I’m a Pundit

Equality minister Harriet Harman has today been laying down plans in England for a Law which I am heavily against.

Currently in the UK there are laws that say a persons ethnicity or religion should not affect a job application, for Harriet Harman however this does not seem enough.

Let me point out right here and now that I am 100% against ethnic and religious tolerance, I believe what the world needs is ethnic and religious indifference.

In Harmans speach she spends a lot of time segregating groups, even promoting discrimination, saying that if a company is short on blacks, men, women, muslims whatever they should try and balance things up.

In my view religion, race or cultre should have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on someones job unless it would physically affect their ability to perform the functions of the job.

If a black person got a job over me because he was more suited to the role I would not complain, if he got the job because he was black I would be annoyed.

This planned segregation is the pure fantasy afforded by those who do not have to deal on a day to day basis with the problems encountered in the working world.

How can an equality Minister hold her job when she is actually promoting the discriminiation of  people, isshe seriously that stupid?

I thought the worst part of her entire speach was when she noted

“Official figures show that the gender pay gap has been declining, but for every pound a man earns, a woman still earns just 87 pence. Female part-time workers also still earn as much as 40% less than their full-time male counterparts”

Ok, hold on one second Ms Harman, did you just compare FULL TIME male workers against PART TIME female workers?

Of course the women in that group are getting paid fucking less you stupid fucking bitch, they are part fucking time.  If you want equality, since you are the ‘equality’ minister why the fuck are you not comparing men and women who are both part timers ratehr than trying to swing the statistics your way.

I apologise for the language but she does, fucking, deserve it.

written by Oli \\ tags: Bigotry, Bitch, Equal Pay, Equality, Harriet Harman, Racism, Sexism

I have been following the push of Carbon Credits quite closely.  Carbon Credits basically are an extra tax on any business that goes over a certain level of carbon emissions, based on things such as electricity usage and so forth.

What amuses me slightly is that

The Green Party are pushing for the Carbon credit tax and have arrived at a value

The industrial lobby have been lobbying for business rebates to avoid bankruptcies due to high energy bills.

People are complaining because their energy bills are already high enough, and there is a very real possibility that they will be hit hard by this (Energy producers create a great deal of carbon, the cost of paying this would be passed onto the consumer)

The Government has suggested that out of the estimated 7 trillion dollars raised, 1 trillion is sent to government debt, some is spent on energy efficiency research and the rest is sent back to the tax payer as a rebate.

Ok, so I look at this and what do I see, half the money going back to the industry, half the money going back to the tax payer, a whole load of red tape and extra burden on industries who will have to employ people to figure out their carbon usage, survive the gap before they get their research and so forth.  Meanwhile the taxes will increase by around the extra amount the energy companies have to pay (around $22 a tonne) but that alright because the consumers will get a regular rebate giving them their money back.

Does anyone else see the complete pointlessness of this latest environmental debacle.  I cannot believe there are serious political contenders out there who would consider such a farce in the current recessive economic climate, let alone a strong one.

I think I may move to Australia, last time somebody tried to introduce a red tape tactic there they were sent to jail for a minor offence of treason and damaging the economy, why does that not happen here or in the US?

Politicians are destroying our economy for their own selfish and misguided ideals which they have shrouded by their own self illusion.  Yet even when incompetence is proven there is no backlash, no fines or punishment, half the time jobs are not even lost.

It scares me.

written by Oli \\ tags: America, Carbon Footprint, Europe, Global Warming, Political Fiasco

As an ongoing penchant of the EU to run with the Global Warming Debacle they have once more made another uninformed and politically ridden piece of legistlation to try and increase costs to car users who drive cars with poor fuel emission ratings.

This is a move which has severly handicapped disabled and older people, as well as the agriculture industry and people who live in rural areas.

Many older or people with slight physical difficulties require larger cars, and the agriculture industry is on the verge of being reduced back to the ‘horse and cart, ox and plough’ era as tractors are announced to be non environmentally friendly.

But its nice to know that a European Conference of some of the worlds greatest minds spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of EU taxpayers money to decide that since requiring fuel efficiency to be included in advertising was not having the desired effect it should infact take up a minimum of 20% of the advertising.

Now did it ever occur to these people that many people need larger cars, whether its because tey have a family to move about, friends to give lifts to, goods to transport, people need big cars and no matter how large your advertising is it will not change the fact that a person looking for a people carrier will still buy a people carrier and a single person living in the city will probably buy a smaller car.

