Well, it’s been a month. So I shall add some new material. The comments have been thin, but then who wants to read the blog of an angry thirty something when the sun is high in the sky? Me? No. Fuck the grumpy cunt. So I’ve been continuing to work in a quarry for 45 hours basic a week. The thing is that I’d forgotten about the fact work encompasses every fibre of your life, even when you’re not there, you sort of think about it.. Then you come home and talk about it. Then people from your work appear in your dreams. No kidding in a dream this week I punched a work colleague for standing on my lunchbox. True. I like to think is a quasi-Marxist metaphor for the way I’ve sold out, but I suspect it’s just dreaming about work. But if you stomp on someone’s lunch – you pretty much have it coming.

The upside this vocational malaise is that I cycle 5 miles to work and back each day so despite craven indulgences surrounding Indian food and beer my beer gut is slowly being replaced by a svelte flat tummy. Yay me!

Still I have no rants, no fist waving as I’m too tired, and 4:30am is a bedtime not a time go get up.

This week a CBE was given to the Metropolitan police officer that masterminded a bungled terrorism raid and shot an innocent man in east London. I would argue that this man has nothing to apologise for. I personally would rather have an innocent man shot then have a terrorist outrage, and I would sooner have one innocent person shot on a train than have a terrorist outrage, and I suspect you would too.

For me I can reconcile the loss of life with terror prevention. In this war against a fragmented enemy we need to readjust our liberal values and realise that innocent people will now start to die in the face of combating a difficult and loosely based terrorist network. We cannot wait for certain information to be so definite to be beyond error in the face of this terrorist threat. If the security services suspect chemical weapons are being made then a pre-emptive strike is indeed justified and necessary. As it turns out that the security services were wrong and now have the unenviable task of dealing with those elements of the press who believe these people shot were wronged, I wonder how we would have reacted if a dirty bomb had been found. This man would have been a hero.

It’s time we confronted some unpalatable truths, firstly that we live in a society where young British Muslims are angry. They are angry at the west for what they see as an unjust war perpetrated by the west in which innocent Muslims die. Rightly or wrongly this is the impression they are forming and with it with it a few will become radicalised. We all know that 99.9% of British Muslims wish only peace but there will always be a few people who will always be Muslims before Britons. Muslims have accused the western authorities of marginalizing them and making them the enemy, however unfavourable attentions will always fall upon those who are the villains de jour, just as the Irish had to endure years of suspicion in the nineteen eighties and Germans living here in 1930’s will have seen the negative effects of conflict befall them. As long as Al Qaeda is active the Muslim faith will continue to attract unfavourable attention.

I am personally angry with the small faction of radical Muslims, I was onboard the underground on the 7^th July and will not forget that day as what I would call some treasonous (and that’s what taking up arms against your own countrymen is) scabs blew up some of my countrymen, most of whom voted against the government that acted to justify your hatred.

In short a war has begun in which there will be no easy victory and the enemy will keep coming as fast as we can kill them. The Pentagon (who themselves have a lot to answer for in creating this war) are calling this “The Long War”, whether you believe that this is a war to justify the creation of a police state policed by a climate of fear, or a war against terror, we must shift our perceptions and not be too shocked by death caused in the name of terror prevention. 

From The Guardians Notes and Queries:

Why, if I spend most days on the computer, have I never dreamt about using one?

this is true - but why?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-184579,00.html

The English language is a great language. That’s not to disparage any of the other languages of man, but English has some brilliant turns of phrase. For example, it is widely accepted that there is “more than one way to skin a cat” meaning there’s usually more than one-way of doing something. I was thinking the other day; most sayings in English and rhymes have some basis in fact, or at least can be traced back to a specific point in time. But I was thinking where did this phrase come from?

Could it be that one day, a couple of centuries ago a man happened upon another man skinning a cat and said “ you don’t do it like that, you got to start at the head”, to which the other disagreed and stated that he “did it another way and did the legs to the head and tail”, and some volley of arguments were traded until they agreed to differ and doffed their caps and went their separate ways and were happy that there was definitely more than one way to “skin a cat”. In that both attempts resulted in a successfully skinless moggy.

Either way it can’t be good news for the cat. 

I also wonder if Alexander Graham Bell when unveiling the telephone had just stood agog at the telephone and realised he was standing before the worlds only telephone, did he lift the receiver to his ear and then realise he didn’t have anybody to call, quietly whisper “shit” and build another telephone.

