Patriarchal Double Standards Waste Water!

According to a survey by Thames Water, one in three women leave the shower running whilst shaving their legs, thus wasting 50 BILLION litres of water. To the shock of perhaps quite a  few people, but to the surprise of no one, the Daily Mail and Telegraph jumped on this for a chance of light women hating.

Of course, neither of those stories questioned why the hell women have to have their legs in the first place.This is also not a surprise nor a shock, but it is worth remembering that women only feel the need to shave their legs because society tells us to. If we didn't "need" to shave, all that water wouldn't be wasted. Seeing as men don't "need" to shave their legs, why the hell should we have to? After all, the water saved could apparently keep London going for 25 days.

 Of course, as is, if any famous woman goes out without shaving their legs, guess who jumps down their throats? The Daily Mail. Hypocrites (I couldn't actually find any examples from the Telegraph though, all fairness to them).


Conclusion: If you want to save water, let's get ready to smash the patriarchy. And stop leaving the tap running whilst you're at it. That stuff wastes 120bn litres of water a year.

Reactionary Riot Reactions are Reactionary

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been a massive shift to towards authoritarianism following the riots.Today Yesterday, 2 men were sentenced to 4 years in jail for "inciting" riots on Facebook. Riots which never actually happened (they could have happened, but they didn't) but still count because they do. Never mind the proportionality of the sentence (seriously, 4 years for a freaking Facebook page), this is justice.

 In addition to this, there have been a ton of calls from various quarters for knee-jerk actions, most notably Theresa May calling for the police to have curfew setting powers, David Cameron wanting to censor the internet (with Louise Mensch MP doing the same thing) and the calls for stopping rioters' benefits. All of which will achieve nothing, in my humble opinion, but making the world a worse place and fulfilling some desire for vengeance, which happens to conveniently help the Government (more police power, plus it helps their anti-"scrounger" rhetoric). This not even mentioning the members of the public braying for rioters' blood (literally in some cases (just look at Facebook, the Sun also ran a poll), and the evictions that are already happening (NB: in the household in question no one had been convicted).And the cliche attacks on the Human Rights Act, but that happens for everything now.

All these aside, the disproportionate sentence I mentioned at the start of this post ay well be an egregious example, but it certainly isn't the only one; courts have been told by the Government to scrap the present sentencing rules and be extra (and, even according to some MPs, too) harsh in order to fulfill an urge for revenge that many people have. Violation of the separation of powers aside,  this has resulted in several highly disproportionate sentences. One man (who had brought £100 worth of stolen goods from "a junkie") was jailed for 22 weeks for handling stolen goods. One person was jailed for 16 weeks for using "threatening or abusive language". A student was sentenced to 6 months for stealing a case of water.Three young women none with any sort of criminal record) were handed down 6 month jail sentences for entering a store with intent to steal (nothing was stolen). Infamously, a mother was sentenced to 5 months for accepting a stolen pair of shorts. She wasn't even there for the riots [EDIT: which is why she was freed and given 75 hours' community service on appeal]. These specific cases aside, several were referred to the crown court as the maximum sentence Magistrate's courts could give (6 months) wasn't considered sufficient, and bail was refused as a matter of routine, with the desire for the punishment to be strict superseding the need for proportionality.

By way of comparison, someone who functionally looted thousands from the public purse was simply fined £7000 made (an incredibly rubbish) Education secretary. Because, at his age, there was no way he could possibly have known better /sarcasm.

One thing that is legal, however, is publishing the names and addresses of subjects, which is very probably connected to one getting his house burnt down, in what is probably a reflection of the rage of someone at the riots (given the present situation) and generally a worrying, given that the old maxim of "innocent until proven guilty" apparently has stopped applying, sign.

On a slightly lighter note, someone else was recently arrested and charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act  for trying to arrange... a water fight. And it isn't a very light note at all since it means that water fights are some sort of serious crime, which is just absolutely ridiculous and that arranging a water fight should be stopped by any means necessary.You couldn't make it up.

In conclusion, though, things are looking pretty bleak as far as civil liberties and freedom of speech are concerned. It'd be incredibly easy to blame this on media rhetoric, and I suppose that's what I do blame it on. The ore important thing, however, is figuring out how we're going to stand up to all this because, as is, I think we're screwed.

EDIT: Forgot that I wrote this overnight, have corrected it. Also, I somehow misspelled "in".
UPDATE 1: Reportedly, an independent monitor was beaten up during the Enfield disturbances on the 7th. This is alarming to say the least

UPDATE 2: A 17 year old has been given a ban from social media for 12 months, 120 hours' community service, a 12 month youth rehabilitation order and a 3 month curfew for posting a message on Facebook which read ""I think we should start rioting, it's about time we stopped the authorities pushing us about and ruining this country.
"It's about time we stood up for ourselves for once. So come on rioters – get some. LOL."
Whilst I can't condone the message, it was probably, as the teen in question said, a joke (you don't add "LOL" if you intend to actually incite a riot) and this is turning out to be an incredibly bad week for freedom of speech. I'd say something about the sentence being disproportionate, but I'm not entirely certain that the message should have resulted in a charge at all.

