That’s Brief for Firefox, by the way. For years, the grouping of political blogs in my RSS readers has been entitled “The Racket”. Does anyone now doubt that description? Other sources have pointed out that the rise is actually a “minimum” of £10,000. Which amounts to £6.5m in total.

I hope a profuse and detailed apology from Cat’s will be forthcoming for this fiasco, but frankly I’m a bit pissed off myself. We cannot carry on like this. The friggin Difference engine has to go. I will contribute to the cost of a proper professional Server, and others here have indicated to me that they are prepared to do so too.

I have had at least half a dozen posts I wanted to put up in the last bastard ten days of invisibility, but all past their sell buy date now. Not fuckin good enough, not fuckin good enough at all.

Dear sweet Jesus of Nazareth (and I am not taking Our Lord’s Name in vain because if He had seen that Sodom and Gomorrah would have looked like a small incident with a camping stove there would have been smiting beneath the fifth rib, up the bracket and indeed elsewise - and that from the Prince of Peace). It wasn’t just bad it was chronically septic. It was so far up the pole it was fucking orbital. I’ve known people who enjoyed major abdominal surgery more than that.

It makes “Geordie Shore” sound like fucking Shakespeare. I enjoy rides out to the sticks and perhaps dinner in a pub but that show is a country pleasure I shall not partake of again. I’m a fairly liberal guy but when shit like that is smeared across the Samsung (what did nowt to cause it) I want to fucking well lock and load.

I know a lot of libertarians and conservatives and such and such think the BBC has a bias towards the left and it does but it also expropriates GBP145.50 from all of us to make utter drivel. Oh, and to pay for pedophiles, obviously.

I mainly watch “Watch” and “Dave” so I can see great comedy writing. Where is the pill? And the drug? And which knockwurst contains the painting of the “Fallen Madonna…”. As to the whereabouts of the “Cracked Vase with the Big Daisies”. God knows. The BBC clearly doesn’t anymore. It requires a Pte Helga not so much to tell them to “COME IN!” as “FUCK OFF!” and possibly with Lt Gruber (and his “little tank”).

Anyhow, congrats BBC. In “The Wright Way” you have made “So haunt me!” look like comedic genius. That is genius, that really is. I haven’t seen a faster “race to the bottom” since Manchester hosted Europride. Because I thought you had hit bedrock, BBC, with “My Family” which despite starring Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker you managed to make utterly dreadful. Though the storming example of the recent shitcom about a British Muslim family that makes “Love thy Neighbour” look like TV downloaded from the future (there is an app for that) runs it close.

I say this because the BBC used to make good stuff Like “‘Allo Allo” or “Only Fools and Horses” and it’s all still on Sky’s Satellite of Love. And dear Gods some BBC executive ought to be waiving his cock in the neighbourbood of Arkright’s till. Or doing “Porridge”. For the crapfests of recent years.

But with “The Wright Way” the BBC utterly breached the turdulence threshold and sent the crap-o-meter to permanent FSD*

Yes, they made “On the Buses” for a new century.

Thanks BBC!

*That happened at Chernobyl. When reactor 4 went totally tits-up (that’s how my nuclear physics lecturer at Nottingham put it - “Now, children, now you know what not to do so don’t do it!”). Of course I would do it because I’m a meddler. I am the ethnically British person The Daily Mail warned you about (not Neil Kinnock - I’m the other one). I have done questionable things. There is a reason I always fancied Ace in Dr Who. Remind me to tell you about it later but the things I’ve blown the fuck out off or burnt down is something else. Never anyone else’s property, mind. Anyway FSD. If a dial is showing FSD it is probable that it is much more. The wonks at Chernobyl didn’t tell Moscow this. I think they were mainly shot. FSD is Mother Nature getting upset**- or instrumentation’s way of telling you it has l gone very badly Pete Tong. Pete Tong? By that point you are technically fucked. At that point it becomes emotional.

**Every scientist knows that she’s the one bitch you really don’t diss. Not. Ever. You tease her, mind.

I’ve only got Ronnie Corbett left for… House!

