A New Year's Resolution

I don't know how I am going to do this but I have decided I will have a New Year's Resolution after all.  It is actually the 14 January 2012 but what the hell.  If you give up after the first failure what hope is there?  I'm a destitute man in an attic whose life has been destroyed by cultural prejudice, abuse and oppression.  Sometimes I write what is on my mind and sometimes I write stuff that I have thought out.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  But I get despondent and don't write for days.  I did keep a diary once and, on rereading it, even I can see how tedious and boring it can get reading it.  So I decided I will write a blog entry, no matter what, each day.

I will try to be kind to myself and forgive me if I fail but I will try to catch up.  I will try to make at least one interesting entry per day.  I will even "think" about it sometimes.  Maybe it will evolve into a really interesting blog.  Maybe I will find my true purpose in life.  But a lot of it will be straight from the heart.

Fundamentally we live in an "inside out" world.  That will take a lot of explaining but Freud began to understand it.  We are, to some extent, living in a subconscious world.  We think we "understand" what is going on but at every turn we find "the universe" or "reality" is not behaving quite as we expect.  In Jungian terms this is possibly the subconscious conflicts revealing themselves.

I have a little pet theory (I have many of those) which is about "Inside Out People".  That could be my second blog.  Inside Out People are those contradictory, controlling, authoritarian, self opinionated gits that many of us encounter every day.  They are stunningly un-empathetic.  They even seem to have no genuine feelings.  They certainly suffer a lack of rational logical analytical thought.  They seem to work on the principle of saying stuff to get results regardless of its relationship to truth or reality.  So why are they "Inside Out"?

Take two people, say P1  and P2, and P1 says to P2 "There were these three people in a room..."  What happens in side P2's head?  Half way through the statement P2 has formed an idea of three abstract objects that have human qualities.  A bit like an artist's manikin - sexless, size-less,  colourless - mere blobs representing these "three people".  During the second part of the phrase they are suddenly encased in four walls.  The room has no defining features except that it is "a room".  Now P1 says "...and the mother says to her daughter..." and suddenly two of the manikins become female and one is adult and the other is, provisionally, smaller.  The last figure takes on the possibility that it is male and maybe the husband, but it might be another child or someone else altogether.

So we form models of reality inside our heads.  Inside Out People think the model IS reality and non-inside out people think the stuff outside, that is adjusting their world view, IS reality.  I am of the opinion that the stuff out there is reality.  I regard my experience to date to suggest that I am an object experiencing effects from "out there".

To keep this to a few simple examples Inside Out People will typically say things like "It doesn't hurt." when sticking a needle into a child's arm and they cry.  They will say things like "Don't be clever!" when a child questions them with some valid point.  They have opinions about people which have no real substantial meaning like laziness, rudeness, obstinacy, or that they are "spoilt".  Inside Out People are working on the basis that the model inside their head is reality and when a signal is received that conflicts with their current model they criticise the world out there claiming IT is wrong.  Non-Inside Out People have a different response to the same situations.  They will say sorry to the child or something factual like "I know it does but it won't take long."  They will think about the question the child puts to them if it is a valid point.  All those "bad" attributes like laziness are thought about.  They wonder "why" this particular person doesn't actually want to do the thing in question.  People who are the right way out readjust their inner model according to the new information coming in.

This idea of Inside Out People is simplified here.  Of course we all use both methods to varying degrees.  But in the normal hubbub of daily life some people are acting more Inside Out than others.  They are not terribly helpful when it comes to adapting to a changing world and generally the worst cases float to the top of the hierarchy and generally make it very difficult for a lot of other people beneath them.

There!  That's the first blog of my New year's Resolution.

Tim Minchin censored for taking Mickey out of lizards.

Tim Minchin wrote a song which was recorded and scheduled to be aired on 23 December.  But for some funny reason it was axed from the show.  Apparently it took the Mickey out of Woody Allen and lizards.  You can read more about it on the MailOnline website.  But it is definitely worth a view and here it is for your personal delight...

Just thinking numbers.

I saw one of my comments with a url like:
www.blur -blur.com/pagename.html#lf_comment=9683676

So I was wondering: if you wanted to give each comment ever posted on the internet by a human a unique identifier how long would the url have to be?

I like to make sure I encompass every reasonable possibility and I wondered how many humans had ever lived.  According to the Population Reference Bureaux the rather whimsical calculation results in the figure 107,602,707,791.

So there have been about one hundred thousand million so far.  If every one of them lived for 80 years and left a message every second of their lives (a task that is highly improbable - like impossible) how many messages would there be so far?

One person would leave 60 messages per minute and 60 times that every hour which is 3,600.  Multiply that by 24 to get the number of messages per day and it comes to 86,400.  Multiply that by 365.25 to get the number of messages per year (the .25 accounts for leap years) and you get 316,677,600 messages by one person per year.  Multiply that by 80 to get how many messages each person leaves in their life time and it comes to 25,334,208,000.  That's twenty five thousand million messages per person and there have been 107,602,707,791 people.  So multiply those two figures together and you get the total number of messages left by this hypothetical hyperactive human race.  It comes to the not so staggering 2,726,029,380,540,414,528,000 which is 22 digits long.

