I’m a Pundit

I was reading yet another story today on the myriad of Suicide Support Websites out there. These are not websites which try to stop people committing suicide, but infact encourage them.

From a personal standpoint I think it is everyone’s right to take their own life. So when the government announced it was going to make sites supporting suicide illegal I decided to look, and shocked though I was, the government was infact Right.

I took a look at several sites claiming to be there to support people who were thinking of ending their life. However a quick look at the members of these sites showed a much more sinister side to human nature.

These websites each had three distinct types of people.

Those Truly Seeking Help – There were some people who had suffered so badly that they were thinking of ending it all

The Predators – These came in several forms, none of them good.

The Attention Seekers – We all have one of those people in our lives somewhere which have threatened to kill themselves in a desperate bid for attention, the words ‘breeding ground’ come to mind here.

The most interesting to study here would most definitely be the predators. Many of them seemed to be living out their ‘suicide fantasy’ through either an attention seeker or a real suicider. They would first gently and then more forcefully shove people to what they should do to kill themselves in a rather perverted way.

They also sent hate mail, in rather vast quantities. These ones were not trying to fulfil a suicide fantasy, they were simply sad people seeking the feeling of power. As soon as I joined the website I was hit by a barrage of abuse that was obviously designed by these people to drive me over the edge.

The third type was sexual. Yes even by posting my real profile of 23 year old male, not the young schoolgirl type profile I got hit with an unexpected amount of emails coercing me to have sex, send nude pictures or perform an artistic show on cam, these tended to come from men in their forties of Arab origins, and was to say the least very concerning since a large number of site members were underage girls.

The Attention Seekers were the least interesting, they get shoved out of social circles in everyday life and it seems like they congregated here to try one last ditch at grabbing someone’s focus for a few minutes. These were fairly easy to spot due to their bi-weekly suicide ‘attempts’ and how publicly they announced what they were doing.

The Real Suicide members were those that really needed help. Many of them would shyly post about the pros and cons of a particular suicide method, while keeping the reasons for their intended departure well hidden. These are the people that really need someone’s help, someone to listen and someone to talk to. It’s a shame therefore that if these people suffered the same kind of abuse that I did then there is little doubt in my mind that they may be driven to suicide when they could have been saved and brought back on track to lead normal lives.

It is therefore my opinion that the government should ban the sites supporting suicide immediately, and also heavily regulate the sites that are set up for helping people who are on the brink return.

Currently the sites are filled with Sick Fucks and Attention Whores who need to be kept well away from those truly seeking help!

written by Oli \\ tags: Ban, Illegal, Internet, Murder, Suicide, Support, Websites

The raid on a polygamist sect, The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently has once again made the headlines as the Mothers in the sect claim that their children had been taken away illegally.

They have been making several claims about undue stress caused to the children and the problems they may be going through.

Personally I have some real trouble with this.

Yes, the government should try and keep children with their parents unless all other options fail.

However, I despises any judge who can with clear conscience send these children back to the ranch which in most cases seems to be no more than a paedophile ridden brain washing operation.

At this place children as young as 12 are expected to perform the full duties of a wife, they are told this is the right thing to do from the moment they are born.

By allowing this to proceed the judges are doing no more than condoning paedophilia and rape.

written by Oli \\ tags: Paedophilia, Texas Ranch

Today all the papers were in uproar about the 2p increase in fuel taxes in England (Which several months ago they were thanking gordon brown for postponing till later in the year).  Gordon brown proceeded to say that taxes were not the problem but that the cost of Fuel Globally must be tackled.

Now, hang on a second Gordon. The average price of fuel in 2007 was 95.1p per litre, thats high yes, but not as high as the 63.7p Duty which is included in that cost.

Without Gordons tax, which at one point drove Fuel Duty to 81.5% of fuel cost, we would be paying a measly 31.4 pence per litre in fuel.

Now What Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling do not seem to want to take into account is that the myriad of taxes in this country has stifled our economy.  Fuel Costs especially have destroyed many businesses as their costs have rose above customer income.  Taxis, once a fairly good way of getting around have seen prices sky rocket, and transportation companies are failing nationwide.

But yet despite the current take government is getting from Fuel, well over two thirds of what you pay at the pump, high fuel prices are apparently not Gordons Fault.

Think of it like this,  if everything you took to the till tripled in cost when you paid for it would you be happy?

Hell No!

When you looked at the price on your goods and then asked the cashier why the cost was 3 times that of the actualy price what wouldyou think if she said it was the basic cost rising, even though she was the one who put the cost up by so much?

