Work, and spooky non-voting.

Another report done. In the absence of Big Jobs (the ones where I can take a month off afterwards) I'm doing lots of Little Jobs to keep the pennies rolling my way. It's a recession thing, I suppose. Nobody wants to fork out for a Big Job at the moment but they don't balk at anything below four figures - or even in the low four figures - and I can get through a few of those a week. The trouble is, it means lots of short reports and I can't invoice without a report so it's busy here.

I also need spare money for a greenhouse. Not a Tesco one, a proper one. Cheap ones just don't cut it, I don't want one that will fall apart in a few years and/or need constant maintenance. So I need to do a bit of extra accumulating. Which means I'll be sporadic unless I get lucky with a Big Job.

That said, time to go look for something to raise my ailing blood pressure. I can say one thing for Labour, they were the perfect daily treatment for low blood pressure. No pills, no doctors, all you needed was the news feed.

I see Spooky Madcow kept his job without a vote. Her Madness, the Princess of Dorries, is outraged (yawn. Again). I think he would have won the vote anyway but I still think they should have had a vote.

Winning a vote would give him credibility. Even if he only won by one, he would have been voted into the position.

As it is, he is now open to attacks of 'We didn't vote for you' from all sides. He's going to have to put up with that more and more. If he had won through a vote, it couldn't happen, the matter would be closed.

I think it was a big mistake not putting it to a vote. He would have won anyway, but he'd have won more than the vote. He'd have won some respect and legitimacy. He would also have no concerns about accusations of 'unelected'.

Well, it's too late now.

Not enough. I'm getting drowsy. There must be something out there.

Ming the Meaningless.

The arch-enemy of Flush Gordon, Ming the Meaningless, wants the Speaker's job. It's hardly surprising. He's a Lib Dem and they all want to be Speaker because the Speaker isn't allowed to make a decision on policy. It's the Lib Dem dream job - all the money, all the prestige, no decisions.

Spooky Madcow has apparently launched a PR campaign to avoid being voted out of the Big Brother House and to keep his job. That's it. PR. It's all they are about now, any of them. Why bother with all those reality TV shows? The Houses of Parliament contain things that are even more bizarre than having to climb a mountain of blancmange or eating kangaroo testicles.

Everyone I speak to says they'd never watch 'Prime Monster's Question-dodging Time' because it's dull. Really? It's top-level TV these days, right up there with Big Brother and Australian Jungle Has-been Torment Fun and the Simon Cowell Humiliate-an-Idiot show. It leaves Constipation Street, the cul-de-sac in Liverpool where nobody with any sense would buy a house and that farm thing that used to have someone called Seth in it right out in the cold.

No wonder the Brown Gorgon was such a big fan of 'X factor'. It's how government is run these days. Form over function, every time.

I look forward to the Cameroid facing down the next Labour party frontman with 'I will answer his question if he eats this spider'. Although if it turns out to be Ed Balls it wouldn't be much fun. He has tarantulas for breakfast. Prescott the Hut wouldn't have batted an eyelid (he can't, his eyes are too fat).

You know, that might even get the viewing figures up. 'Would the Prime Monster like to choose between a vote on a referendum on the EU, or eating this live slug?'

We complain about the BBC licence fee but really, the BBC could produce a show like this for far less cost than we currently pay for it. It would probably do far less harm to the economy, too.

In this week's episode, Ming the Meaningless beams his deadly Indecision Ray at London in order to take control, while Busted Flush Gordon is incapacitated and forced to sit on a bench at the back and mutter incoherently. Ming's robot henchman, the Clegginator, has snared the deadly Cameroid and is ready to unleash that left-leaning monstrosity on the world at Ming's command.

Does that sound like a cheesy Sixties science fiction show? It does, doesn't it?

It's modern British politics. Come on, BBC, try to keep up.

Politicians complain that we don't take politics seriously. They really can't understand why.

Right is the new left.

Late at the lab tonight, it was a last-bus night and that's dodgy on Sundays. With double the expected sample load this week I have to make up extra media.

Something else occurred to me also. I need to sort out what I'm likely to need over the next few months and buy it now before the tax-cutting Tories boost VAT. It's not easy with perishables but with a lot of stuff, I can stock up. I can't reclaim VAT because I'm not registered and am staying below the threshold for registration because I can't be bothered with it. It's a tax on turnover, not profit, and I pay quite enough tax as it is. I have looked into it and it won't benefit me at all, because what I sell is thought, not a tangible product. I can't apply VAT to the reports because they can be classed as books. So VAT would be a pointless expense.

