Guns N' Roses : Chinese Democracy

The Setanta Clause Is Coming to Town.

Last year I purchased one month's worth of subscription from Setanta Sports in order to watch a one-off sporting event, costing £20. I should have known better, really; the last time I did this was twelve years ago for the first ever PPV (Pay Per View) boxing match, where our Frank Bruno bravely defended himself against Mike Tyson for about twenty seconds or so, but I am an absolute sucker.

All went well. I watched the event (which is usually shown free on Bravo when the event is staged out of the UK) and went about my business. The next month, Setanta took another £20 from my account without asking me. When I called to see what had gone wrong with our arrangement, I was told that I was on a 'rolling contract' (not true: it was advertised as a feature that there was no contract or cost and at no time was I told that further charges would be taken) and because I could not be bothered to argue, I cancelled the 'contract' and sucked it up.

The next month, Setanta charged me another £20. This time rather more incensed, I called them again and firmly asked that the charges be stopped and the two previous month's worth of unwatched horse racing and crappy Hurling be refunded. The soft-spoken Irish gentleman assured me that the contract would now be cancelled if I stood on the nearest common at midnight and spat in a southerly direction, before sending the cancellation in writing by post. The refunds would be sent by cheque, also by post, if they weren't too pissed or lazy to send the fucking thing, which of course they were.

So why do all my imaginary readers need to know about what is really a private disagreement with a shoddy rip-off merchant? Well, at the time, Setanta were so small-time that they resembled those constant racing channels that play in bookies, but things have taken a turn for the sinister, as they now have the sole rights to broadcast England's away matches in the World Cup qualifiers. Now, let's leave the public interest issues for another paragraph and ask why such a marginal, shonky outfit were allowed to get these rights at all? On Sunday, England played their first qualifier against Andorra away and unless you paid the £12.99-a-month charges, you may never have been aware that it was taking place. What really irks is that Setanta accused the BBC and ITV of brinkmanship in the negotiations for highlight broadcast rights and refused to sell them at all, which is a sneaky way of telling the public that an undisclosed fee was insufficient to allow ANY terrestrial coverage and you may as well subscribe. I would strongly urge anyone considering this to rethink their options.

So, what role has the FA played in this farce? The usual: buck-passing. They claim that as guardians of the administration of our national game, they were powerless to stop the evil, corrupt foreign FAs from selling the rights for the internationals to outside parties. So what the fuck DO the FA do, if not prevent this sort of thing from occurring? They employ eight inbred neckless fools for every job at that place and they put themselves in a position where this kind of thing can happen?

I have tried to work out the cost of watching every England qualifying match at home on television and this is not an easy process at all. Setanta seem committed to shrouding the actual monthly cost with cheap deals and short-term scams. But here goes:

The England qualifiers take place from between 6th September 2008 and 14th October 2009, which would mean two payments of the TV license and 24 months worth of contracted Setanta Sports. In total, this costs over six hundred pounds at todays rates (which are by no means fixed). From what I read, some of the away fixtures are still being negotiated on and could be bought by Sky, which would more than double the cost of watching the national team and take the total cost to £1,230.

It's really up to you, but I've got to ask myself: is this 'product' (as we are all encouraged to think of our loyalty to national and club teams these days) really worth it?

Oil Be Freeing You.

I've been posting to this blog for a while now (if a little intermittently) and so far have pretty much avoided the issue of our struggle for democracy in the Middle East and Iraq in particular. There has just been so much written and spoken on the subject that I wanted to leave it until I had fully gathered my thoughts and could deliver a true reflection of my opinion.

When Tony Blair assured the British people in 2002-03 that Saddam Hussein was in control of an arsenal of Weap..., those thingies of mass whatsit, I was extremely dubious. No surprise, as the UN inspector Hans Blix had, despite being ejected from the weapons sites, deduced that Iraq carried no such power. Indeed, Blix inaugurated the now oft-repeated clamour to inspect the real source of danger on the world stage - North Korea (if one were to be unkind at this point, one could draw the assumption that the USA would not want to get into a conflict with a small nation that has already 'kicked their ass' on the world stage and would rather go after someone they have recently beaten).

