Longrider

The revenue has been experiencing a little difficulty. This comment from George Bull, head of tax accountancy at Baker Tilly says it all:

With British citizens regularly exhorted to undertake as many of their dealings as possible with government via the internet, it’s completely unacceptable that a state-operated system catering for the entire population can’t cope with an estimated 150,000-200,000 filings in one day.

Yes, George… But are we remotely surprised?

I don’t have much to add to DK’s and Harry Haddock’s evisceration of Rowan Williams’ appalling comments on free speech. Williams’ stupid suggestion that religions be protected from the criticisms of others is bad enough. And, I suppose, I cannot be too surprised that this foolish man would wish to replace our outdated blasphemy laws with something else rather than sweep them aside completely. He has, after all, made similar suggestions before about the sensitivities of the religious.

Now, frankly, I don’t give two hoots what people believe. In a liberal democracy, they can practice whatever belief system takes their fancy and as a liberal (in the classical sense) I would vigorously defend their right to do so. But, importantly, in a liberal democracy, non-believers have the right to criticise and ridicule without concerning themselves about the offended sensibilities of those believers. That is how freedom of speech works. There is always the right of rebuttal – that, too is how freedom of speech works.

Perhaps what angers me most is the repugnant attempt to draw a moral equivalence between those who stood by Salman Rushdie’s freedom of speech and those who sought to murder him:

Webster points out how in 1989/90 Muslim groups in the UK took to a relatively militant response to Rushdie as and when it became clear that the literary and political establishment had nothing to say to their sense that their faith had been publicly and damagingly misrepresented and their sensibilities shaken. For groups like those in West Yorkshire who were at the forefront of militant reaction in Britain, the overwhelming feeling that animated their protests was that they, as a disadvantaged minority with the most limited access to any sort of public voice, were being left at the mercy of a powerful elite determined to tell them what their faith really amounted to and to remind them that they had to get used to being seen – never mind the realities of their social and economic position here – as essentially the representatives of a foreign and threatening power. The same is true of the furore over the Danish cartoons: the Muslim community in Denmark is neither large nor militant, yet the cartoon issue was framed as if these products were a sign of courageous defiance towards a hegemonic power.

They were not a disadvantaged minority and they had exactly the same right to freedom of speech as you and I. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between them and the publishing world or the political establishment; those who took a “relatively” militant response were advocating murder. How this is “relatively” militant escapes me. They had no right whatsoever to expect the publishing world to respond to the “misrepresentation” of their faith. If their faith is so weak, then it certainly does not deserve defence anyway – and I said as much at the time. Salman Rushdie had every right to publish the Satanic Verses and the Danes had nothing whatsoever to apologise for over the cartoons depicting the evil medieval tyrant Mohammed. The only appropriate response to these people who feel slighted, insulted or offended because their faith is ridiculed is: Too bad, grow up and get over yourselves.

What you do not do – absolutely do not do – is enable their behaviour. You remind them that freedom of speech is paramount and continue to vigorously defend it. Freedom of speech is far more important than the sensitivities of religious believers. This is something that Rowan Williams would rapidly discover should this country ever become a part of the desired Muslim Caliphate. Try being the Archbishop of Canterbury then, old bean… You might want to ask the Egyptian Christians what it’s like before spouting off guff like this in future.

Footnote: It is somewhat disturbing that in a matter of days, I’ve noted at least three demands for a restriction on freedom of speech.

Madeleine Bunting bemoans the state of civilisation today:

Trivial personal anecdotes, you might say, with some justification. But what I saw at Edmonton bus station left me enraged. How can we complain about children’s antisocial behaviour when we show such dereliction in developing in them any understanding of social behaviour? Where are the buses, the stewards or bus conductors they need? Why are transport services in poorer areas so under-resourced? Treat people like animals and, chances are, they will end up behaving like them. Every morning, these kids are getting a crash-course in how aggressive self-assertion is your passport in life.

