The Majority Blog

Excited, and now Brilliant

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:37:00 +0000

We can just about contain our "excitement" when Microsoft and the rest abuse the word lavishly and mercilessly in their lazy PR blather - but when The Daily Mail describes every single one of its contributors as "brilliant", we feel that it is time to introduce the "superlatives charge" and charge these drab and lazy organs £1 times their readership for such tedious and crass abuse of the English Language.

Some people are easily excited

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:25:00 +0000

Somewhere in the past ten years, the expression "we're excited about..." has become one of the most abused phrases in the English language. We think Microsoft was one of the first companies that started to abuse this utterly fatuous expression when attempting to get the attention a jaundiced press and public, and kid them that it's latest attempt to monopolise the world of IT with second rate software and systems was anything more than very tedious indeed.

It is high time that HM the Queen set up The Queen's English Language Rights Society to crack down on such abuses of her language in the same way that just about anyone who claims "rights" now pays some bunch of ex-coppers to threaten the public with terrible retribution for any misuse/abuse and vague naughtiness where those alleged "rights" are involved.

TMP could get excited about seeing the witless PR and marketing droids being sent to the Tower for a summary topping. Couldn't you?

LLoyds Bank: the fat cats that got the sour cream

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:06:00 +0000

Lloyds Bank always enjoyed a reputation for being staid and stalwart - the last sort of bank that would do anything foolish. Indeed, when its champagne socialist Chairman, Victor Blank, did a deal with Gordon Brown over a cocktail party to save what amounted to the entire Scottish economy and any hope of Labour ever winning another seat in Scotland, by bailing out HBOS and its various allied disaster zones, there was an air of triumphalism that the cautious tortoise had won some sort of race with the reckless hares of the banking industry.

We now know rather better. Lloyds' many small shareholders reflected the prudent and conservative nature that the bank had always projected up to that point - and now after 85% dilution, they have been and truly sacrificed on the altar of Brown's cunning, and Blank's hubris.

Many Lloyds customers are similarly dissatisfied with the performance of the bank at the basic functions of being a simple bank, never mind all that nonsense about wheeling and dealing and saving nations - and political hides - including us. So TMP went googling for alternatives business account providers - and the site linked below at the top of the google search for reviews of business banking - and lead to this page where Lloyds is rated by its customers: "1.2 out of 5", with respondents complaining that they were not able to rate Lloyds service with "0" - because the range on offer was 1-5.

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews2437.html

However, the same site largely confirms that the mainstream clearing banks are pretty much regarded as equally dire by all their victims. Alliance and Leicester appeared to score better than most and always boasts winning customer surveys - but a call through to them suggests that they are no better, and about to become fully "Santander, and thus imbued with the same "mañana" attitude that now seems to blight O2 since Spain's Telefonica took it over.

So it's the devil we know for a while longer until someone comes along with a really different and better proposition. Most banks seem to think that free banking is a big deal; but trust us, you grotesquely overweight felines, we're perfectly happy to pay for competent banking - so try and see if you can still remember how to provide it?

Dialling up another stealth tax

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:16:00 +0000

The way that UK cellular networks all charge the same and offer the same levels of dire services suggests a cartel in operation. When doing some research in the local Orange store, TMP was told unequivocally that it was pointless waiting for Vodafone to get iPhones, because they will be charging the same anyway.

We don't think this was sales banter but the dishonest truth - Apple is controlling the iPhone market with the skill and brutality that it controls all its markets. The keenly complicit cellular networks are familiar and comfortable with market-fixing cartels, since the government has effectively allowed them to all get away with murder for years.

The Faustian deal was done when the embarrassed networks paid barmy money in the 3g spectrum sale, and simply had to be allowed to find ways to recover their donations to the treasury, by overcharging their customers. So in reality, the 3G spectrum sale was the stealth tax of the century - and in a "nod and wink" deal, Broon allowed the networks to do whatever it took not to go bust, and squeeze a few more taxable quid from UK punters and businesses; probably anticipating that they would go and blow any profits that they ever made on another spectrum auction.

The "latitude" extended to the cellular network operators included turning a blind eye to them operating as cartels - where everyone charges the same (albeit with as much effort at obfuscation as possible with intelligence-insulting marketing schemes) and either you pay a grossly inflated PAYG rate - or you will be lashed to a very tedious 24 month contract, hacked straight from your account by direct debit - or else...

