What makes you happy ?

SIX-hundred more people are to appear in court in a train company’s crackdown on passengers putting their feet on seats. …. A Merseyrail spokeswoman said: “We are responding to the demands of passengers who don’t want to sit on a seat covered in mud or dirt.” (Manchester Evening News)

“Kathleen Jennings (pictured), 19 …. pleaded guilty …. a Cub Scout leader …. who also works with disabled children …. given [an] absolute discharge.”

You just know that this would have happened:

“Bob Partridge, 19, pleaded guilty …. unemployed …. broken home …. was fined £1000″

All Kathleen Jennings has learnt from this is she needs to cry and try to look as sweet as she can because hey, she got away with it once.
That policy isn’t draconian at all – it’s a company trying to look after their customers and their assets. But those magistrates are sexist to the core.

GWB is planning on attacking Iran and Cheney wants everyone to know his story of why. Somewhere someone is waiting for one seriously large stock market gamble to pay off. And the biggest computer in the world is in the hands of those with the money to call the shots. Not so great eh?

I’m not usually big on conspiracy theories but right now it’s looking like there’s some big clouds on the horizons. Not that there is anything I could really do anyway. And it’s that huge and I’m so powerless that it’s also almost pointless even thinking about it. But then if you don’t think you don’t question and if you don’t question you don’t read and if you don’t read you can’t learn and if you don’t learn you cannot make up your own mind. So I question, read, learn, think .. and decide one side is wrong. And that does what exactly? Here – nothing. So why worry, why think…….

I half-heard something on the news the other day about some sort of bomb. The reporter said that if it were detonated in Paris then most of the UK would be destroyed too. Let’s say it really was going to happen – like the 4 minute warning – would you:
- hide and hope they were wrong
- ignore the whole thing and make plans for next week
- go somewhere high so you could see the fireball as it came to you
Part of me says the first but then you don’t want to be the only survivor (Youtube) and you’d need balls of stone to watch something come at you. Hopefully I will not have this dilemma. Or you.

A concrete and steel fence is being built across the centre of Sydney

More than 5,000 police and troops

5km (three-mile) barrier

A$169m (£68m, $138m) on security for the event over six years

Fighter jets and police helicopters will patrol the skies above Sydney, while Australia’s navy will deploy ships, divers, water police and special forces in Sydney Harbour

Parts of Sydney’s rail network will be closed, along with many roads.

to protect the 21 Asia-Pacific leaders

They really worth that?
Over £3 million per head?
Is the cost of this lower than the cost of a sniper’s bullet?
Lower than terrorist propaganda?
Or is this just a stage on which to set the scene for more government propaganda?

Employees should have access to social networking websites such as Facebook during office hours, the TUC has said.

Some firms have blocked workers’ access to the sites, or disciplined staff for misuse of the internet.

However, the union organisation says it is unreasonable to try to stop staff from having a life outside work and suggests setting guidelines instead. BBC.
(My emphasis)

Since when do they get confused with “office hours” and “outside work” ?

Unreasonable? Get a grip.

Update: Just found this on The Register:

An old Vulture writes: There is no doubt the TUC’s groundbreaking dictat on social networking sites will help the UK’s union movement shake off its unwarranted and erroneous “dinosaur” image and contribute to the revival of the UK’s heavy industrial base. If only Arthur Scargill, Red Robbo, Joe Gormley and their cohorts had had access to Bebo and Friends Reunited we’d still be enjoying the three day week, driving British Leyland cars and singing along to Billy Bragg in the dark

(Maybe you need to be a bit older to appreciate this…..)

It is a commonly held belief that Jupiter shields Earth from comets or asteroids that might otherwise hit us. BBC

It is?

Dr Jonathan Horner, with Professor Barrie Jones, has designed a computer model that tracked the paths of 100,000 Centaurs, over 10 million years, and recorded the number of objects that would impact the Earth.

Models mean zilch. Political parties have economic models which grandiosely predict how much better we will be with them and they are always wrong.

The results showed that the numbers of Earth impact events were the same for the cases with the real Jupiter and with no planet at all.

And?

The next phase of the project for the group is to assess the impact risk posed to the Earth by objects in the asteroid belt and the team will go on to study comets that venture into the Solar System from deeper out in space.

And precisely who on this actual real earth will benefit? Whose life will be made better by this research? No-one’s, that’s who. So what’s the damn point?

The “continuing problem” of gang violence is due to the absence of fathers in black communities, Justice Secretary Jack Straw says. BBC

He was responding to US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson who said inner city violence was an economic problem.

“It’s a cultural problem. It’s the absence of fathers who are actively involved in parenting. [said Jack Straw]

“He said: “The Army is a very good career for many black and Asian people”

So.. Jack Straw says that if the fathers of black boys stayed at home then we’d have no gangs. That alone is – for me – racist.

But it doesn’t cure the BNP, other nasty gangs, thefootball gangs – or would some paternal love make all that go away too?

Jack Straw is a clueless idiot.

An article in The Independent on the falling circulation figures of men’s mags. I used to buy FHM and I used to really like it. The main reason I stopped wasn’t the price as that was about the same. It was the fact it turned into a catalogue.
The index went further and further into the mag as they filled it full of ads. Every other page was ads. They adopted a technique of saying ‘continued on page 72′ just so readers would see more ads. They had more ‘features’ on clothing and accessories. And these ‘features’ always had really expensive gear that I could never afford. Those pages actively irritated me. It’s one thing to flip through pages about DVD’s, games, health drinks and how Tesco is cheap and quite another to see 200 quid trainers, shirts that cost a week’s wage, snowboards, jetskis and similar. Those pages alienated me. Grub Smith and really expensive gear? How do they go together then?

