Diana Watch

OK, I think I have to be honest with you. I will not be voting for the Conservative Party at the next General Election. I know that this may come as a surprise to absolutely none of you but I thought that we should clear it up.

 I spend a lot of time on here having a go at Tories and their rubbishness and almost as much time defending the Government. This will stop, the government defending bit anyway (unless they are being unfairly maligned or misrepresented because that is not fair.)

 I feel that, for reasons of fairness, that I should also tell you that I am a member of a Political party and it is neither of the two mentioned above. Yes, my dear readers, I am a member of UKIP. Ha, bet you spluttered what ever drink happened to be in your mouth just then. Bet it’s running down your chin and dripping on to your keyboard right now! Ha. Of course I’m not, I’m a member of the Lib-Dems (oh and as of this week the RSPB).

 You’re not really that surprised are you? I thought I should mention it because as we, in Britain, build up to the Election this blog may get a little more partisan. To be honest it will get a little more partisan but I’m trying to give it a veneer of balance and fairness.

 I won’t be uncritical of my party though just because I am a member, if they do something twatish I will say, but possible not with as much vitriol as I would if it were a Tory issue.

 For instance, there seems to be a plot afoot to remove Evan Harris as the parties’ spokesperson on Science, you can read about at Jon Treadway’s blog here.

 Brilliant, Evan Harris is great. He’s funny and well informed. We need more people like him not fewer. So he pissed off a few on the old woolly side of the party. Fuck ‘em. They are one of the reasons the party has an image problem. People think that we are all just a bunch of Tofu eating, sandal wearing hippies. Are we going to try and get rid of Vince Cable as well because he annoys some bankers?

 Anyway, confession over (now I know how Tiger Woods must have felt. Seriously, talk about taking yourself too seriously. You play golf for a living, calm down. Who cares into what or whom you have inserted your penis. Can you still play golf well? If so then carry on, if not stop, you are worth over $1billion) and now back to Tory Bashing, it’s like whack-a-mole but much, much more fun.

 20 economists have written to last Sunday's Times to say that the Government's handling of the economic recovery is wrong. Are we surprised by this? No, of course we aren't. I would imagine that they were asked to write to the paper by either the paper or the Tories. I can imagine that it isn't that hard to find 20 economists that disagree with the Government. After all it's only 20. and as any economist will tell you that, when compared to say 60million, 20 is a very small number.

 History also tells us that economist know nothing. We've had a recession after all but that’s not all. In 1981 364 economists wrote to Geoffrey Howe to tell him that he was wrong to raise taxes by £4bn. In the letter, Mervyn King (now Governor of the Bank of England), and the Labour peer, Maurice Peston (Robert Peston's Dad) said that Howe's policy had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence", and that Britain's "social and political stability" was at risk if the government did not change course.

 The Tories made much of Sunday's letter but they should be a little careful. Hubris people, hubris. After the 1981 letter was written by loads of people who where supposed to know their stuff, exactly the opposite of what they said would happen happened. The Economy started to grow.

 Friday bought another letter from some more economists. Really, shouldn’t they be doing some adding up or something, they seem to have far to much time to write letters. Oh and letters? Who writes letters these days? What is this, the early 20^th Century? This is why we are in so much trouble, they’ll be advising us to invest in the East India Company or Dutch Tulip bulbs soon.

 Anyway, this time 60 of them have written an open letter supporting the Government’s plan to delay spending cuts for a little bit.

 Now I only have A-level Maths and I don't have a degree in Economics but I'm pretty sure that 60 is bigger than 20, about 3 times as much I reckon. So that will be lots more economists say the Government is right and not the Tories. To quote a football chant “Sit down, shut up. Sit down, shut up.”

 Whilst we are talking about Tories and numbers lets have a quick award,

 The Award for Shooting Yourself in the Foot and Showing That You Have No Idea What Is Going On,

 The Tories put out a document as part of their “Broken Britain” smear campaign against not-middle-class-people that claimed that more than half of girls in deprived areas, by the age of 18, were pregnent. The exact number that they used was 54%. If that is true then that is terrible, maybe these Tory types have a point. Of course they don't. The figure was false. The true figure is 5.4%. Was it just a typo? Did they just miss out a decimal point? Well if they did, they did it 3 times in the document so that seems unlikely. Did no one proof read it and question the figures? (I know I can't really criticize others proof reading but hey, I'm not trying to get elected, yet.) 

