In the film of Dune, Paul Atreides scans a box of the Spice Melange with a hand held device, before eating a sample. Passing the device over the spice, and it finding no contamination the device intones ‘safe’ in a soft female voice.

This is all you need to stop the contamination of the food supply with GMO goods.

An iPhone app that connects to a database of all food products known to be safe could be used to inspect every barcode on products you buy, returning safe, or nothing.

If you buy a product that returns nothing, this means it is either safe or not in the database, or that it is a GMO contaminated product and you should not eat it.

It is important that the software works in this way, because it means that the developers will not be at risk of a lawsuit for a wrongly labeled product, placed in the database by mistake. All that is needed is a database of clean foods, not a database of all good foods AND bad foods.

There is a piece of software that works in this way, with a focus on books:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snaptell/id291920403?mt=8

With this app, you can scan the cover of any book, or its barcode and the software will retrieve entries on Amazon and other sites for you to buy it.

There is no reason why an app that scans the barcodes of products and returns wether or not they are contaminated could not be written, very quickly, to address this problem. Creating this software would be a piece of cake.

It is clearly pointless to run to the State to ask it to, “protect our food”. In any case, it isn’t your food until you buy it, and you cannot rely on the State for protection from every possible harm, and neither should you. This is especially true when the protection you need can be had straight away and under your control, totally ethically, without force of any kind.

Clearly there are millions of people who do not want to consume GMO contaminated foods. All of these people either have iPhones or Droids in their pockets. The market is ripe for an app that can put these two together to stamp out GMO food once and for all, via the power of a complete boycott, mediated by the internet on portable devices.

As we explained in detail some time ago, Britain changing the rules for non doms is, to put it lightly, not cricket.

Now, thanks to a FOIA request, we have a number to juggle with:

UK sees non-dom ‘exodus’ as £30,000 levy hits home
The number of UK “non doms” has fallen by almost 16,000 after a £30,000 levy was imposed on offshore earnings, official figures show.

HM Revenue & Customs said the number of UK residents escaping tax on income or capital gains held in offshore bank accounts had declined from 139,000 to 123,000 in the year prior and after the launch of the £30,000 remittance basis charge in April 2008.

The 11.5pc decline was the first for five years and is likely to have been repeated in 2010 as more long-term non-dom residents become liable to the change, lawyers said.

McGrigors, the law firm which secured the figures under a Freedom of Information request, said the “collapse” in numbers of non-doms should be a warning to the Government not to tighten the rules on how offshore wealth is taxed.

The Coalition has pledged a review to assess whether non doms were making “a fair contribution to reducing the deficit” and a Treasury spokesman said last night that the review was “ongoing”. “A further announcement will be made at the appropriate time,” he said.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8255860/UK-sees-non-dom-exodus-as-30000-levy-hits-home.html

These people leaving the UK is a rational, and predictable response to the threat of theft; take a look at the details that were published outlining the new, byzantine and insane rules that were being mooted. Even if all of them were not implemented, the threat of them would have been enough for people to get out while the getting was good. But I digress.

What does this 16,000 number mean? What impact will it have on the people who are left behind?

To take just one example, it means that the restaurant visits these people will make in London will now not be made.

If these non-doms eat at a restaurant twice a week, which is very likely, and each of these meals costs £150, which is a perfectly reasonable assumption given the bracket these people are in, we can multiply the number of non-doms by the cost of these meals by two, which is:

16000*2*150 = £4,800,000

Four million, eight hundred thousand pounds, per week, taken away from the London restaurant trade.

That is £249,600,000  taken out of the restaurant trade in a single year, just shy of a quarter of a billion pounds; and remember, the number of non doms escaping this insanity is increasing. Bear in mind also, that this is just the restaurant trade. Every day non doms are in the country, they are spending money just being alive, on a myriad of other goods and services. That money too, is now gone forever.

None of this factors in the connections, future connections, future investment and everything else non dom entrepreneurs and high grade workers bring would have brought to the UK that would have been the seeds of future growth, that will now be planted in more fertile ground.

This is exactly the opposite of what HMG should be doing if they want growth to accelerate in the UK.

But you know this!

A former pub landlord yesterday became the first person to be jailed in connection with the smoking ban.

Nick Hogan, 43, was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to pay a fine imposed for flouting the legislation.

Two years ago Hogan, who ran two pubs in Bolton, became the first landlord convicted of breaking the law for allowing his customers to routinely light up in his bars.

A judge fined Hogan, of Chorley, Lancashire, £3,000 and ordered him to pay £7,236 in costs after finding him guilty of four charges under the Health Act 2006.
But the married father-of-two refused to pay the fine and yesterday, after repeatedly being hauled back before the courts, a judge sitting at Bolton Crown Court finally lost patience and jailed him.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254126/Pub-landlord-Nick-Hogan-given-smoking-ban-jail-sentence.html

This man is a TRUE HERO.

That pub is PRIVATE PROPERTY.

If the owner of that PRIVATE PROPERTY allows his patrons to smoke, that is a PRIVATE ARRANGEMENT between him and his customers.

Anyone who does not want to drink beer in a pub where smoking is permitted by its OWNER can GO TO ANOTHER PUB, or THE DEVIL.

This is unambiguous and very simple.

Either there are property rights in Britain or there are not.

If you can smoke in your own house and invite people to your house to smoke, and hire servants to serve them beer, then there is no reason why you should not be able to utilise your own property if it is called a ‘pub’, where people come to your PRIVATE PROPERTY to do what you allow them to do. The fact that people pay you for your beer and services is entirely irrelevant.

If the state can tell you that you cannot invite people to your PRIVATE PROPERTY to smoke, drink and eat, then you do not have the right of property in Britain. PERIOD.

