Sweeney Todd The Brownie

Tim Burton and Johnnie Depp done themselves proud again with their new release, ably aided and abetted by Helena Bonham Carter. Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is due for general release in the UK 25th January, but not to be upstaged by the Hollywood Dream Machine Dr. Gordon Brown has ideas of his own for all our body parts.

Yes.  MR. Brown has decided not only should we pay all our earnings to the government, smokers pay tax to the NHS, drinkers and drivers too, but they own our body parts also whether we choose it or not.  Don't be fooled.  What starts as an option will eventually become compulsory, and once we are all criminalised by the plethora of laws they have passed in their short but oh too long 10 years, they will be able to match DNA files up for candidates to keep themselves alive forever.  And if they don't need them, there's always someone who will arrive, plead poverty and oppression, get GIVEN a nice big house some of you might may have been waiting for for years, and then help themselves to you heart, lungs, and liver, maybe once you're deal if you are lucky, under the NHS you have been paying taxes for for years, but couldn't get an appointment under for your by now chronic condition.

Hey, I have a preventative proposition of my own: 

TELL THE LUNE-POTS RUNNING OUR LIVES RAGGED NOW TO GO FUCK OFF.

Soon to come: The New Labour remake of THE BODY SNATCHERS.

Be afraid, BE VERY AFRAID.

Scrapped My Car? SCRAP THE GOVERNMENT

What I didn't expect was for scrap merchants to be allowed to break the law, openly admit it, and then not be pursued by law enforcement.

My cars were in a garage under repair.

The owner decided to sell the garage.

The owner tells the garage proprietor to omove all cars out of the store.

The cars were put outside, but not on the highway.

The garage is sold.

The cars are sent to a scrap merchant and crushed.

Taken Without Owners Consent is the term for this crime.

The police make sure the time they take to look into it means the CCTV evidence of what happened is erased, and say they can't be bothered because its the bonfire season.

This life breeds hatred.

And in comparison to how servicemen are treated, my woes are just scratches, or sleep in my eye.

and While we are o the Viral marketing Tip...

You are on the verge of a great meandering rant, ladies and gentlemen, because we have a recycling dilemma.

Let's face it now, there are amongst other things 2 things in this country that prevent us from being green:

1. Infrastructure
2. The authorities that manage or control it.

How outrageous that we should have to pay mad rates of petrol and car tax, and then not even have the kind of tarmac on our roads that prevents us from being doused in the spray from the rain that stopped falling. Christ! What we get charged the toilets in the service stations should be made of bone china and our dicks wiped by fawning concubines with fantasy proportions when we are done, and you ladies out there who are motorists, I am sure you can think of something similar that you should be placated with after a hard ride on the road!!

What has this got to do with green? MY POINT IS INFRASTRUCTURE...

One for the Road...
The Highways Agency takes a small fortune off us to dig hole and fill them in again, and then they don't even spend the right kind of money on the surfacing to reduce accidents, congestion and therefore carbon emissions. The motor car does account for some carbon, but the road works and congestion through poor management account for most of that I am sure.

Most other countries make use of every kind of transport means for their goods and services, but we seem obliged to use the roads. And who controls the infrastructure? Why aren't the waterways commercially developed and exploited? Why on this island that we are, can't we use the water around us for transport more efficiently? I haven't researched this, but I know there must be something in it...

And then there's the 'Real World'

And most of you who then say, all wise and noddingly patronising, "Ah yes, but in the ideal world that is all very good, and as we all know..." You should go to hell in a handcart!! Most of you who think like that are already dead in the heart and sycophants to the court!! I get to hear this a lot from people who love their bitterness and use it to define them, so comfortable in their prison of regret and cynical despair they think they have it made. Don't listen to these guys. The truth is most things are usually being done better somewhere else.

Who runs the show?

I guess that is pretty obvious where that leaves the authorities, from the local council who take the money from the supermarkets that produce the goods wrapped in useless packaging, we then have to pay to dispose of. And what does the small business do in all this, who had been paying their business rates all this time, only to be told their part of town was being put out of business. There have been enough satires of this to make my point for me. So who is the council doing it for?

