The UK election is such an arbitrary, unpredictable affair because this is the age of no-party politics – and no-politics parties.
(CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Spiked Why nobody knows who will win: .)
Anarchy Sticker outside Bricklane Bikes Heres my attempt to make the most random post in the forum today. On the door on the left when you come out of bricklane bikes there an sticker “clear your mind, put your vote where it belongs” and then a picture like this I love it and want one for my letter box (hoping it might cut down on the amount of politician leaflets crap it always seems to be full with) Anyone know where it comes from? Can’t get interested in this or any other plebiscite but then I saw this tweet. ” In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.” So what happens now? 29 April 2010  |  | category: the new 'priest class', the state we're in  | one comment - (comments are closed)  A secret agent is abducted after resigning and finds himself imprisoned in a surreal village from which there is no escape. Engaging in a battle of wits with his mysterious captors, the new arrival is determined not to remain a prisoner for long. First episode of the cult Sixties drama, starring Patrick McGoohan, Paul Eddington and George Baker. 27 April 2010 | | category: film, the new 'priest class', Wales | one comment - (comments are closed) In case you had forgotten about this travesty. If catapults were made illegal the only people with catapults would be criminals. The Digital Economy bill, known on Twitter as #debill, passed today. The short version is that this thing makes the DMCA look like a warmup act. Cory’s traveling, but you can expect his thoughts here soon. For now, Mike Butcher sums up the danger eloquently: During the 1960s Chairman Mao told farmers to kill crop-eating sparrows, an edict which produced a plague of the insects which the sparrows normally ate. Likewise, the Digital Economy Bill, in trying to [ continue reading Draconian UK Digital Economy Bill passes: huge blow for digital privacy, security, freedom ] The Olympics are coming to London, so our civil liberties are going out the window: because nothing epitomises the spirit of global competition and cooperation like corporate bullying and unfettered truncheon-waving. Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events. “I think there will be lots of people doing things completely innocently who are going to be caught by this, and some people will be prosecuted, while others will be so angry about it that they will start complaining about civil liberties [ continue reading London Olympics: police powers to force spectators to remove non-sponsor items, enter houses, take posters ] 23 March 2010 | | category: can't make it up!, Sport? what sport?, the law, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed 22 March 2010 | | category: can't make it up!, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, twitter | comments are closed Dollyhead Books says, “A musician has spoken today of his shock at being removed from a train for ‘behaving suspiciously’ by writing a list of songs which included the band name The Killers.” Tom Shaw was travelling on a South West Trains when he began writing a list of song titles which his band The Magic Mushrooms would play at a forthcoming gig. But the 25-year-old was approached by two security staff employed by the train company and asked to leave the train at Fareham railway station. Mr Shaw, who works with young people with learning difficulties, said that [ continue reading Man kicked off train for writing song list that included band name “The Killers” ] 18 March 2010 | | category: can't make it up!, music, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, transport | comments are closed The US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance has asked the US Trade Rep to add Indonesia to its list of rogue nations that don’t respect copyright. What did Indonesia do to warrant inclusion on this “301 list”? Its government had the temerity to advise its ministries to give preference to free/open source software because it will cost less and reduce the use of pirated proprietary software in government. According to the IPA, this movement to reduce copyright infringement is actually bad for copyright, because “it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights and also limits the ability of government or [ continue reading IP Alliance says that encouraging free/open source makes you an enemy of the USA ] 11 March 2010 | | category: scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the law, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | one comment - (comments are closed) The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week. This would leave many organisations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. continue reading Open Wi-Fi ‘outlawed’ in Digital Economy Bill ] 27 February 2010 | | category: the law, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed All of this rings true to me. Unfortunately it was at this point – about five minutes ago – that I realised the time. I’ve spent so long catching up with everything I missed from the past week or so that six hours have passed. It’s dawn in San Francisco, a matter of minutes before my deadline, and I still haven’t written a word, let alone 1300. That’s the other annoying thing about skipping a week: it takes you another week just to catch up. