It's all well and good to say that soldiers should act morally at all times, this is really taking it to the extreme:

Part of a soldier's job is to kill. If they go into battle, what should they be doing:

(a) checking their morality handbook, or
(b) trying to stay alive and kill the enemy.

Which would you do? Me too.

This really is an absurd idea. Ensuring that soldiers understand what is acceptable moral behaviour and what isn't is surely good practice. But expecting them to carry around a guide to moral behaviour is ridiculous and demeaning to our soldiers.

No-one can apologise for something that someone else did. I can't apologise for something you did, and you can't apologise for something I've done. And neither of us can apologise for something someone else did. Any apology we did make wouldn't mean anything since we didn't do it and so have nothing to be sorry for.

This is an obvious fact, right?

So why do politicians persist in apologising for things that happened before they were in power, grown up, or in some cases even born? How can Kevin Rudd apologise for Australia for the "profound grief, suffering and loss" inflicted by successive Australian governments on the indigenous Aboriginal population? Just like Blair or Livingstone can't apologise for the brief period in history where Britain perpetuated the slave trade [and the same goes for the Papua New Guinea tribe and the cannibalism of their ancestors]. Not with any real sincerity can they.

They can regret what happened, but they can't apologise for it. Regretting an incident is fine and not a problem. We all have some regrets about past issues. But we can't apologise for something we didn't do. Any apology made is just an empty and meaningless gesture. If we carry this idea on, children born of rape will be apologising to their mothers for their father's actions, and ultimately everyone will have to apologise to everyone for something that some long-forgotten ancestor did.

However, Rudd does have slightly more legitimacy in making his apology than Blair or Livingstone for theirs, since the period his apology covers goes right up to the 1960s. But even that is a long time ago. Way too long. Just let all this stuff go for crying out loud and let's move on a equal people, not looking back over our shoulders at past slights!

Via Mike Rouse, who nicked it from an internet forum:

Elf and Safety? Literally so in this case, as it affects their boss, Santa Claus. He must now be "strapped into a full body harness in case he falls out of his sleigh as it is towed by a Land Rover at the gentle speed of five miles an hour."

Absolutely fucking absurd.

Christmas is one of the times when the health and safety police should fuck right off and let us actually enjoy ourselves. I have no problem with the intelligent "as safe as necessary" position, but this sort of thing is just completely and utterly absurd. Reason and common sense should be used to make reduce risk where possible.

After all, the idea of Santa riding in a sleigh at five miles and hour without a full body harness is hardly shocking. It's hardly like holding up a huge Christmas light display with a couple of drawing pins is it! Instead of coming out with this kind of bonkers conkers ideas, any who has any claim on being a "health and safety professional" or has any intention on making any health and safety decisions of giving any related advice should sit back any apply common sense before anything else. Then, hopefully, there wouldn't be this sort of story for the media to produce.

Source: The Telegraph

WTF? That is an absolutely absurd idea. The Union Flag is an iconic image, and there's hardly an easy way in which to combine the Welsh dragon into it without it looking absolutely stupid. A flag is just a symbol, it isn't a direct representation of a nation. All flags are symbols - after all, what else can you do with a rectangle and about three different colours?

As much as I like the aesthetics of the Welsh flag, how could it be adapted into the Union Flag without looking ridiculous? The Union Flag is our flag, and to want to change it just because is just plain stupid.

Source: BBC

Facebook really does seem to be getting more media coverage than any social networking site really deserves. Is it really newsworthy that Facebook is to remove the mandatory "is" from status updates?
No, it isn't. It's not news at all except for the minority of people who use Facebook and really care about having to think up a status that grammatically follows "[Name] is" or just settling on an ungrammatical status instead.

Really, who cares? It might make users go "oh, that's good" but then they would get on with their lives. To whom is it really a big issue? So why has it got such a large article - or any at all?

On the Telegraph website, right now this story is just below one titled "Father and son, 5, drown in Spain" and just above an article on former attorney general Lord Goldsmith saying that he would have quit if parliament had ratified to government's preferred pre-charge detention limit of 90 days.

Really, why?

Source: The Telegraph

Regular readers will know that I don't normally swear [mainly because I just could never match the peerless swearblogging of Devil's Kitchen or Mr Eugenides as you can see here], but this warrants a good number of swear words.

