Tuesday 12 November 2013

Religion News

As the propositions of the fool Iain Duncan Smith come under greater attack, he relies on the approach of the cleric. Argued into a corner on his own terms on Today a few weeks ago, he virtually shouted “But I believe it”.
I think I am right in saying that our army is currently fighting a war in Afghanistan against people who have adopted the same mode of logic
More recently on some programme or other on Radio 4 Esther McVey uttered the same words to sidestep the requested response to a similar demolition of some crap she had uttered. When it was a television presenter Ms McVey presented The Heaven and Earth Show
Today Mr Andrew Coyne, in The Business Desk 12th November 2013, reports Michael Heseltine as follows: "All over the world governments are making decisions about a future which they cannot predict but in which they believe."

Tuesday 29 October 2013

A Hunt

Jeremy Hunt is found to have acted illegally a second time, this time by the appeal court. Instead of apologising for his crime and for wasting our money, he insists he was morally right and will change the law so that another time it'll be ok.

I'm afraid I can't think of an insult disgusting enough

Illiteracy

According to the BBC website “Grayson Perry asks if revolution is a defining idea in art, or has it met its end?” Actually, I think he suggested that art has met its end; not revolution.

Some hours later, Naomi Campbell responded to a question: “It's not ignorance; it's not knowing”

Thursday 4 July 2013

Facebook

I'll say this in the light of Mr Snowden, and in the light of a nice Bell cartoon today of an ear extending to wrap around Morales' plane

I think the following message to Facebook puts it clearly: “I do not want a Facebook account. Every now and then you write to me as if we are old friends. When I just unsubbed you said you had amended your records or something. I don't want you having any record of me. I think you are despicable. Please confirm you have entirely deleted your record of me”

This was after Facebook wrote to me chatty and said I seemed to be missing out. You know, the way a god salesman tells you how they are pleased to see you.

I unsubbed although they had subbed me without my knowledge; and they said they had updated my preferences.

My problem was that I wanted to know where the “fuck off” button is. In reply to the message above they said “Thanks for your feedback. We aren't responding to each email we receive through this channel, but we may reach out to you for more info as we work on improving this experience.”

So these dog turds with business qualifications decide if they reply or not to a request that they stop their harassment. It seems to be impossible to get a response. Kafka's Castle anyone?

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Dungheads & pointlessness

I havent written here recently for a variety of reasons including a sense of pointlessness. I thought back nearly 20 years to when my employer decided to victimise me and another union activist for standing up for our colleagues' rights although those colleagues did precious little to help themselves. When this happened, those colleagues paused briefly in their endless asking “What has the union ever done for me?” to declare us both trouble makers who were getting what we deserved – the impetus to obedience driving them.
This morning I thought that I must write though because I read in the paper that young people are turning to the Tories because of their imposition of the bedroom tax. This was in The Guardian and wasnt some wet dream of the Daily Mail.
How could this be? I wondered. The answer would seem to be that those young people are Dungheads, like much of the rest of the population. In no way could one support the policy rationally – i.e. I challenge anyone to make the case. At best it would a demand to be given some of the action at the expense of others without doing anything oneself, like brats having tantrums.
But I am busy and a bit under the weather and was going to let it go. What is the point of writing that people are Dungheads when people are Dungheads?
And then I arrived at the cafe where I work, because it has wifi and where the official propaganda encourages you to work in a quiet atmosphere, to find a dune of shouting mothers and screaming babies occupying two thirds of the tables with electricity and blocking access to all the others with armoured personnel carriers.
I asked them politely to move these vehicles so I could get through and was just waved away. So I said they were selfish and moved a table out and clambered in. Tell him to fuck off, said one.
I worked. After a while one baby began screaming piercingly and was ignored, which is why presumably it was screaming; and I gave in and said For God's sake shut it up.
Trying and failing to be suave, the mother turned to me and told me to go to the library if I wanted quiet.
Clearly she has not been to the library. The library is full of screaming adults and children running riot. That's when it's open.
I said This place is supposed to be quiet.
No it isn't, she said, without hesitation.
So I was dealing with religion. To confirm that there was a mothers' knot of voices as various of them shouted at me their opinion. From what I could gather, which was little, most of them were not relevant to the exchange; but whenever has the believer made a pertinent reply to an objection? It was pointless to reply because their aim was not to reach agreement but to impose their will.
But of course I am wrong. I forget that there are only 7 billion of us, that there is empty cheap housing, places in schools and an abundance of open space. I forget that children are best socialised by being given no guidance.
In due course their attention gave out, they forgot what they were doing there, and they left, a few hurling insults as they left. It reminded me of trying to teach teenagers in school.
And then some business types arrived. I committed some of it to memory but the memory has turned to sludge. None of them were actually making anything or doing anything useful. It was all, as so often, the application of Onanism to administration.
The place is full of people with babies all inordinately proud of their achievement in reproducing, though flies can do that.
As Timon said, More Man. I may as well post it. Perhaps one of my enemies will read it and become so angry they have a heart attack.


