Day 3572: Browne'd Orff

Tuesday:


It's been a BAD day, really.

First the Browne Report is published saying: "tuition fees are unfair… let's double/triple/quadruple them!"

Then Mr Dr Vince comes to the despatch box putting a brave face on it, saying we're making the best of a bad job.

The Coalition Agreement, chapter 31, says:

"If the response of the Government to Lord Browne's report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote."

But really ANY response short of an enormous RASPBERRY deserves a fluffy sight more than just abstaining.

We didn't pledge to "make the best of a bad job", did we?

We didn't pledge to "put a brave face on it".


No, we said saddling young people with tens of thousands of pounds of debt at the start of their career was FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG.

So now we're signing up to saddling them with twenties and thirties of thousands of pounds of debt?


Look, I'm not really sure how it CAN cost twelve grand a year to teach a student. Let me run a little maths past you.

Say you give a weekly tutorial for about an hour for three maybe four students. Maybe an hour's prep time, and another hour for marking. Throw in a couple of lectures, and an hour each to prep those and that's a day's work. So you've made what, thirty-six or forty-eight grand a year for one day a week of work.

Even at just three grand a head in fees you can pull in the same sort of money by having sixteen students and you STILL get Fridays off.

Yes I REALISE that your academics want to spend their time doing their own research rather than education their replacements, but it does SEEM like this teaching lark covers itself.

And yes, I REALISE that there are support staff to pay, librarians and lab techs, cleaners and caretakers, and that there are libraries full of books and papers and laboratories full of chemicals and cadavers to stock, but even so…

There are two million students in Great Britain, that's SIX BILLION quid in top up fees – even at the current capped rate! – or forty million pounds each for each of our Universities. You really SHOULD be able to pay for a staff of a thousand on that sort of money, and that's a student to staff ratio of 13:1 which is rather better than most schools manage.

Yes, I realise it costs ten thousand pounds a term to go to ETON, but you do get your bed and board and an unlimited supply of crumpets thrown in.

What AM I missing?

Some people say "why shouldn't the next generation pay for the cost of their own education – after all they'll benefit from it". But who paid the cost for the CURRENT generation? And by what right does the current generation pass off its responsibilities to the next. One of the reasons we say we MUST pay down the deficit – and I agree with this – is that it is WRONG to saddle our kids with enormous debts. And yet what is it that we are doing here?

And the very WORST of this is putting a "market price" on excellence, with no limit to the fees so that the "best" Universities can trade on their reputation to increase their income in a self-perpetuating spiral of exclusion.

Academia isn't for everyone, and we should do MORE to create alternative opportunities for other people, but if you are bright enough to go to University then you should go, and your background, low high OR middle, should NOT be a bar.

A university education ought to be a GOOD THING in and of itself, taking you away from home, meeting new people from all different backgrounds, broadening your horizons, teaching you new ways to THINK.

WE need to find new ways to think too if we are to solve the problem of funding our future. Hard Labour only saw Universities for the money people got out of going there. We have to abandon that line of thought and start again. We need a better answer.
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Day 3293: Snowstorm in a Teacup

Wednesday:


Sometimes that Mr Balloon has all the luck. He's all ready to launch the Conservatory election campaign when he falls flat on his airbrushed face because he forgets his own Party's policy on tax and marriage (it's one of, what, four that he has to remember?).

And no one's going to notice because the very next day two of the so-called Big Beasts of Hard Labour decide to shoot the Prime Monster in the foot. Again.

And you've got to ask how badly off ARE Hard Labour if their "Big Beasts" are Mr Buff Hoon and Ms Patricia Blewitt?

I mean, for all this talk of Conservatories preparing posters, images of that pair beside the slogan "even THEY think we can't go on like this" are less likely to provoke a revolution than baffled cries of "who?" from the general public.

Just WHAT did the conspirators think they were DOING? Talk of this being the "last window of opportunity to change the leader" is blithering nonsense – the last window of opportunity was six or seven MONTHS ago, before the Party Conference season (so the new leader can have one big platform speech and then go directly to the country). The election campaign has ALREADY BEGUN. Once you've ACTUALLY started to cross the CHASM it's a BIT TOO LATE to start hacking at the ropes holding the bridge up.