All of which means I will be limited in my babblings for a few days while I work out what I can safely stock up with and what is likely to hit its expiry date before I use it.

Anyway, that's my problem, not yours.

What is my, yours and everyone's problem is whether the Cameroid-Clegg-Collective is still operating on the same basis as every single official for the last 13 years. Spite.

Tiny Blur didn't win by appealing to the 'working man'. In fact, the Absurdist party he created has spent most of its time in office turning the 'working man' into a pariah. No, the Blur kept winning by appealing to the aspirational middle classes. They turned to New Labour for those tax credits and so on. Those traditional Tory voters saw something more Tory in Blur than in the Tory party.

Early indications are that they were right to vote left, because under the Cameroid, the the right are more left than the left have ever been. So far left that an alliance with the Lib Dems is not only possible, but has happened.

Now, the Cameroid-Clegg Collective have been told by their own Tax Guru that they are hitting 'middle class voters' too hard. Why would they do that? Revenge on them for voting for Tiny Blur's grin? Is it, could it be, that same old spite we've grown so used to over the last decade? Is it really that leftie spiteful vengeance, now applied by a party we thought were on the 'right'?

Cameroid has declared himself a leftie. No wonder Barry O'Blimey likes him so much.

We have not climbed out of the frying pan to land in the fire.

We're still in the pan.

Tired

Back from smoky-drinky and browsing the blogs but too tired to write much of anything.

I note the EU is gearing up to take over at an accelerating rate, the IMF think we can 'afford a bit more fuel duty' (which tax will be taxed at the new rate of VAT on top) and Brussels believe they should control the UK budget even though we are not in the Euro. Why has the Cameroid not yet put up a big sign over Dover saying 'Just fuck off'? I would have, and I'd have put it up there as soon as Mrs. Queen said 'We appoint you, you hideous little freak, as Primary Monster, and would you mind not eating any more of the corgis and stop telling the ladies-in-waiting that what they've been waiting for has arrived?'

An MP was stabbed. Hideous Harman demands to know what measures parliament will take to protect MPs since this is the second such incident in only nine years (as opposed to similar incidents among London youth which are separated by much larger timescales, sometimes even hours. We're talking relative-importance time here, remember).

I have an idea to protect all our MPs. It's called "646 second homes on Rockall with one-way travel".

They wouldn't be small homes. They would be compact and bijou. With perhaps just a touch of rising damp.

But at least there are no knives or lampposts. So they'll be safe.



News from Smoky-Drinky - the stolen child is in the land of Kafka. His foster parents are ill so he is now with foster foster parents until his real foster parents are well enough to take him back. His real real parents have no chance even though there has been not so much as a suggestion of abuse or neglect mentioned in this case. By the time he gets home - if he ever does - he'll have Traveller status and will be able to tarmac your front garden while you're on holiday and claim residency. He will also be one seriously screwed up individual.

The kid has muscular dystrophy. His life expectancy is no more than 15. Will the council invite his parents to his funeral, I wonder? Will they even bother to tell them when or where he dies?

They are not trying for another child. What would be the point?

This is LibDem/SNP-controlled territory and has been for some considerable time. They can't blame Labour for this.

Real life is a time-sapper.

Lots to do. I have 36 samples coming next week when I was expecting 18, I have a brand new lab freezer for free because I have to store the Stuff for the next hospital trial on C. difficile (and precious little space to put it into) and I have to get this blasted report out of the way before next week hits. No time for serious swipes at politics tonight. I have to be compos mentis for lab work tomorrow and I hope to get enough done to have time for a smoky-drinky tomorrow night. So it's a quickie with references to other people's posts.

The Great Repeal Bill is coming. When it arrives, will it reduce the constant torment of the smoker? Will it hell. I had the Jovial Witnesses at my door today and guess what the current comic is all about? 'How to quit smoking'. Even the JWs are at it now. I had immense difficulty persuading them that some of us don't quit not because of some demonic possession thing or terrible addiction. We don't quit for the same reason we don't stop drinking tea and coffee. We do it because we like it.

They were a little confused by Electrofag. I gave them some copies of New Scientist in exchange for their comics and sent them off to think about it.

The Odd Couple will do nothing to reduce the onslaught against smokers. Frank Davis has an excellent analysis of why. I think it might be worse than just the smug revenge of the born-again non-smoker. I think it might be that they are also finding it useful to have whole classes of whipping boys to distract people from their schemes.