My suspicions were already aroused on hearing the propaganda that Osama Bin Laden was conveniently hiding in various places around the globe that were of particular importance to the oil industry; Afghanistan with it's strategically important pipelines (and a nice sideline in heroin, which I believe is now up and running to full capacity again); Pakistan, who underwrite many of the Middle-Eastern oil ventures and had just attained nuclear-capability (a definite no-no for an Islamic state. Why can't you be more like India?); Iran, who had lost the Western investors hundreds of billions of dollars of investments when the Shah (who had been a good little sandboy and sold the oil nice and cheap) was overthrown by the Ayatollah in the recent past; and Iraq.

In hindsight, our combined World Force For Peace (or whatever it's called) would have been better invading the White House if they wanted to find Bin Laden, or WMD's for that matter.

Despite all this, I was in an awkward position as far as the potential threat Iraq posed was concerned. I did not want to believe that our Prime Minister would lie to us on such a grand scale and in such a manner that would lead to the loss of so many lives. I tacitly gave my support to an initial invasion to determine the actual capability of Hussein and to nullify it where possible. And by 'support' I mean that I kept quiet like a good citizen and didn't join the Hyde Park march even though I was in London on the day, decisions which can never be reversed and which I deeply regret now, of course.

Now, five years on, what have we achieved? Conservative estimates suggest that the death-toll has exceeded one million dead (the majority by far Iraqi). We have installed a puppet government that regularly passes edicts that contravene even the most basic of human rights. Terrorist activity has been aroused not only in that area, but globally and the funding for terrorist networks has been assured for decades to come. Our forces patrol the streets like the invading tyrants they are, committing the sorts of atrocities that characterise such a Nazi-like enterprise. The telling figures from the conflict are that about one -and-a-half-thousand contractors have been killed in Iraq since 2003, with a further 12,000 injured. Just how many contractors do you need to give the Iraqis freedom? How many contractors, for example were taken to the Falklands in 1981?

We all now know that this false war is a sham. I suggest that we stop calling it 'The Gulf War' or 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and start calling it what it is: an invasion. An occupying force.

Who's next? Well, no surprises there: it's Iran. Don't forget that the Iranians callously captured a boatload of our troops in 2006 (troops that were illegally encroaching on Iranian waters in what can only be described as a provocative and foolish manner), treated them well and sent them home. But never mind that, there is now definite proof that Iran is funding Al-Quaeda and supplying terrorist with weapons. No, really, DEFINITE, this time, honestly.

The West is gradually creating a quasi-empire in the Middle-East and the reason, as always is power. Oil is only money and money is fairly meaningless to the kinds of people that can carry out such atrocities on such a scale. The irony is that I don't believe for a minute that Tony Blair is one of those people. To anyone that watched as he aged rapidly during the last few years of his Premiership it was obvious that this man will find it difficult to wash the blood from his conscience in his last years.

But the really disgusting part of all this is our role; we who could have made at least a political and social point when the elections came around. We didn't, and because of this we are all responsible for this mass-slaughter.

Generational Insanity

I was talking with my parents last week about the gathering scandal surrounding the disappearance of young Shannon Matthews in Yorkshire. For those of my imaginary readers that don't know about the case, visit the BBC website and run a search in her name. Our discussion moved on to the subject of crime in general and child-molestation in particular, when something odd occurred to me: my parents are barking mad.

Not raving lunatics, but quietly psychotic. You see, I have often heard them expound the benefit of torturing and executing criminals, or lay the blame for our deteriorating society on the 'immigants', or announce that we should simply obliterate the Middle-East with nuclear weapons to rid the world of such a troublesome place. I rather fancy that if you come from what we refer to as a civilised western background and you have parents of, say, 60 or 70, you may have heard similar outbursts. But two things worry me and give me hope at the same time. The first is that my parents actually mean what they say! Given the opportunity, I believe that my parents (and most of their generation) would carry out or seriously consider acting upon the most extraordinary of impulses. There would be a whole subclass of neutered, lobotomized, branded and tarred unfortunates, and our cemetaries (or refuse dumps) would be full to bursting with the corpses of those who were found to have crossed the line, or even just rumoured to have done so.

