UK Un-Cunts

There were protests yesterday outside banks by members of UK Uncut dressed as doctors, protesting about "tax evasion" by the banks, and their role in the credit crunch, and hence their perceived role in the (non-existient) cuts to the NHS [Link]. First of all, like I've said before, the NHS is a Stalinist organisation which puts money before patients all the time, and fails in patient healthcare compared to the systems in most other developed countries, and thus needs to be euthanized, but I've already talked about it here. 

The protesters do have a point, in saying that big businesses tend to pay less tax than small ones, due to offshore 

accounts in tax havens and so on. However, the argument isn't to make them pay more tax, but for the small 

businesses to pay less. The government knows that without these tax "loopholes", the places like Topshop, 

Vodafone etc. wouldn't do business in the UK at all, so they would get more tax revenue if they allow these

companies to exploit these loopholes. This however makes it harder for the small business to compete, so it would

be fair to lower taxes to smaller businesses as well. However, I'm sure this has more to do with big business 

"lobbying", and less to do with the economic ineptness of politicians. The point is that instead of defending stupid,

inept public organisations like the NHS, they should be defending tax cuts for small businesses, which will then 

increase employment, increase tax revenue, and make us all better off as a result

Superinjunctions still suck

It's kinda worrying these days when even the Daily Mail is championing free speech, but here we are. The main argument for superinjunctions, especially in the Ryan Giggs case, is that it's "not in the public interest". This is the type of snobbery we have come to expect from the so called "liberal elite" (ironic as they're not liberal, and they're not elite), who look down their noses at the millions of people who read The Sun etc. The idea that we should scrutinize every story and determine whether the public have a "right to know" about it is something that would happen in communist China, not in the UK, the birthplace of the enlightenment. If that were to happen, The Sun would just be printed on a sheet of A4, with the weather, a crossword and a page 3 girl. I understand the "right to privacy", but in my view (and the view of the Irish courts as well, which are also bound by the ECHR), injunctions can only occur when somebody has hacked your phone, email, bank accounts etc. Only when the law has been broken then should you have to justify "public interest". Of course defending the right to publish kiss-and-tell stories about footballers won't get many people riled up, but when we have cases like this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391918/New-gagging-order-row-erupts-Court-hear-sensitive-sex-case-secret.html, Fred the Shred raping the taxpayers and having an affair at the same time, Trafigura, and Gordon Ramsay firing two people from his company, then it's obvious the law is an ass.
  Also good on Lib Dem MP John Hemming for naming Ryan Giggs. He named him not because of the kiss-and-tell story, but because he was trying to sue people on Twitter for mentioning him (which is in the public interest), who might not even know the injunction exists. Also Giles Coren is under legal action for saying Gareth Barry has cheated on his wife, but the courts would not be allowed to name Coren, because it would break Barry's injunction. Hence we have the farcical situation where we wouldn't know who was being prosecuted, and nor would we know what he was prosecuted for. This is not open justice, and hence this is the real reason why injunctions suck.

Money-grabbing Councils #1

There is an article in the Daily Mail about a street in Camden which has so many roadsigns it confuses motorists (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392006/Revealed-The-5m-raised-camera-Britain-s-baffling-road.html). The really annoying thing about this story is that before all the roadsigns, there was a bollard and traffic lights, which seemed to work fine. Now they've removed them and put up so many restriction signs, that it catches out on average 800 motorists per month (over 25 per day). The council even have the cheek to say "The signs stating the restrictions are clear to motorists". Well obviously they're not, if 1 person an hour is caught out by them. If they actually cared about traffic management, they would think "Obviously this isn't working, well have to simplify the system". However, the fact that they haven't shows that they are motivated not by serving the people, but by greed.

Libraries suck

Hello trolls,

I was walking through Birmingham the other day and walked past the construction site for the new "Library of Birmingham". The design of the proposed building does look impressive, but I wonder will anybody actually use it? The only library I've used in the past 5 years is the one at University, and I don't really see the point in spending £193 million on a library. Especially now I think the classic version of a library will soon become obsolete, with the internet providing the information we need for research, which is more up to date and more readily available. If you're going to make the point that "how can poor kids afford to read books without a library?", then that's what school libraries are for. And anyway, with £193million, you  could buy almost 1.75million Kindles. It would be more cost effective, and more fun and practical, to give every school child in Birmingham a Kindle then to invest it in this stupid building. And anyway, why should government fund libraries anyway? If there was a public demand to rent books, then a private company would have done it, and probably much better (like a LOVEfilm for books). These companies might even exist if the government stops it monopoly on book lending.  And if we cared about the poor so much, why doesn't the government instead not take £190 from every man, woman and child who lives in Birmingham, and allows them to instead spend it on things they actually want. Like food.

Ken Clarke is not evil

Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, today has been brandished a "danger to women", and is under pressure to resign, after he suggested that some rapes were worse than others, and that he was considering halfing jail time for rapists who admitted guilt. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3588801/Sex-attack-victim-demands-Ken-Clarke-sacking-for-endangering-women.html)

First of all, all rapes are bad, whether they're committed by your boyfriend when he's drunk, to being committed by a family member, to being ambushed by someone in a dark alley. All are crimes. However, in our legal system, rightly or wrongly, some rapes would be considered more serious than others, as different rapists would get different jail sentences, depending on the circumstances/likelihood to re-offend. It doesn't mean some of them aren't serious. However, if you think all rapes, whatever the circumstances, should get the same jail sentence, it's unfair to criticise Ken Clarke, your critisisms should be going to the judges instead.

