Archive for the 'Bollocks' Category

25
Apr
13

Here we go again – Syrian WMD

WMD or a new Tesco?

WMD or a new Tesco?

Stupid people run our lives. This was made obvious back in February 2013 when the footballer Paul Elliott resigned his posts at the Football Association as well as trusteeship of the anti-racism campaign group Kick It Out because he used the word “nigger” in a text message argument with another black football player.

Elliott has received the CBE for services to equality and diversity in football and is quite obviously not a racist yet he was forced to resign by the witch hunt mentality that prevails in British public life.

The reason that we oppose racism is that it causes harm to people. We’re not against racism when an American is deemed friendly, a German efficient or an Englishman polite. We’re against it when certain groups are discriminated against. When they lose out to other groups when applying for work or are unjustly hassled by the police. Of course we should avoid using racially derogative terms when referring to people but the single use of such a word should not be a litmus test of racism.

Public life is dominated by people so lacking in judgment that they rely on idiotic rules and this is the way with much of 21st Century life. This same knee jerk mentality seems now to be pushing the United States into another war. President Obama has previously said that the use of chemical weapons by Syria would be a “red line” that could trigger U.S. reaction. Today, the United States Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel, put out a statement saying that “that the U.S. intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.” -  the talk now is of whether Syria has crossed that red line.

HANG ON A MINUTE! - Statements put out by government departments are always very very carefully worded and this statement reeks of indecision – “WITH SOME DEGREE OF VARYING CONFIDENCE”???!!!!!…..They’re TALKING BOLLOCKS!

Obviously the statement has been constructed under pressure and the authors have made damn sure they express themselves in terms which commit themselves to precisely nothing. It’s interesting to speculate on how the story originated. A brief perusal of the web reveals that a vague article in the London Times on 13th April 2013 stated “Forensic evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria has been found for the first time in a soil sample smuggled out of the country in a secret British operation. Defence sources, who declined to be named, said yesterday that conclusive proof that “some kind of chemical weapon” had been fired in Syria had been established by scientists at the Ministry of Defence’s chemical and biological research establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire.”

So we have a story from an unnamed source that some soil in Syria may be contaminated by some unspecified chemical weapon. The Times is a News International rag and, for Rupert Murdoch, this constitutes hard news.

First we should question whether this story and the subsequent statement by Mr. Hagel have any merit at all. If the British government do have contaminated soil from Syria then let them say so; it’s worth investigating. But rather than setting trip wires that commit Americans to combat and potentially death let’s think this through.

Why do we abhor Weapons of Mass Destruction? It’s not because they kill people, many weapons do that. It’s because they kill masses of people. Hydrogen bombs are an obvious example but gas attacks are another. So if we are looking for evidence of the use of WMD we should be looking for far far more than traces of some bloody substance in a plastic tub of questionable providence. We should be looking for masses of dead people. If Assad is using Sarin to run his lawn mower we should not give a toss. If he’s exterminating thousands with pick axe handles we should sit up and take notice. We should consider the crime not the mechanism used to commit the crime.

Like the absurdity of discerning racism by a single casual word the existence of a few grams of chemical is not a defining piece of evidence. The West has a history of intervening in the Middle East and all interventions are couched in altruistic arguments designed to placate the electorate but fundamentality all interventions have been for the benefit of Western countries.

The decision of whether to intervene in Syria is a difficult one but the United States should resist being bounced into another war by idiots and war mongers.

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05
Apr
13

Bollocks

Bollocks

Bollocks

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30
Mar
13

Forget Cyprus – Cameron is raiding British bank accounts

Rainy Days

Rainy Day Blues

The UK national debt stands at over a trillion pounds or around 88.7% of total GDP. That’s £18,506 for every man, woman and child in the UK, more than £40,771 for every person in employment. Every household will pay £1,918 this year, just to cover the interest

Party politics has become overblown rhetoric about cutting fast or slow but this is a smoke screen while the politicians get on with the real job of raiding our savings. If you don’t read all this article then at least skip to the end to read the extraordinary quote from last week’s Economist.

By rights, at the time of the credit crunch in 2008, the banks should have gone bust and three groups of people would have lost out. Those who owned shares in the banks, those who had entrusted the banks with investment money (often other banks) and those with savings in the banks of over £50,000 as this was the government backed deposit guarantee in place at the time.

This would have been bad but it would have been the most fair outcome because all three groups had chosen to entrust the bank with their money. Admittedly the savers did not think that they were taking a risk but what can you do? Shit happens. The point is that only people with a stake in the failed bank should have lost out.