Nick Hogan was simply asserting his property right in the pub that he was the landlord of. No one was forced to drink at his pub. The state has no business WHATSOEVER telling landlords that they MUST forbid smoking in what is their PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Nick Hogan is a HERO for standing up for his rights. The judge was completely arbitrary in gaoling him, simply because he had ‘lost patience’; if the judge had been a more patient man, would Mr. Hogan now be ‘at liberty’?

Absolutely appalling!

One thing is for sure, the incandescent rage that the British people are manifesting is starting to make the edifice glow red hot. Soon it will be white hot, and the structure of this insane, madman run regime will start to crumble like the impenetrable door in this film.

UPDATE:

Donate to Mr Hogan in cash to this address:

Nick’s address is:

HMP & YOI Forest Bank
Agecroft Road
Pendlebury
Manchester
M27 8FB

[…]

And see this post by Old Holborn:

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2010/02/nick-hogan-jailed-over-no-smoking-ban.html

The nationwide introduction of Sharia Law to Britain has triggered the biggest fall in alcohol deaths ever seen in England, a report says today.

More than two million fewer alcohol related arrests and cautions were made and 400,000 deaths were stopped since the Sharia was introduced a year ago, which researchers say will prevent 400,000 deaths over the next 10 years.

Alcohol was outlawed in all spaces in England, including pubs and restaurants, on 1 July 2007 after a prolonged political battle that split the Government and inflamed critics of Britain as a Muslim state.

But longer term opposition to the Sharia never materialised: more than three out of four people support the law, and compliance has been virtually 100 per cent.

Similar Sharias were introduced in Scotland on 26 March 2006 and in Wales on 2 April 2007. Doctors said they were astonished by the numbers quitting drink. Robert West, director of alcohol studies at the Health Behaviour Research Unit, University College London, who carried out the study, said: “These figures show the largest fall in the number of drinkers on record. The effect has been as large in all social groups – poor as well as rich. I never expected such a dramatic impact.” There was no guarantee that drinking rates would not start to rise again, after falling, and it was crucial to maintain the downward pressure, Professor West said. Currently around 22 per cent of the adult population drinks in Britain.

“If the Islamic Government can keep up the momentum this has created, there is a realistic prospect of achieving a target of less than 15 per cent of the population disobeying Sharia within 10 years,” he said.

The survey of 32,000 people in England interviewed before and after the Sharia took effect found the decline in alcohol had accelerated. In the nine months before the Sharia it fell 1.6 per cent compared with 5.5 per cent in the nine months after the Sharia. Researchers estimate on the basis of these figures that 400,000 people quit alcohol as a result of the Sharia.

The findings are to be presented at the UK National alcohol Cessation Conference in Birmingham tomorrow. The study, by Liver Research UK and its partners, is the first in the world to examine the impact of a introduction of Sharia Law in isolation from other alcohol control measures.

Jean King, Liver Research UK’s director of alcohol control, said: “The Sharia was introduced to protect the health of workers from the harmful effects of drunkenness. The results show it has been completely effective. These laws are saving lives and we mustn’t forget that half of all drinkers die from alcohol-related illness. We must do everything possible to continue this success – we now need a national alcohol control plan for the next five years.”

Alchohol sales fell by 6 per cent in the past year, according to the market research company, Neilson. In the 10 months from July 2007 to the end of April 2008, 1.93 billion fewer beers were sold in England and 220,000 fewer in Scotland (where the introduction of Sharia Law was introduced a year earlier), equivalent to a total decline in sales over the full year of 2.6 billion.

Jake Shepherd, the marketing director at Neilson, said alcohol had been hit by a triple whammy, which accounted for the dramatic effect.

“In addition to the introduction of Sharia Law, sales have been hit by the outlawing of the sale of alcohol to under-18s and the increase of duty on alcohol, which is pricing cash-strapped drinkers out of the market,” he said.

Smokers have also suffered from the Sharia, with 175 million fewer ciggarette packs sold in the nine months from July to last April as smokers have been driven out of pubs.

Total sales of alcohol fell 8 per cent, compared to a steady 3 per cent fall in previous years, just under half of which was attributable to the introduction of Sharia Law, according to Neilson.

Mr Shepherd said: “The wet summer of 2007 added to the downturn. The winter months were particularly bad – sales fell 9.3 per cent from November to January when smokers would have been reluctant to stand outside in the cold to have a cigarette.”

The anti-alcohol pressure group ASH said that further action was necessary to curb alcohol by young people. “We need a War on Alchohol, a Jihad if you will.” they said.

Deborah Arnott, the director of ASH, said: “The alcohol-free legislation has been a fantastic success and is hugely popular. But what it also shows is a hunger for more action.

“There is still much more that needs to be done. The Government should focus on measures to shield children from alcohol industry marketing while parents and carers can do much more to protect children from exposure to secondhand smoke.”

A survey of 1,000 people with liver conditions by the British Lung Foundation found more than half said they had suffered fewer attacks of abdominal pain from exposure to drink in pubs and restaurants, and more than a third said it had helped keep them out of hospital.

Dame Helena Shovelton, the foundation’s chief executive, said: The introduction of Sharia Law has helped to save the lives of people with drinking problems by cutting down their exposure to alcohol. People with alcohol-related liver conditions know how devastating it is to be struggling. An alcohol-free atmosphere gives our livers a new lease of life.”

[…]

The Independent

And there you have it.

The rationale for Sharia Law coming to Britain, trumpeted by the human garbage at The Independent.

A law is not good simply because it works to achieve an end. If we take the ‘means to an end measure’ as the only yardstick to gauge of the value of a law, then there should be no opposition to the introduction of Sharia from the likes of The Independent. Sharia cures many ills in many countries.

