A parting shot at porkers

Just before I take my leave- look what WE are paying for (not the hospital boards- us the taxpayers)

Self-inflicted medical conditions- just as bad as drunken fighting and injury, the affects of substance abuse and idiots doing 'extreme' sports!

Off the interweb

...unless someone leaves their wifi unlocked, or I find a free one...

The Friday Funny

A new take on an old favorite

He left his mark

Lair, Liar!

"...Masoe joined Parliament's other cleaners in Labour's caucus room today to push for a $15 an hour minimum wage and to remind politicians that poverty does exist in this country.

She earns the current minimum wage, $13.50, and says that's about $453.34 in the hand a week.

By the time she pays $250 in rent, $90 for power and $70 for petrol to get to and from work, Masoe has about $43 left to pay for groceries.

That usually consists of budget canned spaghetti and baked beans, cheap bread, oats, noodles and margarine.

"This is what our low wages can afford. It's budget food, it's not healthy," she told MPs and fellow Service and Food Union representatives this afternoon...."

Follow the link and take a look at the 'Poor starving cleaner' 

Also, no mention of the family tax credit welfare package of about $370 a week (four teens and minimum wage)

Lead me directly to temptation

The hard part is getting the material

...The rest is relatively straightforward engineering.

Of course when the government wants an incident so serious they can seize power- the materials could be forthcoming.

An old warehouse, somewhere in a city and surround the device with drums of nuclear waste, to make it nice and dirty.

A timer counts down and the firing circuit is now active and awaiting a cell phone call or the secondary back-up timer to finish counting down. A cordite charge fires and a hollow slug of Uranium 235 slams onto the target at 300 metres per second. Microseconds later, a city starts to die and a nation is locked down.

All according to plan...

The Phoenix Reich

Damn, I have writing projects backed up so far...

This one involves a USA in the near future that has more or less mirrored the path of Germany from the 20's to the 40's.

The administration, knowing they were to be ousted at the polls, engineer a crisis that dwarfs 9/11. Elections are suspended and whats left of a tattered constitution is now cast to the winds.

The story is about how small groups and individuals fight back- in what ways they can...

Friday Funnies

The good stuff here. Not for the sensitive.

A writing project- yes- a writing project...

A have been kicking around a project involving resistance to an unpopular totalitarian government.

This is not about the rock- throwing, car burning rioting or armed resistance, but about the more subtle methods used by those unable or unwilling to take up arms.

Even in the vilest regimes, there have been those who found a way to fight back- the slave workers of WWII, who managed to leave a bit of cotton waste in a fuel system, or grit in a gearbox.

In my story, we have a less overt  form of fascism (slightly). People find ways of making the government's apparatus job more difficult- misinformation, over-reporting of 'suspicious activity', casting aspersions towards minor officials. Neighbors who start having parties and making noise to disturb the sleep of a local official. The farmers who leave supplies out, where the armed revolutionaries can readily find them. Contractors who are always a day late delivering or repairing goods and services to the government- and never do as good a job as they could.

Then there are those within the system who would fight back. The policeman who turns a blind eye. The storeman who makes supplies 'vanish'. The soldiers that break irreplaceable equipment.

Any ideas of subtle or passive resistance would be appreciated!

Who knows?- we may need to try them out one day...

Village of the Damned- Village of little thinking

Unfortunately, the Christchuch CDB is FUBAR. Even more unfortunate is the council/government meddling. They do not understand that the city WILL AND CAN NOT be build in the form it is in now.

The one thing that might salvage the crock of shit, is that so many are taking the money and bailing. Acre for acre, the land in that area is going to be worth less than a bit of stony bare land out the back of Springfield. As it is, the land is worthless, as high-rise is looking to be uninsurable- and there goes the business sector.

So, I say let it return to park with cheap land for those that will take the risk of building there. Maybe the cheap land will attract what the run-down semi-derelict old rentals used to. The bars, cafes and restaurants that were all done on a shoestring budget.

They were the appeal of the CBD- retail was dying well before the shakeup, as the shops relocated to the outlying malls- as they have been doing worldwide.

Bars, food outlets, boutiques and brothels can all be build in quake-resistant steel and timber and don't need to be more than two stories high.

Likewise, low-rise apartments catering to those who like that sort of lifestyle.

Think outside of the concrete box!

UPDATE:

Looks like I'm not the only one thinking this.

And the colour of the sky on YOUR planet is?

"Parliament is an "old boys' club" and is often out of touch with the modern world, Green MP Sue Kedgely said in her valedictory speech this evening..."


That's rich!


Who could be more out of touch with heartland New Zealand, than a friggin' 'ban everything' greenie? 

Dealing with dope

Yep, make dope legal.

BUT- employers will test for it, as they do now. Just as turning up with alcohol in the system will get you the boot, so will dope.

ALSO- Given that beneficiaries are meant to be work- ready- they should be subject to random testing, too. Fail the test, no dole.

If you drive a vehicle on the road- expect to get tested, just like for alcohol.

Easy.

One law for us- another for those who would rule

It may seem a small thing- putting up party propaganda before the date it is permitted to do so.

It would be- but for the fact that the ones playing loose with the law are those that would make the laws that the rest of us mere mortals are required to comply with.

Is anybody surprised at such blatant hypocrisy?

Thought not...

Buggerizing around with time

Feckin' daylight 'saving'!
I hate it- as does every other person I know with: small children, older children, livestock, early starts, shiftwork- or is otherwise a slave to other peoples timetables.

The unemployed and the retired don't give a damn- so who actually wants it- and why?

It's not like we magically get more hours in the day.

I suspect it's those in the civil service- childless and on glide time who want to sip Chardonnay on the deck after a day of making life more difficult for the rest of us.

Or it's just someone being a bastard because it is possible to be so.

Bastinado would be too gentle a medicine...

Engage FTL drive

"A pillar of physics - that nothing can go faster than the speed of light - appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said today (NZ time) they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity - the famous E (equals) mc2 equation - just doesn't happen..."

The rest of this story here.

In my opinion, this is the greatest discovery of the century (at least, so far!)

The thought police are busy banning- HERE

"There are more than a thousand books that you will never be allowed to read unless you leave New Zealand.

Many are of a sexual nature, deal with violence, horror and crime and might have only been fully read by one person in New Zealand - and that person decided they shouldn't be available to the rest of us.

A total of 1319 books are banned and a further 728 restricted in some way..."

So censorship is alive and well here, in the good old nanny state of NZ.

And as for that freedom of speech delusion...

Sucks to be you

I want my money back!

"...Prime Minister John Key today revealed legal advice that almost all use of covert video surveillance by police had been rendered unlawful by the Supreme Court ruling..."


Does this include speed cameras in unmarked vehicles?


The millions nabbed by these revenue generators would make for a fairly serious crime...

Thank You!

For the second time since I have had it- some generous chap has used my tip jar!

Much appreciated, thank you!

UPDATE:

I'm not sure what one of my blogsites it came from, though!