In an astonishing move, HM Government has now enacted a law that allows any government (because it’s now part of case law) to sentence someone for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time they “committed” an “offence“.
Worst of all, our dear labour Party let HM Gov do it!
So what was “allowed” (as they thinly described it) is now “not allowed”. Legality curiously disappears in this “allowing” farrago, yet some things were and are illegal yet hardly anyone was sent to the clink. Just a few token stooges.
Workfare
So much for our privileged elite.
Not so good if you’re struggling in this artificially enforced time of economic restraint, wholly created by a roulette-based banking and investment class that shares the revolving door world with our politicians.
Now set in case law, the precedent has now been set for any law to be so applied. You can now be penalised for something that was legal when you did it, but isn’t legal now. That’s what it means. Forget (for the moment) the injustice done to thousands of poor folks, fooled and misled into being stripped of their benefits.
The bigger picture is far worse and will have far reaching consequences.
This is really the ghastliest abomination from a whole series of actions where the freedom of the individual has been sequentially stripped over the past decade or so. No wonder they’re all smiling. On top of this they’ve now gagged the press with whom they previously had such a nice cosy relationship. They’ve made it so that if someone wins a libel case, they still have to pay all legal expenses!
Terrorism
Of course, terrorism (or the perception of terrorism through the western filter screen) is at the route of it. The silent majority have let leaders do and say anything for so long that they’ve become accustomed to being scared and placid for so long that they can’t tell right from wrong anymore. But consider this:
It’s always been illegal to trade with certain proscribed countries, organisations or individuals, (call them COI) at a given moment. But it wasn’t always so. At another moment, the list is different.
The precedent now makes it illegal for anyone to have traded with certain proscribed COI in the past even though they weren’t on the proscribed list years ago! This is the bonkers conclusion to this daft legislation. You can dream up any amount of scenarios. All bonkers but now, apparently, all legal.
It’s here on Wikileaks! Text and xls spreadsheet – it’s all here. The Wikileaks site went a bit awry earlier today and then fell over completely (as of 20081119 20:31 GMT). There sure are a lot of people who want to know lives round the corner! ;-) It’s back up now (20081120 20:24) Wikileaks...
Freedom and the Law In stark contrast to the US which still insists on draconian measures against people thought to be bad (the lowest of the low Rumsfeld called them), the UK has had a landmark ruling for common sense in a democratic, freedom-loving country. Nine Law Lords have unanimously ruled it was unfair for...
Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-R: Is this not a work of art?
I’m afraid my old TZ7 (which replaced my earlier TZ5 due to my clumsiness) has now had to be replaced with the new TZ30. The reason? At some unknown moment, my usual dollard-ish clumsiness put a scratch on the lens….. the whole recent trip to Australia is marred (to my eyes at least) by a fuzzy mark off-centre at 2 o’clock.
I wanted the red one as it’s a beautiful thing indeed. In fact, I hunted to get one at a good price within a reasonable time-scale, but have settled for the black one for cost and because I can get it now!.. (The Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-K).
Gratuitous photo of Iggy Pop from October 25, 1977 at the State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s now on the way so watch this space for my opinions and results later!!. I’m extremely hopeful due to the reviews I’ve read.
I’ve waited and have passed over the TZ20 and other incarnations due to unfavourable comments and lack of substantial change in their features. Now, the TZ30 has tipped the balance for me. The GPS feature introduced with the TZ10 hasn’t had much interest to me, but maybe this’ll change all that!
Specification Highlights for me are:
The 20x optical zoom (naturally) in a body that’s less obtrusive than my current TZ7.
Better ISO performance – reputed to be very good at low light down to ISO800.
Better burst mode shooting. It’s supposed to be 10 fps whereas my TZ7 only does about three…. I have some stop-action movie ideas that I started with my old Fuji FinePix F30 that I’d like to continue and expand upon. The F30 did reasonable frames per second whereas the TZ7 is just too slow for the effects I want.
Semi-automatic panorama shooting. Much better than the old manual stitch mode….
Rapid autofocus (AF) – reputed to be 1/10 second. Combine this with burst mode and nature and sport shots should be great with at least one being on the button.