A warning to tumblr folk out there (short)

 EDIT: As explained in the longer version, the problem's been solved! Just leaving this up here for posterity.

There’s a post floating around on tumblr which has a link to “myiqtcst.tumblr.com”. Please don’t click it; it’s a blatant scam. Seriously, there’s like 30 odd thousand people who’ve posted it in the same words. And it’s a dodgy redirect.
Don’t click it!
(also, if you think you’re in danger, change your freaking password, damnit!).
(this (and therefore this (it’s the same thing))) explains how I came to this conclusion and goes into more detail, but it’s a bit long).

(cross posted from my tumblr)

A warning to tumblr folk out there

 EDIT: All links on this blog are defunct, including the one to mine, which indicates that the problem's been solved. It would also explain why I was forced to change my password a few months back ("suspicious activity).

Yesterday I saw a post on tumblr which alarmed me, I'm actually a bit shit at technical stuff, so I can't post a screen shot, but here's a link to the second version of it which appeared on my dashboard (the first was on the same tumblr and was identical). EDIT: It's been removed, which is fair enough everything considered..

If you don't want to click the link, here's the text
"i guess im legally retarded or something >:(
tell me this is fake guys please i took this twice and i got a 92 then a 96.. thats too close right :( am i stupid?
i took the test at http://myiqtcst.tumblr.com reblog or tell me through asks if you think its real / what you got! :("

Scummy ableist language aside ("retarded" is not okay), there's a few things that worry me about this.
First, although the initial URL is given so it appears to be myictest.tumblr.com using a weird looking "e") when it's actually myictcst.tumblr.com. That's pretty petty, but there's more to it than that.

Secondy, I know for a fact that the person who posted this can in fact use capital letters and apostrophes and tends to do so, they also were in the middle of posting a load of Killers spam (including urging people to vote for some thing) when this popped up in the middle, which seems a bit off to me (it's out of character).

Third, the link itself redirects to some random site of the sort which asks for your personal details and blatantly isn't an IQ test. The first site I got redirected to was some fake social networky dating site thing (I didn't stay there long enough for it to load) and the second was something about discovering deals in my area (I also didn't stay long enough to give you a proper description or for it to load, since I only clicked to confirm my suspicions of its scammyness).
Fourth, and most obviously, the post has accrued large numbers of reblogs, many of which (not all, I reblogged it to voice my suspicions, for example) use the same wording as above. Here's an example and another, and here's a third for luck. [EDIT: I can't check to see if those pages are still up (tumblr's borked on my computer) but there is a good chance that they've been deleted or the URLs are obsolete (people tend to change URL a lot)]. They also accrue incredibly quickly, showing an abnormally large degree of spread.
Finally, I actually responded to the request on anon to point out it was fake and got a gif of Brandon Flowers looking confused as a response. The first one has just been deleted, meaning that the post was probably made on a compromised account, so the people who are posting it have probably been hacked.

This is quite obviously a scam, so I advise you to not click on the link. It would appear that several people have already been hit, and quite recently at that (last night I swear it was on something like 4,000 notes, tonight it's busted past 35,000 36000 37000, so yeah) . I've not seen any warnings about this, so please spread the word, tweet, reblog (I'm cross posting this to tumblr), whatever - and if you think that you have been hit CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. That's pretty much all the advice I can come up with to beat this thing.

Thanks for reading! /cheese

A is for Authoritarianism...

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local Police.” - The Griffin Briefing 29/07/2011

My views are now, illegal, apparently. Or they're going to be, at any rate (they're already demonised anyway).

Why else do the local police want information on me?

Admittedly, they don't know that they do; most people I know in real life know that I'm obsessed with politics, but think that, if anything, I'm a Marxist (maybe Maoist (I really, really am not)). Not to mention I call myself a “Libertarian socialist” in my Twitter bio specifically to avoid the stigma around anarchism.

Of course, this call for information is still pretty worrying, but it is worth noting that the police want ANY information relating to anarchists.

ANY information, with no apparent clause to make sure that the anarchists you're snitching on (anyone who replies to this request as it is intended is a Grade A knobhead BTW) a) are, have been and/or will be in the local area, and/or b) alive or active. Not to mention that, although the request is in an anti-terrorism briefing, the kinds of information that they want isn't specified.

Who says it has to be relevant information? (Well, the law might (I honestly don't know), but since it's a matter of when, not if, anarchists are going to get rounded up now, I think that this isn't the most pressing concern)

I mean, the number of digits we can recite Pi to (around 40 in my case /boast) may well prove to be the key which cracks our evil anarcho-terrorist cells. As well as our jam preferences and favorite type of iguana (assuming there are different types of iguana, I'm a bit fuzzy on this). I mean, it can't really identify anyone, but it sure could come in handy.

Not to mention anything about that Mikhail Bankunin, or that Emma Goldman... I mean they're really influential and stuff, if the police could just capture/kill them then the grip of anarchy over this fair land shall be broken!...

Oooh, and I could swear that the Daily Mail, the Sun and the like have a ton of articles on anarchists. I should send them directly to my local police!

