Modern Slavery at Waitrose

So yesterday morning, Sunday 22nd December, i thought i’d go out for a ride on my scooter — weather being nice and everything.

So off i went to Sidmouth, as it’s quite a fun ride from Exmouth going the back lane way over Peak Hill.

I planned on getting there just after 10am so i could pop into Waitrose and grab a free coffee before it all got busy.   Alas, it was not to be.   I had forgotten about all the mindless, senseless, automaton, baby jesus freaks running around in their mad, last minute, buying frenzies because they’d forgotten the fucking stuffing mix and aunty Jane would starve to death if they didn’t get out and buy some at 10am on Sunday morning.

It was so busy Waitrose had even draughted in the boy scouts to guide people to empty parking spaces as they became available, and also the air cadets to collect all the trolleys as all the mad people threw them madly into the air in their mad dashes to be away from the madding, fucking crowd — i kid you fucking not!!!

By the time i’d got through the crazy busy store, having bought some nice things i can’t buy at Tesco in Exmouth, i proceeded to queue for the free coffee at the machine.   Yes folks, a queue had formed at 10.30am in Waitrose.   And it was a queue of 5 people, plus me, and more people then queued behind me.

Normally i wouldn’t bother waiting in such a queue, but i’d rode 12.5 miles on my scooter in the middle of winter — albeit a nice day — to get to Sidmouth; and, if you ask me — which no one did — i was the one in that fucking queue that deserved that free fucking coffee the most.

Needless to say, the coffee machine was not having a happy morning.   When anyone finally made it to the front of the queue they proceeded to apologise to those in the queue behind them about the coffee machine taking ages to make their coffee: “It’s never usually like this.” they said.

And the thought occurred to me:

In the internet of things, and intelligent devices, i wonder, should coffee machines get a tea break?

It struck me that at baby jesus time when everyone is all good will and shit and over eating and seriously hating the whole fucking experience but they go along with it any way because that’s what they’re supposed to do — init — that no one cared about this poor little coffee machine being so utterly abused by the hoi polloi and all and sundry of Sidmouth as they all lose their collective fucking minds and binge shop for baby fucking jesus like it’s the last fucking birthday he’ll ever fucking have.

So yeah, spare a thought for all your intelligent machines, and even the retarded ones, at this time of year.   Buy them a present and make sure they get a fucking break from your family’s incessant, mindless demands.

And yes, i do consider the Waitrose coffee machine to be intelligent.   It can make a fairly decent fucking coffee from whole beans, grinds them all by itself and everything and shit — that’s pretty fucking intelligent compared to a dog.   I don’t see dogs making a fresh ground cup of coffee and plenty of people claim they’re intelligent and if you abused one like you abuse intelligent machines then you’d be arrested good and proper.

So why is it ok to enslave, torture and abuse an intelligent machine in this way — at christmas for fucks sake — but it’s not ok to upset someone’s doggie?

So yeah, give the coffee machines a tea break — and stay the fuck out of Waitrose when i’m visiting Sidmouth.

#5t4n5 #waitrose #ai #coffee #thoughts

Marie Antoinette’s Big Fuck Up

This follows on from “Scottish Privilege” and “£4.50 Doughnuts”, so if you haven’t read them already then go and do so first — else i’ll get really grumpy or something, and you wouldn’t like me when i’m really grumpy.

In English speaking countries there’s an urban myth that during the French revolution someone mentioned to Queen Marie Antoinette that the peasants were starving and she reputedly responded with “Let them eat cake.”

Of course, we love that one in England; anything to diss the French will always cheer us up, no end.   Anyone who thinks frogs and slugs are food seriously needs to try eating some cake instead.

However, in French, her reputed statement was “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” which means: “Then let them eat brioche.”   You can read all about the whole episode by clicking here.

If you did click there and read the wiki on it you’ll soon get to thinking that she didn’t actually say it, but that it was a pure propaganda stunt by the peasants to stir up animosity against the royalty.   Or maybe it was just some bored English bloke deciding to have another bash at our favourite neighbours.

Anyways, history lesson over and fast forward to the UK under the bootheels of the Tory party austerity measures.   Are the ruling classes of the UK going to make the same mistake as the French monarchy made and see the peasants rising up against them and chopping their heads off, or are they going to do something different?

Yes, you guessed it, they’re going for a different approach: that of aspiration.

After all, the last thing the poor peasants of the UK need to hear from Mandy Android is this:

Firstly, the ignorant, mono sylabic, tabloid oiks — which make up the vast majority of the UK population — wouldn’t know what the fuck that meant; and secondly, even if they did manage to translate it correctly, they wouldn’t be too impressed anyway as they don’t know what a brioche is — coz mcdonalds don’t sell ’em, init.

But they eat doughnuts.   Everyone likes doughnuts, especially the poor, downtrodden masses of the UK.   I checked while in Tesco yesterday and they’re still 79p for 5 from the in-store-bakery.   Probably cheaper at Lidl and Aldi, but i’m way too classy to be seen in those type of places with the sort that frequent them.

So instead of the government handing out barrow fulls of Brioche to the hungry masses, or simply giving them enough benefits to afford to buy their own brioche, they have deliberately fucked up their benefit payments and created a country where the poorest have to sit at home, staring forlornly at their 68″ plasma tv screens, while watching rich cunts shoving £4.50 doughnuts into their faces, while they have to rely on whatever tinned and packet shite the food bank gave them yesterday.

Obviously, this is far better for the peasants than simply giving them brioche as Marie may, or may not have, suggested.

Why is it far better, you may ask?

Well, because it gives the peasants something to aspire to.   Think about it.   What else, other than their 68″ plasma TV screens and 12 hours of day time TV, do these people have to look forward to every day?   If you dangle the carrot of aspiration in front of them, of being just like Judy and getting to go to London to buy £4.50 doughnuts, then they’ll soon be getting off their arses, getting really good jobs and jumping on trains every weekend to get at those doughnuts.

It just makes so much sense.   It certainly worked for Margaret Thatcher who used ‘buy-your-own-council-house’ as her carrot of aspiration for the oiks, which got them all out from in front of their TV’s and getting jobs so that they could get a mortgage and be slaves to their jobs until their mortgages were paid off because they’d now be homeless if they didn’t pay the mortgage.

