What has the EU ever done for us?

I feel this video perfectly encapsulates how the EU has helped me - and so many millions of others - on many occasions throughout my life.

Semi official confirmation of the secret surveillance state

It doesn't matter whether you identify as "left", or "right" or whatever political-philosophical conjugation suits you, we should all be outraged and concerned by this.

The Telegraph reports that the Guardian and Washington Times have obtained a secret slide show detailing nine companies who are willing participants in a programme called PRISM - which is, literally, the ever feared 'back door' into the databases of these companies. They are: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.

It's only semi-official confirmation of what many of us have suspected, however it is nevertheless galling to see it in black and white.

Such swathes of data really can provide roadmaps - and predictive ones at that - to our lives and inner workings; the capabilities of Big Data in this respect has already been well proven in the last few years. The nature of privacy has also fundamentally changed in a way that neither the law or popular conceptions (and hence, popular narratives) have caught up with.

These applications will not be particularly useful for "fighting terrorism". It is abundantly clear that our "intelligence" services already know who the terrorists are. And the terrorists certainly aren't shy about hiding it. Some of them even get invited for regular tea and biscuits on Newsnight. No, these applications are on the contrary extremely useful for monitoring, corralling, anticipating and controlling the general population. The only major ray of hope in this regard is that our respective governments are so fucking stupid and incompetent that they will continually fuck this up and there will always be ways to run rings around them with enough determination. There's still capacity for great harm however if you fall into one of the currently designated 'social-other' groups (smokers, climate sceptics, EDL, "offensive" tweeters etc etc) - and anyone congratulating themselves on not being on that illustrative list of examples, go bang your head off the wall until you remember that it could - and probably will -  be you next.

Several of the named companies are claiming ignorance, for example:

"Google said in a statement: "From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”

I don't buy it. The problem is that no one's official statements can be trusted in this area, least of all with anything touched by the rancid dogcock finger of the "intelligence" agencies, metastasizing great brown clouds of bullshit wherever they go. And of course our respective governments can compel such companies to remain entirely silent or otherwise coerce them into making misleading statements such as the above, especially given the official rationale of the U.S. invasion of privacy is because "most electronic data passing through the US at some point and therefore accessible to PRISM's net.".
Meanwhile, in reaction to the other recent revelation that the NSA is routinely collecting phone data en masse, it appears to have rattled someone in the "intelligence" community enough to break cover. -
'it could cause "long-lasting and irreversible harm" to counter-terrorism efforts.' Oh do, just fuck off already. It's just the usual weasel worded bollocks.

Minimum pricing: the most lethal mistake yet...

....by the Coagulation government.

Of all of the idiotic policies (including and especially the government's newfound authoritarianism showing that it is just continuity Labour and not even giving us two years before pulling the curtain back...), given all the other factors involved I'd struggle to think of a more lethally stupid policy for this government. And one that it is set on forcing upon the rest of us. Yes - force - there is no mandate for this policy (there is however yet another meaningless "consultation" (i.e. give us a fig leaf of validation for what we were going to do anyway) - and one, I note that has not been reported by the media despite the press interest in this story. But then the media never do let us know about these "consultations", do they?).

And ah - yes - "policy based evidence making" as a Very British Dude put it. With computer models.

Ah - good old computer models.

I must have fallen asleep during the period when the scientific method was inverted and hollowed out to the point that computer models became acceptable as primary evidence instead of just useful tools for modelling and refining hypotheses. They're supposed to test your assumptions, not provide evidence for them. Though I'm not surprised that the government, or even a Russell Group institution like the University of Sheffield, has deemed it acceptable. It is after all good enough for climastrology catastrophism, and it seems part of the fashion is to exaggerate as much as possible in order to support policy goals (c.f. for example the absolutely appalling activist "research" detailed here).

In any case, the UoS "research" is taken fully to task here. Continuing this postnormal kind of madness is the fact that a frightening number of people seem to just fall over like surprised goats at the sight of an argument from authority. I'm sure doctors know a great deal about alcohol. How does that authority extend to being able to define policies that are based on economics? Answers on a postcard please...

....Anyway back to the title of the post. This is a policy not only without a mandate, it is without credible evidence of its efficacy and even lacks support within the cabinet itself. Worse, in a time of deep and seemingly endless recession where the cuts all keep coming (including many in the blatantly wrong places - under 25s housing benefit rather than international aid or the EU for example), the one primary tonic of the nation - affordable alcohol - is under attack. And by a deeply unpopular government that only survived the election in coalition. Not to mention the fact that only a year ago it had a severe criminal wave to deal with across the nation. And then there's the fact that it is likely to be ruled illegal under EU law (and despite this, the Prone Minister has promised to "fight" the EU on such a ruling!) In spite of all this the Boy Cameron is going to force extra costs on people, on something that is one of the few pleasures most of our countrymen and women can afford to indulge in. Costs that are completely unnecessary and driven by an authoritarian nannying agenda; restricting one of the few things that keeps many of us from suddenly rampaging through parliament (and its subsidised bars...). What could possibly go wrong?

So I do hope you join Anonymong, myself and others for Drinkuary (facebook event HERE) to stick two fingers up at the neo-puritans and their authoritarian handmaidens in government. Please do join in and spread the word. Also if you have any spare change, 1000 beermats linking to the Drinkuary site have already been ordered - we'd like to order more to spread the word at pubs across the land. There's a huge amount of anger riding on this one and its an issue that's good to get people talking about politics and their relationship with the horror that is our state again. Remember the great and the good don't like us gathering together in relaxed environments to talk serendipitously with one another. We might get ideas....