The second thing that worries me is that, as time passes and I stumble awkwardly into middle-age, I am becoming less and less tolerant myself. I don't know for sure whether this is because I am changing in my outlook, or because I am not changing with a steadily more easy-going society, but it is worth considering that every generation's (and by generation, I mean every thirty years or so) standards and morals always seem horrifying to the previous and next generation. Take, for example, my father, who will be quite literally sickened by a television programme about cross-dressing homosexuals, or morbidly pierced new-agers (while I would just be slightly bored), but actually believes that the world today would benefit from a World War, involving the loss of tens of millions of lives, a process he would refer to as 'thinning out'.

War is, in fact, the major note of contention between my generation and the previous one as far as I can see. For most people of my mother's age, it does not really matter that our government has taken us into a conflict with lies to increase the profits of rich business corporations. They just want some arabs killed because they see them as threatening our way of life(!). They were raised in the late thirties and early forties, when propaganda was a way of life and probably gave comfort to them as children, with its promise of justified war-mongering and swift victory.

But there is a difference between the views of my father and those of his parents. They actually witnessed the horror of war first hand, and as is usually the case, condemned it utterly. As far as the other sociological issues go, however, they were even more draconian. It is worth remembering at this point that at the beginning of the nineteenth century (probably at the time my great-great grandparents were in charge) a succession of animals, including pigs and monkeys were executed in Britain for the crime of treason. Barking.

These ramblings have led me on to another of my persistent questions: has there ever been a more selfish, self-absorbed, critical, greedy and morally bankrupt generation than that of our parents? If you, like me, grew up with your mother and father bemoaning the state of society, crime, architecture, crappy household goods and rude behaviour as if it was all your fault, it must have occurred to you at some point that the world we now live in is to all intents and purposes fashioned in their own image. They were a generation that divorced in record numbers, chose careers over children, consumed vast quantities of the worlds resources, polluted the environment on a hitherto inconcievable scale, sold our industry down the river to Asia, consumed illegal drugs in record numbers, borrowed money to the detriment of the world economy, created weapons of horrifying destructive power, plundered Africa, persecuted minorities, perpetrated holocausts and genocides and began the mass abortion culture that, for better or worse, still increases to this day. Then, for good measure, they decided to retire early and blame the resultant shortfall in the National Insurance kitty on illegal immigrants.

And how do they behave now? They are, for all their moralising, the single most rude, brash and outright vulgar of any class of people you can hope to find. They are pushy, tasteless and spoiled. My day-to-day measure of decency is to analyse what kind of people thank me for the small kindnesses I perform throughout the day: holding doors open; a cheery smile; letting a car out of a junction. The grey foxes, I am afraid, perform atrociously, whereas their parents were among the most polite.

I can't think of a single sociological achievement of the last generation that didn't have it's roots in the previous one. The political, scientific and cultural revolutions of the early 20th century eventually gave way to a sort of global pie-eating contest.

Believe me, I have a lot of respect for individual members of that generation, my parents included. But taken as a whole, I wonder whether our present system of existence will ever recover from their complacency and greed.

All of which gives me a little hope. For all I worry about my son, and the life he is going to lead with the threat of street-violence, drugs and hoody-style gang culture, I can rest easy at night knowing that he won't be wrongfully disfigured by some vigilante old goat mistaking him for a pig. Unless we move to Norfolk.

A Frogs Chorus

It looks like the sordid divorce of Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Heather is finally drawing to a close. It has marked the nadir of my opinion of a once great musician and songwriter, an opinion that has steadily degenerated through twenty-five years of dreadful decisions taken by the man (some important and usavoury; others less-so).

Let me take you back to an event that shortly preceded the divorce, when Heather McCartney was reported as being unhappy with Sir Pauls' continued use of marijuana. It was what I refer to as a 'Chinese Bang' of a story; a brief yet fairly amusing run in the tabloids that seemed to paint the picture of an ageing sixties pop-idol being nagged into old-age by a young demanding wife. I did not care about the story one way or the other, but was surprised at how little play the tabloids gave to it, seeing as how the drug-use seemed a little at odds with Sir Pauls' wholesome veggie image.

After a few months, things got a little nastier for Heather, as revelations emerged in the press of her shady, vile (and frankly exciting) past. Pictures of her in soft-porn poses were released to the newspapers, with assurances of further more hardcore images to follow. We were informed that Heather had been a prostitute in her younger days, hired out to rich 'Arabians' (sic) (because let us not forget, there is nothing more certain to get Daily Mail readers more upset than foreign men having sex with British women) without any proof of these events bearing more than the slightest resemblance to fact. Her reputation was in tatters. It began to look like the weed-nagging was a bad idea.

