Diana Watch

 Good news, it's not just the Express that prints pictures of Princess Diana on their front page, sometimes other people do too. Look, here she is on The Times,

I'm in a bit of sports frenzy at the moment what with the World Cup, Wimbledon, Cricket and a Grand Prix this weekend as well. I am barely leaving the house at the moment which is a shame because the weather is lovely.

 Depending on when you read this England are about to play Germany or have played Germany in the World Cup so I say this*, Come on England/Well played England/Not out on penalties again/Well, they were the better team on the day/That ball is awful, so light and round. *delete as appropriate.

Have you seen Star Wars? What do you mean no? Stop reading this, go and buy it on DVD and watch it and then continue reading otherwise you won't get the next reference.

 You know that bit in Episode 4 when the Death Star destroys Alderaan and when it happens Obi-Wan says he has felt a disturbance in the Force, like 1 million people cry out at once and then were silent? You remember that bit? See told you this would mean nothing to you if you hadn't seen the film. Anyway, that's how I felt when I heard the Nadine Dorries and David Tredinnick had managed to weasel themselves onto the Science and Technology Committee. 1 million Geeks, Nerds and Skeptics cried out at once and then were silent. Well until they got their breaths back from the collective scream and started Twittering and blogging about this adoration.

 Now I know that to get onto a committee you have to want to get onto that committee but surely there should be some sort of test to see if you are qualified to pass judgement on the subjects the committee will discuss, in this case maybe GCSE science. Here come the Dark Ages, austere Dark Ages at that.

 I would go and hide in a cave until it is all better but for the fear that Prince Charles would be there extolling the virtues of this kind of architecture.

 This however is not a time for retreat, the morons are strong but we can be stronger. They may have one or two people now on the inside and Prince Charles is still interferes more than a constitutional Monarch should (I know that technically he is not yet the Monarch but he should be practising the sort of opinion withholding that his mother does so well.) but this is the perfect time for the rational people to strike back. Let them witter on about how Surgeons don't operate under a full moon because it effects blood clotting or how a foetus can punch it's way out of a womb (maybe she was misquoting a Chuck Norris joke), they get some attention for themselves and look silly but then the way is open for sensible people to correct them and look, well, sensible.

 Remember when strangely faced Michael Gove was trying to sell us all the idea of Free Schools? Do you remember how we heard the word “Sweden” more times then the Divine Comedy album Fin De Siecle? Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden. 

 He point was that Sweden used the free school system and it was bloody brilliant. What we needed was some sort of study that could tell us if he was right or not.

 What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? No, it's a study about the Swedish free schools system and guess what, they are not as good as Tory Boy (and I mean that in an unpleasant way) has been making out.

 A report, published in Research in Public Policy, has found what we all thought. Those that do best from this sort of system are pupils from educated, professional homes. Report author Rebecca Allen from the Institute of Education has found that "The impact on low-educated families and immigrants is close to zero," well that's ok, this Government don't really seem to like them anyway. The report went on, "The researchers also find that the advantages that children educated in areas with free schools have by age 16 do not translate into greater educational success in later life.”

"The evidence on the impact of the reforms suggests that, so far, Swedish pupils do not appear to be harmed by the competition from private schools, but the new schools have not yet transformed educational attainment in Sweden."

 So the evidence shows that this system does not help ALL pupils but only those from the right sort of family, so why do this? It seems that this Government (mostly the Tory bits) are making the decisions on ideological grounds rather than based on evidence. That would explain the budget, a small mention of which later.

 First they refuse to introduce proper regulation of landlords despite the fact that their trade organisation thinks that it is a good idea and now they cap housing benefit. People will be forced to live in cheap, unpleasant housing that may well be dangerous and there will be nothing that they can do about it.

 Run free little markets, run free. Don't you worry who you hurt, you just go and have fun, make as much money as you can for a very small number of people.

Far be it for me to criticise the mighty BBC but I do feel that they went for the salacious angle of this story when they went with the headline “GP admits viewing pornographic images at Dorset surgery.”

 Now that is a very stupid thing to do but this GP was up in front of the GMC, it can't have just that can it?

 Well, the person who wrote this piece seems to think that it is important, or at least the most interesting to the sites readers. If you read on, however, you learn a little more about how spectacularly inappropriate this Doctor was.

 In paragraph 3 we learn he may have been “drunk at the surgery in 2007” and may accessed patient records whilst suspended in 2008 and 2009.

 In paragraph 5 we learn he was accused of  “inappropriately touching three female colleagues”. Paragraph 6 brings news of a webcam he set up  in his surgery and we finish with paragraph 7 that tells us that “Dr Vadas also faces allegations about his care of eight patients and is accused of making threats against a witness”.