I mean never put it past people in public life to do something BRAIN MELTINGLY STUPID, but surely even a heartbeat's consideration by ANYONE would lead you to notice that this couldn't have ANY POSSIBLE good outcome. IF they DON'T hold a vote, the Prime Monster is frit, and it reminds everyone that he's never faced even an INTERNAL election to get his current job; if they DO hold a ballot then too big a victory and people will claim it is a fix (thanks to his Mr Stalin reputation) and too narrow a victory and people will claim he's lost his mandate. And he might just LOSE…!

In which case who, pray tell, did they think could take over? Postman Pat and his black and white DRUGS POLICY? One of the MILLIPEDES (it's too early to say which)? Mr James the Scarlett Pimple-purnell?

And incidentally, this surely HAS to be the end for any ambition that the senior Millipede has to lead his party. This is the third time he's been led up to the bring of showing some BOTTLE and EACH time he's fumbled the decision. As candidate to be ditherer in chief, a Mr Frown II (this time without the gravitas), that's fine, but is that REALLY what the defeated and demoralised Hard Labour fraternity will look for in their next, er, Big Brother?

But then the catalogue of second-raters and also-rans crawling out of the Cabinet woodwork to off the Prime Monster their full support reveals just what a WRECK of his Party Mr Frown is going to leave behind when he finally goes.

I realise that this kind of ATTRITION is almost INEVITABLE in Governments that go on way too long: the Conservatories under Mrs Queen Maggie had the same problem, as one by one she saw off the Grand Figures of her Party like Mr Willie Whitelaw, Mr Michael the Hessleswine or Mr Nigella Lawson or even Mr Sir Gerffey Howe, leaving behind the distinctly B-Team likes of Mr Major Minor and, well, most of his Cabinet.

But the only figure of ANY substance – even if it IS mostly SHADOW – is First Lord Sideous (aka Senator Mandeltine).

Speaking on the Newsnight Show, the First Lord High Everything Else told Mr Paxo: "I don't need to threaten anyone in the Cabinet," before adding: "They all already know that I know where they live."

After him we've got puffed-up, over-promoted maroons like Mr Johnson & Johnson, the hilariously invisible Mr Benny Hill or the sinister minister Mr Jack Man'O Straw. And that's without even mentioning Nectarine-tinctured Non-entity Mr Peter Vain.

The idea that a CABAL of Mr Bob Aimless (Defence), Mr Wendy Alexander (International Development), Mr Jim Murky (Scotland) and led by Ms Harriet the Harminator could topple Mr Frown isn't even SATIRICAL. Does anyone even know who these people ARE?

Lord Sideous again: "The whole Hard Labour Party are united in wanting Mr Frown to lead us into the next General Election."

But that's really not the point: the HARD question is do they really want Mr Frown to lead them for the four years AFTER a General Election. Obviously not.

Hard Labour are finished and they know it. They're not even waiting for the General Election to BURY them before starting to FALL APART.

Like the Conservatories before them, Hard Labour are probably over for a political generation.

That means it's up to the Liberal Democrats, once again, to be the EFFECTIVE Opposition.

Because if Mr Balloon has all the luck, then that's bad luck for EVERYONE else!


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Day 3227: Postman Pot

Sunday:


We know a SONG about this, don't we children:

"Postman Pot, Postman Pot, Postman Pot and his black and white… opinions about drugs policy…"

Minister for Misuse of Science Drugs, Mr Alan Johnson and Johnson must be wishing for a No More Tears formula today, or at least a no more RESIGNATIONS one, as by firing the Nutty Professor, he has gone from being next leader of Hard Labour to merely the next failed Home Secretary faster than it takes to say "My word, how very RED-in-the-FACE you've gone, Mr Johnson and Johnson; have you taken any DRUGS for that?".



