Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Following the initial meeting last Tuesday, the Pro Life Through Pro Choice campaign finally launched today. The campaign is to promote the idea that pro choice does not mean anti life (whereas those who traditionally describe themselves as pro life generally are anti choice) and that the abortion issue is a serious one which needs to be approached with an open mind.

I’m just listening to the news on 6Music and they are talking about the fact the MOD has lost loads of personal data again.

The story leads, “serial incompetance is how the Conservates described it.”

I mean, what is the point? Who cares what the Conversatives think? If you give it some thought, they are obviously going to be condemning it. But why make a big issue that the Conversatives happen to say that? I’m sure most people condemn it. How is such news reporting doing anything than stiring up trouble?

Surely if the BBC wants to report on the issue as unbiased balanced report should be the way forward. Why don’t they get someone on to say “actually, I think it’s great the MOD lost everyone’s personal data.”

Obviously the answer is, because that’s just retarded. Nobody would say that because it’s not an issue, it’s something that happens and the fact that the Conversatives also happen to condemn it along with everyone else in the country, isn’t news. It’s just cheap, intellectually bankrupt journalism.

I’m not going to use the phrase economic crisis because we’re not in one. Everything is fine. The only reason we’re in a recession because we decided to call it a recession which then scares everyone and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I would however like to throw a few ideas out there on the current economic climate.

Government’s all over the world are in the middle of nationalising banks. Like everywhere. Iceland’s Glitnir, which I’m told was a rather large bank, has recently been nationalised. Here in the UK, Bradford & Bingley have just gone. We’re still bailing out Northern Rock. Me, my tax money is bailing them out.

Point is, this isn’t how a free market capitalist economy is supposed to work. There shouldn’t be government bail outs, a free market only really works when the market is free. Companies go down, other companies take their place, circle of life and all that jazz.

Surely the way to encourage economic growth in such times is to increase the capitalist freedoms and reduce the socialist state rather than the current trend of increasing the socialist state with government bailouts and suprise taxes. Slash taxes, slash minimum wage, make it more profitable to actually generate profit than go cap in hand to the government.

We’re all moaning about these huge salaries the city big wigs are getting paid then coming to the tax payer for the bail out. Who can blaim them? That’s just common sense. They don’t lose it all when their company goes down to the toilet, most boards are remaining intact when the company is nationalised. Who wouldn’t take up that offer?

If we’re going to this whole capitalist economy (which we are, because it works, get over it) we should just get on with it. The world economy well go down the pan if government’s don’t intervene. But it will be back again. Bigger, better and even stronger than before.

With new legislation having been introduced in Italy to limit what prostitutes can do or wear on the streets, they have come up with a rather interesting solution.

The Telegraph reports that they are taking to dressing as nuns so the police cannot arrest them for wearing “unseemly and indecent clothing.”

Pia Covre, from the Committee for the Rights of Prostitutes told the Corriere della Sera newspaper “the idea of wearing gowns or habits down to the feet is to confront the decrees which limit even the freedom of what you can wear.”

One thing I think is worth commenting on is the situation regarding Leeds Unviersity Union when el presidente Norman submitted some events to the events calendar for Atheist Society.

You see, apparently, they turned us down. Apparently events such as “make your own god” may reflect badly on the union. Whereas, I guess, they have already taken the abuse for censoring anyone connected with the union resulting in at least one front page of Leeds Student.

This is a clear freedom of speech invasion with no real reason, the event is not in any way negative (it’s a fun craft day) and does not target one specific religion. This will certainly be added to our ongoing discrimination complaint which the union have apparently burried as the new societies officer has never heard of it.

The figures don’t lie.

Abstinence only education really does work for the Bible belt of America. Almost one million teenagers get pregnant in the United States each year. Teenage pregnancy rates in the states were abstinence only sex education are far higher than those in states that offer proper education.

What does this result in? Lots and lots of young Christians having babies which are then raised to be a whole new generation of Christians. As I said, works fantasticly. Maybe we should be giving out condoms with holes in for freshers’ week?

