Friday 17 January 2014

My MP asked if I had any local issues, and if I thought council tax should go up...

Spontaneous scribbles...

The council do nothing for me that I couldn't do better myself.

We have one bus every hour and a half, its times are of no use to us....

I avoid going into Brighton any more, parking charges, the green 'hate' projected at me as a driver...

I opened a new bank account in Lewes - easy to get to, easy parking.
I moved dentist to Peacehaven - easy to get to, easy parking.

We generally holiday in the UK - we tow a folding camper, we need a big car to tow.
We have family, and extended family locally - to save using multiple cars on excursions we need a big car for transport.
My younger son gets the bus for most of his travel between home and collage, but we often need a car to get him to/from the bus stop.
We do a weekly shop, we need a car.
We do Aquarobics in Falmer, we need a car.
We do Kendo in Lewes, we need a car.
We do Ninjitsu in Brighton, we need a car.
We do Atheltics in Withdean, we need a car.
We help with cubs in Rottingdean, we need a car.

I work with clients all over the place, I need a car.

I guess Greens just sit around at home smoking pot *talking* about how great they make things, in their restricted, crippled little lives they can't really imagine that anyone actually *does* anything.

There is nothing the council does, that I wouldn't rather do myself - and do better.

Not going into the 'city' much any more I don't give to the homeless sleeping rough much any more - but what the hell, the way the council fleece us they should all be in The Grand!

A council tax rise vs a council tax freeze? Don't make me laugh, I want a huge council tax *cut*. Cut to *zero* and start justifying every sodding penny upwards from that!

Thursday 16 January 2014

Jesus - Libertarian - Part 1 of...

I am a bog standard British bod. UK is a Christian country - with a culture based on Christian teachings (whether or not any 'god' is involved...). I am broadly libertarian - if you disagree, then you have a different definition of libertarian to me, and I don't really care! I came across some stuff on Jesus, Christianity and Libertarianism, and started doing my own rooting. I haven't got far, but got this far so far.

I am not arguing a religious case either way, just following a logical case to a logical conclusion from the story of Jesus as per the bible.

According to the bible:

Jesus, himself, sent out 12 disciples to spread his word, our knowledge of how they did this is made up from, and by, the four biblical gospels (Matthew, Mark Luke and John).

Jesus, himself, evidently considered the spreading of his word in this way, was all that the rest of mankind required.

Jesus would have known that, at the time, most people hearing a gospel would only hear one gospel, and it might be any one of them.

From this we must deduce that he believed each of the gospels is adequate in and of itself - anyone of them would do - because that is all that anyone at the time was likely to hear.

We know their lessons are not literal, that they are 'parables' stories meant to convey a message - a message that will be understood by those who they are meant for. Jesus said that an individual will be saved only through him, not through anyone else. So nothing can be valid unless you understand it for yourself, no one else can can save you, the message is accessible to every individual, if you don't understand it or 'get it' yourself then it is not part of the message intended for you - how could it be otherwise?

Old testament? And the rest of 'the bible'? Of academic interest maybe - but not something that Jesus asked to be spread, so clearly not needed for the  spreading of his message.

So the first thing seems to be only the four gospels matter - any one of them is all you need...

Here endeth the lesson so far...

Duggan sounds like a wrong'en, but we don't execute people for that in the UK.

On twitter I seem to be disagreeing with everyone... (whats new eh?!)

I agree that Duggan seems to have been a wrongen, I also agree that the police seem to have engineered the circumstances that led to his being shot.

I agree that they jury had more evidence than any casual observer would have and there is no reason to question their final conclusion on what happened at the moment of Duggan being shot.

However, there is more going on here. The story as I have heard it (and not disputed as far as I have seen).

The police were told Duggan would be collecting a gun from an associate, the police believed that this was true. They waited to let Duggan go to the meeting to collect the gun. When he left they believed he had collected the gun. Later they chased and stopped the car that Duggan was in, he exited the vehicle and was shot, dead.