The root of Mr Johnson and Johnson's problem is NOT that the Nutty Professor has criticised his policy; the problem is that the POLICY makes not the remotest HOOT of SENSE, and he knows it, and everyone else knows it and he KNOWS that everyone else knows it.

I am reminded of the story of the EMPEROR with NO CLOTHES ON. And what was the MORAL of that story? Yes, the little boy who pointed out that the Emperor was in the nuddie got taken away to Guantanamo Bay and tough new laws enforcing Imperial Attire were enacted, because pointing out that people in power are fluffing idiots is never a healthy career option.


Increasing penalties, spending millions on police snatch squads, re-classifying everything as Class-A triple-star with skull-and-crossbones and dagger-dripping-with blood, these are all the clear signs of someone who is SOFT on drugs.

Yes, SOFT – the Government's "war on drugs" policy is the SOFT option, it is easy, lazy pandering to headlines in the redtops, and it causes HARM, it unnecessarily criminalises a whole generation, it encourages robbery and burglary, it wastes police resources, it puts people at risk from impure sources of supply, it supports a culture of violent criminal gangs both here and in poverty-stricken parts of the planet (usually countries that, by an astonishing coincidence, regularly get bits of their territory EXPLODED by Americaland).

It is, on the whole, EXTREMELY stupid and, yes, SOFT.

The TOUGH stance on drugs is tackling the problem head on.

What IS the problem? The problem is that for some unearthly reason politicians and meeja curtain-twitchers think that it is ANY business of theirs what other people choose to do with their bodies.

This is where the HORSE RIDING comes in.

Horse riding is a VERY, VERY slightly dangerous activity that people choose to participate in. We don't ban it. In fact, people would probably think of it as HEALTHY and FUN because of the associated physical exercise, fresh air and social interaction. And yet people can and do get killed doing this.

And so I present you with the rave.

Was the Nutty Professor RIGHT to compare "tragic accidents involving harmless innocents" to the deaths of "drug-taking-fiends" who go "raving" on "ecstasy" (©all newspapers)?

Well, what are the numbers:

About two-and-a-half million people regularly go horse riding.

About half a million people regularly take ecstasy.

If there's about TEN deaths a year attributed directly to each activity – as the Nutty Professor claimed – then you can do the maths: it works out that horse riding has a risk of death of 0.0004% (or four in a million) and ecstasy taking has a risk of death of 0.002% (or twenty in a million).

So (tabloid speak again) ecstasy FIVE TIMES more DEADLY than Horsies! Or, more rationally, you are actually QUITE UNLIKELY to die of either.

The POINT, as made in this study, is that the meeja OVER-REPORT deaths attributed to "drugs" and in particular ecstasy in order to PORTRAY "drugs" and in particular ecstasy as an EVIL COCKTAIL of DEATH, with your average teenager playing Russian Roulette every time they pop a party fun pill.

The truth is, you are far more likely to drop dead of PARACETEMOL.

In fact the BIGGEST killers appear to be Diazepam and Temazepam ("The Housewife's Choice") but nice Middle-Class ladies numbing themselves into oblivion don't seem to be on the Daily Fail's agenda. Odd that.

And any examination of the HISTORY of drug policy in Great Britain would suggest that more than likely it was MEEJA-DRIVEN moral panic that CAUSED the explosion of first heroin then other drug abuse by going all "moral high ground" on the doctors who were actually TREATING the at-the-time actually VERY SMALL number addicts back in the Sixties.


So, to return to the Emperor with No Clothes On, the Nude Secretary – do not SHUDDER; even Mr Johnson and Johnson has an, er, Johnson – he says:

"You cannot have a chief adviser... campaigning against government decisions."

Was the Nutty Professor WRONG to speak up when he disagreed with the POLICY? Should he have kept QUIET, not published his piece about the relative HARM?

NO.

As a scientist, he has an absolute moral DUTY to present his findings, whether they support the policy or not; whether they support his OWN beliefs or not. It is actually VITAL to the scientific method that ALL results are presented, otherwise you introduce BIAS into the shared pool of data

This is in DIRECT contradiction to the OPERATING systems of Hard Labour.

