An attack of common sense

Finally after years of knowing that the majority of petty crime is committed by heroin addicts trying to pay for their $2000 a week habit, the government in the UK are considering giving it away free on the NHS. OK, it'll cost $20,000+ per person but that to me sounds like good value for money. It'll cut burglaries substantially, thus giving thousands of people better quality of life, it'll help make insurance cheaper, and it'll give the addicts a chance to get on with their lives away from crime, which is pretty much their only avenue of funds. Three bloody cheers from me. Now, more common sense please.





Independent Online Edition UK Politics

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Happyness? I don't bloody think so

I do like Will Smith a lot - he seems a decent chap and has been in some good films: Ali, Enemy of the State, Bad Boys (only kidding) but I certainly won't be seeing a film called The Pursuit of Happyness, the same as I won't be taking my car to Kwikfit. They start spelling the fucking words correctly, I'll start complying.

Taking over the net with crap

All those people obsessively compulsively downloading thousands of films and other crap they will never ever watch apart from pile up in the corner of the room are ruining it for the rest of us who just want to read the news and send some fucking emails.



Rise of video downloads threatens gridlock on net | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology



So, please stop it, or at least calm down a bit.

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Radical green idea of the day

This is an easy, yet radical, idea that we've tried to alarmingly successful degrees in our house. We've stopped buying bottled water - now isn't that amazing? We've singularly managed to halve the amount of plastic we throw away each week in one fell swoop.



Having realised that our building here in Tokyo is about 10 years old and its water pipes provide water that is reasonable to taste (OK, it's not Evian but it didn't have to come 12,000 km to get here) and has passed a hell of a lot more tests than any mineral water in the world, we have gone plastic water bottle free. And it feels good, it saves us money, it saves having to cart the stuff home, it saves us making dumb comments like, shit, we're out of water! And it's a beautiful resource that lies untapped in so many homes that it pains me to think of the hundreds of bottles of plastic we've helped to produce. Maybe your place is old and the pipes are rusting and the water tastes like crap - well, how about asking the water company to do something about it? It might not cost you much, and you would be doing your bit.

Fifty years from now, people will not have unlimited supplies of this amazing clean stuff that comes out of taps for as long as you want it to, so we should appreciate it, and use what we have, enjoy it fully. Tap water is beautiful, so try it.

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Two sides of America

On the one hand we have a Bangladeshi New York cab driver who discovers one of his passengers has left $500,000 (yes, that's half a million $) in diamonds in the trunk, and goes on to discover the owner and return them. He does not ask for a reward, but is rewarded anyway by the media and perhaps even an audience with the Mayor of NY. It comes as no shock however to discover that for the $11.70 cab fare the passenger with half a million in diamonds in the trunk... paid a 30c tip. It's no shock because as we all know generally speaking the filthy rich are filthy swines when it comes to being nice to others.



And on the other side of the coin, we hear in the news that plans to bomb Iran are far advanced and seem to be set for spring. Haven't these people seen Dr. Strangelove? What about the experience in Vietnam? Or, um, Iraq? Or haven't they noticed that the Iranian president has been criticized at home for being an idiot. What the hell happened to diplomacy? Have the Americans learned nothing? OK, stupid question.



Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring | Iran | Guardian Unlimited

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Bush the Dunce reaches out for more glory

So George W is talking up a war on Iran, in the usual belligerent, headless fashion that we have come to expect of this most venal and repulsive of American administrations. And if he does get his way, he will go from the world's biggest asshole to the universe's biggest asshole in one go. And all at a time when the Iranian president with the unbelievable name is in the doghouse back home because he spends all his time dreaming up ways of taunting the west when he should be paying a little attention to the shithole situation he's created back home. Remind me again, when is Bush out of office? And him with the unpronouncable name? Anyone noticed how both Bush and the Iranian guy both have eyes far too close together? Have there been studies on this and the preponderance of psychotic episodes? War mania? I think there ought to be.

Like all the worst horror films - combined

Climate change and global warming, which I often rant on about, are things that have haunted me for years, but now at least it seems that many politicians, newspapers and even corporations are coming round to the fact that these things will cause devastating changes to our way of life as we now know it (see here). Many leading supermarkets are beginning to see the error of their ways over absurd packaging. Customers are becoming more aware of how simple decisions can affect their lives. Kids are using pamper power to get their parents to switch off lights, drive less, fly less and buy more fuel efficient cars. Schools in Britain will teach about the effects of climate change from next year. Seeing as the future is not us, but our children and the generations to come then they do have a point. It can't be left for them to clear up the mess, or what looks more and more likely, for them to see catastrophic changes occurring in front of them, brought about by the rapacious greed and stupidity of those generations that came before.
So there are many positive things happening now, but it takes political will to make real change happen, because although some talk, it needs actions by politicians, through laws, which the rest of us then follow. Of course people can make changes themselves, but politicians need to take us further and faster, because this is the mother of all nightmares coming home to roost.
Of course there are still great evils in the world - one: George W Bush, the Great Bullshitter, whose conversion is superficial and nonsensical (see here). And other evil (here) which mentions how Exxon Mobil have actually been paying scientists to refute the latest conclusions from the IPCC about how global warming is most likely being caused by us.
I really hope people make changes to their lifestyles, make a difference, because the alternatives are quite frankly terrifying (see here).