But Who Pays the Ferryman?

I thought they were supposed to be elected by the people for the people...

So why are they watching the people go out of business, then having them throw out consumer rubbish from supermarkets who put them out of business, and then telling the poor downtrodden people that as the council hasn't been properly dealing with the refuse they were charging for all these years, there is now a crisis that we all have to pay more tax for!!!

And blow me if at the same time they don't start selling off the allotment space ( BBC News)we may have otherwise started growing our own food on...

And how do these council allied supermarkets get all the goods they sell? On the poorly maintained roads. These are roads we have paid for by the way, but that we can't use to leave a car outside our own house because nowadays if we haven't gotten road tax it will be carted off, destroyed, and us billed!!!

And why haven't we all got driveways and garages to store our vehicles, and gardens we can grow our own food in?

Because even as the councils are INDISCRIMINATELY carrying off our cars and taxing us for the rubbish their policies have encouraged us to produce, they are still for the greed of it letting the construction industry build houses that are too close together so there isn't the room, they are technologically behind the continent by more than 20 years, and without a driveway or garage that we now need to have by virtue of the authorities' own laws.

A serviceman serving in Iraq had his car towed and crushed because he wasn't there to renew his road tax!!!

So when a government lab and their commercial partner allow the infrastructure to deteriorate to such a degree that their viruses leak out into our surroundings from a poorly maintained disposal drain, simply because they couldn't agree on who should spend the money, DON'T THAT JUST SAY IT ALL?

But, of course, it must have been sabotage (The Telegraph)...

...I will leave you all to decide on that one, I have already laughed it out of court.


Can I say it? Yes:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are OFFICIALLY living in a SICK COUNTRY!

What didn't I say about the PROPAGANDA AFFAIR

Yesterday I wrote about the proaganda machine in operation through the British Press, and the fact that British Servicemen, and the British public, have been caught up in a propaganda incident outside of the bare facts of what happened to them.

WHAT I MISSED OUT.

My blog wasn't supposed to be a balanced comment, as it was a reaction beyond the limits of my patience at the blatant propaganda games being played, and a hit directly at the lack of objective reporting.

I completely ignored mention of the Iranian perspective, because I didn't want to peel off and go through the multivarious onion layers of the circumstances of the affair.

But frankly I think I should put that straight now.


An Iranian commentator was on BBC News 24 yesterday with a perfectly valid point, and he seemed to be the only view that they had tried to acquire from within Iran.

He provided a simply analogy, which I am going to summarise without exploring how appropriate or valid it is, but with the comment that at least any half informed thinker should consider it:

If Syria were to send a task force from the Middle East to Ireland, during the worst of the Troubles, invade Ireland to impose their solution, and then patrol threateningly with a battle group around British Coastal Waters, Britain might get a little nervous and defensive.

For another point of view, today I used blog search to see how my blog had rated on the search-o-meter. Not famously, but what did asides come up
was a deal of other opinions on propaganda, media treatment of Iran, and a snapshot of opinion from inside Iran which I think people should read from Officialy me!!!'s Iranian Thoughts (I don't know where the second 'l' went in officialy - you will have to ask Shahab). To you, Shahab, I say thanks.

For an alternative, polarised 'Western dissident' view on things, look to Chimes of Freedom and ask yourselves what is the environment that makes educated people be so radicalised in their pessimism about their homeland?

The BBC AND HAVE YOUR SAY

The BBC run a blog-style comments service on their website called
"Have Your Say", where you post your views on their news items and they get moderated.
Today there is a lot of comment on on 'Can UK and Iran resolve their difference?'
I had a comment which was moderated out. It went something like this:

"Propaganda! Propaganda!

British Diplomats know their job, therefore understand the protocol to apply to this incident between the UK and IRAN.

Comments on 'concern for our captured troops, or a need to see them fit and well for their families, or concern for their families, and admissions under duress, are propaganda from our side, which are published through the press.