There, now we should be really safe from the non-existent anarcho-terrorists. Sorted.;)

I don't think Gove 'gets' GCSEs

The Coalition's Education secretary, Michael Gove, has recently given an interview to the Times in which he bashes GCSEs for being too easy and a bit crap (my words, not his). Due to the pay-wall I haven't read the interview in the Times, but the Guardian has got some of the stuff he said on their site.

He's said some, erm, interesting things, unfortunately they're almost all wrong and boil down to “things were better in my day” conservatism, but I'm going to focus more on the 'wrong' bit since I don't know what things were like back in Gove's day. I happen to be studying GCSEs (I'm in Year 10 in the state education system) at this moment, so I think I'm qualified to say if they're actually hard or not. Let's see what he said (in italics, my commentary will be underneath every sentence or so in crimson)

(NB: I've omitted t start of the article since it isn't the part I'm focusing on. I'm also relying on a probably biased source since, y'know, pay-wall.)

“"It has become easier to get an A at A-level or GCSE than it used to be, and that's a problem”

A. More people achieving something is not indicative that it's getting any easier to do it, chances are there are other factors behind the rise in As. As far as I know, the percentage of possible marks gained is how grade boundaries are determined (although I will concede that some questions may have their values reduced according to the percentage of people which could answer the question (I'm not certain how this would work but I am hoping it will happen with the astonishingly badly worded AQA GCSE Humanities exams I took earlier this year ("Describe 2 agents of Primary socialisation" Primary really? (the family counts as a single agency of socialisation as far as I know))), so I'm going to guess that your argument is that exams are getting easier.

Which is weird because I don't think they are, for my year group, at least, think they've actually gotten harder (but this may be due to the “things were worse in my day” effect). Incidentally, if anyone reading this can tell me what AQA meant by any of the 12 mark questions in the exams mentioned earlier I'd be very grateful.
[EDIT: Never mind, I did really well in it. God only knows how, turns out I'm really good at coming up with clever-sounding stuff (and they probably ignored the second bit of the answer of the primary source question since it made no sense). Way to undermine my own point...]

“… If you are doing art or geography, you've got to have a work of art or a field trip. But if you're doing mathematics or English or French then the logical thing is to have a proper rigorous exam at the end of year 11”

The ellipses at the start of this bit does indicate that the Graun missed out a bit, which could have helped people reading it know what he meant by this, but I'm not certain Gove knows what we actually study in GCSE (WJEC) Geography (I'm not certain we can go on a field trip to, say, an urban area in an LEDC, or even an MEDC since we live near one making it pretty pointless,likewise with rural areas, and here's the small matter of getting funding for these field trips, since they're trying to make 'savings' (cuts)). Also, going off what context the Guardian has given for this quote, we should be marked... based off a field trip? Seriously? WJEC Geography is examined in the very way the Tories advocate (actually, I think there's an 8 hour controlled assessment, but that's probably one of the ones which is a weird hybrid between exams and coursework (1^st part probably coursework, 2nd part exams) in a classroom since 8 hours is too long for a standard exam).

Also, I don't think that a single rigorous exam at the end of year 11 is the fully logical conclusion for assessing maths, English or French, especially not for French. I suppose there is a logic behind the maths one, but it should probably be split in two as to allow assessments of mental mathematic capability (calculators aren't that ubiquitous, and I imagine it'd be a pain to have to get your calculator out for everything (plus, I kind of find mental maths fun) and more comprehensive assessment of techniques... I sounded like a Tory there, didn't I? Moving on, there is the small matter of English and French being languages which are both spoken and written in practical applications. A single exam simply wouldn't be a suitable medium for assessing both these things. This not even getting into comprehension and (in English more so than French since it's the lingua franca of this country) analysis.

Also, exams are stressful enough as is, and it's human nature to goof off and procrastinate until something important is staring you in the face (I think, this is armchair psychology at best though), guess what modular exams do! Seriously, those things are bloody stressful...Also, I could've sworn Tories were against 'teaching to the test' (I read the Daily Mail for 2 years, I know this stuff), how does this tie in with that at all?

The Guardian then reports that “Gove said there had been previous attempts to make science relevant, by linking it to contemporary concerns such as climate change or food scares. But he said: "What [students] need is a rooting in the basic scientific principles, Newton's laws of thermodynamics and Boyle's law."”

First things first, Newton most certainly did not come up with the laws of thermodynamics. Secondly, linking stuff to contemporary issues? I'm not an expert, but it provides a practical case study which shows the application of... basic scientific principles (kind of).

Actually, I don't think I'm qualified to comment on this, since I've only got up to year 10 science to go off, and I don't know what the Year 11 syllabus involves (beyond the stuff for Biology Unit 3, but I think that, for Gove, biology doesn't really count as a science (to be fair, it is a pretty boring one IMO, physics is more interesting since it's mathematically based)), but I know that f=ma (Newton's 2nd law of motion) and p=Vk is on there (there's a few other equations I don't recognise on the walls of one of my science classrooms, and I'd be willing to bet that us not learning them is what he is complaining about)

This said “Cold stuff does not make hot stuff hotter”(which is what the 2^nd law of thermodynamics boils down to) is pretty much common sense, and Newton's 3^rd law is also a common saying (“for each and every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action”).