Drinkers - do you think they will realise that the 'minimum pricing' idea is a load of rubbish? I think they already know it is but will do it anyway.

The green issues - now that we are midway through May and still getting snow and hard frosts, do you think they will question the Church of Climatology at all? Nope. Not even when all those volcanoes go pop, fill the air with dust, cool the planet... and we won't have any power stations.

This new administration looks like keeping the blogworld buzzing. They just need a few days to get themselves sorted out and then the proper lunacy can begin. The EU is already at it with demands to vet the UK budget even though we have proper money rather than their Euro nonsense.

Boatang and Demetriou say we should not relax for a moment but the removal of the Brown Gorgon and his gangster cabinet leaves me feeling as if an especially strong headclamp has been relaxed at last.

The next lot will turn the screw soon enough. For the moment, I intend to take full advantage of the lull while the warring factions gear up, replenish my energies and reload the sarcasm gun with blue and yellow bullets.

I'd better hang on to a few red ones too. They haven't finished bleating yet.

True colours.

''We lost the election in England, not elsewhere, amongst so-called decent hard-working families who felt, especially working-class people, disconnected from the Labour Party."

One of the champions of the 'decent hard-working family', earlier.

They don't like you any more, you so-called decent hard-working families.


Well, to be honest, they never really did.

It's not dead yet. Keep flogging.

Dammit.

A whole day in power and none of the new lot have done anything unutterably stupid yet. Not one. I could rely on Labour for at least one cock-up a day and sometimes a dozen or more.

They're still at it, too. The Strawman has made clear to any English voters who hadn't already realised it that his party doesn't consider them worth bothering about. Even though England contains most of the UK population, he insists that proper people wanted Labour.

Actually, Strawman, there are only two reasons for anyone to vote Labour. One, they are clinically insane or two, you bribed them with benefits or a non-job.

Mrs. Bucket has spoken up to insist that the Cameroid and the Clegginator install ministers on the basis of gender, race, and religion rather than on any ability to do the job. Because that's worked so well over the last thirteen years, hasn't it?

Prescott the Hut has been bragging about the number of civil service non-jobs Labour created because the layers of fat around his brain have caused it to overheat. He genuinely thinks it was a good thing to wreck the private sector and still make them pay for bin inspectors and duckpond police. Fortunately the current government plan to make some very deep cuts in the parasitic sector.

It's a good thing some of them are still around because this new lot seem to be taking the job seriously. They aren't likely to produce a lot of blog material for a while yet. I'll be watching, because they are antismokers so I don't like them.

Still, while they settle in, we will be able to amuse ourselves with Labour's leadership contest. So far it looks like it'll be between Moribund, Moribund the Younger, Cruddy and 'Sweaty' Balls, although Balls hasn't decided whether to try yet. Silly little socialists are already calling for a quick end to Tory rule. Not yet, benefits boys. First the pain, then the slow death.

So if the Cameroid does get the fixed-term parliament idea through, then the only way to shift him is with a vote of no confidence and that will need 55% support. Silly little socialists are already crying 'That's not fair' because they think we haven't noticed something.

The Scottish parliament needs 66% support for a vote of no confidence. Who set that level?

Why, it was the Liberal/Labour coalition that ran the place before Al the Oily Fish took over.

Careful now, DaNi. That idea rebounded on Scottish Labour. They can't now get Al's lot out. Set that figure too high and it could rebound on you in the future.

Oh, and if you could get someone to do something stupid but preferably harmless, it would be nice. Is Nadine busy at the moment?

I mean, you don't even have any really odd-looking ones and no easily twisted names apart from Vinnie the Wire. Give me something to work with here.

If they relaxed the smoking ban, you know, I'd be pretty much silenced. They won't though.

Even so, it's going to be hard to reach the heights of contempt inspired by the Brown Gorgon and his nosegoblins when the CCTV cameras start coming down, the databases are scrapped and the unaccountable start finding that they aren't any more.

They'll do something stupid soon. I have faith.

They are, after all, politicians.

Crying Wolf.

It's only fair to let the Toriator and the Libdeminatrix settle in before letting loose at them so I'll take the night off. I hope they're still there in the morning. This lot don't have such fun names to play with so there'll be some experimentation over the coming weeks. They'll have to earn their new titles. I'll probably stick with Cameroid because as Prime Monster, he's certain to be a pain in the arse.