If you used alphanumeric characters (that is a to z and 0 to 9) you could represent it with 15 characters.  Just 15 individual characters to uniquely identify every message in that hypothetical population.

e.g. the url would look something like:
www.blur -blur.com/pagename.html#lf_comment=9f68gjw369746fx

It was just a thought.  Nothing too profound has emerged yet.  But I keep thinking these weird thinks (like the death toll counter).  Hope you have a happy Easter.  Bye.

Creating a level playing field for the disabled.

In the House of Commons the issue of giving disabled children an advantage in exams was raised.  To give a simple example:  a dyslexic person may be given 25% extra time to complete an exam.  That all seems very reasonable on the surface.  But I am shocked.  I am shocked that these people, apparently clear headed thoughtful rational people, are discussing this issue and assuming it makes sense.  But it doesn't.

Underlying the discussion are certain assumptions that block out reality.  Of course it seems nice and equitable for a benevolent society to give support to disadvantaged people.  If we assume the system is fair in the first place it makes sense that someone who takes longer to read the questions and who finds it harder to actually write the answer than the "average" child should be given a more level playing field.

But consider this for a moment.  Dyslexic children are subnormal dunces.  They are lazy and deserve what they get.  It's a sort of Darwinian "survival of the fittest" thing.  I don't want to get into a moral discussion because looking after disabled people is an affront to the very process of the evolution of a fit, healthy and happy society.  By looking after disabled people and the old and infirm we are wasting resources and damaging the long term survival of the human race.

Does that sound a little eugenic?  The science of eugenics originated at the beginning of the 20th century and has always been controversial.  The  Nazis made it politically undesirable using it as justification for their policies of racial hygiene.

The point is that the whole education system and the actual practical purpose of the schooling system and the exam system is precisely to give moral justification to a few people having significant advantage over the rest of the population.  If you need to give people you perceive as being subnormal in some way (of course through no fault of their own) an advantage who are you actually serving?  Not them.  You are maintaining a false perception that some humans are naturally superior to others and that entitles them to social advantage.  It doesn't.  If you actually apply the assumed morals then people with natural advantage should work harder for society with equal benefits and facility to survive.  The morality is that if one person naturally has twice the energy of another then they should do twice the work for the same return.  But our culture has this on its head.  The consequence (revealed in a recent poll) is that 55% of the English population consider that poor people deserve what they get because they are lazy.  This is so immoral that it beggars belief.

It is one thing to believe that being better (physically or mentally) gives one a natural advantage but to wrap the justification for abuse in a tissue of moral claptrap is a heinous duplicity and perhaps one of the worst human crimes.

Making yourself feel benign for your own satisfaction by giving a patronizing advantage to people you perceive as less fortunate is also very anti-Christian.  It is part of the cancerous self consumption that is devouring and destroying this culture.

The answer is to provide an education which encompasses all the varied talents that humans exhibit.  Rarely, if ever, is there a human who does not "deserve" to live from the outset.  The exam system, if such a thing should exist at all, should find the talents that exist not define them and class people on a hierarchical scale.

Say I naturally like driving.  I am good at it.  If there is someone who doesn't like driving much it makes sense that I should do the driving.  I get to enjoy it.  But the person in the passenger seat is not me.  If I were in the passenger seat I would be less happy.  But the passenger is a more intellectual person and loves map reading.  They get to enjoy themselves doing the map reading.  I wouldn't enjoy that.  They wouldn't enjoy driving.  So the right people are doing the right things and the system works well.  If, however, you judge the situation from the assumed position of a driver and that 'driving' was more 'valuable' than map reading you might be tempted to award more privilege to 'drivers'.  The consequence would be that drivers get rewarded more than map-readers.  This becomes ridiculous when you consider that the drivers are now getting disproportionate advantage because they love driving AND get paid more.  This can (and does) lead to a lot of miserable and resentful map-readers.  It also leads to mixed motives and aspirations.  People who are naturally good at map reading forgo their natural talents and try to do well at 'driving' for the privileges it affords them.  What you get is manipulative competition and a whole lot of crap drivers.  This may all sound a little topsy-turvy but that is the ridiculous nature of our culture.

Bankers do not really 'deserve' the advantages they get.  The only reason people accept the way things are is because they feel they are disadvantaged and their only hope is to conform and maybe they will win.  Humanity has simply got to stop this perverted crap.  Humanity, you and me, have got to stop supporting the 'benign' oppressive paradigms of our culture.

The "Occupy" movement is fundamentally about this;  Even if a lot of people involved can't quite get it sorted in their heads.  We cannot carry on with the escalating inequality because it is destroying life and the planet.  We have to get away from this primitive judgemental attitude.

