A victory against Disneyfication

Pixar and Disney are to go their separate ways. Good, they have little in common. One makes good films, the other one used to.

How to be a victim

I've stopped being surprised by articles like this one:

The story was told by an American student named Valerie Ruppel who had returned from a term's study in London. Two days after her group reached Britain, a policewoman came to South Kensington to brief them on how to keep themselves safe.

I pick up Valerie's account in her own words: "Her first question was to the women, 'How many of you brought Mace?' Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn't use it, shouldn't even carry it, it was illegal.

"Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too."

"Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack."

"The reason (and she spelt it out in no uncertain terms) was that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the aggressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball it would be quite clear who the victim was."

Franlky, in a situation where a criminal offers up violence I would have thought it appropriate to make it as difficult as possible to tell who was the instigator and who was the intended victim.

As Jeff Cooper once said:

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

Bugger, bugger

I just had to abandon my car and walk five miles in the snow to get home. I wouldn't have minded so much but some bugger in a BMW smashed into the side of my car and drove off (skidding all over the place) as I was retrieving my briefcase from the passenger side door, the cad.

I caught up with him on foot.

Oh, dear aunty Beeb, you suck so

In a programme scheduled for 9pm today on the BBC called "Hey Big Spender!" we are to be told that we've been very very naughty with our cash. So naughty in fact that we are all deeply in debt.

We have become a nation of big spenders and credit junkies, with borrowing at an unprecedented high.

At the end of 2003, borrowing had risen to £4,426 for every adult in the UK, not counting mortgages.

The BBC programme aims to assess how worried we all should really be and wishes to offer us some practical advice, which is ever so nice and considerate of them.

Or at least it would be had they chosen a different tact to this one:

We have even taken up the challenge to offer you the financial tips that could help save you the cost of the BBC licence fee - perhaps much more.

You know, one has to wonder if the BBC actually have their finger on the pulse these days. Are they so deeply buried up their own self important backsides not to realise that such a ridiculous challenge can only add insult to injury for those poor debt ridden souls who are drip dripped even further into debt by being forced to pay a license fee for a service that they have no choice but to pay for whether they like the service or not (which is increasingly not these days).

Leaked Hutton report slams BBC

Talk on BBC radio 5 this morning was all leak and no meat.

This is consistent with the reaction expected by Iain Murray:

this is devastating for the BBC, who will doubtless try to spin the leak as the big story.

Mmmmmm, dinner

So, what with all this talk of cuisine and the like my mind has been full of the culinary delights that I might expect or arrange for this evenings family meal. Just now, wandering into the kitchen after a day at the office I noticed that the oven was already on and loaded.

Oooo I remarked to my good lady, what's in the oven.

Fish fingers and chips she replied.

Oh, and what's in the bottom oven? I asked, thinking that I could see a dish of some kind.

Nothing, why?

I thought it might contain something a little more, and here I paused, sophisticated.

I'm doing beans as well was her casual and perfectly delivered response.

Surrounded by comedians I am.

A foxing tale - continued

Here's a little more information on the hunt saboteur story I blogged about the other day. It doesn't make for pleasant reading:

"I really feared for my life as last year a hunt saboteur had threatened to kill me - at one point one of the attackers had his foot on my throat while the others were hitting me. My wife tried to help but was also pushed to the ground and my children fled the scene. It took me over an hour to find them - that was the longest hour of my life."

Let's just take a moment to consider the position of these saboteurs. It's not the killing of foxes in the countryside that is the issue but, instead, the way they are killed. The saboteurs.....lets refer to them as thugs in this instance...the thugs high ground is one based upon cruelty (namely them being against it) and yet they seem perfectly capable of using it themselves as a weapon when it suits their beliefs.

The Countryside Alliance has expended a great deal of time and effort changing the public perception of hunters as toffs on horseback out on a jolly with some success. I would say that the saboteurs have a far bigger public image problem these days and I also suspect that they have no idea that this is the case. Too bad for them.