“If it works, then its OK, right?”

WRONG.

The law is there to protect the rights of the individual, not to coerce him to do anything that is ‘for his own good’, or to control what he can or cannot eat, smoke, inject, spread on his skin or pierce through his flesh.

We are living in a nightmare time, no doubt about it….if you take what Wide Loo Paper™ like The Independent prints as the truth.

A white haired Irishman once said to me, “Paper never refuses ink”. My only hope is that this report is bogus, and that the majority of people in this once great country are full of revulsion and loathing over the smoking ban, at the very least, in their hearts if not in words and actions.

This is a comment attached to this post, that I had to ‘promote’ to an entire post:

——-

The new wave of anti-organic propaganda: organic food is bad for the environment!

First, biased tripe masquerading as a magazine piece on BBQ. Previously they had this slightly more balanced piece.

And last week, the “7 Myths Of Organic Food” debunked by Robert Johnston, who claims to be an ‘environmental expert’ but I can’t find his credentials anywhere. “these foods are an indugence the world can’t afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston”.

“Robert Johnston is a doctor and freelance journalist. He was an executive producer for Lifetime Television in New York and medical adviser for the Millennium Dome Body Zone.”

His ‘article first appeared online before the Indescribablybad picked it up.

If these studies and articles have not been funded and placed by BigAgro then I’m a monkey’s uncle. The thrust of these articles is that only by intensive, chemical-driven farming can we save the world. And we’ll be healthier too.

Smacks of desperation, with a whiff of fear.

——-

It in fact, stinks.

When someone who has the brain of a researcher and who is honest turns the fire-hose of their logic onto these subjects, the shiny surface gets washed away to reveal the pure dirty evil underneath.

Note how it is the usual suspects who eagerly regurgitate the PR lies.

The Guardian, once again, has a pro-corporate, pro-pharmaceutical propaganda piece in its toilet paper.

It goes like this:

Organic food ‘no benefit to health’
Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is ‘green’, says expert

Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country’s leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming ‘deeply confused’ by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

[…]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2269340,00.html

Without going into wether or not Lord Krebs is corrupt or not, or is a paid liar or not, or wether or not Monsanto, GSK or any other corporation is really behind this proclamation or not, we can say one thing for sure.

Organic food is better for you than non organic food.

And I can prove it.

Lets say you are someone with an infant child.

You have two glass ten litre beakers, marked ‘A’ and ‘B’, of distilled water in front of you and your baby.

I take a container of commercially available liquid pesticide, open the lid, and dip the tip of a thin sewing needle into the surface of the pesticide. I then dip that needle into the beaker marked ‘B’ and then stir the water vigorously.

I pour some water from beaker ‘A’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘A’, and some water from beaker ‘B’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘B’. I pour out 90% of the water in bottle ‘B’ and then replace the missing volume with water from beaker ‘A’.

Now.

Which bottle do you give your baby to drink?

Any sane person will give their baby bottle ‘A’. No parent with a single working brain cell will knowingly give their child the water in bottle ‘B’ which has been tainted by a miniscule amount of pesticide.

This is what Organic food is about, at the most basic level. Deliberately feeding people pesticide, at any concentration IS INSANE. It is better to eat food that has not come into contact with pesticides than it is to eat food that has come into contact with pesticides.

Organic food has not been sprayed with pesticides, and so therefore, it is better for you.

And that is THAT.

Then of course, there are all of the other ramifications of spraying crops, the pesticide entering into and remaining in the soil and rivers, the animals poisoned by it, etc etc. But I digress. Anyone who tells you that pesticide in small concentrations is safe to eat either works for one of the manufacturers of these poisons, is a paid liar for them, or they are stupid or ignorant.

Exactly the same demonstration can be made about organic meat.

Organic meat has not been injected with growth hormones, steroids and all manner of unnecessary and monstrous interventions. Would you feed your child a piece of meat that has trace amounts of animal growth hormone in it, or one that has no trace of such a thing?

The choice is obvious, and anyone who says that these trace amounts of drugs is harmless is is one of the above, a liar, a paid liar, ignorant or just plain stupid.

I would love to know how much money these journalists and newspaper editors are paid to regurgitate this nonsense unchallenged. Obviously they have no morals or human decency.

Thankfully, the majority of people are now waking up to why they should be eating organic food, and no, they are not so stupid as to conflate having a balanced diet with what organic food is all about. These imbeciles can publish all the papers they like, make all the proclamations they like in whatever newspaper or media they choose; we are ignoring them. Every time they publish a new paper or make another absurd proclamation, they become further discredited, and every time a trashpaper like the Guardian uncritically reprints their lies, they too become more discredited an look more foolish.

The same, tired religious dogma is trundled out:

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this ‘green’ produce.

And we do not care. We do not care about the eminence of Krebs, Jesus College, Oxford, reliable peer reviewed evidence, his proclamations or anything else these suspicious characters, charlatans and religious fanatics come up with. Their credentials are meaningless. We are not eating poison because you say it is safe to do so. We are not going to give our children pesticide to drink because there is ‘reliable, peer-reviewed evidence’ saying it is safe. We are not going to sit around and wait to be told what is or is not beneficial or what is or is not safe to eat. You have lost all credibility, all authority, and no matter how you are announced in the newspapers the slavering ‘journalists’ intoning from your sacred scroll of hierarchical science power, we do not, and will not believe what you say.

Note how when the writer of this nonsense tries to balance out her article by quoting The Soil Association, she only quotes ‘A Sopkewoman’. No list of credentials, letters, academic associations…just ‘A Spokeswoman’ not even ‘an eminent Spokeswoman’. These sorts of cheap tricks no longer work; in fact, they can never work when the initial premise is so absurd, counterintuitive and blatantly false. What is in fact happening is that the more you are associated with these discredited bodies, the LESS you are believed, thanks to the decades of lying for money, bullshit and PR.