Having said all that, I didn’t watch a lot of the Olympics mainly because it just annoyed me. We seem to have been a bit too happy, smiley, everything is fine with China. Let’s review a few of the news stories that came out during the games.

The fireworks were pre-recorded.

Nobody turned up so they rounded up groups of students to make the stadiums look full.

To construct the new venues they bulldozed people’s houses with compensation.

People’s families suffered due to the people being involved in the games being taken away to camps so they couldn’t look after their familes.

The fancy trains that said “made in China” on them were actually made by a company in Canada - who were ordered to de-badge them and put “made in China” on them in an attempt to stop people associating said term with crap quality. When in fact of course it is, hence why they went to Canada for their trains.

They spent a third of their GDP on the games, rather than feed their people.

They decided the young girl who was singing was too ugly so they hid her behind a curtain and put a better looking girl out there miming.

They managed to perform the closing ceremony without using any amplification on the drums.

They had people carrying “nothing to see here” boards on standby as seen when the Hungarian weight lifter bent his arm back.

Their no doubt equal and fair selection process for the hundreds of people dancing in the stadium somehow presented any overweight or even slightly inperfect people from appearing.

Finally the co-ordinator for the ending ceremony of the olympic games said the western world couldn’t do amazing ceremonies like China did because…

• We respect human rights
• We have no dicipline and stop every 15 minutes for coffee breaks
• We only work 4 and a half days a week
• We aren’t willing to suffer enough
• However he does complement North Korea on their ability to stage such performances.

Did I miss anything?

There are a few things I want to talk about here. We need rather well I thought. Russia beat us to 3rd place in end but but 4th for Britain is really good, after all if there is one thing we are good at it is losing at sports.

Anyway, syncronised diving. It’s not a real sport is it? I mean seriously, you’r just jumping into a pool at the same time. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It’s very good to do at some kind of swimming club with 7 year old kids but an olympic sport? Of course not.

Also, London 2012, how are we supposed to follow this? Well anyway it’s irrelevant as we’re not even going to try. There is already talk of how we are going to hold a more “intimate” games, which basically just means less impressive.

And what was our closing ceremony about? It did have some rather nice features but it was spoilt for me by the fact that the big red bus we had, turned up on time. I don’t really feel that sums up British culture. Oh and the commentator accidentally called Leona Lewis a “superstar.” Finally, in case we hadn’t lost all self respect we ended it with “here’s David Beckham, he’s not going to say anything we’re just showing off.”

Finally, I just want to be clear that the man we sent to represent us in front of the rest of the world - was Boris Johnson. Kept him away from Britain for a while I guess. It’s good to see I’m not the only person who actually uses my jacket pockets.

Good stuff.

A quick google around tells me that you can pick up a homeopathic remedy for anxiety for as little as £13.17 plus shipping.

But here is the thing. It’s just water.

Suddenly seems rather expensive for 15ml when Tesco are doing 2,000ml for a rather more reasonable £0.17.

It really makes you wonder however why the NHS are spending millions of pounds of our money on homeopathic remedies. And as such I’m starting a new campaign to promote greater understanding of homeopathic medicine because, much like religion, the thing that will do the most damage is if people actually learn what it’s about.

You can learn more about the bullshit the NHS is spending money on at the campaign’s website, It’s Only Water.

I recently watched the Horizon episode on research done by some of Britain’s top drug experts published last year in The Lancet, a medical journal, which offers an alternative system to the current ABC classification for drugs which is far more based on science and evidence.

The new system would rate the harm each drug causes based on a number of factors, most notably - physical harm (what it does to the user when they take it including the route of administration and long term effects), how much dependence the drug induces (and what dependent behaviour it leads to) and social harm in terms damaging family and social life as well as the social costs of medical treatement and policing a drug.

The study ranked 20 commonly abused substances and had some suprising results…

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbiturates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines
8. Amphetamines
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrates
20. Khat

So, anyone fancying dropping a few E next weekend? ;).

If you want more information the text is available online (you need to register but it’s free).