Hunt sabs...thugs...damned if I can tell the difference.

Quote of the day

Samizdata contributor Gabriel Syme on Shepherds restaurant, Westminster, London:

One has to remember though that Shepherd's is frequented by politicians whose palates are not necessarily amongst the most discriminating, what with having to kiss arses all day long...

How many dead is enough?

It makes me shudder when an organisation called something as affable as Human Rights Watch can say something like this:

"Only mass slaughter might permit the deliberate taking of life in using military force for humanitarian purposes," it said.

"Brutal as Saddam Hussein's reign had been, the scope of the Iraq Government's killing in March 2003, was not of the exceptional and dire magnitude that would justify humanitarian intervention.

What hope is there for the repressed, tortured, vanished and murdered?

A foxing tale

Some time back, while I was in a queue at a petrol station I overheard one of the stations staff, a young girl, talking to some young guy. She was explaining that she would not be around on the coming weekend because she was out on a fox hunt as a saboteur. Her friend was intrigued, as was I, and asked what kind of thing she got up to. "Well", she said, "last time we bashed the hunt hounds with sticks".

Since then I have stopped being surprised by reports such as this one.

Claims a fox hunt master was dragged from his horse and assaulted by protesters are being investigated by police. The Countryside Alliance said 38-year-old Graeme Worsley, from East Grinstead, received hospital treatment after being assaulted by saboteurs.

Stunning Mars Express images

I am very impressed with the images being released by the European Space Agency. Go here for a selection.

Visit this site for more information on Mars Express.

That man Straw

Via Andrew Sullivan I came to read Jay Nordlinger's summary of Jack Straw's performance at Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in the village of Davos, Switzerland.

It seems that the UK foreign secretary put up quite a commanding defence of the Iraq business.

Another questioner alleges that Britain et al. are "cooking the books" in Iraq — placing their thumbs heavily on any electoral scale. Straw himself describes this as a charge of "a stitch-up job," then knocks it down, in no uncertain terms. He again avows his special love of democracy: "I have been democratically elected to public office. Who else in this room can say the same? Let me see hands, please. One? Fine. But I don't care to take lectures on democracy and democratic legitimacy.

Jolly good.

It's my browser baby

The Limey Brit wades in on the net advertisers who think it might be a really cool idea to subject us to full motion TV advertising while we browse the InterWeb thing.

Once again, we see that internet marketers haven't grasped the fact that people get their media fix online because it's different from TV. The tricks that work with a TV's captive audience have not, do not and will not work on the internet, where the populace is free to leave the moment you start wasting their time.

Right on!

I practice this particular bit of behaviour often, usually when I arrive at a web site that puts one of those stupid flashy advertising windows up right over where I'm reading.

An open letter to Thames Valley Police

It saddens me that Chief Constable Peter Neyroud thinks it appropriate to suggest that it should be illegal to buy and sell replica firearms:

The move is part of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003. Anyone carrying an imitation firearm or air weapon in public without reasonable excuse* may face a six month prison sentence or £5,000 fine. Chief Constable Peter Neyroud said: “I welcome this but I would like to see further legislation making it illegal to buy and sell replica firearms.”

Such legislation would effectively destroy the popular and legitimate pastime of Airsoft enjoyed by thousands of honest and hard working people across the UK.

He already has the necessary legislation to stop criminal misuse now that the Anti-Social behaviour bill has become law and I suggest that he uses it.

Further failure to curb such illegal use should be put down to lack of manpower or mismanagement of resources (too much red tape, too high wages for Chief Constables etc) and not used as an excuse to once again limit the liberties enjoyed by honest men, women and children.

I also note that the Chief constable uses the language of the state when issuing his suggestion. He would like to destroy legitimate use without having to pay compensation, hence the phrase make it illegal "to buy and sell" rather than to ban outright (which would require compensation).

The Chief Constable has all the legislation he needs. Now let's see some results.