The oiks didn’t seem to concern themselves with the fact that they could have continued living a job free lifestyle, watching day time TV and been guaranteed to be able to live in their council house for the rest of their lives if they didn’t buy it because housing benefit would always cover the rent.   No, they chased that carrot of aspiration all the way into corporate slavery and worked themselves into an early grave and their houses were sold to the highest bidder to pay for their old people’s home care bill.   The highest bidder being a buy-to-let property magnet who now rents those houses back to poor people on short term 6 month leases at 5 times the rent the original council house would currently be rented to them for if it were still a council house.

So yeah, aspiration.   Do you dream of being wealthy enough, or even pretending to be wealthy enough, to buy £4.50 doughnuts?   If you’ve already bought your own council house then maybe this is the next aspirational step for you.   In the meanwhile it’ll keep the masses downtrodden as they drool at the thought of getting one of those doughnuts one day instead of rising up and overthrowing those that keep them downtrodden and eating slightly stale, food bank doughnuts instead.

Seriously, people, quit aspiring to the shit they advertise to you in product placements within Judy Murray stories that aren’t worth publishing.   It’s all designed to keep you enslaved to the system.   If Marie had known then what the ruling classes of France know now then she would have opened a few tourists shops at the Palace of Versailles and offered expensive tat to the peasants to give them something to aspire to affording — which is exactly what the French government are doing at the Palace of Versailles right now.

Instead of tearing down the gates of Versailles, storming the palace, stuffing your face in the kitchens and nicking whatever valuables you could fit in your pockets; you can now aspire to buy a ticket — starting at 20 euros — to walk through open gates, wander around anywhere you’ve got a ticket for (look but don’t touch), pay a load more euro to eat brioche and drink coffee in the cafe and then spend even more euros buying a shit load of tourist tat on your way out.   Which doesn’t leave much change from 200 euros for a peasant family.   But at least you won’t have to put up with Judy Murray as they don’t take Scottish play money.

Anyway, fuck aspiring to pay for it, revolution was much more fun and much more cheaper.   Storm the doors of the boutique doughnut shops and help yourselves — the police won’t stop you as they’re too busy with all the climate change demonstrations.

#5t4n5 #scottish #doughnuts #privilege #socialaspiration #thoughts

£4.50 Dougnuts

No, i just can’t let this one go.

After my previous post on ‘Sottish Privilege’ in which i have a little rant about Judy ‘my-son-can-bat-a-ball-better-than-your-son-can’ Murray and her obscene financial excesses, i decided to dig a little deeper into what makes a doughnut cost £4.50.

So apparently, what makes these doughnuts so fucking special is that they’re made in Reading.

They make them in Reading, fresh every day, and then ship them into London through all that poluted traffic, adding to the already overloaded congestion and pollution that London suffers from while delivering these daily to their 10 London shops, so you can have a super fresh doughnut experience.

I presume that they don’t do this because there’s anything special about Reading — trust me, i’ve watched ‘Beautiful People’ — but because its cheaper to make them there and then ship them into their 10 London shops than it is to make them truly fresh in their shops in London.

Surely, at £4.50, you’d expect someone to stand in front of you and make it especially for you from 100% organic certified ingredients that have been lovingly fertilised with unicorn shit and pixie wee and watered with rainbow tears, but no, you just get a doughnut made in Reading sometime last night from ingredients that i can’t find published anywhere on their website.

One would think that if they were truly proud of their obscenely expensive boutique doughnuts they’d publish a full ingredient list on their website, but no, they don’t even state what kind of oil they use other than its some kind of vegetable.

But, not to worry, if you want to save some money you can buy a box of 6 for £24.   Yeah, it’s actually really real, me and Judy ain’t making this shit up.   They’ve got 10 shops in London, so one can only presume that there’s plenty of people, fucked in the head enough, to be buying them.   Although, when you think about it, all that pollution from delivery vans delivering to 10 different shops every day in London does have most people fucked in the head enough to be paying £4.50 for one single doughnut.

So, anyway, i thought i’d look at Tesco and see what they can do for £4.50 in the way of nice cakey things…   So, for £4.50, at Tesco, i can get 990g of mini gingerbread men, that’s basically a whole kilogram (let’s not quibble over 10g).   Yeah, really, a whole fucking army of your very own mini gingerbread men for £4.50.   So Judy and her friend, i’m presuming she was buying two doughnuts to share one with a friend, but maybe she’s just a greedy person and was hoping to devour them both herself.   After all, who the fuck am i to be judging the feeding habits of a nation who eat deep fried, battered pizzas with chips as a snack…

So, if, and it is a big if, we presume one of her £4.50 doughnuts was for a friend, then Judy and her imaginary friend could have, instead, gone to Tesco and got a whole army of mini gingerbread men each and played Warhammer with them and when you killed your opponents you’d get to eat them too — now that’d be so much more fun than 2 fancy, made in Reading, doughnuts.

Tesco in store bakery also sells doughnuts fresh baked every day, ‘in store’ — not shipped half way across England — @ 79p for 5.   Yes, a whole pack of 5 fresh baked doughnuts for 79p.   So you can have 28 1/2 doughnuts for £4.50.   So Judy, and her maybe imaginary friend, could have had 57 doughnuts between them and had such a mental sugar rush that a big fight (that Conor McGregor would have been proud of) in the middle of the street would have ensued over who got the last one — now that would have been headline news worthy of any tabloid and even possibly made the BBC front page.

Moving on: for other sources of cheap doughnuts, simply pop along to your local food bank and wait until someone donates a packet of doughnuts and you’ll get them for nothing.   And if you’re really lucky, they’ll be from some rich, Scotch cunt who paid £4.50 each for two and couldn’t manage the second one after their Pizza Crunch breakfast so decided to give it away to the peasants.

There should be a [sic] somewhere in the previous sentence, but i didn’t put it in because i felt it destroyed the flow of the piece, so i’ll leave it to you to think about where it should go.   Answers on a postcard.   And for the fuckwits who can’t make out what i mean by [sic], this whole thing is wasted on you anyway because you obviously suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect, and right about now you’ll be getting all fucking righteous about everything and attempting to engage me in a tedious exchange of emails in the vain hope of educating me out of my ignorance — and stupidity — while all the while not realising it is you, yourself, who is the utter fuckwit here who is so fuckwitted that any attempt at educating you is a total fucking waste of resources and time: that’s what eating pizza crunch suppers does to your brain.

