UK tax changes means five million low-paid families will be worse off

(New Labour ensuring the gap between rich and poor in the UK continues to increase)

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"The world owes George Bush a huge debt of gratitude..."
- Gordon Brown (UK Prime Minister)

when will the UK get a Prime Minister who doesn't lie for a living?

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leaders of opposing groups often have more in common with each other than with their respective followers

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so Tony Blair has finally come out as a Catholic -- it's a pity he didn't become a Moslem; then we wouldn't have invaded Iraq

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a UK man was jailed for 6 months for stealing 7000 rare birds eggs

if a bird of prey stole and killed 7000 babies, would it be let loose again after 6 months confinement?

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when the President of the most powerful country in the world, a fervent Christian, endorses the use of torture, it's clear that people haven't changed much since the days of the Inquisition

Labels: foreign policy, George Bush, torture, US

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before being interviewed by the media, spokesman should first state how much they're being paid to say whatever it is they're going to say

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one law for us, another law for them

while inner city kids get nicked for smoking a bit of dope, the plod allows huntscum to break the law with impunity -- equality in the uk? yeh, we all get an equal chance to lick the arse of the aristocracy

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if one of the bush brigade married one of the clinton crowd, and there were offspring, then there'd be no more need for presidential elections in the USA

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being older than both Bush & Blair, it's always tempting to offer them advice -- however i suspect there are times when my views don't reflect those of the majority, which isn't completely disastrous, as in the past i've argued with a certain amount of success that as a rule of thumb the majority is always wrong -- before throwing your teddy out the pram and spouting tautologies at me, please bear in mind that this argument has a philosophical pedigree of sorts -- (a possible exception to the rule is the belief in the existence of a human soul) -- obviously if the majority agreed with me then err.... anyway i've just added the Political Compass app to my Facebook page, and it comes out at -

      Economic Left/Right: -8.25
      Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.97

(which isn't quite at the bottom left hand corner of the graph)

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perhaps England would now be a better place if it'd had Neil Kinnock and William Hague as Prime Ministers instead of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair

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Trash Vortex - the world's biggest rubbish bin

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if i added affiliate links to my most popular pages i could probably generate more than enough to cover all my net costs -- but i think it'd be the thin end of a slippery slope on the road to hell -- i've got something of an addictive personality and the last thing i need is to become obsessed with making money -- so this is a free plug for my main web host -

      Dreamhost

i first came across the internet in 1991, and started using it regularly in 1993 -- my first web site was put together in 1996 while working at a web design and hosting company -- and Dreamhhost is the best i've come across yet -- they're an employee owned company that's been around for 10 years and hosts over half a million web sites, providing terrabytes of bandwidth and hundreds of gigabytes of disc space at remarkably low cost, with the best customer service you're likely to find in a major web host (tho i guess that's not saying much, given the general standard of technical support in most places) ... but be warned, they're not for everyone -- check out why they think people who work in other web hosting companies are crazy -

      why Dreamhost are err.. "special"

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Saudi Arabia to execute woman for witchcraft

her confession was extracted after weeks of police beatings -- hmm... Saudi Arabia is one of the staunchest allies of Bush in his grand fight for "freedom" -- now why is it that the US and the UK are so often on the side of barbarous regimes and tyrannical dictators? of course, it couldn't possibly be anything to do with trying to control the world's mineral and energy resources for their own benefit?

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the UK Government is proposing to hold 'suspects' 6 weeks without charge
that's longer than anywhere else in the western world

it's also intending to remove the independence of coroner's courts, one of Britain's oldest defences against the State hiding the reasons for the deaths of its citizens

when i was young, two of the accusations levelled against the USSR were that they held people without trial and they did not hold public investigations into people's deaths, and this was why we in the West were better off because we were living in a free society -- how times have changed! and all this is in the name of Neo Labour's "progressive democracy" -- not even Orwell would have believed it!

Labels: 1984, britain, democracy, england, human rights, uk

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what's happening in the UK this month?

UK Ministry of Justice plans to microchip British citizens

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Just in case anyone has any doubts, or is in danger of being suckered in by their slick marketing, let me repeat once more, VIRGIN MEDIA ARE CRAP.

