It's almost as if he wants to lose...

David Cameron will probably be known as the man who lost an election some would have thought impossible to lose. He somehow managed to only get into power by forming a coalition with the idiot Lib Dems a party renowned for making up policy on the hoof in their door to door campaigns. Still despite being up against one of the most unpopular and uncharismatic Prime Ministers in living memory, Cameron through his imbecility in denying the voters a say on the EU managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Telegraph.

David Cameron has held talks with Nick Clegg about forming a second coalition after 2015, amid growing concern in Downing Street that the Conservatives will not win the next election.
The pair are said to have discussed the prospect of a second union “from time to time” over the past year, with the Prime Minister confident that his deputy will not form a government with Labour.

One of the reasons the Conservatives lost is that they were almost certainly not Conservative enough, the public simply didn't want another Labour government, they did not warm to Cameron in his role as Blair mk2. Rather than putting clear blue water between him and the leftards, he tried to be all things to all men and became nothing to anyone.
And now it seems as if he's hell bent on losing the next election by tying himself to the even more leftist Lib Dems who are so unpopular these days that Ukip are currently leading them in the polls because of Ukips appeal to Conservative and Labour voters, something that the media is in somewhat of a frenzy to deny... well the Labour bit anyway.
Other than for a politician to actually be loath to give up actual power, you'd think that Cameron was deliberately allying himself to the Lib Dems to lose the next election to avoid a referenda on the EU.
Bears thinking about.

People will believe anything...

Sometime this month the Mayan long count calender reaches the end of its long count. Some people believe this presages the end of the world as we know it and have stocked up on various canned and dried goods to outright purchase of survival centres. It's not particularly bothering me, people are entitled to believe what they want so long as they don't try to force their views on me (Yes government I'm looking at you here) nor expect me to pay for their foibles.
Telegraph.

Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth.
Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.
The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm.

Thing is there's always someone predicting the end of the world, the Jehovah's Witnesses had a handle on millennialism for decades before going very quiet about their history and the various spurious claims made by the leadership which somehow or other never came to pass and were wiped from the official record. Almost every religion has its end of the world 'myth' it's frequently used to keep its followers in line and not questioning why the priests need all those people to sacrifice or other odd bits of dogma which worked ok in the 7th century but clearly have no place today.
The internet itself has added to the panic as well as a couple of Hollywood films, it's very easy to reinforce your fears simply by googling, still that's freedom of choice for you, it allows you the freedom to be an idiot...
Thing is, what most of these people don't seem to get is the odd thing about calenders...
When you reach the end of one, you start another after December 31st comes January 1st. We should be celebrating a happy new long cycle calender...

Mayans themselves reject any notion that the world will end. Pedro Celestino Yac Noj, a Mayan sage, burned seeds and fruits to mark the end of the old calender at a ceremony in Cuba. He said: "The 21st is for giving thanks and gratitude and the 22nd welcomes the new cycle, a new dawn."

Says it all really.

Scares over

Well all those people who went into hysterics over the 'evidence' (or lack of) that using a mobile phone would somehow end up microwaving your brain can breathe a sigh of relief as a study shows that the daft buggers should have known better.
Express.

MOBILE phones were yesterday given a clean bill of health after scientists found no evidence linking them to cancer. Research concluded low-level electromagnetic fields from phones and transmitters do not increase the risk of health problems.
It flies in the face of some studies which also linked mobile use to male infertility.
The Mobile Operators Association welcomed the Norwegian Institute of Public Health report.
It said: “It is consistent with the findings of the overwhelming body of evidence from a huge number of studies over the past two decades.”

Not that I expect people to believe this, there is a lot of evidence out there that electromagnetic energy can cause problems with your body, though admittedly it has to do with standing in front of radar masts and next to tv transmission masts. There are always scare stories out there the measles, Mumps, Rubella combined injection was one, sitting too close to the tv is another as is going blind from the practice of Onanism.
What's happening now though is that people are becoming jaded or inured to the efforts of so called experts and the state to scare us into doing things their way. Did the scare of you head exploding stop people using mobiles? Well no, other than a few parents panicking and removing their little darlings mobiles from them whilst ignoring the microwaves, computer monitors and tv's which also give off electromagnetic radiation.
There are simply too many scare stories these days, which is a bit worrying as one day a real scare might happen and we'll ignore it and die. The MSM are to a certain extent to blame, they'll big up any story they believe will get them viewing numbers.
But in the end time will tell and we're still here, still going no matter what they tell us.
Till the next big scare of course...

Gender neutral

'All I want to do is make people think a bit.' The words of Beck Laxton who decided that for 5 years they would bring their child up gender neutral alternating between girls and boys clothing and keeping a lot of people guessing.
Mail.

A couple who concealed the sex of their child and raised it as ‘gender neutral’ for five years have finally revealed - it’s a boy.
Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, decided not to reveal Sasha’s gender in the hope it would let his ‘real’ personality shine through.
They referred to him as 'the infant' and allowed him to play only with ‘gender-neutral toys’ in their television-free home.
For the past five years Sasha has alternated between girls’ and boys’ clothes, leaving friends, playmates and relatives guessing.
However Beck and Kieran, from Sawston, Cambridgeshire, decided to reveal Sasha's masculinity to the world after it became harder to conceal when he started primary school.
Yesterday Beck, a web editor, said: 'I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping.
'Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?
'It’s like horoscopes. What could be stupider than thinking there are 12 types of personality that depend on when you were born? It’s so idiotic.
'Gender affects what children wear and what they can play with, and that shapes the kind of person they become.