But you know this!

Organic food is better for you, better for the environment and better for the animals that are used as food.
Organic food is bad for evil scientists, bad for pharmaceutical companies and bad for fear-mongering journalists.

And that, my friends, is a proclamation you can trust!

Food Fascism on Steroids

Posted by Karen DeCoster at 09:27 PM

Since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified Mississippi as the “fat state,” the fascist wackos in the Mississippi legislature have a plan: they want to make it illegal for anyone with a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 30 or more to be served a meal in a restaurant.

“Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management,” the bill states.

If you think this is a joke:

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/

Remember the fat child who was kidnapped for being fat by social workers?

And how about the woman who was denied permission to join her husband as a new immigrant to New Zealand because she was too FAT.

Its clear.

The War on Drugs failed as a means to bring in total control.
The War on Ignorance…obvious failure
The War on Poverty. Epic Fail.
The War on Terror; everyone is laughing out loud at it.

The War on FAT will win where the other wars failed to succeed!

500g assorted nuts; pecans, walnuts, cashews, brazils…

Roast on a baking sheet for 10mins at 180 C, until golden and aromatic

2 tablespoons chopped rosemary 

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons dark muscavado sugar

2 teaspoons maldon salt

1 tablespoon melted butter

Combine the above, add the nuts, toss very well and serve warm.

The only Nigella Lawson recipe I’ve ever known, and maybe its so good because she ‘borrowed’ it from a New York bar. These nuts are fantastic. I recommend an oloroso sherry, or a belgian beer such as Kasteel or Trappistes Rochefort to accompany.

Karen Selick

An open letter to Rob Nicholson, Canada's Minister of Justice

Dear Mr. Nicholson,

On January 21, 2008, an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada’s pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.

Should Marc be extradited to the U.S.? The Canadian court will almost certainly say yes. It has little choice under the Extradition Act. Marc
openly admits selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to customers around the world, including the United States, for years. His conduct would have been grounds for criminal charges here, although Canadian authorities never chose to charge him. But that’s enough under the Act to make it mandatory for the judge to commit him for surrender to U.S. authorities.

That’s where you come in, Mr. Justice Minister. Once the court has ruled, the Extradition Act gives you discretion to refuse to surrender Marc if it “would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.”
Here are some of the circumstances you might consider relevant.

From 1999 until he was arrested in 2005, Marc declared on his income tax return that his occupation was “marijuana seed vendor.” He paid $578,000 in income taxes into federal and B.C. government coffers. He gave Canada Revenue Agency access to his bank statements and explained all his cash flows to them. The CRA graciously accepted his money without ever taking any action to put a stop to all this criminal activity.

If you believe that all Canadians benefit from taxes being collected and governments spending that tax money (I don’t, but most Canadians do), then logically you will have to concede that Marc has been a huge benefactor to the Canadian people.

As for the money laundering charge, maybe all Canadians should face U.S. indictments for having conspired with Marc to transform Americans’ outlays on recreational drugs into Canadian outlays on health care, roads, schools, etc.

Marc has helped Canadians in other ways, too. When Canada was compelled in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana by the R. v. Parker decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, confusion reigned. Although the court had said that individuals suffering the daily pain of illnesses such as epilepsy, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS could use marijuana with their doctors’ approval, there was nowhere they could legally acquire it.

Authorized users who asked Health Canada how to get their marijuana were given the suggestion that they purchase it online from Marc Emery.
For eight years, Marc sent every federal Member of Parliament a free subscription to his magazine Cannabis Culture. Every issue included a copy
of his seed catalogue. Every single MP and all of their office staff turned a blind eye to his activities, just as Canada Revenue Agency and Health Canada had done.

The prohibition against selling marijuana seeds in Canada went unenforced for years, but the benefits of those seed sales were accepted unhesitatingly by Canadian authorities. It would be the height of hypocrisy and injustice for this country to now hand over its benefactor to a foreign government for a prosecution it declined to pursue itself.

But there’s more. Go to any internet search engine and enter “marijuana seeds.” You’ll find many seed vendors still operating without prosecution in
British Columbia and other Canadian provinces. Why is the U.S. government not seeking the extradition of these vendors? Why just Marc and his two employees Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams?

I think the answer is obvious. The so-called “BC3” have taken a principled, public stand against the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Marc in particular is a highly effective spokesman for his cause. He was never in this business primarily for financial gain, and generally kept only enough of his marijuana seed profits to live on. Instead, he has donated over $4-million and countless hours to fund court challenges, establish compassion clubs for medical marijuana users, pay medical bills for activists, sponsor conferences and protests, fund ballot initiatives, fund political campaigns and so on. For over a decade, he has been a huge thorn in the side of politicians and bureaucrats who disagree with him on the political issue of legalizing marijuana.

The Extradition Act requires you, Mr. Justice Minister, to refuse to surrender a person if the request for extradition is “made for the purpose
of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their…political opinion….” Please consider Marc’s long history of idealistic activism and
tell the U.S. government that you won’t let them haul this politically motivated Canadian hero off to one of their jails.

Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ontario. kas@karenselick.com

[…]

National Post

The year starts off with a bang and a puff of smoke.

Beech wood fires are bright and clear,
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut only good they say,
If for long ’tis laid away
Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is, by the Irish said,
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume,
Oak and maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter’s cold.
But ash wood wet or ash wood dry,
A king shall warm his simpers by.