Their MP Mr Tom Price, appearing on the Westminster Hour, went as far as to utter the STAGGERING suggestion that independent advisors should be bound by collective responsibility.

The Labour Party, it seems, have come up with a new DOCTRINE for independent advisors: "ministers decide and advisors AGREE".

As Dr Woo once said: "the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they change the facts to fit their opinions".

Whether Mr Johnson and Johnson is very powerful of very stupid, I will leave it up to you to decide, but if we can't face the facts, we can never see it: the "War on Drugs" has been a TOTAL FLUFFING FAILURE.

PS:

My favourite comment, though, must be that of Mr Stephen of the Glenn:

"New Government Science Policy: Anyone who claims that the Earth is NOT the CENTRE of the Universe will be taken to the EDGE and thrown off!"



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Day 2763: Now the Wings Have Fallen Off

Friday:


No, not another QANTAS airliner; it's the Prime Monster and the Labour's Glasgow East by-election campaign.

(Probably NOT in the best of TASTE.)


Now we'll see whether the unnecessarily rushed timing of this by-election was strategic genius or MADNESS. With MPs off on their hols, will this be a case of removing them from the FEBRILE hothouse of the Westminster BUBBLE, putting it all behind them; or will it actually be letting the issue FESTER as they BROOD and DWELL on their misery, storing up disaster for when they return?

Feverish speculation over the weekend suggests the LATTER!


For all that there are many articles jovially reporting that a 22% swing would see all but two of the Cabinet – including the Prime Monster himself – unceremoniously ejected from Parliament, no one is SERIOUSLY expecting to see the Glasgow East result reproduced across the country in a General Election.

But then, no one was SERIOUSLY expecting the Labour to lose the seat that is widely reported as their "third safest in Scotland" or possibly their "twenty-fifth safest seat in the country".


What's going to happen? Well these are the possibilities:

Mr Frown returns from his holiday and announces that for the good of the country/the Labour/his sanity (*delete according to taste for hubris vs credibility) he will step down with immediate effect, leading to a short campaign that will see a new leader elected by the Autumn conference followed by a general election.

The Labour would still lose that election, but it would put a stop-loss on the number of seats that go as people would view the new leader with some sympathy and be slightly more forgiving of Mr Frown for his "doing the noble thing".

But it's not going to happen because Mr Frown does not want to stop being Prime Monster and indeed seems incapable of realising that he really SHOULD stop being Prime Monster.

The second option is that Mr Frown comes back from his holiday and announces that he's going to carry on much the same, only to find a half-a-dozen DAGGERS in his back "Et tu… Sooty…?" and the Cabinet replace him by force.

But THAT'S not going to happen either.

Former Deputy Prime Minister for TACT, Mr Prescott, suggests that this is because "none of them have anywhere near the skills and experience to run the country" That's not the reason, even though it happens to be true. It happens to be true about Mr Frown as well and it didn't stop HIM wanting the job.

No, the reason there won't be a putsch is because none of them want to be the patsy who replaces him. Or – more accurately – none of them want to be the one who replaces him YET. Neither the Sinister Minister nor Ms Harriet Harpy want to be tarred with the blame of leading the Labour into the election. They want someone else to carry the can when the Party goes down to inevitable defeat so that they can be the White Knight not the caretaker. That is why despite the old maxim of "never believe anything in politics until it's been officially denied" the fact that both of them have officially denied plotting against Mr Frown probably DOESN'T mean that they both actually ARE. Meanwhile Mr Millipede remains as Prince in Waiting Across the Water.


So the third and most likely possibility is that Mr Frown clings on to power by his chewed finger-nails hoping to be saved by an economic recovery that isn't going to come in time. In fact the economic reality is almost BESIDE THE POINT: just as the credit boom was suspended more on hope than on facts, so the credit crunch is more because people now know fear – fear that house prices will fall much further than they have (even though they are more likely to recover soon); fear that food and fuel prices will rise further than they have (even though the petrol price has actually eased very slightly). The Labour's death agonies will be dragged out over the course of eighteen horrible months and the defeat will be deeper and more profound, more in keeping with 1979 or the Conservatories losses of 1997 when the losers were out for a generation.

