So I got a new book the other day "I fought the law" by Dan Kieran and I have to say it's definitely one of the more thought provoking things I've read in quite a while. The idea behind the book was to research the many bizarre obsolete laws that can be found if you look for them a good example being that it's still an offence to hail a taxi when you've got the plague. During the research process the writer accidentally stumbled on something else entirely. Puzzled with the question of what Britain stands for today if anything he set off on a journey where he would meet several interesting characters and find out that actually there's a varied amount of people fighting against the creeping menace of Britain PLC. My own personal perception is that politicians with very few exceptions to my knowledge are deceitful,manipulative, underhanded,greedy,and in a great many cases shockingly dense and mindbogglingly inept. The main reason for electoral apathy is a combination of 2 factors in my opinion the first being that you feel you can't really change anything anyway so what's the point? and the second being that elections are somewhat akin to reality TV with several people all trying to get your attention by doing anything they can only instead of fumbling around under the covers with each other ( as far as I'm aware anyways) they come up with a list of things they say they'll do if you pick them only for you to find out several months later that for some reason they seem to have "forgotten" all those things they promised to do. The crumbling state of the NHS dental system being a prime example despite a certain Mr Blair saying everyone would have their own NHS dentist by 2001 it's now 2008 and most of us haven't seen a dentist for up to 2 years and if we have you can bet it wasn't an NHS one. While I'm in no way a militant anarchist it seems to me that things seem to be sliding slowly into a disturbingly Orwellian subtopia.I've got a few things rattling 'round in my cranium and thought I'd get other people's views on them.
Equal parts funny and disturbing the book features many things I was unaware of including amongst others that you can get arrested for having a heated political debate on the London Eye, or on the Jubilee line if the police hear you thanks to section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act which states that any "unauthorised political protest" within 1,000m of Parliament can get you arrested being so ill defined about it's boundary around parliament. As for what actually constitutes a "political protest" well that's even more vague. Some people have pointed out that this was drawn up to evict protester Brian Haw while others have said that Brian Haw was just a convenient smoke screen to allow lazy MPs repressive powers to rid themselves of protesters in general. If you want to see for yourself how this has given the police the power to arrest anyone doing pretty much anything in Parliament Square unless they have authorisation previously I suggest you go here Freedom's corrosion among my favourites on the list of absurdities include quoting George Orwell, having a picnic & reading the names of the war dead.
One of the things I was aware of is that the vast majority of people including You,Me and pretty much anyone else who happens to read this will spend most of their lives doing 3 things which are all inextricably linked Working, shopping and getting in debt. As a nation we work an average of 43 hours a week and as a direct result of that we buy stuff we don't need to try and make up for the fact that we spend so long doing a soul detroying job. So while we're out buying crap we don't need or really want we're doing that other thing that's so easy to do and that's getting into crippling debt. Had a shit week at work want to cheer yourself up with something shiny and new but don't have the money yet 'cause you don't get paid for another 2 weeks have no fear all you need is one plastic card and you can buy anything you want and the best part is you don't even have to worry about it 'til that envelope arrives in several weeks time by which point you'll have forgotten all about it with being at work so much and that's when things get nasty and you find yourself having to dodge the paper knives that get thrown in your direction.
I forgot to mention the other thing that most people spend their time doing which is arguing and becoming strangers to their own family.When you do see your family most of us are so burnt out or wound up from work that it results in petty squabbling over things that really don't matter. I've quite unintentionally found myself in a very select group of individuals the reason for this is that I have no debt at all and even more shocking than that I have no credit cards either! When I tell people this they react as though I've just told them I have four arms and fly home every night using my immensely powerful mental powers. I really fail to see the purpose of something which really is the financial equivalent of a bear trap once it's snaps shut on you those teeth will dig in and they take a hell of a lot of work to prise open. I think it's a worrying indictive statement that it's so easy to get into shocking amounts of debt that there's an increasing amount of people taking their own lives 'cause they really can't see any way out of the gaping hole of debt they've fallen into like the case of Derek Rawson who owed 100,000 on 16 credit cards or Stephen Lewis who owed 65,000 on 19 cards. While it's easy to say having 16 credit cards in the first place is pretty stupid but if you're getting offers every several days for another card which I know I do and I'm pretty sure everyone else does then it takes willpower to say no when you're sat their reading the nice letter from Mastercard or whoever telling you all the things you could get with their "new higher limit card".