Thursday 6 June 2013

A sample of the electorate

I just had an “interesting” experience, sitting in a branch of Caffe Nero. There was some kind of family group in and they were worshipping a child. They shouted and the child shouted. The more noise they all made the happier they all were. The child could speak but they all spoke baby language and the child joined in to ingratiate itself
I had been concentrating on what I was doing, but at the time it was fairly routine. However, it came to a point where the noise the child was making, and it was a child and not a baby, were painful – what is sometimes called ear-splitting. It was way beyond not being able to work. (Caffe Nero say they think one can work in their cafes.)
I called out to them to keep it down and they gestured at me in a sort of 2001 opening scene sort of way and went on encouraging their child to join them in making pre-verbal noise.
This repeated several times and the more that they refuted my arguments with their detailed analysis and rhetoric, the more self-righteous their grunting gestures became.
No one else complained. They just got up and left. People are coming in now. Now there are 6.
You might think the staff would tell them off. Three or four of them were occupying about 1/5th of the entire place. One of the staff has just spent some time returning the furniture to its place where the adults and child had displaced it by running up and down. They were disruptive.
But I infer that the staff are not allowed to tell people off. If they have money, take it off them. That's the policy
There came a moment when the child uttered a really painful scream and I flipped - shouted at them to bloody shut up. The squattest of these early primates loped over and uttered various phonemes. I found it a little bit frightening that someone who might just be human was so incoherent. I asked him what he was saying and eventually pieced together his propositions.
1 That's a child.
It is a fundamental tenet of all bad parenting that children make an unbearable noise and cannot be stopped, that to dispute that is to be stupid and that any child who does not make an unbearable noise is probably exhibiting signs of disease. Furthermore, parents who discourage their children from making an unbearable noise are bad parents.
2 This is a public space and I can make whatever amount of noise I want.
I disputed that and he refuted my opinion before I had finished it with “course I can”. I told him he was anti-social and he said fuck off which he seemed to think was a clincher.
It reminded me even then of a woman who responded here “it doesn't affect you”. When I disputed that, she said “No it doesnt because it's my child and not yours.” Some weeks later I had said to an acquaintance, someone who was becoming a friend, that I wasn't sure I'd be able to spend time in their home because of their smoking. They said “It doesnt affect you” When I said it did, no matter how hard we both tried, she said “It doesnt affect you because it's my choice”
At such times I wonder if there is any point in learning any logic, in learning anything, if we are subject to this sort of crap. Anyway that was the beginning of the end of that friendship.
3 If you want to play, go to the library.
Now I did find that impenetrable for some time; but in my quest to communicate with alien species, I persisted in saying, I confess, what are you burbling about? and eventually noticed that as the creature was saying this sentence it was gesturing with one of its forelimbs at my laptop
To the creature, the noise he and his fellow creatures was making was serious and anything done on a computer is playing. I think that's it. Such play is to be conducted in the library. I think that's it.
And I think that was when I first used the word “moron”. I am not proud of it. I do not condemn slugs for being themselves; but I do remain outraged that someone with such an aggressive and selfish and stupid attitude help to elect the government.
It seemed the noisy one was incapable of understanding that the objection was to its noise regardless of what one was doing
I do not think they are morons. I think they are culpable. I think they have never bothered to think. Before I realised that they only spoke proto Modern British, I asked them “Where do you get your sense of entitlement from?” and one replied “We are entitled”
This is the reality of the electorate
14 people in here now.
Funny way to run a business. But if you have seen some of the regional managers or whatever they call themselves, you'd understand. Up themselves smartarses