They had less interesting stuff to read.
Or maybe they had the same but it became diluted by the mass of glossy ‘buy me!’ around it.

The solution for me and FHM is simple – cut the ads.
Getting rid completely is obviously not on, but they could reduce them to a level which meant the mag was profitable and readers didn’t feel like an expedition was needed to find the content.

Here’s what they do – they weigh the first 12 issues of FHM. They weigh the last 12 issues. They set the former as a goal. Easy.

One free english channel and it is CNN.
I used to like rolling news and at one point I believe CNN was held up as the way to go:

Golf ad. Rolex Ad. Angola Ad. Coming soon on CNN. More coming soon on CNN. News that says just 1 item. Ad for skin creams. Ad for the Maldives. Ad for Cyprus. Ad for the CNN website. Rolex ad. Ad for Turkish Airlines. Coming soon on CNN. Larry King Live with what feels like an ad between every 5 sentences. Zenith bank ad. A sport news item. Ad. Another item. Ad. Coming soon on CNN. News on the hour that covers the whole world but really it’s 99% USA.
If this is an example of a good news channel I’ll eat this laptop.

Each of the women seem to have had cheek implants too. Looks weird.

This is CNN? This is junk more like.

Back in mid-2006 a nasty scrap of humanity was sentenced for abducting and sexually assaulting a toddler. Craig Sweeney was sentenced to 18 years but told he could possibly walk free after 5 years. Understandably, everyone outside the judiciary was angry at this, but the judge was – in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor – exactly right with the judgement. (This means that Lord Falconer agrees that a known predator of young children will be free to start all over again in less than 5 years from now.) At the time, the media reacted with the indignation felt by everyone other than Lord Falconer and his wig-wearing cronies.

Today there was a judgement about the way that other judgement was handled.

The media, particularly the tabloid press, was also criticised and was asked to restrain from attacking judges.

What? The media is meant to just agree? How can you attack a sentence and not attack the idiot who used his own judgement to arrive at it? Maybe the media should just be quiet and in doing so be seen to be in total agreement.
Judges are phenomenally well paid and are meant to be intelligent. They know exactly what they are getting themselves into and with the trappings of their career come the barbs. Cope with it.

In that same link above:

The constitution committee also looked at the creation of the Ministry of Justice when Mr Reid split the Home Office in May.
It said it had “significant constitutional implications” but that ministers had tried to dismiss it as simply a machinery of government change.
The government was criticised for “failing satisfactorily to consult the judiciary on the proposed changes”.

What this means is “Damn! More work!”. It also means “Politicians should not interfere with the judges but the judges can interfere with the politicians” (unless Cynthia Payne was in charge of course). So the judges want to have complete control and be protected from anyone saying anything bad, but in the meantime they will allow people out of jail who are known to harm children and can be absolutely guaranteed to do it again.

Does anyone not a judge agree with this? I seriously doubt it.

So we had the uncaring Judge John Griffith Williams who was joined by the incompetent Judge Francis Gilbert and this particular diabolic trinity was completed with the bleeding heart Judge Julian Hall. And if the Lord Chancellor had his way then the media would not report the public feelings on the matter, then the politicians would not try to enact new laws (which is NOT the remit of the judges) and the judges could continue in their strange world where they are the sole arbiters of good and bad.

But…… go back to 2005 and decisions were taken to increase the sentences handed out to men who kill their wives. Would this have happened if the media had been quiet? No, of course not.

There were more sentencing guidelines issued in 2006. Here are a few words from that report:

The guideline which was drawn up after a major consultation

Feeling let down / angry / sad or many other emotions is difficult to do in isolation. Ideas about what else could be done are also difficult to express as you only have your own experiences to go on. Which is where the media comes in. Parts of the media can and do accurately reflect the feelings people have over many things and if a judge thinks it’s okay for someone else to be attacked then they should expect equal treatment. But the media also functions as a megaphone and of course that will cause a louder and harsher voice – people like me saying that the likes of Sweeney should be executed. Does that mean it will happen? No – just like Sweeney’s mother probably thinking of her son as someone who would not harm anyone and should be freed will not happen (for 5 yrs anyway). So the media magnifies but in magnifying it also communicates other ways of dealing, other voices that can be more objective, other voices that urge change by process. Do not judges praise the media for their help in solving crimes? (so should they not be criticised for also causing it?). The media are a vital part of the judicial process. Without the media we have no review, no feedback, no change, no presentation of the people.

Judges, by their actions and inactions have a direct and profound impact on society. For that their every ruling should be put under public scrutiny and society has every right to praise, criticise and castigate as the public and media see fit.

I just watched “ABC World News” on BBC News 24.
They didn’t say a word about anything outside the US.

• The rest of the world does not exist
• The USA is the world
• Only news in the USA is fit to be spoken
• The news elsewhere is too scary to be broadcast
• ABC News have no clue
• People have phoned in and complained about stuff in other countries that has no effect at all on their lives so why waste time talking about it
• There is simply so much news they couldn’t possibly do justice to it so better to not show favouritism by mentioning any
• ABC New don’t give a toss

I think it’s all of the above.