We in the UK should be aware we are subject to this propaganda through our news channels as the Iranians are.

Our servicemen are well drilled, and know their jobs.

They carry out their duties professionally.

Whatever their circumstances of capture, you can be pretty sure that they have followed correct procedures during their capture.


Whatever the machinations of our politicians and their use of our press to convey their messages to the rest of the world and to us, we should not doubt our servicemen deserve and need our support. They are from us.


BUT THEIR ACTIONS AND THIS INCIDENT SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A WAY OF CONTROLLING OUR OPINION THROUGH THE MEDIA.

• Stop using our servicemen as propaganda, and support them.


• Stop putting them in the line of fire without giving them the best equipment and support to do their job"

BBC, YOU HAVE COMMITTED AN OFFENSE AGAINST THE PEOPLE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO INFORM AND EDUCATE, and frankly you have shown the same disregard for our military as the politicians in this. Shame on you. AND OF COURSE SHAME ON ALL THE OTHER BRITISH NEWS CHANNELS FOR FOLLOWING SUIT.

Of course as the original comment was limited to 500 words it was less verbose and detailed, but I have taken its essence and expanded it.

We Come In Peace, Shoot To Kill

Maybe there is something right and proper going on that we aren't privvy to, or else this is the accepted procedure for arbitration on the international stage, or else they are really leading us down the garden path for reasons we definitely would not like, I DON'T KNOW, but I will say that things have taken a predictable turn today.

A littl while ago, we had no aggressive policy tiwards Iran.

Then, we had an incident where the Iranians have APPARENTLY taken servicemen inside Iraqi waters, who were operating beyond the umbrella of their support, and are holding them for interrogation but in good conditions.

You know, the sort of thing that happens every now and again.

And General Blair has decided to rattle the sabre.

They were operating under a UN mandate, so I presume this statement has come through UN Channels.

Are we following a pattern here:

1. Invade Afghanistan on a liberation tour, and now we have the most heroin production from there hitting our streets since ever.
2. Invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found, and now they have the worst and most bloody violence they have ever known, including under him.
   
3. Find a pretext to snarl at Iran, who have been pursuing a nuclear policy, which of course we had no intention of reacting militarily to - what price will we, or the Iranian people, pay for this course of action?

Just a word of incidental remark.

You ma remember that a year ago the Lancet, a respected medical journal, reported that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the invasion of Iraq. At the time, George Bush himself poo-poohed the figures as ridiculous and based on unfounded methods, and the British Govt (though I can't remember specificall which marionette made the mouth gestures), made similar disparaging remarks, saying we were better off trusting the Iraqi Government official figures of 65,000.

WELL, YESTERDAY GOVERNMENT STATISTICIANS CONFIRMED THE LANCETS FINDING WERE BASED ON METHODS OF VERY CLOSE TO BEST PRACTISE, AND IF ANYTHING THEIR METHODOLOGY MIGHT UNDERESTIMATE THE NUMBER OF IRAQI CIVILIAN DEAD.

So just in case you missed it here it is again: British Government statisticians have confirmed that the Lancets findings a year ago (and don't forget now they are 1 YEAR OUT OF DATE), THAT 650,000 IRAQI CIVILIANS HAVE DIED AS A DIRECT RESULT OF THE U.S.A./BRITISH LED INVASION OF IRAQ, WERE PROBABLY ABOUT AS GOOD AN ESTIMATE AS YOU ARE LIKELY TO GET. NO QUESTION.

That is 500 people per day on average.

Or 2.5% of the population of Iraq.

Just thought you might like to know..

Anyway, as regards the latest "diplomacy" with Iran, how about a show of hands:

Do you think:

1. There is something right and proper going on that we aren't privvy to, OR
   
2. This is the accepted procedure for arbitration on the international stage, OR
3. They are really leading us down the garden path for reasons we definitely would not like, OR
4. They are crazy politicians playing God and JR Ewing's Dallas, OR
5. There is something very noble going on, and God moves in mysterious ways, OR
6. Something else?

DO Let me know...

WHAT BUDGET?

WELL?