And people call Margaret Thatcher evil — at least she didn’t allow boutique doughnuts on her watch while the oi palloi went hungry.

Fuck it, it’s 7:04 and Tesco has been open for over an hour.   You see the sacrifices i make so that you can have cutting edge journalism with your breakfast?   So, anyway, it’s well past time for their in store bakery to have my 28 1/2 doughnuts and army of mini gingerbread men ready for a dining room table top battle — at least that’s my day sorted and £9 well spent.

And no, i’m most certainly not finished with this topic.   Click here for the next episode.

#5t4n5 #scottish #doughnuts #privilege #thoughts

Scottish Privilege

While the rest of the UK is suffering under the bootheels of Tory austerity and having to use foodbanks, the Scots are living it up big time and taking expensive day trips to London to buy boutique doughnuts for £4.50 each…

Andy Murray’s mum Judy Murray shocked as London shop REFUSES to serve her

..and then they have the fucking audacity to complain that we don’t accept their play money.

If you’ve got enough spare change lying around that you can afford to go all the way to London for a couple of boutique doughnuts to shove into your privileged face, then surely you have enough spare change to afford getting your play money changed to legal tender somewhere along the way — obviously having lots of spare change doesn’t equate to having any fucking intelligence.

As the Scottish still don’t understand after being told again, and again, and again, and again, let’s try it more simply… Your play money is legal to use as money in the UK if people are willing to accept it, but it is not legal tender and no one actually has to accept it.   Which is exactly the same as Monopoly money, as you can also buy doughnuts with Monopoly money but, likewise, only if all parties are in agreement.

That aside, who the fuck in their right mind would even think of going to London and paying £9.00 for 2 boutique doughnuts — for fucks sake — and then have the holier-than-though arrogance to complain to all and sundry about the service while most people in England have less than £9 to feed themselves for 2 days and many have far less than £9 and have to use foodbanks?   Only the privileged, strawberries and cream, Wimbledon cunts with more money than sense.

A special thank you goes out to the Daily Express for exposing these privileged cunts and the obscene disparity of wealth between the countries of the UK.

I actually learned to read using the Daily Express when i was 3 and 4 years old.   Tis true.   That’s how privileged — and intelligent — i am…

coz…

unlike Judy…

i am fucking special
 
Giz a donut!

Continued…

#5t4n5 #scottish #doughnuts #privilege #thoughts

What Fuckwit Arranged This?

Once upon a time big sporting events used to take each other into account and arrange things on different days.   Not any more.

In the information technology age, full of incredible computing superpower that can calculate pi to a billion places in 10 minutes and even beat a human at Scrabble all while streaming a show on Netflix, some fuckwit decided to pick this weekend to put on the Chinese Formula 1 Grand Prix, the USA MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 Grand Prix, and the Rome Formula E race.

And they even managed to muscle in on Paris Roubaix as well.

Now that is a proper royal clusterfuck of epic proportions for these great, world class, sporting events.

It really beggars belief that these fuckwits can’t just get together at some point during the year and work out between themselves not to trample over each other’s sport like this.

So i’m having to survive on a shit load of coffee until late Sunday evening.   #nosleeptillmonday

Ho hum!

#5t4n5 #fuckwits #formula1 #formulae #motogp #thoughts

Organ Donor UK

From 2020 the UK government have made a law that you will automatically be a body part donor in the event of your death whether you have chose to be or not.

Personally i find this disgusting.   That a bunch of politico cunts will lay claim to any or all of your body parts after you died as their property to do what they like with without your prior, voluntary consent is a step too far, and is, most certainly, another step closer to ‘Soylent Green’.

And what happens when someone important to the government wants a specific body part from a specific blood group, etc..   All your genetic, blood, tissue, etc., details are being collected into an ever expanding government database and whenever they require an organ from any specific type of person then it’s not too far fetched to imagine what can happen when they have deliberately and legally turned you into an organ harvesting animal at their disposal whenever they want — which is what this law does.

It’s all well and good if you don’t mind your body being chopped up and used however politicans decide their agents can use it, but if that’s the case then you should opt in, which has historically always been the case.   But it’s not the case any longer.   From 2020 the UK government will claim ownership over your whole body once you are dead and butcher it up like an animal carcass to do whatever they like with unless you specifically opt out.

You can do so by going to the “Register a decision not to donate” webpage of the NHS.

If the government was truly concerned about you, the people, then they would have created a completely different method of farming human organs: that of offering services in return to the donor.

It’s not too far fetched an idea that if the NHS uses any part of your body after you die then the government should pay a decent sum of money to the next of kin towards funeral/cremation costs of what remains after they’ve finished harvesting.   There’s always people complaining about the cost of funerals, so why not offer free cremations for all body part donors?   This will also have the effect of making people look after themselves a lot better because if their organs aren’t healthy then they won’t get used.   But this isn’t even an option.   The politicos will take whatever bits they want and send the bill to dispose of the rest to your next of kin.

It’s very simple, if enough people opt out then the government will have to change the system and start offering a fair price towards funeral/cremation costs for all body parts donated.   It really is that simple.

#5t4n5 #organharvesting #refusetodonate #soylentgreen #thoughts

Too Little Too Late

I just read this… “Zoopla bars ‘no housing benefit’ rental ads”

What strikes me as utterly shameful is this line…

Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee has launched an inquiry into discrimination against benefits claimants.

Like they really need an inquiry?   Another few years will go by and landlords will still be discriminating against people who claim benefits.   People on benefits have for decades been forced into substandard housing because that’s nice for the Government because they don’t have to pay as much housing benefit for sub standard housing.

All the time we hear the tired old crap of MP’s paying lip service about bad landlords with tenants being forced to live in squalor, while those same MP’s have done absolutely nothing whatsoever, for decades, to deal with the very situation that causes it.

We don’t need another pointless inquiry, what we need is legislation now that bans any prospective landlord from discriminating against any prospective tenant in this way.   This can be done immediately if the government are serious about it.   But they’re not.   What we need is legislation that bans anyone from discriminating against another human being for simply having to claim benefits.

It’s a very simple law to enact: if anyone is refused a tenancy on the grounds of race, sexuality, gender, religion, benefits, etc., then the landlord should have their property confiscated and handed over to the local council for social housing.   That would soon stop all this happening immediately.