The way in which banks are paying bugger all interest - but still charging borrowers as much as ever - is clearly another very handy form of stealth tax on prudent savers. And again Broon has assembled a handy cartel of behemoths who are prepared to "do business" with him in return for cartel favours.

Everywhere we look in Labour's benighted Britain, the big guys have been allowed to reach cartel and monopoly proportions where they are simply too big to care anything for customer service any longer, and immune from serious competition, in return for "doing deals" with the government, in return for acting as agents that are operating the dreadful Auld Fraud's stealthier raids on your cash.

Green with stupidity

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:28:00 +0000

The current questioning of Green presumptions is the fault of the those zealots who saw it as an opportunity for global social engineering, preaching the ethos of the "nanny state" - and irritating anyone who likes to at least try and think for themselves.

A moment's thought reveals that concern about energy is very real - but that price and politics of energy are definitely real, whereas the science oif climate change has all the hallmarks of a religious cult, where superstition and half truths are spun into an ideology where all opponents must be burned at the nearest stake.

Another moment of rational thought reveals that a wholly undeniable issue concerns population - which affects much more than just climate issues.

However, the question of "breeding rates" risks exposing the Labour Party's many sacred cows, especially that the UK population that has been suddenly grown by the unfettered immigration that politicians insisted was somehow "good for us". However, many "ordinary people" are packed like sardines in overcrowded trains and on jammed roads - and thereby daily witness the growing strain on the nation's infrastructure, and suspect that the open door policy is not the good thing that the Labour hierarchy has been telling us.

Leaked emails now confirm that Labour's migration policy was part of a process of carefully considered gerrymandering to dilute the nasty xenophobic native population with a rainbow influx of likely Labour voters, and to provide cheap domestics for Lady Scotland. But meantime, drowning polars bear and the climate distraction is a handy smokescreen for the apparatchiks of the BBC to bore us with, under which Broon and Co are imposing all manner of specious taxes and laws in the name of saving humanity.

The phoney war

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:10:00 +0000

The cellphone operators raise TMP's blood pressure as much as any of the cartels that 13 years of Labour misrule has allowed to flourish and torment our lives in this benighted land.

TMP exists on the fringe of coverage for all the networks, rumour has it that a local resident once objected to the location of a relay mast, and around 500 residents have been cursed with indifferent to crap coverage ever since. Even a

For reasons of pure inertia, and the effort Orange puts into preventing its customers from finding ways to escape from its clutches, we cannot presently recall, we've put up with Orange for the past 10 or so years. However, 10 years ago, TMP world HQ was located in an area of urban coverage. 5 years ago TMP relocated - but with the relatively dull services possible at that time, it wasn't a terrible nuisance to be out of cellphone range. However, over the past 5 years the integration of the internet and cellphones have made the absence of cellular coverage a major factor of social exclusion. Maybe not quite as bad as living just off the broadband coverage map, but a pretty close thing.

So TMP has become increasingly agitated by the lack of coverage, and started to shop around to see if any of the other networks were any beter. We always checked with visitors to see if their phone worked and if so, what network. O2 seemed to come off better than Orange (anything was better Orange), and there was some talk of O2 making a picocell/femtocell - a miniature local base station that looks like a wifi router (which is what it basically is) that you plug into a broadband router for backhaul - available in fringe areas.

We are also weary of lies told by cellphone salespeople. We switched one from Orange (France Telecom) to O2 (Telefonica) two years ago, and were assured we were in a coverage area. Of course we are not, but we simply couldn't be bothered to go through the huge hassle again of baling out of 02, and transferring the number again. And O2 and the rest know it.

The efforts that their marketing departments go to in order to invent obscure and confusing "subscription plans" is quite astonishing. Orange feel the need to call their hideous creations banal but cuddly names like Dolphin and Panda. Rat and Louse would be more appropriate and reflect the nature of those tormenting the punters more accurately.

TMP will keep you advised of our experiences of getting PAC numbers from Orange and o2, and then setting up a deal we can all understand with Vodafone. We are expecting pain.

Democracy: dangerous stuff!

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:31:00 +0000

The recent Swiss referendum that decided to prevent minarets being attached to mosques was one of the more defiant gestures of public opinion of recent times, albeit outside the EU.

Those Swiss leaders that were pleading for a vote to allow minarets, were doing so purely to avoid upsetting militant Muslims and thereby risk turning Switzerland into a target for reprisals. The Swiss are not noted for their ability to take sides and make a stand on matters of international discordance, in case you had not noticed.

