Nice going, socialists
That’s the front window of a little music shop in Shropshire. The manager, on his way out, paid a sign writer to decorate it thusly.
That’s a great wickedness of the local system of government — the power and incompetence of county councils. It was a Tory government, unfortunately, that decided to cut costs by combining councils into larger and fewer bodies. The upshot is, our local services are controlled by people who live far away, who are apt to see us more as cash cows than a constituency.
At one time — so I’m told — councils were run by local businessmen on a voluntary (or at least modestly remunerated) basis. Now, of course, it’s run by our global professional ruling class (read: smug, self-important lefties) on eye-watering salaries. And those lefties in turn hire scores of other lefties, in the form of Lesbian Outreach Managers and Pet Hair Recycling Wardens.
But, hey, if there’s anything socialist dimbulbs know how to do, it’s make money, right? Cut essential services and raise taxes! Pff! Easy peasy. It’s not like raising prices ever changes buying behavior.
Down here in the sunny South, most towns still have a charming high street (read: Main Street) full of interesting little shops and pubs and cafes. We do as much buying as we can in these places. You pay a bit more, but you get undeniably better goods and help keep the heart of the town beating.
We’ve watched as high streets all over our shopping territory visibly shrink, thanks to…well, read the sign.
February 21, 2013 — 1:42 pm
Comments: 21
Everything is coming up Workforce Update 28
Oh. OH! Can I have a meme? I swear I’ll take care of it. I’ll feed it and take it for walks. Just this once, pleeeease?
It seems someone used the microwave to warm up people shit in Brighton (it’s hard to beat the headline Poo Found in Brighton Council Microwave).
The council being the council, they wrapped the appliance in crime scene tape and stuck a note to it. And left it there for a week.
An update sent round to all members of staff, titled Workforce Update 28, said: “The microwave in the canteen has unfortunately been used to heat excrement and cannot be made hygienic or safe to use.
“Please do not use. We will have it disconnected and removed.
“This kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable and we will not be replacing the microwave.”
Staff has taken to referring to the whole incident as Workforce Update 28. Which is the meme I want. It’s my meme, and I want it.
Unfortunately, I haven’t pinned down the situation where this phrase would be appropriate. Which of life’s many vicissitudes corresponds to “someone has heated a bowl of shit in the communal microwave”?
July 31, 2012 — 9:53 pm
Comments: 45
The Panties of Liberty
I am so not into identity politics. No, scratch that — I really hate identity politics. I have consistently refused to participate in women’s art shows (I can compete in the regular kind just fine, thank you). A lifetime of observing the increasing role of women in politics and the workplace has convinced me the female influence in those places has been mostly bad. Really bad.
A mother is someone who has stuck her finger down the back of somebody’s else’s pants to see if he’s shat himself. That sort of person no longer recognizes boundaries like the rest of us. “None of your business” just doesn’t compute any more.
So it isn’t some reflexively feminist impulse that the number of women candidates on our ticket this year makes me think of this lady. Liberty, up there. That particular seated Liberty was all over our money in the 19th Century (by law, Liberty has to appear somewhere on US coins).
I love this one, because it looks like she’s waving her panties around on a stick. Which totally says “Liberty” to me.
Like, “Woohoo! LIBERTYYYYYYYYYYY!!”
(Okay, it’s a Phrygian cap on a liberty pole, but it’ll always be panties on a stick to me).
Good weekend, all!
September 17, 2010 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 29
Gesundheit
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. (Yeah, that’s right. I can still hear your thoughts. The injections don’t help at all). You’re thinking, “geez, Stoaty — you live in an Olde Worlde socialist paradise now. What do you care from Obamacare?”
Well, I own sixty acres of American scrub cedar and rattlesnakes out near the old Gore place. We call it Rancho Plan B. I pay American taxes and vote in American elections. I brush my teeth humming Yankee Doodle Dandy and insist on saying aloominum and skedule and coming home once a year to stock up on Jimmy Dean country sausage and Bounty paper towels.
But seriously — clown nose off — it matters here. You have no IDEA how much things in the US matter outside the US, in the general force and direction of world politics. The old saying when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold should probably be updated to when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets AIDS, Ebola and a side order of flesh-eating bacteria.