Oh, for fuck's sake. What is it with this stupid fucking government that makes them think that making delinquents stay in school for two years longer will actually help them in any way? I mean, the kids who leave school at sixteen tend to be the same little shits who hold everyone else back by mucking around in class. They're the non-academically gifted kids who just don't want to stay in school for longer, but want to go and do something useful to them and their future.

This idea is a fucking stupid one, thought up by a bunch of statist cunts who think two more years of compulsory schooling will make up for their failings in their last eleven. Bollocks will it. All it will do is hold back those who do want to work, as the twats who piss around in class will still be there disrupting everyone else. When those bastards left after GCSEs, school became far better as those who were left had chosen to do so, and so put in more work and pissed around in class less.

Frankly, there are no benefits to making kids stay in school until they are eighteen. At all. All it will do is cause mass truancy, and then criminalise those truants for having the gall to decide what is best for them!

But ah you say, "under the plans pupils would not have to continue with academic lessons but would be required to receive training." But who the fuck going to provide this training? What is it going to be in? What purpose is it to have? How are you going to make them attend? The practical problems in this are fucking immense - and I certainly wouldn't trust any government - and certainly not this bunch of cunts - to implement such a scheme with any real thought to the practical considerations.

Apprenticeships and training for school-leavers already exist. Companies take on apprentices and train them up already. The difference is that the apprentices they have have chosen - at least to a far greater degree - to go into this trade. Thus, those who want to stay in school already can and do - after all, it's free unlike university. And those who want to get into a trade can and do so as well. And the ones who don't will just be a distraction to those in school and just lower the educational standard on the country or just be useless little shits if forced into an apprenticeship.

When it comes down to it, not everyone can do a skilled job anyway. It simply isn't possible. Someone needs to clean the streets and the toilets, stock the supermarket shelves, and wait tables, etc. after all. Every single job has to be done by someone. The best way to get 16-18 year-olds to get off their fat lazy arses and either get a job or stay in school is to cut their dole. Say they can only get half or even not a single fucking penny until they are 18.

Conscripting 16-18 year-olds into longer educational is a seriously fucking stupid idea. Instead of pumping money into educating them when they don't want to learn anything, put it into adult education for when they have decided that they're fed up of doing a shit job and do want to learn. When it comes down to it, you can't physically make every 16-18 year-old stay in school. it's not possible, and is just absurd to even suggest, yet alone include in the Queen's Speech!

So, Blinky Balls and Cyclops Brown, and the other authoritarian statist cunts in the government - fuck off. Just fuck right off.

For more on this subject, visit the group blog Educational Conscription.

The prize for the most stupid sentence I have read today goes to:

How on earth can freedom possibly be about authority?! They are polar opposites!

That just - and I mean just - pipped this in sheer stupidity:
Tom Paine has ably destroyed this ridiculous assertion, so go there and read his post.

There is controversy over the unveiling of a statue of David Lloyd George in Parliament Square. Apparently it wrong to put up a statue to Lloyd George because he ordered bombings in Iraq between 1916 and 1922, which "makes today's celebration of Lloyd George's legacy highly topical and disgraceful."

What on earth are Harold Pinter, John Pilger and Denis Halliday on about in their letter to the Telegraph? Whilst Lloyd George wasn't perfect, it is hardly "disgraceful" to erect a statue of him in Parliament Square.

The reaction to Lloyd George's statue is especially remarkable in contrast with the reaction when a statue to Nelson Mandela was erected in Parliament Square. The BBC article on Mandela's statue has absolutely no mention of his less-than-salubrious past and objections to his statue because of it, whilst the article on Lloyd George has more on the opposition to his statue than support for it.

Mandela was a terrorist. No matter what the cause for which he fought, his actions ticked absolutely every box of that definition. Lloyd George, on the other hand, just authorised bombings during a war! There is no denying that Lloyd George has more right to have a statue in Parliament Square than Nelson Mandela. To start with, he was a British Prime Minister, and not a terrorist!

So why, why was there a deafening silence on opposition to Mandela's statue but the utter opposite for the far more noble and deserving Lloyd George?

Source: BBC

Christmas seems to come earlier every year. There are Christmas decorations in some shops even before the end of August, most have the by September, and now - the middle of October - they're bloody everywhere! And the Christmas adverts have already come out on TV, playing the Christmas songs that just get on your nerves long before 25th December.

