messing about with essex boys

Threw the bikes around the Surrey hills again ....

green ewes liberation society

Updated news on the Shoreham Sheep has appeared on the webpages of The Argus today

West Sussex County Council confirmed that the plastic sculptures had been taken “on a Christmas break”.

They were being stored in a secret location and would be back on the roundabout in the New Year, a spokeswoman said.

a small independent brewer's opinion

As some of you are aware I brew beer for a living. Ok so it's currently unpaid as we're getting our small independent brewery up and running but very soon we'll get to a position where it will provide an income of sorts. So when I read SIBA (the Small Independent Brewers Association) giving space to repost, without comment or rebuttal, a piece from the Burton Mail it makes me even less inclined to sign up to their scheme.

This is the same SIBA who gave space on their website and in their journal to Alcohol Concern, an article written by their chief prohibitionist Don Shenker, and accepted them as a corporate member. You read that correctly - Alcohol Concern are a corporate member of the Small Independent Brewers Association. For some reason SIBA think this is a good idea. I hope that other brewers in my situation tell SIBA to go fuck themselves and withdraw from the organisation. Alcohol Concern is not the brewers friend and, ever increasingly, neither is SIBA.

So what did today's piece do to annoy me further? It was a report of a commons debate secured by Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) in which the usual idiotic statements, fallacious comparisons, and calls for price regulation were made by MPs. I'll pick out some of the comments from Hansard

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) Numerous studies around the world have shown public health benefits as a result of price increases and taxation policies, so is it not time for some evidence-based politics?

Evidence based? As in all those European countries who have lower rates of tax on alcohol than we do and less trouble with drunkenness and those crazy Swedes with their healthy black market of smuggled alcohol because their government raised the tax on booze so high? Which evidence were you looking at?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to the letter in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph signed by 19 organisations.

This letter? Signed by the BMA, Alcohol Concern, Alcohol Focus Scotland, Action on Addiction, etc etc etc. As many of these organisations receive large chunks of their income from the public purse I think they should fuck off and not get involved otherwise we might suspect they're being paid to promote the government's agenda.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) In 2010, a total of 48.4 billion units of alcohol were sold in the UK. Of those, 31.8 billion units—about two thirds; the great and increasing majority—were sold by the off-trade. The widening gap between the price of on-licence and off-licence alcohol is becoming far more significant and is fuelling the rise in home drinking

And the smoking ban, instantly making smokers unwelcome in pubs, bars, restaurants, had absolutely nothing to do with this shift to off-sales?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I absolutely agree. Most of the alcohol-related carnage is caused by young binge drinkers and by heavy or dependent drinkers

Young drinkers who, due to increasingly heavy handed state regulation of pubs, can't learn how to drink properly until they're adults by which time it's too late. And if we can identify the cause of the antisocial behaviour (i.e. the individuals) why do we need even more regulation? Use the existing laws, don't create new ones.

Andrew Griffiths (Con): I agree with her about the need for the Government to take action. Does she agree with me on this point? Twenty years ago, the price in a supermarket and the price in a pub were much the same at about 75p a pint. Today, a pint costs £3.10, £3.20 or £3.30 in a pub, whereas in a supermarket it remains at about 70p or 80p.

I've yet to find a supermarket that sells decent quality beer for 70p per pint. Looking around the web the cheapest I can find is approx £1.40 per pint (for decent beer. More on that in a moment) The differential between the cost of on-sales and off-sales is misleading though. If you are taking away from the premises you don't need your glass washed (you do that yourself), service is quicker and therefore less costly, furniture doesn't need to be supplied, toilets aren't provided etc. The cost of your pint in a pub pays for all of those things too.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I absolutely agree. The point is that in the UK harmful drinkers buy 15 times more alcohol than moderate drinkers, yet they pay 40% less per unit.

Is there a government scheme for a special discount card? Harmful drinkers pay exactly the same as every other customer of a given retail outlet for their alcohol (unless they steal it of course).

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) With a four-pack of bitter for 68p, the price was just 17p a unit.

Asda Smart Price Bitter, at 2.1% ABV, which works out to 0.9 units of alcohol per can or, after rounding, 19p per unit (not 17p as claimed), and tastes like dishwater. A decent beer, such as Thornbridge Jaipur, is £2.39 a pint in a supermarket. It costs £3.20 in my local.

