Well, this is beyond parody

This article alleges Obama is trying to destroy the US.

Two words: confirmation bias.

BTW, if someone on the left posted that about McCain, Bush or Reagan, I would make the same response.

Farage and UKIP

I caught a bit of the UKIP Party Political Broadcast a couple of nights back.

The UKIP leader was speaking in a manner that I found rather uncomfortable, stating that Britain should leave the EU because our money was going to the states of the former Soviet bloc, who were only joining for subsidies and new infrastructure.

Mr. Farage, are you at all aware of the history of Communism? Or that these states are pretty poor, had their economies ruined by Soviet rule and are suffering because of the credit crunch? Or the principle of helping your neighbour out?

People need to examine UKIP throughly before voting for them.

Victory Day

Today is the 64th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe.

May I extend my deepest gratitude to all those who served to defend freedom during that war. You will never be forgotten.

On MPs Expenses

Two posts today- I anticipate at any rate.

It's important to get some perspective on this whole scandal over expense claims of MPs. Certain words are being bandied about, like "fraud", that aren't fully justified.

Firstly, Members of Parliament don't get paid that much. The basic salary of your backbencher is about £65,000. Members of the US House of Representatives earn over £100,000 a year. I don't know what Paul Dacre earns, but I guess it's at least £500,000.

Secondly, it costs considerably more than that to function as a member of Parliament. Some of the key expenditures:

• The rent/mortgage on two residences.
• Travel costs on a weekly basis to places as far away as Scotland.
• The salaries of at least two staff members and probably more, as well as expenses for interns.
• Office hire in your constituency.
• Food costs.
• Feeding yourself and your family.
• Stationery and other office supplies (20,000 leaflets costs a fair chunk of cash)

Thirdly, there has probably been some fraud going on and it should be dealt with. However, most of this stuff isn't fraud, because that would require deception as to the purposes the money was used for. There is no evidence of that in most cases.

Fourthly, MPs do work very hard. Just because Parliament is taking a 12-week recess, it doesn't mean that MPs won't still be working. Even when in session, you can't spend all your time in the Commons Chamber.

Fifthly, there's been far worse cases of corruption, that's for sure. Try Italy.

The system needs complete reform, that's for sure. I propose an increase in basic salaries and an allowance specifically for all office-related stuff. No-one should claim non-essential social stuff on expenses.

Now, let's get this sorted out. We have more important things to deal with.

30 Years After Thatcher's Election

It's been thirty years since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. It will take another thirty, at least, to fix the damage she did to this country.

Mrs. Thatcher's economic policies condemned an entire generation of working class to long-term unemployment. The manufacturing capability of Britain was massively eroded. The credit crunch was caused by the culture of greed she helped create.

Before anyone says the Falklands War, her Government was planning to make cuts to the Navy beforehand. Those cuts were a reason for the Argentine invasion.

For those of you who are unhappy with Labour at present, remember Thatcher. Remember what a lurch to the left does. You can't play politics with people's livelihoods and jobs at stakes. Do what is best for this country and the wider world.

Swine Flu

It appears, so far, that this swine flu thing is just going to turn out to be a minor strain of the regular sort of flu. Some people are going to have time off work. Some are going to pull sickies. Pigs are going to die in Egypt.

This is not going to be Spanish, or even Hong Kong Flu.

The papers have been doing their usual panic thing (thankfully, no-one's attempted to tie this to immigrants, although house prices have probably been mentioned somewhere) over a virus that has a mortality rate of about 2% or less and has had virtually all of its deaths confined to Mexico.

Which leads me to think that there's something odd going on in Mexico, which needs investigating. Diet, perhaps? It would be interesting to see a case location map, because if they're all grouped in one area that happens to be near a chemical plant, it would be suspicious to say the least. Remember the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984.

Time for openness and accountability

It is time that key decision-makers and people of influence reveal their expenses and sources of income.

Mr. Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, how much do you earn a year?