“His daughter did not understand the way history was taught, Gove said, because it was not chronological: "My daughter does toys through the ages, then she does the Vikings, then the Greeks; and she gets confused."”

I don't think basing the education system (which I think this interview may well have generally been about, not just GCSEs and A-levels being too easy <glares at The Guardian>) off any one person is a good idea, and I'm not certain that history not being taught chronologically is the problem, but I suppose it's unfair to assume that Gove's wrong about his daughter's needs. I can't see how it's confusing as long as the time transitions are explained properly though (but this could just be me). I think in this case, it comes down to what time periods are suitable. E.G. The details of the Roman era aren't suitable for kids really (Gove, as a Tory, should probably be able to get behind this aspect of it).

He added: "We are now seeing with the new exams regulator how we can make GCSEs tougher. Exam boards need to sharpen up their act. We are also saying in GCSEs that you need to award marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. We need to have stretching exams which compare with the world's most rigorous."

A. We're already marked on spelling, punctuation and grammar! (“Quality of written communication”) Heck, that's what the marks for French consist of! This being despite it making GCSEs biased against people with dyslexia. 

B. Why do we? The improvement in GCSE results could be due to any number of factors other than the stuff about “dumbing down”, like better teaching. Also, we're talking about general exams for 14-16 year olds for the most part. Having exam's which “compare with the world's most rigorous” (at God knows what level) probably isn't suitable for this purpose (especially since they are mostly compulsory). It's a general exam. Due to the nature of it almost everyone should be passing.

Having a 69.1% pass rate (A*-C, which is all employers care about anyway, and what passes for a pass in the BBC reportage, I actually couldn't get any information for A*-G) isn't too high. Especially considering that this is just for GCSEs (I think, trying to find information on this stuff makes my head hurt) and probably skewed towards the people who get high numbers of passes (and probably take more exams). I'm not even going to try to tell you what the rate for the 5 A*-C GCSE or equivalent baseline is - really, information on this is impossible to get, the best I've got is 35% from The Daily Mail of all places, and they're reporting that Gove's complaining because it's too... low, um yeah, not sure how that works, but going off this 5 A*-C rate is a bit crap. If anything, it kind of totally renders Gove's point irrelevant. It does raise the question of why it's so bad, but that's a whole other blog post.  EDIT: Tried to track down the article, turns out I misread it. Considering this has over 350 views, that's slightly worrying. As an aside, yeah, this shit's impossible to track down. I was right!.

Like the omitted start of the article, most of the remainder of what Gove has to say involves his stance on the academies thing and the like (which is probably a whole other other blog post), but The Guardian leaves us with this:

“The education secretary also thinks that, in A-levels, state schools are suffering at the expense of private schools, which are opting for a more traditional-style exam, the Pre-U.

He said: "If private schools are having an elite qualification and state schools are being left with a qualification that can't match it, that is of profound concern to me, so we do need to do something to strengthen confidence in A-levels."

And I have to say I have a little suggestion for him (and the rest of the Government, going off his use of the plural 1^st person): STOP UNDERMINING THEM!!!! Really, you can't say you're surprised that employers and universities have no confidence in them when you spend the rest of the time going on about how they're useless. It. Doesn't. Work. That. Way.

The article quoted throughout this can be found here on The Guardian's site and was written by Jonathan Paige. 

EDIT: Have fixed the font, credit goes to @IdioticInuit for pointing this out. Also added tags. 

EDIT: Updated to boast about my marks in the Humanities exam I mentioned and to try to rework a paragraph since I apparently borked the grammar on it, or I accidentally used the selecty-draggy-texty thing when making said edit and borked it up that way. I'm not sure. 
EDIT: Finally capitalised "Times" in its second instance, and realised an epic mistake I made. Which no one picked up on, but still...

An A-Z of illogic

If you haven't read James Delingpole's atrocious Telegraph article from today [15/05/2011], I strongly suggest you don't as it will probably end up destroying whatever faith in humanity you have (likewise, whatever you do avoid the comments). If you have had the misfortune of seeing it, here's my response/letter-thing to his frankly ludicrous 'A to Z of Political Correctness'.

“A is for 'A-Levels'”

Which, contrary to popular belief, are not in fact just given away free with cereal, but require 2 years of work. Whilst the pass rate is pretty high (over 90% A to E, and yes over 25% get As), to make it look like this is due to a lack of effort on the part of the people taking A-levels and that A-levels are thereby worthless is pretty damn breathtaking. See also, 'Y'. P.S. If you think that people only go to University to get a self-esteem boost I strongly suggest you slap yourself in the face.

“B is for 'Bumper Cars'”

Not 'dodgems'. The Butlins guy explained it, come on. You were just pretty desperate here, weren't you.

“C is for 'Climate Change'”

Which there is, in fact, evidence for. From NASA, NASA. And anyway, we're running out of oil. We need to stop wasting energy to delay that too. If I find out you disapprovingly refer to people as 'deficit deniers' I'll... um... point out the disrepancy... on Twitter! Wait... that's a really shitty threat... never mind.