 Really I don't thing that the porn thing matters that much, it just made a better headline.

Let's get on with the Awards as we all have more important things to do with our day,

The Award for Massive Insanity of the Week,

Jim Corr from the Corrs (you remember them, 3 cloned women and some bloke, he was the bloke) seems to have become more than a little mad.

 Thank you to Michael Marshall on twitter for pointing everyone towards Jim Corr's website which is filled with pretty much every conspiracy theory you have ever heard of and many you haven't. The man is a loon.

 This is what happens if you hang around with 3 beautiful woman all the time that you have to keep reminding yourself are your sisters and you shouldn't be looking at them like that.

The Award for Incredible, Passionate, Refusing to Loose Sporting Achievement Of The Week,

Yes, yes England played pretty well on Wednesday against the Slitheen (and may also do so again today) but that doesn't even come close to our award winner.

 Nicolas Maihut and John Isner played an epic 5 setter at Wimbledon this week.

 There is no tie-break in the 5^th set at these championships so you play on until somebody is ahead by 2 games.

 The first break points didn't come up until the 101^st game of the set. Yes you did read that right. The score was 50 games all. At this point they had been playing for nearly 9 hours, over 2 days.

 Until Wednesday the longest match at Wimbledon had lasted 6hr and 9 minutes, the 5^th set of this match alone lasted longer than that.

 The 5th set ended 70-68 after 11 hours and 5 minutes of play. It was played over 3 days. Both players served over 100 aces. It was just incredible.

The Award for Fantastic Misdirection Of The Week,

David Cameron was so very proud of the Conservative Party restoring the link between pensions and earnings, so proud in fact that he mocking Labour during Prime Minister's Questions for not doing it whilst they were in office.

 Is it such a great thing? I mean, it would have been a great thing when earnings rises were high and inflation was low. I wonder what it's like now?

 Well, George Osborne announced that public sector pay will be frozen for a few years and, as we all know, the general economy is a bit fucked and many private companies have frozen pay as well.  What about inflation you ask? Inflation is creeping up, well it's about 3.4%, down from 3.7% the month before but still higher than it was.

 So it seems that inflation is higher than the rise in earnings. The increase in pensions for your Granny is going to be less under the Tories than it would have been if they had left the system alone and yet they trumpet this a “progressive”. Welcome to our brave new world.

The Award for Getting More Than You Bargained For of The Week,

 So you are in Canada and you decide to steal a lorry. You think, that looks like a nice lorry and the keys are in the ignition, I'll have that one. Really you should check the back of the lorry to see what's in it shouldn't you? No, you're in a hurry, after all you are nicking it, you are sure whatever is in there will be easy to sell on the black market later on. Just take the truck.

 After the crime is committed you have time to see what's in the lorry. As you approach the doors you notice that it seems to be making some rather odd noises. With some trepidation you open up the lorry only to be faced with a a Bengal tiger called Jonas and camels named Todd and Shawn.

 If you are the person that stole them would you mind terribly giving them back to Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario, they are a little concerned for their animals.

No real mentions for BP this week, oil still floods out into the Gulf of Mexico and they have finally decided to put someone else in charge of capping the leak, but there is a video on YouTube that claims to be footage of some sort of oily rain. I, obviously, can't confirm it's validity but have a look yourselves,

 The sun still seems to be out in Britain and it confuses us, although it could be the Tardis burning up I suppose, because it rarely happens we feel we should make the most of every last second of it despite the fact that we know our skin will turn pink, cause us a lot of pain and then peel off. I did see a man on Weymouth seafront on Friday wearing only Speedos and trainers, this is not a good look.

 I wish it would rain a little bit, I'm fed up watering the allotment.

Anyway enough of my moaning about how nice the weather is here, have a nice week all.

Diana Watch

“The good thing about Science Fiction is that no one lives in Hampstead”
J.G. Ballard

Whilst I’m typing this I am watching the London Marathon at the same time and feeling a little jealous. I wish I had that sort of motivation. I managed 10 miles a couple of weeks ago but really must try harder.

