British Crime Survey
The British Crime Survey has been released and interestingly states that "The BCS excludes.... those crimes termed as victimless (e.g. possession of drugs)"
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109vol1.pdf
Robbed from Transform:
'Victimless' is an interesting phrase, not one used in jurisprudence, that is essentially political - tending to be flagged up as part of moves towards criminal penalties being removed (it rather reminded me of the old 'no victim, no crime' cannabis campaign stickers). Its inclusion here perhaps reflects the wider trend towards acknowledging personal drug use is not rightly the subject of criminal sanction even if it is the subject of social or state disapproval in one form or other. This is more than a purely intellectual trend as actual or de-facto decriminalisation of personal possession and use of drugs taking place in much of Europe and around the world.
Where this leads intellectually is also an interesting question; if possession and consenting adult use is not criminal, what are the implications for commercial drug transactions between consenting adults, that also have no obvious victim? The statistical crime bulletin could very soon be largely just blank pages.
Development aid damages Africa
I've just been reading this, I know it's a few months old but I found it interesting enough to post here.
stop_giving_aid_to_africa_it_s_just_not_working
It is worth noting that she is referring to development aid which is given to governments and not money that is given via charities.
Zambian economist, Dambisa Moyo, says that Africa has not benefitted by development aid from the west - quite the opposite - it has caused damage. Research has shown that 85% of development aid doesn't get used for its intended purpose, it simply gets used to fund corruption and the luxurious lifestyles of leaders. She argues that if the west pulled the plug on development aid then only "the elite will feel the pain. The poor won't even notice the difference. It's not like they ever saw any of that money anyway."
The concequenced of development aid are..
"First and foremost the widespread corruption. The people in power plunder the treasury and the treasury is filled with development aid money. The corruption has contaminated the whole of society. Aid leads to bureaucracy and inflation, to laziness and inertia. Aid hurts exports. Thanks to foreign aid the people in power can afford not to care about their people. But the worst part of it is: aid undermines growth. The economies of those countries that are the most dependent on foreign aid have shrunk by an average of 0.2 percent per year ever since the seventies."
Green Democracy
As we all know, the government are going to go ahead and spend billions of pounds of our money on wind farms. Due to the unpopularity of onshore wind farms in particular, they have decided to further stifle the democratic process by reforming the planning system to take power away from local authorities and people. It will give more planning power to central government so that they can bulldoze ahead and install onshore wind farms at the expense, and against the wishes, of local people.
Many people that live close to them complain that wind farms are noisy and ugly. They generate very little power (none when it's not windy enough). They are also unlikely to be economically viable which is why your energy bills are going to increase by hundreds of pounds a year, on top of the ever increasing 'green taxes'.
Here is the more detailed Telegraph report.
Bullshit of the week
This morning on the M42 I saw a tanker lorry with a sticker on the back proclaiming "Go Green with DHL! This truck has been limited to 85kph to save emissions....".
Just like every other lorry in the country then (by law)..
“Babes of the BNP”
I found this: http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/07/babes-of-the-bnp/ (Via The Devil's Kitchen) today.
Vice Magazine interviewed 3 "babes" (note the use of quote marks there) about their support for the BNP. The best part by far is the classic line;
Yeah. I wouldn’t mind [immigrants] if they actually worked and didn’t take all of our jobs, basically.
Ahh, you want them to work AND not work! I can see how many immigrants are having trouble gaining your approval.
It's frankly a crying shame how organisations like the BNP are gaining support on the back of real concerns people have about the level (real or imagined) of immigration into the country, the perceived effect this has on unemployment, and the problems of integration and social cohesion. These are genuine concerns to a great many people, but the likes of the BNP are taking advantage of the uninformed to pursue their pretty-much white supremacist ideals.
Now, I come from what could be considered a "very white town" (I don't live there any more) and the supposed "immigrant family living off benefits" that BNP supporters like to talk about is, in my mind, a fiction. There are a great many families and people living on benefits, sometimes for generations, and in my experience these people are predominantly white. This "white town" of which I speak has the same problems with crime (of all varieties), welfare dependance etc etc as anywhere else, which suggests to me that immigrants are not the cause of these problems. It's all to easy to find scapegoats for all of one's ills, and people like the BNP are accelerating the process, and by trying to find and 'deal with' scapegoats all these people are ignoring the real causes of these problems, whatever they may be.
Anyway, extending my "UKIP theory" from the show a few months ago; it is strongly in the BNPs interest for there to be real or imagined racial strife in their heartlands, the more 'trouble' there is the stronger their support becomes. That being the case, what possible reason is there for the BNP either now or in the terrible and unlikely event of them gaining any power, for them to 'solve' any of the problems that they bang on about anyway?
“BT Business Direct”- useless, useless, useless
When I'm not doing radio, sometimes I'm the IT man for my workplace, and we currently need to seriously upgrade one of our computers. "No problem", I thought, and went to dabs.com, an online computer and parts retailer that used to be good. Dabs was bought out by BT (the multiheaded British Telecom company, for those who don't know) some years ago, and now the business arm has been rebranded as BT, complete with pictures of grinning chimp-like folk happily using laptops on the front page, and inducements for me to take out their crappy broadband service. Ho-hum.
I select the motherboard, processor etc that I want, and go to check out. It asks me if I have a "BT Business Direct username"; I don't. It transpires, after filling in the long form to register, that my old Dabs details are still on the system (it tells me this by saying "account already exists with this email address" blah blah).
Time to check out. My company credit card is refused by "Verified by Visa", which is completely unable to handle the concept of a company credit card; it asks me for my date of birth (which companies don't have) and then falls over, accusing me of fraud. I try again with a personal credit card, which is of course registered to my home address. When I try to change the 'billing address', it changes everything except the postcode, which is still set to my workplace. It has changed the delivery address in the same way, even though the billing and delivery addresses are displayed seperately and have seperate buttons to change them. It is at this point that I notice the site has increased the delivery charge from £3 to £8 for "super ultra speedy nutter delivery" or somesuch bollocks.
I change the delivery address back to my work, and this also fucks up the billing address, making it a mish-mash of the two addresses.
I give up and order from Misco instead, cheaper.
Welcome to the new blog
Finally, we have the blog up and running. We'll be updating this a few times a week with info on things that we intend on talking about on the shows.