 ADDENDUM: Simply the best rant I've seen yet on this topic at 'The Thing Is'. Do read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Once upon a time in Bexley.....

Fellow blogger and member of the awkward squad, Olly C, has as I'm sure many of you already know, been slapped with a custodial sentence as a result of calling a Bexley councillor a "cunt" on twitter. There's a lot of history here and I've already seen some lightweights casually dismissing it because they believe the council's line that he was "harrassing" them.  For a short readable version, pop by Max's place. For a lengthier treatment, go to Spiderplant - which gives a fairly detailed and dispassionate breakdown. If you're unfamiliar with this case, Olly or Bexley council, then you really owe it to yourself to dig deep into this and as such just have a quick browse through Bexley is Bonkers for examples of mendacity from the council that are legion. The blogs just for April will give you enough of a taste. Rather than add my own summary of the situation, I'd rather highlight some particularly striking points from the 'Bexley is Bonkers' site.

First, however I would like to speculate on something. And I'd ask people to please share this speculation far and wide. Remember though, given how easily speech - especially online - is criminalised in this country, it is only a speculation.It goes as follows: Olly is due to be sentenced at Bromley magistrates court on May 9th. WOULDN'T IT BE AWFUL if Bexley council, and certain councillors in particular, were on the receiving end of a "mass cunting" on that day. That is to say - that they were inundated with emails, tweets and phone calls indicating that many of the general public considered them - well - "cunts". Spread the word about this speculation......I'd be interested to see if it comes true.

Secondly I wanted to highlight that the story is now being picked up by as diverse sources as Reddit, Stephen Fry and Sunny Hundal. That's good. These censorious attacks - especially in online media - have got to the point where they are simply beyond belief. I certainly wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me 10 years ago that this would happen. So a cross-partisan left-right shitstorm in response is exactly what we need, as we've had on (too few) occasions in the past such as when left and right blogs joined forces to support Craig Murray against Schillings.

Now - those two points I wanted to highlight, lifted verbatim from the 'Bexley is Bonkers' April 2012 blogs:

"When Eric Pickles’ department wrote to all councils in February 2011 telling them “citizen journalists” should be allowed to Tweet and film in council meetings even the most hard line of secretive Conservative councils like Barnet and Westminster caved in. Bexley however changed its Constitution to exclude all forms of recording at meetings. All their Agendas repeat the prohibition and when questioned they say it is to protect members of the public from appearing on tape. They sheepishly offer the excuse that permission may be granted on request but not a single request has been approved, not even for an audio only recording at a meeting where the public is not allowed to speak."

And as to why / how the judge on friday effectively threw the book at Olly:

"the charges were those prepared from the original false allegations that included flaming torches, pitchforks, petrol bombs and Olly writing on Bonkers. All of that was untrue; made up and distorted stories by Bexley council aimed at getting both Olly and me in trouble. The prosecution could find no evidence for any of those allegations which is what you might expect since they were all false and Olly was found not guilty last December. All the nonsense invented by Bexley council was put before the new Judge as fact. Worrying."

Did I mention that the judgement against Olly was made at a court in Bexley?

Time to consider this a war footing I think.

And my personal message to Bexley council is:

Britain does shoeshining

Never mind that our muppet chancellor said that we're about to hit the worst economic shoals for sixty years.

Never mind that we hit Peak Oil in the North Sea in 1999 and worldwide in November 2005. Never mind that Peak Gas followed straight behind it. Never mind that no one in the cabinet appears capable of even mouthing the terms (but backbenchers do give it a mention). After, what is unspeakable is unthinkable. Never mind that the government was warned in a parliamentary briefing in 1999 in no uncertain terms. Never mind that energy still fails to equate in the government's economic calculations and predictions - something known as the Solow Residual, where "energy" turns out to be a very convincing missing link. Never mind that the U.K. doesn't have a Sovereign Fund. Never mind the fact that you never even heard of a Sovereign fund.

Never mind that the UK and EU is hopelessly dependent on gas supplies from Russia, whilst making aggressive noises regarding the situation in Georgia (and never mind that the U.S. and Israel had boots on the ground in Georgia, training their armed forces before they rolled into South Ossetia).


Never mind any of this. (And hat tip to Patrick Vessey of the UK Libertarian Party for this one.)

Mind what Darling missed out. What the media missed out. Again. Mind your opinion of the U.S. Economy. Mind your opinion of the strength of the dollar (representing as it does, USA Plc). Think the U.S. economy is running on hot air? Possibly about to fully tank in the near future? Think that UK Plc is taking a hit too? Then don't read on.

Since June last year, the U.K. has increased it's holding of U.S. Treasury securities, from $50 billion to $280 billion. Here is the raw data. This means in the space of one year, the UK has gone from the world's 8th to the world's 3rd largest holder of US debt.

Nations buy securities (debt) from other nations as good investments. Or at least that is what they should do. That's what governments who look out for the interests of their citizens might do. UK Plc has just gone and purchased a f**kload of debt from the same place that brought us subprime mortgages and the crash of Northern Crock. Bailed out by "us". The socialisation of corporate debt.

Now we're seeing something truly remarkable. At the beginning of our own, balls against the wall, economic crunch, we're now seeing what could be the socialisation of another nation's debt and it's death-spiral economy. There's nothing short of a miracle that could make these securities good investments. And where will the buck stop for paying this one? You and me. Again.

Now we know what that strange group of islands off the North-West coast of continental Europe is for. You know, that one that isn't buffered by being part of the Eurozone (p.s. speaking to some European friends recently, they don't want sterling to join the Euro, why? Too much debt.... uhh....). Now we know what it's for. It's going to be a doorstop for the crashing US economy.

Skids up kids.