Saturday 25 May 2013

The Cloud made Honorary Dungheads for May 2013

Further to the last post, I have just been cut off 3 times in 25 minutes -- forced to reconnect, presumably because these fools who would need help masturbating have expanded their business beyond their infrastructure capacity. And they have the Dungheads' sense of entitlement that tells them it's ok to make false promises that we put our trust in and then consequently waste time just so long as they steal a living.

This must be happening to people all over the country. The reality of green shoots. The Cloud Dungheads for May 2013

Wifi company seeks the Dunghead 2013 prize


Nowadays I spend a lot of time connected to the net by The Cloud from branches of Caffe Nero.
The trouble is it is a bad service. It takes a lot of effort to connect in some places; and you have to remember that you will almost certainly be cut off without warning, which can lead to loss of data. Sometimes it is within 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes after hours; but in a day it can occur 2 or 3 times and there is no pattern.
Often it is difficult to login. Their database is unreliable and records disappear. If the record cannot be found, they post a message (if you're lucky) saying "I'm afraid that's lost with the clouds" or something like that, which I am sure the inane smartarses at The Cloud think is funny.
I challenged them on that and they explained that it means "your browser does not allow cookies". I responded that by no stretch of meaning could "I'm afraid that's lost with the clouds" mean "Your browser does not allow cookies" (it was at that moment that I discovered the existence of Modern British, the democratic language structure for evading meaning) and also that my browser does allow cookies.
They didn't apologise or admit that they had lied; but they said the message would be altered. It has not been altered.
One is referred to this help desk when they do not connect you to the net: they give you an email address. It does not seem to have occurred to them that if they do not connect you then you cannot send an email.
But when you do send it, they may or may not answer in about 5 days. They never apologise beyond a railway sorry for anything.
But if everything goes well then it is a cheap way of connecting, if you don't mind making sure you always have your current work at least in the RAM of a non-net application and don't mind spending 10 to 15 minutes connecting
I have purchased an external wifi receiver because it brings more control. The inbuilt PC system allows Free Pub Wifi across the street to connect; and it fights back if you try to disconnect it. Or else BT cuts in. Where I am, Caffe Nero, they seem to have gone for the cheapest option and the result is it rarely connects of its own will to The Cloud. I have complained to Caffe Nero and they have not bothered to answer.
Today I connected to The Cloud at 10:26 a.m. but my browser couldn't find any page. First I had to login. Fair enough, though I have never gained any benefit from them knowing who I am. Supposedly, The Cloud intercepts a call to the web page one chooses and takes you to its login, where, as I said, it may or may not grant you entry.
Now when it does that, logs you in, it leaves you there. Clearly the intention was to return you to the page you sought -- you can see that url being passed as an argument of the interception -- but it is at that point their programming skills failed them. I suppose they didn't cut and paste everything. So one must call the page a second time.
But you can't do that if it doesn't intercept. Sometimes, I poll their website myself and that sometimes works; but this morning I had to poll it one hundred and three times before it responded. 102 times The Cloud said it couldnt find the The Cloud website.
The website responded at 10:40, 13 minutes after I connected. Free Pub Wifi connects almost immediately so it is just a matter of a trash system.
When it responds, it does so with a link to click on. Usually 6 or 7 clicks are all it takes!
Then you go to another link to click. The record for that is now 24.
I imagine the whole thing running on an Amstrad CP/M machine.
It's at this point that you get the "lost with the clouds" crap and from now on have the
excitement of guessing when you will be cut off. Yesterday was the latest time that my email was "lost in the clouds" but I was simultaneously welcomed by my correct name so it wasn't lost at all. Who said quantum computing is far in the future. All I had to do was clear my cache and login again and everything was fine.
So they waste about 30 minutes of my time each day. On average. It did once tgakes me 3 and a half hours to connect, but I worked on paper while they finished playing with themselves.
If the company is really successful, I expect some of them will be made Lords. Then they can lecture us on waste and productivity