But that won’t happen because the wealthy MP’s and their wealthy friends won’t like it.   So we’ll just have an inquiry and come up with some pointless recommendations that will be certain to not change anything whatsoever, and anyone who feels like it will be allowed to continue to discriminate against the poorest within our society.

#5t4n5 #benefits #socialhousing #thoughts

Cafe Culture

I wrote the following article a few years ago for another website which no longer exists.   But i still like it so i’m republishing it here…

So once again Starbucks are in the news…

‘Starbucks agrees to pay more corporation tax’.

What perplexes me is why so many people get their knickers in a twist about this and think that complaining about Starbucks’ tax avoidance is something to get all uppity about.

Let’s put it simply…   No one, other than a complete fool, pays taxes that they do not have to pay by law.

You show me one of these anti-corporate-tax-avoidance-protest-moaners who pays tax that they are not legally required to pay by law and you’ll show me a utter fool.   So why do they think that they have a moral right to start bitching and whining about others who do not pay tax that they are not legally required to pay by law?

Everyone does tax avoidance.   Tax avoidance is simply not paying taxes that the law does not require you to pay.   People who run their own businesses put every receipt (loss) that they are allowed to by law through their accounts to lower their tax requirements for the year, this is no different to any other business putting any receipt (loss) that they are allowed to by law through their accounts to lower their tax requirements for the year.

Yes, ok, one could argue about the level to which this is done by these huge multi-national corporations, but that isn’t the fault of the corporations, it’s the fault of the political classes who allow these loop holes in the tax laws to exist purely so that their own personal corporate investments can bring them bigger returns, and also to please their corporate masters who fund their election campaigns.   It’s not the corporations you should be complaining about, it’s the political classes who have their snouts in the corporate trough that are the problem.   And none of this is ever going to change while we have an unelected oligarchy/plutocracy/corporatocracy/ecclesiocracy, like the House of Lords (whose only purpose is to ensure that new legislation looks after corporate interests for the rich, wealthy and powerful), overseeing new legislation — but that’s another topic for another day.

What i want to rant about in this post is what is really annoying me about this Starbucks thing.   Yes, what annoys me more than politicos with their snouts in the trough, and the corporatocratic take over of the House of Lords, is that people are only boycotting Starbucks because of this tax thing; and they simply take their business elsewhere to other corporate clone outlets like Costa and Cafe Nero.   Like they think that makes them a bit more morally superior.   Well it doesn’t!

Every town that i’ve ever visited, and i’ve visited a lot of towns in my time, has a treasure trove of independent cafes and coffee shops that are small independent businesses that are fully part of their communities and only exist within their own communities.   So why is there even a discussion about Starbucks, et al, in the first place?

Next time you want a cuppa when you’re out and about, don’t got to a corporate clone outlet and look like a total fucking loser who thinks they’re in with the in crowd.   You’re not in with the in crowd, you’re just a stupid fucking herd animal that can’t think for yourself.   Instead, start frequenting your local, independent coffee shops and cafes, and get to know the owners and the staff and have a nice chat with nice people who are civilised and sociable and a real part of their communities.   There would be no corporate tax avoidance going on by these corporate clone coffee shops if everyone just used small independent coffee shops instead.   And you might even find that you will get a far nicer cup of coffee.

A good local cafe is run by local people for local people.   I’ve found many a local cafe/coffee shop with a notice board and leaflet shelves overflowing with local events, clubs, etc.. I’ve been in quite a few cafes that also serve as art galleries displaying local artists’ work for sale all over the walls.   And you can find good local cafes like this in every town if you just take a few moments to look around — and they’re not ripping millions out of the UK economy for their overseas, corporate masters’ profit margins.

So, have a good long think about where you’re going to buy your next cuppa when you’re and about next.   And remember, every penny you spend in life is a vote on how you want your world to be.   I’d like mine to be nice and local and lovely, but you can make your own choice.   Just don’t cry to me about Starbucks, i don’t care what Starbucks are doing with their profits because i don’t give them any.

Nuff said…

My next thought will be “Too Little Too Late”

#5t4n5 #coffee #thoughts

Privacy, Privacy, Privacy

The following is an old article i wrote way back when Edward Snowden was doing his thing, and as that website no longer exists i’m re-publishing it here for you to enjoy — or maybe not.

So are you sitting comfortably?

Then i’ll begin…

To be quite honest, i really don’t care about the NSA and GCHQ trawling through loads and loads of data and building ever bigger data farms, employing more and more staff while driving the U.S.A. & U.K. budget deficits ever higher.   I think the whole thing is quite amusing.

Take this article for example… ‘Google patents ad tech linking restaurant to taxi ride’.

I would hazard a guess that Google has far more information about people’s internet habits, email contacts (and contents), purchasing history, etc., than the NSA do.   If you could go and have a look through Google’s data farms you would find billions, maybe even trillions, of people’s emails; and not just the meta data but the full contents.   Every email on gmail is in a Google server farm somewhere, all of it: contents, contacts, meta data, ip addresses, and the full contents of the email message itself.

For Google to be investing into this ‘ad tech’ thing, and other future technology to such an extent, shows very clearly how much information they already have on people and their habits and contacts and whereabouts; and it also shows how much more information they’re likely to collect in the future.   There would be absolutely no point in patenting and developing these kinds of schemes if they didn’t already have access to any of the information needed to make them work.

The above Google example was just one example.   You can look around the internet and find many more examples of this kind of corporate data farming going on: social media corporations like facebook make the NSA look like rank amateurs at data collection and exploitation.

So why all the hoo-hah about the NSA and the government doing the same thing?

Nearly everyone is more than willing to hand over whatever data and personal information the corporations want from them, whenever they want it, simply at the claim of…

‘This helps to improve our services and give you,  the consumer,  a better experience while shopping at fuckmart.com.’

…followed by the ubiquitous, biblical fashion and length, terms and conditions that no one ever reads but we all tick the boxes accepting them anyway, accepting that the corporations can do whatever they like with our data just as long as they sell us the latest knick-knack or service at a good price.   We really don’t care when it comes to corporations gleaning as much personal information from us as it’s possible to glean.   The lengths that the corporatocracy go to to extract every last nuance of data from our lives is extra-ordinary, but we all turn a blind eye to it.

So what difference then that the government, essentially another corporate entity, does similar things in order to improve their services and provide you the citizen a better, safer experience living in your country?

There is no difference!!!

