wealth

The BBC tells me that George Osborne says we mustn't tax the wealthy because we don't want to drive the wealth creators away.

Excuse me?

The wealthy aren't wealthy because they have created wealth

The whole idea of wealth creation is a version of snake oil.

These vermin did not create their wealth; they purloined it.

smug asbos

I'd been having a passable day, and getting some things done, and was beginning to wonder if I should have another cup of coffee; and then around 4 pm the cafe was semi-flooded by middle-class Asbos exhausted by shopping, I suppose, who sat down with their coffees and cakes and left their offspring to run round banging into people and screaming. It had been noisy before; one expects that. Now it was NOISY. The important people had arrived.

Those too young to run screamed from their people carriers

And all one heard in opposition was the occasional shsh uttered by the responsible adults, made with the same kind of automatism with which some cross themselves. The children take no notice of such rubbish; it is just a variation on being ignored in between sudden but short bouts of baby worship.

 

At some level they notice it; enough to be sure that in twenty or thirty years they'll be doing it to their own brats.

If you shout at them to shut up, as I did around 4:35, they turn languorously with the assurance of those who know themselves to be of the master race, regard the shouter with contempt and carry on with their conversation and their shsh – while their children learn that they can misbehave, probably unaware that they are the topic of antagonism

Over by the window there is a nicely turned out woman reading a book while a child with what appears to be a motor horn almost the size of itself fills the air with pointless noise to cope with its boredom

When next I hear of large number of women and children being murdered, I may think of today. It is not necessarily a moral outrage, not if it happens here.

 

Three brain cells and you're out.

Last night there was a supposedly funny programme on radio 4 – One Micky Flanagan, who is we are told a cockney comedian, chatted on about how he finds “a big newspaper” too much of a burden because it takes so long to read, how he found school a burden because he didn't need to learn most of what they tried to teach him and how he is now a plumber earning good money without having learned anything at school.

I suppose it is a variation to hear from a smug (self-defined) working class voice; but it is just a variation on arrogance. It is really the same stable as the middle class moron.

At one point he told us repeatedly that he finds galleries and museums boring and wants to know why in such places they don't tell him what he's supposed to get from it...

Where does the idiot get the idea that everything has to be laid on for him?

If the slob had listened at school he *might have an idea.

 

The implicit idea that he is somehow an alternative voice to the middle classes is ridiculous. He's about as alternative as cornflakes. He's behaving about as intelligently as the smug puddle of scum who are imposing the results of their lack of parental control upon us in this cafe...

shallow

"That is the view of World Anti-Doping Agency chief John Fahey, who says Armstrong's refusal to fight on means the allegations have "substance"."

This from the BBC website

I don't give a damn either way about the matter really but I note the stupidity of what Mr Fahey is reported as saying.

*

Puts me in mind of the headline RECESSION NOT AS DEEP AS THOUGHT.  Well... how often is thought deep in these parts?

*

A little while ago I moved away from the guy to my left, moved to another table. He looked at me accusingly asked what was wrong with him that I had to move away. I said it was so I couldn't hear his music and he said "You can't hear that"

Stupid as well as insecure

Transport for London etc

Transport for London e-write to me about the Paralympics: "London is very much open for business and we are confident that transport will cope well, as it did during the Olympics, provided that we again get your support in changing the way or time that you travel.  "

What does it mean (rhetorical question) when it says London is open for business?

And what is the connection between the possible meaning and the transport coping?

I didn't change my way of time and travel...

I haven't used public transport for about a week and noted when I returned that nothing had changed. Trains were still running late for no announced reason. The silence on the platform was broken this morning by a demand that we stand away from a non-existent train because it was about to leave.

Employees of Diarrhea Trains return to their arboreal origins, as they swing from the branches of their boredom, pressing the occasional button as they go in case their researchers have attached a reward to it.

A train was late because another train had broken down. That too seems discontinuous, the discontinuity marking a lack of details: that they have too few trains and have taken up the sidings so that they can't go round the break downs. Oh yes, and they don't maintain the machines adequately

SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE TO BE PROSECUTED FOR MURDERING BLACK MINERS

Joke

Hypocrisy of the government

What follows is taken straight from an Avaaz.org mailing. It needs no comment from me

Dear friends across the UK,
Education Secretary Michael Gove is selling off our school sports fields to rich
property developers at a staggering rate -- leaving a generation of British kids
with nowhere to play. But he’s overreached with his latest sell-off attempt, and
if we stand together now we can stop him.
Rather than investing in education, Gove is on the verge of approving the sale of
school fields at Elliott School in London -- the latest in a string of 21 sales
under his watch. This could turn almost half of the school’s grounds into luxury
residential apartments. But under growing community pressure, Gove is hesitating,
sending out conflicting messages about whether he approves the sell-off.
The local community is already mobilising against the sale, and a strong national
outcry supporting this opposition can force Gove to back down and save these school
fields -- sign the petition now and share with everyone you know:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_Londons_school_fields/?bjkysbb&v=17158
Despite the Coalition's promise to halt the sale of school land and a pledge from
Cameron to prioritise school sports after the Olympics, the students at Elliott
School are only the latest victims in a series of government broken promises. This
is a government that would rather sell precious outdoor space to fund vital school
maintenance, instead of investing in education.
This time, it isn’t any ordinary school. Listed as a heritage building by the
government, English Heritage has called the school one of the finest built by the
London County Council. The government’s own heritage listing acknowledges that the
unique landscape is a key part of this heritage -- the very landscape Gove now wants
to sell off.
But with the focus on school sports during the Olympics, Gove has been coming under
increasing pressure. Despite earlier messages that Gove would approve the sale, now
David Cameron himself has personally insisted that no decision has yet been taken. A
national outcry can ensure these school fields are saved, and a line is drawn in the
sand against any future sales. Sign the petition to Gove now and share with
everyone:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_Londons_school_fields/?bjkysbb&v=17158

The success and failure of the Olympics

It would seem that the majority do not agree with me.
That's ok. The majority have tvs and watch Big Brother (2 separate oddities by my judgment.) The majority of voters voted repeatedly for Thatcher. Many I know who make a lot of noise about politics thought that something would change when Blair, the unindicted war criminal, was elected. The majority doesn't know so much.
Nevertheless, I have been surprised and dismayed by the size of that majority.
Makes me think of the way that most people were blinded in Wyndham's THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS because they all went outside to look at the marvels in the sky. And that makes me think of Defoe's JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR when he nearly gets in trouble for saying that actually he can't see a giant hand clutching a sword over the city.
And I thought of all that because I heard the second and final part of Radio 4's dramatisation of THE CHRYSALIDS when someone says "The more stupid people are, the more they want everyone to be like them."
The government must be pleased to have such proof that it can con such a large proportion of the London Mob. Makes the possibility of any future war mobilisation quite feasible. Even a hunt like Jeremy Hunt could manage it. Or Lord Low Cog himself, peace be upon him.
Yes, it was expensive, but as a dress-rehearsal for the final enslavement at the end of history, you can't put a price on it; and the victims pay anyway. Much cheaper than riot control, and we're not that good at riot control.