Saving and investing is an intrinsic part of our economy and necessary for industry and to provide funds for people in retirement. The British government chose to bail out the banks because they judged that to allow the banks to fail would have wreaked havoc in the British economy and there seems to be consensus that this was the right thing to do. However, by doing this, everyone, including people with no investment or savings or any other relationship with the failed banks were forced to repay the debt.

On the face of it, share holders have only partially lost out as the value of their asserts declined but savers have not lost out and the bankers themselves have actually increased their remuneration with the idiotic assertion that we need them to steer a safe course out of this crises.

Meanwhile the British population are suffering a stagnating economy and cuts. This is, of course, fundamentally unfair.

Now the banks of Cyprus are in trouble and the European Union is trying a different tack. Cognisant of the fact that a lot of rich (and supposedly dodgy) Russians have money in Cypriot banks they are trying to force investors and savers to share directly in the cost of the bail out. This sounds reasonable but seems to be causing uncertainty which could lead to the turmoil that everyone agrees should be avoided. Perhaps the blank cheque bailout was the best option after all?

To protect savers and investors or not to protect them, that is the question. Should tax payers take on the debts of others or accept market turmoil by allowing the banks to fail?

Perhaps none of this matters after all?

It took Dr. David Starky on the BBCs This Week program on Thursday night to say what politicians of all stripes are keeping quiet about: the pound has been devalued 25% since 2008 by Quantitative Easing. Perhaps prompted by Dr. Starky’s forthright statement, last week the Economist put it more succinctly in an article entitled The Financial-Repression Levy:

“In the developed world total debt (including that of the financial sector, consumers and companies, as well as governments) is so high that it is implausible that it can be repaid via the fruits of economic growth. The debt must either be written off (defaulted on) or slowly inflated away. That means inflicting pain on someone: sorting out the crisis has been so difficult because no one wants to take the hit.

The Cypriot deal is a very clumsy attempt at a write-off. Your humble deposits are banks’ debts. So taking the deposits and using the proceeds to recapitalise the banks is a roundabout way of defaulting. But any form of outright default creates the potential for contagion.
Because it is more subtle, financial repression (any of the measures that governments employ to channel funds to themselves) is more successful. It was the way that many countries reduced their debt burdens after the second world war. It takes advantage of the phenomenon of money illusion: people get confused between nominal and real numbers.
The danger is that savers will eventually get wise to the erosion of their spending power….”

In short: we’re all shafted as the politicians take advantage of our economic naiveté to raid our savings and investments to repay the debts incurred by greedy bankers.

Oh Bollocks!

Saving is now a guaranteed way to lose money

Saving is now a guaranteed way to lose money

st malo beach

St Malo Beach

29
Mar
13

What happened to soap?

What happened to the soap?

What happened to the soap?

What’s happened to bars of soap? Time was when the supermarkets were full of soap. These days it seems that one can only buy what were previously regarded as specialist bars of soap; Wrights coal tar, Imperial Leather and the like. All at a high mark up. What happened to ordinary bars of soap? I guess we all know the answer: They’ve been liquified and are now sold as shower gel. But why?

I bought some gel to try out. I selected Original Source Mint and Tea Tree shower gel. The blurb states that they have crammed 7,927 real mint leaves into every bottle which is all very well but it has a slightly stingy effect on one’s nether regions.

I just don’t understand how one is supposed to apply the stuff. One squirts a dollop into one’s hand but as one tries to rub it on ones body it just runs off. At £3 for 2 125 ml bottles compared with £1.38 for 4 125 mg bars of Tesco Magnolia Bath Soap it’s a bloody stupid idea.

I guess it’s the marketing which makes us buy the stuff. We’re all susceptible to it. I just typed “shower gel” into Mysupermarket.co.uk and it displayed a large range of shower gels. One jumped out at me and I noticed a vague thread of thought which ran “Maybe I’ll try that one”. Which one? Nivea for Men….and why……well I can’t be certain but while typing this a Nivia advert came on the TV. Had there been a Nivea ad 5 minutes earlier?…… bloody marketing!