“D is for 'Drowning'”

There's no denying that Jordon Lydon's death by drowning was immensely tragic, and, had the PCSOs been trained, could have been prevented. However, I doubt it was Health and Safety rules which prevented them jumping in rather than said PCSOs being unable to deal with such a situation. Also, considering that the media is fostering negative attitudes towards immigration and multiculturalism, having a degree of knowledge concerning how to help reduce that is important (especially for a Police Community Support Officer).

“E is for 'Edinburgh, Duke of'”

An old man who makes not particularly funny jokes. Said jokes being non-PC has no bearing on the fact that they're shit. Also, I'm I'm fairly certain that the real 'greatest bastion of political incorrectness' is in fact another 'E': the 'Encyclopaedia Dramatica'.

“F is for 'Feminists, and Our Sense of Humour'”

Which is odd, as feminists aren't one homogeneous group. Nonetheless, I do recommend following @MediocreDave on Twitter, since he certainly has one (actually everyone I follow generally does, even Philip Davies MP (albeit a small one)). Also, the joke you stuck here was actually less funny than some of the Duke of Edinburgh’s.

“G is for 'Golliwog'”

An outdated, and possibly slightly racist, character. The suspension of two Conservative party activists after a complaint about them posing with one on Facebook (after being warned by the local branch that it didn't look good) being analogous to the censorship under the Soviet Union (you don't directly make this comparison, but it is certainly implicit (he refers to a couple of other probably racist things as being 'verboten' (German for prohibited, possibly utilised to produce Nazi connotations) and 'samizdat', apparently being unaware of what the latter term actually means). )).

“H is for 'Health and Safety'”

Which has absolutely fuck-all to do with political correctness, moving swiftly on...

“I is for 'Islamism'”

Which appears to have been conflated with Islam insofar that it isn't PC to offend people of other religions (at least deliberately offending people will be met with opposition, unintentional offence should really be met with an explanation of why something is offensive in my opinion). Also, I believe that this is the story you were referring to in your piece, so yeah, I'm actually inclined to take The Daily Mail's word on this and assume that you've managed to get your wires crossed in his head.

“J is for 'Jon Snow'”

The Pub, specifically... um, people should be kicked out of pubs because people complain about their sexual orientation. Wait a second... isn't the point of that article that people being offended isn't a reason for this sort of stuff?

“K is for 'KFC'”

Which only sells halal chicken in some of its 'restaurants' [citation needed] because it wants to have Muslim customers. Likewise, some Domino's Pizza have stopped selling pork products [citation needed], including pepperoni. Of course this is the truth, we should just take the good solid word of James Delingpole for it. EDIT: We actually should; he was half-right (KFC and Domino's did try the halal thing, but they stopped after it hit sales badly), well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day...

“L is for 'Llantrisant, South Wales'”

Where apparently £190,000 has been spent on making sure that dormice don't get killed [citation probably needed]. Um... what's that article meant to about again? EDIT: Delingpole was also right here, this being the second time a day he's right. Although it's still unrelated to the topic at hand really, and he missed the opportunity to bring up the nationwide cost (which is only tangentially related to the subtitle of the entry, but hardly dissimilar to what he's done on a large number of entries).

“M is for 'Motor Insurance'”

Because correlation doesn't equal causation, women have to pay the same as men when it comes to this. This is bad since women are 10 times less likely to have an accident (even though correlation is not the same as causation, and chances are it will pay off in the insurance excess instead). Unrelatedly, the EUCJ ruled that men and women should get paid equal pensions per year. Honestly "P is for Pensions" would have been way better than "P is for Peppa Pig".

“N is for 'Nigger'”

An indisputably racist term. Nonetheless, you seem to mourn being able to use it. I do have to agree that changing it to 'slave' in Huckleberry Finn isn't the right thing to do though, due to it being an artifact from the social-historical context in which the book was written.

“O is for 'Offence-Taking'”

“Which we have become so skilled at it should become a new Olympic sport”. I'm quoting out of context, but see 'Jon Snow' for an example of someone taking undue offence.

“P is for 'Peppa Pig'”
Who has been redrawn to wear a seatbelt because not wearing seatbelts offends Muslims or something. Alternatively, it's an attempt by whoever makes the show to avoid showing Peppa breaking the law.

“Q is for 'Quangos'”

Such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is bad. Because, um, human rights are bad? (Mind you, I wonder who's been put in charge of drafting the British Bill of Rights... if it's them you're going to end up eating your words for sure).

“R is for 'Rover'”

Who is presumably not a human since we apparently have to refer to him as a 'companion animal' rather than a 'pet'. Seeing as this is literally the first I've heard of this, the PC-brigade is obviously far too ubiquitous./Sarcasm

“S is for 'Sooty'”

A mildly racist nickname for the Prince of Wales's friend Kuldip Dhillon, which he apparently doesn't mind, and is probably not meant to be derogatory, but, since I don't know how he acquired it, I can't comment, so yeah.

“T is for 'Twitter'”

Apparently run by the 'Twitter Taliban' (read: people like me), who pick up on anyone who isn't PC and scream at them until they shut up. Or, y'know, use the block button.