Jim Kong Dead is ill

Or was that Kim Jong Il is dead?  Anyway some North Korean monkey apparently died and all the people in the country are crying.  Thousands of them are all lined up crying and wailing because their dear leader is dead.  It is a pitiful sight.  It is the human race at its most insane.  Well not quite - but pretty insane.  It is a tragic example of the effects of a benign dictator.  They all think they need him because he made them entirely dependent upon him.  The only way to do that is to have a lot of people suffer and the rest benefit so that they dare not dissent.  What a horrid bunch these humans can be.  There is not a lot to say really.  Any sane human can see the pure lunacy of it.  I think Harry Potter should be made compulsory viewing in North Korea.

So in memory of all the people that have died at his miserable hands I have made this beautiful picture of Kum Jill Jong or whatever his memorable name is.

Anyway I am tired and have to go to bed whilst millions of people in North Korea die in pain.  Yawn... night night.

Top selling items on AMAZON!

Now if anyone is interested the best selling items on Amazon UK today are:



I can't really review The Inbetweeners Movie because I haven't seen it or even heard of it.  Just goes to show how well connected I am.  The IMDb (Internet Movie Database) has it rated at 7.5 out of 10.  So that's not so hot.  It is all about four socially troubled 18 year olds (Will, Simon, Jay and Neil) from the south of England going to Malia (a small town on the north coast of Crete (that's Greece for those who didn't know (and it's very warm and beautiful))) on holiday.  It seems to be a totally slapstick farce and not worth the toxic material it is cut on.

Now Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 I can recommend because I have seen it.  Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (part 2) has a rating of 8.2 on the IMDb and, given the respect I have for the voters' views on the IMDb, I guess it is a reasonable rating except for the fact that The Inbetweeners Movie has a rating of 7.5 which is exactly 1.9 higher than it should be at 5.6.  So those 1.9 should go to Harry Potter which would give it a rating of 10.1 which is a little over the odds but it'll do.  Good old Voldemort split himself into Horcruxes to extend his living spacetime and Harry, Ron and Hermione (pronounced her-my-on-eeeeee not herm-e-own) are on a desperate quest to locate and destroy all the horcruxes in an attempt to kill "He who shall not be named" Lord whatsisface.  It is the eighth and final film in the Harry Potter film series.  So you'll just have to go watch the other seven first if you haven't seen them.

Then there is the complete series of Frozen Planet which is a very beautiful nature documentary series made (partly) by the BBC and featuring David Attenborough as the narrator.  In his inimitable way David makes this a profound and awesome production and it is generally very highly rated by critics - except for the scandalous bit about the polar bear.  It has an unusual and quite amazing rating on the IMDb of 9.5 so this can be seriously recommend.

Harry Potter - The Complete 8-Film Collection is a must for anyone to have in their movie collection.  A mega film series of a mega book series by a mega novelist.  And, in my humble opinion, a brilliant insight into the utter lunacy of Christianity and the monstrous control freaks who run it and think they are so self-important to the point of elevating themselves to spiritual beings in the Universe doing God's will - Oops I'm getting carried away.  But the series is brilliant by any measure.  The collection contains the eight films; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (rated 7.2 on IMDb), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (7.2), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (7.7), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (7.5), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (7.3), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (7.3), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (7.6) and finally Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (8.2).  Together the IMDb ratings are from 1,162,350 viewers so that is quite a lot of people and the average rating for the series comes out at 7.5.  Total run time about 18 hours 49 minutes.  That is serious value for money.  Go buy it now!

Finally there is Bridesmaids.  Lowest rating on IMDb at 7.0 so I am not going to comment on that!

David Cameron rips into the Archbishop!

"Someone chuck me a dead man on a stick.  I can do this better than the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Just call me Pope David."

It appears David "Baboon" Cameroon has really lost the plot and decided to give the Archbishop of Canterbury a few lessons in theology.  He declared Britain a "Christian Cunt Tree" and implied that Dr Rowan Williams was a wishy-washy liberal toot by "sympathising" with rioters and criticising the government for ripping off the poor.

In a speech on Friday 15 December 2011 David Cameron blamed the Archbishop for failing to "stand up and defend" the morals taught by the Bible.  David is as likely to have read the bible as he is to have read the Conservative manifesto.  His policies are directly contrary to that manifesto and his ideas of morality are based as much on the bible as Sharia law is based on Buddhism.

David Cameron is way out of his depth and is beginning to sound more like a wishy-washy Hitler every day.  He also accused the Archbishop of "fuelling" terrorism and went on to say "... just as it is legitimate for religious leaders to make political comments, he [the Archbishop] shouldn’t be surprised when I respond."

He went on to say "The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend." Er... like ripping off the poor and kowtowing to the bankers David?  Ooooh good morals.  I remember reading that bit in the bible... or was it Mein Kampf?

What does David Cameron know of moral codes and values?  For him the moral of his story is "Lie through your teeth, become Prime Minister and get fcuking rich." and values are how to rip people off with BOGOF offers in Tesco.

New Title: Dr Pope David Adolf Rowing Baboon Cameroon.

What a wally!

You can read all about it on the Mail Online in an article entitled "Speak up for Christianity, Cameron tells Archbishop: PM calls on the Church to defend 'values and moral code' of the Bible."

