The Current Outlook

Independent MP and AM Peter Law was offered a peerage not to stand against Labour in Blaenau Gwent at the last general election, his widow alleges.

This wouldn’t surprise me in the least. The Labour Party (or, rather, the people at the head of it and, less so, those people that continue to support this parlous organisation) are despicable people.

Ah well, it looks like NuLabour have already fucked up their chances of winning back the constituency in the by-election as they tried to call a by-election even before Law’s funeral (although this has since been denied).

The home secretary has said he will not resign after it emerged 1,023 foreign prisoners had been freed without being considered for deportation.

It’s time to go, Charlie-boy. In any civilised nation they’d have dragged this corpulent fascist through the streets of their capital Mussolini-style long ago. But in ZaNuLabour’s Britain this isn’t going to happen. Sadly.

Roll on the next example of authoritarian vermin then.

The Queen has met thousands of wellwishers at an informal walkabout in Windsor, on her 80th birthday.

As a loyal subject of the Queen and the Crown, I wish Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II Happy Birthday. And may she continue to reign for as long as she feels able to.

God save the Queen.

NO2ID, a cross-party group campaigning against the introduction of UK ID cards and the Stasi database are organising a mass passport renewal in May (traditionally the busiest month of the year for people wanting to renew their ‘external’ passports, hur hur!), so if you’re going to get it renewed, do it between 1-31 May 2006.

I got mine renewed last autumn but if you haven’t got yours done yet you should get it done as soon as possible - passports are certainly not going to get any cheaper and the earlier you do it the more you’ll protect yourself from new ‘measures’ brought in by Tony Blair/the Government/UK Passport Service Identity and Passport Service.

Click the banner for more details.

Romano Prodi looks set to be confirmed as the winner of Italy’s general election after the number of contested ballots was drastically lowered.

Farewell, Silvio Berlusconi. You neo-fascistic megalomaniac. Don’t let that door hit you on the arse on the way out!

I can’t be the only one who is wondering what will happen to him now his immunity from prosecution has suddenly vanished. Or will it be like that montage at the end of Casino (excellent film by the way, if you haven’t already seen it) where everyone gets bumped off in various graphic ways? Well, there’s a thought to ponder for the weekend anyway.

Jesus fucking wept.

I have just this week heard about the disgusting concept of Freeganism. The most excellent Irish blogger Twenty Major had a little rant about it. He ended his post with:

The first Freegan I see in Dublin I am going to string him up by his bollocks from the Five Lamps and stone the cunt to death.

I sympathise.

Then I heard more about this vile practice by listening to a programme on the BBC World Service the other night, which I think also had some actual freegans on. Eventually I switched the radio off in utter revulsion and disgust.

What is Freeganism, you may ask? Here’s the general idea (from Wikipedia):

Many freegans get free food by pulling it out of the trash, a practice commonly nicknamed dumpster diving. Freegans claim to find ample amounts of clean, edible food in the garbage of restaurants, grocery stores, and other food-related industries, and this allows them to avoid spending money on products that exploit the world’s resources, contribute to urban sprawl, treat workers unfairly, or disregard animal rights. By dumpster diving, they prevent edible food from contributing to landfills and sometimes feed people and animals who might otherwise go hungry. Many freegans (and strict vegan “dumpster divers”) claim that they are able to eat very well, and even avoid paying for food altogether, due to this practice. Many vegan dumpster divers come to embrace freeganism in order to utilize more of the thrown-out food they find, which would otherwise be needlessly wasted.

Freeganism is not only utterly disgusting, it is unsustainable. If absolutely everything was free, we simply wouldn’t be able to survive. Unless we went back to trading goods rather than money - and what if you don’t have goods (or ‘goods’ of another kind?)? I guess you have to have something else. Oh, I know, what about tokens? We can call them… money! Then all you’ve got to do is get some. So, I guess you’ll have to sell your time, expertise or, if you have them, goods. Um, in about five seconds flat freeganism simply trips over itself.

What a stupid, naive and ill-thought out idea freeganism really is. Bunch of undignified wasters, the lot of them.

Hungry shoppers are being offered the chance to eat a gourmet sandwich, but the £85 price tag might be too much for some to swallow.

Well, what’s in it then that justifies the huge price-tag?

Wagyu beef, fresh lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de meaux, rocket, red pepper and mustard confit and English plum tomatoes all on fermented sour dough bread.

Oh. What sort of morons people do they think will buy this sandwich?

Food and catering director at Selfridges on Oxford Street, Ewan Venters, who commissioned the sandwich, said they expected it to be a hit with local “foodies”.

“I think if you are a food lover, this represents great value for money,” he said.

“Some of the finest ingredients from around the world have been used to create this fabulous sandwich.”

What they mean is that this sort of thing looks attractive to gullible and foolish people who spend a exorbitant amount of money on what is still ultimately a sandwich so that they can go and brag to their idiot friends that they spent £85 on a sandwich, and then bask in the envy at their conspicuous and irresponsible waste of cash. At the end of the day, I believe in the free-market so if people wish to waste their hard-earned like that I’m not going to stop them having their five minutes of very expensive ‘fun’. I’m just going to laugh at them.

I don’t care what Selfridges rip-off has in it (apart from obvious smart-arse retorts like “five £20 notes” and so on), no sandwich is worth £85 of my money when you can have a wondrous and far-cheaper sandwich composed of the most beautiful strong Lancashire cheese and succulent vine tomatoes. Very fattening, though.

Four-hundred years old this week, the union jack is one of the world’s oldest national flags… if you overlook the fact it’s only meant to be flown at sea, the proportions are wrong and no one can agree on its name.

Interesting article. But it is most definitely supposed to be Union Flag. Calling it the Union Jack when not at sea is simply an abomination!

People should be happy with their national flag and with flying it - it represents their country (the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), not the fucking gobshites who are currently destroying running it.

A Bristol teacher who resigned after her school failed to replace a squeaky chair which made “farting” noises has lost an employment tribunal.

Heh heh heh. Silly cow.

If I was on £48,000 a year and I had a chair that made ’squeaky’ noises and they wouldn’t replace it, I’d simply buy a new one that was nicer than everybody else’s.

A judge who said a legal case against a 10-year-old boy over alleged racism was “political correctness gone mad” has been criticised by a teaching union.

Oh, dear.

Let’s have a look and see what District Judge Jonathan Finestein said about this case that was so “out of date”, shall we?

Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? I was repeatedly called fat at school. Does this amount to a criminal offence?

No-one is seriously questioning whether the racist taunts were hurtful or not; of course they were. And this should have been dealt with swiftly. In the school. Dragging this out of school and yanking it into the courts blows the matter out of all proportion. I do wonder at what sort of nation Britain is rapidly becoming.

And as for this by NASUWT leader Chris Keetes…

Judges have a responsibility to consider the potential impact of their comments. The timing of his remarks is particularly unfortunate. The local elections are imminent and candidates from the extreme Right are being fielded in many cities. Comments which dismiss racial abuse as “political correctness gone mad” simply feed the pernicious agenda of extremists.

…well, it simply takes the biscuit. It’s comments like this that are more far likely to fuel racism and bigotry towards people than anything else about the case. What an ignorant cretin.