As the first commenter to her silly piece points out; one personal anecdote is hardly evidence of serial decline. And, again, he states the obvious truth; people have always experienced this sort of behaviour getting onto buses and bullying has always been going on.

What I picked up, though was the sly dig at bloggers. See? We are to blame for everything. We are individualists and therefore it is we who are poisoning public life. That’s the trouble with collectivists; they really don’t understand what individualism is. It is not a selfish disregard for others, it is a sense of self-reliance and personal responsibility.

Note, too, Bunting’s contempt for freedom of speech:

Aggression, abuse and contempt are now the normal currency of debate among strangers on blogs. Last week two prominent columnists, David Aaronovitch and Linda Grant, added their bewilderment to the growing chorus of those arguing that public debate on the internet is being strangled at birth by the quantity of personal abuse and bullying.

Really? I can be pretty robust here when discussing the idiocy of politicians, but as Mr E points out today when discussing the recent “administrative shortcomings” our contempt is nothing compared to theirs:

And to those who criticise me for the contempt I evince for those who govern us, I say this; it is as nothing compared to the contempt they display for me - me, you, and everyone else whom they purport to serve.

Any derisive comments we proffer towards the politicians who treat us with contempt; or to the well-paid journalists who trot out their propaganda, I would suggest that it comes with the territory – a fruity response is all too often all we have to express our anger, contempt and sense of betrayal.

Some participants, intoxicated by absurd interpretations of freedom of speech and individual entitlement, suggest people should be able to say whatever happens to pop into their heads, that there should be no space for reflection before speech.

Yes, Madeleine; that is exactly what freedom of speech means. If people fail to think about what they say before saying it, then likely as not, the bollocks they subsequently spew will be full of holes and torn to pieces as such – a bit like the tripe you’ve written here, really. The alternative is to stifle freedom of speech, isn’t it?

Debate has always been gladitorial. It is just that the advent of blogging has eroded the opinion journalist’s ability to present their opinions unchallenged, fait accomplis. Don’t like it, Madeleine? Well, find yourself another profession. If you write twaddle – and you do – then we will be here to let you know that it’s twaddle.

First Great Western has been subject to a second fare strike by commuters.

Rail commuters today staged a fares “strike” in a protest against overcrowded, unreliable trains and rising fares.

Hundreds of passengers boarded First Great Western trains services, in south-west England, wearing cattle masks, with some substituting their normal tickets for specially printed vouchers carrying slogans such as “Worst Late Western”.

Having endured this service myself, I have sympathy. That said, I also have sympathy with the train operator as well. Unfortunately, they have little control over what happens to the infrastructure. A points failure, for example, creates a ripple effect, delaying trains throughout the day – and a train that misses its timetabled slot, may well be relegated behind another, possibly slower, service that is running on time. None of this will be the train operator’s fault. They cannot do anything to improve the quality of the infrastructure and can do nothing other than apologise profusely to their customers while fuming at the latest engineering overrun. Such is the nature of our fragmented railway.

They can, however, do something about one of the core planks of the complaint made against them; that of overcrowding. This, after all, was a company that replaced HST services consisting of eight coaches with five-car Adelantes. They are not the only ones. Anyone who has travelled west on a cross country service on a Friday afternoon in particular will be aware of just how miserable a journey can be. Want to experience hell? It’s between Leeds and New Street on the cross country main line. Virgin, too, took seven coach HSTs away and replaced them with four-car Voyagers; possibly the most uncomfortable train I have ever travelled in; competing in the crapola stakes with the truly dreadful Adelante. Noisy, cramped and overcrowded, they make the journey one that you will not forget in a hurry.

The excuse – and it’s a pretty feeble one – is that a higher volume of service makes up for the shorter trains. This assumes that people are able to be more flexible with their travelling times. The reality is that the same people turn up at the same station at the same time of day and try to squeeze into a shorter train.