Japanese Whale Hunt

Did you donate to the Fukushima disaster?

Do you know where your money went?

Do you want to pay for expensive security ships to defend the Japanese whaling fleet?

SIGN THE PETITION at Avaaz

And why is the Japanese government subsidising the whale hunt for about 1000 minke whales for meat this year.  Why are they paying a possible £20 million from the earthquake recovery fund for security to defend themselves against environmentalists like Sea Shepherd?  Why are they subsidising the hunt to the tune of £4 million every year anyway?  Why, when they have a stockpile of whale meat, are they paying all this money to catch 1000 more whales.  They don't seem to be doing any scientific research which is the only legal reason for killing whales.  What on earth are they up to?  This year it is estimated that the Japanese tax payer is contributing about £24,000 per whale caught.  Is there some corruption behind the scenes?

But the Japanese whaling industry is on its last legs.  Whaling has become less economically viable recently and it seems as if they just do it to prove a point.  It seems unlikely it will continue for many years apart from the fact that they are killing all the whales.  Most Japanese folk are quite nice.  Like in most countries the population are a decent bunch.  But those pretentious kowtowing hypocritical low-bowing politicians are a bunch of deceitful self-interested vicious gits.  There I go getting mad again.  But they are such horrible liars.  They go in front of the press and say all sorts of words that sound as if they give a damn.  But they really don't.  People in power are so unbelievably treacherous.

If people in power are so dreadful that leaves us with a problem I guess.  It seems anarchy is the only way.  But whales are pretty anarchistic and look what happens to them.

Anyway - what you have to do is go sign the petition at Avaaz

Liege shooting

Yet another apparently insane mass murder.  Just after midday on 13 December 2011, and quite suddenly in the bustling Christmas market in Liege in Belgium, there was a series of explosions.  A rogue killer by the name of Nordine Amrani had simply decided to throw multiple grenades into a crowded shopping  area and to start shooting indiscriminately.  Over one hundred people were seriously injured and at least six killed.

Why?

Many people will have many opinions and most people will find this a frightening and very upsetting event.  Most people will look to the individual and on discovering that he was a convicted criminal and a hoarder of small arms will put it down to a crazy and rather nasty individual.  On discovering that he had earlier lured a cleaning woman into his house and killed her they may conclude that this man was possibly insane, definitely horrible and it is a jolly good thing that he's dead.  They will also feel that there needs to be more security and more police and that the laws and punishments should be increased in scope and severity.

But it is also a fact that this human being was a product of a culture.

There is no doubt that people affected by his aberrant behaviour are seriously injured emotionally and some physically.  There has been a lot of damage caused to a lot of humans.  But why does one human end up doing something like this?

It seems to be an inevitable consequence of our rather selfish, consumer based, capitalistic, blame orientated, competitive and punitive culture.  We can be a rather unpleasant bunch of humans sometimes.  Individuals who are disadvantaged and consequently suffer humiliation, abuse and prejudice find they have nowhere to turn.  People claim that lots of people suffer hardship and even abuse but this is no excuse.  They also comment that most people who suffer injustice do not resort to this kind of behaviour.  This line of thinking seems only to be attempting to 'justify' the judgemental attitude towards an individual.  But the judgemental attitude doesn't help in understanding or preventing this sort of thing.

Appalling though this shooting is there needs to be more effort in our culture to accommodate all people.  As the austerity measures escalate in this collapsing culture and impending financial crisis the people at the bottom of the pile are suffering more and more.  If there are already some who see no other way forward than to kill indiscriminately I am afraid we will see more and more of this in the next few years.

The tricky thing is that it is not simply down to the law makers or the people in authority who try to do their best to prevent this kind of mayhem.  Much as I dislike police in principle there were some incredibly brave and selfless police officers who were willing to run straight into danger in Liege to attempt to stop the killing.  A very significant part of changing our culture is the attitudes of all of us.  When children fall out and argue or fight in school they should not be treated as if "wrong" or "bad" they should be accommodated.  Intervene to stop the damage but find out why the children felt aggrieved.  Give all parties full respect.  It seems that very often a "shooter" has suffered from ostracism and exclusion.  It seems a common factor in many apparently insane and indiscriminate killings that the perpetrator feels they are 'outside' of the culture.  Their very act of attacking 'people' in the culture seems to indicate that it was not their choice and that it was forced upon them and they resent it.

By all means dislike or even hate the guy.  But don't forget we are still manufacturing them in our schools.

And by the way - austerity measures should start at the TOP not at the bottom.  It simply makes sense.

TESCO do it again! 0.25p per kg of rice.

How do they do it?  Last week they sold me a 4 kilogram bag of long grain rice for 4p.  This week they sold me six 4 kilogram bags of rice for 6p.  Not 6p each but 1p each! That's 0.25p per kilogram. (It should have been 0.1p per kilogram but I didn't argue the point when the man told me his till wouldn't process that.) Unbelievable though it may seem I have written it up on the Toxic Drums web site where you can see the receipt for yourself.