“U is for 'Unreliable'”

Because I don't think you understand that people who are disabled have good and bad days, and thus are unreliable. Hereby, advertising for someone who is 'reliable' is being ableist (albeit unintentionally).

“V is for 'Vegetarianism'”
Which is a real pain for you since you really cannot be arsed to cater for guests who partake in such eating fads as having a gluten intolerance, the politically correct bastards.

“W is for 'Winterval'”

A fake festival in the way that the PopStation is a fake games console. What you doesn't realise is that Winterval isn't even that.

“X is for 'The Cross'”
Um. No it isn't. I'm fairly certain the 'Cross' begins with 'C'. Don't be lazy.

“Z is for 'Zoo'”

Which should really be in plural since we're moaning about the fact that they don't have any big animals in them any more, like in Twycross, what with their elephants, tigers, and apes. Also, I'm fairly certain that humans are the only animals with guns, so yeah, we are the most dangerous animals out there.

I am aware that I've skipped out 'Y', because I want to reserve the worst until the last.

“Y is for 'Yoofs'”

A. It's 'youths' not 'yoofs', and yet my generation is the one which has been dumbed down, go figure. And B. You know what, I'm going to let Delingpole do the talking here.

“Who, thanks to our failing education system’s “all shall have prizes” ethos, believe that the world owes them not only a living but also three taxpayer-subsidised years of rutting and drug-taking at university. Tell them it is unaffordable, and they riot around the Cenotaph. This is the generation whose parents were too caring to say “no”.

Actually scratch that. Because you know what? Yes GCSE pass rates are high, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING! 5 GCSEs A*-C is considered to be the benchmark, and far too many kids aren't getting that. As for the 'taxpayer-subsidised years of rutting and drug-taking', just because you, Davey, Boris and co. spent your uni days slacking off doesn't mean most kids do. Most kids have to work, and as for the 'all must have prizes' bullshit... what prizes are there to be had? I'm genuinely curious. The sad thing is, in my experience this isn't a fitting depiction of the generation I'm in, it's one for yours (well, for people of your class at least... yes, yes I am a bit bitter, but can you blame me?). 

Concerning edits: Thanks to @DickMandrake for giving me the info. 
By the way, his take on it can be found here: http://dickmandrake.blogspot.com/2011/05/a-z-of-delingpole-being-twat.html 

"Empowerment" Merlin's Soggy left buttcheek

I'd like to apologise in advance for any cisnormavity here, but this is Nadine Dorries (who quite probably has a secondary citizenship to Daily-Mail-land) we're talking about here. And the bill this post rants incoherently about discusses is pretty aggressively gendered.

Did you hear? Girls like me have apparently been so corrupted by the sex which is ever-present in the media that we have completely forgotten who is in control of our bodies, and as such need the wonderful, amazing, uber-empowering, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries to empower us through the medium of having special lessons set aside solely to teach us how to say no. And by empower, I mean 'reinforce negative perceptions about'.

There is absolutely no way that I can see this actually doing anything empowering, the exact opposite would happen. But this is what you get with a bullshit bill based off the bullshit premise that girls aren't taught how to say no (we don't need to be, if anything people should be taught that 'no' means just that no but I digress) and being given decent sex-education has caused the teenage pregnancy rate to reach the unacceptably high rate of.. oh wait, as of 2009 the teen conception rate has been the lowest since the early 1980s (when, if I remember rightly, it was Nadine Dorries's own Conservative party which was in control, how very odd). How bizarre. Still there's no denying that teaching 7 year-olds how to put condoms on bananas is wrong. Which is why IT DOESN'T BLOODY HAPPEN. In my LEA we do get a nice lesson on STD prevention in Year 8 and one in Year 10 on contraception where we do the condom thing (the learning how to put a condom on 3 times bit actually being true, probably), but we're told that abstinence is actually the best way to avoid STDs and pregnancy. So this bill is redundant, this raises the issue of what the bill would, if passed (something which is, admittedly, rather unlikely unless our MPs are exceptionally rubbish... and I mean exceptionally), actually do.

Since the extra sex-ed lessons are female only, well it's hardly going to be good for gender roles in that area. These 'empowering' lessons work off the premise that 'consent' is simply not saying no, rather than saying yes, I can't exactly see this as being a good thing. Saying nothing is not the same thing as consent. These 'empowering' lessons will also quite probably provide our still patriarchal society with a handy way of blaming girls who are raped for their rape* because girls have been taught they can say no, it puts the onus on women for stuff like this, when it takes two to tango, and some people may well not take 'no' for an answer. Not to mention that it's just a reinforcement of the patriarchal assumption that girls aren't interested (which I actually can't rebuke from personal experience, but I reason that this probably isn't the case), and shouldn't be, meanwhile guys will never need to say no* which probably isn't an exactly brilliant image to send out. And by 'probably' I mean 'bloody well'.