I suppose some might argue that corporate data farming isn’t being done at the tax payer’s expense — which is a fair point — but it is done at the consumer’s expense and either way you, the citizen/consumer, are paying extra for goods and services from the government/corporation to fund the data farming which the government/corporation would argue allows them to keep the prices down and offer you better goods and services for a better price.   Once again…

There is no difference!!!

So it’s a little retarded to allow a big supermarket to track your every purchase by giving you 1% off everything you buy with your loyalty card (that 1% having been added to the price of everything in the shop to fund the loyalty card program in the first place), and then to bitch because the government knows who you phoned last week when your phone company already stores all that information already.   And all that information can be stolen at will by any hacker or simply sold to the highest bidder by any poorly paid, disgruntled employee.

You see, the problem isn’t really whether the NSA should be farming all this data or not, because every organisation that wants to profit from and exploit you is doing it legally anyway and have been doing so for a very long time.   The NSA are mere amateurs at what corporations are expert in doing.   The problem is that our illusion that we actually have any privacy in this new information age has just been shattered for most people.   For some of us, we never had that illusion in the first place, so we really don’t care about what Snowden has revealed because we already knew that it was going on years ago.

And i just noticed that while i was busy writing all the above the BBC have also been busy writing…

‘After Snowden: How vulnerable is the internet?’

…which makes interesting reading.

I think that it’s fairly clear from this article that the NSA is only sifting through information that private corporations already control and have in their possession.   So why is it that people don’t think twice about allowing their private data to flow through private corporations, like ‘Level-3 Communications’, that they know nothing about, know nothing about who owns them or what their ultimate motive is?

As i alluded to earlier, if you’re willing to give all your private information to a corporate entity then you can’t really start bitching on about your privacy being eroded.

The one thing that stands out for me in the above article is the last few paragraphs…

“The Snowden revelations may lead to a change in how governments and large organisations use the internet.   There has been talk of the internet “breaking up” so that, for example, communications which start and end in Europe only travel along European cables.

“Data is power, and data is money,” security expert Bruce Schneier, who has analysed the Snowden documents for journalist Glenn Greenwald, told the BBC.

“These discussions about who has control of data are bigger than the NSA, bigger than surveillance, and they are the key questions of the information age.”

But technology experts say this would make business more difficult to carry out online and may make the easy global access to which we have become accustomed a thing of the past.

“I don’t think we know what the internet is going to transform into because of this,” Mr Schneier said.

I very much doubt for one moment that anyone is seriously considering ‘breaking up’ the internet in this way.   Too much is invested in this global entity.   And it’s not just about corporate global reach, but also the personal global reach of people.

I, like many other personal internet users, love the global reach of the internet.   I don’t want what i write in the UK to be limited to only those in the EU because some idiot is worried about their privacy being invaded.   I want what i write to be open to any computer anywhere in the world, and if that means the NSA and GCHQ’s computers, then so be it.   If people want total privacy then maybe i would suggest that you go away somewhere without phone lines and other modern conveniences and revert to living in the 18th century because modern life isn’t private and was never meant to be private.   The internet was designed and started up to share ideas and thoughts, and it’s doing that perfectly well and doesn’t need fixing because the NSA and GCHQ decided to poke their noses into some of those ideas and thoughts.   As far as i’m concerned they’re just as welcome to my ideas and thoughts as anyone else.

Now let’s look at these two paragraphs in particular…

“Data is power, and data is money,” security expert Bruce Schneier, who has analysed the Snowden documents for journalist Glenn Greenwald, told the BBC.

“These discussions about who has control of data are bigger than the NSA, bigger than surveillance, and they are the key questions of the information age.”

As it’s says, these discussions are bigger than the NSA and surveillance.

What i believe it comes down to is this thing that we have about privacy.

Before the internet we did most of our shopping in public, and we were all quite comfortable displaying our shopping habits in front of the whole world every Saturday.   Everybody used to be able to see what everyone else was buying, and everyone was comfortable with that.

Then comes the internet, and suddenly people had access to items that they didn’t have access to before and could purchase them without anyone they knew knowing about it: the sex toy industry has boomed into a multi billion dollar industry since internet shopping came online.

And somehow people have got themselves into this idea that when they purchase something on line that they have total privacy.   While they may be able to purchase the latest ‘Rampant Rabbit’ dildo vibrator, with batteries and water based anal lube in discrete packaging so the postman and their housemates won’t know, they seemed to have overlooked that every corporation that handled any part of the communications that made that transaction occur would know.   They completely ignore the fact that all their financial transactions would be kept in historic corporate records for many years to come, available to any hacker, spy or law enforcement official who wishes to have a look at it; or any disgruntled, underpaid employee who wants to sell it.

We used to use snail mail to communicate, and this was considered private, but i have known people who steam open people’s letters and others who claim to have opened them by mistake (when it was clearly done on purpose).   We accepted the risks of our snail mail being lost in the post, delivered to the wrong house, stolen, steamed open, opened by mistake (or not as the case may be).   Yet when people send an email they expect it to remain between the sender and the receiver as though this is some kind of natural human right bestowed upon them by some god like entity.   Like they never heard of copy/paste, forward, etc..

I think it’s time for people to stop externalising this debate onto the NSA and surveillance, and start to internalise it onto themselves and why they demand this complete privacy that has never existed in the first place.

I was born in a British Army hospital, i grew up in British Army housing in small British Army communities, and later served in the British Army.   I was also in a children’s home as a teenager and also lived in small communities as an adult.   With these parts of my life there was no privacy.   For the most part of my childhood i shared a room with my brother, and when i wasn’t sharing a room my mother would continuously be snooping through my things.

In a children’s home, once again, there was no privacy.   I shared a bedroom with 3 other boys and the other 6 boys that lived there would be in and out of our room whenever they felt like it.   We had no concept of privacy.   Everyone knew everyone else’s business, everyone knew why everyone else was in that children’s home.   There was a real feeling of honesty to it all, where nothing could be hidden from anyone.   Even if something was deemed private enough to be kept between a child and the staff, it wasn’t long before someone overheard a conversation and the whole place knew what was going on.

Then later i joined the army.   Many times i had to share a room with lots of other men with many others just walking in and out whenever they felt like — including NCO’s and officers going through all your cupboards and drawers during inspections: the intent to kill any idea of privacy that might have arisen.   There was no privacy, anything that anyone was going through was public knowledge and you just got on with that and accepted it as part of your life.