I guess it is a kind Universe sometimes.  My life is an utter wreck and my financial situation (if it can be called that) is disastrous.  But 10 days ago Tesco excelled - well the Universe did because I don't suppose Tesco meant to.  And then I visited them last night and they dropped the price even more.  I am now looking forward to shopping in Tesco next week to see what amazing bargains they can come up with next.

Swedish Embarrassment

The poor old Swedish people are being seriously embarrassed by their journalists, politicians and legal beagles.  Given that the origins of the Swedish case against Julian Assange were so questionable that the charges were dropped by a senior prosecutor it was a mystery when one of Sweden's three Directors of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, reopened the case declaring "I want to make it clear that I have not been put under any kind of pressure, political or otherwise."

Given that there has been this dreadful media circus, this witch hunt, this gory assault and prolonged lynch mob hysteria against Julian Assange for over a year, it now appears the Swedish press and television are not satisfied and are dutifully dancing to their puppet masters tune and playing to the gallery by instigating one smear campaign after another against Julian Assange.  The web site Sweden vs. Assange (which is worth a browse) has just published an article Media climate in Sweden which paints a very dark and frightening picture for those of us concerned with real human justice.

To get an idea of the rather sordid, petty and perverse origins of the case see Reuters'  Special Report: STD fears sparked case against WikiLeaks boss.

We will wait to see if Julian Assange is conveniently shipped off to the USA after his unhappy and probably unjust forced visit to Sweden.  Personally - I don't trust these people.

Public Sector Strikes - Wednesday 30 November 2011

The Great Pension Swindle!

There is a lot of rhetoric flying around over the proposed strike on Wednesday by public sector workers.  The central issue is pensions and retirement for public sector workers.  We all know there is economic upheaval around the globe and we all have to "tighten our belts".  The UK is in serious financial difficulties and that needs to be turned around.  It will inevitably mean less, not more, for the majority of people.  So why are these people causing all this disruption at a crisis point when we need them to be pulling their weight, putting their shoulders to the wheel and their noses to the grind stone?

Brendan Barber, the head of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said it was 'unlikely' there was anything the Government could say to persuade him to call off Wednesday’s action.

Francis Maude, a Cabinet Office Minister, said the 'irresponsible' strikes would inflict huge damage on Britain's economy.

Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, said the mass walkout will definitely go ahead and could be the biggest since 1926.

David Cameron, one of Britain's Prime Ministers, says that it is irresponsible to go ahead with the strike when talks are still ongoing.

So are these strikes a good idea?  Surely they will cost the country millions of pounds and push it closer to the precipice of disaster.  There are lots of people who fear the breakdown of our society who would bend to the oppressors and do their bidding just to get a momentary reprieve from the pain.

Does anyone recall how we got into this mess with the pensions in the first place?  Does anyone recall that it was a crime far bigger than the Brink's-MAT Robbery or the Great Train Robbery.  It was a deception by government officials on a scale that warrants permanent jail sentences for the perpetrators.

The equation was simple:  Put a percentage of your earnings into savings to cover your retirement.  This is the benefit of working as a group.  This is the benefit of 'government' organising welfare.  One person can't reasonably predict their "working life" versus their "retirement" and so can only guess at the proportion of salary required for a pension.  But statistically it can be calculated very accurately.  Even if it is a bit wrong the adjustments are very small.

So with the pronounced plan of putting some of the National Insurance contributions into "pension" investments the government effectively "authorised" this scam.  But they did NOT put the money into investment plans.  Sure they put some there.  But the majority of pensions being paid soon became a direct transfer from the earning population to the pensioners.  This suited government officials because there was more coming in than they were paying out.

It was fraudulent and it was theft.  When this was exposed in the 1980's it was essentially ignored with distraction, argument and obfuscation.  It was 'covered up' with a new worrying perception that, given the changing demographics, there was a crisis looming.  This provided more unscrupulous government officials with moralistic and fear mongering mechanisms for taking yet MORE dosh from the population, but they still didn't act responsibly with respect to the current population and their 'pension' savings.  So as the whole world including the Middle East, Europe and America descend into the abyss that is their own making, the power mongers are still trying to 'take advantage' of the situation for their own benefit.

That is what these strikes are about!  Sure there are militant Trades Unionists who revel in the opportunity for a fight.  But that is the current way of these humans.  Thank God (you know: that oppressor's myth) that some of the dogs of war are fighting at the helm of the majority.  Thank goodness they are on the right side.  They may be morally sound and they may not, but that is not the issue at hand.  The issue is that it is time to say "NO" to these perverse and manipulative, self serving politicians.  It is time to say NO to the corruption.  It is time to recognise that we are in a mess and continuing with the illusions set up by the abusers is not a way to resolve the problem.