And the predictable list of unelected global busybodies has pitched in to tell the Swiss what they should be thinking. And of course the ever vigilant Guardian is seething with indignation, accusing Switzerland of being Europe's hotbed of Nazi insurrection.

Somewhat closer to home, TMP can't get planning permission for a modest enclosed porch on the front of TMP world HQ that is not visible from any road, that no neighbours can see, that blocks no light, that does not cross any building lines. All because the owner here before us was a bit "creative" with his planning permission interpretations, and the bearded wally in the council planning dept left a note on the file to refuse anything else ever again, on principle.

Our biggest mistake in this benighted land of barminess is clearly one of not being a Muslim or other culturally diverse minority. But we can soon fix that, if it helps.

Vox pop

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:40:00 +0000

This was written by a rig worker in the North Sea, and circulated as a viral. But it certainly seems to have a struck few chords...

"I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a rig for a drilling contractor. I am required to pass a random urine test for drugs and alcohol, with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a benefits cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand that I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.
I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their arse drinking beer and smoking dope.

Could you imagine how much money the government [and the rest of us!] would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a benefit cheque?"

A brief sabbatical

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:54:00 +0000

Please excuse TMP for taking a couple of months off.

The enforced break brought about when Lord Google decided this blog was spam gave us pause to ponder. We did of course object at being put on the naughty step for no reason whatever - and we did try asking Lord Google to explain himself, but typically, he did not. We have some suspicions what might have been going on - it seems reasonable to assume that Google secretly compares blog content with other posted information. And yes, some TMP items are cross posted elsewhere on the net. But at not time were consulted, asked or advised - Big Google just did his thing, in his own time and in in his own secretive way.

Lord Google - who now exerts dominion over vast tracts of cyberspace - feels that he is not accountable in any way to his the users who have handed him (and the US spooks) their innermost secrets and personal details. But he puts a lot of energy into smoozing politicians and buffing up their already voluminous egos by holding invitation-only conferences and events for them and members a worshipful media that are even more sought after than a G20 summit.

TMP has been pondering the task facing the next UK government. We've been asked how we would feel if it was not a majority government, but just another fudge of sort that we are presently labouring under, albeit a Conservative fudge. And that's a very good question indeed.

High on of our list is what to do about the question of Europe. Of course it's plain daft for Cameron to be expected to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Not only would such an overt challenge cause the slushmeisiters of the EU to pour money into trying keep it's puppet chums in the Labour Party in power, there are far better ways to tackle the issues raised.

We need a new treaty proposed by the UK that the other disenfranchised people of Europe could participate in - there is clear populist evidence that it's not just the long suffering English, but those many people across Europe who are paying for the EU gravy train and its tender of the client superstate.

Thanks, Google

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:12:00 +0000

For some time now, Google's Blogger service has been blocking attempts to post new items on the TMP site.

There is of course, no simple recourse to an email address or a help line when Lord Google turns his thumb down - just an inexorable faceless process that does its thing - as and when and how it feels.

So here's yet another candidate for our list of those imperious behemoths that will need "re-education" in the responsibilities of cartels and monopolies when an opportunity arises.

Sorting the NHS

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Never ones to shirk the big tasks, TMP is pretty certain we can fix the NHS for a lot less than McKinsey charged for producing a report that was clearly pointless.

Above all else, the NHS needs to rediscover the vitality of smaller operational units. The programmes of centralisation in the name of "efficiency" in the past 20 years that have closed local hospitals and created so-called centres of excellence have generally failed.

There have been some notable disasters, and the vast budgets involved have provided temptation and scope for some embarrassing embezzlement opportunities. And in many of these over-vast metropolis developments, it It takes 20 minutes to get from the (expensive) car park to the bedside. (If you can find a space at all).

Multiple smaller units also permit motivated staff to rise more quickly to positions of relative authority - whereas the career path in a hospitals of thousands has created a civil-service "so what" 9-5 mentality that is painfully obvious in most oversized trusts.

We all understand the benefits of organisations of any type where "everyone knows everyone". On the vast sites it is simply too easy for unauthorised people to wander in and out at will, and help themselves to equipment and staff valuables. Attempts to install security can severely impede normal operations as the "real" staff rush around and forget to carry all the right security devices with them at all times.

