Kenny McBride

I think one of the key issues will be the forthcoming collapse in the Lib Dem vote. One of the reasons for the SNP landslide up here was that the Lib Dems just crashed horribly. The effect won't be quite the same in England but it will be similar. A lot of seats with the Lib Dems in first and Labour second will switch to Labour. Where the Tories are second, I can see turnout slumping. Labour will be able to mobilise their base much more easily than the Tories this time round. I suspect the Tories may maintain a plurality but are unlikely to be able to get enough support from the Lib Dems to form a viable coalition. It may well be minority government ahoy.

I think the "it wouldn't even be a crime here" argument is bullshit even if it were true. Jaywalking isn't illegal in this country, but if you got lifted for it in New York you wouldn't really have a leg to stand on. You can't pick and choose which of a country's laws you're going to abide by when you visit it. By all means, if Mr. Assange and his backers wish to campaign for a change in Swedish law once his trial is over, so be it. Until then he needs to man the fuck up and face the music.

I thought the accusation was that he'd had sex with one woman without a condom, and she subsequently said she's not given consent for unprotected sex?

 

Galloway is right, the actual accusations are pretty ropey. I believe in this country's law, they'd not be regarded as sex crimes even if true.

Some legal bits and bobs about the Assange case. Get your myths exploded here!

It's not ballet, folks. You get in the ring with Zebra, you know you're going to have a rougher night than you might encounter with less traditionally trained wrestlers. Get over it. He's one of the best in the country for a reason and learning to deal with it is part of what it takes to get as good as he is. Sure, not everyone will be as stiff as he can be but that's the glorious and infinite variety of professional wrestling. And honestly, is there anything more entertaining than watching Zebra smash the crap out of someone?

I love that he's terrified of the justice system of the notoriously brutal, authoritarian, US-puppet government of Sweden. Because the powers-that-be couldn't have conjured up a way to extradite him from Britain to the US and put him the fuck into Guantanamo in a flash if they'd really wanted to. No, they needed to get him to Sweden. On trumped-up charges of surprise sex.

What a twat.

Bischoff's book is hilarious. It's like he doesn't realise that anyone reading might actually remember what a fucking mess his company was. It seems like Easy E wasn't a character at all - he really was that sleazy, arrogant, slimy and cunt-like.

The problem with WCW is that by the end it was just so completely surreal that even the telling of the story of what happened sounds completely unbelievable. I'm not saying that book has all the answers or that it would have been easy to do things better, but it would be extremely difficult to do things any worse than they were done from about 1999 onwards. Some people would say 1989 onwards...

Of those, I've only read Wrestling At The Chase. It's pretty cool as an insight into how Sam Muchnick ran his operation. I love the idea of the wee boxes of cards showing the finish of every match anyone had ever had in St. Louis so that when they booked him next time they could use that finish to lead into something else. It's probably pretty sugar-coated because Larry Matysik has such a boner for Muchnick, but he doesn't blatantly bullshit you so it's probably not all lies.

And this one, out at the same time:

 

Bobo Brazil says "hi."

This one still shits me up even today.

Fuck me. That should be the very definition of that "when you see it, you'll shit bricks" meme.

The Radio 1 comedy thing was weird. It was part of Matthew Bannister's revolution. Oddly, I was just thinking about it the other night while re-reading Disgusting Bliss. Chris Morris' radio stuff is some of his best. Blue Jam was awesome when you stumbled in from the pub and sparked up a joint or three. Reading about his local radio work makes me wish I'd lived in Bristol in the early '90s.

Maybe not, but it might stop the ludicrous housing bubbles that have precipitate the last few recessions.

I think a serious problem with our tax system is that different forms of income are taxed differently. We need a simple, straightforward tax on all income regardless of source along with a general anti-avoidance rule so that people don't get away with convoluted avoidance schemes.Also, I don't necessarily oppose tax cuts, but they should be done when business is good, not cutting the top rate (with no idea of whether it will show benefits to the actual tax take) when the Exchequer needs to bring in every penny it possibly can. In my ideal world, we'd slightly over-balance the budget, retaining a small amount (say 3-5%) for a contingency fund, with the tax rates we have now, then we'd cut from the bottom up. The first step would be to increase the basic allowance up to the level of the living wage then cut VAT. After that, I'd increase the basic allowance by a chunk every time you raise the threshold for the other taxes or cut the higher rates. Eventually, the only tax that would exist would be a basic rate of maybe 10% for people earning over about

If you're earning

The thing with tax avoidance is that if you do it and it's legal then I suppose that's fair enough, albeit immoral (in my view). You've got to be a bit of a cunt, though, to then go on and complain about the tax rate you're meant to pay or to to take shots at anyone who games the system at the other end.