Being too far from my local BT exchange to be able to get fast broadband over a BT line, I'm stuck with these greedy incompetents. I was with Telewest for 5 years, who were fine, but after getting taken over by Virgin Media, technical support is now on a premium line number and their performance is lowest of all the major service providers. Worst of all is getting cut back to 25% of the advertised download and upload speeds for 5 hours every night. This seems to happen as soon as my upload speed goes over 256Kb regardless of whether anything is downloading. (I'm paying an extra 10 quid a month for a measley additional 128Kb upload which is really needed).

There are better suppliers out there. If you have the choice, use it!

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US elections? No doubt the Presidency will continue to alternate between the Bush and Clinton families, as it has done since the 1980s.

Such is democracy.

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to solve the problem of unplanned starving childen we need better birth control and better food distribution, not genetically modified products from Monsanto

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in 2007, my UK ISP (Telewest) was taken over by Virgin Media

Telewest Blueyonder were ok, and i was happy to recommend them to friends

Virgin are not ok, and i don't recommend them -- most evenings they throttle back my internet access by 75% or more -- also the quality of technical support has droppped, and calls to them are no longer free, but are charged at a premium rate

so it looks like i'm going to have to get my BT line reconnected and find another ISP (sigh!)

my verdict on Virgin Media? - they are crap!

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livestock production accounts for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions

(that's more than all the world's transport combined)

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carbon trading is capitalism's way of trying to have its cake and eat it

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detention without trial is law without justice
good men are turned into terrorists
those who oppose the government become enemies of the state

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the TBLF yesterday disowned one of its members for what it claimed was an insult to teddy bears throughout the world -- an outraged spokesbear demanded that the offending teddy be publicly flogged

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the planned 104 acre US Embassy embassy in Baghdad is six times bigger than the whole UN complex in New York

(where there's muck, there's brass)

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i've just come across a strangely evocative video, Robbie Dingo's "Watch The World(s).", showing the creation of a complete village in the virtual reality metaverse Second Life -- it's a village which many people will recognise -- except it's not a picture - it's a virtual reality -- or was... he did it on a temporary sim he had the loan of...

hmm.. a bit like Leonardo making a film of himself painting the Mona Lisa, throwing away the painting, and then releasing the movie

*** don't forget to have your sound on -- (there's a link to a high res version of the vid in the "About This Video" section)

<musing>
if only it had been kept and sold off in small plots, it would have been possible to buy one of the cottages and actually live there -- no doubt a nice neighbourhood, tho probably expensive, and the cottage would still need to have been furnished... i've seen classic jukeboxes for sale in some of the SL retro stores, so maybe i should look out for a virtual Seeburg Q160 -- the gardens don't look big enough for a swimming pool (so i could have put to use my recently acquired swimming animations) -- but maybe a small pond with water lilies, some circling goldfish occasionally coming to the surface, a couple of frogs splashing in and out of the water, a bit of bird song in the background, and how about a heron flying over as dawn comes up? (earlier today i spent 10p on a drinking fountain -- when switched on, it burbles away nicely enough in the background, and it doesn't run out of water... but it's not exactly a top of the range model) -- oh, to be a master builder!
</musing>

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how to recognise spam (#273) -

*********************************************
Subject: URGENT
From: MR THUGZY BUBBLE <mrthugzybubble@gmail.com>

This is Rev Thugzy Bubble and here interesting in buying flyers ..I will like to know if you do print flyers and if you do .... I want to Inform you that i will need the Following Type and size of the Flyers i am in need of:
<snip>
*********************************************

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estimated cost to the US of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions is $1.6 trillion

annual cost to ensure basic water supply and sanitation to all is $20 billion

but hey, this is the Viet-Rak era

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IRAQI DEATH TOLL FROM OCCUPATION PASSES A MILLION

to paraphrase Josef Stalin -
"A single American death is a tragedy; a million Iraqi deaths is a statistic."

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it would appear that the severity of global warming depends on me not using the central heating but putting on an extra jumper instead

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the world is a kaleidoscope - we all have a different point of view

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I have one question for Gordon Brown - if he had been Prime Minister in March 2003, would UK troops still have invaded Iraq?

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