I don’t do the 07:01 run to Paddington much these days – and I don’t miss it. I try, whenever I can, to avoid the commuter rush if I do have to travel by train.

Now, doesn’t it say something that as rail professional I tend to travel more often than not by road? It’s more reliable, I’m more likely to get there on time and it’s cheaper…

You can always rely on the Groan’s Comment is Free for sheer, unadulterated idiocy. Today, we mustn’t be mean to the beardy-weirdy enviroloonies, ’cos it upsets them and they get all offended by it.

Should the mockery of the environment be tolerated?

Er…? For sheer stupidity, that takes some beating. I mean… the obvious answer is; “yes”, absolutely, because we believe in things like, er freedom of speech anyone?

Not for the enviroloonies, though:

It’s a question asked by Paul Keeling, a philosopher and environmental writer, in the latest edition of Philosophy Now. “By mockery of nature,” says Keeling, “I mean an insincere, disrespectful or trivialising portrayal of nature, albeit in a way that is not deliberately rude or mean-spirited.”

You may want to take a little time to allow that thoroughly stupid statement to assimilate – go make a pot of tea or something and chew it over. I can think of a few very sincere things to say about Paul Keeling that are intensely disrespectful, rude and mean-spirited. Paul Keeling is a totalitarian fuckwit who deserves to be dancing the Tyburn jig alongside all the New Labour politicians who encourage his ilk. Freedom of speech means saying what you damn well please no matter who it offends. Paul Keeling, though, seems to think that he shouldn’t be offended:

Keeling argues that by tolerating the mockery of nature “we implicitly excuse and perpetuate our abuse of the natural world”.

Oh, for fuck’s sake – what at prick!

Examples of such mockery, he says, include the large number of car adverts that now display vehicles in union with, or conquering, nature. (It’s a subject that I also wrote about in the Guardian this week.) So we have cars - invariably SUVs, it seems - with names such as Yukon, Canyon, Tundra, Forester, Cougar, etc cutting a dash on mountain tops, in polar landscapes, deep within forests and the like.

Vehicles have always had daft names. I recall, for instance, the BSA Barracuda – less like a Barracuda than this dreadful little bike, it is difficult to imagine. No one takes the names of vehicles seriously – they are just names, just as no one takes seriously images of SUVs perched on mountain tops; they’re just fucking adverts for chrissakes – you know, adverts aren’t actually real life… duh!

Keeling says that he is offended by how car companies use names that evoke wilderness areas and endangered species - both of which are being increasingly threatened, most notably by mankind’s dependence on and love of the automobile. He says he is as offended by this as much as any religious person might have been if confronted by, say, an advert for a “Messiah XL” or a “Ford Prophet”.

Oh, diddums. Paul Keeling is offended. Well, grow the fuck up and get over yourself, you self-righteous, prissy, pompous arsehole. And, no, you should not be protected from being offended, just as religions should not be afforded any such protection. Mockery of stupidity is perfectly right and proper. In a free society, you have the right of rebuttal. That’s how freedom of speech works. Don’t like what car manufacturers call their vehicles? Well, don’t buy one. You could even write to them and tell them that you don’t like it and they can file your letter where it deserves to be filed.

Rather than point out that Paul Keeling is a whiny self-righteous fuckwit who deserves derision and ridicule, the author of the piece, Leo Hickman, credits him with a degree of hugely undeserved gravitas:

I agree with him that it is both ignorant and ill-judged for companies to use such names, but I wouldn’t say that I personally feel offended by it.

Um, if it helps to sell cars, it is far from ignorant and ill-judged (although whether it actually does, or not is moot). That was the point of the exercise.

But Keeling’s deep-felt faith in nature leads him to argue that mocking it can be described as being akin to mocking one’s religious beliefs,

Idiocy of the first water. Although, environmentalism has, indeed become the new religion. So much so, that any real concerns about the ecology have been subsumed and corrupted by morons such as Paul Keeling. And, religious belief should have no protection from freedom of speech.