Meanwhile, the capitalist hierarchical culture which gives rise to patriarchy is going to escape unscathed; Dorries outright said that the reason behind her moral panicking was related to the media which is then completely ignored (Dorries seemed concerned about the abnormally high (read:low) teen pregnancy rate, I don't think same-sex kissing should be an issue for her, unless it is (wouldn't surprise me)). Actually that's unfair, she did say that Mary Whitehouse was right, but that's going a little too far in my humble opinion. Still, as a Conservative, and going off this bill, she doesn't see any issues with our place in society. So let's see, the proposed bill will reinforce patriarchal perceptions of women whilst not actually doing anything about said patriarchal perceptions. Really empowering Nadine. Thanks.

*I am aware that it is possible that guys can also be raped, this bill isn't.

Panem et Circenses

"Roll Up! Roll up! Roll up for the event of this generation, the furthering of one of the great institutions of our age!

On the 29th of April every single one of you is warmly invited to witness a ROYAL WEDDING!

I'm certain all of you are excited about the forthcoming union of one of the fine heirs to our throne, none other than the Prince William, and the wonderful and totally middle-class woman Catherine 'Kate' Middleton, showing that all of you proletarian scumbags middle-class women out there can too eventually fulfil what I am sure is the ultimate dream of all of you pretties, and become a princess! In fact, we're sooo sure that you'll want to join us in our jubilation, that we've made the event a special day off just so you can be a part of it! I mean sure small-businesses and the like will suffer from it... but who cares about them? It's a Royal Wedding!

So roll out the bunting, gather up some food and grab everyone you know, because you really don't want to miss this piece of history, quite possibly the most important event this year! Who cares about those people who did that walk? Or that thing about electoral reform (which is soooooo boring, although you should totally vote no to AV, your minds are too feeble to cope with it it's stupidly complicated)? Or those people off in the Middle East kicking off and ruining our oil supplies? And what's that about welfare reform? You do realise that they're all scrounging scum, right? Yes, the Royal Wedding is the single most important thing that will happen this year, it's history in the making, and you can be a part of it!

Even though we, alas, have to reserve spaces at the event itself for esteemed democratic figures (although, sadly, our good friends, the rulers of Bahrain, cannot attend due to people kicking-off over there scum-bags), and great icons of British culture, and as such you cannot directly attend the wedding (it'd be a bit of a tight squeeze to get all 60-odd million of you in the abbey after all) but don't worry! Our wonderful, unbiased, media knows exactly what you want and so has graciously decided that, as all of you can't come to The Wedding, The Wedding can come to you! Our esteemed newspaper institutions - The Mail, The Telegraph and The Express - are sure to have wonderful coverage! And that's not the best part! The BBC, ITV, Sky and five have all dedicated themselves to covering this once in a lifetime event! And the other option's another sodding episode of that Gypsy wedding show on Channel 4. So fuck that and WATCH THE WEDDING! It's like you're there. In HISTORY! AS IT HAPPENS!

Heck, this means that you can celebrate the Royal Wedding even more than those schmucks who can only have the shitty view from the ground! You get the best damn seats in the house! And it gets better!! You can have street parties! Can those schmucks have street parties? No, so let's get the bunting, paper hats, and lukewarm cherryade out and celebrate the all important event of the year! I mean sure the deadline has been and passed, but who cares about the red-tape conspiracy by our evil, bureaucratic, faintly Communist, councils to stop you having fun?! Have a street party! Have fun. This isn't an order, since you are celebrating the Royal Wedding already. Everyone is.

Of course there is the chance that you are one of the incredibly small minority of leftist-republican-anarchists who hate Britain and its culture. In which case, you are evil, and bad, and wrong, and quite probably the sort of scumbags who would throw a protest solely to ruin the day for this wonderful couple. Don't give me that load of fecal matter about how 'monarchy is privellidge', and 'monarchy is unfair' and 'why do we have to pay', and 'waa, wa, wa, our wonderful allies in the Middle East are totally dictators because they rough up their opposition' (like we don't). You're in it this solely to be a jerk. Jerk. And no you can't have your petty street-party. Fun is only for nice obedient sheep people. Not jerks. Any you are a jerk because otherwise why would you oppose the esteemed rights of our Royal Family. Incidentally, any of you scum-bags who attack the wedding need to expect no mercy. Stuff like protesting against our wonderful monarchy has no place in a democracy.

If you aren't one of those minority lefty-anarchist scum-bags on the other hand, come along it's free* and, most importantly of all British. You aren't a jerk, so celebrate. Have fun. Have fun.

*'Free' does not include the £20million security costs. Or the few-billions it will cost the economy. But the Royals bring in cash-monies anyway that will cancel it out. They do. Honest."*

*Actually, I can't find anything to counter this (although I swear that the Royals don't bring in that much tourism money).

I'm so confiscating my grandparents' Daily Mail...

 EDIT (02/11/2012): In hindsight, I don't feel like I should have posted this. Gonna leave this up though since I only Orwell stuff if I have really good reasons to - ultimately pretending it never happened seems at the very least odd to my moral compass. Also, none of the links in this work anymore since itsyotsy got shut down and I really cannot be bothered to track them down again.