If you can’t think in the abstract, then it’s tricky to distinguish between physical objects and abstract concepts. This explains much government education. This is an important idea, so let’s look at a simple example.

A tree exists, it has a trunk, branches, bark, leaves, roots etc; it is a tree. A forest by contrast is a concept. It is a name we give to a bunch of trees in a reasonably close grouping. But it’s not real in anything other than an abstract sense, because really it’s just a bunch of trees.

Similarly, countries are just abstract concepts. If you look at satellite photos, there are no obvious lines or giant letters that spell out FRANCE or whatever. Some countries share a common language, many don’t. The thing that makes them countries in today’s world is simply the fact that the government claims rights to enforce arbitrary borders, laws, compulsions, bans and tax collection within these borders (and increasingly outside of them). They enforce these claims with threats of violence for non-compliance.

Government is another abstract concept. In truth, it’s just a couple of hundred people who claim the right to initiate violence against you, but absolutely prohibit you doing it to them. They can take your cash, you can’t take theirs. They can have all the guns; you can’t have so much as pepper spray.

Similarly, the police are yet another abstract. They are just people with weapons and powers to kidnap and they wear blue costumes to pretend they have some kind of legitimacy. All law enforcement ever does however, is maintain the status quo in favour of the ruling class.

So, what is the likely outcome of all this? Well people can comply, covertly evade, openly defy or collaborate with the government and its goons. But it’s so wasteful. Voluntary exchange sans threat gives us Mercedes, i-phones, Skype and thousands of products to choose from in your local supermarket. Government coercion gives us everything from your local council to North Korea. No effective mechanism for change and no way to get rid of the unwanted or the failing.

So let’s put down the guns and the threats of kidnap, the coercion. Let’s live all our life, free. This month, see if you can persuade one person you know that the government is just violence and we would be better off, free.

The reason they don’t teach critical thinking, is that they don’t really want people thinking critically about the government and its fundamental nature.  It’s this basically confused philosophy, one that declines to see that A is indeed A, that really seems to befuddle some of our fellow citizens.  How else can we explain the following ideas that have gained traction today?

Tesco/Starbucks/Amazon (insert name of this weeks hate target) are evil for not paying ‘enough’ tax.  The government must do something.

Astonishingly stupid in its failure to accurately conceptualise the nature of corporate taxation as well as a fundamental inability to grasp the tax code.  Taxes are theft.  Corporate taxes are theft from the individual, dressed up to look like something else.  If these taxes did not exist, prices would be lower for individuals, thus, they are a tax on people.  An indirect one for sure, but no less real despite that.  And of course the companies themselves do comply with the tax code written by the government, but mere strict legal compliance is not enough for the hard of thinking.

Tesco etc are evil for ‘forcing out’ small shop keepers and taking away choice.

Exactly, diametrically inaccurate.  In my part of the world, a “Tesco town” if ever there was one, we can choose from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, Lidl, the farmers market, internet shopping and some smaller Polish shops (you know the ones that can’t exist).  Smaller shops won’t exist if they offer inferior products fewer people want and higher prices.  Whereas, I detest my local council, but I have no choice, I just have to keep paying them and avoiding all their looney-tune schemes.  If I don’t pay, the state instructs its goons and its time to play “kidnap and cage”

The government is there to help people.

By sticking a gun in their face and demanding money, compliance with a host of crackpot schemes and prohibiting any number of victimless ‘crimes’  A five yearly vote of nearly identical pantomime dames does not legitimise violent coercion.  Furthermore, it is futile because there is no effective mechanism to remove government if people don’t want it.  Whereas with the evil corporations, you get to vote every day.  And the vote is absolutely effective; bad or unwanted companies go bust (unless politically connected of course).  Companies need to listen to people as they lack the power to stick a gun in their faces and demand money.

Government protects people.