Some Lib Dem MPs are muttering about wrecking the coalition at their next party conference. They are idiots. There are now six Lib Dem Ministers and their party has a say in what the Government does. Would they rather go back to the irrelevancy the Clegginator has just hauled them from? Cameroid has the PM job now so if the Lib Dems try to take their ball and go home, they lose six Ministers, they lose all say in policy decisions and the Tories will be in government. Minority administration, sure, but the Oily Fish has run one of those in Scotland and he's made it work. Only the Lib Dems lose - and they'll lose a lot - if the party forces Clegg to pull out.

A coalition with Labour and a rag-tag band of little parties would have lasted all of five minutes and would have precipitated another election at which all the Rainbow Warriors would have suffered badly. Even Count Mandelstein knew that which is why he has let the Rainbow Coalition slip quietly under the water.

The SNP and Plaid Cymru, even by hinting they were going to bend over and take it from Labour, have already caused a collective sharp intake of breath across Wales and Scotland and we don't like doing that here. It's too damn cold.

Besides, do the Lib Dems really believe they would be better off with Labour? The Gorgon wasn't interested in what his own ministers thought and would smear and discredit anyone who so much as disagreed. How do the Lib Dems imagine they would have been regarded? Now the Gorgon has gone but Count Mandelstein remains, as does Darth Campbell and all the rest of them. The Gorgon was not the worst of them, only the most public.

I'll give them a little while. I might wait hours and hours, we'll see. They will need to show they can resist Righteous lies and made-up statistics, which the Righteous have set about proclaiming already. It's the same old stuff. It's still not true and it's obviously not true and that is what makes it dangerous.

The ludicrous assertions on smoking, drinking, salt, fat and so on are so utterly absurd now that people are laughing at them. They are also laughing at other advice, such as 'do not drink' on a bottle of bleach. In the average person's mind, all experts are now proven liars so none of their advice is worth a damn. Looking straight at the sun can damage your eyes? Nah. Yes, people, it can. That particular bit of advice is sound. But how can you tell?

Put yourself in the average working man's place, the man who has not had a life of learning and in most cases, doesn't want it. That is not a disparaging remark. The trouble with 'equality' is that it assumes everyone wants the same things. Some people just want to earn enough to be able to live a pleasant and quiet life. In fact, that's all I want. I'm no use at physical work so I do it using my brain. It's not really different in the end, I just use a different method to get the same result as a bricklayer or a plumber.

A side-effect of being a bricklayer is that you can tell, just by looking, whether a wall is going to stand up or fall down. I can't. A side-effect of what I do is that I can tell which health advice is good and which is not. Bricklayers can't. So when it reaches the utterly absurd and the blatant and easily-proven lie, which it has, they have no option but to regard all such advice as junk.

I used to work with probiotics, now I work more with prebiotics for reasons too dull and uninteresting to relate. In the early 1990's there were loads of products sold as 'probiotics' and some of them were good. Most of them were junk and did nothing at all, they were just 'bandwagon' products from people who didn't give a damn about proving anything, they just wanted a quick buck. Because of that, the whole probiotic industry and research into it became associated with junk science and scammers. There were some that worked, some based on sound research and careful development, but among the many that were junk or outright fraudulent, they were lost. Nobody other than those of us who worked with them could tell which was which.

The same is happening with health advice now. There are so many absolutely absurd pronouncements that people are starting to ignore all advice. The experts are lying to them. So they believe none of it.

If anyone in a position of power ever finds this backwater and has the attention span to get this far, listen up. All those fakecharities and insane control freaks are not mere inconveniences for smokers, drinkers and foodies. They are very, very dangerous. They hide serious advice under a mountain of their petty personal prejudices and that means the serious advice is ignored along with their blatant lies.

Go into Tesco. Find a 500 ml can of own-brand lager. Cheap, isn't it? Find a two litre bottle of own brand water. That two litres of water is not only cheaper than four cans of beer, it is cheaper than one can of beer.

Alcohol cheaper than water? Every single person in this country can walk into Tesco and see that is a lie. Absolutely everyone. Then they see that a GP apparently cannot understand simple arithmetic. Respect for the medical profession? Those oafs can't even compare prices! So when they start going on about other health issues, nobody believes a word of it. Even the ones that are true.

So don't be surprised when you tell them an Ebola pandemic is coming, and they don't believe you.

There was a story when I was a child about The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

I bet they don't tell kids about that any more.

Perhaps it would be a good idea for someone to read it out in the next Parliament. If they can get rid of their fake charities and stop listening to the Righteous, it would do more than increase civil liberties.

It would save lives.

Selling legal products gets you a life sentence.

Only in Ireland.