Roses

Roses

23
Feb
13

Electric Stout

Window Number 3 Please

Window Number 3 Please

Last week I ordered a pint of Guinness and was asked which type. I wanted a draft but they offered a choice of cans. It seems a new way of preparing the black stuff has been invented. What appears to be straight un-gassed Guinness is poured from a can and the glass placed on an ultrasonic vibrating plate. Abracadabra: Draught Guinness. All very clever but, as one drinker in a local pub commented: “I feel cheated by them pouring it from a can”. I know what she means, it just doesn’t seem right. One day we’ll run out of oil to fuel the power stations, the electricity will go off and we wont even be able to get a fucking pint of Guinness.

But I guess the draught we’re used to slurping with it’s creamy head is a comparatively new invention which came about by forcing beer through the pipes with gas, nitrogen in the case of Guinness. And the draught from a can with it’s funny widgets seemed odd at first.

In another boozer on Friday night I noticed that the beer pump displays seem to be getting absurdly tall. More evidence that marketing has gazumped taste in every aspect of our lives. Perhaps it is also to protect the bar staff from rowdy punters, a little like the glass windows in banks. Eventually we’ll have these windows in pubs. We’ll join a communal queue and a recorded voice will enunciate “Window number 3 please” in a repetitive jaunty voice and we’ll step up to the window, place our order and insert our credit cards into a slot. A moment later an apparatchik behind the bar will push the pints through a little window. It’s called progress and it’s coming to a pub near you. On the subject of progress the TV tells me that I should use a Gillette Fusion ProGlide which, apparently, is a razor with 5 blades. Only five, do they take me for an idiot?

Yachts

Yachts

11
Feb
13

Blame the BRANDS for flogging a dead horse

Ahhh...Bisto!

Ahhh!..Bisto!

It’s facinating how faith in British institutions is collapsing. One by one, like a row of dominos, British institutions are revealing themselves to be greedy, amoral and corrupt. The bankers of course (we all hate the bankers), the politicians fiddling their expenses, the press tapping our phones and the police forging documents and making false statements.

Now it is the turn of the food companies to demonstrate their complacency and disregard for their core business as #horsegate dominates the twittersphere. First a little horse DNA was found in beef burgers, then one type of burger at Tesco was found to consist of 29% horse meat and now Findus beef lasagne has been found to be 100% horse meat.

The cause is said to be an overcomplicated supply chain. In corporate Britain, the farmer and the supermarket are linked by a plethora of abattoirs  trading companies, agents and futures dealers. It’s so complicated that the retailers don’t know what they’re selling. So who’s to blame?

The last I heard the politician were passing the buck to shady criminal gangs in eastern Europe. Hmmm….could be. It’s possible that foreign criminals are a link in the supply chain but that’s a cop out. The real question is why, supposedly legitimate, British food companies are dealing with foreign criminals?

The real blame for #horsegate lies firmly with the brands.

In the idiot world of the 21st century, retail sales are dominated by marketing and the key to marketing is branding. The brands seek to control their public image. BMW tell us that their cars are reliable, powerful and technically sophisticated, Louis Vuiton tells us they make nice bags and the major food brands tell us that their food is quick, delicious and nutritious. The goal of their marketing is to gain our trust – and they succeed, we trust them. We trust the food brands to ensure that the products which we buy are as described. We trust that we will get an fair deal. Obviously their marketing has been projecting a false image.

It’s mind boggling! Did the people who make the lasagne not notice that this was not beef? Are they so ignorant of food and so bereft of cooking skills that they can’t tell horse from beef? If they can’t even put the right animal into their food products then this calls into question the quality control of their entire operation. If the meat is horse rather than beef, can we trust that the milk is being pasteurised or that free range eggs are not from caged birds?

Wikipedia states: “Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company…and how it relates to key constituencies: customers, staff, partners, investors etc”. It is the brands with which the public have the relationship and it is the brands which we trust. The creation of trust might be said to be the raison d’etre of a brand. If the brands now pass the blame to their suppliers then their brand names becomes worthless. If Tesco don’t know what is in their products then we may as well buy any old burgers.

In an overly commercialised world this scandal may be an unwelcome but useful wake up call. In the short term the high street butchers will gain from #horsegate but it is the responsibility of the major food brands to get their supply chains under control. They should spend more time on intrinsic quality and less on marketing.

st malo beach

St Malo Beach

14
Dec
12

Stoned, Gay or foreign – When it comes to SPIN, politicians don’t discriminate

can't see the truth for the spin

Can’t see the truth for the spin

A funny old week but great for the talking of bollocks in the media. With the economy still in the doldrums it’s clear what the lead stories in the press should be. So what were the three main parties pontificating about? Gay marriage, immigrants speaking English and legalising cannabis.