And now, via an unimpressed Norfolk Blogger, I hear that the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol is to be remade. With lots of "special effects". And starring Jim Carrey. Why? We already have the best video version of that classic book that could be made: The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Yes, this is absurd. But no, Devil's Kitchen, it isn't an example of them being "Little Hitlers". Under the alcohol licensing laws, all supermarkets that sell alcohol are obliged to run a scheme under which all shoppers buying alcohol who appear to be under 21 are asked for ID before they can purchase alcohol. As the penalties for selling alcohol to minors is serious - resulting in a £70 fine and potential criminal conviction for the checkout operator themselves and any supermarket who did this three times in any twelve-month period loses its ability to sell alcohol, a serious revenue cut - many supermarkets have gone for the extreme approach of requiring checkout operators to request ID for every alcohol purchase. They do this to basically cover their own arses. As you may have realised, many checkout operators [and other supermarket workers] aren't the brightest crayons in the pack.

Yes, to require ID from a man as obviously over 21 as Mr Ralls is absurd - but done simply to cover themselves. The manager's reaction appears over the top. He should have just told the checkout operator to sell him the bottles of wine. But considering the way in which Mr Ralls also appears to have reacted - such as refusing to confirm he was over 21 because it was a "stupid question" - almost certainly did not help the situation.

Yes, it is absurd. But it's not the fault of the checkout operator, or even necessarily the manager. They should have just sold him the wine - but company policy is company policy, even when it's stupid.

UPDATE: Re-reading the BBC article I have to fall even more to the supermarket staff's side - Mr Ralls refused to confirm that he was 21 by not answering the question put to him. If I am reading it correctly, he was not asked to produce ID but to answer "yes" to the question "are you over 21, sir?" - verbally confirming that he was over 21. He is quoted in the article as saying: "I wouldn't dignify the question [of whether he was over 21] with an answer." Whilst refusing to sell the wine was absurd, Mr Ralls certainly didn't help the situation. It was a very simple questions with a very simple [and obvious] answer - but an answer which he refused to give. To a certain extent he has only himself to blame.

Source: BBC

Lunatics running the asylum? No, even more absurd - school children writing their own tests.

What the hell? Let's read that again: "Pupils should mark their own classwork and decide what their school tests should cover". What? Why?

This is quite possibly the most stupid thing I have ever read. Have they actually thought it through? Obviously not.

Our education system is in enough trouble as it is right now, which the dumbing down of GCSEs and A-levels to extent where more a than a quarter of A-levels are As, and nearly one in five GCSE grades are A or A*. SO this idea really isn't going to improve confidence in the education system at all. In fact, if it ever comes into practice we might as well just give everyone an A and get it over with.

Can the idiots who devised this even remember being at school or even in education at all? Have they completely forgotten the simple fact that all school children will do anything not to work - or at least work hard. If it is the pupils themselves who pick the exam questions, A-level maths will consist of questions on the level of 2 + 2 = ?.

The QCA report said that:
That ignores the very simple fact I mentioned above - school children don't want to work. I always found this sort of "self-assessment" of work as pointless and certainly not constructive. It doesn't help to pretty much waste time going through old work - it is far more useful to get it marked and appropriate feedback written on it. The teacher then knows what areas need work. But trying to "engage learners with the quality of their work" like this is never going to work. Ever.

The dumbing down of education needs to stop and be reversed - this is going in very much the wrong direction. It truly does take us to within one step of rubber-stamping all exam papers with an A.

Source: The Telegraph

Keep the Queen on our passports!

How dare they?! The Queen is, and shall remain, our head of state. We are, first and foremost, subjects of the Queen. The EU should stay away from our passports. We may be citizens of the EU, but we are citizens of Great Britain and subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II first and foremost.

So the EU can fuck off if they think that we will have their twelve-star logo and a passage from their - rejected - Constitution on our passports. We're still British and not European, and Britain is still, technically at least, a sovereign state. So until we are forced to become nothing more than a region of a United States of Europe, we will continue to have the royal coat of arms on our passports.

Source: The Telegraph

If you live in England, get ready to write yet another blank cheque for Scotland...