On recent events in London Town

Is it just me or does Max Clifford come across as the PR equivalent of an ambulance chasing lawyer? Every time someone suffers some nasty event, there he is representing them. While he may have waived the fee for Jade Goody, he got a lot of exposure from it. All publicity and all that...

Mr. Green is not being charged over the Home Office leaks. Right call I say. If anything the bad publicity would be spectacular. That said, while Labour may have got overly comfortable in power, I'd take 12 years of Labour to even one day of the Conservatives.

I see the Daily Fail is already smearing the woman who is complaining anyway. The hypocrisy of Tories is outstanding at times.

Smear and spin, by the way, are as old the hills.

Happy Easter!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the day when Christians all over the world remember Jesus' death on the cross.

Over at TV Tropes we have a fairly large category called "Crowning Moment of Awesome", which details awesome moments that occur in fiction and also in real life.

We don't have a section on religion, but if we did, the Crucifixion would have to go on the last.

I've been spending some time over the last few days thinking about the whole story of Holy Week. There are just so many great aspects of it, that show just how amazing God is.

The entry into Jerusalem. Jesus comes into a city on a donkey and people mob him. I'm guessing the palm leaves were for the colt, to protect its feet. That donkey must have had a great story to tell to his peers for the rest of his life. It's also entirely different to traditional triumphant entries- but Jesus was no conventional hero. He was- and still is- so much cooler.

He never ran any earthly body, never ran for office. His only paid job was as a self-employed carpenter. He lived for 33 and a third years. He wrote no books and directly preached to only a few hundred thousand.

Yet this man, the Son of God, has influenced the entire of global history for the past 2000 years. That shows the power of God. Thanks to Jesus, many, many good works have been done as well. I admit that he has been misused for evil by many people, but the good he has achieved far out weighs that. Do you think that we'd have as little poverty as we do in this country without the impact of Christianity?

The Gospels differ over when precisely Jesus cast out the money-changers from the Temple. I'm perfectly happy for him to have done it twice. It's a dramatic enough event and shows a side of Jesus that people sometimes ignore. Yes, he is nice, but he can also be very angry at times.

He used skilled rhetoric and intelligence, not force of arms, to attack the corrupt society of his day. If it wasn't for Jesus, we'd have far more wars these days.

The authorities felt threatened by him. The powerful generally don't like anything that threatens their own position. In this case, the High Council were worried about their income from sacrifices and endangering their own good relations with an imperialist force. So, they falsely accused Jesus of blasphemy, subjected him to an unfair trial and executed him.

On to the Last Supper. Few of us know precisely when we are going to die. It tends to come rather suddenly. Those who know to the precise hour tend to be facing execution.

The Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus must have been terrified. He knew, he knew, that in less than 24 hours, he was going to be flogged, stripped naked and nailed to a cross. He was going to be taunted by a crowd who had earlier supported him and then he was going to die.

He knew he had a way out- he could have fled Jerusalem altogether. He knew Judas was going to betray him- he could have killed him. Yet he chose to face his fate.

He could have made a spectacular demonstration of his power and come off the cross. That would be the predictable thing to do. But Jesus was anything but predictable.

In fact, the evidence of what was going to happen was there, people just interpreted it wrongly.

It had to happen this way. If Jesus had done the "predictable" thing, people wouldn't have believed him.

Witness the Resurrection. It was observed by two women. Women didn't have much respect in society back then.

Jesus was spectacular by not being spectacular. In fact he still is. In the continuing provision for us, the hope he has offered for millions (I am sure many more suicides would occur without Jesus helping people), the miracles that still occur, he shows the awesome power of God.

Happy Easter.

AJJE Games blog

Thought I'd advertise this:

The official blog of AJJE Games.

It's largely news announcements, but I'll be adding some more.

G20 Thoughts

I've been on holiday to Dubai, so I haven't been able to blog recently.

Might as well give my thoughts on the latest excuse for a riot in my home city.