Friday 24 May 2013

DUNGHEADS OF THE YEAR 2011, 2012 announced

I can confirm that the first Lawrence Upton DUNGHEAD OF THE YEAR is that irresponsible, greedy corporation EDF, pioneers in the Onanisation of Administration and experts in Modern British Communication. So dedicated are they to these causes that we have backdated the date of the first award of its kind to 2011, so that they were officially dungheads even before the condition was diagnosed.

More information will be provided over the coming days to make clear how far they exceeded the expectations of the judge and drew away from the contenders Southern Railway, London Borough of Sutton, The Cloud, Sutton & East Surrey Water Co and various others

No mere Wankers Manqué, they have shown that there is scope for Tosspotism and Faecal Head Syndrome on a megalomaniacal scale in today's business world.

EDF, every dreary farthead. Congratulate them!

Saturday 18 May 2013

Tories & UKIPs

As I said yesterday, I almost gave up, at least in terms of this blog. What is the point of saying anything; you just get verbal vomit back except in a few cases. Coming off the train today, a man stood in the cattle gate the train company uses to check tickets and stood there. After a while he looked for his ticket and put it in the wrong orifice – how does the human race manage to procreate? - and then trotted on, part of the herd again. It occurs to me that dairy cattle are better at using human-designed gates than humans.
A large minority of the larger herd known as the electorate voted at the last General Election for the Conservatives, the party of the moneyed, the liars and the obscene. They did so on the basis of prejudice, apparently believing the nasty promises they were told.
The promises have only been partially kept, thank the vacuum, but the result has been what any rational thinker would expect. The electorate of course chooses to believe in their religious way and it is now, in its multicellular sludge of a consciousness, become dissatisfied; and, in protest, is voted for UKIP. I recall – I often do – Joyce's Stephen Daedalus responding to the proposal that he become a Protestant: I said I had lost my faith, niot myself-respect.
It is a measure of the stupidity which has given the Conservatives power in our travesty of the idea of democracy that UKIP is now in the ascendant.

Friday 17 May 2013

The state of things

I almost gave up. What is the bloody point? The human race is lardheaded.

I decided years ago that when Thatcher died I would post Rejoice! everywhere I could in memory of her murder of the crew of the Belgrano and others. When she died I wasn't listening to news and found out a few days later... and I couldnt be bothered. I didn't understand that but went with it. Subsequently I found out that many others thought it a good idea to echo that ridiculous chant of hers.

Since I have seen a cartoon that speaks for me. Someone says: I haven't felt this indifferent since Princess Diana died.

Saturday 23 February 2013

Gideon Osborne named Buffoon of the Year

Well what a tub of lard buffoon Gideon Osborne the chancellor of expectoration now shows himself. Though we had guessed.
Having pursued a course that has ended in a way that even theclown Balls could see, he says the result proves that he is right to do it and that he will do more of it.
What's worse, apparently, this gives a substantial part of the bovine electorate confidence in his ability with the economy

Friday 15 February 2013

Gove is mostly horse say scientists

It did not come as a surprise to me that Michael Gove may be as much as 70% minced horse.
I don't see many horses now. There used to be a stables near my house; but it closed to make way for cars.
However, I see them when I walk, and try to have conversations; and quite a few years ago now I spent around a month on the Lizard peninsula and, every morning, walked past a field in which there stood a horse and its foal.
They had food supplements brought to them in buckets. It was their habit, having finished that food to get the buckets on to their heads and stand there, sometimes shaking their heads, mostly not.
Alerted by this, I have looked out for similar behaviour elsewhere, and it does seem quite a widespread practice, as if horses tend to like to try to get into the bucket just to make sure it really is empty.
They are not that bright.
And when I look at Gove or hear him, I think of those horses with buckets on their heads.
Horses of course are straightforward unmendacious creatures.