The only one I’ve spotted that directly affects my expectations is that in burst mode, the auto-focus is fixed once the burst starts, at 10fps. However, to counter this the feature is more variable than I’m used to in that with burst mode set to 5fps autofocus and zoom work concurrently! This definitely needs playing with!
My Standard Expectations:
Minimal blue/purple casts or fringing at high contrast edges.
Wonderful summer shots with vibrant colour.
Much better focus changing in video zooming.
My Quantum Leap Hopes:
The same or better sound quality that the F30 and TZ7 delivered. Both produced full non-clipped audio sound at rock concerts! The TZ7 does it in stereo. (see my Iggy Pop video below, discussed in this post, Iggy at Hammersmith).
Much, much faster autofocus and burst shooting than I’m used to. This includes the continuous autofocus & zoom at 5fps mentioned earlier.
Much better auto-focus on video zoom especially and pictures generally. I’m hoping the intelligence of the thing has been re-jigged…… To explain…….
The tendency on my TZ7 is to focus on the near-field whether it’s bright or dark. Yet I want it to focus on what the human eye drifts to, i.e., bright objects. On the TZ7 I’ve had to use human intervention to override the camera expectations….
The video below shows this.
For me the prime purpose of a compact camera is to get the best shot possible as fast as possible.
At the Stooges concert at Hammersmith below, I’d waited for ages and then suddenly the band came on and kicked off immediately! There was no time to prime the focus because I knew I’d miss some performance, so I had to make allowances for the camera deficiencies by pulling back zoom and trying to get autofocus on the bright areas by field drifting.
Ideally, I should have asked Mr Pop to restart his concert so that I could stop the video, auto-focussing on maximum zoom to distance and then restarting the video before he kicked off again. ;-) Obviously that wasn’t going to happen so I did the best I could without missing any of the performance of my historic bête noire idol.
As it was, my guess was right, even to continuing filming without a break, because against all rumours and knowledge that the Raw Power album was to be played in order, it wasn’t! Search & Destroy immediately followed Raw Power.
A few test pictures using the “Starry Sky” setting on my Panasonic Lumix TZ5. The pictures were done using a tripod at the three timer settings that are inbuilt for that setting; 15s, 30s & 60s. The sky was quite brightly lit due to some thin mist acting as a reflector for the urban lighting....
After driving through blizzards to get there, I took this little video of King Edward’s Bay en route to the Gibraltar Rock Inn in Tynemouth. It was freezing and I was shivering…. What it demonstrates quite effectively, is the anti-shake at work on my camera and the fantastic level of zoom it has. The colours...
Orwell must be turning in his grave in despair that what he predicted as a warning about what not to do, now looks like coming to fruition.
Remarkably, since wangling themselves into government, the conservative-libdem coalition government is now actually dropping a key part of their manifesto which they laboriously agreed two years ago. This can still be found on the government website, page 11 to be exact (pdf) . Here’s what they said:
The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian…. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power – FAIL
…reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion – FAIL
… introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation – FAIL
…end the storage of internet and email records without good reason – FAIL
…a British Bill of Rights that … protects and extends British liberties – FAIL
(Actually, the whole Con-Dem pledge list makes good reading to see just how far removed from it our evil diktat of quangos has become.)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Photo credit: andreasmarx)
Not so long ago I was haranguing the former Labour government about their plans for ID Cards, their laws over CCTV and photographing in public places, the reduction in privacy for individuals and the removal of our civil rights over detention without trial, due cause and 3rd party notification for first 90 days and them 42 days.
I left the Labour Party because of it and have not rejoined.
Huge Vocal Resentment Against UK Government Secret Citizen Monitoring Plans.
Now, the tories and their liberal stooges have been shown to be both serially evil in their pronouncements and plans, and also serially incompetent of managing almost anything.
Their pathetic management of a minor industrial dispute (the fuel shortage) which did nothing except invoke almost universal resentment of the coalition and reawaken a general awareness of their ineffectiveness comes on top of stripping the very foundations away from one of UK society’s greatest inventions of the Industrial Age, our National Health Service (NHS).
