You have to love George Bush. He has an innate crudeness that is almost charmingly primitive. But not quite. The latest news is, he apparently wants to know WHY no WMDs were found in Iraq.
Well, Dubya, old buddy, that sure is a toughie. My only suggestion is: take a wild guess. It might just save you an extra few million bucks.
Read More »Dubya
I’ve been tempted to write a lengthy ramble about the so-called Hutton Report, it being one of the few things sparking my attention in the news… but, nah, I’ll be brief (I think).
What does this report mean, anyway? Are people getting confused about the Lord in Lord Hutton? It doesn’t mean Lord as in God, you know. In my opinion, for a report of this kind to carry any kind of weight, it needs to be the result of analysis by panel (in the same way that a trial verdict is reached by jury). Even that hardly ensures true objectivity—whatever that is—but it’s probably the best we can hope for.
One man’s allegedly objective analysis simply isn’t good enough, particularly when he admits the ‘scope’ of the report is so limited as to rob the process of any genuine context. Aw, who needs a context anyway? Hilarious.
Read More »Report Schmeport
By way of a moan about the government in general, you might be interested in the state of the pension system these days. My mother was 60 on August 13th (which was a Wednesday). Two weeks later, her pension still hadn’t been paid. She started making angry calls. No one had a good explanation for this, except mutterings about ‘backlog’ and things not being ‘processed yet.’
She did finally get sent a giro for the first two weeks of her pension, last week. It should have been paid into the bank, but they seemed to be having trouble with this concept. It was dated from August 18th. Here’s the fun bit: she phoned to inquire what this meant, and they told her the pensions are only paid on a ‘from Monday’ basis, so since her birthday was on a Wednesday, she loses five days of pension simply because it didn’t fall on a Monday! (How much like an evil ‘save every penny we can get away with’ government plot does this sound?)
Read More »The Wonderful System
I had a longish entry keyed into Notepad, detailing how the Nu Deel thing went yesterday, then I realised I’d have to write about what happened today too… which was an appointment with the Jobcentre manager again, following another clash with the person who’s dealing with me.
But I can’t be bothered. I’m feeling really burnt out on this stuff.
Read More »It’s Official: I’m Feeling Crap
So the war atrocities are well underway. I would prefer to not even think about it, let alone rant about it, but there it is on the box incessantly.
Blair wants us to give our support to this sordid affair. His ‘address’ last night was even less convincing than usual, because he didn’t even seem able to muster his usual wild-eyed fervour. F**k you, Mr. Blair. Whether Saddam Hussein is stockpiling chemical weapons or not, we are the aggressor in this instance—we’re causing innocent deaths, the number of which our official propaganda will never disseminate. I can’t/won’t ‘support’ a cause that produces the hideous carnage we’re seeing all over our screens. I will sympathise with the troops who have do this filthy work; I hope most of them come out of it in one piece.
Read More »I Can’t Support the War