"First off we'll have 10...., no 12 bread rolls, and bring a pack of that fancy stuff...."

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Liberal Conspiracy - It’s not the BNP but it is the next best [worst] thing…

It's unlikely that you haven't checked out Unity's piece at Liberal Conspiracy but if not please do. I have sometimes found Unity a touch long-winded** in the past but there is no doubt that when he's on form he is absolutely cracking and this post is a fine example. In it he tackles Donal Blaney, the lawyer friend of chubby blogger and serial hypocrite, Paul Staines - aka Guido.  Blaney whinges about the BBC providing an 'Asian Network' and wonders why there isn't a network devoted to 'White Middle Class Hetereosexuals' or indeed gormless, chinless, Tory, toss-pot bloggers, come to that.

Unity defenestrates Guido's answer to Lord Goodman pretty comprehensively but the most entertaining part follows in the lively comments section. I'm always on the lookout for the pithy phrase or quote in an article which sums things up so well that I needn't make the effort to add anything myself, being by nature extremely lazy and this is the paragraph that did it for me:

So is my local ASDA bowing to ‘political correctness’, ‘pandering to minority groups’ or indulging in discriminatory practices when stocks Halal or Kosher products? Or is it merely servicing a growing local market, which is precisely how what is now the BBC’s Asian Network originated and why it has since grown to become a national digital network.
Nuff said really!

**Update...Erm! :(


Damned if you do and damned if you don't

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My wife attempted to leave a comment on two stories which appeared in today's Times. The first, an 'analysis' by the increasingly ludicrous Camilla Cavenish  titled: Social workers put themselves above the law and the other by David Sharrock titled: False accusation that changed mother’s young family for ever.

The target of both articles was, of course, social workers. In its wisdom The Times saw fit to publish such considered and thoughtful comments as these:

Surely it can only be correct to describe these dreadful people as crawling 'beneath' the law.Geoffrey Lake, Carbost, Isle of Skye  Why are our taxes wasted on morons like them and the thousands of others employed by the government to keep unemployment down. All these people are doing jobs that don't need doing or because there are so many doing the same job that they get lazy. Wouldn't the money be better spent in key areas of society instead of hiring people to push paperwork? Keith, London, And even complete non sequiturs like this: Ahem, think it's the tories who thrive on power and control. Look back and see the mess of the tories years in power! Jean Wallace, Dundee, Scotland
But an informed comment, presenting a different perspective from someone who has spent her entire professional life in the field of child protection? Do me a favour! So here, through the miracle of the interwebs is the comment they deemed unfit to publish alongside the ignorant, stupid thoughts of Keef, Geoff, Jean and the other idiots:

Social workers and the police are legally obliged to act whenever a doctor suggest a child may have been abused. Only doctors are allowed to make that diagnosis. Everything social workers do is under a clear legal framework: removing children, placing and keeping in foster care, placing for adoption. None of this can happen without several family court judges and lawyers for all sides, including independent representation for the child and parents, hearing the evidence,over and over again. Many cases end up in the high court, like the one referred to today. It was the previous legal ruling which was wrong, based on the medical evidence.

But all the criticism is about the comparitively lowly and daily maligned social worker, who does not have expert witness status in legal proceedings. Does anybody out there make any effort to find out how the child protection system works? I cannot take any of the actions you complain about without appearing before the court myself, being cross examined and held to account.

And the MSM still prattles on about ill-informed and opinionated blogs. Jeez!

Oh well, I'm sure the pendulum will swing the other way just as soon as the next dead baby story appears.


WMD in the middle-east? Ay yay yay!

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How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret - The Guardian
The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian. The document reveals how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel's nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN's authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier was made public this week, but the FCO succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.
Via Mark Elf, who adds:
So we don't want Israel thinking that we are critical of it having nuclear weapons, we don't criticise Israel killing children with or without their parents and we don't even criticise Israel when it kills Brits whether they're working for the International Solidarity Movement, Channel 4 or the UN. And the reason for that is so that we can be influential when it comes to middle east peace or work against terrorism.

This is absurd. The more sycophantic the UK and other states are towards Israel the more outrageously Israel behaves. If the UK won't act against Israel when it kills Brits what can we expect when Israel kills Palestinians? Not only that, this support for Israel must surely be a major cause of the kind of terrorism, this support for Israel is claimed to be preventing.


Shiver me timbers

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FT - Whitehall gives ISPs piracy deadline
The government will (today) tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films. Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted.  Andy Burnham, culture secretary, told the Financial Times on Thursday that the deadline was a “clear signal” of the government’s determination to tackle rampant piracy, which the music and film industries blame for the slump in CD and DVD sales. “Let me make it absolutely clear: this is a change of tone from the government,” Mr Burnham said. “It’s definitely serious legislative intent.”


Filter failure

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Techdirt: That Didn't Take Long At All: $89 Million Australian Internet Filters Called A Failure
Last August the Australian Prime Minister announced plans to spend many millions of dollars to offer free internet filters that parents could use to keep their kids from surfing porn. The filters were cracked by kids in a matter of days. While we noted that this should have made politicians realize what a waste the program was, instead they just said it explained why they needed to spend even more...the Australian government has now declared the entire program to be a failure. While the government had predicted that 2.5 million households would make use of the filters, only 144,000 were downloaded or ordered on CD-ROM and only about 29,000 were actually being used


Does that include a blow-job?

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Housewife 'would be paid £30,000'

It's all complete bollocks, of course, but not a bad way of getting free marketing and a link for you social network site. Every year, as regular as clockwork, someone comes up with a breakdown of what housewives (sic) do around the home and just how much it would cost to get it done by professionals. This year it's the turn of alljoinon.com a 'networking site for housewives' - (surely they don't have time to network, what with all that 'gruelling housework'?) to come up with the costings.

...Cooking is another big chore for housewives - who spend about 63 minutes a day in the kitchen preparing culinary delights (sic)for her loved ones. By comparison, an experienced head chef taking home a respectable £16.48 an hour would earn themselves £17.30 for their time...The poll said the average mum trawled the family finances for 39 minutes, which would cost £12.50 if an accountant did it...
There would be one difference though. A head chef would actually cook you a decent meal rather than just reheating something from Marks's in the microwave for four minutes. Most of the women I've known over the years wouldn't actually last 63 minutes in a commercial kitchen, let alone get paid anything.

And as for spending 39 minutes a day doing the household accounts! What sort of books do these housewives keep for fuck's sake - illuminated manuscripts?


Wannabe scriptwriters take note

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LA Observed Script Project
Presenting "Right of Way," LA Observed's first all-hands script project. "Right of Way" is a story about… well, we're not sure exactly what it's about, because it hasn't been written yet. That part's up to everyone here. All we know so far is it's a murder mystery taking place in a city in the process of re-making itself——yep, Los Angeles——and it'll be filled with glamour, drama, wit and big dreams, the stuff of life in Southern California.

Here's how it works. The first few pages are here, written by me. Each Wednesday we will publish new pages, written by you. They can be anywhere from a short scene of a page or so to a sequence of as many as five pages. You'll have until Sunday at midnight each week to submit the next installment to our crack team of experienced Hollywood writers, producers and story editors consisting of, well, me.

I'll read all submissions and choose one to carry the script forward, posting it along with the pre-existing pages. We may put up some other good submissions too, so you can see and have a chance to discuss how different writers would have handled the story.