Going on holiday

Blogging which has already been light (sorry about that) will now be slim-to-non-existent for a week.

I'm sure I'll have plenty to rant about on my return though.

Michael Jackson

You might have been a fucking freak in your later years, but you didn't half write some truly amazing music.

Personally I'd like to thank you for Thriller, which is, in my opinion, one of the best albums ever produced.

RIP.

Bllllleeeeeuuuuggggghhh

Thanks (I think) to the BCC employee who emailed this simpering note off the BCC Intranet. It apparently comes from a column where Jan posts musings to her minions. I think I feel sick.

Messages from the Chief Executive

(updated 23 June 2009)

Have you seen the news? What a coup for Bristol.
The City Museum & Art Gallery is currently taking centre stage in the art world with the ground-breaking Banksy show.

Love him or loathe him, there’s no getting away from Banksy in Bristol at the moment.

What does the show mean for the city and the council?
We’re already looking at extra temporary staff over the summer to cope with record numbers of visitors to the museum.

The show is also proving to be a real boost to Bristol’s economy - helping to pack local cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels.

Thanks must go to the staff at the museum who have worked hard behind-the-scenes to bring this spectacular show to Bristol.

The show runs until Monday, August 31 and includes over 100 works, including 78 new pieces. The exhibition is free too, so make sure you get a chance to see the show.

Christ allmighty, where do I begin? The sheer hypocrisy is damning enough. BCC couldn't have seen Banksy as anything other than a complete pain in their arse in his early years, suddenly he's "famous" and "popular" and he's always been their best mate, don't you know? What a fucking load of hypocritical nonsense. Is this what Jan means by "marketing" the city?

And are "local cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels" really "packed" because of this show?

Please.

Expenses Analysis - Dawn Primarolo

ADDITIONAL COSTS ALLOWANCE

Damn it. I was hoping to find some juicy shit with Dawn's ACA since Kerry didn't have much other than her food allowance. But if Kerry was fairly clean, Dawn was squeaky. She's hardly EVER claimed for Food allowance on her ACA. Nothing else really of note.

ICIDENTAL EXPENSES PROVISION

Claiming for papers on your expenses is a little iffy, but all MPs seem to do it. Interesting that the redactors have sometimes blocked out "STREET" of "EAST STREET NEWS" on the reciepts (a newsagent in Bedminster) and sometimes not. What is the point?

Also, should the taxpayers REALLY foot the £120.00 bill for a copy of "Who's who" for you, Dawn? Why do you need it for your job?

Amusing to see Dawn locked herself out of her office on the 29th August 2006 :)

What was the blanked out payment on Page 22 on Dawn's 07-08 IEP? There is no reciept included for it.

COMMUNICATIONS ALLOWANCE

Only thing I wonder here is why she paid some staff members from the CA, and others from IEP? Maybe these ones were "promoting" her?

SUMMARY

Again - nothing exciting from the redacted versions. But the telegraph can reveal:

Dawn Primarolo The Childrens and Families Miniister claimed second home expenses for her constituency home in Bristol until 2004, when she FLIPPED her expense claims to her London flat.
Overnight her monthly claims for mortgage interest went up from £317 to £1,313. Having claimed a relatively modest £12,553 in 2003-04, Miss Primarolo's total claims under the Additional Costs Allowance rose sharply after the move, and by 2007-08 she was claiming the maximum permissible amount of £23, 083.
Miss Primarolo also claimed for council tax, utilities, a cleaner and for her TV licence

No surprise that the Parliamentary Authorities wanted to redact what they did.

Next, Let's go to Bishopston's middle-class favourite, Stephen Williams.

Expenses Analysis - Kerry McCarthy

ADDITIONAL COSTS ALLOWANCE

And the first shocker - well, not really a shocker. Kerry has claimed £400.00 exactly for food allowance in Jun 2005, Jul 2005, Jan 2006, Feb 2006, Mar 2006, Apr 2006, Jun 2006, Jul 2006, Oct 2006, Nov 2006, Dec 2006, Jan 2007, Feb 2007, Mar 2007, Apr 2007, May 2007 and Feb 2008. After May 2007 she gets a conscience, realising that she shouldn't really be claiming the full amount, just because she can - but still claims figures that seemingly were pulled from her arse. But for the many months that you did claim £400 for food, did you REALLY spend EXACTLY £400 EVERY MONTH on food solely relating to your parliamentary duties, Kerry?

I rather think you didn't. After all, I haven't met you in person but judging by your headshot you don't look as fat as Eric Pickles, and I would have thought anyone would be, spending that amount.