While I am not a vindictive person it is fairly obvious even to me that the people running the UK need to take a good long hard look at themselves and then jump off the nearest cliff.

written by Oli \\ tags: Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, Politics, Tax

It was announced today that non violent and non sexual offenders in britain could see their sentences halved.

This is in my mind a despicable state of affairs, letting out criminals early simply because the government will not stretch to building a new prison.

Something that worries me immensely in the Uk is the fact that the prison system costs around £40,000 ($80,000) a prisoner per year to maintain.  Now considering people are expected to get by on around £8000 ($16,000), and most people do not earn above teh £20,000 till the hit their middle years, you can begin to worry about how exactly ourmoney is being spent.

Personally I think jails are too cushy, human rights protestors have made things easy for those who quite simply do not care about human rights.  I am not saying that everyone in prison is that bad, but they have to have done something to get there.

When someone breaks the law they are accepting responsibility for the consequences.

So why is it that we are paying what equates to around £330 a day to keep each prisoner incapacitated?

I worry about this counry sometimes!

written by Oli \\ tags: Prison

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7421045.stm

I read this story on the BBC news site today, it raised one of those good ol’ moral dilemas.  This woman has HIV and will most likely die if returned to her home country.  She has already been treated here in the UK several times on our NHS at tax payers cost, despite being an illegal immigrant.

Now how do you weigh a persons life against your own cash?

The fact of the matter is that millions of pounds of tax payers money is spent treating people who have come to the UK for that sole reason, the NHS is a very large, complex and overall easily abused system.

The problem is if you treat one person, why not treat them all?

Every year we send back thousands of people who have come to this country to abuse our system, as nice as you make it sound they come here illegally simply to take what they want.

Others of course come here because they want to live in Britain, to contribute and to become part of our society.  There is a clear, if unmeasurable difference between the two.

How can we keep out those who are abusing the country and let in those who want to join England?

And how do you turn someone away who so desperately needs medical attention, whatever their skin colour, creed or religion?

While it would be nice to treat the world we simply cannot afford it, hell we can hardly afford to treat ourselves with the NHS’s drug boards regularly cutting important medication and treatments from what we get on the NHS.

I have to admit it is a subject matter I would not want to be the policy owner on.  Do you bankrupt the country or stand to be hit by claims of racism and hatred?

Maybe we should look more to other countries, ones that protect their own heritage?

Ones that are not afraid to stand and say, this is us, if you can contribute you can join but do not expect our country to bend to your will.

written by Oli \\ tags: Culture, Disease, England, Heritage, Immigration

For those people searching for the ‘right’ ISP to supply their Broadband Internet many will find the majority of ISPs offering Unlimited internet packages.   However many families are finding tehir internet access restricted, removed and even in some cases extra charges appearing on their internet bill.

This is all down to the ‘fair usage policy’. A fair usage policy is basically a small line in your contract that says while your internet is Unlimited you cannot use more than xxGB per month.

Suddenly things don’t seem quite so unlimited anymore.

The ISPs back this move saying it keeps things fair for all of their customers.  Some users abusing the system can slow down the network for everyone.

Now here I think is a very important point.  If I bought an unlimited usage product I should expect unlimited usage. The company should have the network to deal with this if it decides to advertise such a product.

If I hired a Builder to paint a mansion I would be very friggin upset if the builder only did half of it and then said He couldn’t paint anymore because then there might not be enough paint for the other houses.

If I went to an all you can eat resteraunt but was told I could only have half a plate of food so there was enough for everyone I would also be pretty damn annoyed.

So why the hell should internet service providers get away with unethically and misleadingly advertising products as unlmiited when they sometiems have usage limits as low as 5 gig.

Fortunately there is help available, there have been several casse where people have won full refunds and even damages for loss of connectivity because the Fair Use Policy was not well displayed and that the advertisements were misleading.

Lets take down the corporate bastards who decided to call limited unlimited!

written by Oli \\ tags: Advertising, Crime, Fair Usage Policy, Internet, ISP, Law

The BBC today reported on how rent has risen by aroun 10-11% while house prices are expected to drop by 20%.  When they interview landlords on this they give reasons such as increased market (People selling houses and renting for a while)

Of course they avoid the major issue on this.

The Reason Rent is rising so dramatically in some areas is because Buy to Let investors are in serious trouble.  Many of them have found rent not covering rather significant mortgage increases, and with few other places to turn they are placing the burden on their tenants.

The Reason Property owners are admitting this to the press is that it would be an admission of their own guilt

By admitting they are raising rents to keep up with mortgage prices they are admitting it is their fault, they stretched themselves too thinly over debt and failed to keep enough money in reserve to cover high interest periods.  For that reason when times get tougher they have no choice but to massively increase rent, despite the fact it carries a significant risk of putting them out of business.