Well it’s true that companies that kill their customers can face some serious legal sanctions; directors can be personally responsible for health and safety codes etc.  Directors are keen to avoid this.  We must however ask ourselves how long a restaurant regularly not cleaning its kitchens and thus killing its customers with salmonella would last?  If the negative publicity didn’t get them, killing its client base surely would.  Whereas governments drag people off into armies, or bamboozle them into accepting the kings shilling.  Either way, they will be in harms way very quickly.  Even outside of wars, how many of its own populations did governments kill in the twentieth century?  Believe it or not, more than have died in all the wars (sic).  Governments outperform wars in killing their own people!  There’s even a term for it, Democide.

You begin to see why the bastards don’t want people thinking about the true nature of their oppression.

Russell Taylor

Interesting writeup and photos.

Last surviving Second World War Dornier bomber is to be raised from its watery grave after 70 years in biggest recovery of its kind

German bomber has lain in English Channel since the Battle of Britain
£350,000 project to retrieve the plane and display it at the RAF Museum

By Hugo Gye

PUBLISHED: 04:56 EST, 3 May 2013 | UPDATED: 12:38 EST, 3 May 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318808/Last-surviving-Second-World-War-Dornier-bomber-raised-watery-grave-70-years-biggest-recovery-kind.html

Throughout history those who have sought to create incarnations of the all-powerful state have struggled with the fundamental contradiction that to introduce such a state is to create a coercive tyranny of the collective, but equally this requires the support of the populace at large to succeed at least in its initial creation.

It was the creation of the notional “Social Contract” during the Enlightenment by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and others that has proven to be the mechanism by which this paradox could be disguised if not resolved. Scratch the surface of any welfare state and you will find the Social Contract underneath like some hidden malignancy.

At its heart, the political philosophy of the Social Contract is straight-forward and to woolly thinking liberals infinitely appealing, in that each citizen/resident subjects themselves to the authority of the state in return for security*.

The Social Contract is a deemed contract in that each citizen/resident is presumed to have signed up to it at birth and remains tied to the Social Contract whilst in receipt of the “promised gifts of the state”. In modern parlance this is interpreted as either retaining citizenship of the state (as with US or Eritrean citizens) or more commonly being resident in the state. To prevent accusations of enslavement the citizen/resident is nominal free at any time to divest themselves of their responsibilities under the Social Contract to a particular state by terminating their citizenship/residence. The downside to this is that usually the requirements for termination of citizenship/residence are that another citizenship/residence has been acquired elsewhere, in essence jumping from one frying pan to another.

However, the appeal of the Social Contract hides its dark nature, in essence this deemed consent is the deceit that is used to justify the states ultimate weapon and indeed the only power required for tyranny, that of the “Monopoly use of force” within the territory of the state. This power alone guarantees that the needs of the state will always succeed over the individual, collective, minority or even majority of citizen/residents within its boundaries. Even after successful, usually bloody revolutions it is usually just replacing one set of managers for another, the fundamentals of the state rarely change and the Social Contract becomes indefatigable.

Those who are libertarians, as with most members of the Counting Cats Commentariat understand that the power of the state is coercion, is a loaded gun pointed at the head, but your average
“Man on the Clapham Omnibus” does not understand, by accepting the terms of the Social Contract they are accepting slavery; the state owns them lock, stock and barrel. As with any owner, they can do what they want (provide they abide by the terms of the contract) charging you whatever they like in the form of taxes through to imprisoning you for breeching their rules that they alone determine. They can even send you off to fight a war or kill you in some states.

From my perspective as an anarcho-capitalist / monarchist fence sitter, there is perhaps a de minimis level of conformance that is required to maintain a civil society, but the Social Contract is not it. It is a

mechanism that has been used to enslave us by the collectivists and until those subject to its terms realize the full consequences of their submission we will continue to be enslaved.

I don’t expect freedom anytime soon.

To paraphrase, “Listen, and understand. The state is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”**

* Benjamin Franklin’s 1775 quote that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” is appropriate, but something that the collectivists will never appreciate, nor understand.

** Bonus Points to anyone getting the movie reference