The new technology available should mean that administration is a breeze - but any government's record with IT projects are pathetic - unless they are something vital like a congestion charging scheme or speed camera network.

Computerised equipment like CT and MRI scanners should cost a fraction of what the NHS pays (just see how the cost of IT has fallen everywhere else) but there seems to be little effort to put the cartels of medical equipment providers on the spot to explain why a CT scanner still costs about the same today as it did 10 years ago. Suppliers will always point to a list of "enhancements" and new technology to justify the price, but the law of diminishing returns is severe in this type of gear, and 99% of all cases could be effectively dealt with by more basic models that could be operated by front line doctors and nurses, not rare and costly specialist staff.

An iPod is probably more complex and contains smarter technology than a 10 year old CT scanner.

Importantly, a lot of the operational responsibility could and should be devolved back to medical staff with admin assistants, and most of the managers who rejoice in holding meetings about meetings to create more work for themselves could go without any damage to the delivery of healthcare. The benefits to general morale of putting medical staff in overall charge of healthcare once again, would be huge.

The problem is that the turkeys will not vote for Christmas - so when consultants like McKinsey interview the management on cost savings we get bonkers propositions that preserve the nonsense hierarchy and instead seek to reduce front line staff.

So much of the shambles and waste stems from communictaion and record keeping - so the current NHS needs to be taken apart, and rebuilt around modern technology that extends to encompass the ever-growing needs for care in the home.

In such a process, there should also be an opportunity for the UK to create world-leading healthcare businesses - but the chances are that we will continue to bumble along with a world-class cockup. Sigh...

Why Brown let the bankers let rip

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:54:00 +0000

There is still a lot of bemusement why Blair's Labour Party was quite so "intensely relaxed" about bankers getting rich. TMP thinks it has worked it all out!

Who taxed the booming profits of the City of London for 12 years? The City was specifically encouraged to get fat so that sly old Farmer Broon could effectively tax the proceeds of the phony asset bubble, via the finance industry's mega £billion profits and bonuses. Farmers force feed their cows and pigs for much the same purpose. So it was wonderfully ironic that the first crisis to hit the Auld Fraud's phony premiership was the foot and mouth outbreak. God's way of having a laugh.

What is easier to tax? A £1m bonus paid to a banker or that same £1m spread around 1000 of a bank's customers who didn't get crudely overcharged? And then the bonused banker will spend the £500k after tax on a bunch of frivolous consumption items resulting in lots more VAT than the food that a 1000 starving bank customers would have bought.

And don't forget that every bonused banker will also privately educate their kids, and not bother the NHS. More savings. Hell, for a while this worked so well that some of the more gullible in the City even voted Labour!

Concentrating all those profits in the readily taxable finance industry was a very smart move. Letting the people get a fair share of all that cash by preventing the finance industry from raping their customers quite so outrageously, would have been too costly for the exchequer.

The riskless world of the quango

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:36:00 +0000

TMP worries about the number of appointees without any experience of "the real world" that seem to float to the top of this wretched junta and its many quangos. How come so many people with backgrounds in academia, consulting and "pure politics" now rule the lives of the rest of us, who live in that real world?

This risk-free club of the unworldly is almost Masonic in its nature and coverage of Labour's establishment. Its members all seem to speak the same dialects of newspeak (ranging from ancient tripe to modern tripe) and for all us outsiders know, they have funny handshakes and other techniques to help them to easily identify fellow travellers, to ensure that no one with a realistic view the world should be allowed in to spoil their deluded view of the world.

Lord "Red Adair" Turner appears to be another fellow-travelling, peerage collecting, hack quangoista, with nothing on his CV that suggests he has ever been involved in what the majority of us plebs would regard as faintly akin to sustainable wealth creation within "the real world".

He lasted less than an year in the only job on his CV that has any resonance with a "real wealth creating business" with his employer - BP - before moving his double first in History and Economics to Chase Manhattan and then McKinsey, who are not famous for pulling the levers at the coal face of the economy, as much as nudging the buttons of rarefied deal makers and bankers.

Before his time at Merill Lynch, his period as DG of the CBI (95-99) was regarded as "disappointing" and the CBI members subsequently may have regretted picking him as a compromise choice, (possibly to appease what in 1995 looked like the inevitability of a Labour government). And then when Blair/Brown duly arrived, Turner seemed instrumental in engineering that brief but disastrous period of rapprochement between the business community and New Labour that set the scene for Brown to raid the pensions industry - and be allowed to get away with it! Just what was that deal about ? Was it a "trade" that allowed bankers to make personal fortunes for themselves, and vast taxable profits for the banks, while the rest of us paid with our pensions?

