Why.....?

The news.
Striking local government workers are condemned by the self-styled "Sir" Digby Jones. No, he's not the worlds biggest dog. He's the head of the CBI. And a man who looks like he doesn't go short at mealtimes. Unlike former local-government worker pensioners, who may be on as little as £35 a week. On what fucking planet does the fat-bastard multi-millionaire Jones get to criticise these people, each and every one a better human being than him? Can I move to another one?
Other news: rich parasite falls off a chair. Laugh? I nearly puked.
To quote Chris Morris, "Those are the headlines, God I wish they weren't..."

More whining liberals...

You see, this is where your whining liberalism gets you. Thatcher-worship. Ok, so this is a few days old, and should have been written at the end of last week. But I've been busy. And no one reads this shit anymore, anyway. So who's complaining?
Nonetheless, I digress. Last week, a programme entitled "Tory, Tory, Tory" was aired. Nowt wrong with that, you may think. Someone's bound to watch it. I didn't, but Guardian columnist Rupert Smith did, and had this to say: " Watching Tory! Tory! Tory!, I found myself in a situation that I could never have imagined in my 20s, when the action was unfolding - I was largely in agreement with Thatcher and her robust solutions to the problems of the day." Eh? Why? Are you some sort of idiot? Extreme right-wing nutter? Inordinately rich crook? But, no, let young Rupe continue: "So we were given a clear overview of privatisation, share-culture and right-to-buy, all of them dirty words at the time but now a familiar part of the landscape". Ah, I see. So certain aspects of Thatcher's self-serving agenda are adopted by Blair's Boys. That means, because they're "part of the landscape" they're OK? Let's forget how disastrous privatisation has proven itself to be on this country's infrastructure (caught a train, recently, Rupe? No, thought not...), or on how unscrupulous banks pushed people into taking out mortgages they couldn't afford and repossessed the houses they'd been living in all their lives. It's all "part of the landscape", so it must be OK.
But he continues, descending from what is merely complacent idiocy into mind-blowing snobbery and offensiveness, fuelled entirely be stupidity and ignorance: "I can't be the only person who has finally admitted after all these years of pretending otherwise that Arthur Scargill was a ghastly little man who needed to be trodden on". Ah, I see. So forget how Scargill's prognosis was entirely accurate and everything he predicted turned out to be true. Let's concentrate instead on the fact that he was a "ghastly little man" - no doubt because of his offensive northern accent, and the fact that he didn't go to the right school. Probably would be blackballed by the Garrick, too. Crimes far greater than Thatcher's out-and-out assault on the very fabric of British society, and well worth destroying the coal industry for.
Liberals, eh? Who needs 'em?

Sense, for once

It seems the European Court has made a sensible judgement. Why I feel this is sufficiently unusual to write on it is unclear, but I think a few things need to be said. A young woman thought it would infringe her human rights were she not permitted, against the wishes of her former partner, who fertilised them, to use frozen embryos to have a baby. Against her human rights? Her rights, surely, are such things as not being tortured, being able to speak freely in criticism of those in power, having enough food and a roof over her head, and so on. Having a family is a lifestyle choice, much like owning a Ferrari, or spending your summer travelling around Europe. Some people, whether for financial or biological reasons, don't have that choice, and it's possibly sad, but not a case for the European Court.
The other thing that must be stressed here, and that seems to be overlooked in most commentary, is the right to not have a family. It takes two people to create a child, and if one of those people doesn't want to, then their wishes must be taken into account. After all, they are the ones who are arguing for the status quo, as opposed to some radical, probably unpleasant, disruption to their life. And the voices of those of us who don't want to have families are often ignored. After all, we pay our taxes to support the education and care of other people's children, we're often left at work carrying on when the parents have had to leave because little Jonny's got a cold, we're the ones who get mugged by hoody-wearing teenage thugs and have to pay for their time in borstal, and so on. And we leech nothing out of the economy. Who's going to stand up for us?