Louie and Bigg Taj - Commonwealth Mind Games

I've been looking for this all over the place since hearing it live in September. Finally got a link the other week and can't stop listening to it. The rest of the album is fantastic, but this song is just out of this world. If you like a bit of Scottish hop hop and/or have an interest in the "legacy" of major sporting events, it's well worth a listen.

I like that he gave tax dodgers a whole year before his zero tolerance approach comes into force. I mean, I can't imagine a way that rich people with good accountants could spend the intervening twelve months. It certainly won't involve developing spectacularly obscure and impenetrable arrangements for their income that prevents HMRC even knowing the money exists, never mind tracing it, calculating the tax due on it and relentlessly prosecuting the thieving cunts who've hidden it.

Quite seriously, though, if you're going to have a general anti-avoidance rule, you need to back it up with serious powers. Make tax evasion punishable by unlimited fines and lengthy custodial sentences. Make the directors of companies that evade tax jointly and severally liable not only for the tax but also the unlimited fines. Then permanently ban all the directors from holding any directorship ever again and throw them in jail too. And bury Dave Hartnett in a pile of his own shit, since that's the best he deserves.

Are you sure it's cool?

So sure I said it twice.

And "Easy to learn language".

It's cool. Thanks to English cultural imperialism, we're all bilingual at worst.

And "Easy to learn language".

It's cool. Thanks to English cultural imperialism, we're all bilingual at worst.

On minimum wage and aged over 20? Have a 1.8% rise.

 

On minimum wage and aged under 21? Fuck you!

Vince Cable: "It's better to be poor and working than not to be working at all. I mean, have you seen what we're doing to benefits?"

Trickle down has never worked. In these days of tax evasion/avoidance and easier international movements of money, it's even less likely to work. The simple fact is that poor people have a substantially higher marginal propensity to spend whereas rich people have a much higher marginal propensity to save/invest offshore. The most effective way to fix the economy right now would be to raise the tax threshold to about

Are you now replying to yourself!?

 

A-anyway, moving on from the strangeness above.. what do people think of the debate today on universal benefits vs targeted ones? The coalition was planning on removing the child benefit from those in the higher rate tax band, however they've (only now!) noticed that this will create 'unfair' anomalies around the cut-off, and are backing away from it.

 

I find it fascinating that it could actually be cheaper to pay a universal benefit than try to target it.

It's always been well known that child benefit is the most efficient and effective benefit we have in this country. It goes directly to women (well, almost exclusively) and there's no means-testing of any kind so there is no situation in which it can be cut off. The fact that the cost of limiting access to it may well end up being more than is saved by not paying it to some people should tell you the real purpose of the government's actions: give the (entirely false) impression of us "all being in it together" by cutting off a tiny stream of money to the better off while subtly getting the message across that there is no such thing as a universal entitlement and that everything can be means-tested. Don't be surprised (if the Tory government lasts long enough) that you start to hear whispers about the rich having to start paying for their own NHS treatment because, well, they can afford it and the NHS is costing us all a lot of money. It will be the first step towards true privatisation. You heard it here first.

Must say that I almost bust a gut when I read that unelected EU Puppet Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said that there is no room for violence in Democracy following yet more violence in Greece.

I want to know when we're going to invade Greece. It's a failed state with an unelected leader imposed by hostile foreign powers.

On that last point, if you're going to fight corruption then it's a very good idea to not be corrupt.

Well that's just a conspiracy of the liberal academic-media hegemony. They want us all to be black disabled transgendered lesbians.

Seriously, though, without reading the actual report, there is a stack of questions emerging from that article. How is the "intelligence" measured? Talking about "innate intelligence" is dubious at the best of times, but particularly ridonkulous when it's not even measured until the kid has already completed its primary education. Where are the controls for educational status/style/opportunity, or for employment status/opportunity? What about media/cultural conditioning? After all, the Sun is one of the most rabidly right wing newspapers in this country but is written for eight year olds and is the most explicitly populist paper going too. What about parental politics? I would think many (if not most) people's politics are heavily influenced by their parents, whether it's being broadly similar (as in most cases) or through over-identification (the union leader's son who becomes an armed revolutionary to prove himself to the old man) or through deliberate rejection (the Tory minister's daughter who goes off to live on kibbutz). The article itself doesn't define "right wing" either. I imagine the report does, but even then, the automatic equation of conservative social policy and bigotry is troublesome.