The interconnections in the UK catch me off guard. I was having a cup of coffee and a scone in a cafe in town yesterday and the lady at the next table over heard my accent and wanted to tell me all about her upcoming vacation in California. That happens a lot. So much for the taciturn Brits.
The BBC’s obsession with all things American is deep and malignant. You would not believe how much of a typical broadcast day is about the US, one way or another. I used to joke that Radio 4 could work a George Bush joke into the gardening program, but I think the Obama infatuation is even loonier.
During a radio interview of the English singer/songwriter Alison Goldfrapp a couple of days ago, the interviewer remarked that her most recent album was very upbeat. “Why is that?” he said out of an abso-fucking-lutely blue sky, “because of Obama?”
So you’d better believe the BBC has reported every twist and turn of the Obamacare saga in minutest detail. Absolutely zero insight, but minute detail. And you know what they’re rooting for.
The tug-of-war between freedom and the state is played across international boundaries. Pull hard, Yanks!
March 25, 2010 — 11:35 pm
Comments: 26
Loaves, fishes and pap smears
Yeah, dude. We totally, totally believe you can add tens of millions of people to the insurance pool and nobody’s premiums will go up and nobody’s coverage will go down. Totally. Because we are totally the inbred paste-eating retards they told you about at Harvard.
This is an unbelievably clumsy piece of political reasoning, this bill. They forgot the First Rule of Ponzi Schemes: in the beginning, everybody gets a pony. Near as I can figure it, nobody ever gets a pony with this thing.
If you already have insurance (Medicare, Medicaid or private), either your coverage goes down, your premiums go up or both.
If you don’t have insurance, the government is going to force you to stick your hand in your pocket and buy something you could damn well have bought any time, without the helpful assistance Guido the Legbreaker.
The segment of society that is currently uninsured, not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but poor enough to trigger substantial government assistance paying for this shit — the group of voters that is kinda, sorta getting a pony — must be incredibly small.
I wonder if he’s registered to vote.
March 23, 2010 — 10:55 pm
Comments: 38
Geoff’s famous chart, now with 100% more commercial exploitation
If you hang around the Moronosphere, you’ve seen this chart. Or this chart’s baby-daddy, anyhow. This is what happened when geoff (who usually posts at Innocent Bystanders) took the wishful thinking unemployment chart the Obama administration used to sell the dreadful porkulus and plotted actual unemployment figures on top of it.
It reads better in color.
Anyhow, someone recently came to geoff and inquired if he could get the chart on a shirt or a mug or something and geoff thought to himself, “do I know anyone venal, desperate and masterful in the construction of line charts?”
Me! Yay! I give you: geoff’s famous unemployment chart merchandise.
Notice the postcard and greeting card. I hope sending one to your Congressman becomes all the rage, because every one of those represents twenty American cents of cha-ching in my little piggy bank.
It’s through November, 2009 — the most recent period we have numbers for. I have a bad feeling we’ll be updating that chart a time or two. I can’t see the red line coming down to touch either of those blue lines for quite a little while.
December 23, 2009 — 6:20 pm
Comments: 20
Cracked…
Well, well. Looks like ACORN is well on the way to getting itself defunded after a series of embarrassing hidden camera revelations. I know you know this. I have to give all the background in the first graph, otherwise I come back in a year or two and think what the holy poo was I talking about? This stuff fades fast.
Now, ACORN is chock full of villains and bad actors, all of them up to their nipples in duff mortgages and voter fraud. So, you know, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. But I confess having just…just a little teeny tiny touch of sympathy with them over the actual sting.
I flipping hate hidden camera stuff. And that thing Dan Rather used to do on 60 Minutes, where he’d run across the employee parking lot at seven in the morning, shove a microphone in some dude’s face and scream, “do you eat babies?!” And that confused, hasn’t-had-his-coffee-yet moment you can see the man thinking, “Wait! Aw, shit! Do I?”
Fluffy baby bunnies look shifty on shaky-cam.
And the people who work in urban help centers are not fluffy baby bunnies. Pretty much nobody but down-and-outs really want to spend their days working with down-and-outs. Just the way it is.
I know, I know. They thought they were helping set up a child sex ring.
Maybe. I’m not sure.
If I’m a grizzled inner-city aid worker, and these two skinny goofy-ass middle-class white kids come in asking for help getting a start in organized crime…I am SO TOTALLY going to play along and screw with their heads.