Also, since Mr Balloon has pretty much GOADED him to go to the country soon, that is another reason Mr Frown will do exactly the opposite. Of course, it's transparently, almost PAINFULLY obvious that Mr Balloon is using REVERSE-PSYCHOLOGY: the Conservatories WANT the Labour to carry on burying itself and so they urge an election NOW knowing that Mr Frown can't help but refuse.

Funnily enough they did EXACTLY this at their conference last year and Mr Frown fell for it then too!

Day 2758: Now it's the Labour's turn to Kick the Sick

Sunday:


"Claimants should work for benefits," says Mr James Deathknell.


"Claimants should work for benefits," says Mr Balloon.

Day 2717: Irises are Poisonous / Spliffs make you Stupid / Heinz in the Soup

Good news for any gay daddies fearing repatriation to the Theocratic Nuthouse of Iran!

According to the Hopeless Secretary, Ms Jacquie Spliff, there is NO DANGER of being executed to death by the religious police, so long as you remember to STAY DISCREETLY IN THE CLOSEST.

Clearly, the 145 people since 1979 who HAVE been murdered by the Revolutionary Iranian State for the so-called "crime" of being gay must be just KICKING themselves for overlooking this simple precaution. Or they would be if they weren't totally DEAD!

Only a cynical person could suspect Ms Spliff of looking for LOOPHOLES in the ban on deporting people to places where they might get killed.

On the other fluffy foot, she might just be being incurably THICK!


Meanwhile, this reminds me that, a little while ago, Ms Jennie asked me to look into a story from Northern Ireland, reported in the Pink News and picked up by Liberal Conspiracy about Ms Iris "Poisonous" Robinson.

Poison-Iris is the wife of the first minister of Northern Ireland, and holds down two jobs, being both a Member of Parliament AND a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (except on days when she is suspended for using "unparliamentarily language") for Strangleford. This doesn't keep her too busy to be a born again Christian as well, though.

Now – remembering that I am a militant atheist baby elephant and may have got this wrong – I seem to recall a story that according to the Bible was told by Mr Jesus. It was about a Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were a tribe of people who were at odds with the Jews and had different religious beliefs. Nevertheless, when the Good Samaritan discovered a Jewish person beaten up in the road, he did all he could to help the victim, in spite of their differences.

Funnily enough, this story is about someone who got beaten up too: Mr Stephen Scott, who was a victim of a QUEER-BASHING. And did Poison-Iris do all she could to help… well, no. She said that Mr Scott should try and get cured of being gay.

"I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals trying to turn away from what they are engaged in.

"And I have met people who have turned around to become heterosexual."

Well, firstly he's NOT a "lovely psychiatrist" because psychiatrists do NOT say that being a gay daddy is a disorder and so wouldn't try to cure you. In fact, the Royal College of Psychiatrists EXPLICITLY says that it is NOT a disorder. Which means that this person is a FRAUD, passing himself off as a psychiatrist.

And second, although there is no reason to think that something as FLUID as a person's orientation could not change over time, and BISEXUALITY might express itself more strongly one way and then another, you almost certainly HAVEN'T met anyone who's "turned around to become heterosexual", and more likely have met some SERIOUSLY UNHAPPY people with a whole load of unnecessary guilt complexes and a complete absence of a healthy sex life.

Poison-Iris says that homosexuality makes her "sick" and "nauseous". It sounds like SHE is the one who needs a CURE!

Nor is this a ONE-OFF, as her interjection in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Debate shows.

"Can she [the Minister] envisage, down the road, a child going to primary school and being collected by two females or two males, and the bullying and abuse to which those children will be exposed…"

And why would they BE bullied? Surely only because prejudice is being perpetuated by lady-harpies like Poison-Iris.

"…or going into their parents' bedroom, as is natural for a child to do, and finding two women or two men making love?"