It's the way we tell 'em

Normally, and in many countries around the world, when accumulated records show that a particular thing has increased the message is one of, well, this particular thing has increased. It's reasuring that (though the saying there are lies, damn lies and statistics is well known) there is a certain symetry that is being maintained or at least an attempt at consistency.

People feel a little more informed and there is a little more certainty to their lives.

Not so in Great Britain. In Great Britain we collect records (much as any other country), collate them, analyse the results and then blurt out that regardless of what the results are showing we should not really believe them because we are using a new measure, method, practice or some such.

This is true of many measures including new figures from the Home Office which this time shows that violent crime has risen by 14%. But it hasn't.

The Home Office said much of the rise in violent crime had been due to an increase in the reporting and recording of violence.

Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, said: "It is important to put the increases in police recording of violent crime into context."

She said better recording policies meant police forces now had a clearer picture of crime in their areas.

Yawn. If I had a pound for every time I heard this kind of thing from the Government I'd have 100 million pounds.

I would have had somewhat less than that but I've changed the way I record these things.

The BBC report originally stated that the high violent crime survey was from the British Crime Surver rather than from the home office themselves. I have updated the above posting accordingly.

Also, it makes me laugh that the following appears:

The British Crime Survey is seen as having the most reliable figures, and is based on interviews with the public.
Recorded crime represents incidents reported to the police.

So recorded crime shows a massive increase in violent crime but ministers see the figure based upon a survey as a more reliable indicator of trends.

I wonder what they'd think if the results were reversed?

In the old days...

Just so you know kiddies, this is what computer games looked like when I was a teenager:

And that was on a top of the range unit, with tape storage (yay!), real keyboard and an impressive 16k of internal memory.

The particular game depicted above was called "Android Nim" and it r0x0r3d!!

Quote of the day

Holy shit! I didn't think they still existed in England!

By Paul, the proprietor of the newly blog rolled Voice of the Future , commenting upon Tim's recent blog entry on wild boar in the British countryside.

I suspect that Paul's comment is exactly what most people would think if they ever encountered one. Word for word.

Bugsy Malone

Now this is a film that couldn't be made today. My young son is a big fan and we watched it together last night (well, I caught parts of it whilst knocking up dinner). Kids shooting at other kids, kids dressed as adults dancing about on stage, sexual overtones by the ever excellent Jodie Foster, gang warfare, drinking, baseball bat violence - it's all there, though in a watered down fashion mostly. It's a cracking film, but I stand by my statement. It could never be made now.

The Italians are crazy

My mother is Italian and, as a result, is a little crazy. She shouts and waves her hands about at the drop of a hat, can swear in the beautiful language for minutes on end and make it sound like an operatic performance and knows the meaning of the word revenge like you would not believe.

She is not, thankfully, crazy like these Italians are crazy.

Can't catch criminals? Hey, just pick on someone else instead.

It looks like the Express newspaper is at it again. This time, instead of columnist Carol Sarler describing all shooting sportsmen and women as perverted we have the editor of the Sunday Express, Martin Townsend, calling for the outlawing of the sport of shooting completely. Why? Well let’s hear it from the man himself:

My problem is that, outside of the military and the farming community, I don't understand why anyone really needs to own a gun. Can anyone explain it to me?

Sure. People need to own guns to, among other reasons, go clay pigeon shooting, hunt game and vermin, compete in shooting competitions and the like. Of course, Mr. Townsend, being poorly informed probably thinks that only farmers hunt vermin on their farms (like they haven’t got anything else to do), thinks that clay pigeon shooting is for crazy people and that owning guns for any kind of competitive shooting throws doubt on your suitability to, well, own guns. Think I’m exaggerating?

And whose are the "right hands" to be holding a gun? The sportsman with his ear protectors who lines up targets in a gallery and practises, practises, practises? What's he practising for? When more and more of his shots go clean through the centre of the target, what's going through his mind? That he can win every competition? I would love to believe that every amateur marksman has the same innocent thought.