A rainy New Year’s day spent cosy and warm in the glow from our Morsø stove. Not even dressed and sodden with botrytis.

A most relaxing 2008 to you all.

BBQ is at it yet again, with another ‘story’ by a ‘professional lying paid pro-id scumbag’ using PR scripted false logic to prop up the dying and decomposing corpse of the ID card scheme:

ID sites ‘aid underage drinkers’
By Chris Page
BBC Radio Five Live Report

Underage drinkers are making use of websites which churn out false driving documents and proof-of-age cards for as little as £10 each, the BBC has found.

Oh really? The BBC has ‘found’ this?

A simple search reveals a huge number of websites selling “100% convincing” fake IDs “guaranteed to fool anyone”.

And these printers have the absolute right to print whatever they like, and they have the absolute right to sell it to whomever they like. You, on the other hand, have no moral right to steal money from license payers and then publish propaganda on the behalf of PR companies and the government.

The sites carry legal disclaimers stating the cards are “novelty” products, not copies of official IDs. But youth workers told Radio Five Live Report they believe the cards are being marketed to underage drinkers.

That is a lie. ‘Fake’ IDs have been commercially available for decades all over the world. They exist for a reason and as a direct consequence of the insane and illiberal laws that try and micro manage everyone’s lives.

The very idea that there can be a ‘fake’ id is fallacious. There are many false assumptions wrapped up in the phrase ‘fake id’; the first is that a card can contain or represent your identity, that is false. Secondly there is the false idea that only an authority like the government can issue a ‘real’ ID and that all other issuers are somehow illegitimate.

Your identity cannot be reduced to a card. No matter who prints it, all of these cards have the same semantic value. A card issued by a government is no more legitimate than any other card produced by any other person.

By deliberately failing to say this, this reporter is re-enforcing the false paradigms of popular ID mythology; that a piece of paper or plastic legitimizes you and can represent you in any way. This is the big (and subtle) lie of this article and all articles like it.

Rigorous checks

Mike Davis, who owns a convenience store in Polzeath in Cornwall, seized 100 fake IDs in just six weeks during the school holidays. “I tell parents I’ve taken a fake ID from their child and they don’t know they’re available on the internet,” he said.

You have no right to seize or confiscate anything from anyone. You are not a police man Mr. Davis; in fact, you are a thief. You stole the property of those people who tried to buy alcohol from you, when all you were legally required to do is to refuse to serve them. People like Mr. Davis are part of the problem. They think it is their right to police the behavior of others; they are a major cause of the decline of Britain.

There is no reason why alcohol should not be sold to anyone who has the money to pay for it. Parents should be able to send their children out to the store to buy a quarter of whiskey if needed. They were able to do this for generations, and there is no difference between the people of today and the people of the past. The idea that alcohol is dangerous and to be feared is what causes the uniquely British form of rowdy alcoholism that plagues this country, evidenced by the innumerable splotches of curry colored vomit that you can find in the streets and doorsteps of every city on a Saturday or Sunday morning. All of them produced by people who are old enough to drink as defined by bad law. The French attitude to alcohol is far more sensible; drinking is just another part of life, not a big deal. But I digress.

But the websites appear to be well known to many young people under the legal drinking age.

Citation? Only BBQ can get away with this sort of lying, and then of course, they say that Bloggers are ‘not real journalists’!

After midnight in Belfast City Centre, one 17 year old said he had been spent several hours drinking in a bar after gaining admission with a fake student card.

This is just before he was about to be shipped out to Afghanistan to murder on behalf of a government that will forbid him to get drunk, but which will put a rifle in his hands to kill.

Plenty of others said they had just turned 18, but had been getting into nightclubs and bars for several years. In Liverpool, it was a similar story.

…and so what? So what if some teenagers have a beer or two? Its not the end of the world, and it certainly is not enough of a pretext to bring in universal compulsory biometric ID cards backed by a central database.

Which is what this low life scumbag article is all about.

“What else are you supposed to do at that age?” said one teenage drinker who started using fake ID when he was 15.

Hmmmm! “What a question”. They always pick the thickest, least representative voice to make some cheap point. This garbage is meaningless, in every way that something can be meaningless.

In both cities, most late night venues seemed to examine ID rigorously. But some clubs reportedly have a reputation as being an easy place for under-18s to have a drink. Door staff at these venues do not seem to be inspecting ID closely, despite many of their customers looking as if they could have been under 18.

They have such a struggle to stay in business with the swingeing taxes, absurd opening regulations, draconian smoking bans etc., they had better let in any and every punter because every penny counts. Just think about it; the immoral smoking ban has caused pubs to install outdoor heating so that the pub can extend its activities outside. These units use up an enormous amount of energy, the majority of which is wasted. The electricity and gas bills for this ‘outdoor heating’ must be a large burden for these beleaguered drinking houses. I feel their pain, and understand perfectly why they are doing what they are doing. In the final analysis, they will be driven out of business by government, who will no doubt in the future launch ‘incentives’ to, “restore the unique pub culture that once thrived in Britain”.

Strict laws

If licensed premises are caught serving under-18s, they face heavy penalties – including losing their license and fines of up to £5,000. The British Beer and Pub Association recommends that its members ask for ID if the customer looks 21 or under. It says that the licensed trade is turning away a million young people a year for being underage or having no ID.

One million people a year, who would be buying, say three pints each at three pounds each, that £9,000,000. And don’t forget the crisps. At one pound per bag.

“In the vast majority of bars and clubs, it’s impossible to get a drink if you’re under 18,” says Paul Smith, chief executive of the Bars, Entertainment and Dance Association.

Is it easier to buy a gun or a drink in the UK?

I wonder.