Or is it just me?
September 17, 2009 — 6:17 pm
Comments: 37
You gotta read the fine print…
We stopped at a tiny cafe for a burger last week and I picked up this flyer. Other than the name of the cafe (which is sponsoring this, I guess) and the address, this is the whole thing. High-larious.
Speaking of fine print, I was trying to do a graphic about Obamacare when I caught that bug on Friday. It was going to be the Hammer of Reform descending upon the Sore Toe of Health Care. I’d found a nice example of a hammer and I was browsing a selection of toes. When I clicked on one, all hell broke loose.
That’s right. I caught a computer virus on a picture of somebody’s big toe. You’d think for all the grief I went through, it could’ve been some hentai or a filthy limerick or something.
August 10, 2009 — 7:09 pm
Comments: 12
Can I just say something…?
A white cop will arrest a white man for being mouthy.
A black cop will arrest a white man for being mouthy.
A black cop will arrest a black man for being mouthy.
So it’s sure as shit not news when a white cop arrests a
black man for being mouthy.
Word.
July 24, 2009 — 10:05 am
Comments: 33
Run, leetle peeg!
Okey dokey. Let’s see if I can take a crack at translating this expenses thing into Yankee.
Members of the British Parliament are expected to keep a home in their constituency district and also have accomodation in London for when Parliament is in session. Two homes. London is the second most expensive city in the world. The average MP makes £64K per annum (around $100,000).
You could swing it, but it would be pretty tight. So, rather than pissing the voters off by giving themselves a fat raise, the government set up an easygoing allowance scheme that would reimburse them up to £24K ($38K) in expenses a year. Few questions asked.
It’s like your boss saying, “I can’t give you a pay increase this year, but I’ll turn a blind eye if you swipe office supplies and pad your meal allowances.” No big? Ah…but X factors have whipped this into the perfect political shitstorm.
THE TIMING IS LOUSY. Right in the teeth of a global financial meltdown. One that is widely blamed (rightly or not) on bankers. The public has a great big hair across its ass, and the name of that hair is “greedy rich guys.”
THE RECEIPTS ARE STUPID. It’s a slush fund, really. And MP’s never dreamed the paperwork would go public. So the things they tried to claim for and their correspondence with the fees office are sloppy and wrong to the point of smartass. Five pence for a shopping bag. Tampax for a male MP. Pissing and moaning whenever they didn’t get their way.
THEY DID THEIR BESTESES TO COVER IT UP. The Freedom of Information Act is new here, and ex-Speaker Martin spent over £100,000 in court trying to exempt Parliament from it. In the end, the receipts did a mysterious end-around and flat-out leaked. Oh, but the Blair-era receipts were shredded, despite being subject of an official FOI request. Hrm.
THE CONTRAST IS HIGHLY OFF-PISSING. See: timing. The economy is tough. Record layoffs and bankruptcies. There’s a rage for growing your own vegetable gardens. A waiting list for wood-burning stoves. The public mood is austere. It’s a really, really bad time to try charging a £8,865 Bang & Olufsen widescreen TV to the taxpayer.
MP’S ARE SO VERY FUCKING TONE DEAF. I cannot believe how badly these bozos are playing it — all whiny and butthurt. They compare themselves aloud to “other professionals” like doctors — yeah? What exactly are the qualifications for MP again? — and I guess their fantasy doctors live like rock stars and premier league footballers. Alternating snot-monsters and victims; the worst possible reaction. The only major figure who seems to understand how scary-mad the public is is David Cameron (mixed feelings on this; I can’t stand him).
But I think the biggest aggravating factor is, MP’s are asking the public to cut ’em a little slack at a time when NOBODY CUTS THE BRITISH PUBLIC SLACK, EVER. Civil liberties are in the crapper. There are cameras everywhere. Three traffic no-nos and you lose your license. Councils are paying neighbors to snitch on each other. They collect your garbage half as often but ream your ass if there are recyclables in with your kitchen waste. “Health and Safety” legislation daily shears off great chunks of familiar freedoms.
The worst is at the local level, but government flows from the source. The great dam of public rage has up and busted, and MP’s are standing right in its path. Clutching receipts.
May 22, 2009 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 48