There you are.

Townsend is exhibiting the same kind of dangerous thinking that, contrary to his intention, actually ends up increasing gun crime. He wants the government to spend a fortune (and it will cost a fortune) to ban a sport and legitimate pass time when that money and time would be better spent catching criminals and ending the smuggling of guns into the UK.

It’s about time that people like him took on the responsibility of the kind of country they have created. A country where resources are misdirected away from where they are truly needed because of ill thought out personal crusades. A country where freedom is ok as long as it’s the same freedom that media managers subscribe to. A country where, unscathed, you can get away with hate speech against a sporting community but not against a terrorist.

(PS. I cannot find an online resource for this article so see below to read it in its entirety, including an email address for the author of the article. He is clearly looking for responses.)

Sunday Express 18th Jan 2004

A word from the Editor

MARTIN TOWNSEND

'We are all going to have to stop tinkering with
firearms laws and outlaw guns completely'

IN RECENT weeks, a policeman has been shot dead in
Leeds; a retired colonel, living in a tiny village,
blasted to death on his doorstep and a couple murdered
by gunman or men at their Cornish petrol station. Just
a few months ago a jeweller was shot dead at her
family-owned shop in Nottingham and a former bodyguard
cut down by bullets as he left his gym.

Guns, it seems, are everywhere. A friend of mine, who
owns a shop in west London - a family man with three
children under 10 - stepped out to buy a sandwich one
afternoon last summer and found himself at the centre
of a gunfight. It's something you only read about in
books, he told me afterwards, but he felt a bullet
whistle past his ear. Over Christmas a child in our
area was partially paralysed when he shot himself,
accidentally, with an air pistol.

In my street, just a few weeks ago, an elderly man
awoke to find someone had blasted an airgun pellet
through his porch window. The police said such
incidents were all too common in the area but there
was little they could do. These guns are increasingly
getting into the hands of 11 and 12-year-olds, they
explained, and the rules need tightening up. The usual
targets are birds, cats and dogs.

My problem is that, outside of the military and the
farming community, I don't understand why anyone
really needs to own a gun. Can anyone explain it to
me? The "huntin', shootin' and fishin"' lobby would
argue their corner, of course, but it worries me that
the word "shooting" has insinuated itself so
comfortably into that phrase. Book-ended by two
pursuits over which far too much Parliamentary time
has already been wasted, shooting seems to have
escaped similar attention except in the knee-jerk
aftermath of the Dunblane tragedy. But the popularity
of shooting and the resulting widespread ownership of
"sporting guns" gives shooting a legitimacy - and an
armoury. It means that there are a lot of guns around
that have to be accounted for, stored and moved around
in order to be maintained. I am sure that the vast
majority of those charged with such duties exercise
them with due care and responsibility. But not all.
Guns will go missing. They will be stolen. They'll end
up in the "wrong hands".

And whose are the "right hands" to be holding a gun?
The sportsman with his ear protectors who lines up
targets in a gallery and practises, practises,
practises? What's he practising for? When more and
more of his shots go clean through the centre of the
target, what's going through his mind? That he can win
every competition? I would love to believe that every
amateur marksman has the same innocent thought.

Of course the majority of guns in criminal hands come
from the black market: sold out of the boots of cars
at the back of pubs and on motorway hard-shoulders.
Society is awash with such weapons and the armed
burglar is not exceptional any more. It's perfectly
understandable, therefore, that listeners to Radio 4
have called for a "Martin's Law"-named after burgled
farmer Tony Martin, left - to give them the right to
defend themselves and their property by whatever means
are necessary.

But we all know that such sentiments, together with
the constant calls for the police to be armed, mean
that we are beginning to teeter down a very slippery
slope.

At some point, very soon, we are all going to have to
make a very 21st century decision -and that is to stop
tinkering with firearms laws and outlaw guns
completely.