Remember that she was still ostensibly happily married to Sir Paul at this juncture. He even came out in the papers in support of her, despite rumours that his own daughter from a previous marriage, Stella, carried a dislike for his current wife. Shortly after these revelations, however, the marriage was all but over and the ugly divorce commenced in the full public glare.

But how did all this really come about? Is Sir Paul really as virtuous and gallant as he has appeared in the British press? Well, I would draw your attention to a few events, some from the dim and distant past and others from the near-future to explain how I think this man (and our news industry) operates.


When the Beatles officially split in 1970, the world looked for reasons for the break-up. Indeed, the rabid fans of the group were looking for someone to blame. Little by little, with no outright fact or quote from the Beatles themselves, it begun to be reported in the British press that Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono was the person that had disrupted the balance of the band. Later (and indeed right up to the present day), it became an accepted fact that this was the case. John Lennon later revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine (and in subsequent interviews) that the real reasons for the split were the increasing isolation between McCartney and himself, a disillusion with the musical direction of the band and a desire to 'start playing Rock 'n' Roll' and draw himself away from McCartney's insistence on elevating the cache of Rock music to that of opera. All pretty boring stuff. He also made reference to feeling betrayed by McCartney after he felt that he had used the music and broader press to discredit him and his wife. Whilst it was obvious that he still had affection for McCartney, he painted a picture of a man obsessed by popular success and global image. Tellingly, Lennon continued to perform with the other two Beatles, Harrison and Starr and went on to perform with other contemporary musicians, such as the Rolling Stones and Dylan, all of whom it must be said have no such love for McCartney. Sir Paul announced the dissolution of the Beatles (reportedly without telling his band-mates) a month before the release of his solo-album, a move that further upset Lennon and seemed to confirm his misgivings about McCartney.

Because of Lennon's reluctance to enter into a public argument with McCartney, however, Ono's role in the split has become part of our culture. Britain does seem rather ready to 'blame the woman' when it comes to things like this. Did Paul have anything to do with these rumours? To my mind, a fabulously rich man with an eye toward his public image is capable of anything, and to smear the reputation of a scapegoat in the press does not even approach the limit of such a man.

In later years, Sir Paul honoured the death of his former writing partner by legally changing the order in which his name appears in the writing credits on Beatles songs, a move that many have condemned as petty. But this slightest of changes to the historical order (one which was surely only ever laid alphabetically) not only puts McCartney first in the minds of future generations, but also guarantees him increased revenue due to the fact that Lennon is deceased. It will further benefit him when negotiations conclude as to the digital rights of the Beatles catalogue.

So, petty and greedy then.

It is rather alarming that history seems to be repeating itself with Heather. I obviously do not know the woman personally. She does seem rather incapable of keeping control under what are admittedly rather pressured cirumstances, but enormous amounts of attention have been centred around her in this whole thing, while Sir Paul (the father of her child, let's not forget) is getting away scot-free.

I am a fond reader of conspiracy theories. I don't believe them all, but I find them fascinating and usually as factual as the agenda-driven official lines spun by our lapdog press. One such theory is that Paul McCartney was actually killed in a road accident in 1966, only to be replaced with a lookalike (named William Campbell) by a terrified record and management company, to prevent a colossal loss of revenue. This would, on the surface, appear to be a preposterous tale.

But then there is the Frog's Chorus...........

Card Carrying Leftie

Whether or not you believe any of the conspiracy theories about our western governments surrounding us with fear and immobilising our populations with dread, there is something extremely sinister about how keen New Labour are to introduce identity cards to the U.K. As I've previously mentioned, an eager British government is an unusual beast and should be treated with the utmost suspicion.

I've had conversations with friends about this subject and the overall consensus appears to be that, while nobody really believes the party line about I.D. cards increasing security and foiling terrorists (Name: Mohammed Al-Faruq. Occupation: Career Terrorist.), equally nobody could see any harm in them being introduced anyway. Indeed, some actually thought that the system would increase the efficiency of governmental administration. Are these people correct in thinking this way?