Personally, I doubt that the economy is exactly stimulation-capable at the moment. Metaphorically speaking, it's in a coma having banter with a lairy Mancunian detective (BTW, watching the first episode of Ashes to Ashes on the plane home, I remembered just how awesome Mr. Hunt can be- he gets three Crowning Moments of Awesome in the first episode can be).

What we're going to need, basically, is damage control- ensuring that the exchequers of some of the poorer countries still get decently revenue, that jobs are protected and that confidence doesn't go down any further (in the latter case, we need to drop out the rest of the bad debt news now to get it done with).

This is a step in the right direction, but things will get worse before they get better.

I expect the economy will recover in a couple of years. I'd say 2010 is too optimistic. Personally, I'm going for 2011.

If it does recover before the next election, Mr. Brown will have the thanks of a grateful world. If not, Mr. Cameron had better remember that he was responsible for none of the recovery and that he opposed many elements of it.

That Goal Was Offside- I want £45 million because we didn't get into Europe because of it!

Just when I thought we'd finally put this whole stupid thing with Tevez to bed, we start getting sued by an ex-manager and Leeds United of all people.

Look, you got relegated due to your own incompetence. If we'd registered Tevez properly, he'd have been cleared to play.

Are you going to blame us for your poor footballing or are you going to try and get back into the Premier League?

Don't waste everyone's time.

Upcoming Stuff

I got elected, pretty much unanimously, Administrator of the Ride The Edge club of AJJE Games recently. No-one else ran. That's a vote of confidence in itself, I hope.

I'ved Fast Eddie and the people at TV Tropes if I can take the articles on atomic weapons platforms there and put them here. They might be more suited for this. Who knows? I might even get a small community here.

I've also joined up for a Harpoon 4.1 Play By Email game, a single scenario one based on one of the scenarios for the High Tide (1980s Cold War) box set. I'll do a write-up on that once it's concluded.

Does anyone know a place that does D20 Modern PBEM, by the way?

Northern Ireland

I haven't been blogging as often as I aim to. Can't make any promises on that regard, it's been busy.

So, a bunch of bigots have just killed two British soldiers in Antrim. The Real IRA has actually been setting off bombs for a while now, but the papers don't really care about property damage.

I don't think this callous act (they shot them some more while they were lying on the ground) will derail the peace process. The Daily Mail's attack on Gerry Adams is not really going to help matters, especially as a front page headline (then again, the Daily Fail was always deeply Unionist).

Cooler heads should prevail and these evil-minded terrorists will not return Northern Ireland to the bad old days of the Troubles.

Global Sale! Get Fifty Percent Off!

It seems like we've been in a constant sale since about October. Everywhere I go, or whatever I see on the radio, there's a sale on at most of the stores. Cars, sofas, houses etc.

There's one major reason why the economy isn't doing too well- there's nothing really to buy.

Books I can generally get for free from the local library if I'm even inclined to read them. With the Internet, I can find out most stuff easily.

Most of the magazines in any given newsagents are of the soft pornographic variety. While I like attractive women as much as the next heterosexual man, lesbian or bisexual, I have no interest and actually dislike "lads' mags".

The papers are either too expensive or not worth reading (I've been a Metro reader for months).

I don't eat a huge amount of sweets, I don't smoke and I don't like alcohol too much.

DVDs are generally rubbish (I can watch that stuff on TV), I rarely buy video games since I got seriously into RPing and I have little interest in clothing.

I'm sure many feel somewhat similar to me. With job worries, we're also saving our money.

We need an incentive to buy stuff before the economy recovers.

West Ham's season

Since Mr. O'Donnell of The Poor Mouth (see my blogroll) has added me and I currently show as having made my last post a week ago, I might as well post.

West Ham now have 33 points with 12 games to go. We need 9 points from the remaining games to be statistically sure of being safe. I think we'll get that.

Our losses to Manchester United and Bolton were not all that bad and we should have some easier games after that.