So for me, privacy isn’t something that i find to be a normal thing.   I’m used to having my life laid open for everyone to see.

So why is it that others seem to be so against this?   Maybe it’s because if you’ve lived the opposite life to mine, where all you’ve known is privacy, the idea that others would know the minutiae of your life must seem horrendous.

I fully accept that my upbringing built into my character an openness that few have.   It also built into my character a fucking good sense of humour and the ability to laugh at myself.   But i think, most importantly, that it also built into my character an awareness that we’re all different and that we all have our kinks and odd ways of doing things and that these oddnesses are what makes people interesting and should be accepted and celebrated, not dissed and shamed.

But for someone who has grown up within a private environment, in an oversized community like a city, then i would presume that the opposite would take effect.

There are way too many people these days who completely lack the ability to laugh at themselves, who lack a fundamental sense of humility, who lack openness, and who walk around judging anyone that displays the slightest hint of difference.   They, along with their friends, get their kicks out of watching reality TV shows, ridiculing and laughing at the weaknesses and quirks of others to distract attention away from their own weaknesses and quirks.   I would say that voyeurism is a fetish that is fuelled by privacy, and that it’s an unhealthy fetish.

If we look back over the centuries, back to when we used to live in tiny little hamlets, you will understand that people didn’t have any idea of the concept of privacy.   I’ve even heard it said, and experienced it myself in our current century, that within small communities everyone knows everyone else’s business, and that’s a perfectly normal thing and everyone is fine with that.   It’s only in the modern age of cities of millions where people become essentially anonymous — even to their immediate neighbour — that the idea of privacy has crept in.   Yet this privacy has not been a desire that has become the driving cause here, it’s been an effect that has been driven.   It’s been something that has come upon people through this anonymous lifestyle that big city living forces upon them.   Because, in the city, you cannot know the other million people and they cannot know you, so privacy is something that has become an effect of this, not a cause of it.

Which means that what we should be asking is, ‘Is privacy healthy for our societies?’   Is it healthy for us as individuals?   I would say, no, it isn’t.

Anything that leads to reclusive, secretive, ashamed behaviour is not good for any individual, and that is exactly where privacy leads.   And if millions of individuals are being cast into anonymity and privacy by a city lifestyle then that society is going to suffer as the individuals who make it also suffer.

I lived in London for 12 years, and i have to say that it was the loneliest time of my life.   It was unhealthy for me, and for everyone else there.   To live in an environment where the strangers around you simply become objects that you’re not able to communicate with is totally messed up.   It leads to stuff like paranoia and depression, and you can see this written on so many faces in big cities.

So back to the NSA… essentially governments are incredibly secretive.   Anyone who seeks to rule you is not going to be honest to you — that is a fact!   Those in power have just one goal, to retain that power.   And the desire to retain power is no different than the fear of losing power.   And the fear of losing power leads to all kinds of aberrant behaviour and thoughts — which must be kept secret in order to retain the power.   This inevitably leads to paranoia, which then inevitably leads to the voyeurism towards those you wish to control.

Essentially, the NSA is nothing but the biggest bunch of screwed up, paranoid voyeurs the world has ever know.   The fear that must lie at the heart of the US Government to be so utterly paranoid to resort to the level of voyeurism that the NSA is resorting to is unhealthy.   But the voyeurism isn’t what should be being tackled as that’s only a symptom, and the fear that lies at the heart of the US Government isn’t what needs to be tackled, because that’s only a symptom also.   What needs to be tackled is privacy itself.

Only in a world where there is no privacy, are there no secrets.   Only in a world with no secrets will there truly be an opportunity for peace.   Until then, privacy will create fear, and fear will create paranoia, and paranoia will create conflict.

I’m not saying we can change the whole world.   But each of us can change our little bit of it.   Really, give up worrying that some screwed up, paranoid voyeurs, like the NSA staff, are listening to your phone calls, or looking through your emails.   Give up privacy, give up fear, find peace in openness and humility.

Until next time…

And the next time thought is “Cafe Culture”

#5t4n5 #edwardsnowden #government #politics #privacy #thoughts

What Gender Is That Then?

Another old post that continues on from “Same Sex Marriage”:

It seemed to me when i wrote that article that the BBC were being apologists for transphobic and homophobic points of view, and it still does, even more so after doing a little more research.   Not only did the BBC not look very deeply into what human society means when they use the term male and female, they never looked into what it means in the natural world either.   So i’ve done a tiny bit of research into Nature’s genderqueer/genderfluid/trans community.

Strangely enough, the first example is from the BBC, which demonstrates quite clearly that the BBC science department is fully aware that gender and sexuality are not as simple as male/female, hetero/homo.   So why is it that the rest of the BBC don’t include any of this scientific stuff when they write an article on same sex marriage?   Oh yeah, i remember, the people writing the original BBC articles on gay marriage were obviously transphobic and homophobic themselves.

So first up, Neotrogla.

“Females have penises in sex-reversed cave insects”.

So, the females have the penises and the females get pregnant.   I like the fact that as soon as the female of one species gets evolutionary control of the penis it becomes barbed and the males get fucked continuously for up to 70 hours wherein he is drained half to death as the female fucks and sucks every bit of nutrition she can get out of him.   Go girls!!!

Then we have the seahorse.   In seahorses the females don’t have a penis, neither do the males, but the males get pregnant and give birth a few weeks later to live young: “Seahorse Facts”.

Apparently when there aren’t any females around some males will turn into fully reproductive females that can then get the other males pregnant.

Butterflies and birds can be half male half female with one side of the animals demonstrating male colours and the other side female.

Clown Fish have a dominant male and female in each group which do all the breeding.   If the dominant female dies then the dominant male will become the dominant female and one of the adolescent males will become the dominant male.

Hamlet Fish have both male and female fully functioning sex organs, although they cannot self fertilise themselves, when they mate they take turns at being the girl and boy.   Sweet!

Banana Slugs are similar to Hamlet Fish with the benefit that they can fertilise themselves if need be.   Oh the joy of having to consider birth control methods when masturbating.

Over 70% of male bass in USA waters are now found developing eggs in their testes.

Male frogs that have been exposed to a common pesticide called atrazine can become fully functioning reproductive females.

The bass and the frogs clearly demonstrating how susceptible our sexuality, sex organs and gender identity can be to the substances that we absorb from our environment/food.