Had the ever-conniving Brown worked out that allowing greedy (and frequently quite dim) bankers to make vast taxable profits from their dodgy dealings, fairy mortgages, and excessive interest charges (surely against every one of his Marxist principles?), was going to provide the opportunity for the biggest stealth tax grab of all ? Had he simply set up a gullible finance industry to become vicarious tax collectors - effectively taxing the UK's gullible property owners, who eagerly believed in the artificially inflated values - through the medium of mortgage interest ?

During this time, Turner also built a cosy personal relationship with the Labour hierarchy that has kept him in comfortable employment and quangos ever since he left Merrill Lynch in 2006 - at the peak of Brown's phony boom..

In a world where small business founders are routinely expected to put their homes on the line in order to provide collateral, Turner and his ilk seem to spend their time smoozing and networking their way around quangos and government appointments, collecting salaries and pension contributions - and doing what they clearly do best - pontificating without any personal responsibility or financial risk.

Nevertheless, we'd pay to see Lord Sugar take him on in a celebrity Apprentice showdown challenge match - or attempt to pitch a business idea to the Dragon's Den..

The curse of F-level politics

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:51:00 +0000

The A-level season is upon us, and once again, flying in the face of all the evidence around us, standards have risen.

One of the consequences of the "further education for all" fixation of the past 30 years is that a lot of not very bright kids are hustled through the comprehensive system because their teachers/tutors don't want to be associated with failure. As a result, a lot of students without any innate common sense seem to have scraped through with the softer options of politics, economics and sociology, and found jobs in politics and social activism in general where they are now doing damage.

The problem is that a lot of these people realise that they got where they are by luck/accident/fraud, and set about trying to solidify their precarious positions by surrounding themselves with people even less competent than themselves. It is a vicious circle.

The really smart and well rounded giants of the last century like Churchill and Thatcher had no such insecurities, nor did they need the money, and so could happily surround himself with the finest brains in the land and not be bothered about being upstaged. At least up to the point where the Tory party judged them to have exceed their shelf life.

Gordon Brown was probably told by Blair (and Cherie) on several occasions that he wasn't up to the job of PM - and this insecurity has lead to him surrounding himself by idiots. Lord Mandelson, being the smart operator that he is, saw his opportunity to get that Peerage he's been aching for, and doubtless played on Broon's insecurity with the idea that it would be safer to have Mandy inside his "big tent", pissing out (prostate permitting), than vice-versa.

And TMP wouldn't put it past the ever-scheming Broon that he has calculated that he can usefully leverage Mandy's legendary hubris to set him to take the fall for something big that goes wrong. Virtually every commentator on the UK political scene has made the point that despite all the fabled Dark Arts, it is virtually inevitable that Mandelson's love of playing with fire would end up burning him yet again.

And the consequence of the limited reserves of intellectual energy being spent on all this intrigue is that Broon and his advisers did not possess the common sense ...

a) not to ambush our once enviable pensions industry, and

b) to see the asset bubble coming.

So thanks to the ease with which not-very-clever people can gain political power in this country (with or without elections), we now have a multi trillion pound disaster to sort out.

We test our kids to destruction and publish the results - why don't we require politicians to face tests? Assuming David Lammy felt he was above the intelligence of his fellows when he took on the Mastermind challenge, than perhaps the infamous Lammy Mastermind calamity might not be the only exposure of scary MP stupidity to look forward to.

Say what you think, at your peril

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:42:00 +0000

Many of the lazier commentators in the press appear to have been tuned into the BBC News Channel recently, which is overly engaged with any story that potentially undermines the Tory party, even more so than usual - sensing perhaps that they might conceivably be spared their richly deserved evisceration by a Tory government - if only they can try and concentrate their small arms fire, and see if it can be combined into a sufficient force to hole Cameron below the water line.

But for many others it's a relief to see that political parties can still contain a range of opinions after 12 years of the command and control mentality of Alastair Campbell's dungeon lab.

Dissenters have always existed in all the main parties, and are generally regarded by the press and people as relief from the carefully spun monolithic wall of blather from Westminster. So why not celebrate them and their controversy rather more?