I predict that we'll finish between 8th and 12th this season, more likely 9th or 10th. Good job Zola!

Basic ideas for a post-STARTarms treaty

You might have heard already, but the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is due to expire soon and so President Obama has proposed reducing stockpiles to 1,500- 2,000 nuclear warheads.

I have some basic ideas for this new treaty and would like your opinions.

Overall aims

I would aim for a reduction in deliverable nuclear warheads to a total of 800 for the United States of America and 1000 for the Russian Federation. Those precise numbers would be tweaked about, but reflect the differences in technological capabilities, as well as other things.

This number would allow for effective mass destruction of either country without ensuring complete "breakdown" of their countries.

No strategic weapon systems with increased capability from present would be permitted.

Nuclear long-range bombers

The US has the B-52 and B-2s as their sole aircraft tasked for strategic nuclear weapons, with 1,080 such warheads. Russia has the Tu-22M "Backfire", the Tu-95 "Bear" and the Tu-160 "Blackjack".

I propose that the B-52 fleet is reduced to a total of about 30 and completely denuclearised. The B-2 will become the sole US nuclear bomber, along with the "2018 bomber" and these two together limited to a total of about 40. These would only carry free-fall bombs.

Russia would de-nuclearify the "Backfire" and the "Bear", reducing their numbers to 100 of the former and 50 of the latter. The "Blackjack" could go up to 40 in numbers too, retaining the air-launched cruise missile capability..

Stealth would balance out stand-off capability.

Tactical nuclear weapons

Eliminate the lot of them- on both sides. They are not needed in any likely war scenario. This includes sub-launched cruise missiles.

ICBMs

Eliminate the R-39M/SS-18 and UR-100N/SS-19 from Russian service immediately. Allow Russia a total of 400 ICBM mounted warheads, on Topol, Topol-M and RS-24 missiles.

Reduce the US Minuteman III force to 150 missiles, with two warheads each.

SLBMs

The US would convert three more of the fourteen Ohio-SSBNs to SSGNs and eliminate a further four, leaving seven.

Russia would be allowed nine Borey SSBNs, with everything else going.

Anti-Ballistic Missiles

Now, this is where things will get a little more controversial.

Basically, the US will be allowed to continue development of NMD, if President Obama decides to do so. However, its deployment will be limited to a total capacity to intercept 150 warheads and limitations would be placed on BMD-capable ships (10 in total as a figure I'm throwing out there), which would be clearly marked (paint the launchers orange or something).

In return, Russia would be permitted to have intercept capability of 200 warheads, either expanding A-135 or converting S-400/SA-21 missiles for an ABM role.

Other thoughts

The inspection regime would continue as is with appropriate modificiations.

China and the other nuclear powers, as well as potential ones (like Iran and Saudi Arabia) should be brought into a global agreement on the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons

Personally, I'd like to see one each of the Ohio and "Typhoon" SSBNs as museum vessels.

So, your thoughts.

Exhuming the Corpse: Why 'Demons' failed

ITV's big new Saturday drama, Demons is almost certainly not coming back. If Incompetent Television renew it, I will be very surprised indeed.

There's a number of reasons that it failed.

Firstly, Philip Glenister's American accent was pretty poor. A man of considerable acting talent, he looked wasted in this show. This was a minor reason.

Secondly, lack of genre savviness among the characters, who casually wandered into traps and fell for dodgy people. Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed the rules of the game regarding this.

Thirdly, a general moral issue with good guys who freely waved firearms around in public, shot someone who had just given information and were in essence pursuing a policy of genocide. Luke's father actually had the right idea.

Fourthly, it was too dark for the time slot. Doctor Who has far more humour.

Fifth and finally, it was boring. There was little to hold viewer interest.

Time to close the coffin on this one and for ITV to try something new.

Simultaneous Happiness And Worry...

Iran has launched a satellite.

While this is a great achievement for any country, it also means they can build an ICBM...