It's rather complicated for me, because when one actually assesses the information that will be collected for the database, it doesn't seem like there is anything on there that isn't in some official file anyway. Most of us carry a National Insurance card, a driving licence, a pension book or a young person's I.D. The government has access to your finances (in theory!) when you declare taxable income, has knowledge of your geographical whereabouts when you move house and more and more employers now insist on background checks when taking on staff using information that is collected largely without your consent or awareness.

The liberties that can be taken by governmental offices are quite astonishing already. Did you know, for example, that the DVLA (or whatever it is called now) was criticised recently when it was discovered that it was revealing licence-holders details to 'unsavoury companies'? The firms revealed in the subsequent investigation were car-clampers, but further prodding showed a regular pattern of identity supply to insurance companies, loan sharks, motoring organisations and vehicle repair centres. Never mind about the type of companies involved, did you even know that government departments were allowed to give such details away? Did you, like me, believe that your details were sanctified by the Data Protection Act? This divulgence of information is completely legal and is still happening. At least you now know how all these junk-mail mountains appear on your doorstep.

All this serves to highlight a disturbing data-phenomenon: your personal details are quite literally winging their way through databases around the world, whether you have asked for this to happen or not. The assumption, when confronted with an unwanted call, or solicitation, is to think that you ticked the wrong box in a competition, or replied to the wrong email, but the fact is that even the most diligent of practitioners is subject to a deluge of unwanted correspondence.

Is this a worrying development? For me, not yet. But when New Labour begins to piece together all my most saleable info-assets into one master file (for their convenience), I will be terrified. You see, I have no choice in the matter. Preliminary details regarding the actual extraction of said information included 'Processing Centres' to which reluctant citizens like myself could be forcibly sent. Fines and prison sentences ultimately follow if information is not forthcoming or is intentionally corrupted. If all this sounds rather dramatic, that's because it is. The government wants these details and intends to get them whether we like it or not.

And when it has possession of them? Well, try to think of a national computer database that the government has introduced in the last fifty years that has come in on budget, worked satisfactorily and been operated without reasonable loss of integrity. You can't. There are none. Tales of laptops left in black cabs, CDs lost in the post and USB keys falling through holes in pockets are not just tabloid scare-mongering. It's happening, and on a much larger scale than anybody really knows. Why? Simple carelessness accounts for a certain percentage, but the main reason for all this leakage takes me straight to the reason New Labour wants the cards in the first place.

Money.

Your details are worth a lot of money and you will never see a penny of it. Now that Britain no longer actually produces anything to sell, we trade on what economists like to call the 'Service Industry', otherwise known as Scotch Mist. For a Service Industry-based ecomomy to really thrive, it needs an industry to serve and since we don't have one of our own, we have specialised in serving those of more productive countries with greater resources. History repeats, however and just as British industry leeched to the East and beyond, so have cheaper, outsourced alternatives appeared to take our call centres, I.T. consultancy and creative accountancy away (like a huge Mechanical Turk, one might say!). The U.K. needs more and more injections of capital to sustain her through to a brighter age.

£18* per person, per company. Around 35 million adults, multiplied by an infinite amount of Chinese, Indian and U.S. companies. That, I am afraid is all you are worth. It may not be strictly legal for the government to sell you at the moment, but that is what governments are best at; changing laws or finding DVLA-style loopholes to leap through. And if the choices of companies are as careless as have been so far; if gambling addicts begin to be bombarded by internet casino offers, impotent couples preyed upon by charlatan Chinese fertility clinics, or our children targeted by professional scam-artists who will know why? Who will argue? Have you, so far?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. I.D. cards are only as useful as the database that serves them and the database is vulnerable to the information fed into it. I don't think that even the government sees I.D. cards as an ongoing agenda. A system whereby citizens can be observed and monitored to the minute and second would not only provide valuable information on buying habits for foreign retailers, but would also have the added benefit of letting the government know exactly what services and benefits their populace are using and enabling them to tax them accordingly (always upward, never down, of course!).

This system has already been initiated. The U.K. already has the deepest penetration of publicly assigned CCTV in the world and 'stealth-taxes'; speed cameras, refuse inspection and the like have increased the average Britons' payoff by a substantial amount each year. But the most ominous development is happening in New Mexico (with increasing interest from various U.S. states), where a technology known as RFID 'Radio Frequency Identification' has reportedly been implanted into around 180 government staff to monitor access to restricted areas. You probably know where I'm going with this.........