As for David Cameron's expressed view that 'the strike is irresponsible when there are still discussions being held' he is simply continuing the illusion.  To turn it on its authoritarian, bigoted and hypocritical head, the fact is, Mr Cameron, you have had ample opportunity to do something responsible.  You have had extensive and repeated stays of execution to get your act together.  You are now simply prevaricating and threatening and getting, frankly, desperate.  You had the chance to sort this out.  You had another chance to sort this out.  You even had more chances to sort it out, but instead you chose to side with your financial oppressors, your paymasters.  You chose to be a fawning parasite.  You chose to be a sycophant.  You chose which side you were on and it's the wrong one.

So the strikes must go ahead!  The people of this country must understand that the Occupy movement is profound and inescapable.  The people must take responsibility for their actions.  They must ensure that the 'elected government' IS 'representing' them and not dictating to them.  Whilst we live in this illusion of democracy we are only kidding ourselves if we defer decisions to a group of people whose interests are clearly oppositional to the general population.

The government has to be kept under control.  The government should be controlled by the people - not the other way round.  The damage caused by the strike will be a small price to pay compared with the critical and terminal damage being done by this government.  Austerity measures MUST start at the top of the pile of corruption.

Tesco sell rice at 1p

Yes they do indeed sell rice at 1p per kilogram.  Not to everybody.  But to me they did sell a 4 kilogram bag of rice for just 4p!

Why?  Because they had made a mistake on their weight comparison in the (very) small print on the shelf label.  It clearly said (when I had my glasses on) 1.0p per kg.

I have put a page up about it on the Toxic Drums web site and included the receipt for those doubting Thomases amongst you.

Kurt Vonnegut censorship.

It now seems I must read Cat's Cradle !  This is a book that Kurt is famous for, as well as many others.  I started looking into this guy when I read a small 'blog' on Ralph STEADman's web site.  Ralph STEADman points out, with some disgust: "Now, Hardly 3 years after his death, some wretched, asinine School Board in a place ominously called Republic, Missouri- has voted to ban Kurt's personal first masterpiece, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE"  Slaughterhouse Five is the shortened title of a book Kurt Wrote about his experiences in World War II.  The full title is "Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, ‘The Florence of the Elbe,’ a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace."

Ralph is quite correctly horrified at the fascist attitude in banning this book.

A lovely quote from Kurt "The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected".

A problem with secrecy.

There is a problem with the issue of secrecy and the national scandal of phone hacking as a good example.  Lots of people express their different views and there even seems to be a consensus opinion that people's privacy should be protected.  But that actually confuses the issue and is leading people into another more severe problem.

People do not have some inalienable right to secrecy.  If that is established it is the people with a motive to be secretive who will be protected.  In fact that is the way it is and the scandal is more likely to give the devious manipulators more power and control over others.  But the issue is mixed up with the reasonable expectation that 'private' information should not be broadcast when it will be abused and cause undue harm to the subject.  It is not 'privacy' that is sacrosanct but rather the abuse of information that should be dealt with.  For example, if I were a politician and I dropped a brick on my foot this morning causing me to swear and someone published the fact that I swore in a national newspaper, what could be the problem?  If that information were used to inappropriately suggest I was an undesirable type who was not fit to hold a public position and I lost my job, it is not the fact of it being broadcast that 'caused' the injustice.  It would be the inappropriate and unfair actions taken by someone else based on an inaccurate and prejudicial interpretation of the facts.  Obviously the motive for the broadcasting has to be questioned too.

During the early days of the Libyan uprising I was pleased to hear one interviewee give his name and point out that he disagreed with all the secrecy where individuals remained anonymous when they spoke out against the government because, as he pointed out, it is the secrecy that is colluding with the perpetrators of the crime.  The secrecy is, in fact, giving power to the abuser.

Just because it is a difficult problem is not justification to 'opt' for one solution which happens to be wrong.  Just because one can't solve the problem doesn't mean a quick guess is right.  Behind all of this is a lack of personal responsibility.

Hang Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani

The Iranian hierarchy want to hang this guy for apostasy.  e.g. The Washington Post: Christian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani faces potential execution or New Statesman: The trial and punishment of Yousef Nadarkhani.

I really don't understand the problem here.  The guy should hang.  Surely it is that simple.  He was born of an Islamic family and, although I don't understand Islam, it seems clear that they are right in all things because they have a direct link to God or Allah through that chap Mohamed.  His words are interpreted by the strictest and most devoted scholars and young Yousef Nadarkhani quite clearly chose the dark side (it's in his name for goodness sake: Na-DARK-hani) which is an anathema to Allah and he should be terminated.  Doesn't that all make sense?

Well doesn't it?

When are these human beings going to understand that these major religions are nothing more than anaesthetics for people who can't deal with the reality of their existence.  Like alcohol they get rid of the difficult issues and make life seem all rosy.  It becomes quite clear through the rose tinted spectacles of religion that the stuff out there in the real world which upsets them is not meant to be there.  It doesn't fit their desired interpretation of reality.  Being egocentric, obviously the world out there (reality) needs to be changed to put things right.  What sort of mind numbing stupidity is that.  The problem with addictions, like alcoholism and religion, is that once people have run away from experiencing the real world they are less capable of meeting the next challenge.