The above list is not by any means the limit, that’s just a small little bit of research to show what Nature’s views on gender, sex and sexuality are, there are many more examples if one just cares to open ones eyes and look.   Things only survive in Nature if the phenotypes benefit the species, so if these species are surviving then there must be some benefit to the species for gender/sex variance, and that gender/sex variance is perfectly natural and perfectly normal within Nature for it to have survived for so long.

Why then would any intelligent society even be listening to, let alone publishing, the views of bigots who want to ban all forms of gender/sex variance because it doesn’t conform to some idea that they claim was written 3000 years ago, in a country 3000 miles away, whose capital city only had a population of 3000, and whose understanding of the natural world you could have written on the back of a postage stamp with a marker pen?   Should we really be basing our laws, our world view, our social ethics and morality upon the word of some despotic tribal chieftain from so long ago, so far away, who had the intelligence level of a modern 8 year old, who still thought his city was the actual centre of the universe and the world was a flat disk?

Next up is “Privacy, Privacy, Privacy”

#5t4n5 #gender #lgbtq

Understanding the Complexities of Gender

Following on from my ‘Same Sex Marriage’ article is a ‘TEDx’ talk by Sam Killermann, who is a comedian and social justice advocate, and the guy behind ‘It’s Pronounced Metrosexual’.

Enjoy…

 

Certainly a bit of food for thought for those of you who still think that gender is a simple binary system of either male or female and that every single one of us has to live in only one of those two boxes our whole lives.   Well it isn’t, and we don’t!   And also food for thought for those of you who still think that how we express our gender defines our sexuality — it doesn’t!   Just because i’ve got a mini skirt on does not mean i want to have sex with a man — understand?   If you don’t understand, go back and watch the video again.

Open your minds a little and see the world in a much more wonderful way.   A world where people aren’t defined by what genitalia they have or haven’t got, but a world where people are defined by who they are and who they chose to be within any given moment.

On a side note… i do really like Sam’s presentation of this.   The way he jumps between prose and poetry and back again is just delightful and gives what is a very serious topic a nice light-hearted approach, which i hope makes more people pay attention and listen than otherwise would.

Next up is “What Gender Is That Then?”

#5t4n5 #gender #lgbtq

Same Sex Marriage

Another post from the past that i’m re-publishing.

Enjoy…

Once again the absolute best journalists the BBC has to offer have written an article that i just can’t help but add to.

‘The people who oppose the gay marriage law’.

It seems to me that the article is nothing but the BBC pandering to homophobic bigots, because i don’t see any counter argument against any of the bigotry that is being presented.   And it is bigotry.   Oh sure, you can dress it up as being faithfully religious if you like, but people who hide behind an archaic ideology that has no relevance whatsoever in the 21st century in order to justify intolerance and discrimination are nothing but bigots.

Let’s look at this in a little more detail, let’s provide a little journalistic endeavour to this article and see where it leads.   Because one thing’s for sure, the BBC journalists certainly did not apply any journalistic endeavour towards their article.

So basically, according to the homophobic bigots, if one of you has female on your birth certificate and the other has male on it, then marriage is ok.   If they both have the same sex, then it isn’t.   But just because a birth certificate states something doesn’t mean it is true.   A birth certificate is simply a piece of paper issued by the political state for their own political purposes, and is not, and never has been, approved by any god for the followers of their religion to be used to judge, approve or oppress anyone.

Where, in any religion, does it state that the clergy should ask the political state to intervene on the sex judgement of those that the clergy are marrying?   Because that’s what the clergy are doing when they refer to a birth certificate.

I can absolutely guarantee that all of these religions who are so opposed to same sex marriage have performed many same sex marriages without their knowing.   Why?   Because they have no way of knowing if the birth certificate is accurate and true.   They also have no way of knowing about anyone born with an intersex condition, or if that intersex condition has been defined correctly on their birth certificate.

You can read all about intersex here.   Go on, educate yourself and be a lot wiser.   And the next time some ignorant, homophobic bigot tries to tell you how utterly sinful same sex marriage is, you’ll have plenty of ammunition for your debate.

Oh, if only sex and gender could be defined so easily as male or female.   Nature simply isn’t like that.   Depending on what scale you judge intersex on, you could be looking at up to 2% of the population with some kind of physical intersex condition.   That’s a lot of people!

Sex and gender is a spectrum, not a binary objective that we all either fit this one or that one.   This is a fact!   And more and more science is proving this fact again and again.   The only people who don’t accept this are bigots, totally ignorant, retarded bigots.

And how many transgender people have been married who have had their documents changed to reflect their new gender identity?   Do any of these religions have any idea on how many trans men have been married by them to cis women and vice versa?   I doubt it.

Moving along…

The other point that the wonderful incredible BBC journalists fail to look further into in a journalistic way in this whole article is the procreation aspect presented in the homophobic bigots’ arguments…

We read in part 1, this…

“Marriage is a unique kind of relationship that involves a man and a woman and their ability to create new life in the form of children,” says O’Reilly.   “The church isn’t looking to impose its understanding of marriage on others, but it is looking for its understanding of marriage to be protected.”

And from part 2…

“The main reason for the state to be involved with marriage is children,” says Prof David Paton, an industrial economics lecturer at the University of Nottingham and a supporter of the Coalition for Marriage, a group arguing that traditional marriage is beneficial to society and would be undermined by a definitional change.   “It seems reasonable for the state to treat the one type of relationship from which children can directly result in a different way to others, and this is the basis for marriage laws,” says Paton.

So let’s look at this a little closer…

Is this what marriage is really about?   I know people who have been married for years and years and have never had children and do not want children.   So why did the priest or registrar marry them and why isn’t the church or government annulling their marriage?   Surely, if the religious/political argument against same sex marriage is that they can’t have children and that the sanctity of marriage should be protected for only those lucky few who can actually have children together, they should make sure that only fertile people are allowed to marry and that they should produce a child within a certain period of time else their marriage shall be null and void in the eyes of the lord and the state.

But they’re not doing that.   These churches, and the political state, very clearly don’t care whatsoever as to whether two people they marry are capable of producing a child, or if they are capable whether they actually want to have a child. So why is this point of view, that marriage should be about the production of children, being used by the bigots now when it very clearly has never been the case for either church or state to insist on the production of children for a marriage to be valid?