It may seem ridiculous to think that wholesale chip-implants could ever be enforced in this country. You might even be confident enough to bet that it will never happen.

£18?

The author of this blog worked in data storage, recovery and retrieval for and in retail lead generation. He had no reason to question the Data Protection Act for all that time (having attempted to circumvent it for most of his career!) until he read a report about the DVLAs practices on the BBC website last year.

*Based on average cost to U.K. retail for gold standard leads. Subject to wholesale discounts and reduction for notorious governmental magic-bean negotiation skills.

Speed Bump Greed Hump.

Over the last ten years, the UK government has seen fit to introduce a raft of measures, ostensibly designed  to make our lives safer and protect us from......well, from ourselves. Many of these initiatives have centred around roads and the unfortunate motorists that use them.

Now, I'm a realist as far as driving in the UK is concerned. Our Kingdom is smaller than a lot of US states, with a road infrastructure that has benefitted from none of the organisation afforded to more recent efforts. If driving was ever truly a pleasure, then much of it has been lost due to jammed routes and aggressive drivers. Our road surfaces often resemble a patchwork quilt, as one shoddy botch-job is laid over another, to the benefit only of the companies that get the contracts to keep maintaining them. In short, I believe in trying to reduce the amount of traffic on our roads, for all manner of reasons (many of which will be dealt with in future articles).

With no realistic public alternatives available at present, however, we are pretty much stuck with our impacted hardtop. So what can we do to solve this congestion? Well, according to the government, we can install millions of lumps of tarmac on hundreds of thousands of roads to prevent vehicles from utilising shortcuts and reroutes on their journeys.

There are other such 'traffic calming' systems in use too: the chicane-style dodgem kerbs that are often placed on the brows of hills, obscuring the view of oncoming traffic and the increasingly common habit of simply closing routes through residential areas (apart from local 'access'). The devisors of these snafus have their own special place reserved in hell, but it is the speed bumps that deserve a closer look.

Car companies are at an important junction (if you'll pardon the pun) in their history, with fuel pricier and more elusive than ever and environmental concern amongst the public increasing, not to mention increasingly reliable cars engineered to last longer than ever, the industry was, until recently, entering somewhat of a doldrum. What was needed was a way to reduce the working life of the average vehicle. One that, for example, introduced a systemic trauma to every single component.......

Has our government (quietly entering into public/enterprise initiatives left right and centre on our behalves) offered tax incentives for car companies willing to invest in their 'Road Safety' schemes? My theory is that when there is a proliferation of do-good measures, done for the 'benefit' of the public, it is usually because one or more parties is getting a payoff somewhere down the line. In this case, is it too difficult to believe that a firm like Toyota would be all too willing to donate an amount of cash to New Labour in exchange for a device on the road that will reduce the working lifetime of their cars, thus ensuring a nice increase in sell-through mid to long-term, with a tax sweetener in the short?

If you think the idea of these speed bumps having such an effect is farfetched, ask your mechanic next time the car is in for service what these things are doing to the suspension, brakes, shock absorbers, engine mountings, wheels, steering, tyres, chassis and more. Not only do they reduce the working life of the motor (by up to three years according to the mechanics I have asked), but they often render the cars more dangerous in-between services from the ongoing damage done. Ask a cyclist how dangerous these unlit, inconsistent obstacles can be, especially on a dark evening's ride.

What does three years less life and associated damage mean to the car industry? Billions and billions of pounds. The government will tell you that these measures are designed to help prevent cars from driving past schools and areas of dense housing, but what choice have we got? They will say it is part of an ongoing investment in or road transport system, but how many times have you driven down an unkempt, pot-holed dirt-track of a road, only to have to bounce over countless shiny new sleeping-policemen and swerve around safety-chicanes with your newly-damaged handling system?

Suspicion should be aroused when the government pounces on schemes like these because it inevitably means that it has stumbled upon an uncomplaining cash cow. After all, like speed cameras (now renamed 'safety cameras') I don't recall the British public clamouring for them to be introduced, do you?

