Tuesday 6 December 2011

They're after our money again!

Good ol' Ken Clark, he never disappoints.

Here's his thought for today:



'Britain should be prepared to accept "proper" financial regulation from Brussels, he went on. But he rejected the idea of an EU "Tobin tax" on financial transactions.

"It's the devil's own job to collect," he said, and added that New York and Hong Kong would not follow suit. '

So, Britain should accept 'proper' financial regulation from the same EU that has brought a continents economic system to the brink of collapse, and is so incompetent (or corrupt depending on your viewpoint) that it can't even manage to get its' books signed off.

And why exactly is it so hard to collect taxes on financial transactions. They seem to manage perfectly well in devising systems to collect VAT, PAYE and all those other rip off systems that are imposed on the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Surely the difficulty cannot be that the banks don't want it?

Monday 5 December 2011

Can TV sink any further?

Let's start with some background first. In the absence of anything else remotely interesting to watch, we tuned in to the new (trilogy) Channel 4 drama, Black Mirror.

The storyline consisted of a kidnapped princess whose release could only be secured by the Prime Minister.

The writing was sloppier than that of a 5 year old's description of a day at the zoo. The potential kidnappers hideout was identified by the best technology available, because a pair of car headlights were seen. This led to a complex being surrounded by SAS types, who didn't notice that a journalist was freely roaming around managing to bypass their infra-red technology and years of experience in Afghnistan. She got shot, obviously, and there was no sign of the princess.

The writer ignored the fact that situations of this type have occured in the real world, and the response is nearly always the same i.e. never give in to threats of terrorism as they will always come back for more. But hey, peddle it as a surreal drama and it seems you can get away with anything.

Neither the journalists that receved a severed finger apparantly from the princess, nor the police or analysts that handled the finger after, managed to notice without DNA testing that the finger actually belonged to a man and not the demure little princess who had been kidnapped.

But the real tragedy of this 'drama' was its main hook. In order for the kidnapped princess to be released, the Prime Minister would have to fornicate with a pig whilst the act was broadcast live around the world, and of course in this twisted drama, he did just that.

Why are sick and twisted writers being allowed to peddle their malfunctioning sexual desires onto our screens under the guise of entertainment?

And what kind of sick and twisted media corporations let them?