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» TechCrunch NSFW: Playing catch-up… Or ceci n’est pas une [ continue reading NSFW: Playing catch-up… Or ceci n’est pas une column ] 22 February 2010 | | category: advice, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, world of work, writing | comments are closed Parking wardens working for London’s local authorities routinely issue tickets against authority-owned vehicles. When this happens, the authority takes itself to court to argue that it shouldn’t have to pay fines to itself. Sometimes, they ask the courts to award themselves legal costs from their own pockets. This according to Barrie Segal, who published a book in 2007 on London’s insane parking enforcement called The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Boing Boing London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court: .) [ continue reading London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court ] 22 February 2010 | tagged as: institutional incompetence | | category: Hackney, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the law, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed Make your own David Cameron poster. 4 February 2010 | | category: empires flux, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed So far the election campaigning in the UK is pretty low key – with no date yet fixed – but there are rumbles growing. It was a week or so ago that I heard Evan Davies scoffing at Cameron’s air brushed posters. (I see Evan has blogged about the interview here.) I have now seen the posters for myself and they are pretty smarmy to say the least. Digital Literacies. Condemning cruises for sailing carefree into Haiti’s hell makes little sense if we don’t apply the same standards elsewhere An instinctive revulsion is hard to suppress: a cruise ship of pampered passengers pulls in to dock at a private beach in Labadee, Haiti, in the wake of the earthquake that killed more Haitians than the survivors can find space to bury. How could holidaymakers sip cocktails or take jetski rides, knowing the devastation that persists nearby? Some may have felt uncomfortable, but not enough to dissuade Royal Caribbean from keeping their giant liners to their usual schedule. Yet this [ continue reading The haves and the have-nots in Haiti – cruising into controversy ] 19 January 2010 | | category: one world, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, transport | comments are closed Young people eh? tsk … we’ve gotta fix them. Reminds me of the Hackney police officer telling me that people were not supposed to cross roads except at ‘official’ crossing points. Whilst I wear a haz-vest often and think they are a good idea this piece seems to suggest more about clothing and reflective tape. If they are not simply enforcing the use of front and tail lights and are insisting on reflective clothing then the words: ‘ultra vires’, obstruction, harassment, illegal, abuse of powers, vigilante, all spring to mind. Will there be a curfew on black and dark-coloured vehicles [ continue reading No hi-viz vest means no cycling in Norwich ] 19 January 2010 | | category: clothes, cycling, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, transport | comments are closed In August 2008, Apple approved an application in the App Store called I Am Rich. The app did nothing beyond show a picture of a red gem. So why was it notable? Because it cost $999.99. Though Apple pulled it relatively quickly, there was some concern that we’d start to see a rush of bogus applications and/or huge prices in the App Store. Luckily, that didn’t happen and app prices have remained low (some would say too low). But now we have the return of a $999.99 app. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> TechCrunch BarMax: The $1,000 iPhone App [ continue reading BarMax: The $1,000 iPhone App That Might Actually Be Worth It ] 17 January 2010 | | category: Apple, iPhone, Nerds, the law, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed It’s hard to be humble when you come from Stoke Newington – as many of the residents prove. Not affluent: mean, mode or median? Obviously not all (or even many) of them grew up there, but house prices now and the deceit of short-term rentals around the parish of St Mary’s each time a scion hits Year-6 will embed the burgeoning ‘new priest-class’ there. Also, Hackney improvements today coincide with opening of 3 academies – ie. schools not run by the local authority, an authority that hosted the first school in Britain closed under special measures. With the loss of [ continue reading another reason to be SMUG-16 ] 14 January 2010 | tagged as: humans, life, London | | category: Gallery of the bleedin' obvious, Hackney, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, tribal | comments are closed Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbusting 3D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a [ continue reading Monbiot: “Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film” ] 12 January 2010 | tagged as: film, humans | | category: film, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, tribal | comments are closed That John Robb is a clever lad that can spot other, clever lads and lasses … “Theres a great article in TIME magazine by Amanda Ripley (I wrote a review of her great book, ‘The Unthinkable‘ in the City Journal) on one of the most under covered security lessons of 9/11: that an aware citizenry can defend itself. It ends with this telling para which depicts the government reasserting its authority to prop up its legitimacy: After the passengers [heroes] of Flight 253 deplaned in Detroit, they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours [ continue reading YOU ARE IN CONTROL ] The Observer reports that an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks’ doors open. As Charlie Stross notes, “A third of a trillion dollars is a lot of money; it’s enough to fund the US military invading another country halfway around the world, or a manned Mars exploration program.” Charlie goes on to mention that now that these narcobucks “aren’t neatly bundled up [ continue reading Hundreds of billions in crime money knowingly laundered by banks during credit crunch ] 14 December 2009 | | category: empires flux, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed Less feared by whom? It would be hard for anyone to have ‘feared’ it less than I do. The swine flu pandemic is “considerably less lethal” than feared, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson says. BBC News – Swine flu less lethal than feared. 