The Irish government have not banned the 'legal high' drugs. Instead, they will arrest and imprison anyone using them, and arrest and imprison for life anyone selling them. The drugs are still not illegal in themselves. Good, eh?

With tobacco, it's legal to buy it and carry it around but illegal to smoke it. This is only one step further. The substance is not banned as such, but possession and sale are crimes.

At the end of the article is an interesting line:

"The righteous fuming over these products is never applied in the same way to the products sold in the local pub which are just as lethal and dangerous when misused and abused," Irish Times journalist Jim Carroll said on the newspaper's blog, referring to the consumption of alcohol in bars.

Typical of the attitude of people nowadays. Not 'It is outrageous - these are legal products, you can't ban them'. Instead we hear - always - 'if you're banning my stuff, why don't you ban his stuff too?' As if that is going to help. It's children's logic, not adult logic. It applies to the child who is powerless to prevent confiscation of his toy so resorts to the only revenge he can get - demand that another child's toy is confiscated too. The child cannot fight for himself. Adults used to be able to.

If I get punched in the face, it does not lessen my pain to know that you will also be punched in the face. Unless you're one of the Brown Gorgon's goblins. Or the Brown Gorgon himself, for whom I would accept a few whacks as part of a deal.

However, Irish enraged child Jim Carroll has missed something.

Under the new legislation, the sale or supply of substances that do not specifically fall under existing drugs legislation, but which have "psychoactive effects" will land users with up to 7 years in prison and suppliers with a maximum life sentence.

The legislation does not name the drugs. It merely refers to 'psychoactive effects'.

Others are questioning how the group of substances with "psychoactive effects" would be defined.

Why, that's easy. They will be defined as any substance that has an effect on the workings of the mind.

Such as tobacco.

And even more so, alcohol.

You have your tantrum-derived wish, Jim Carroll. That legislation can now be expanded to arrest and prosecute tobacconists and pub landlords. The wording of it makes its extension easy. It will get support because it's about 'drugs' but once it's in place and set into the law books, the Puritan State takes Ireland.

Watch the Cameroids for signs of this sort of thing. It's no good doing a CAMRA and shouting 'Do it to them instead'.

This time, they will 'do it to them' as well.

Parasites Lost.

Finally.

It's been like watching attempts to resuscitate a run-over cat whose spine is smashed. Even Labour MPs and ministers have said 'Oh, just give it up and put us all out of our misery'. Blunkety-Blunk and the Strawman have openly said that the Gorgon's 'Rainbow Coalition' could not work.

In a way, it's a pity. If there was one thing guaranteed to wake up the English, it would be to see the party they voted overwhelmingly into power still in opposition, while everyone they didn't vote for takes control. As CF says, the party that won the election would then be the only party to have no place in Government.

The Scots, Irish and Welsh wouldn't rise up because of this. The parties they voted for would all have more power than they ever dreamed possible. Even that Green MP, the Snow Queen (thanks to JuliaM in the comments for that one), would have more say in government than Dai Cameroid. That was never going to sit well with all those Tory voters. Nor with the non-Tory voters who voted Tory to get rid of that sack of spanners tied up ugly who still squats and drools in the seat of power.

So there will be much discussion on the idea of voting reform over the next few weeks. I note that none of this 'electoral reform' mentions anything about postal vote fraud. That is easy to fix. Just stop allowing it for all and sundry. I could have had one even though I don't need one. Anyone wanting a postal vote would have to give a damn good reason for it, or preferably turn up in person at a council office, cast the vote, seal it in an envelope and put it into a locked ballot box. Then their name is crossed off the register. That way, if you're going to be out of the constituency on polling day, you can still vote and nobody can use your name while you're away.

I have a feeling postal voting might still be around for the next election. So will Count Mandelstein. The Gorgon, too, is staying on as an MP but his curse now only extends to the borders of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath. You voted for him, he's all yours now.

It's time for a bit of relaxation and perhaps another one of these. Since the wrangling is over for the moment I can also get back to ranting about smoking. Standing in the next election is under consideration, I hear both 'go for it' and 'don't do it, it's a lot of work for no gain' voices. A lot to consider.

I'll give the Cameroids and the Cleggies a few days to settle in before letting loose. Although I see the maniac Dorries is already causing problems. Tut-tut, Nadine, you are taking advantage here. You know Dai can't sack you with the numbers he has.

The voters, however, might. That next election is a lot less than five years away.

Oh and a note to the Green MP. It's snowing again. When are you going to do that global warming thing you've been promising?