Monday 11 February 2013

The welfare of foxes -- a cull is needed urgently

The case of the fox which has been accused of attacking a child is an indication of an urgent problem that needs solving.

As the mayor of London has said, these creatures "may appear cuddly and romantic” but they are “a pest and a menace, particularly in our cities."

I would add to that they are noisy and destructive and spread disease in their unregulated emission of faeces. They are an economic burden in an overpopulated country. It is high time that we culled children so that foxes can go about their business undisturbed by ignorant human beings.

head in the cloud






The above is a message I received from The Cloud. They are a bunch of chancers offering poor connectivity in cafes. I complained today that it had taken 9 minutes this morning from being "connected" to being offered a login page, during which time they told me that their own website did not exist.

I await their bullshit reply.

Then the screen cleared and I got this. Oops, which they can't spell, appears to have become an all purpose grunt along with with no problem. I find it patronising, particularly when I got there by following one of their own links.

It reminds me a young schmuck who let me down recently and got very angry when I told him that and snarled "well I didnt leave enough time did I" as if that made it ok. i.e. it is always someone else's fault.

The key to this damaged thought may be seen in their belief that something can be either "not here" or have been moved.


Sunday 10 February 2013

You blocks you stones you worse than senseless things

There is a bank system called 3d verification system. It is a piece of junk. It works intermittently. I have been unable to do wonderful things promised by the internet because the tosspots employed by the banks cannot program properly.

It has cost me cheap tickets on FGW and skybus. FGW and skybus say nothing to do with them; it's the bank. The bank says nothing to do with them it's the company.

So no error is ever reported and they say Well Mr Upton no one else has complained.

That is, they refuse to record the complaint.

Morgan Computers have now installed it.

They seem to know it doesn't work because as they ask you to use it, they say if it doesn't work you might like to try something else.

I just used and typed in the correct data. It said it wasn't correct. I did it again and then it said "an error occurred". Notice the impersonal language. No one's fault. It just happened. They say.

So I can't buy the item these dumb oxen want to sell.

I wasted all the time registering with them.

As I came away, figuratively, I found an email comfirming my registration and confirming my password -- in plain text.

They make us jump through security hoops that don't work and then send secure data in plain text.


Moronic doesn't really begin to say it

Friday 18 January 2013

Belief

I'm listening to Any Questions and the nonsense objections to “gay marriage”.
Someone just accused the government of picking a fight “with people of faith”.
That's an interesting phrase: people of faith. What does that mean?
I can't make my argument based just on what I have heard here on this programme because I have heard relatively little of it.
What I am doing here is slightly dodgy in that I am referring to what I have heard here and there; but maybe I can deal with that after.
It seems to me that the phrase can bring together quite different belief sets. It would link those of believe in transubstantiation and those who do not, for instance. I pick that because it is such a wide difference. I was brought up to believe in transubstantiation... It was taught at my school, a roman catholic school later closed because it was such a shambles (I simplify)
Why, I wonder, did they not teach that the world is flat? or that there are four elements: earth, air, fire and water?
But, I believe the (ad hoc) argument runs, that we should take notice of people who believe in, for instance, transubstantiation because those who believe in transubstantiation and those who do not believe in it but do believe similarly unprovable things are in agreement on something else.
Quakers, I think, would have no problem with gay marriage. Are they not people who have faith? I know many Quakers and doubt they would miss a breath at the idea.
And also I believe it is NOT all people of faith.
For instance, I have been accused of being a person of faith though my faith would be in the unbelievability of most of the others. Recently I heard on the radio someone or other dismissed the idea of faiths that are not well-established being considered as faiths in this context. Whatever that context is. It's all a bit vague.
I think a person of faith has to be seen as powerful to be treated in this special way, along with those of us who refer to logic and evidence. That's how the dungheads think, I believe!

Tuesday 8 January 2013

I meant to say this ages ago.
PREFACE
I am no great supporter of the monarchy; no great supporter of a republic.
Ousting the monarch is far from being a personal priority.
OBSERVATION
How miserable the Queen looked as she sat amongst her cabinet. How proud and full of themselves those arrogant buffoons looked