You know the stereotype of old people being conservatives of both the big 'C' and small 'c' types? Well I think my paternal grandparents may well conform to that (I think my dad is also a Tory). Well, my grandmother certainly does, at least, going off a conversation I had with her yesterday. In a bullet point list, here are a few views she expressed. Whilst reading this I ask you to bear in mind that she's actually British Chinese (I think her father was a second-generation Chinese immigrant) :

• 'Enoch Powell was right when he said he didn't want all of those coming in here' I'm paraphrasing slightly, but the first part is what my grandmother said word for word.
• Schools should bring back Christian assemblies as they teach people morals (I didn't even realise she was a practising Christian).
• We'll soon be majority non-white-British.
• The Muslims will be taking over with their Diwali and what have-you (yes, Muslims, I actually face-palmed at this, I feel quite bad as this was my Grandma I was talking to, I did point out the mistake).
• Christians are oppressed and can't express their beliefs (like that electrician who was transferred to another depot for having a cross in his van), whereas Muslims can (related to the one above, I can't actually remember what she cited, or even if she did).
• Children of immigrants don't count as British
• Immigrants have taken all of our jobs
• They've also taken all of our university places
• Basically immigrants are bad and are ruining this country
• We shouldn't bail-out <insert other country here> as there's no money left (note: I agree with her, kind of, but more due to me thinking that the imposing of economic shock therapy measures on 'bailed-out' countries is wrong,)

There was also the general implicit feeling that this was Labour's fault (my grandfather at least has never voted Labour, excluding in 2005 (I'm inferring this based off a reference to Gordon Brown)).

By way of reference, here's a sampling of what comes up on a search for 'immigration 2011' on the site- all links go direct to the website to istyosty, for best effects read the comments*:

• Boom in immigration helped cause the economic crisis, says Cameron (Jan-2011)
• White children in Birmingham 'a minority' this year due to immigration (Jan-2011)
• Tony Blair changes tune over immigration saying it produced a 'challenge' (March-2011)
•  UK will NOT hit its target to cut immigration in 2011 due to Irish influx, coalition warned (Dec-2010)
• Immigration is too high, say four in five Britons (Jan-2011)
• Migrant cover-up: Reports kept secret by Labour show mass-immigration cut wages, raised tensions, and that too many stayed too long. (March-2011)
• Immigration DID hurt wages and Labour 'under-estimated significantly' the influx, admits Milliband (Feb-2011)
• Schoolgirl, 15, dies from TB after Government warns immigration has caused disease to soar (Jan-2011) 

Not found on the site is their egregious coverage of David Cameron's speech on the subject.

 And the results for 'Muslims 2011':

• Number of British Muslims will double to 5.5m in 20 years (Jan-2011)
• 'Muslim Eton' at centre of Channel 4 hate-preaching allegations is forced to shut over far-right safety fears (Jan-2011)
• 4 men slashed teacher's face and left him with fractured skull for 'teaching other religions to Muslim girls' ( Feb-2011)
• How 100,000 Britons have chosen to become Muslim... and average convert is a 27-year-old white woman (Jan-2011)
• Extremist cleric to lead White House protest calling for Muslims to 'rise up and establish Islamic state in America' (Feb-2011)
• 'We need to be a lot less tolerant towards Islamic Extremists': Cameron calls for immigrants to respect British core values (Feb-2011)
• Mlitant Muslim warns Royal Wedding terror attack is 'highly likely' (April-2011)
• While Muslim sexual predators have been jailed, it is white Britain's hypocritical values that are to blame (Jan-2011, by Melanie Phillips)
• Shame of Britain's Muslim schools: secret filming shows pupils being beaten and told Hindus 'drink cow's p***' (Feb-2011)

Gee, I wonder where my grandma got her views from. And you know what the terrifying thing is? MailOnline is the second largest English language news website in the world. It had 39.6 million readers in March, and chances are not all of them were there to mock it. It is the largest news site in Britain. Regarding the dead-tree copies, according to the Wikipedia, the Daily Mail has a circulation of 2.1million. And this is the sort of stuff they're reading (okay, this and a ton of shallow show business stuff), yeah, likewise, some people take Melanie Phillips seriously. Hell, I think that I used to take Melanie Phillips seriously in my Daily-Mail reading days (I dismissed Littlejohn as being less funny than Clarkson though, and my maternal grandma put me off Jan Moir). Although, in the Mail's defence, they did dedicate 1/3rd of a page to this story concerning 'Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs' standing up for the electrician I mentioned earlier (I did read out the headline to my Grandma...), it's no wonder the far-right are so popular (even if the Mail does pretend to not support them), when we have a media (I've picked on the Mail as I have the most experience with it) which makes it sound like we're under attack from 'Muslamic rape gangs'.

*In order to make sure the results were recent, I put '2011' in. I can't remember the name of the Daily Mail proxy, and I'm only quoting the headlines here - the actual story may show them to be misleading (which probably helps my point here). All headlines come from the articles themselves (there are two headlines visible sometimes) as I'm assuming these were the ones they were printed under. The 'other headline' as it were is visible in the URL the header of the page. I used Google to find them by doing a 'this site only' search, since I couldn't find MailOnline's search function. The results received using this may be different and more positive (or negative, the Mail could just about conceivably be worse than this).,

EDIT: Have istyosty-ified the links.