I think it's a sad state of affairs when whole estates are for all intents and purposes just left to rot by the councils and governments which are supposed to be there to look after them. There's a strong arguement for people being a product of their environment If someones parents are alcoholics and don't care what their kids get up to then obviously this isn't going to be a stable or healthly environment for someone to grow up in. My town maybe dull and rather boring but it's not a wasteland, I have nothing but sympathy for families that are stuck in the vast concrete wastelands that make up so many estates now cast aside like the unwanted by-product of a failed experiment. Kieran points out the case of one poor wayward soul that gets an ASBO banning him from his home town so he can't go to school anymore, while I'm unaware of the specifics of why he received his ASBO in the first place it seems a little bizarre that instead of trying to help turn his life around the powers that be in this case have effectively washed their hands of another "problem".
Yet despite seeing nothing but the coming storm everywhere on the horizon I was always under the impression that you can still rely on your fellow man in times of need and then you read something like this I think this highlighted a big problem now running rampant through our streets like the feral youths that your constantly hearing about, that problem is fear. Whether it's fear of personal injury or fear of persecution from a "justice" system which increasingly places the rights of perpetrators above those of their victims. Who's willing to fight off a potential rapist when they could be charged with assault by said rapist not many apparently.
I don't know about anyone else but I actually like my country that's right, shocking isn't it I like Britain but I and a great many others no doubt reserve the right to bitch and moan about it.
After all that reading here's a picture of The Agonist who are not only a rather stonking musical entity but singer Alissa White-Gluz is incomprehensibly smoking hot.
In other news the possibility of actually moving out took a tiny step towards becoming a reality. I've been talking to my brother about it via the medium of Facebook while he's been in Canada. I think he's got to sort out what he's doing about his job and some other stuff. Whether this will actually happen I don't know really but I'm starting to feel like I'm stagnating a bit being at home. My family dynamic is rather distorted for example despite there being 5 of us here most of the time sex has taken on a sort of mythic quality. It's never even been discussed at any point that I can recall. This is ofcourse rather bemusing when My friend Damo's 17 year old girlfriend's parent's have no problems with his violating their first born in the next room as though it's as normal as coffee and gridlock in the mornings. Maybe it's a by-product of my solitary childhood since I was the atypical loner and still am pretty much, I listen to my friend Mr Ford (who ironically can't drive)
cracking under the strain of not "Getting any" for a month after he and his girlfriend split up and it just makes me laugh, not that I'm laughing at his plight (I'm not a sociopath,honest) it just seems he puts far more value in sex than I do. Okay that's the psychobabble done for now.
In other news I finally excised the blight that was Norton Anti-Virus 2008 off my new laptop which came preinstalled. I can't emphasise enough how much I bloody hate Norton. Every year they release a new version and the only difference is it's even more dumbed down than the last one and has even less functionality as if it that's not bad enough as a security program it's pretty bloody awful too. It's quite amusing the number of times it asks if you're "Sure you want to uninstall" the program like a desperate salesman determined to get you back.
Things at work have changed around a bit too we've got a load of new managers to replace the several that have moved on elsewheres, the best part about this is our shockingly incompetent store manager has been "moved sideways" I believe he called it after just a year which shows how bad he was since the manager before him lasted about 5 years. In his place we've got someone who actually wait for it ..... has people skills, shocking I know. Even more shocking than that he actually knows how to run a store properly and has already started focussing on the shopfloor and not really bothered anyone about the petty bureaucracy side of things which is pretty much the opposite of what our last manager did. We've also got a new girl on our department who's actually capable of conversation! so I actually have someone to talk to at break time which is a little new after putting up with ground down, depressed, bitter types that make up the majority of our "team" and seem to avoid conversation as though it's a virulent disease.