To prohibit the manufacture, import, ownership and use
of firearms for all but the most essential
non-military purposes. The numbers of guns in use,
even in these areas - farming, say, or pest control -
should be strictly controlled and the ammunition
clearly marked for use only with that weapon. It will
be an unpopular, expensive and difficult undertaking,
but it's one that we must consider unless we want to
descend further into the American nightmare of a
society ruled by the gun, and "policed" by a pro-gun
lobby.

The Editor, Sunday Express, 245 Blackfriars Road,
London SE1 9UX.
Fax. 020 7922 7055/7794:
e-mail Sunday.exletters@express.co.uk

Foul mouthed old bird

Did you know that Blue and Gold Macaws can live to be over 100 years old? They can you know. Take Charlie for instance, which used to belong to some guy called Winston Churchill.

The British wartime leader's faithful companion, Charlie the parrot, is still squawking out anti-Hitler jibes at the grand old age of 104.

Thanks to Churchill's patient tutelage, her favourite curses remain "**** Hitler" and "**** the Nazis".

Astonishing.

Maybe not.

Quote of the day

From an article in the Telegraph titled I say, let them eat pheasant by Robert Gore-Langton:

Britain, once a cheerful land of Labradors and cordite, is enslaved to a sentimental cult of animal luvviedom. In the modern child-psyche meat and animals are now completely unrelated.

Replica Guns

Here is a BBC report on a call for greater control of replica guns because they are being misused by criminals and thugs. The BBC are seeking submissions and here is mine:

The usual solution of banning an item because it is misused by a minority will no doubt be top of the control freaks agenda, focusing as they do on the object rather than the criminals and thugs actually responsible for the misuse of the object. We have already travelled very very far down that road; for instance consider the complete ban on all real handguns. All this has achieved is to destroy a sport and ensure that only criminals have guns, and we have seen in recent years that they have them in abundance.

Now plastic BB firing replicas are firmly in the sights of those that believe they have a God given right to dictate what their fellow citizens should be allowed to do in their spare time and what they should not. For instance the sport/hobby of airsoft skirmishing is one of the fastest growing legitimate and safe pastimes in the UK, but the control freaks will not bat an eyelid when it comes to trying to prevent others from following the hobby. It is in their nature to scapegoat the innocent and they must take responsibility for the results of their actions.

For instance, the 170 million pounds the government spent removing legally held guns from sportsmen and women could have been used on resources to get guns out of the hands of criminals but, instead, it was frittered away. And still the killing goes on.

We have some of the harshest firearms legislation on the planet and it is failing. That is the result of identifying an object with criminal behaviour rather than getting down to the business of fighting crime, deterring criminals and punishing the wicked.

New Chopper - yay!

I'm a big fan of the Raleigh Chopper bike so this bit of news pleases me no end.

The Chopper bicycle, an icon of the 1970s, is to be relaunched by manufacturer Raleigh.

Yay! Mind you £249.99 for one of the first batch is quite a bit of money but I am very tempted.

Fruit loops

What a complete waste of time.

BBC Radio 3 will be airing more than four minutes of complete silence on Friday... by design.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is to give a performance of composer John Cage's seminal piece 4'33", which does not contain a single note.

Sandringham - a letter to the Daily Mail

I would like to congratulate the education authorities in Norfolk. The letter from school children in Dersingham complaining about pheasant shooting at Sandringham displays a mastery of spelling and grammar far above the level one would expect from children of primary school age. Or perhaps the well-constructed sentence "Lots of us were extremely upset, especially our wildlife teacher, Mrs Bryan" reveals they were engaged in a dictation exercise from a teacher with her own political agenda? I am amazed that a school with such close links to an estate such as Sandringham has failed to point out the benefits which shooting brings for the local economy, the conservation of local wildlife and woodlands, and of course the inescapable link between the death of animals and meat on our plates.

Simon Clarke,
BASC
Press Officer