The irony of Islam is that it is God's will.  God made everything and this is the way he wants it.  He wants different religions fighting each other and committing contradictory heinous crimes against each other in his name.  Isn't that obvious too?  To suggest the Iranian hierarchy, whoever they may be, should be merciful and apply a little clemency to the situation and should let him off with a lesser sentence is surely in the face of Allah.  The suggestion is that mercy is a 'good' thing.  How could it be if it resulted in the direct opposition of a benign God?  So is it that the non-Muslims are begging the Muslims to just go along with their grubby immoral ways to appease them?  It is so contradictory it beggars belief.  What sort of a religion would it be if it just cow-towed to any pleading from the satanic side of things?  What sort of a religion would it be if it didn't stand up for what it believed in?

The whole thing is a complete farce.  The Iranians are playing games and trying to frighten people.  They get two birds with one stone because they get to intimidate their population and they get all this fearful reaction from abroad.  Religions are abusive.  Please try to understand that.  There is no more sense in "Christians" begging for clemency than in Iranians begging to be allowed to kill non-believers.  I was brought up as a Christian and I completely get all the 'good' ideas touted by it.  But people have got to rise above that oppressive control mechanism and realise that cow-towing to any religion is all part of supporting the oppression of control freaks over the rest of humanity.  Religious freedom is an oxymoron.  Get used to it!

And just before I go - They make me very angry.  Both sides!  The Iranian hierarchy are evidently ruthless oppressors and the people who oppose them are woolly minded.  Killing someone because you don't like them is not acceptable.  There is no point in beating about the bush (that one that had the two birds in it that Iran killed) and making feeble attempts to appease oppressors with tactical diplomacy.  Try following that trite advice dished out by the anti-drug-abuse folk "Just say No!"

Iran: NO!  In yer face NO!  You are out of order and you are evil by your own definition!  Thank you and good night.
(P.S. Yousef is a twit anyway for being a Christian.)

 A LIGHTER TAKE ON THINGS 

Free Speech for Hamsters
(or 'the Rod of Righteous Retribution')

Patients four times more likely to die in UK than in the US

I was lying in bed at about 5:15 British Summer Time listening to the news on the BBC's Radio 4.  "... a report shows that patients in the UK are four times more likely to die after an emergency operation in the UK than in the US".  Unfortunately it got me thinking.  So I tried to find this "report" on the internet.  Eventually I found it by locating an article posted about 4 hours ago on the BBC News web site entitled "Emergency surgery patients lives at risk, say surgeons" by Dominic Hughes.  The report by The Royal College of Surgeons of England and the department of Health to which this news article refers is available on the RCS website at http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/publications/docs/higher-risk-surgical-patient/.  Specifically it says "... one study reported that risk-adjusted mortality rates were as much as four times higher in the UK than in the US."  So it is a tenuous, if not false claim, by the BBC, that the RCS claims that this is true.  But the essence of the message is clearly true.  Lack of correct care results in more deaths.

So what do I care about this?  Well I am getting really fed up living on this planet with what appears to be a moronic life form.  Yes HUMANS!  I was brought up with the view that our culture is somehow at the leading edge of all things good that humanity has achieved... but it has never quite felt like that.  I live in someone else's attic.  My father's as it happens.  I am supposed to be grateful.  But the real reason I live there in squalor is 'lack of care'.  I call it a lack of love.  It is care in the sense that they don't care.  I am not looking for some 'care' that I expect someone to provide as if it costs them time energy and money;  As if there is some service they are supposed to be providing but are failing to do so.  No!  What I mean is they "don't care";  They think they do, but they are mixing things up.  And they are mixing things up in a way that I think is so destructive it is fit to be called evil.  It is a kind of ignorance and an ignorance based on fear.  These people are so screwed up by a judgemental, punitive, upbringing that they have lost the ability to be 'human' and to think for themselves.  What happens is, they are compulsively defending themselves from any accusation that they are 'unkind', cruel', nasty, 'rude', lazy', 'inconsiderate' or any number of ridiculous negative constructs by moralistic judgemental adults in authority.  They are so afraid that they might be 'blamed' and punished that they are emotionally compelled to 'act' in a way that can't be blamed.  They are transfixed on themselves and what they experience as their own survival.  They are not living their own life they are living up to a set of external values projected at them in their early years.  They are 'conforming' and 'doing the right thing' according to their perceived cultural environment.

What this report from the RCS is saying is that when patients are cared for as individuals and respected as unique with their own set of conditions and responded to appropriately they have a better survival rate.  What the report seems to fail to do is identify what the root cause of the problem is.  In fact it goes one stage further and makes the mistake of recommending procedures which would (in theory alone) improve the well being of patients.  But the procedures they recommend would be implemented in a paranoid environment and simply make the people carrying out the procedure MORE worried that they might not be getting it right.