Equal parts funny and disturbing the book features many things I was unaware of including amongst others that you can get arrested for having a heated political debate on the London Eye, or on the Jubilee line if the police hear you thanks to section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act which states that any "unauthorised political protest" within 1,000m of Parliament can get you arrested being so ill defined about it's boundary around parliament. As for what actually constitutes a "political protest" well that's even more vague. Some people have pointed out that this was drawn up to evict protester Brian Haw while others have said that Brian Haw was just a convenient smoke screen to allow lazy MPs repressive powers to rid themselves of protesters in general. If you want to see for yourself how this has given the police the power to arrest anyone doing pretty much anything in Parliament Square unless they have authorisation previously I suggest you go here Freedom's corrosion among my favourites on the list of absurdities include quoting George Orwell, having a picnic & reading the names of the war dead.
One of the things I was aware of is that the vast majority of people including You,Me and pretty much anyone else who happens to read this will spend most of their lives doing 3 things which are all inextricably linked Working, shopping and getting in debt. As a nation we work an average of 43 hours a week and as a direct result of that we buy stuff we don't need to try and make up for the fact that we spend so long doing a soul detroying job. So while we're out buying crap we don't need or really want we're doing that other thing that's so easy to do and that's getting into crippling debt. Had a shit week at work want to cheer yourself up with something shiny and new but don't have the money yet 'cause you don't get paid for another 2 weeks have no fear all you need is one plastic card and you can buy anything you want and the best part is you don't even have to worry about it 'til that envelope arrives in several weeks time by which point you'll have forgotten all about it with being at work so much and that's when things get nasty and you find yourself having to dodge the paper knives that get thrown in your direction.
I forgot to mention the other thing that most people spend their time doing which is arguing and becoming strangers to their own family.When you do see your family most of us are so burnt out or wound up from work that it results in petty squabbling over things that really don't matter. I've quite unintentionally found myself in a very select group of individuals the reason for this is that I have no debt at all and even more shocking than that I have no credit cards either! When I tell people this they react as though I've just told them I have four arms and fly home every night using my immensely powerful mental powers. I really fail to see the purpose of something which really is the financial equivalent of a bear trap once it's snaps shut on you those teeth will dig in and they take a hell of a lot of work to prise open. I think it's a worrying indictive statement that it's so easy to get into shocking amounts of debt that there's an increasing amount of people taking their own lives 'cause they really can't see any way out of the gaping hole of debt they've fallen into like the case of Derek Rawson who owed 100,000 on 16 credit cards or Stephen Lewis who owed 65,000 on 19 cards. While it's easy to say having 16 credit cards in the first place is pretty stupid but if you're getting offers every several days for another card which I know I do and I'm pretty sure everyone else does then it takes willpower to say no when you're sat their reading the nice letter from Mastercard or whoever telling you all the things you could get with their "new higher limit card".
I think it's a sad state of affairs when whole estates are for all intents and purposes just left to rot by the councils and governments which are supposed to be there to look after them. There's a strong arguement for people being a product of their environment If someones parents are alcoholics and don't care what their kids get up to then obviously this isn't going to be a stable or healthly environment for someone to grow up in. My town maybe dull and rather boring but it's not a wasteland, I have nothing but sympathy for families that are stuck in the vast concrete wastelands that make up so many estates now cast aside like the unwanted by-product of a failed experiment. Kieran points out the case of one poor wayward soul that gets an ASBO banning him from his home town so he can't go to school anymore, while I'm unaware of the specifics of why he received his ASBO in the first place it seems a little bizarre that instead of trying to help turn his life around the powers that be in this case have effectively washed their hands of another "problem".