Issues

1) The police believed the associate had a gun, however the didn't seek to seize it - this would have ensured the public were safe from it, and may have provided evidence related to other crimes committed with it.

2) The police only had any reason to think that Duggan had a gun because someone claimed he was going to collect one and did attend a meeting.

3) At the scene, Duggan was never armed, gun in hand, whatever his actions/behaviour they were not the actions/behaviour of an armed person about to shoot anyone.

Questions

1) Why did police not raid the gun owner and seize the weapon immediately?

2) Why did police let (as far as they believed) Duggan collect a gun and take it into public?

3) Evidently armed police cannot distinguish between the behaviour of unarmed and armed people, is this 'OK'?

Points

1) The outcome would have been the same whether or not Duggan had a gun (the judge said there was no overwhelming evidence for him having a gun ot not).

2) He was ultimately shot for not behaving in precisely the way an armed police officer wanted him to.

3) If people can end up lawfully killed just because police believe a rumour - and the outcome would be the same whether the rumour is true or not - then this needs to change, or we are all in danger of (effectively) summary execution at the hands of the police.

4) Duggan himself is pretty much irrelevant to all of this. It just happened that he was the subject of the original rumour.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Health Nazis kill people and make us all poorer.

I was considering the current state of affairs over tobacco control and so called 'e-cigarettes'.

Smoking has been a useful stick for the UK's authoritarians to beat up the general public, and charge the public (via taxes) royally for the privilege of being beaten up.

The latest round of abuse of the public has been plain packaging fuss. However from left wing we get China supplying huge quantities of 'e-cigarettes'.

The argument against smoking is not about the nicotine in cigarettes, it is about the tar and carbon monoxide and other damaging by-products produced when you extract the nicotine by burning tobacco leaves.

The UK have spent billions of taxpayer pounds nagging, hounding, regulating and otherwise imposing on the public in failed attempts to stop them burning tobacco. Meanwhile China has created a profitable industry (with huge export potential) by letting its industry create an alternative method of consuming nicotine, a method that does not require the burning of tobacco leaves, and so avoids any damaging by-products.

The UK has followed the old discredited socialist approach to this, while China has followed the successful capitalist free market approach.

It is time for the authoritarian nazis to be put back in their box and banished from public life for once and for all.

Currently they know the days of being anti-tobacco are numbered, so they are seeking other items to ban - like sugar. These disgusting parasites must not be allowed to escape, they must be terminated now, once and for all.

There is no genuine argument in favour of the UK remaining a member of the EU.

The EU-Lovers keep rolling out the same, bogus, arguments - instead of repeating the well known answers again and again, I thought I'l blog them here, all in one place.

1) Why do you hate Europe?

- I don't hate Europe, I love Europe. I hate the UK being under the power of political institutions of the European Union.

2) If UK leaves the EU, the EU will refused to trade with us, or make it very difficult and expensive.

- Under the Lisbon treaty, the EU is obliged to negotiate free trade agreements with any leaving member.

3) Despite their Lisbon treaty obligations they will put up trade barriers.

- As part of the World Trade Organisation there are yet more limits on barriers to trade. If the EU ignored its own treaty (as if!) they would be answerable to the Rest of the World, under their WTO obligations.

4) Despite all that they would put up trade barriers.

- The UK buys more from the EU than the EU buys from the UK, in any trade war, the UK would end up keeping loads of cash, and the EU would be left with unsold products.

5) We can't eat cash, we can't drive cash.

- But with cash we can buy from anywhere else in the world and/or we can use it to develop native/domestic manufacturing.

6) Even if they did negotiate a free trade agreement, the UK would end up having to conform to all EU laws/standards/regulations but not have any say over those laws/standards/regulations.

- For products exported to any country/area, they must (of course) meet that areas standards. This is an issue for exporters everywhere, already. It has no impact on any activity not related to export to that zone, nor the daily lives of citizens.

7) No, if it impacts trade, it will impact everyone.

- China, USA and the Rest of the World trade with the EU without needing to join it, nor to apply its rules/laws/standards other than to products specifically for export to the EU.