This keeps me awake at night. I know the world’s being run by a shadowy elite and that should bother me, but whether an inventor had the foresight to build two telephones, now that’ll bug me for hours.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, here we go another four weeks of world cup fever, and four solid weeks of football. The four yearly spectacle that gives the British working classes the chance to parade around the streets in their chav like attire and beat their collective chests, while their scabby girlfriends look on gamely pretending they’re enjoying themselves. I don’t know what it is about this spectacle that means painting your face in the national flag and carrying beer round the street. I’m willing to say yay to the national side as much as the next man, but why it means we’ve got to drape ourselves in St Georges flag is beyond me.

What I wonder is that this is what it takes for the nation to unite, a 90 minute festival of tribalism, which brings us together, never mind poverty or inequality, no we’ll live with that but Wayne Rooney’s toe is a matter of national pride. We’ve got our priorities wrong, it’s all very well supporting your national team but there’s times where frankly I’d be a little more happy to see the country rise up, such a when our leaders our taking away our civil liberties and going to war unjustly. This is when we need the country to pull together, in the face of mans inhumanity to man, not in a fucking football match, sure it’s got it’s place but there are more important things.

But no, that’s not interesting or cool. No the world’s most famous haircut running around a pitch that’s national pride.

But that said I wish the team well, I won’t be following it myself, but good luck. It’s about time we brought back some silverware, and it would punctuate 1966 nicely.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This weeks hero must surely be Peter Jamieson of the British Phonographic Industry who today told a committee in the UK parliament his company would not pursue people who copied bought CD’s to their mp3 players for personal use, but would instead concentrate upon the professional pirates.

Thank you; thank you for your cuntwank generosity you fuck. So us people who want to own legitimate copies of artists on CD and who pay for downloads are not to be penalised. Oh thank you for your cunting wank generosity. I think considering it costs £2 to make a CD and we’re willing to pay £14 quid for the finished product, so that we can escape prosecution just because we put in onto an mp3 player so we can enjoy it more on our way to work.

Peter Jamieson – you cunt!

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5053658.stm

http://www.bpi.co.uk/index.asp

It seems that this week the topic of choice among the middle class fascist rags, is immigration. According to the Daily Mail,, and it’s cohorts of the scare mongering right wing press would have us believe the “tide” of illegal immigrants have come over here to bleed the good old tax system dry, clogging up our hospitals and making life unbearable for us honest Brits, and these people who according to the press come over here to sell crack in our child’s playground, commit crime and make sure we all get cancer.

However one group seems to have passed under the radar, The Royal Family. The all came over from Germany and haven’t done a days work since and they’ve been sponging for years. Let’s deport the freeloading bastards, and what about Paddington Bear? This illegal got a ride on a boat from Peru? Has he gone through any immigration? No. So we’ll bundle him on a plane to Lima shall we?

See photo at the bottom of this entry....

Finally we have catagorical proof that George Bush is losing his grip on power and his sanity, as he reveals his choice for the Supreme Court justice position: A giant bunny rabbit.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’d like to ask a question, is it me or are there no cool people left anymore. I remember growing up we had people we genuinely looked up to, people who were worth looking up to. I think as a thirty one year old during our childhood and teens we all had at least one person we wanted to be. We all looked up to somebody. When I was young we had heroes, genuinely rebellious people whose maverick ideas seem to shake our parents values down and give us an outlet for rebellion. For me it was in the late eighties and early nineties and I had a crackly radio under the bedclothes tuned to foreign medium wave stations letting me glimpse into a far off land or John Peel playing discordant East German punk my parents would hate. Whether it was Rock and Roll, Punk or Goth. It seemed I grew up with that most essential of adolescent heroes: the antihero – an outlet for middle class suburban angst.

I look around these days, all the people who are cool just, well seem like fucks. The sort of filthy arselicker that would say “don’t you look nice” to your mother when they visited, instead of gruffly nodding and going to your room where you’d plan on sneaking out to camp in a wood. The problem is people don’t want anti-heroes; they don’t even want heroes. They don’t even want to worship people now it’s brands. David Beckham wears it; that’s cool. It must be cool right? And things, we measure ourselves now by how much we own. The ideas we have are not important. An ipod? Now you’re cool.

One of the problems I think is that technology has become cheap. The advertising people would use the word affordable, but cheap is what it really is. I’m going to risk courting unpopularity and say that I think that technology should be expensive. A nice piece of technology should be something to aspire to, not given to everybody. The problem is that with technological democratisation is that scum can afford nice stuff without working for it. This is wrong. It should take time to have nice things so that you value them.