 You could just brush this off (as I'm sure the Tories will) as just a mistake but what it does show is that the Conservative Party have no idea what is actually going on in Britain. No one who read the document before it was published thought to ask, “Is this very high number correct?” They all assumed that this is what their country folk were like. Are these the people you want making social policy for us all? Well of course you lot don't, you read this but please tell your friends, relatives and complete strangers, the Tories have no idea about other people.

Would you let this woman run your child’s school?

For those who don’t know, this is Goldie Hawn, she is an actress who likes Buddhism. This is qualification enough to run schools under Tory plans announced last Sunday. Parents, charities and companies are to be encouraged to take over failing schools.

 Is that not privatisation? You remember privatisation, trains, power generation, home care, all those things that work really, really well. Oh now wait, I forgot, profit is put ahead of service. That’s how your children should be educated, by the lowest bidder. What could possibly go wrong?

 Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove, told the Sunday Times that there would be proper inspections of the school and did say that creationism would not be taught even if a church charity took over a school. Can we hold you to that Mr Gove because that is quite a bold claim?

 He also used a very odd phrase when discussing who would be allowed to run the schools. He said that an independent body would be set up to vet all those who applied and “to make sure that extremist organisations, or people who have a dark agenda, are prevented from doing so.". A dark agenda? He does realise the Harry Potter is fiction right?

 The Award for Reasonably Incompetent Secret Service of the Week,

 This must go to Mossad, the Israeli secret service. OK, so state sponsored terrorism isn’t funny but the way this hit was carries out does smack of a Carry On film.

 Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas leader, was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai. It has been assumed by most people, quite reasonably given Mossad’s history, (have you seen the film Munich?) that they carried out the assassination.

 I realize that none of the above is funny but the following is, a bit. They used stolen identities to travel on. The identities of real people. They traveled on passports with these people’s names on them. People who would very quickly be able to prove that they were nowhere near Dubai when Interpol, who seem to have issued an international arrest warrant for these obviously innocent people, come a calling.

 As far as I am aware, and most of my knowledge does come from the BBC television program Spooks, spy types use a false identity or legend. By using real people and then killing someone, they have managed to get themselves an awful lot of attention, usually the opposite of what spies try and do.

 The Israeli Ambassador was called to the Foreign Office and was asked to explain why they did this, to which his reply, after shifting awkwardly in his seat, was. “Ummmm, we didn’t.”

 The problem is we can do nothing. A government spokesman, I forget who now (this is why I would never be able to uncover something like the Watergate cover up, “ummm, someone broke into somewhere and junk.”) said that “We will make the strongest representations to the Israeli Government”. Well what does that mean? When pressed he was unable to answer because they can do nothing.

 Your ID can be stolen by a foreign Secret Service and there is nothing you, or anyone else, can do about it. International law is meaningless if it is unenforceable.

The Award That Will Mean Nothing To You Because You've Just Won An Olympic Medal,

We won a gold! Oh yes, Ladies and Gentlemen (ok, those reading this in Canada and the US are quite use to this) Great Britain has won a gold medal! Amy Williams has been victorious in the Skeleton bob and has become the first Britain to win a solo Gold in 30 years. (If you click here you can see some video on the BBC website.)

 Lets not mention the US and Canada making sour-grapes type complaints about her aerodynamic helmet because they were rejected, and Great Britain won a medal. Oh yes.

Stories that haven't made it this week,

 The pointless but funny story of the week. The BNP has voted to change it's constitution to allow non-white people to join after the threat of legal action from the Equalities commission.

 Is this going to make them less racist? Nope.

We live in a country of unpleasant people (despite the survey a couple of weeks ago that said that we are all more liberal), although why has the BBC focused on woman's attitudes?