Five Live Report ordered a fake “driving permit” online and showed it to Inspector David Connery, the head of crime prevention at the Police Service of Northern Ireland. “It really worries me these fakes are out there,” he said, pointing out anyone found using one faces getting a criminal record.

Of course, that is absurd. Many companies produce ID cards that are no more ‘fake’ than the ones you can buy or make yourself with a laminating kit.

In the absence of bad laws that try to conrtol human nature and urges, the rationale behind ID cards disappears and these dirty lying articles disappear with them.

“The more discerning doorman will know it’s false – but on a busy night it could easily fool people. “If you are caught using a false ID getting into licensed premises you will be reported.”

You are in violation!

He also warns anyone “lending” their own genuine ID to underage drinkers could be charged with aiding and abetting an offence.

I think we can safely say that no one is paying attention to these bad laws, just as in the days of prohibition, the majority of people simply broke the law. And we know what the result of THAT was.

The BBC contacted several fake ID firms for an interview, but none responded. The site which comes out on top when you search for fake ID through leading internet search engines carries a warning addressed to the press. “We discourage the attempted use of our cards for the purposes of misrepresentation, both here and in the documentation supplied with our delivered fake ID products,” it states.

Bollocks. Why should they respond to a bunch of habitual liars who are out to misrepresent them and destroy their legitimate businesses? They say that they are producing ‘fakes’ in line with your own fallacious logic, so what more do you want? Of course, they want them out of business and state issued mandatory ID cards to be brutally enforced.

But youth workers and publicans say they are in no doubt that the fake cards are marketed to underage drinkers.

This is just hearsay, and totally irrelevant to the true thrust of this absurd piece of paid for trash ‘journalism’.

They argue that the firms selling the cards are immoral and endangering people’s licenses and livelihoods.

This is a perfect example of ‘in the box’, ‘night is day’ thinking.

Everyone has the right to print whatever they like. Everyone has the right to sell what they print. It is immoral to try and prevent people from printing what they like and selling what they print to whomever they wish. Publicans should not need a license to sell alcohol. The regulation of pubs is what is endangering peoples livelihoods, not the selling of food and drink, which is the very purpose of a pub.

Bill McComb, who runs several alcohol and drugs awareness programmes in Ballymurphy in West Belfast, says: “The companies know that young people are using these cards for an illegal purpose.”

And so? Once again, this is an assertion, not a fact, and even if it were a fact, this is not the point. The point is that the laws controlling alcohol in the UK are immoral, and they are being used as a another pretext in the arsenal of bullshit that is being trotted out to boost the case for total control everyone through the introduction of a totalitarian ID card.

A final point of interest; when you surf to the BBQ page where this rubbish lives, you will notice how it is formatted so that it is almost free of paragraphs. This article is designed for the lowest common denominator. Each lying thought is a single sentence on its own, so that the thickest most asleep reader can easily swallow the fallacies being rammed down their throats.

Five Live Report: The Faking Game will be broadcast at 1930 GMT on Sunday, 16 December. Or download the podcast from the Five Live Report website.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7144972.stm

We will give that one a miss, thanks.

Bastards.

This is water-kefir fermenting at home.

About Kefir

Waterkefir is considered to be even better than milkkefir and the effect is similar. Waterkefir tastes very good and one becomes accustomed to looking forward to it every day.

The natives of the Kaukassus Mountains know the effect of Kefir. As children they drink it like water, and on average these people live to an age of 110 years. This is one of the few places in the world where most people reach an advanced old age in perfect health.

According to Dr. Menkiw, who has researched Kefir all his life, tuberculossis, cancer, stimach ailments etc. are unknown there. Dr. Drasek from Germany had already observed the good effects of Kefir before the Second World War. Persons who drink Kefir report it has helped them to recover after severe illnesses. Other people explain how drinking Kefir has helped them to overcome stomach cramps,chronic intestinal inflammations, gall bladder ailments, inflammations of the liver and bladder ailments. Mothers have given Kefir to their children as a substitute for mother’s milk. Women claim that Kefir has served them well in the treatment of eczema during pregnancy and in various chronic abdominal ailments.

Other possible applications of Kefir include nerve ailments, jaundice, diarrhea, constipation, aneamia, rashes, decomposition of blood

And it tastes good!

—

So where do you get it from and how do you make it you may ask.
We were given a small bottle of kefir powder from some French friends, but are looking around for kefir granules (this looks promising)

Our recipe is adapted from one on the web.
1 litre mineral or filtered water
2 slices unwaxed lemon
40g sultanas
6-8 dessert spoons of unrefined sugar
powdered kefir

mix ingredients in sterilised jar, leave for three days letting off the ferment gas occasionally.
Remove the lemon and sultanas with non-metal spoon, carefully pour off 5/8 of the liquid into a storage jar for serving.
Top up with correct proportions of water and sugar and on alternate occasions either replace or renew lemon/sultanas.
We also return the dregs of the serving bottle into the kefir as the powder is too fine to be filtered. If you can get granules you can filter them out at stage two for re-use with a non-metal filter.
Repeat.

Here we have top sleeping policeman at BBQ trying to slow the momentum of the anti road pricing rage. He uses a straw man argument to try and pull it off. Lets see…

Here’s an old economist conundrum about queues.

Here we go.

Suppose there is a water fountain in a park. It’s a hot day and lots of people want to drink from the fountain. Being awfully British and civilised, they form an orderly queue at the fountain.

Now, if the number of thirsty people strolling past the fountain is large enough, the rate at which people join the queue will exceed the rate at which people satisfy their thirst and leave the queue. So the queue will get longer and longer.

So what. The point is that everyone has an expatiation of when they are going to be served. They choose to queue up for the water. It is fair. It is efficient. There is no problem here. Anyone can leave the queue at any time to seek another source of water…or even a coke.