Tories? Legalising gay marriage? With their reputation? Yes, David Cameron is apparently trying to push through a policy which could almost be perfectly built to wind up his back-benchers but appeal to Labour supporters. Meanwhile Ed Balls has been banging on about how immigrants should learn English and this has to be tailor made to wind up the racism paranoids in the Labour party. Not to be outdone Nick Clegg wants to legalise Cannabis! What in blue blazes is going on? Why are they all meandering off in weird directions? Perhaps they’re all stoned and next week we will see Ed Milliband munching cookies during PMQs?

From the Tory perspective they probably just want to distract attention away from the economy and consider  promoting gay marriage  will soften their image though this may be backfiring as the backbenchers mobilise. Nick Clegg is also engaged in distraction tactics though his party may be more sympathetic to his cause. Ed Milliband comes off worse. He may be trying to toughen up Labour’s reputation on immigration to counter revelations about their open door policies when in power. However it demonstrates fantastic ineptness and c an only aid the Tories in knocking the economy off the front page.

I heard this week of a book entitled Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini which outlines “6 key principles of persuasion”. It’s a marketing book which, I heard, was selected by David Cameron for the Conservative party reading list. This is the key to what they’re up to: SPIN. I’m sure we’re all got opinions on Gay Marriage, Immigration and drugs but, as Bill Clinton quite rightly said, “It’s the economy stupid!”

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02
Nov
12

Everything is everything else

Look suspicious?

Look suspicious to you?

A good week for the Talking of Bollocks with the detritus of Britain’s discredited elite desperate for our attention. Convicted felon and newspaper magnate Conrad Black, freshly released from an American prison, somehow weaseled his way onto every news and chat program in the UK using the opportunity to bang on about his supposed innocence. One wonders if all ex-cons will be allowed such media access or whether this will be reserved for those with royal connections and pots of money.

On Saturday Jeremy Hardy, who makes a living alleging prejudice in others, thought he’d engage in a little of his own during BBC Radio 4′s News Quiz when he suggested that Jimmy Saville should have been suspected of being a paedophile because of the way he looked. “How much more of a child abuser could you look like than Jimmy Saville for God’s sake!” hollered Mr. Hardy to uproarious laughter. But should people in glass houses really throw stones?

Ed Milliband made a speech attacking Jeremy Clarkson for making jokes about depressed people attempting suicide. Why do politicians think that their role is to comment on TV presenters? That’s my job. Attacking accepted hate figures is mere rabble rousing and Mr. Milliband’s patronising assumption that the depressed have no sense of humour is wide of the mark and not borne out by the number of comedians who suffer from this disorder. If politicians are really interested in helping the depressed they might consider replacing themselves with competent leaders with vision and integrity.

On Monday BBC Radio 4′s Food Program discussed food in football and documented how the “pie and pint” mentality had been displaced amongst professional footballers by attention to the nutritional effects of food. However, the supporters still want burger and chips so Islington council’s environmental health team worked with chip vans to reduce portion size and provide salt shakers with fewer holes.

The reporter stated that “Good food is now part of the Manchester City brand” and Head of Sales at Manchester City, Danny Wilson, claimed “ultimately it’s about adding value to a supporters experience on a match day”.

Ah, so that’s what football is about. It’s been said that the soul of football is “passion, community, honour, even beauty” but it seems in 21st Century Britain the soul of football is “added value”. This ties in nicely with Tuesday’s report on the closure of New Scotland Yard accompanied by the elimination of almost half of the front counter officers at police stations in London some of which will be replaced by officers at supermarkets.

There’s a new mobile phone company named Everything Everywhere. It’s a good name and it symbolises what is happening to our society.

Everything is becoming everything else.

In a society geared totally around capitalism there is no room for anything which does not drive profit. We want everything to be about nothing more than efficiency and added value. In my lifetime super markets have gone from selling just groceries to supplying clothes, electrical goods, alcohol, drugs and banking services. Now we are to have a bobby behind the checkout counter and since politicians consider that their role is to “communicate a message” then why not move their “services” to the supermarket too? A Politicians isle? Down the right, the more economic Tory brands and down the left, pay a little bit extra for universal health care from Labour. Stacked at the end are the odds and sods bin for the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Ulster Unionists. Efficiency and technology mean we can vote out the government and report crimes while we scan our meat pies!

Rape madame? Certainly, that’s Isle 5 and we’re doing a two for one offer on Vitullo kits.

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