That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘get a grip’

It’s no big deal, it’s natures way.

Some twat in Scotland has proposed that a tax should be levied on chocolate; the BBC HYS forum is currently red hot. It’s not a bad idea to do something about obesity but we are attacking it from the wrong angle, the current thinking is to tax everyone in order to waste money telling fatties that they should eat less and exercise more, all the while the fatty food companies are spending more money getting the fatties through the door and plying them with lard. We are now considering taxing everyone for eating crap in the same way that we tax smokers and drinkers, something which the tobacco industry fought by making smokes a luxury and desirable product and something the booze industry fought by lowering production costs, lowering margins and increasing volume.

So if we know that these things don’t work why are we doing them? We tax booze and fags not to lower demand but to line the coffers of the treasury so that they can offset the cost of booze and smoke related illnesses. So why not attack the costs head on rather than trying to scrabble around for the cash to pay for it? Why not just withdraw free NHS treatment for smokers, drinkers and fatties. Not only does it provide a real incentive for people to stop smoking, drinking or cramming junk down the gullets, it means that those who don’t can continue to make that choice without impacting on the rest of society. Sure a few fatties will die but they are going to die anyway and prolonging their lives is a pointles waste of time. Parents who allow their kids to become fatties can of course be prosecuted for child abuse and the kids rehomed with parents who are actually going to take care of them.

We’re quite used to seeing this sort of thing in the media all the time.

Just to clarify, this is the homosexual agenda in full:

• live without harassment
• have fabulous hair

And that’s it. Various countries have allowed gay marriage and/or some measure of gay equality for quite some time now, and they haven’t descended into fiery pits of brimstone.

To paraphrase the bus campaign: There’s no such thing as a gay agenda. Now, stop worrying and get on with your lives.

I was quite pleased to see that noted scientist, economist and government policy advisor* Alistair McGowan has been speaking out about the proposed (and de facto approved) plans to expand Heathrow with a further terminal and runway. I wonder if Mr McGowan has gotten a little carried away with his day job; one where he impersonates people who either know what they are talking about or whose opinion the public cares about. Along with a bunch of other well meaning luvvies, McGowan would rather see an investment in high speed rail links and people being ferried around the country between smaller distributed airports.

The BBC, meanwhile is doing a Have Your Say item in which literally dozens of people who live near Heathrow are complaining that it’s too noisy and they don’t think that there should be an airport expansion. Oddly enough they are quiet about their choice of airport to fly from, one must assume that they trek up to ‘London’ Stanstead or ‘London’ Luton for their flights or down to ‘London’ Gatwick or maybe over to ‘London’ Bristol airport. Maybe they take the tube, bus and walk to the easily accessible London ‘City’ airport which is somewhere in the docklands and great for those who happen to also own a helicopter to get them there.

Heathrow is the busiest airport for a bunch of reasons, most are pretty dull and have something to do with it being a major carrier hub, close to London and well connected on the rail and tube networks. It is, in fact, the only airport in the UK that is within the M25 and connected to both the rail and tube networks so logically it’s the airport of choice for anyone in the south east who does not want to:

Let’s just get a grip here on the breaking news that the papers have delivered to us three years after the event. With nothing going on in the McCann household, nobody getting their cock out on radio and everyone bored of doom and gloom in the economy it’s time to dredge up some frankly hilarious footage of Prince Harry dicking about with some mates.
My only complaint with Harry is that he needs to be aware that there are cunts with agendas everywhere all the time trying to take whatever he does and make it fit their cause. Newspapers are here to sell newspapers so those in the public eye (and especially the royals) need to be very careful with what they say.
If you had a mate who suggested he called you ‘paki’ then not many people would bat an eyelid but then you aren’t the heir to the throne with a few thousand bitter and twisted middle class journo fuckwits itching to make a few quid by making you look bad. With all the bullshit that the princes have to put up with it’s a wonder they have turned out as such a nice and well rounded pair of individuals. They have impossibly high standards set for them and even if they are mates with the guy and and the name ‘paki’ is a term of endearment there is always going to be some stone faced twat who can sell a few shitty rags by whipping up an outrage.
Let’s look at the sources to see who’s outraged… the person quoted as saying that the term was not used by one mate to another was not the young fellow soldier himself but an uncle who probably picked up about £25,000 from the papers (the going rate for this sort of thing) for his comments. The group calling for Harry to be disciplined are ‘Republic’ a fruitjob anti monarchy group who would say the same thing if Harry had singlehandedly saved the lives of an entire platoon.
Others will jump on the bandwagon but they are most likely easily led politicians who want to draw a bit of limelight by looking suitably outraged, most likely the same tossers who stood up and made pricks of themselves during the Ross/Brand thing.
Guys, this is not a big deal. Harry is a kid who is trying to live up to the expectations of a nation and doing a far better job than the fucktards at the Screws of the World ever could.

When I was a kid studying biology I was introduced to the charming story of the peppered moth. Kids nowadays may not have heard about it because it has been challenged by the witch hunters as flawed science. It’s laughable that the intelligent design crew are criticising the methods of science when their own evidence based practice consists of citing a bad translation of book which is mostly 2500 -3000 years old.

The peppered moth is still the poster child for explaining evolution to the great unwashed and it is a popular choice because the events described all happened in the last century and were observed by reliable recent sources.

For those who don’t know the story of the peppered moth, here’s the synopsis as I remember it:

White peppered moths used to be common across the British Isles and their wings made effective camoflage against the lichens on tree trunks. During the industrial revolution the lichens died out and the tree trunks were darkened by soot in some parts of the country and so the white moths were more easily spotted by predatory birds. At the same time the darkened form of the moth (occasional genetic freaks) were better camoflaged so thrived in numbers. Since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1956 the lichen has returned and the tree trunks have whitened; this has caused a resurgence in the white moth population.

My last encounter with doorstep creationists included their rebuttal of the peppered moth, the creationists told me that it had been dropped because the science behind it was flawed and so it was not to be considered as evidence of evolution. I asked why it had been dropped and for what reason but creationists rarely cite sources, they just recite what their handlers have told them to preach. They were incredulous at the thought that the moths had changed colour and seemed to be unable to grasp the very basics of the evolution theory that they were seeking to disprove.

The science behind the peppered moth has been done again with better methodology and it evidenced what reasonable people already knew, that light moths on dark trees are eaten by predators in greater numbers than dark moths on dark trees. The experiments were conducted with greater controls for other environmental factors and from my reading of the paper it seems a sound assumption that this was the cause of the changes in moth population (of course I don’t expect you to take my word for it, look at the paper by Majerus in 2005 on his Cambridge experiment).

The peppered moth is the chosen favourite explanation of evolution because it cuts through all the clouds of disinformation that the creationists preach and answers the simplest of questions: how do things evolve? The answer is this: as one species is more adapted to surroundings it has an advantage and numbers of that variation will increase. The moths did not change colour any more than we changed from being monkeys to humans in a lifetime, we evolved because genetic mutations and variations produced offspring who where more suited to their environment and they succeeded and passed on their traits to offspring in greater and greater numbers.