The reason it bothers me particularly is because my health is declining seriously and I put it down to my the abusive upbringing.  Given that I was emotionally tenderised like a piece of steak in my childhood I was then unduly vulnerable to the vagaries of an abusive culture.  By a set of unfortunate circumstances I have ended up destitute and from there the situation gets worse.  The consequences to my health are quite real and measurable.  There are so many studies which show the relationship between anxiety and poor health that it beggars belief that the majority of health professionals don't get it.  But the reason they don't get it is because they are desperate conformists.

To put it simply;  People who care and do research because they are interested and concerned can see clearly that there is a problem and in many cases can identify actual physical correlates.  I don't need to research this subject and list reams of studies, books (like The Biology of Love which I highly recommend) and research papers to illustrate my point;  It is clear in the general culture that psychology, counselling, biology, neuroscience and all the leading edge research conclude that our emotional condition is "REAL" and has a direct bearing on our physical health.  But people who are concerned to hold down a local respectable job like a doctor who earns a rather sickening salary for their 40 odd hours and who is far more concerned with what they look like than what they achieve, they cannot see the relationship because it is a risk to their security.  They can't 'prove' it.  What they are concerned to do is to 'prove' that they did the tests, they carried out the right procedure by the book, that they didn't do anything wrong.  They are incapable of seeing what is staring them in the face;  They need to actually care about their patients.  They really do.  Failing that they are just inhuman artefacts carrying out the bidding of a psychopathic and parasitic institution called the National Health Service for their own pathetic survival.

It should be made illegal to abuse children.  What?  "It is!" I hear you say?  No, unfortunately it is not illegal .  Extreme physical or sexual abuse which is not hidden well enough is illegal but the law is not working well on that account.  But common or garden abuse like humiliating children in the classroom, blaming your own children for your own failings, labelling them as morally bad and destroying their lives if they don't conform to the standards you are terrified to counter are all serious abuse and are leading to the collapse of the human race.

It saddens me to hear this sort of report on the radio because from my perspective it sounds as if people care.  It sounds as if some people out there realise that abusive, careless behaviour has real undesirable consequences.  It sounds as if things might change.  But I am fifty something and it feels as if they just get worse.  But then I am living in a very hostile environment and in a cultural abyss somewhere in the backwaters of in Britain.  So maybe somewhere out there it is getting better.

How to set your Facebook url.

If you have ever tried to link to your own Facebook account you may have encountered a small problem locating the url to your personal page.  You can locate the unique url for your own home page on Facebook by clicking your username or avatar and the web address appears in the browser address bar.

If your name is Nik Allday your Facebook url might be www.facebook.com/nikallday or, if you are less fortunate it might be something horrible like www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1632672560.  The trouble with the second case is that it is eminently forgettable and prone to errors if you try to write it down.

You can personalise your Facebook url by assigning a unique username to it.

In trying to find out how to do this many people resort to searching Google with phrases like "how to get a facebook username", "how do i get my facebook url", "personalize your facebook url" or "facebook page url".  They look for "custom facebook page" or "facebook address" and most of the results do not answer their question correctly.

This is how to personalise your Facebook web address.
Log in to your Facebook account and then open a new tab or browser and go to http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Simples!

You can locate this information through the Facebook help pages too.

Unfortunately if you name is John Smith the obvious username is probably taken and you will have to opt for something dreadful like johnsmith1632672560  which is about as bad as the original naked php parameter.

If you found this helpful (or not even) please comment with your suggestions as to what I should set my username as.  I want samspruce but that has gone;  So has toxicdrums.  Options I consider possible are samspruce3 toxicdrums1 samanthaspruce, samualspruce samthetree, samsprucethetree.  But none are satisfactory.  So which do you think is best or do you have any other ideas?

But I don't want to leave it as http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1632672560

What a mug!

Having created the rich aesthetic textures Sam applied them to a bunch of mugs. He was tempted to buy them himself but can't afford them. So, instead, he decided to offer then to the public in the hope that it enhances their life and brings in a little dosh to enhance his.

Keep your eye on this store as it might just be expanding its incredible range of objets d'art. And you wouldn't want to miss out. Take a look around by clicking one of the mugs below. You don't actually have to buy anything.

Make a personalized gift at Zazzle.

Mousemats by Sam Spruce

I decided to have a go at creating some abstract texture designs for Zazzle products.  I am reluctant to describe how these images were made because it all starts with cling film.  I have a thing about cling film.  A love hate relationship I suppose.  Maybe a fetish but now I am getting carried away.

I tried various ways to scan cling film on the scanner.  I tried laying it flat, crumpling it to various degrees and wrapping things like blue tack with it.  Having got some interesting base images I set about tampering with them using PainShop Pro and some of it's more interesting features.

Apart from the "Toxic Drums" mouse mat the other mats featured below are some of the results of my experimenting.  What is good about Zazzle is that you can make post cards, greeting cards, posters, mugs and all sorts featuring the designs.  I like mouse mats because they are relatively cheap as an art form and relatively incidental.  But they add quality to your desktop and enhance your environment.

Shop other personalized gifts from Zazzle.

Please feel free to visit the store by clicking on the products above and even create your own product like a fridge magnet or an iPad case.  I enjoy doing this so if I sell some I might be encouraged to produce more.