 Haikus of the Week,

 We now know what killed

 King Tutankhamen, fear not,

 He is still dead though.

 A Golfer says sorry

To his wife and family,

Gillette are relieved.

In the coming week news,

Simon Singh's appeal against the BCA comes up on Tuesday. For those of you who don't know what the case is about then may I recommend that you read here or here, for more info on Libel reform, try here.

 May I advise you to read the Jack of Kent blog later in the week to find out what happened.

 Good news, I've come to the end. Have a lovely week.

Diana Watch

So I had my swine flu vaccination on Tuesday and, unsurprisingly to anyone with a modicum of sense, not much happened. I had a bit of a sore arm and, as the Occupational Health Nurse Kerry said might happen when my body started to produce antibodies, I felt a bit hot and slightly achy during the early hours of Wednesday morning. To be honest I was reassured at the speed at which my body made me feel a little unwell.
I am telling you this because, as a not overly bright person, I had not considered what happens in my body when I had the jab but, because it was explained to me, it all made sense. Oh yes, that would be the standard response of the body to receiving a denatured virus (or part of a virus) or any other potential infection. It's not the infection; it's what the body does. But I wonder if those people who you meet (I met 2 yesterday) and claim that they had their flu jab and a day later they had the flu get this explained to them at the time of stabbing? The NHS can be a little poor at explaining itself sometimes.
Is it the lack of understanding of how our bodies function and how vaccines work that lets in all the anti-vaccine nonsense that is out there? Have you had a look at some of it? OMG! To the rational eye (most of me is rational but my eyes are especially so) it is so badly informed as to be hilarious but to the not so well informed it is spectacularly misleading and dangerous.
My favourite argument that the, umm....... let's for the sake of balance call them, charlatans and liars use is “Big Pharma is lying to you in order to separate you from your money”. Now I'm not here to defend GlaxoSmithKline and friends because they aren't the world’s most moral companies but I will say this, those who use this argument are always trying to sell you something of their own. Whether it be magnetic bracelets or a homeopathic swine flu vaccine(this lady, in the section called “Swine flu treatment and Flu Treatments”, even questions whether this strain of the virus is naturally occurring or created in a lab. She later goes for the complete set of nonsense cards as she claims that all vaccinations cause autism.), they are trying to get your credit card details.
If someone makes a claim on a website please don't just take them at face value, read around them a bit, learn something relevant. Now you are able to make a slightly more informed decision and if you are still open your wallet for snake oil sales men than it is Natural Selection at work. Intelligent design my arse.
If vaccines didn't work then the world would still be revenged by small pox and it's not. This may be simplistic but it makes the point rather clearly I think.
Please don't get me wrong, I am not criticising the people who buy this nonsense (well I am a bit), I understand their desire to be told that their incurable disease can be cured by some herbs and a wand. No, the people that I am having a go at are those who prey upon these desperate people with their many kinds of woo. Theirs is the cynical misinterpretation of science and logic in order to extract money from those who have been told that they have no hope and, in the case of Mediums, the recently bereaved. I mean, what sort of cunt tells the parent of a child who has died that they can talk to them but it will cost you money?

OMG! (sorry to use the expression again) They want to teach 5 year olds about sex and drugs! It can't be allowed to happen! And of course it isn't, despite what the Evening Standard or the Daily Express says.
The Government want to bring in a new plan for sex education in schools but it has annoyed the usual sort of people. This time, however, they are way out of touch. The new government plans, that do not include sex education for 5 year olds, have been discussed, and agreed with, many religious groups such as the Muslim Council for Britain and the Catholic Church.
So why bother complaining about them when the current lessons have worked so well. I mean, it's not as if we have the highest levels of teenage pregnancy in Europe or anything. Oh, now, wait a minute, we do.
The plans are to start teaching children, yes, as young as 5 (but as a vast number of parents have decided not to teach their children anything before they go to school such as how to use the toilet or cutlery it shows that some one should), about relationships in the most basic ways and learn about parts of their bodies. So what's wrong with that? Well, obviously nothing. Fuss for the sake of fuss. And the part about drug lessons for 5 year olds? I have no idea where that has come from. I was told about drugs and their dangers at school, were you?
The argument against seem to be that if we tell children about sex they want to do it. Interesting point. We don't tell children about smoking but they still want to do that and that is because they see others doing it. Our world is all about sex. Sex sells and lots of people want us to buy their stuff. We are surrounded by sexual images all the time so it is no wonder that younger and younger children find it interesting.
Let us have a look at the statistics from a country that teaches abstinence shall we? After years of falling, the teenage birth-ratein the US went up between 2005-2007, it is the highest in the western world. Many blame the “abstinence only” sex education bought in by the Bush Administration for this rise. Young people will have sex, we need to except this as fact, and what we need to do is to make sure that they have the knowledge to do it safely. Proper facts, sensibly discussed. Internet porn and playground chat is not a really that helpful.

