

But that's all over now, and the calculations have been made, the party can descend (much as the Tories have done in the past, and will do in the future) into a power struggle for the leadership of it, and for the inner circle membership of that leadership.

Which makes for much more interesting politics I always think.

So here we have the first real blow, and like all great stories it's the young prince killing the king. Or in this case:

David Miliband says public lost trust in Labour

David Miliband has criticised Gordon Brown's record in office, saying Labour's failings worsened under him.

Mr Miliband said the former Prime Minister had failed to demonstrate the "moral seriousness" he had promised.

The shadow Foreign Secretary said that by the time of the election in May Labour had lost the people's trust.

and then goes on...

He said: "I supported and voted for him. I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity-drenched culture.


"I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality.

"I agreed with him on the importance of party reform and a meaningful internationalism that would be part of a unified government strategy.

"I agreed that we needed a civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others.

"But it didn't happen." 

This is the Miliband who refused to criticise Brown in office at all, and even stood by when one of his allies tried to get a bandwagon rolling. So is this something he's just realised he felt throughout the past three years? No, he knows Gordon is now yesterday's man so he's trying to establish himself as tomorrow's.

Good for him, except... read that second part again. I agreed, I agreed, I agreed. Oh! Whether intentional or not he's just stabbed Tony Blair in the back too. For he's saying that Blair had allowed an immoral, frivolous, celebrity obsessed and aloof Prime Ministership to thrive.

So he was in government through two Prime Ministers that he disagreed with during their office and said, well nothing really. And now he's going to be the man to 'renew' Labour.

Did he think all this up by himself or is he being led in a particular strategic direction? His main rivals for leader are Ed Balls (Brown's closest ally) and his own brother Ed (another Brownie). So he's positioned himself against the position of the Brownies, but also managed to distance himself against Blair - who is mistrusted because of his record on foreign policy in particular. Will either man be willing to also speak out against Brown, or risk defending the man who lost them the election, but neither can now misdirect onto Blair.

And who should turn up but our old friend Peter Mandelson, the real heart and soul of the current Labour party, mistrusted at best by most, figure of disgust by many within that party, and yet in thrall to his magic. He helped them win power, and for lefties power is all that really matters. Integrity, well thought through positions and a desire to see individuals succeed are alien concepts. All that matters is power and the perpetuation of the conditions to keep that power (keep people in need of you).

Here's the charming Peter, the one who returned from the EU to shore up, um, Gordon Brown when he was in trouble (and danger of losing that power):

Brown waged 'insurgency from next door' against Blair, says Lord Mandelson

At times, Lord Mandelson said, Mr Brown feared that he had “killed” all three men, but, wound up by his lieutenants, was unable to stop the feud, meaning that Mr Blair was forced to devote too much energy dealing with him.

The former business secretary said some of the blame for the hostilities lay with the people around Mr Brown who, he said, treated Mr Blair with “unbridled contempt”. 

I think we can see the attack on Ed Balls for what it is here. We all knew Mandelson was going to push David Miliband as his preferred candidate - though it's probably a safe bet anyway. Which just goes to prove they need that backstabbing and infighting to feel alive.

And so it begins.

Politics: Showbusiness for ugly people #2

#2 The Milipede

He's a gurning, bristle headed, bug-eyed monster.

And has the knack of making me change the channel

Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull

Even though it shouldn't, the hypocrisy of politicians still manages to anger me.

John Prescott, New Labour's key link to the party's old Labour roots, today became Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hull, despite previously saying he was opposed to becoming a peer.
The Guardian, 8 July 2010

Lord Prescott took the ermine at a ceremony in the Upper House yesterday morning - despite his previous insistence that he did not want a seat in the Lords.The Daily Mail, 9 July 2010

I guess the working class really can kiss his arse now then, because this is not just the foreman's job now, now he's moved on from being shop steward under Labour to being the full-time trougher he's always aspired to be.

A man who happily blamed his overeating on bulimia, his use of chauffeur cars to travel 200 hundred yards on his wife, when caught with his trousers down tried to claim the woman was after money, caught playing croquet (pastime of the the wealthy) puts out the line that it was his aides who wanted to play (though later claimed he'd played all his life) and now says he's went against his lifelong 'principles' because either his wife wanted to be a 'Lady' or because he wants to continue to serve the country.

Whatever the truth, I suspect there's a feeling inside him that he's earned it, deserves it and will claim the fullest possible expense and earnings through it, still buggering about in cars and planes while telling the rest of us that we need to cut back on our carbon footprint to save the planet.

Isn't that always the way with the most vocal proponents of environmentalism? Can anyone point me to just ONE high profile climate changer who has genuinely scaled down their own carbon footprint, who teleconferences instead of junkets, who eats local produce, who cycles or walks instead of drives, indeed who makes do with just the one house, because even this 'socialist' firebrand can't get by on less than two, uses a Jag instead of a Prius, flies all over the world and demands all the trappings of his role.

So when an awful man bares his hypocrisy for all to see, I still get angry, not through surprise, through disgust.

Carbon emissions by local authority

So am sat there, minding my own business (as usual) when I stumble across this:

Carbon emissions by local authority


from The Guardian

Data released today slices up the 8.3 million tonne carbon footprint of local authorities' buildings and transport - equivalent to 1.6 per cent of the UK's CO2 emissions in 2008 - in England into local council chunks.

The numbers, collated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, show a wide disparity in the carbon footprints of the different councils. At one end of the spectrum are large, bustling metropolises with large populations, such as worst offender Birmingham with 177,360 tonnes of emissions for 2008 to 2009; and at the opposite end, the tiny Isles of Scilly, where schoolchildren get to school by boat and the year-round population amounts to just over 2,000.

Another prism to look at the data through would be the wealth of the respective councils. But at the moment I can only get hold of data of assets for regions from the Office of National Statistics. But it would be interesting, if the data became available, to see if richer councils spend more in carbon terms than their poorer relations - in the same way that data suggests richer householders have a bigger footprint than poorer ones.

If this was the case, would this be because they spend more in public services or on their own creature comforts, like the civil servants at DECC last summer who reverted to air conditioning after an attempt to live without it.

There's a few interesting aspects to this, one might be the fact that we are having the money spent on collecting this data at all during a recession. Another might be, if we're being charitable, that we might want to ask if it's reasonable that some places appear to have a bigger footprint than others with a similar demographic.

What interests me about it is this. We're currently going through a huge pub argument in Britain today over cuts in spending. It's getting quite bitter as it happens.

On the one hand there are people like me; I want to see cuts in spending on everything but the most basic services that keep the streets clean, reasonably safe and well lit in the dark. On the other there are those who are of the view that any cuts in public spending are a step backwards, that we need to spend money we don't have on services we don't need on behalf of people who don't care as a way of growing ourselves out of the recession.

And yet it gets ironic, because, in general the people who claim to care most about the negative effects of 'climate change' are the same ones who are arguing not only for retaining public services, but actually growing them.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want councils to cut back the spending in the vain hope that one less teaching assistant is going to hold back the seas; I just despise a large state.

Another thing that makes me chuckle is that these figures are released with a straight face. I suppose in some respects they totalled up their power and fuel consumption bills and so on, but at some point in the exercise there simply has to be a figure tossed in that is simply plucked from thin air.

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics, and after statistics there are climate change statistics I suppose.