Despite the facct that there are a huge amount of unlet properties currently on the market as people return to house and flat sharing the Landlords will continue to spout their bullshit to remove any possible blame to themselves, in the end however a lot of them will go bankrupt as the market normalizes

written by Oli \\ tags: Depression, Housing, Lettin, Renting

In the effort to progress human research into stem cells the Government is considering repeal laws against experimentation with a mix of human and animal embryos.

Now the religions and pussy footed human rights groups have been up in arms on this one, no surprise there. But the focus of this experimentation is a rather strange and mind boggling one.

Personally I am a bit undecided, Christian groups said this move strikes against the heart of human Morales, but wouldn’t something that gave the potential to save millions of lives be a good thing?

I think it is important to remember that this is not aiming to be an Island of Doctor Monroe scenario. These crosses would be grown in the hope that we could gain a greater number of stem cells for a single embryo.

This whole situation brings in a massively controversial angle to an already hotly debated topic. After all the ending of human life at an early stage for research is hardly a non-argument between pro-life and the scientific community.

From a more personal aspect I believe this research should go ahead, I will support nearly anything that looks like it has a serious possibility of improving human life. Stem cell research has already proven immensely effective on the treatment of previously fatal illnesses, the only reason such medication is not already in use is down to he morality issues put forth by pro lifers.

I can see their point in some respects, an embryo could grow into the worlds next greatest artist or scientist. How do we know?

To that I would always point out, it could also be the next Hitler. These things happen ey.

The mixing of animal and human genes does seem at a fundamental level ‘wrong’ but for something that could save millions of lives who am I to complain? After all people take an animals heart already, how is changing an embryo different?

written by Oli

I read this article on CNets Crave today and was glad to see that none other than Harvard University have found that Violent games really do not have that much of an effect on a childs behavior.

Personally I have stood by this belief for a long time. I think Violence in a person is formed from their upbringing, their peers and their lifestyle. I think I first realised this when I was very young.

One of my friends at the time was from a devout christian family, his parents were so against violence that they even went as far as taking Red Alert off him when they found out it was a war game.

Of course from the outset he had an unhealthy obsession with guns and violence. The very shield that his parents ahd set up to protect him had infact driven him to explore the world of violence.

I am not sure how things worked out for him, his family moved away a long time ago. All in all though I think the fact remains that by preventing someone from experiencing and learning about the world around them can only ever end in disaster.

I think this is highlighted by several of the school shootings that have happened in the USA. These children do not talk about videogames or even violence on the news. They talk about how they were repressed, how they were kept off the team, how someone else got the girl.

The truth of the matter is that the personailty of these children was such that no matter what they would have ended up in some violent crime.

The fact of the matter is that the popularity of violent games is very rarely down to the amount of violence in it. It is down to the challenge, beating those around you and so forth.

Of course violence ina game is a factor, but its teh same factor that drives people to join the army. Should we get rid of our armed forces because they encounter violence, even if the majority are balanced, caring individuals?

I worry sometimes that the western world will become too nanny state. The Government will maintain a drakonian control and people will lose the ability to experience, we would become effectively no more than ants. Unable to do anything more than work.

In the UK this is already becoming increasingly apparant, whether you look at the new smoking laws, crack down on drinking, or harsh drugs laws. Then it pervades into your everyday life, telling you that you can no longer do DIY electrics in your home.

This government needs to rememebr that it is here to serve the people, not make people lead the lives it thinks they should.

Personally I think most laws are there to make you think before you break them, but so many people in our government are so now distanced that they do not realise that a multitude of laws are broken constantly every day by your average law abiding citizen simply down to common sense, not including times when people simply do not care whether something is against the law.

written by Oli \\ tags: Computers, Video Games, Violence

I was reading a story about a girl who lost her foot in an amusement park accident today here. I have to admit I have pretty mixed feelings on the story.

Firstly, the injury was caused due to poor maintenance, this was purely and simply the amusement parks fault for not maintaining properly. This Should be Fixed.

But what worries me is that the repercussions of this will go much further. The excitement of theme parks is in the, if only perceive, danger. With this perceived danger there is of course the increased risk of Real Danger. Choosing whether or not to risk this is of course a personal decision.

Personally I love theme park rides, I would be distraught if they were forced to become less exciting in the interests of safety, but at the same time I would be absolutely devastated if my feet were cut of because someone didn’t grease some cables regularly enough.

In the meantime, the sun is shining, I’m off to ride a roller-coaster!

written by Oli \\ tags: Danger, Injury, Theme Parks