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative)I particularly objected to the labelling. It said, “Asda Smart Price”. I put it to hon. Members that there is nothing smart about charging 68p for four units of alcohol. That would send a woman well over the safe limit for a single day for just 68p.

Safe daily limit? What if that's the only alcohol your imaginary woman drinks all week?

Sarah Wollaston (alleged Conservative) I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. We need to show what minimum pricing means in practice if we set a reasonable price.

The problem is that once you've got a minimum price you can claim it isn't working and raise it higher and higher.

If we set a minimum price of around 45p a unit, as the Scottish Government are planning to do, in a Bill introduced at the end of October, it would mean that a bottle of whisky containing 28 units could not be sold below £12.60, a bottle of wine containing 10 units could not cost less than £4.50, and a pint of beer with two units could not cost less than 90p.

As your colleague pointed out earlier that a pint of beer was as little as 70p or 80p in a supermarket and this was scandalously low the idea of a 90p pint is, quite honestly, fucking ridiculous. Almost immediately minimum pricing is introduced there will be calls to raise it as it hasn't had the impact it was supposed to.

Such prices would not suck all the fun from a night out; in fact, they would not raise the price of alcohol in the on-trade at all.

Don't tell Shenker that. He clearly wants to suck the fun out of everyone else's lives so that they are as miserable as him.


So, the organisation that allegedly represents the interests of small brewers has aligned itself with an organisation that seems determined to destroy the small brewers of this country and politicians who are of similar mind. Cunts.

singing hedgehogs

Festive? You want festive? Ok ... have this then ....



Click through to youtube to watch it biggerer. It's worth the effort.

Mrs Tam Fry

As I was flicking through The Mirror at lunchtime today, waiting for my food to arrive, I noticed this story somewhere around page 9 of the paper. I can't find the Mirror's version online (The Express has also covered the story) so you'll have to make do with the dodgy photo instead.

Where to start? Researching how to take the pleasure out of food? That's just wrong. Food is fun. In my experience the people who think food isn't fun tend to be the overweight ones. There's no joy for them in cooking or eating but they continue to do it because they think they're hungry. Reducing eating to a chore that has to be endured is unlikely to help them or change their attitudes to food.

Chemically controlling if someone is hungry or not. I might have to reach for the tinfoil headwear but I can see many ways that could be misused. I don't understand what's wrong with good old fashioned self-control. Surely a better solution?

There was some research published a couple of months ago that suggested that thin parents had thin kids because they passed that trait on GENETICALLY. If it transpires that body mass is affected by your genetic inheritance then it won't make a difference what chemicals you ingest.

Finally, I had to snigger at this line

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said she thinks the new pill "offers a breakthrough"

SHE? *childish giggles* Maybe that's why it's not on The Mirror's website?

finely balanced

You can tinker with it, nudge it gently in many directions, but if you push it too hard then the balance is lost. I'm sure there's a message there somewhere ......

how fucking stupid?

A few weeks ago I noticed West Sussex County Council had, as many other councils have, decorated a roundabout. They'd put some green sheep on it. I was surprised the first time I saw them because for the last decade that roundabout has been laid to grass with no ornamentation at all.



I quite liked them. Then a few days later this happened



According to the Argus this is because

Panicked motorists who thought the bright green sheep were real had complained to West Sussex County Council.

Thank you so much you complete fucktards. If you're that thick that you can't tell the difference between plastic sheep and real ones then you should hand in your driving license and stick to walking.

**UPDATE 18th Dec 2011**

The sheep have been completely removed.

24-3 now?

When iDave came back from waving his veto around in Brussels there were howls of outrage from LibDems and Labours for isolating the UK from the rest of Europe. Except now, it would seem, more countries are expressing concerns over closer fiscal union. Does this mean we are no longer in a group of one?

NSFW pub locator

If you're somewhere new and you've got no idea where the pubs are, and you're not of a sensitive disposition, then wherethefuckshouldigofordrinks is the NSFW tool for you. It's not perfect by any means but it's a start....

title of the day

And the award must surely be winging it's way to Mark Daniels for this in the Morning Advertiser

pornaments

Want something different hanging on your Xmas tree? Why not buy some pornaments (NSFW)? The decoration pictured above is the tamest one they do. You've been warned .....

shootview

I wonder how long it takes for the condemnation to start and calls for this to be banned?