So, basically, if you're English [or Welsh] you have to pay tuition fees if you study in Scotland, but not if you're Scottish or from anywhere else in the EU? Thus, English taxpayers are funding Scottish and European student's education - but not that of their own kids.

No matter if Wendy Alexander [Scottish Labour leader] thinks that the English shouldn't complain about Scotland living off of us, we will. Especially when the abuse of our taxes extends to such a level as £1,236 more on every person in Scotland.

As much as Salmond may not like it [politically, though obviously not financially], Scotland is still part of the UK. As such, to discriminate in such a way against students from England is utterly wrong.

This is yet another example of the educational apartheid in Britain. Scottish students shouldn't get university - or any other - education on a different financial basis, such as no Student Loans for Scottish students, to that which exists in the rest of the United Kingdom. We are one state, under one Government, even if Salmond disagrees even on that level with his pronouncement of the "rebranding" of the Scottish Executive as the Scottish Government with £100,000 of English money.

Has Salmond never heard of equality - as in where everyone is equal? Apparently not.

Source: The Telegraph

I just can't believe it. Absolutely gob-smacked. A policeman ran over a man - and then gave him an £80 fine for "causing a dent"?! Running a man over happens - it was an accident - but to then fine him for the pleasure?!

The policeman who issue this fine [pic above] should be disciplined for doing so. The system by which the policeman felt he had to issue the fixed penalty to cover himself also needs to be fixed. Anyone can have an accident - such as running over someone's foot - but then giving a fine to the casualty is inexcusable, especially when the ticket reads:
When the truth is nearer "I ran you over in my marked police vehicle, causing a dent".

via Guthrum

Source: Daily Mail

Yet another example of an outpouring of grief taken into absurdity with the inclusion of celebrities:

Yes, it is tragic when someone - anyone - dies, but they do so every day. People, even 11-year-old boys, die every day and in every way.

The way that a few of these are picked up and exploited - by the media, politicians, and general public - can really be quite sickening. Why does Rhys deserve more than any other 11-year-old whose life is brutally cut short? Why does the search of Madeleine McCann get so much more media attention than many of the other missing children? The same question can be asked about all of the other media stories of this ilk - Damilola Taylor, Stephen Lawrence, et al. The answer is the same for all of them - nothing makes them more deserving. The only difference is that their deaths/disappearances got into the news.

This outpouring of, and wallowing in, grief just revolts me. Yes it is tragic. but where is the traditional British stiff upper lip? What happened to grieving in private and getting on with your life? Especially when you didn't even know the deceased.

Source: BBC

For crying out loud, why?

Why, for fuck's sake, why?! Why is Ken Livingstone apologising for something that has not happened for nearly two centuries? Slavery is not something that has been done by, or even in the lifetime of, anyone alive. Many generations have been and gone since slavery was abolished, through the 1807 and 1833 Abolition of Slavery Acts, and the efforts of William Wilberforce.

As I wrote not long ago, you can't apologise for something you didn't do. It is just an empty gesture! How can you apologise for something that you (a) didn't do, and (b) weren't alive to do anything about anyway? No, slavery is hardly a high point in British history, but since it was carried out before, and after, by Africans, any claim that we should apologise is just a load of utter bollocks. It annoys me that anyone can claim any apology from a descendent of the guilty party, especially when they themselves have never been affected by it - like the recent apology from a Papua New Guinea tribe for their ancestors eating someone else's ancestors. It is all just a load of rubbish. You can't apologise for what someone else has done, and neither should you.

Why is Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, apologising for slavery? He said:
But you don't have that right, Ken. No elected official does. You can apologise for yourself, if you really think it's worth it, but not for anyone else.

It has been claimed that Ken has set "an example" by apologising, one which Anti-Slavery International thinks
Just fuck off, Anti-Slavery International. Just fuck off. I'm not apologising for something I didn't do, and neither should anyone else. In Britain and her Empire, the slave trade ended two hundred years ago, and slavery as a whole 174 years ago. Don't you think it's time you just let it go? Just move on with your life and stop dragging up old, divisive, arguments about slavery. Everyone considers it a bad thing, it;'s not going to happen again here. Go look at Africa and stop it happening there right now, rather than wasting your time asking us for a pointless and totally illogical "apology". If we were to take the argument they make for an apology, everyone would have to apologise to everyone for some minor slight back in the mists of time. Let's just move on.

Source: The Guardian