Environmentalism is often dismissed by its critics as a religion, a fundamentalist one at that.

Having read the drivel above, that is a fairy reasonable conclusion. Only a bigoted fundamentalist could come out with the utter crap spouted by Keeling.

As I’ve written here before, I can live with being accused of being, say, a climate change “believer”, but should such name-calling be tolerated?

Yes. It’s called freedom of speech.

Should environmentalism join all the other “isms” that are now warranted protection such as sexism and racism?

No. Freedom of speech is more important than the sensibilities of thin-skinned pillocks like Keeling.

I have to admit that I’m not of such a sensitive disposition to demand or seek such protection, but I can certainly foresee a time when such car adverts are as much a part of history as, say, golliwogs being used to sell jars of marmalade, or near-naked women used to sell men’s magazines (sorry, I forgot that that isn’t part of history yet, is it?). Over time, they will simply become socially unacceptable.

This country really is going down the pan when this type of idiocy is given such credence.

More widely, being disrespectful of the environment - both through your actions and what you say - is likely to ultimately go the way of drink-driving, spitting in the street, or even smoking. In decades to come, we’ll probably watch an archive clip of Top Gear presenters driving a Toyota pick-up to the North Pole and wonder how we ever thought that was funny.

Then I shall have to make a point of being disrespectful at every opportunity that I get, because I will not tolerate such totalitarian behaviour. I would also point out that idiots like Keeling and Hickman do not speak for those of us who love the natural world.

One of the planks of the New Labour “gold standard” identity management scheme was the much touted biometrics. It was going to be all-singing, all-dancing fingerprints and iris scans, along with facial recognition. At the time that Big Blunkett was touting this stuff from his usual position of arrogance peppered with ignorance, those who had a modicum of understanding of the subject were, quite rightly, pointing our that he was talking bollocks – so, no change there, then.

About a year ago, iris scans were quietly dropped. This, on top of the decision to use Chip n PIN, a faux “secure system” that isn’t.

Now, today, they finally admit that fingerprints aren’t such a good idea either.

The future of the UK’s identity card scheme was thrown into further confusion last night after it emerged that the Home Office is looking to scrap one of its key components - a national register of fingerprints.

I do apologise if my glee is obvious, but these disingenuous bastards deserve to see their flagship; full of cannonball holes, listing badly with the rigging falling about their ears; slip serenely, unmissed, unwanted and unloved beneath the cold grey waves.

They were told, time and time again, but they knew best – in their arrogance, they presumed that they were the ones, incompetent, fraudulent liars that they are, to manage our identities. Frankly, I would sooner trust the Mafia to manage my identity. They, at least, wouldn’t claim that it was all for my benefit.

Successive Home Office ministers have said fingerprinting will be a vital weapon in combating identity fraud and terrorism.

So they did, with not one jot of evidence to substantiate their exaggerated and absurd claims – and every one of them lied. Every one of them touted “biometrics” as if they are, somehow, a holy grail, and every one of them was wrong.

Then there was the nonsense put about by Alastair Darling in the wake of the lost data disks last autumn.

“The key thing with ID cards is that information is protected by personal biometric information,” said Darling. “The problem is we do not have that protection [on the lost HMRC information]. ID cards match up biometric information with information held — there would be a biometric lock with the ID cards system.”

Thus confirming beyond all doubt that he is an idiot – a lying, disingenuous idiot, who has not the faintest idea about that which he talks – so, no change there, then.

Yes, I’m enjoying the sight of HMS ID Cards wallowing, holed beneath the waterline, as the venal, mendacious poltroons who launched and sailed her try vainly to make her appear watertight. May every politician be so visited by the lies and fraud they perpetuate in such graphic fashion. May they sink without trace and may their eyeballs and private parts be nibbled by the denizens of the deep as they scream silently in agony for the harm they have done us.