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan had a go at the NHS. Given that the NHS is easily the most expensive thing in the UK, this seems like fair game. Moreover, the experience of the NHS varies hugely. Just because you had your haemorrhoids sorted quickly and efficiently doesn't mean the largest employer employer in Europe and biggest financial black hole we presently support is all sweetness and light - because it isn't. Ask most of the medical staff if they think it could be run more efficiently and less wastefully.

Thanks to years of stupidity, new technology has barely touched the NHS. In fact, the numerous IT disasters have probably reduced the overall efficiency as the system has moved from being based on distributed locally responsible hospitals, to far fewer but much larger centres (of excellence?). But the expected slick "all-knowing" IT has not been delivered to cope with this transformation, and the new much larger units simply have much larger crises, where the inept can lose themselves rather more easily.

Most of us have experienced highs and lows of the medical care - but one thing is absolutely consistent - trying to complain about a bad NHS experience is futile. Sure the "customer service structures" exist, but you or you loved one would be long dead before anything actually happened. So the bureaucratic configuration of the NHS does need a complete overhaul, it was created from a basis of fairyland dogma rather than reality. The notion that no effort can be made to try and separate and prioritise time wasters and those with self-inflicted problems from the more urgent and deserving can be seen in any casualty unit pretty much any day of the week.

As for Alan Duncan, are all you lot now not only in favour of the surveillance state - but one that is covert and operates through subterfuge? Who amongst you has not said something "off the record" that you would not posted on youtube..? The world would be a much duller place without the Alan Duncans and Boris Johnsons.

Churchill could not possibly have survived trial by modern media,und Sie werden viel über die Lesung dieser Die Welt -Website..

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:29:00 +0000

Just say NO!

The UNreal world of the BBC

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:25:00 +0000

Watching the "where are they now" show confirms that Dragon's Den provides some pretty outrageous promotion for those who appear on the show. TMP remembers the good old days of BBC propriety, when Blue Peter religiously used to cover the name of "Ever Ready" on its distinct blue batteries, using black tape.

It's not as if Peter "as seen on TV" Jones, Theo Profiterole & Co need any freebies - especially as their victims get quite thoroughly mugged for equity in a manner that borders on disgraceful, where they are blatantly using their benefits of celebrity – provided by the BBC licence payer – to leverage the poor mugs off their own businesses. With gullible souls like this eagerly turning up to be brutally insulted and financially raped on TV, it's a mystery how any of these ideas ever make any money.

The BBC has a long history of interfering with and distorting commercial markets since the BBC Acorn micro started out doing some good, but quickly became a terrible distraction that arguably set UK education back a generation, when the rest of the world was getting on with the more versatile and vastly more relevant IBM PC.

TMP respectfully suggests that part of the work of reforming the BBC might include asking the Dragons to hand back half the equity they have stolen, by exploiting the BBC and our licence fees? Better still, let's adopt an interactive format and more liquid market where the entire audience can choose to participate and "buy shares" in the ideas being paraded.

However "good" the TV, the idea that an entrepreneur is required to spill the beans on their business idea in a way that alerts competition must be fundamentally wrong.

And then however attractive the proposition, the Dragons nearly always end up saying they'll invest only if it's a guaranteed monopoly with patents to squash any of the competition (that has just been woken up) - and if the owner hands over half the business in return for a ride with the licence-payer funded publicity machine.

The Real World (4)

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:01:00 +0000

The whole eco-sermon is based on a well prepared and tedious chanted litany of assumptions; acts of faith that are every bit as specious as those which form the basis of any sermon delivered by any wild eyed and rabid preacher, for whom the absence of unimpeachable scientific proof is a small inconvenience that is dealt with by dismissing any doubters as Satan's spawn.

We've known for 100 years that fossil hydrocarbon energy oil was going to run out. We didn't know when we would reach "peak oil", but now we have, and the present distraction is not about climate change, it is about the politics of energy security.

So let us all stop being quite so easily suckered and insist on the truth. It makes little practical difference, since the reality is that we need to explore and develop any and all alternative energy options as fast as possible. However, over many years, one party has had a better track record of creating climates for commercial progress and success in a competitive world than the control freak nannying of Labour's command and control obsession.

If the government was actually serious about carbon emissions for any reason other than an opportunity to herd the sheeple and raise taxes, it wouldn't cost ~3-5 times less to fly 300 miles than go by train.