Yet despite seeing nothing but the coming storm everywhere on the horizon I was always under the impression that you can still rely on your fellow man in times of need and then you read something like this I think this highlighted a big problem now running rampant through our streets like the feral youths that your constantly hearing about, that problem is fear. Whether it's fear of personal injury or fear of persecution from a "justice" system which increasingly places the rights of perpetrators above those of their victims. Who's willing to fight off a potential rapist when they could be charged with assault by said rapist not many apparently.
I don't know about anyone else but I actually like my country that's right, shocking isn't it I like Britain but I and a great many others no doubt reserve the right to bitch and moan about it.
After all that reading here's a picture of The Agonist who are not only a rather stonking musical entity but singer Alissa White-Gluz is incomprehensibly smoking hot.
In other news the possibility of actually moving out took a tiny step towards becoming a reality. I've been talking to my brother about it via the medium of Facebook while he's been in Canada. I think he's got to sort out what he's doing about his job and some other stuff. Whether this will actually happen I don't know really but I'm starting to feel like I'm stagnating a bit being at home. My family dynamic is rather distorted for example despite there being 5 of us here most of the time sex has taken on a sort of mythic quality. It's never even been discussed at any point that I can recall. This is ofcourse rather bemusing when My friend Damo's 17 year old girlfriend's parent's have no problems with his violating their first born in the next room as though it's as normal as coffee and gridlock in the mornings. Maybe it's a by-product of my solitary childhood since I was the atypical loner and still am pretty much, I listen to my friend Mr Ford (who ironically can't drive)
cracking under the strain of not "Getting any" for a month after he and his girlfriend split up and it just makes me laugh, not that I'm laughing at his plight (I'm not a sociopath,honest) it just seems he puts far more value in sex than I do. Okay that's the psychobabble done for now.
In other news I finally excised the blight that was Norton Anti-Virus 2008 off my new laptop which came preinstalled. I can't emphasise enough how much I bloody hate Norton. Every year they release a new version and the only difference is it's even more dumbed down than the last one and has even less functionality as if it that's not bad enough as a security program it's pretty bloody awful too. It's quite amusing the number of times it asks if you're "Sure you want to uninstall" the program like a desperate salesman determined to get you back.
Things at work have changed around a bit too we've got a load of new managers to replace the several that have moved on elsewheres, the best part about this is our shockingly incompetent store manager has been "moved sideways" I believe he called it after just a year which shows how bad he was since the manager before him lasted about 5 years. In his place we've got someone who actually wait for it ..... has people skills, shocking I know. Even more shocking than that he actually knows how to run a store properly and has already started focussing on the shopfloor and not really bothered anyone about the petty bureaucracy side of things which is pretty much the opposite of what our last manager did. We've also got a new girl on our department who's actually capable of conversation! so I actually have someone to talk to at break time which is a little new after putting up with ground down, depressed, bitter types that make up the majority of our "team" and seem to avoid conversation as though it's a virulent disease.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
Denmark was great. The weather was mostly ok, a few days of rain but I haven't seen rain for a long time so it was okay. It was great seeing friends and family and go shopping and horse riding and stuff like that.
Yeah, tattoos are great, and thank you for that compliment.
Sorry for being so out of touch.
I've caught up on your entries.
And this current one - wow!
I don't really know the politics of Britain, so I can't intelligently comment.
I mean, I know some of the basics, but not enough to debate anything.
I'm glad your store has a new manager. Maybe your job will improve?
Okay, probably wishful thinking.
Yay for the new computer!
And for getting rid of Norton.
Years ago I had Norton, and it was decent. Then I upgraded to the then-new version, and I couldn't move fast enough to get rid of it. It slowed my system down noticeably.
I did a bit of research and found PC-cillin and have been happy ever since. It does everything it needs to do, barely ever makes itself known, and is always up-to-date.