You may recall – or not – some while ago I mentioned the targeting of our gardens by government and developers… It was getting on for a year ago, but I remind you of what I said then:

This government planning guidance encourages developers to buy up homes with large gardens, demolish them and either build blocks of flats or use the gardens for infilling.

The BBC today carries a story that would appear to be the start of this process:

Building land for development is in demand and developers are increasingly targeting the back garden.

About 40% of new homes in some areas are being built on existing residential land, and the result is more homes crowded together with ever smaller gardens.

At the moment, no mention is made of the insidious compulsory purchase, but look what happens when people refuse:

Celia Johnson lives in a house on the outskirts of Guildford in Surrey. But it is her very large garden which has attracted the developers - more than two dozen of them.

At first she threw the letters away but now she has them all on file.

If at first, they don’t succeed, they persist:

“We would like to make you an offer for an area of your back garden,” she reads from one, “so we write back and say no, and they write back and say ‘further to our meeting, we’d like to offer you this amount’ and we say no thank you, so then you get another letter.”

The latest offer was £800,000 for the house - and the garden.

So what part of “no” do these bastards not understand?

Developers have told her that the area occupied by two sheds, a Wendy house and four fruit trees would leave room for an extra four houses.

Yes? So? It is her property and what she does with it is her business. If she says that she does not want to sell it to the developers to build more houses, then that should be the end of the matter.

“It feels like selling my soul to the devil,” says Celia Johnson, who insists she is not budging. But this has not stopped developers resorting to sneaky tactics to get their hands on her garden.

And, given that these people have the backing of the government to build, build, build are we surprised by this?

Let’s remind ourselves where this kind of bully-boy pressure comes from, shall we?

The Conservatives committed themselves to ending garden-grabbing at last year’s conference.

Quite right, too, but…

But it was a Tory government who first changed the planning rules to make it easier to build on gardens by re-designating them as brownfield instead of greenfield sites.

Yes, I know, I recall it. All politicians are venal, self-serving bastards, no matter what colour rosette they wear. They do not represent the wishes of you and I and would sell our gardens from under our noses, given half the chance. However, the Conservatives’ sins aside, the real criminal in this little episode is John Prescott:

But the real growth occurred after the then government minister John Prescott set targets for councils to prioritise building on brownfield sites, including gardens.

Including gardens. These unreconstructed Stalinists place no value on what is ours – they will use coercion for the moment; coercion of the type suffered by Celia Johnson, but when she digs her heels in, what then?

Garden grabbing is inevitable in much of the south east, says Jonathan Beach, a director at property company Savills.

Don’t you just love that phrase, garden grabbing? A voluntary sale agreed between two parties is not grabbing, it is a sale, a contract willingly entered into. Garden grabbing is a tacit acknowledgement that this is not a willing trade, that somewhere along the way, coercion has played a part.

But for Celia and others in her street, it is the attention of the developers which they find distressing.

Not just because Celia doesn’t want to sell, but because some of her neighbours do and Celia is in their way:

And I think it’s been very difficult for some people, because the ones who want to sell resent the ones who aren’t selling, and the ones who aren’t selling resent the ones who are.

Who needs compulsory purchase when you can set neighbour on neighbour?

In the somewhat drawn out discussion that started an aeon ago with Jeremy Clarkson’s bank account, Urko quotes C S Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

It’s an oft-quoted statement that has a truth about it. The cynical disregard by the bureaucracy of individual needs is epitomised by people such as Harding. Still, Neil’s response is typically warped:

Urko: So CS Lewis would prefer Saddam to Blair? Just like his argument for the existence of God, he is talking out of his proverbials.

Er, no, C S Lewis was observing human nature and very well observed it is too. However, two can play the twisting statements about to make an absurd strawman. How about this?

So Neil, you accept then, that Blair was a tyrant…