In the meantime ..... go enjoy!!

UPDATE: The link is producing a 404 error so, until it's back up, here's a short preview video (NSFW text) of what you're missing

low paid

The Mirror has a story this morning that is as deceptive as it is repetitive.

Low-paid workers such as cleaners, catering assistants and machine operators are most likely to be on the dole for more than six months if they lose their job, according to new research.

The TUC analysis showed that as unemployment rises and the number of job vacancies fall, a growing proportion of unemployed people are staying on the dole for over six months, hitting low-paid workers more than others.

The TUC report has a little more depth to it but still fails to address the issue of WHY are these people more likely to be unemployed so can I suggest two possible reasons?

1. National Minimum Wage, alongside other employment regulations, has made it uneconomic for companies to employ these people. Employers are afraid of the long term financial consequences of employing too many staff.

2. Catering, cleaning, and factory work are seen by many as low skilled employment sought by people of low aspiration and intelligence. In many cases this is true. You don't need a degree to clean offices or flip burgers (although having a degree doesn't, in practise, enable you to perform either of this tasks with any level of skill or competency). People with low or inappropriate skill sets are not being employed.


Solutions? Mine are quite simplistic. Remove minimum wage, reduce employment regulation to rebalance the relationship between employee and employer, alter the benefit system so it returns to being a safety net for the most needy and no longer a lifestyle choice.

sexist stuff

Hillary Clinton wrote an impassioned piece in the Guardian recently calling for renewed action to stop violence against women which, on the face of it, is all very nice and good. Except I have a problem with it.

This violence against women. Who perpetrates it? The article never specifically states who should stop being violent towards women but you are left with the overwhelming sense that Hillary means men. It's as if no woman has ever been violent to another woman which is clearly farcical.

What makes the article a little strange is that, in her position as Secretary of State, she advises on US foreign policy and the US seems to be dropping a large number of bombs on people at the moment (Is there a difference between violence committed by the state and violence committed by an individual?). Are these bombs fitted with smart technology so that they only target men?

Violence in all its forms should be discouraged Hillary and not just when the victim is female.

oppressive regimes

One morning, without any warning, representatives of the government storm into your house, call you a criminal and confiscate your things. When you try to mount a legal challenge to get them back as you aren't a criminal the government blocks your attempts to get justice by colluding with the legal system to exclude you. Secret hearings are held with no record of their existence and even your legal representative is not informed about them.

It could never happen in a democracy could it? Especially one with a left wing president?

Do go read the link.

an advanced guide on good PR from paypal

Lesson 1

Don't, whatever you do, behave like we did because the resultant social media storm will leave you tarnished.

porn filter

The much trumpeted plan by the government to insist that ISPs offer a network level solution to stop kids accessing porn is proving to be less than a complete success.

Hahahahahahaha.

geeky

Made by daughter for her brother's birthday. For those of you who are looking blankly apparently it's a cakey representation of Minecraft.

He liked it.

like

The borders between reality and the internet are further blurred today. I bought my son a "like" and "dislike" self inking stamper set for his birthday today. The first thing he did was to grab the "like" and stamp his sister's forehead. She refuses to wash it off.

child abuse

I'd just made hot chocolates for the kids when my youngest informs me that he actually doesn't like it with squirty cream on top. He was moaning loudly so my daughter said, from the other side of the room, "Bring me a spoon and I'll eat your cream."

I looked her square in the eyes and, just as she took a large gulp of her drink, said "You might want to edit that for bookface."

To be fair she tried not to spray her mouthful everywhere but the urge to laugh was too strong.

fuel poverty

Sky News reports that Wales is the fuel poverty capital of Britain with 32% of households being 'fuel poor'.

The employment rate for Wales is approximately 67%

Are the two connected in any way?


UPDATE

The BBC have a different set of figures produced by Consumer Focus with over 41% of Welsh homes in 'fuel poverty'. That's quite a substantial difference in less than 12 hours.



Have a new raft of 'green' taxes been applied to fuel today to make it even more unaffordable?

at least they won't be late for lectures

Brighton students occupy university building

velocity

Last night I saw a pint of Velocity, the first beer brewed by the Adur Valley Co-operative under the brand name of Adur Brewery, being drunk. You have to admire what they've done. Making their beer hazy rather than clear, to imitate the way things look when you view them while travelling at speed, is a bold move.