Talk of storms brought about by fractional global warming needs to tempered by more than just an obsession with CO2. Solar activity is at a 50 year low - and the last time there was this few sunspots happened to coincide with a year (1903) when an unprecedented and massive storm devasted the Great Lakes area of North America. DO we really belive we are more influential than the sun - whose solar wind blasts this planet's atmosphere at an increible but reasonably steady 280.2km /sec.

The Real World (3)

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:50:00 +0000

Coming on top of 12 years of stultifying bureacracy that has strangled creative and productive enterprise in the UK, the Auld Fraud Broon's belief that the UK can lead the world in any aspect of science, technology or manufacturing with the millstone of his state around its neck is risible and delusional.

Even those at the top of the legal food chain seem to have had enough:

The most senior judge in England and Wales has criticised the government for passing too many crime laws. Sir Igor Judge made a plea for less legislation in a speech at the Lord Mayor of London's dinner for judges.

So how can we begin to clear the decks of the spurious red tape that has accumulated over many years? The babies are now immiscibly blended in lake of murky bathwater, and perhaps we can learn from the Ottoman Empire, which had also run into terminal constitutional decline as the result of many (hundreds of) years of convoluted and irrelevant law and process, when Kemel Ataturk handily bowled up and "reset" the Turkish constitution, and at a stroke (or two) made it relevant to its time and circumstances.

The Real World (2)

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:47:00 +0000

Unemployment at 2.4m contains a disproportionate number of young people and long term unemployed. This is obviously linked to massive costs now associated with employing anyone for any productive purpose.

12 years of misguided Labour effort to "protect" employment has had the opposite effect for all private employers who have to try and provide the wealth that the massively over bloated public sector dissipates with such consummate ease.

The Real World (1)

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:23:00 +0000

All talk of climate change that is not preceded by an analysis of population trends is futile.

Alan Johnson, the latest in a long line of fundamentally and dangerously inept Home Sectretaries, is relaxed that the UK population will top 70m by 2028. Given that all birth trends suggest the demographic of this expanded population will be "natural" Labour voters, perhaps that's not too surprising.

Given there are 2.4m officially unemployed and an estimated 3m "off the radar", coupled to an alleged shortage of 3m homes, how about combing all the ills we face concerning resource and infrastructure shortages (not least the expectation we will run out of power before new nuclear facilities are online) and devising a scheme to reduce the UK population by 5m as soon as possible?

Girding loins

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:02:00 +0000

TMP fans wondering why the long pause will shortly be regaled by a new wave of posts on subjects ranging from the BBC's astonishing ability to pay itself a lot of money that its employees frankly cannot justify or deserve in the current media meltdown; plus a look at the absurd immigration policies being espoused by Woollas and Alan Johnson, who is turning out to be yet another disaster of a Home Secretary. Be Patient!

A lame duckhouse government

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:55:00 +0000

We've all had a jolly good laugh and enormously enjoyed watching pompous MPs squirming in the glare of the most excruciating publicity, but if you lot were told that your employer expected you to claim £50k PA as part of your "compensation package" (we love that Americanism) and that there were virtually no rules - which one of you would not do it?

We thought so.

The righteous sanctimony is starting to smell just a little stale by now. By all means slaughter Broon for presiding over the latest censorship fiasco and he complete mishandling of the entire situation from the outset a very revealing episode that shows just how completely hopeless the Auld Fraud truly is when events move outside his legendary "control zone" - but we really need to get on and sort out the economy before we wake up and find that China has bought us all in a fire sale.

So - General Election, please! How about the press - who now pretty much universally have got the plot - campaign for massive public displays of dissatisfaction until the Auld Fraud is carried bodily from No 10. All that is needed is to guarantee a year's salary to all the many outgoing MPs - appalling though it may seem, that's absolutely and entirely what this has now come down to.

After the apocalypse? We're already here!

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:41:00 +0000

We've all seen those cinematic visions of "after the apocalypse" where the machines have taken over and a few humans remain to scramble amongst the ruins?

Well, you might not have noticed, but it's happened. Possibly not quite as obvious and stark as in the Terminator's imagery, but happened it has: the faceless robots now in charge are the behemoth organisations that have been allowed to emerge through steady acquisition and consolidation in the name of "efficiency" over the past 20 years: massive national and supranational government agencies, collaborating cosily with the cartels of global companies entrenched in major and increasingly monopoly supply roles.