Welcome To Sedition UK

Welcome to the very first post on my new blog, Sedition UK. I've set this up to provide anybody with any interest in politics (UK or otherwise) a means with which to air frustrations, vent spleens and voice concerns over the way in which our society is governed. I will post a weekly(ish) article based on the issues that seem most important to me, but will welcome any contributions in the form of comments and emailed postings.

The guiding principles of this blog are:

1. To provoke thought and action through the use of intelligent debate and articulation.

2. To explore controversial political and cultural theory, not avoid them for politically correct reasons.

3. To highlight when and where our governments are failing the people they have been elected to serve.

The name of the blog is Sedition UK, but this does not mean that contributions from pro-establishment readers are not welcome. Indeed, this excercise would be a complete waste of time without balanced argument. I would also beseech contributors to be completely honest about matters of race, culture, religion and crime when posting. I cannot guarantee any legal immunity for those concerned, but I suspect the blog would be closed down before anyone got into real trouble (especially if contributions are made anonymously). At its conception, this blog has no systematic moderation, but I have a few rules to adhere to:

1. No intentionally cruel or thuggish postings. The subject of race and religion in particular are obviously sensitive to some. Whilst this blog is an arena to frankly discuss these areas (and I would probably discourage those averse to that from reading the blog) I do not wish Sedition UK to become an organ for hatred.

2. No traditional monosyllabic forum 'trash talk'. This includes pointless insults and moronic abbreviations, eg. omg, imho, grofl, lol, smileys, noob, L33t, pwned or suchlike.

3. No condemnation without proper judgement. By this I mean that if, for example, a contributor expresses racist or seemingly predjudicial views, I would like a considered intellectual response rather than an enraged tirade. This could be difficult and may mean that some righteously indignant responses are removed whilst the offending articles remain. There are plenty of other sites around where reactionary outbursts are welcome, but not this one.

There, that's it. It all seems rather serious so far, so it may be a relief to some that the first article (due around Friday 15th February) will only be about speedbumps in the road.

In the interests of what our US cousins call 'Disclosure', it should be pointed out at this time that the author of this blog is decidedly 'Liberal'. All corporations dealing in lily livers, muesli and mealy mouths are welcome to sponsor this blog.

Welcome To Sedition UK

Welcome to the very first post on my new blog, Sedition UK. I've set this up to provide anybody with any interest in politics (UK or otherwise) a means with which to air frustrations, vent spleens and voice concerns over the way in which our society is governed. I will post a weekly(ish) article based on the issues that seem most important to me, but will welcome any contributions in the form of comments and emailed postings.

The guiding principles of this blog are:

1. To provoke thought and action through the use of intelligent debate and articulation.

2. To explore controversial political and cultural theory, not avoid them for politically correct reasons.

3. To highlight when and where our governments are failing the people they have been elected to serve.

The name of the blog is Sedition UK, but this does not mean that contributions from pro-establishment readers are not welcome. Indeed, this excercise would be a complete waste of time without balanced argument. I would also beseech contributors to be completely honest about matters of race, culture, religion and crime when posting. I cannot guarantee any legal immunity for those concerned, but I suspect the blog would be closed down before anyone got into real trouble (especially if contributions are made anonymously). At its conception, this blog has no real rules of moderation, but I have a few rules to adhere to:

1. No intentionally cruel or thuggish postings. The subject of race and religion in particular are obviously sensitive to some. Whilst this blog is an arena to frankly discuss these areas (and I would probably discourage those averse to that from reading the blog) I do not wish Sedition UK to become an organ for hatred.

2. No traditional monosyllabic forum 'trash talk'. This includes pointless insults and moronic abbreviations, eg. omg, imho, grofl, lol, smileys, noob, L33t, pwned or suchlike.

3. No condemnation without proper judgement. By this I mean that if, for example, a contributor expresses racist or seemingly predjudicial views, I would like a considered intellectual response rather than an enraged tirade. This could be difficult and may mean that some righteously indignant responses are removed whilst the offending articles remain. There are plenty of other sites around where reactionary outbursts are welcome, but not this one.

There, that's it. It all seems rather serious so far, so it may be a relief to some that the first article (due around Friday 8th February) will only be about speedbumps in the road.

In the interests of what our US cousins call 'Disclosure', it should be pointed out at this time that the author of this blog is decidedly 'Liberal'. All corporations dealing in lily livers, muesli and mealy mouths are welcome to sponsor this blog.