- UK trade with USA and China, we don't apply their rules/laws to everyone, just to the exported products/services.

8) Millions of UK jobs are dependent on the EU.

- Yes, millions may be dependent on the EU, but few are dependent on the UKs membership of the EU.

- Productive jobs in (say) trade, tourism etc will continue virtually unchanged.

- Unproductive overhead jobs (mainly political and bureaucrat) will disappear, saving the taxpayer millions of pounds in administrative overheads.

9) OK so why are we still members?

- Remember what I said about political and bureaucratic jobs? It is the people with those unproductive, comfortable, well paid jobs that keep us in, it is they who endlessly deny us a say.

10) But it that were true, they would know they couldn't keep the public in the dark for ever!

- They don't need to do it for ever, every year we stay in the EU, more and more of our wealth, resources, sovereignty are transferred to the EU, very soon now, it will be hugely expensive and complicated to leave the EU.

11) But the government have said that there are no more transfers to the EU - if there were we would have a referendum.

- That is what they said, but only if it required treaty changes. Existing treaties already allow for many more transfers, they have only scratched the surface of actually implementing the terms of the Lisbon treaty.

12) But we would see the transfers happening, it would be reported.

- Often no physical transfer is needed, the EU can expand its work in an area, while the UK runs it down. If the EU expands its embassies and the UK reduces its own then no physical transfer has occurred, but power has been silently transferred.

13) If the established political parties benefit from the EU - even though the people and country don't how can we ever escape?

- Vote UKIP, if UKIP win the 2015 election the UK will immediately start to terminate its membership of the EU.

14) OK!

Tuesday 7 January 2014

Are the British public wrong about neary everything? and if so what does it mean?

The Independent has a story entitled "British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows".

It highlights are:-

Benefit fraud - Public think its £24 in £100- Government claim its 70p in £100.
Migrants - Public think its 30% of the population - Government claim its 13%
Teen Pregnancy - Public think its 15% of teens - Government say its 0.6%

In each case the public were asked to second guess government stats (I am not sure how useful this even is as an exercise - Government stats are only estimates...) however given that people see the impact of these things in their everyday lives, and are basing their estimates on the damage they see done maybe something useful can be extracted...

The conclusion implied (usually by the left who hate the public anyway - and decry anything that is wanted by many as 'populist') is:-

'things are not as bad as people think, they should stop complaining because its all OK really'

However I think this is flawed - people know how bad things are, they see it in their every day lives - the flaw is in their estimation of how many people it takes to make things so bad. They think such damage and expense must be the result of many, many more people than it actually is - and just imagine how much worse things would be if these figures were allowed to climb to where they public think they already are!

Also, given the actual figures, if the public are asked about targets for benefit fraud, migration, teen pregnancy, they could well say (for instance) £15, 20%, 10% - and then be truly shocked at the results(!). So any targets currently in place need serious review with an expectation that they need to be hugely reduced.

Monday 6 January 2014

UK Government gives migrants a monopoly on millions of UK jobs and subsidies them with tax breaks!

National suicide - liblabcon have slit our national wrists and we are bleeding to death.

I don't know why it hasn't come up before, but the situation in the UK right now is...

To employ a Brit an employer must pay them at least minimum wage, pay NI to the UK government, the employee pays income tax and NI to the UK government.

To employ an EU migrant an employer can pay as little as they can get away with, pay no national insurance to the UK government, while the employee pays income tax to their home countries government (and at a lower rate than UK government charges).

So an EU worker costs an employer less than a Brit does, takes home more money than a Brit does and pays no money to the UK taxman, while a Brit would pay the tax man and the employer would too!

It is actually illegal for a Brit to offer to work for the same as the migrant! Our own government have given migrants a monopoly on millions of UK jobs!

Of course there are a whole raft of 'in work benefits' available to the low paid too - so rather than just not paying anything to the taxman, they collect a big cheque from him too... while we also pay for the excluded brit to sit at home doing nothing!

National suicide - liblabcon have slit our national wrists and we are bleeding to death.