OR could it be that it's an expense that doesn't require a receipt? I wonder...

They also appear to have interesting redactions on Kerry's Aditional Cost Allowance for 05-06. Page 5 seems to show exactly the same as Page 7, except Page 7 has more blanked out - text which seems to relate to Kerry's mortgage payments, juding by the placement on the form. The text which was present on Page 5 but blanked out on Page 7 is:

Previously Paid £1357.32
PLEASE PAY £275.00

I'm not sure why they blank out the invoice for her furniture (£2690, thank you very much) when a quick Google search shows it's from Habitat. Would Kerry be shopping in Habitat if she wasn't an MP, or would it be Ikea?

In fairness though, she's only got a 17" (!!!???!!!) Television.

INCIDENTAL EXPENSES PROVISION

Getting the FT delivered every day, Monday to Saturday, for a year? Why can't you buy one on the way to work?

Also, why is the building rented, and money paid to, "Labour Party Properties"? Surely if they own the building, and you are a Labour MP, you should just be able to use it? Definitely some digging required for that organisation.

Also, paying the previous occupant of the office (Jean Corston) £1000 for all the furniture in there??!? Was she ever going to use it again? And since she'd paid for it with tax payer's money, why do you need to pay for it again, with tax payer's money?

Also, I'm no expert in handwriting, but this handwriting (which is representative of most of the claim forms)



doesn't look very simliar to this handwriting.



Surely you're not getting your staff to fill out your claims forms for you, are you Kerry?

SUMMARY

So yes - nothing really that terrible, apart from the food allowance which just seems to have been used by every MP as a fucking cash machine, as it didn't require reciepts. Dawn next.

Bristol MP's Expeses

There are 5 MPs in the Bristol Area:

Roger Berry (LAB)

Kerry McCarthy (LAB)

Doug Naysmith (LAB)

Dawn Primarolo (LAB)

Stephen Williams (LIB)

Over the next few days, I shall be going over each MP's expenses with a fine-toothed comb. What I can see anyway, with all the fucking "redactions".

I'll start with everyone's favourite...darling Kerry.

Veritable bargains at Bristol Ikea

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/store/bristol/offers

What's up with their mouths?

Lembit Opik

Douglas Carswell

There was another guy with the same sort of affliction on the Tory benches who asked a question recently at PMQs and everyone commented on it on Guido's Live Chat.

Is it something about the House of Commons?

Just saying...

UPDATE: Seems Lembit broke his jaw in a Paragliding accident. Still wondering if the same happened to the others or if there's something in the water at Westminster.

Chinese-Style Firewall, here we come!

The BBC are all over this story about "Digital Britain".

Essentially, it suggests that:

Every Briton with a fixed-line phone will pay a "small levy" of 50p per month to pay for faster net access.

The national fund created by the levy will be used to ensure most Britons get access to future net technologies.

Good old NuLabor, trying their fucking damnedest to enforce socialism across the technology spectrum as well as every other area of our lives. Why the fuck should I pay tax so some fucking mouth-breathing morlock in Betws-Y-Coed can watch BBC Cymru programs on BBC iPlayer at a decent speed? If I was unfortunate enough to live in Betws-Y-Coed I wouldn't expect someone living in civilisation to pay for me to have decent broadband - it's my own fault for living in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.

However, it doesn't take a genius to see where this is all going...

The report also includes a pledge to curb unlawful file sharing by giving regulator Ofcom new powers to identify persistent pirates.

Bang. There it is. How will Ofcom "identify" persistent pirates? By having direct access to ISP logs of traffic. What's the easiest way of doing that? Have all ISP traffic go through hardware that either Ofcom installs, or has access to.

What comes next?

Chinese-style firewall.

I fucking guarantee it.

Most ISPs already voluntarily sign up to the IWF's blacklist, preventing access to these pages with a HTTP 404 or similar error. Nobody knows what's on the list, although there are theories of how to get it with brute-force scanning on WikiLeaks. IWF are completely unaccountable to anyone. It's not much of a step to force ISPs to follow the list rather than just persuade them, by insisting on government-owned hardware in ISPs.

Sorry, what?

I can't believe what I've read on the BBC...

He was fined £150 for each offence and banned from being a company director for five years. He is currently unemployed.

Although no driving offences were committed he was also banned from driving for six months for each count to run concurrently as an additional punishment.

So you can now have punishments intended for crimes you haven't committed doled out to you by the courts?

What the FUCK?!?!!!