11 December 2009 | | category: Gallery of the bleedin' obvious, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed iPhones changing people’s use-patterns is making the mobile-phone networks groan under the pressure. In their rush to secure the right to retail the ‘phone’ the telephone companies didn’t notice that the iPhone and the iPod-touch are in fact computers. Once one has one of these machines one starts to use more and more of the online offerings, iPod-touch users smarten up their act too. The networks and telcos know that their days are numbered as digitisation frees television and radio frequencies and now think they can bolt the door after the cyber-horse has bolted. Expanding vaguely on previous threats, AT&T’s [ continue reading AT&T in USA talks of restricting their iPhone users’ data ] “Whatever set of faces the EU wears, the problem remains. Whether it is the rictus grin of Blair or the egg-head of Rompuy, arbitrary power is arbitrary power. This is the real scandal of Van Rompuy’s and Ashton’s ascent to the peaks of EU governance; not that they are nobodies, but that they are unaccountable, unelected nobodies.” (CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> The European Union: a tyranny of no-marks | spiked: .) “The LSCP is a secretive body. Take a look at its minutes (available at its website). Many of the most important items are deleted, hidden from public view – for example financial performance monitoring (September 2007), poor quality of camera data (November 2007) and strategic planning (March 2008). LSCP meetings are not open to the public – though no official to whom I have spoken can quote any legislative or regulatory backing for this ban, which is not surprising since the LSCP has never had a constitution. During 2008 there was a concerted effort by local councillors in London [ continue reading Speed cameras – the bigger picture ] 22 November 2009 | | category: photography, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed “By insisting on the inescapable mediating role of the psychoanalyst in patients’ return to health, psychoanalysis is creating a priest class, and saying the only way for the unhappy or mentally ill to return to health is through them, through the Church of Psychoanalysis. This is self-serving, false and pernicious. Stoicism and CBT are about learning to take back to yourself the power that you have given away to externals. It is about not looking to those outside of you for affirmation – including over-paid avuncular therapists. So CBT champions a DIY, self-help culture, which I support, rather than [ continue reading Is CBT gimmicky? ] 21 November 2009 | | category: one world, the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed The Government’s controversial Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has launched an investigation into how the car registrations of millions of motorists were sold for use by a giant oil firm. Castrol spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on a campaign promoting its oils, using giant advertising billboards on five major routes in London. But when The Mail on Sunday contacted the DVLA on Thursday, the campaign – which has also raised safety fears – was halted, just four days after it began. It was due to run for two weeks. via Now drivers’ details sold by DVLA are used in [ continue reading Now drivers’ details sold by DVLA are used in bizarre roadside adverts for Castrol ] 28 September 2009 | tagged as: humans | | category: the new 'priest class', the state we're in | comments are closed Speed bumps have been introduced to deter cyclists from speeding following complaints from residents. via Speed bumps for cyclists introduced – Telegraph. 25 September 2009 | tagged as: cycling, institutional incompetence | | category: cycling, the new 'priest class' | comments are closed So according to this we, (the mouthy community described by LBH councillors and officers alike as misguided, fanciful and alarmist), were pretty damn accurate in our calculations for the costs of Clissold Leisure Centre. We said almost £50,000,000 they said, “nowhere near that”. This figure in the Freedom of Information disclosure won’t include officer-time, precautionary redundancy costs*, auditors’ fees, consultants’ fees, lawyers’ fees, recruitment costs, either! Mr Pipe is not expected to apologise to anyone anytime soon. Can anyone explain why the out-of-court, ‘no-blame’ settlement remains confidential? (This calculation also makes no mention of the additional £10,000,000 windfall grant [ continue reading well you could push our ignorant arses over with a soft stick – we were correct! ] 19 September 2009 | tagged as: architecture, Clissold Leisure Centre, Fraud, institutional incompetence, LBH, swimming | | category: scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, swimming, tank life, the new 'priest class' | comments are closed |  
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