And that would cause just as much blushing all round as if it was one man and one woman. Or one man or one woman on their own. And what do you mean it's NATURAL to walk in on your daddies' bedroom without asking? How RUDE! Besides, I am fairly sure that the technology of LOCKABLE DOORS has reached Northern Ireland… are the members of the Deeply Unpleasant Party just a bit BACKWARDS?

And THIS LADY, dear readers, is one of the NINE VOTES that the Government relied upon to get detention without trial thorough the House of Commons.


Mr Scott, now TWICE a victim after his mugging and then mugging again by Poison-Iris, had previously taken an OVERDOSE because he couldn't cope with being gay. How did Poison-Iris help him? He said that her remarks had made his life "hell".

Apparently more than one-hundred people have reported Poison-Iris to the police for her remarks. So now, the police are to investigate whether she has committed a HATE CRIME.


And speaking of COMPLAINTS, apparently more than TWO-hundred people found the following TOO SHOCKING to show to children… even though mayonnaise adverts are SO PERVERSE (oh, apparently it's the high sugar, salt and fat content) that they are ALREADY banned from being shown to children.

So here are some men kissing to cheer everybody up!

Day 2677: Lesbians are So Gay – A headline with at least SIX possible meanings!

Wednesday:


The Greek Island of LESBOS is famous for exactly ONE thing: and let's face facts, it ISN'T the olive oil exports and it's not the Petrified Forest either.

And yet, apparently, it has come as a bit of a SHOCK to the people of Lesbos that the name of their island might actually be used HOMONYMICALLY.

They are just a LITTLE bit behind the times with this news, what with the term "Lesbian" having been used to describe ladies of the gay daddy persuasion since at least 1732 and probably a lot earlier.

What this means is legal action.

So, the Lesbian (inhabitant of Lesbos) population of Lesbos (circa 100,000) want to take on the Lesbian (lady gay) population of the whole of the world (at least 26,000,000*) some of whom MAY even live ON Lesbos.

*of a global population of 6.6 billion 100 out of every 201.3 people are lady people and surveys show the number of ladies self-identifying as Lesbian ranging from 0.8% (Australia) to 1.3% (America)

Not counting CATS.


Well, good luck to them with that, as the saying goes.

You can SORT OF understand the feeling that you don't like the way that language has EVOLVED and would rather hang on to the past meaning. Obviously, for MANY YEARS, uptight old-fashioned spinsters of all conceivable genders would write into the Daily Torygraph to protest that the perfectly respectable word "GAY" meaning "HAPPY" was being applied to gay daddies to mean that they were HAPPY about being gay daddies and wasn't that too awful for words. Certainly words like "gay".

But now the wheel is on the other fluffy foot, as it were, and I well remember all of the FUSS that was caused when Dr Who's friend Rose said to him: "you're so GAY!" meaning "you're a bit RUBBISH!".

A LOT of gay daddies (HAPPY daddies) thought that it was a bit gay (RUBBISH) that gay (GAY) was being used to mean RUBBISH (gay) and not gay (Captain Jack).

But you cannot turn back the clock. Except in the Autumn.

On the whole I think that the Lesbians suing the Lesbians is a SHAME. They should be more ACCEPTING of the AMBIGUITY. After all, it means that their Island has a UNIQUE SELLING POINT with TOURISTS, and one with a DOUBLE ADVANTAGE – first, you are ATTRACTIVE to lots of nice, well-behaved ladies or lady couples with fewer than average dependents in tow, meaning more disposable income to spend on charming olde worlde crafty knick-knacks. And second, you are NOT attractive to the drunken ÜBER-HETERO stag-party type who would much prefer to smash up your pubs and vomit noisily on your picturesque cobbled streets. I believe that this is called a WIN-WIN and you should EMBRACE it.

Not necessarily literally if you are a BOY Lesbian. (From Lesbos.)

Mind you, Daddy Alex tells me that the Conservatories have had a sparkling new idea straight from Laboratoires Nineteen-Fifties: all that Lesbians need is a GOOD MAN.

It's like Mr Ian Fleming never went away, isn't it.