I think a DVD Player should cost £1200 quid so that the scum don’t have it. Call me harsh but there you are.

It seems that the latest political hot potato is free speech. It’s been all over the newspapers this week. Here in the UK the leader of the British National Party, a party whose right wing tendencies can only be described as worrying, Nick Griffin was acquitted of inciting racial hatred. Muslim Cleric Abu Hamza has been in the dock for the same reasons, but was found guilty and in Washington the “Tale of two T-shirts” saga has been gaining ground.

Nobody of course will have been able to escape the worldwide anger at the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb like turban. A cartoon which in this climate of international relations can only be construed as irresponsible, and those printing it should have gone some way to expecting some sort of hostile reaction. It does give the impression that the teachings of Mohammed are based on violence when we all know organised religion is a fine theory, but always ends up being ruined by a handful of zealots perverting the word of god for the goals of man. Practically every religion has blood on it’s hands in the name of god, especially western religions who have behaved despicably over the last ten centuries.

However the way a handful of British Muslims responded was unconstructive, choosing to dress up as suicide bombers and threaten beheadings to those who insult Islam, a reaction which can only serve to reinforce the negative stereotype that Islam has among the wider British public as being militant and aggressive. In the event more could have been done by the Metropolitan (London) police to arrest those carrying inflammatory banners.

However, surely the privilege of living in a free society is that however objectionable a person’s views we respect their choice to hold these views. The question is one of responsibility. Nick Griffin in my opinion WAS guilty of the offence of inciting racial hatred because he used his views irresponsibly, he used his words in an inflammatory context to incite trouble, as has Abu Hamza has used his words to shape impressionable young minds. And they should both pay a heavy price. The question is not what we believe, or even what we say, if people believe what they believe, however sick and misguided, then as long as their views remain their own surely they are entitled to that worldview. The important question is whether we use those views responsibly. The privilege of a democracy is that we fight for our freedom so that people do have the right to hold their own beliefs, however unpalatable, however it is also the privilege of a democratic society that we should be able to challenge and scrutinize those beliefs without fear of censorship.

For that reason we must have absolute freedom of speech a democratic and free press and the ability to criticise and challenge those beliefs we find unacceptable and make sure those who use their right of free speech to ensure that others cannot live their lives in a free and peaceful manner are made to pay the heaviest penalties society can give out.

I finally realised this week, that it is 10 years ago to the month, that I first used the internet. As a fresh out of home undergraduate, in the Georgian spa town of Bath. I was thinking about how the internet had just literally arrived, and I was eager to make my mark. What should firstly be said is looking back now how crude the technology seems. How we were impressed by a 4 gig hard drive. With a 28,000 modem, and lo and behold 64Meg of ram. If you had that in 1996, you were the geek lord. When I decided I wanted a website, I remember the whole “frames” “no frames”, dilemma. Hell I wanted frames. Never mind Shockwave Flash or Java. I had frames. I was god to my web designing colleagues.

In truth my first website was called “Pete’s Filthy Porno-rama - which contains no porn at all”. Just to make sure it was well found by search engines using words like “porn free, hardcore non naked entertainment”. It worked - Alta Vista (remember the times before Google) and Yahoo Search loved me. My hit rate was fantastic.

How the elation hit me when I had an actual email address, god what power. I was finally allowed to roam free in Cyberspace. It all seems new fresh and exciting. A brave new world, where everyone had a voice, freedom ruled and it seemed we might get a technological bridge to a utopia, where despite the mundanity of “real life” we had a medium to express our innermost feelings and be who we truly wanted to be and where we were free of the hegemonic touch of big corporations and brain washing mass media. Truly I remember thinking this will be the liberation .

Ten Years Later……

So here we are. 2006. I must confess that with familiarity breeds contempt. It seems that give humanity a tool - give us something nice and we’ll turn it to shit. I finally realised that I’ve become jaded. The online world is as bad as the real world. Viruses, worms, identity fraud all commonplace. Junk Mail, big business selling and government censorship. What really jacks me off are virus writers. Why? - It’s the online equivalent of treading on a child’s sandcastle. Thanks to you people we’ve got to keep virtual doors locked again. Thanks.

So once again technology comes down to governments, huge corporations oh and pornography. Well done mankind you’ve done it again.

Where will 2016 leave us. I’ll probably be a brain stored in a fucking laboratory jar playing war games for President Jeb Bush Jr ‘s massive war computer in a basement in Washington.