But at some point, thirsty people will reason to themselves that the displeasure of waiting in the queue is not worth the pleasure of the drink at the end. They’ll avoid the wait, and the queue will grow no longer.

The market solves its own problems. Order emerges from chaotic systems automagically. There is no need for interference, tweaking and other salary addict tactics. People work out problems for themselvs, and their interactions constitute a dynamic system that is self balancing and self ordering.

So far so good. That’s how life works in many ways.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But this simple account has a devastating implication.

Are you a thespian or an economist?

If there are people who are not joining the queue because it’s not worth it, then the people who do join the queue are probably barely getting any positive benefit out of their drinking fountain experience at all.

This is bullshit. There is no such thing as ‘drinking fountain experience’. These people are thirsty. When they get to the end of the queue their thirst will be quenched. That is all there is to it. Your input, meddling and nanny stating is not needed to make this magic happen.

They enjoy the drink, but for them, it is only just worth the wait. It’s a close run thing between bothering to drink or not.

More dramatic nonsense. People are able to weigh for themselvs the cost benefit of joining a queue. In the UK, people learn to do this from a very young age. The fact that they have waited for the water means that they are satisfied with the trade off. They know perfectly well that they can go elsewhere and get water. You are simplifying the dynamics to fit your bogus argument. Well, we expect nothing less from BBQ staffers, the largest concentration of paid liars deceivers and opinion steerers in the UK.

In fact, you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day, as no-one can enjoy it without paying a time penalty that more or less wipes out the benefit.

In your humble opinion the benefit is wiped out. Its a hot day. They get free water. Its up to them and not you, to decide what that is worth. This is a classic error made by people like you; you think you know what is good for other people. And its completely STUPID to say that, “you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day”. If some people get satisfaction from it, it should be there. It should not have to exist according to your idiotic standards of ‘efficiency’. Typical; you would rather people suffer from dehydration than allow an ‘inefficient’ distribution system to continue unregulated. You Swine!

I hope I’ve explained this properly. It’s a simplified account, and it relies on all the people in the park having a similar taste for drinking and not queuing.

Its completely bogus. Like most arguments made by hack economists, they create totally false idealized models of human behavior and then start to write garbage about it. Nothing wrong with that, but when you do it on the licence fee payers back, its a different proposition altogether, especially when you use this false reasoning to justify evil like orwellian road pricing, by direct order of Bliar and his contractors.

But it shows that when queuing does the rationing, it does a really bad job.

No, it doesn’t show that at all. It shows that you are not very good at making an argument. You are admitting that its a simplified model, not fit for purpose, but then in the next line, you say its good enough for the argument! Holding two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. You are a model citizen!

In the park, if you could get a warden to ban people from queuing, and who instead insisted that only random people could drink, (people whose surname begins with A to K for example), the fountain would give more benefit, (although that benefit would be distributed a little unfairly).

The police state option. The first line of choice from a BBQ animal. No surprise there.

There is another alternative that’s a little more equitable. If it’s practical, you can charge people to use the fountain.

‘Tax them’. Another ‘let the state control it’ ‘solution’. BBQ are the most unimaginative people out there. Its sickening.

Now, those who do pay, have the benefit of drinking without queuing,

NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE THERE BUSTER.

There are many other options to knock down this straw man problem:

• Put up a sign showing people alternative sources of water.
• Put in more fountains.
• Allow vendors to sell water in the park.
• $insert_your_solution_here

I have always hated the ‘this or that’ style of posing an argument that journalists are so fond of; it precludes any other, perhaps better options and arguments. It narrows the dialogue. Constrains thought. Its bad.

but they have the cost of paying. So on balance they are better off using the fountain, but probably only just better off. As far as they’re concerned, we haven’t improved things much over the queuing situation: we’ve just changed the pain of queuing by the pain in the purse.

The state of being ‘well off’ depends on who is being asked. What a biased BBQ ‘economist’ thinks is better for you and I is, I assure you, not what is actually better for you and I. And that is a fact.

The difference is though, that the money they’ve handed over can be of benefit to someone else, or the population at large.

But the population at large will never know, because their monies are routinely misdirected and never properly accounted for.

There is an upside to the drinkers’ displeasure, unlike in the case where the queue does the rationing.

Or to put it another way: when you queue – I get no benefit from your pain. When you pay, I probably do.

Now that is a pretty good argument against the use of rationing by queues.

It may not be a good argument for road pricing, but it does explain why economists tend to think of the price mechanism as a better method of rationing things than congestion.

[…]

The Reporters at BBQ

This is a concatenation of utter gibberish.

What this moron leaves out is the fact that the road pricing scheme is more about surveillance than it is about relieving congestion. HMG already has plans to put cameras on every inch of road, “to deny criminals the use of the roads”. What that means is that the criminals will use the roads as they have done before, and all ordinary, non criminal drivers will have their every movement recorded by a Big Brother system.

This couldn’t be more far removed from a water fountain in a park could it?

If you want to eliminate congestion in any place, you simply have to take cars off of the roads.

Think about a pint glass in your local. The beautiful brown haired bar maid starts pulling your pint. As the golden nectar reaches the top, she stops pulling. If she were to keep pulling, the bitter would start to spill everywhere, the publican sees his money spilling onto the floor, and you have to wait longer for your pint, which will still have only a pint of beer in it when it is handed to you.

Now think about London. London has a finite road capacity. Lets say that it is 200,000 cars on the road, plus all parked cars that have the potential of getting on the road at any time. When London is full, it should be closed off to incoming traffic. That means that on every road around the whole of london, barriers come down and no more cars are allowed in.