Day 2672: Green Shoots herself in the Carbon Footprint

Friday:


Speaking to theLondonPaper yesterday for their first of their Mayoral Interviews, Green Candidate Ms Sian Very-Berry said that to get to work “four of us went in a taxi which is as energy efficient as a two-thirds empty bus”

That would be the bus that was going to run ANYWAY.

So Ms Very-Berry’s “efficient taxi” was an EXTRA carbon cost ON TOP OF the bus, not INSTEAD of it.

Vote Green, Get SMOG! you might say.

To make the bus MORE efficient you want more people to USE it, not make silly excuses for snobbishly choosing a taxi instead.

If the bus has to wait until it’s full, like Ms Very-Berry seems to want, then it will be VERY late, and UNRELIABLE and FEWER people will want to use it.


Congratulations then to Mr Neal Wilson with the “Letter of the Day” in today’s theLondonPaper pointing this out for our obviously very short-sighted Ms Very-Berry.

Sadly, she may be green but, it appears, she’s no friend of the Earth.

Day 2627: Please Do NOT Swear!

Tuesday:


I will do my best to do my duty to Mr God and Mrs the Queen…

(namely to tell you that HE's not real and SHE deserves to retire quietly.)

and to obey the Law

(except the bit about I.D.iot cards, obviously);

To help BLAME other people at all times

(In particular the government, kids today, the foreigners, the BBC, the gay daddies for getting married, or just plain Political Correctness Gone Maaaaaaad!) ;

To keep myself physically strong

(subject to Health and Safety),

mentally awake

(subject to Unintelligent Design),

and morally straight

(you have GOT to be kidding).


© the government department of whingeing about the weather, cussing the congestion charge and swearing stupid pointless Oaths of Allegiance.

Day 2622: SAVE JODRELL BANK!

Thursday:


This news is OUTRAGEOUS!

Jodrell Bank, Great Britain's FOREMOST astronomical research centre – and a NATIONAL INSTITUTION to boot – is under threat of closure because the government and their Science and Technology Facilities Council quango have decreed that it is of "low priority".

"Low Priortity"! This is the telescope that detected the Sputnik, monitored the Moon landings, discovered pulsars and quasars and now observes distant galaxies.

The UNITED NATIONS is considering recognising Jodrell bank as a WORLD HERITAGE SITE, ranking it alongside the TAJ MAHAL and the PYRAMIDS.

And in 1981 Dr Who used it to save the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!


It needs funding of two-and-a-half million pounds a year to keep going. Now that is a LOT of sticky buns, but it is CHICKEN FEED compared to the sort to big bucks that the government spends. You could fund it for a THOUSAND YEARS on the price of one Middle Eastern Invasion for starters.

The Lovell Telescope, that's the big FAMOUS dish telescope, was completed in 1957 just months ahead of the Russian's launch of Sputnik. It is, even today, the third largest steerable radio-telescope in the world, and when linked via the MERLIN network with the smaller Mark II at Jodrell and five other telescopes across England and Wales, it forms part of the most powerful telescope on the FACE OF THE PLANET, the ONLY telescope capable of matching the Hubble Space Telescope, and like Hubble is used to study distant galaxies.

Eight million pounds has ALREADY been invested in upgrading the network using super-fast optical cabling and they are swamped with requests to have a go from researchers from all over the world, more than twice as many as they have time for.

So not only would it be stupid it would waste a whole lot of money that they've already spent.


This is a dumb decision, but worse than that there is real concern that the period for consultation is too short for any serious case to be made.

Don't just take MY word for it, the Royal Society of Astronomers says so too.

For years the government has made excuses for not getting more involved in space programmes by saying that we are committed to astronomy and robot missions. Well it seems we are going to surrender our position as world leaders in science and give up on even LOOKING at the Stars.

It is an OUTRAGE!

PS:

Daddy says that I must declare an interest. My Granddaddy Eric works there hosting the Planetarium Show. He is very good and almost as fluffy as me!

Day 2610: Test for Britishness

Saturday:


Q1: Answer the following question in your own words: what would be a good Test for Britishness?

Marking guide: full points to be awarded for "I'm British and we don't DO this sort of thing!" or similar.