Tuesday, November 29, 2011

This bloke knows how to rant.

I was mailed this a couple of days ago, it's a rant from a retired English police officer posted shortly after the last round of UK riots.  With one single exception, I utterly agree with all of it.  That exception is automatically blaming the parents.  I'm not saying that a lot of the time it isn't bloody well true, but not necessarily always.  You can be a role model, guide and lead all you like, but at the end of the day some kids are simply useless gobshite layabouts with low intelligence, no morals or creed, no discernable work ethic, and no hope of ever being more than a lowbrow thug.  I should know, I've got one.



Who would be a police officer in Britain today? You’d need to have your head examined.
You probably know that this week Britain has been terrorised by an underclass of welfare-dependent drug-addled criminal scum who have been allowed to run riot in the streets because the police haven’t been allowed to do their job and protect the public. The media is full of speculation about why it happened and what is the root cause.

Well, that’s easy. The root cause is stupidity, a complete lack of imagination, a stunted feral view of the world that amounts to self-inflicted moral and mental disablement. And it’s the direct product of an entitlement culture that rewards idleness, encourages victimhood, and compensates criminals.
That’s the root cause. And it happened because there was nobody there to stop it, and because the people who did it know damn well that if they are caught they won’t be properly punished. That’s why it happened. It also happened because we don’t have enough police officers in Britain; they cost money, unfortunately. And many of the ones we do have are not properly trained in riot control, because that costs money. It happened because police are not allowed to deal with rioting effectively in Britain using water cannon, tear gas, rubber bullets - the kind of thing other riot police take for granted.

Also, individual officers have learned from experience that if they lay a hand on a rioter they’re likely to be charged with assault, or worse. Ordinary officers in the police have got no chance at all. Whatever they do, they’re criticised and vilified for it by people who are not in their situation, and who couldn’t cope if they were. When the rioting first broke out, if they had gone in straight away and started cracking heads the media would have been all over them for police brutality.
They’re not even allowed to carry guns, except in special circumstances, even though gun crime is rampant in Britain, and in some places it seems like every second fourteen year-old is walking around with a gun jammed into a belt worn halfway down to his knees. Indeed, the whole thing happened because the police shot dead a man who was pointing a gun straight at them, and this apparently inflamed local sensitivities, which is the worst crime you can commit as a policeman in modern Britain.

The social justice brigade have been quick to blame the rioting on the usual suspects: inequality, unfairness, lack of opportunity. “This is happening,” they say, “because these youngsters are unemployed.” No, it isn’t. Who needs a job when you can deal drugs? That’s where the real money is. Besides, if they had to look for employment they might have to learn to read and write. “OK, then, it’s happening because they’re disengaged from society.” Oh, are they? How awful for them. Hey, come to think of it, that might have something to do with all the drugs.

A TV reporter actually stopped one of them in the street and asked him why he was doing it, and he replied: “I’ve got no money.” And I thought: “Aw, isn’t that awful? My heart goes out to the poor little lad. He’s got no money because he spent all his money on a Blackberry phone and a gram of heroin.

You’ve got money, you parasites. You get state benefits because other people work to pay for your room and board. You’ve got no job because you’re unemployable, and that’s because you’re inadequate. You’ve got no backbone, no morals, no knowledge, no intelligence, and you can’t be trusted. You’re like rats who shit in their own nest. And you’ll never make anything of yourselves because there’s nothing there to begin with. And for that you can blame your stupid ignorant parents, not your lack of opportunity.

There are people on this planet who can only dream of your lack of opportunity, you disgusting parasitical halfwits. Go tell the starving people in Somalia that you’ve got no opportunity. Tell the ten year-old in Pakistan making mud bricks eighteen hours a day for no pay. Tell these people that you have no opportunity, you pathetic pampered human vermin.

If we had any kind of justice system worth the name in this country, anyone convicted of taking part in these riots would automatically lose entitlement to state benefit for life and their house would be demolished. That would be justice. And if it violated their human rights, hey, so much the better. However, what will happen, if past form is anything to go by, is that a few hundred dregs of society will go through the courts and get derisory sentences, while the rest of them take their new plasma TVs and go back to their normal lives terrorising the people around them, which they can do because there’s nobody there to stop them.

And then everything will go back to normal for everyone except the victims, the people who have been murdered or who have been burnt out of home and business, because the police weren’t there to protect them, because there aren’t enough of them and because they’re not allowed to.
Peace. That’ll be the day.

I want one!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Quote of the day

Absolute quote of the day:

 

“So I need to mount a 2.3kg monitor to a wall. Besides magic, and drilling into the wall how could I possibly do this?  I was thinking of using a heap of those 3M strips around the edges of the monitor.”

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

One wild ride for a NZ chopper pilot

Alan Joyce:1 Unions:0

I see that yet again, with the referral of the Qantas pay and conditions dispute to FWA, a stupid and greedy union management has quite effectively fucked both themselves and their members by insisting on having their cake and eating it too.