We're going to be part of Europe, oh we're going to be part of Europe and if you don't like you won't get to vote on it anyway. Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Czech president Vaclav Klaus has ratified the Lisbon Treaty. This means that it will come in to force on December 1st. As you can imagine this had annoyed our right-wing press quite a lot and has pleased me so much.
One of the purposes of the treaty (apart from the streamlining of decision making stuff) is so that Europe can keep up with China and the USA who look like they could form a G2. The 2 superpowers trading as superpowers and leaving out the rest of the world. I'm not so keen on that as others seems to be. We need to do everything we can to stop this from happening. If we don't, the UK will become some economic backwater with no one taking any notice of us at all.


The Award For Answering a Question that Simply No One Was Asking,

This has to go to the Daily Star that bought us the Headline “Is Maddie a Muslim?” Way to link missing girl and disliked and misunderstood religion there.

The Award For Heart Warming Story of the Week,

The Actress Kate Winslet has won a libel case against the Daily Mail. Is there anything sweeter than a sentence that ends “ has won a libel case against the Daily Mail”? I don't think so.
They had printed an article disputing the amount of exercise that she did, well they didn't dispute it, they said that she lied when she said in an interview with Elle magazine, "I don't go to the gym because I don't have time, but I do Pilates workout DVDs for 20 minutes or more every day at home." How could they possibly know? No, really? How could they? They are quite obviously making stuff up. Why would they bother? Because they are unpleasant people, that's why.
Believe it or not, with every day that passes my views about the Daily Mail harden. With every hate filled, factually incorrect article that they print. I hate everyone that works there. They are responsible for crap that they print. Every single one of them. They cannot us the Nuremberg defence. By that I mean the “I was only following orders” defence rather than the “pawns and a rook” opening set of moves invented by Franz Nuremberg, Chess Grandmaster, in 1923, a chequered board genius and completely fiction character, made up for the propose of this joke. I want to make it clear that I'm not comparing them to actual Nazi's, just mentioning the excuse.
This week they published an article about an Asylum seeker dying in the back of a lorry and later in the day they had to remove most of the comments because, even they had been moderated by the paper, some people found them offensive. Now remember that this was cleared by the paper, one of the comments was, “one down, many more to go”
There is also an article by AN Wilson which described all scientists as arrogant. I'm not going to talk about the article because others have done it more eloquently then I ever could. It then pointed out, for some completely unknown reason, that another person who completely believed in science was Hitler. It also had a nice big picture of the moustachioed socio-path but later in the day the paper removed this picture. There is a very good article on the Poddelusion podcast about AN Wilson and his hypocrisy, I.E. comparing scientists to Hitler whilst he believes in Eugenics, having called for a woman to be forcibly sterilised in an article earlier this year.
One of the things that really annoys me about the paper is their lack of commitment to being offensive. A few complaints and they take stuff down. So do they really believe in the things that their own Journalists and Columnists are writing? I don't know but they are spectacularly inconsistent.

Sorry, I've been a bit ranty again this week. I will try and be concise and funny again next week.
For those who are wondering, the cat is still struggling on. Her kidneys my not be working but no one seems to have told her. She seems to be coping ok.
Hope you all have a nice week.