Have you noticed...

Remember those "threatverts" on the telly?

BENEFIT FRAUD
WE'RE CLOSING IN...

Don't see them that much at the mo.
Wonder why?

A Benchmark for Fraud

There is a lot of hand-wringing about how we will decide who should and shouldn't resign from Parliament. My brother has come up with a startlingly simple method.
Derek Conway (see a few blogs ago) was dumped out of his job for quasi-fraudulently claiming about eight grand, if memory serves me well enough. So all we need do is divide any particular robber-baron MPs fraudulently obtained loot by 8000 to give us their value in "conways".
Any MP with a conway-value of over 1.0 should be sacked (like poor old Derek). Over 2.0 conways, they should be imprisoned. Some of our MPs are rated, by my reckoning, at about 23.7 conways. Off with their bloody heads.
Actually "conways" is rather a bulky unit title. Just like "newtons" becomes N is physics, I would propose that "conways" becomes Con as a benchmark for MP crookedness. So we could say: "anyone under 1.0 Con is probably safe." There. Much neater.
It works on many levels, does "Con".
Even French.

O-Order, O-Order

So.
Mr Speaker resigns.
First time since 1695.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he he ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
He he.

Fattening Pigs

For the n^th time (where n is a large integer) in my 30 years in education I am facing an inspection.
I have box files full of paperwork, meetings to attend, feedback sessions and all the usual pandemonium generated by such events. The cost in man-hours is gigantic. The cost is equally massive in paper.
Now here comes the bit I don't get.
No lessons are being observed.
It is an old aphorism that you can't fatten a pig by weighing it.
Oink!

Poor Old Derek

Is it just me, or is everyone feeling just a bit sorry for Derek Conway?

As I remember it, he was "guilty" of doing far less than, currently, about 600 other MPs. Like them, he was completely "within the rules" and was pilloried and hounded out. I genuinely feel sorry for the bloke. All he was was the first one caught. The sight of him trudging through the rain to get a bollocking from the Chief Whip (Walnut's younger sister) and then off to get his epaulettes ripped off by Cameron was really, really sad. All he was doing was siphoning money towards his own family. It's not like he was buying porn or having his moat cleaned, purchasing Hob Nobs or getting mock Tudor beams fitted. He should be reinstated.

Derek, if you read this, I think you were hard done by.
It is just me, isn't it.

Articles of Lapsed Faith

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I fear that we are moving away from this on a daily basis and I will, I know, devote more than one entry to this.
Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
This doesn't apply to MPs (obviously!) who are miles above the laws that you and I have to obey. Where I would be looking at a lengthy prison term, they are able to write their sins off as poor accountancy skills. Great.
Article 20: Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
This is simply not true in Britain today. We have no right to assemble peacefully. We have a Police force that infiltrates demonstrations with its own agitators and then uses "kettling" to ensure that the demonstration is anything but peaceful. That same Police force turn up looking like the extras from Star Wars and batter the crap out of demonstrators who were - until their arrival - quite peaceful in intent and action.
Anon.

Melting the Crystal Ball

Scientists (and I use the term loosely) are very worried that the Arctic Sea will probably be free of ice (during summer) within 20 years. This is much faster than they have hitherto predicted.
Let's just run that again.
Scientists are predicting that, in 20 years, the ice in the Arctic will be gone after having recently predicted that it will not be gone.
All this tells us is that their predictions are utterly worthless.
Climatologists are basically long-range weather forecasters. As you know, I wouldn't trust a meteorologist to get yesterday's weather right, never mind tomorrow's. So how in God's name, with all the uncertainties in the system do they honestly expect us to even twitch an eyelid when they predict one thing and then come back - with no more real information or insight - with the "no, it will be much worse" argument. Which prediction is right? First or second? We'll find out in 20 years.
Personally, I trust Nostradamus more than this lot and he doesn't mention ice caps melting.