Don’t get me wrong, fuel efficiency is important and useful information when buying a car, but automobile advertising accounts for a massive percentage of western advertising, outflanked only by credit cards and followed closely by mobile phones.

Now imagine if these car companies are suddenly forced to  increase their advertising space by 20%, thats 20% more paper used, 20% more trees cut down.

This is scarily close to another recent move on Ethanol, a fuel only transportable by vehicles, where it was decreed by those up on high that gasoline/petrol created for road use must contain at least 5% ethanol, the governmetns even subsidised ethanolproduction world wide.

The result?  The speed the rainforest is being cut down has increased dramatically, with rainforest being burned down (Not logged) at an alarming rate for Palm Oil crops. Transportation of this fuel has greatly increased pollution in these areas and since 20% of worldwide farms are now given to Ethanol production third world countries have seen food prices rocket.

My position in this fiasco is clear, global warming has been proven to be part of a natural cycle caused by the Earths relation to the Sun.  It’s a simple fact that the Earth is in fact leaving an ice age, so bound to be warming up, its also a simple fact that carbon released by the sea increases as it warms up (Creating a nice relational graph, you can do an experiment in a lab to prove this)  and its also true that the graphs and data used to support global warming were debunked well over 25 years ago.

The money spent so far on ‘reducing carbon footprints’ numbrs in the hundreds of millions, and the new EU fund proposed on tackling this looks set to massively increase that.  This is money that could be used to help Britian pull itself out of recession and bankruptcy, it could be used to build new recycling plants, finally researching ways to make them more effective.

It could even be used to feed all those starving families in thirld world countries who have been condemmed to death by western incompetancy.

It seems however that we will just see more insane laws and advertising teling us to be ‘green’ while more and more of us fail to pay mortgages and thirld world countries slide into oblivion as they cannot even afford to eat.

written by Oli \\ tags: Carbon Footprint, Debacle, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Politics, Recycling

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

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

Never in all my life have I seen a level of political and economical incompetency equal to that of our government system.

They actually say, and I quote,

“a moratorium would mean missing out on an opportunity to make carbon savings now and reneging on commitments on which biofuels producers had made investments.”

This is basically saying, we can make carbon savings now that make us look good, and we do not disappoint the farmers who have made investments in biofuel production, for instance those that have spent money burning the rainforest.  Don’t worry about THOSE carbon emissions,  they do not count towards our quota.

Yes despite the fact their policies are cutting down rainforest which naturally reduces carbon tehy are pressing ahead to meet their own political targets.  Well done Environmentalists,  Carbon is scientifically provennot to cause global warming but your own unsupported theories that you have pushed to public prominence have taken focus from the worlds real issues and now mean that we are suffering.  Food prices have tripled, thousands more are dieing from hunger and one of the worlds greatest resources the Rainforest,  is not even being cut down, but burned to make way for ethanol crops.

Gordon Brown, Labours most recent stumbling bumbling sock puppet has said that he will look into the situation pending a government review into wether the ethanol subsidies and standards they have set (ie all fuel must have a minimum 5, rising to 10% by 2010 ethanol mix) are causing damage to the environment and starvation in thirdworld countries.

First off, do you really need a government review to see food prices have tripled, or that one in five farms previously used for food is now producing fuel.  Do you really need a government review to see the riots happening because countries can no longer afford food?

On the other hand the National Farms Union (Whos members are now raking in fantastic profits for no extra cost)  representative Peter Kendal said that Biofuels represent the only practical Energy alternative for replacing fossil fuels in transport.  Allthough it is interesting to see that he did not mention electric, which can produce fast cars that travel for hundreds of miles on one charge.

Its re-assuring to know that he is infact jsut an idiot when later he says Biofuels are not the only solution to climate change but only part of a package.

This tpic gets me so wound up, Global warming isn’t going to destroy this world but the people in charge might, tehy do not look at the consequences of their actions, they follow whats popular and they do not fight for their cause.  New Labour? Pah it doesnt even support the labour classes.  The Green Party? They are responsible for a twofold increase in the speed the rainforest is being demolishe, the liberal party? They want to increase the classification of drugs and restrict our freedoms.

The Conservatives, well they just seem to be what every other party is becoming in order to buy votes.

written by Oli \\ tags: , Biofuels, Ethanol, Food, Food Prices, Gordon Brown, Government, Oil