Badger Brows arrogance again

...as he says that

Oil price rises could prevent early end to recession

No, you fucking cunt, the DUTY and TAX that YOU levy on the fuel might prevent an early end to the recession. Ask Thailand how much they pay for their petrol. Oil prices my fucking arse.

Jan's Office Costs

So, it's come out how much Jandroid spent having her offices redone for the Strategic Leadership Team. The offices that were fine for Gurney, but not for her tastes.

The summary of costs is available here. The total is £122,117.37. Just sit and digest that for a minute. She thinks she deserves over ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO FUCKING GRAND of taxpayer's money to "spruce up" her working environment. Some of the MP's expenses that have come out are nothing in comparison to this.

* £38,809 spent on Building, Construction, Decorating and Partitioning is a large enough figure to suggest that the entire offices was ripped out and redone.
* £14,947.81 on carpet? FIFTEEN GRAND on carpet? Christ, is that really how much carpeting costs?
* £1,966.84 on WiFi. 2 GRAND? You can buy a wireless router for £40. You can buy a really decent one for £200.
* £6,112.36 on "Building Practice Fees". What are these, and why are they so much?

Edited for truth

High-speed sex in Norway:

A man faces a hefty fine and a driving ban after being caught having sex with his girlfriend while speeding on a motorway in Norway, police have said.

Officers initially trailed the couple's car after noticing it was swerving from side to side and travelling at 33km/h (20mph) over the road's speed limit.

But they soon realised the erratic driving was due to the woman "sitting on the man's lap", a spokesman said.

After filming the exploit for evidence storage in their personal wank-bank, they pulled them over at a rest area.

Buy-To-Let landlords suffering

So say the BBC.

Well, excuse my lack of sympathy but



My heart fucking bleeds. Pure greed motivated your purchase of the houses, stopping first-time-buyers like myself getting on the housing ladder. I don't really blame people for wanting to make a quick buck, but I've got no sympathy when it goes wrong.

UAF Hypocrisy

Let me first start out by saying I don't support the BNP - they are a far-left party (yes, that's racist left-wing party, read their manifesto, people - full of state control and nationalisation) and I can't agree with most of their policies.

Aside from that, Nick Griffin is a cocktard of the highest order.


That said, I really can't understand why the UAF (who have egged Griffin today) get so much respect.

I'm struggling with a glaring hypocrisy of the UAF. In protesting against the BNP, they are trying to silence them - in effect, they are saying that they don't agree with the BNP having a platform to speak freely from (i.e. free speech).

Often when this is pointed out to the UAF their response is that they can't agree with the BNP because it's views are bigoted and/or racist.

That may be true, but the fact still remains that they are saying they support Free Speech, unless they disagree with the content, in which case they think it should be silenced. So they believe they, the UAF, should be able to censor who can and can't make their views known (racist or not) to the public.

Isn't that a bit...well, um....fascist?


You fucking hypocrites.

BBC Alba

I like cars. I also like car programmes, so it follows that I watch Top Gear. However, whilst bored and watching an old epsiode, I followed a link to "Air An Rathad". At first I thought there was a problem with the audio, but it turns out it's from BBC Alba, speaking Scottish Gaelic.

This is paid for by BBC License fees. The channel costs £15m.

Some of YOUR licence fee - providing you pay it, of course - pays for this shite.

And how many people speak Gaelic?

58,652 in 2001. That's just 1.2% of the Scottish Population. Only 1% of the porridge-wogs speak this stupid language - which sounds even more phlegmy than Welsh - but yet apparently the BBC think it's a worthwhile investment.

How the fuck can they justify this? So what if the language was going to die? So fucking what? Langauges survive and languages die for a reason. Not covering the person you're speaking to with huge amounts of flob is a bonus, so I expect Welsh to die out sooner or later. What possible use is this language if it remains anyway?

Fuck off, you phlegmy fucking morlocks, and stop taking MY money (yes, I do begrudgingly pay a licence fee as Mrs. Bristol Dave inists on it) to try in vain to keep your pointless fucking language alive.

Police State?

You betcha.

Hundreds of teenagers are having their DNA taken by police in case they commit crimes later in life, an officer has disclosed.

In case they commit crimes? In fucking case? Jesus H. Christ on a fucking bike, how did we get to this?

This is the most fucking tenuous excuse for an invasion of civil liberties yet.

It'll start with the children. When do they start taking DNA from adults, "just in case"?

Fuck sake.

Excuse me while I puke

Europe looks united and great from up here

Oh, Please....