Cars are allowed out of course, and for every car allowed out, one is allowed in.

There is no need to take down the license numbers of each car. This is a case of simple counting, and capacity, just like the pint glass. There is no need to count in every sweet molecule of brew as it enters the glass; gravity takes care of it for you automagically. What cars do when they get into London is their business. As long as the capacity of London is not exceeded, the mission is accomplished. The quality of life for all Londoners improves dramatically, no one is disadvantaged by an iniquitous Congestion charging scheme, there is no opportunity for a Big Brother surveillance system of absolutely hideous cameras despoiling the city and making its inhabitants feel like prisoners in their own town, and if each of the entry points is manned, well, its jobs for the boys. And economists like jobs don’t they?

The simple solutions are the best. Take your lead from Beer. It almost always works.

Now there are those who say that such a scheme would cause chaos. So what. There is a cost to driving that has been ignored for decades. Everyone has to understand that there is a limit to the number of cars that can be on the roads, and there is a limit to the number of roads that are possible in any country. By setting the capacity of cities and roads and then cutting off access, people will have to think hard before they take their car out. There will be many systems that will grow out of this method of flow control; imagine the GPS navigation systems overlaid with the capacity of the roads and cities in real time. You could use a system like that to plan your journey. As you approach, say, London at 7:45 in the morning, the capacity left would be shown. If there is no chance of you getting there before ‘LonCap’ reaches 100%, your GPS will tell you to get off of the M4 NOW and park so that you can get a train.

This is the sort of solution that is preferable to the orwell style Blair Brother ‘options’. All you need to do is THINK about the problem correctly, with the rights of people uppermost as you consider what needs to be done.

Without beer, its harder to do.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) — It’s always interesting to me, that in my own country, I often get assignments where I walk into a room, and everyone looks and sounds different from me. Different language. Different culture. And sometimes, different beliefs.

On this story, I crossed such a threshold.

I stepped into the taxi depot that serves the Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport, where drivers sit and wait for their next fare. In this crowded, noisy room, most of the cabbies are Muslims originally from Somalia.

“We’re doing a story about the conflict between the cabbies and the airport. The Muslim drivers have been refusing to take passengers carrying alcohol, such as wine or liquor purchased at a duty free shop,” I explained.

A group of men gathered around us.

“This is America, we have freedom of religion,” says one cabbie. We could see their feelings are intense — that the issue seems to cut to the core of their identity.

“The Metropolitan Airport Commission is discriminating against us Muslim drivers,” says Abdulkaddir Adan, a Somalian-American who’s been driving a cab in the Twin Cities for two years.

We asked Adan if he’d give us a ride, and let us interview him while he was driving. He agreed. CNN Photojournalist Derek Davis set up a “lipstick” cam, a small camera, positioned on the dashboard.

From the back seat, I asked why Adan would object if I were carrying alcohol.

“The one who drinks, the one who transports, and the one who makes a business of it, they have the same category,” he said.

“So, by my transporting my alcohol in your cab, you are sinning?” I asked.

“Sinning to God, yes,” he replied.

Adan is not alone. About three quarters of the 900 cabbies serving the airport are Muslim, and many have been regularly refusing passengers carrying beer, wine or liquor.

In the past five years, 5,400 would-be taxi passengers at the airport were refused service for this very reason, said the Metropolitan Airport Commission, or MAC. Last May, passenger Bob Dildine says he waited for 20 minutes, and five cab drivers would not give him and his daughter a ride. He was carrying wine he bought on vacation.

“They’re here to provide service to people,” said Dildine. “We were a lawful customer, and we were denied service. That’s not our way of doing things.”

MAC officials said they don’t know of any airport other than the Twin Cities where this has become an issue. MAC officials explain that the area has a growing population of immigrant Somalians, many who’ve sought jobs as taxi drivers. Last year, MAC consulted local Muslim leaders, who issued a fatwa, or religious opinion.

“It is expressly stated,” said Kahlid Elmasry of the Muslim American Society. “Transportation of alcohol for Muslims is against the Islamic faith, and therefore forbidden.”

Last September, airport officials sought a compromise, and suggested that distinctive lights could be put on the roofs of cabs operated by drivers who will not transport alcohol. That way, taxi starters — airport staff who direct people into cabs — could send passengers with alcohol to those drivers who have no objection.

“But the feedback we got, not only locally but really from around the country and around the world, was almost entirely negative,” said airport spokesman Pat Hogan. “People saw that as condoning discrimination against people who had alcohol.”

Right now, MAC says any cabbie who refuses a passenger carrying alcohol must go to the back of the line. No small thing, given cabbies often have to wait at the depot up to three hours for the next fare.

But because MAC officials have received thousands of complaints, they’re considering stiffer penalties: a 30-day suspension for a first refusal, a two-year suspension for a second.

“We’re now at a point where the drivers may have to make a choice,” said Hogan.

For Adan, the choice is clear.

“I would leave my job, instead of doing something that’s not allowed in my religion,” he said. […]

CNN

This sort of story is designed to drive people insane. Its very clever; it is a story about how america is changing (for the worse) but also how its principles are still intact (letting new people in to get on with their lives as they wish). This is a story that you cannot take at face value. It is a provocation, a red rag to a bull.

It is a story that is made to provoke bloggers to make links like this as a suggestion to these Taxi drivers, and to make other bloggers write that these people are going to end up in a paralell society, where they cater for their own needs while everyone else lives in ‘REAL-AMERICA’, where you can call a taxi and not have to think about the sensibilities of the hack, save that he wants to be paid.

But we won’t fall for it.

What would be interesting is this; imagine these (male) cab drivers deciding that they won’t carry females. There is nothing to stop them from coming to this decision….go for it dudes!