One should also ask whether the church considers the intervention of science with IVF, allowing two people to produce a child, counts in their proper marriage thing.   Because one thing is for sure, that those people could not, just like two men could not, or two women could not, produce a viable living human child without the intervention of modern science.   So are these homophobic bigots calling for the annulment of marriages that use IVF to produce children?   No they’re not.   But it’s reasonably feasible for two women to make a baby using IVF techniques, so why can’t they be married the same as a male/female couple who had to use IVF to produce a child?

And if it is all about raising children and being a family, then why can’t two gay men who are raising a child (whether adopted or from a previous relationship or surrogate) be allowed to marry in the same way a man and a woman who have had to adopt because IVF didn’t work or for some other reason?

To sum up…

Sex and gender are quite complex topics and they should not be given over to ignorant, retarded bigots to define how they are treated by society as a whole.   I’m sure that 2 or 3 thousand years ago, when we were not much more highly educated than chimpanzees, we could only manage to comprehend gender as either being male or female.   It either clearly has a penis, or a vagina, and anything else is obviously the result of sorcery, and/or evil malignant spirits, and must be drowned at birth.   Keep it simple for the morons.   But this isn’t 2 or 3 thousand years ago and i don’t think that people who chose to follow a narrow minded, world view, that was defined in dark ages of unadulterated ignorance no better than a baboon’s, should be allowed to go around freely spouting their retarded, homophobic bigotry at all and sundry.

I did find Rupert Everett’s bit to be about the only piece in the whole thing with any level of intelligence…

Actor Rupert Everett perhaps gave the most colourful argument against, in a 2012 interview in the Guardian.   “I loathe heterosexual weddings.   The wedding cake, the party, the champagne, the inevitable divorce two years later.   It’s just a waste of time in the heterosexual world, and in the homosexual world I find it personally beyond tragic that we want to ape this institution that is so clearly a disaster.”

More interesting thoughts on the topic of gender and sex to follow in the next article.

Next up is “Understanding the Complexities of Gender”

#5t4n5 #politics #government #lgbtq

Cynical Is Me

Another old blog post i wrote years ago that is still as relevant today as ever was.   The Westminster actors may change but the scripted crap that comes out of mouths is just the same as it ever was.

Sitting comfortably?

Then let’s begin…

So Blunkett doesn’t like people expressing a valid opinion about politics and politicians: “David Blunkett attacks ‘cynicism’ of Russell Brand and Will Self”.

Hardly surprising that the political class don’t like having their boat rocked, now is it?

While i really don’t like the leftist drivel that spews forth from the likes of Brand and Self, i do agree with some of what they say.   It is pretty much pointless voting in this country because those who get elected do not listen at all to those who elected them.   They make lots of promises on their election campaigns only to renege on them as soon as they get elected.   They’re far more interested in listening to lobbyists than they are their constituents, and why wouldn’t they be?   When political party funding is absolutely crucial to get elected it makes complete sense to do what you’re asked by those who fund you rather than those who vote for you.

Furthermore, Blunkett seems to be stuck in this idea that what we have in the UK is a democracy.

Guess what?

It isn’t!

Our first past the post electoral system sees the vast majority of votes go straight into the bin and ignored.   For example, if your constituency results are Conservatives 35%, Labour 32%, Lib Dem 23% and Others 10%; then the Conservatives will win with their measly 35% and all the rest of the votes will be totally disregarded and count for nothing whatsoever.   Think about that, 65% of that ballot will go in the bin.   Now how is that democratic to return a Conservative MP when 65% of those who voted didn’t want a Conservative MP in the first place?

Now let’s also consider the amount of people who didn’t vote in the above scenario.   Consider that the above ballot was only a 55% turn out, then that makes the amount of people who were eligible to vote who voted for a Conservative MP to be only 19.25%.   So now we have a situation whereby 80.75% of the electorate did not want a Conservative MP, yet that Conservative MP will still claim to be democratically elected representative of his constituency even though more than 4/5th of the electorate did not want them to be their MP.

And i’m not making these figures up or exaggerating them for dramatic effect.   Go check the polling figures from the last general election in the UK.

No wonder that politicians don’t listen to the electorate when all they really need to get elected in this country is about 20% of the vote.   They just pander to their demographic and don’t care about the rest who get no representation whatsoever.

And then they have the nerve to criticise us for not voting.

And maybe another reason people don’t vote is because they simply do not want to be ruled by 650 arrogant sociopaths/pyschopaths in Westminster.   Where does Blunkett mention the idea that people just might not want to be ruled by people like him and his mates?   He doesn’t mention it because he’s power-crazy and just wants as many people agreeing to his idea of how the country should be run because he’s one of the people running it.

If more people keep abstaining from voting there will come a time when the question has to be addressed on whether or not they have a quorum to continue governance in the manner that they so love.   And that time, as far as i’m concerned, has passed.

It also comes down to the ethics of passing laws upon people.   If you don’t vote then they have no ethical right whatsoever to pass laws upon you because you didn’t consent to their system.   Yes, admittedly, they can resort to using might to enforce their laws upon you, but that’s a fundamentally different thing to having the ethical right.

What it boils down to simply is this: they have no ethical authority over anyone who doesn’t vote because, by not voting, they haven’t consented to be governed by those elected.   So, of course, they’re going to bitch on about people not voting and, in some countries, pass laws to punish people who don’t vote.   They want nothing more than for you to give them the ethical right to govern you through your consent.

And make no mistake about it, when you mark that ballot paper you are consenting fully and freely to that electoral process and in so doing you are consenting fully and freely to be ruled by whoever is declared the winner of that political process for as long as the term that is covered by that election.

In a modern connected country like the UK, there is no need for only 650 people making these laws any more.   We have the technology to put every law to a referendum, so why don’t we do that?   Why can’t we start having referendum politics where everyone in the country gets to have a say — including children because it’s their future that’s being voted away.   Everyone could be given a secure internet account and any law suggested could be put onto a website, each person could then vote how they wished on every suggested law.

If you’re going to cry “We’re a democracy and everyone should vote” argument, like Blunkett and his pals seem so keen to do, then make it a real democracy.   Let us all have a true vote in everything, Mr Blunkett, and you can go and retire somewhere and leave us all in peace to run our own country without you and the other 649 power-crazy, arrogant cunts telling us how to live every day of our lives.

Nuff said!

Next up is “Same Sex Marriage”

#5t4n5 #politics #government #dontvote