There isn’t much news this week except for the budget but there have been one or two other things.
All of the terror suspects who were arrested following the terror chief/photo incident of last week have been released with no charges whatsoever. Gordon Brown claimed that the police and security services had saved us from a massive terrorist incident. It seems that they might not of. In fact they may have saved us from….ummmmm…..nothing. Well, some immigration offences may have occurred as they have all been handed over to the Immigration Services so that they can be deported.
The problem here is not that MI5 are arresting people who they think might be terrorists and getting it wrong, it’s a hard job, I’ve seen Spooks. No, the problem is the wall to wall coverage in the newspapers and on the 24hr news channels. Oh and comments from our Prime Minister. They manage to give the impression, whether it is true or not, that people are arrested and realised because they are a bit foreign looking and are unlikely to have done anything terrorist related. The constant coverage that claims that they are terrorists and then the coverage of their release and the criticism of the authorities undermines peoples confidence in our security services and breeds the sort of disconnect that is then covered on the news, usually as some sort of vox pop interview, as proof of the divide between “Muslims” and the rest of us. You are not helping, stop it.

South Africa has re-elected the ANC as its ruling party but luckily without the 2/3rds majority needed to emend the constitution. So what has happened since the ANC took over 10 years ago? Well, they had a health minister who claimed that beetroot and garlic would cure HIV, the murder rate shot up and the number of people living on under 1$ a day has doubled. I am, of course, not claiming that things were better under white minority rule because it wasn’t but it is not now a land of milk and honey.

As you know in Britain we really dislike a benefit cheat. Our right wing press spends many a column inch demonising those who claim for things that they are not entitled to. However our press seem to ignore those who have left our country and have retired to other countries. They ignore them when they are talking about immigration to this country and they ignore them when it comes to benefit fraud. A report out this week from the Dept of Work and Pensions claimed that £69 million was being illegally claimed by Britons living overseas. That is a lot of money. Benefit fraud is estimated to stand at about £800 million per year and nearly 10% of it is committed by people living abroad. Lets be honest, these are probably not young people. Old people can be bad to.

I suppose that we should at least mention the budget. The thing that a number of the papers and TV news concentrated on was the rise in income tax to 50% for those earning £150,000 or more. That would be the top 1% of earners than, so not that many people effected. The interesting point that I only heard mentioned once was that this was only for cash income. The government have left open the tax loophole that allows people to take some of their wage in stocks and shares and for the they only get charged capital gains tax at 18% so a lot of them will get out of it. They are trying to close some other loopholes though.
David Cameron railed against this tax rise saying that it would be bad for Britain but when asked if he would scrap it he said that it “wouldn’t be a priority”. So really you quite like it then?
The fuel price escalator has returned which had annoyed a lot of people but the Government are trying to put people off of driving. When fuel prices shot up a while ago the amount of petrol that was purchased fell. People drove less and walked more. Surely that is what should be encouraged? Just me then?
What I thought was a remarkable scheme was also announced by Mr Darling during his mercifully short speech. It was a scheme to find anyone under 25 who has been unemployed for about a year a job or a place on a training scheme. Come on, this is an incredible idea if it works. During the fast recession of the Tory reign, there were 2 by the way; unemployment was a price worth paying and a generation of young people were abandoned by the government. And whilst we are at it, unemployment is currently at it’s highest since 1997, or since the last time that the Tories were in power.

What neither party is willing to admit is that we have no way of knowing what effect Government actions have on the economy. The argument will be, we did this and it all got better but the counter argument will be if you’d done this it would have got better more quickly. The problem is that you can not prove either argument. The likelihood is that if we did nothing the economy would get better in the end. We will have a recession about every 15 years. That seems to be how that system seems to work. Gordon Brown did not end boom and bust, in fact he had no effect on it at all and possibly helping it to become a little worse but all the arguments are hypothetical.


And now the weekly awards,


The Award for Piss Poor Film Trailer Making Sure That I Don’t Go and See It, Of the Week,

This goes to “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. The trailer is awful and it must have been the easiest film to write. The entire plot is lifted directly from “Christmas Carol” and they’ve merely changed the situation. Lazy.

The Award for Silly Names of the Week,

Channel 4 have a series called “Embarrassing Bodies” which sometimes helps to enlighten people about various dysfunctions of their bodies. Last week they really pushed the boat out and some researcher must have spent a lot of time trying to find a spectacularly inappropriately named Doctor. Ladies and Gentleman I give you a gynaecologist called Dr Slack.

The Award for Policy Hiding/Public Misleading Euphemism of the Week,

On the Today program David Cameron was talking about education and he used the phrase “introducing new providers”. I’m sorry? What do you think that means? “introducing new providers”, oh I get it, he means privatisation. Oh that would make sense. Government has to cut back so get some private companies involved. The thing is, it doesn’t work. There was an unsurprising report a couple of weeks ago about council provided home care. This is provided, almost exclusively, by private companies. It seems that corners were being cut and the care wasn’t up to standard. Of course it wasn’t. Private companies have to make a profit, that is the bottom line. There is no other point to them.