I suspect "the infant" might just have quite a few serious issues in the years ahead relating to one sex or another if only because gender rolls are a source of tension for kids.
Kids as a group tend to be merciless little savages when dealing with anyone different amongst their peers and no amount of supervision is ever going to change that. All most teachers can do is try to keep a lid on things in the classroom, outside of the classroom though, it's a bit of a jungle and I suspect this kid will struggle to cope with the differences as he'll have no idea of just how real life works.
Beck and Kieran strike me as being either amongst the most selfish people on the planet or the biggest idiots and what they've done is tantamount to child cruelty as they've imposed an artificial awareness on their child that bears no relation to real life. Sure we all like to protect our kids and keep them safe, but this hasn't kept him safe, it's kept him in ignorance. Still we can all hope that as kids do that he'll be able to soak in the necessary gender cues to at least help him survive without becoming a neurotic basket case.
No, this isn't about him becoming gay (if that's what happens) it's about dealing with an important part of society and being able to relate to it. If he can't and he has had no opportunity to do so, then he's in for several shocks and quite possibly a world of pain as he gets older.
I might be wrong, but I cannot for the life of me see this going well for the poor little chap.

39 not out

I have to renew my driving license next month, the picture is 10 years out of date, though everything else remains the same. I'm one of those oddities with a clean current driving license having avoided (off times by luck) various speed traps, entrapment and sometimes weird stop and enquire attempts by the various local constabularies I travel through. I was stopped last year as they thought I was using my mobile phone whilst driving, I wasn't, I was just leaning on my arm bored and stuck in traffic, my phone where it normally is, in my pocket irradiating my gonads. No, I'm not making myself out to be a super driver either, I've just been lucky. Still I knew (or thought I knew) that if I got up to 12 points on my license, I would face a ban save only in the most unusual of circumstances and I would certainly have thought if I offended again I would certainly face a ban and of course I would have been wrong.

BBC.

A Swindon motorist has 39 penalty points on his or her licence - the most in Great Britain - but not been banned.

A Freedom of Information request to the DVLA showed 638 drivers in Bristol, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire have 12 or more points.

Twelve points usually means a temporary ban for a driver unless they can prove it would cause exceptional hardship.

A court decides if a driver is banned and the Magistrates' Association agreed the Swindon case needs investigating.

The DVLA's response to the Freedom of Information (FOI), from BBC West, did not say which offences the penalty points related to and gave no further information about the driver from Swindon.

It explained that although it compiles the figures on court cases involving driving offences it has no influence on verdicts.

39 points, something we mere mortals would not believe possible, believing despite growing evidence that our justice system is far from fair and professional. But seriously, 39 POINTS! Didn't someone in the system notice the steady climb and decide to nip it in the bud? The person involved is still driving too, I wonder if they'll make it to 42+ points before being stopped from getting behind the wheel of a vehicle. Ok, the reasons may be trivial, I can accept that, a few miles over the limit in some cases perhaps, but sooner or later you'd think your luck would run out, exceptional hardship or not.
Yes, I know in a libertarian society speed limits would be advisory, safe driving under the conditions mandatory and the sooner the government stops picking on the motorists the better. I can agree with all that, I just can't agree with anyone abusing the system as is, be it the driver or the judge. I know I wouldn't get away with it, I doubt any of us would get away with it, why should they.

Stalking by blog

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but apparently it is...

Mail.

A hospital administrator has made British legal history by becoming the first man to be jailed for stalking a woman by blog.

Stephen Andreassen, 38, compiled up to 35 website blogs in which he repeatedly insulted an ex-girlfriend after she ended their month-long relationship, Manchester Magistrates' Court heard.

Over 18 months Andreassen regularly updated his sites telling men to stay away from mature university student Rebecca Pattinson, 36, while bombarding her with Facebook messages, texts, phone calls and e-mails begging for her to take him back.

Ok, the guys obviously obsessed, but stalking by blog? I don't see how it can be done, it's not like the lady in question or other people were forced to read this guys blog and he's certainly no Guido with hundreds of thousands of readers. There are also a good few swearblogs around who do pick targets and go around being very insulting too, but you don't hear of them being closed down by the police either. I suspect this is probably just additional material to justify (rightly) imprisoning the guy for his campaign against Miss Pattinson.
Normally I'd just ignore Daily Mail sensationalism, but it does seem as if the judge and the police used his attempts at blogging as part of the evidence against him, though my own thoughts on the matter having blogged for about 2 years in this incarnation are that he would have struggled to get any hits on any of his 35 blogs. New blogs in particular don't normally tend to be high profile unless the blogger is high profile and blogging from a high profile site as witness Norman Tebbit. The way it's normally done for us lesser mortals is to go around commenting on others sites and gradually attract notice that way, assuming you want to be noticed of course, but it is satisfying in a way to get the odd comment, even if they don't agree with what you have to say. I blog because it helps release the occasional anger and frustration I feel at the direction this country is going in and it alleviates my frustration at not really being in a position to do anything about it (for which you should probably be thankful) Mostly like today I pass comment on something I read, sometimes about something I do and I don't really attract a lot of notice, even after 2 years, yes it's grown steadily, but I'd be deluding myself if its because of my talent, more I suspect my persistence in outlasting a good few better (in my opinion) bloggers than myself..
So, Andreassen was convicted of stalking, though mostly it was harassment by facebook and text which seem to be the usual medium of the stalker today, but he did use blogs as well to advertise his mental state, I suspect though he'll be unique, not as a stalker, but as someone who used blogs to stalk.
Unless you know different?

Contraband

Spotted in Morrisons supermarket whilst shopping today and yes they are a standard bayonet fit.

I thought they'd been banned in favour of mercury laden, unrecyclable, dim glowing, flickering, heavily subsidised, EU friendly compact fluorescents?