Top this behavioural abomination with that of the revolving door policy between banking and politics which they continue to promote with zero penalties for failure while the population-at-large have to prop up the whole system with their taxes means only two things to me.
The government must do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
They will do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
Astute folk will see this as my prediction for government actions over the next 3 years.
Tories: Keep Friends Happy
Meanwhile, hundreds of extra Tory donors will soon be available to bankroll the “all is good” story. They will arrive as beneficiaries of the windfall provided as the “former NHS” contracts are handed out to friends, much like Michael Ashcroft benefited from the first round of NHS privatisation during the Thatcher era. This article on Powerbase and this one (sourced from a now defunct article in The Scotsman) show quite clearly that 1/3 of cleaning contracts went to Ashcroft’s businesses during this time, saying;
MICHAEL Ashcroft, (…) bankrolled an “independent” publicity campaign that allowed his multi-million-pound contract cleaning empire to prosper and led to a change in the law. The campaign was run from the London office of the former Conservative Scottish secretary, Michael Forsyth. A spokesman for Mr Ashcroft confirmed last night that he had contributed to the Public and Local Service Efficiency Campaign (PULSE), which was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services such as cleaning and catering. The campaign had been disbanded by the end of the 1980s after the Conservative government passed the 1988 Local Government Act . Mr Ashcroft’s Hawley Services Group, a contract cleaning firm later known as ADT, flourished under the new regime, with ADT, winning a third of NHS contracts between 1983 and 1988.
For further information into the depths that the Tories will go to enable all public money to be fed straight to their business friends, see this article which pulls apart the dealings of Ashcroft, discredited Dame Shirley Porter, NIMBY Nicholas Ridley, Chris Chope (the dog turd of Christchurch) and current (dodgy expenses, remember) minister Eric Pickles.
How Bad was Thatcher’s Recession compared to the Current Economic Slump? Q. Well, how would you find out, exactly? A. Surprisingly easily. This graph here compares historical economic slumps with the current one, on a month by month basis. It’s taken from the “National Institute of Economic and Social Research” (NIESR) website here. Notionally, it’s...
Too Little, Too Late, Gordon Brown This morning, PM Gordon Brown told Andrew Marr that he wants to ‘clean up’ parliament. He wants a ‘code of conduct’ for MPs to follow. The thing is, there’s already a code of conduct – it’s called the law! All we, ‘the people’ want, is to have reasonable laws...
No doubt hoards of guitar players were avidly checking James Williamson’s fingers in this clip, just to make sure they had it right!
For me, I’m just glad I’ve got to see it in case I die before May or something else happens. The guy is still great – so many fills, so many runs, and all backed up by the hard track running through. Williamson made so many variations and overdubs, they’re all right, somehow.
Because as he’s previously said, he (they) never knew when the song would start or what Iggy would do next. This means that when you’re used to winging it, it forces the creativity from you because you MUST keep it interesting. The real guts of the track is here, plus some of the key riffs.
He’s a genuinely modest guy to people he respects and is fiercely proud of his achievements, as is obvious from his past interviews and just watching these clips here.
This is an unreleased acoustic track of Iggy’s and James’. I wonder if they’ll do it in May?
20/07/2007:Took flying visit to see Mr & Mrs Symptom at the Windmill pub in Cowpen. Luxury customised seats in gaffa tape. Wacky set from the two (sometimes four) members featuring some neat dancing from Mrs Symptom who isn’t as mad as all that. Mr Symptom’s fashion sense is still in a class of one and...
Something I never thought could happen, given everything that James Williamson has said, is the news that 2010 sees the return of Williamson to play ‘proper’ guitar with The Stooges. ( ‘Proper’ comes from Iggy’s historical description of the band a few years back while speaking to Melvyn Bragg.) This is the interview (for a...
Any political movement which charges people to attend meetings is no movement at all. Instead it is little more than a talking shop for lefty celebrities to spout platitudes from a top platform whilst making entirely different plans behind the … Continue reading → […]
A recent response to a Freedom of Information request reveals the first clear details of what will be expected of claimants when Universal Credit is launched. The new benefit, which will be rolled out nationally from October, will replace all … Continue reading → […]