It is very opportunistic for Jack Straw to criticize Clarke for his comments, saying that "The exact circumstances may have varied, but the profound emotional damage, the violation, was the same.", basically saying that all rapes should be treated equally. If he really felt that way when he was justice secretary, he would have put in minimum sentences for rapists. As it turns out he isn't, so he is nothing more than a hypocrite. 

Clarke was also criticized for suggesting that sentences should be cut by half for those who plead guilty at the first opportunity. Again, he was referring to all crimes not just rapes. I don't agree with it personally, but I understand his logic when it comes to rape crimes. There is something like 6% of reported rapes lead to a conviction. (However, 60% of those charged are convicted (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8319/). Rape crimes, due to their nature, are hard to convict for as it is hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. That means there are a lot more rapists out there, and I understand the reasoning that it is better for those to be in prison (even for half the time) compared to not being in prison at all. Although, I would still suggest that it probably wouldn't make a difference, as only those with the most evidence against them would plead guilty, as again rapes are very hard to prove.

But anyway, again he is critised by Labour, even though pleading guilty will reduce your sentence by a third anyway under the current rules, which were inherited from Labour. Even before the Clarke situation,  Sadiq Khan the shadow justice secretary said that we should be "jailing fewer people", and Ed Milliband said that we should have shorter sentences (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/dan-hodges/2011/05/ken-clarke-labour-policy). Again, I don't think Ken Clarke has done much wrong personally, he was only stating what the courts have done for years, when it came to different sentences for different rapes (although the way he said it wasn't voter-friendly), and whilst I don't agree with it, reducing the jail term by half instead of a third (16% less jail time), I don't think matters that much anyway. It just exposes, again, how much of a slimeball Ed Milliband and his hypocrites "R" us Labour crew are.

Lets make homeowners very poor, and destroy the greenbelt at the same time

The price of housing has gone up roughly 3 fold in the last 15 years (adjusted for inflation). The reason why this is not because bricks have become really expensive, it's because there us a shortage of supply. The low supply is not because our island is "full", but because planning permission is really expensive an hard to get, hence making it harder to build houses than what it should be. The consequences of this action is that it made homeowners really rich, especially at the higher end of the scale. It also meant only te middle-classes could pit down deposits before the age of 30, putting those homeowners on the lower end of the scale in a lifetime of debt, increasing rents (hence making it harder to save for a deposit), and therefore creating less of an incentive for those in council housing to move out, hence decreasing the supply of council houses for those who need it. Overall this has reduced social mobility, and it's all the fault of the "fights of the working class", New labour.

Because of this the government do token schemes, like "part rent/part buy", but the biggest help would be if they got rid of all the planning permission, taxes and energy assessment which stop houses being made. I could accept house prices going up due to increased prices of materials etc, but when it is being done Artificially, by the direct actions of a mainly pretend "progressive" government (although the coalition have not done anything different) just to win the votes of the "squeezed middle" (read: the voters which labour/conservatives need to win elections), then these people can fuck
Off. Let's build more houses on the green belt. It's better to have more people in affordable homes, than for a rich people to have a nice view from their estate (only 5% of the country live in rural areas anyway, and it's mainly the roh)

The truth about tuition fees

There is an article today in the Guardian with the headline "Richest students to pay for extra places at Universities"(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/09/universities-extra-places-richest-students). Invariably when somebody reads this headline they'll probably think 'Robbing bastards, now only the rich can afford to go to University, Tory scum". However, once you read the article, you realize that it is actually the poorest students that will benefit the most, as I will explain.


Currently each Uni course has to fill a quota of about 50-60% I think on average for "UK" students. These students pay NOTHING up front, and they get a stipend/loan to pay for living costs as well, but may have to pay up to 9k per year plus their living costs back if they have enough money after graduation, which is still heavily subsidized and taken out of their wages just like any other tax. If you can't pay it eventually it is written off. The rest is formed of EU (which pay 9k upfront) and non-EU students, who can pay from 12k-28k per year depending on the course. The scheme which the government are announcing is that the UK students who can afford the full fees (that is 12-28k per year) upfront, can apply for places outside the UK quota system, that is apply like an international student. This will help the poorest UK students for 3 reasons:

1.   This will free up places in the quota system, therefore allowing some students to study a course they would not otherwise had the opportunity to study

2. The Uni will make more money from these rich UK students, hence more money will be invested in the course overall, and therefore more places will be available as a result (even for the normal UK students, as there is a quota system).

3. UK students funded by charities and businesses will now be able to register as "international", rather than UK like they did before, and pay the full fees. As these charities/businesses tend to fund the poorer students, the amount of poorer students at university will increase anyway. This will also free up places in the quota for more students.

Therefore don't believe what the headline says. This government proposal will undoubtedly increase social mobility, not decrease it.