 

While some of the pay claims themselves were not unreasonable, the TWU pushing for 5% PA for baggage handlers is taking the piss.  Even the pilots were only asking for a couple of percent, and the ground engineers not much more.  Where the unions have really overstepped the bounds of what would be tolerated is in thinking they can tell management how to run the airline.  Offshoring maintenance functions and using contract ground staff is an operational decision and nothing to do with pay, benefits and conditions, and while the unions might not like it, it’s none of their damn business.

 

I don’t like seeing jobs go offshore any more than anyone else does, but Qantas is currently the Telstra of the aviation industry.  It’s used to being the incumbent player and generates a certain amount of brand loyalty from having been there more or less forever, but with Virgin and Jetstar (I don’t consider Tiger a realistic option) offering significantly cheaper pricing, Qantas needs to re-evaluate how it operates if it is stay relevant and profitable in the industry.  Also like Telstra, Qantas doesn’t really know how to do things cheaply, but Alan Joyce is teaching it to do so, and this is lesson one.

 

Ultimately, air travel is air travel.  It’s not something to be enjoyed, it’s something people endure to get to where they want or need to be.  It’s expensive, annoying, uncomfortable, intrusive and restrictive (thanks, CASA) – there’s not a lot of lipstick you can put on that particular pig.  At least when Telstra charge like wounded bulls for access to their network, you actually get something for it in return – performance and coverage.  Only an idiot would expect to pay Vodafone prices for Telstra network quality (although there are demonstrably plenty of idiots about the place who do), but an airline seat is a pretty homogenous product.  The inflight (alleged) meal on a Qantas flight isn’t going close to justifying the extra $100 a seat either in input cost or impact on my wallet, so there are obviously some significant improvements that need to be made other than dropping the cardboard chicken to get competitive.

 

Because of competition and the opening up of the industry to cheaper foreign carriers, the airline flight buying public of Australia is now used to paying cheap, globalised prices for their travel.  Qantas needs to be able to compete on a similar footing to survive, which means lowering prices, which means lowering costs to the same levels as its competitors can operate at.  The unions need to deal with this.  However, like ticks on a dog, the unions would rather see the host bleed to death rather than make any sort of sacrifice themselves.  Hmm, I’m sure I’ve seen a very similar situation somewhere else recently… oh yeah, that’s right – the Greek economy.  That’s in the shitter too, and isn’t it surprising that nobody wants to make any sacrifices for the good of the corporate entity there, either?

 

Ultimately, a lot of the dispute is not so much about pay and conditions here and now, but future security – and that’s something that both the unions and Qantas are fighting for.  Qantas wants the right to run its business the way it wants to, and to have the right to restructure their operations in such a way they will be commercially viable in the future.  The unions want Qantas to commit to not offshoring and contract outsourcing work because it diminishes their role in the future – stuff their members here and now!  In a very similar matter to the CEPU failing their members for years in their fight with Telstra, the TWU, AIPA and ALAEA are failing their members now by acting in their own narrow self-interest.

 

Fair Work Australia isn’t going to care less about the union’s concerns about offshoring and outsourcing, because they are not there to tell Qantas how to run their business, and nor do they have the right to.  I predict they will look at the pay and conditions claims, strike a balance somewhere towards the middle, announce a determination (which is legally binding on all parties), ignore the rest of the union claims, and tell everyone to get back to work.  Qantas will get pretty much what it wants, the staff will get less that they would have gotten had the unions not been acting in their own self-interest, and the unions themselves will no doubt put out a blustery press release claiming it as a “win for their members”.  Yeah, right.

 

Nice one, unions.  Well done.  If you had to devise a way of alienating your members and highlighting your increasing lack of relevance to the modern world I don’t think I could do a better job myself.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Thursday, November 17, 2011

You have got to love the name

Seriously, the irony of that surname is killing me.

Linky

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Dishwasher fun

After much faffing about I appear to have finally fixed a problem with my dishwasher not draining.

 

I’ve been blaming a kinked drain hose behind the machine due to the cabinetmaker not wanting to spend 2c extra on a bit more depth, and I have spent the last week experimenting different hose positions.  Sometimes it works for several cycles like a charm, and then it drives me nuts with drain blockage errors.

 

Finally cracked the shits with it this morning and ripped all the plumbing out from underneath the sink, and discovered the neolithically cretinous plumber who installed the thing had only drilled a small hole though the plug in the drain pipe barb the hose connects to, and a bit of crap had brought the whole works to a halt.  He hadn’t even cleaned the swarf out of the hole, so a 5mm screwdriver would not fall through under its own weight.

 

It’s now reamed out to 15mm and thoroughly deburred, and working fine.