The most obvious proof that these commercial cartel members are unhealthy is that governments simply could not allow them to go bust - even after they had got their numbers disastrously wrong to the detriment of the entire planet.

It is a specific characteristic of these behemoths that that they only want to deal with each other. This has been the globalisation of the old adage that "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM". The implication being that the risk of failure of the product/service chosen would not fall on the decision maker, whereas had the product/service been chosen from a smaller "no-name" supplier, then the superiors of the decision maker would haul them over the coals when any blame storm erupts. It's a pernicious but effective tactic, and means that the behemoths can only ever grow, regardless of their fitness for task and competence.

So if you are not part of this cosy "system", then you are one of the remainder, scrambling around the ruins of the once-diverse economy for crumbs that fall from the tables of fat cats gorging on their unfairly protected cartel businesses - or waiting eagerly to catch the slops that spill over the lips of the many government troughs.

Despite the controversy over his appointment as Business Tsar, [include current honour here] Alan Sugar has a refreshingly old-fashioned view of the world, that includes a desire to wind the clock back 20 years (see the YouTube interviews) to a world where common sense prevailed before "the rise of mechanoids" rather more than it does now in Broon's Blighted Britain.

One acid test will arise his core passion for apprenticeship. The idea that any self-employed tradesman should take on a school leaver as an apprentice is now almost certainly going to be smothered by the enormous hassle and paperwork that 12 years of Labour's interminable process that means it's very unlikely to happen. Only one of the monster mechanoids that can afford to devote an entire department to HR will be able to find the time and resources to push the paper around to satisfy the rules.

As unemployment climbs, this has to change - and quickly.

The Broadband Britain Myth

noreply@blogger.com (The Majority Party) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:04:00 +0000

There is still far too much evidence of ignorance amongst politicians on the matter of broadband, IT and telecoms in general. Blair's admission that he didn't know how to switch on a laptop was considered acceptably jokey at the time. No one is laughing now when our leaders profess such woeful ignorance of the fundamentals for survival in the 21st century.

BT has defended its ancient investment in copper (and aluminium) network to the death and manipulated the government for nigh on 30 years. For various internal political issues, it utterly fudged the obvious opportunity to switch to fibre when we lead the world in the technology in the 80s and 90s.

Despite loudly protesting its innocence, BT has served its own monopoly interests all the way - having delivered a mostly sub-standard service (with institutional attitude) for years. Despite "de-regulation" it carefully waited and then kicked the stool out from under the eager but naive Mercury, which set down a marker to all UK telecom competition that BT was the 600lb gorilla not to be messed with. Don't bother about investing, because we'll spoil your day.

A few cherry picked services emerged to provide point to point services to obvious points of mass connectivity, but aside from an occasional noble disaster - like Ionica's failed microwave home service that failed when the leaves came out - no one has bothered to even try to take on BT in the shires.

But better than "adequate" bandwidth is a fundamental national infrastructure issue - the Queen's Superhighway, if you like.

Copper DSL is a crap shoot with its generally unpredictable performance, compounded by various analogue uncertainties - dependant on exchange routes with a maximum of about 6km before the signal fades out. Fibre is 100% predictable all the way, and could be used from far fewer core exchanges, spaced at 50km - so thousands of exchanges could be shut/redeveloped/sold.

Although the shambles that is Virgin arose form a completely botched cable TV industry, it is the only "in the ground" alternative to BT's copper hegemony. The chances are that Virgin will get the chance to fill in the bits BT has abandoned. Everyone hates BT throughout the entire IT and telecoms industry for its continual abuses of market dominance, it's relentless devious tactics and calamitous lack of vision.

Moreover, once we become a nation dependent on connectivity, then we need to seriously consider how we get not just one but two diverse "fail over" services into each premises. Any business reliant on connectivity knows full well just how disastrous even a minor outage can be - and the same will increasingly apply to consumer installations as government owned banks and post offices progressively shut their doors and tell their customers to use online alternatives.

If ever there was a topic that needed a Tsar to crack heads, this is it. Lord Carter has other fish to fry as he attempts squaring the numerous circles of new media and broadcasting, but let's pray he has the bottle to insist this subject is raised up the agenda and taken away from BT's deathly embrace. For once, TMP will (generously) not immediately assume that his willingness to sit in the Lords as a Labour peer disqualifies him from getting any credit for knowing what he is doing.

After all, the exception proves he rule.