 

The builder will be receiving a similar reaming tomorrow morning.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Conversation of the day

Shooting my new arrows this afternoon in peace and quiet when I’m accosted by a fellow club member.

 

 

FCM:  Wow, are those the new Easton Fullbores?  The max legal Vegas carbons?

 

Me:  Yeah, sure are.  Nice, eh?

 

FCM:   Can I try them?

 

Me:  Sure, grab a handful and go for it.

 

 

15 minutes later…

 

 

FCM:  These fly awesome out of my bow!  Are they factory made?  The glue joints are perfect!

 

Me:  Nope, you have to assemble them from components yourself.  I kind of have OCD about my gear, combine with night shift at work and I usually take about 8 hours to assemble a set as precisely as possible.  Pretty much anyone can get perfect glue joints but it’s a lot of practice and time, and you waste a few components before you get it just right.

 

FCM:  Wow.  Do you want to sell them?

 

Me:  Not really.  I just built them and I want to shoot them myself.

 

FCM:  Oh.  Are you sure?  I’m happy to pay a good price for them!

 

Me:  I suppose everything is for sale, but I’d want about $200 for them.

 

FCM:  But they’re only $120 at store Iggledeblonk!

 

Me:  Yes, the raw components are $120 at store Iggledeblonk.  You can drive for an hour to the store to get them, or have them shipped.  You then need to cut them and weight match everything with a set of digital scales.  You can then spend the same 8 hours assembling them that I did and see if you can get them to come out that neat, and weight matched to 0.03% again after assembly too.  The jig I used to *get* them that neat cost me $600, there are 10 on the planet, and the maker isn’t doing them any more.

 

FCM:  That’s too much, I can offer $100 at most.

 

Me:   You do realise that’s asking *me* to pay *you* about $30 for the privilege of spending 8 hours of *my* time replacing something I already have?  Thanks, but I think I’ll pass there.

 

FCM:  Are you sure?  They are really nice, I’d really like them.

 

Me:  Quite sure.  Especially as the points had to be imported from Canada which took a month, because no bugger stocks them in Australia, the bushings are non-standard and had to be ordered specially, and the nocks are single-mold Beiters from Germany which cost as much as a dozen standard one.  In fact, forget $200 – minimum is $250.  And that’s paying myself about $7 an hour for labour.

 

FCM:  Oh.  </stomps off irritated>

 

 

Fuck me… some mother’s children.

 

Friday, November 11, 2011

MTR1377 closing?

I listen to MTR1377 when I can, but I well understand the poor ratings and losses.  MTR management, here's a few tips:

(1) The grinding, never ending right wing whining of Steve Price, Andrew Bolt and Chris Smith would wear anyone down after a while, and destroys the entertainment value of anything balanced they have to present.  They're entitled to an opinion like anyone else, but make the point and *move on*.  The program producers being blatantly selective about callers that only support their point of view is also blatantly obvious, biased and manipulative.  Stop it.

(2) Alan Jones is a pompous, self important and irrelevantly opinionated windbag.  The couple of minutes he gets in the morning is a large *negative* to the value of the station,  the concept of listening to him on a regular basis would drive me away instantly and forever.  A truer word could not be spoken.

(3) Quality, middle of the road presenters like Luke Grant and Steve Vizard are worth their weight in gold to you.  Losing Martin King will prove to be a huge loss, although I can understand the ACA slot being more attractive to him.  When anything with Dave Hughes and that old slapper Kate Langbroek is gaining ratings over you, you need to look after your talent.  Collette Mann also needs to stop talking about the bloody house she has bought on the weekends.

(4) The 1980s called and they'd like their AM channel back, which is not only weak and interference prone, but a lot of radios with digital tuning (i.e. the car radio in pretty much any car still on the road) can't tune it in correctly as they work in 10KHz steps.  Get an FM channel and we might be able to hear you in places like within a 2km radius of the CBD, or anywhere near a tram.

(5) You beat your listeners to death with the same advertising, over and over and over.  I'm so sick of hearing the Spitwater ad I actually went out and bought a competing pressure washer instead just to vote with my wallet.  Get some variety happening.  Also, while I realise the spoken word ads are done to fit with the talkback nature of the station (and they're better than some annoying jingle), having the presenters read them inline with no obvious disclaimer of commercial content is at best sleazy.  Stop it.

Please get this right.  I'd like there to be one intelligent radio station in Melbourne.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

New weapon in the arsenal

Overjoyed today to pick up a drive-by of Win64/Sirefef.E on my work laptop.    >_<

 

Surprisingly, Foreskinfront kept it knocked down, but the rootkit installed itself well and truly and kept dropping new files the AV would alarm on every 15 minutes.  Disinfect required.

 

Normally I rely on a combination of Superantispyware, Spyware Doctor and Malwarebytes to knock this sort of thing down, but this time it was Hitman Pro to the rescue.  Free fully functional trial version too, a good arrow in the quiver.