You are really, really not going to believe this - here are a few brown pearls of wisdom from Tom Hampson of the Fabian Society (the people that brought you political correctness).

UPDATE: Jon Holmes covered this on The Now Show on BBC Radio 4 on 1st Aug 2008 - here’s the mp3

‘Chav’ is way above the threshold of acceptability. It is deeply offensive

In whose opinion?

to a largely voiceless group

HA! Voiceless?! If only! You really haven’t left your Islington flat in a while, have you?

and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred.

I’ll come back to this. Keep going before the coke hits….

The phenomenon of the word has grown over the last five years. Initially it was purely a term of abuse. (You only have to visit the website chavscum.com to see this – have a look at it and be appalled.)

Er, knock knock? Not noticed that it became chavtowns.co.uk a while back? Never mind, doesn’t seem you’re on the same planet anyway

You cannot consider yourself of the left and use the word.

Although I don’t consider myself on the left anyway, how patronising can you get? So, left = mental and unable to have an opinion?! I know several “people of the left” - their opinion is wrong, of course, but I haven’t even for one moment considered such nonsense as that last sentence.

It is sneering and patronising

A little like your article, Tom?

and – perhaps most dangerous – it is distancing, turning the ‘chav’ into the kind of feral beast that exists only in tabloid headlines.

There is nothing I would like more than distance from chavs, and nothing would please me more if they really DID exist only in tabloid headlines, but if I can just get you to pop your copy of Socialist Worker down and look in the real world for a moment, you’ll find they are very much feral, and very much out there.

But who does the white working class have?

WORKING class? If ignorance is bliss, you must be a very happy man, Tom. Chavs are not “working class”. You seem to think they are somehow forced into their position. You don’t have Burberry, prison-white trainers and a Renault Clio Turbo forced on you. You aspire to it. Chavs relish, embrace and cultivate the way they are.

You might think they would at least have the progressive left, but it would seem not.

Since when did “progressive” equate to “ignorant”?

The BBC should specify the word in its guidelines for programme makers and take class discrimination seriously. The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights should show that they understand class discrimination is an issue that can have effects as detrimental as racial or gender bias.

I’m really beginning to wonder if my clock is set wrong and it’s actually April Fool’s Day.

But more importantly, we must stop using it ourselves. From now on – embarrassingly PC though it may seem – I shall audibly ‘tut tut’ and wince whenever I hear it used. You should too.

Should I? Well, thanks for giving us the benefit of Comrade Hampson’s wisdom.

If you need an antidote by now, I suggest The Campaign Against Political Correctness.

If Tom is reading this, here’s something to keep him happy:

David Thompson has also blogged about this. Guardian Article. BBC article.

Tags: chavs,funnies,john holmes,mp3,political-correctness,the-now-show
Categories: chavs, political_correctness
5 Comments »

From time to time, I get someone saying “all renewables is rubbish, isn’t it?”. The most recent site I got pointed at was:
http://www.greenliving.co.uk/Articles/theeconomiccasef.html

I read that site and hung my head in despair. Now, we all know that small scale wind turbines currently don’t pay for themselves, either in carbon footprint payback or financial terms. Would it be great if there was someone who had found a way of making it work out?! Except, as I was reading through, I couldn’t help thinking “what about this? what about that?”. I was twitching to find the “contact” link, when my questions were answered at the bottom:
http://www.greenliving.co.uk/Articles/theeconomiccasef.html#FAQ

It appears “the economic case” puts aside small things like depreciation, maintenance, replacement of batteries, installation costs, etc etc etc.

So, let’s have a brief look at a summarized version of the Q&A (I have abridged but not edited or changed any words)

Q. You haven’t considered the cost of borrowing money to fund the installation.
A: I didn’t factor in the cost of borrowing as I wanted to keep the article simple.

Q. Do the battery banks not need replacing periodically?
A. This is a complex area whose costs I cannot accurately quantify

Q. [The article] does not deal with storage issues
A. Regarding how electricity is stored, I deliberately kept that side of the article simple because I did not want to obscure the main argument.

Q. Does your calculation include installation costs?
A: No, because these are difficult to quantify.

Q. What would the planned maintenance costs be over 20 years?
A. Difficult to say

Q. Are there any maintenance or insurance costs associated with the turbine?
A. A|l turbines need regular preventative maintenance, [...] I have not included these costs.

Riiiight, so as long as you don’t actually factor in any real-world costs, it works out perfectly!

For those of us trying to make a living out of viable energy (solar thermal etc), these kinds of sites don’t help at all - they just make the whole industry look bad.

BTW - grants paid since inception of scheme:

Not very inspiring.

I also read a book, “How to live Off Grid”. Except, it’s not very “how to”.

I’m afraid I have to agree with this review from Amazon (I’d gone there to write almost precisely the same!)

One of the lesser problems with this book is that the author spends too much time talking about himself instead of the subject. For example he writes in detail about his difficulty in finding parking space when he visits one of the off- grid people. He also brags about getting gadgets for free and talks far too much about his family. He seems to brag about rather than describe his off grid place in Spain. He then says that he can not afford a house in the country in addition to his expensive 2 homes and his van.
The very worst problem is that the book is badly structured, in that the details of how each off grid community works is in a separate chapter to the general description of it and it’s inhabitants. It is hard to flick back and forth between chapters. The quality of writing is not the best.

The only saving grace is a very good tiny section at the beginning about the history of the grid. There is also possibly useful bit in the chapter about planning permission at the end.
There is also the odd thing, that Nick Rosen admits himself, about the irony of him choosing to drive a van to be “off grid”. I was disappointed.

Additionally, there are some glaring typographical and factual errors - weird things seem to happen with random brackets in several places, and p334 - energy saving bulbs do NOT cost £3.50! They are between 40p and 60p each. Well, the Philips ones do, anway.

Good that it is FSC paper though - I have first edition (2007).

I suppose it’s a good try - but it’s embarrassingly obvious that he must have been on “pay per plug” for the Vodafone 3g card :)

Finally, check out this bit of nonsense from the local paper in the letters section:

Image this - school mums are delivering their little darlings to school past eco-friendly homes that have wind turbines.
A typical British mini-tornado blows up and demolishes a wind turbine.
The knife-like blades shoot about as if from a whirling dervish killing or maiming several of those mums.
Come on! Roll out the nuclear future. The people of Reading cannot wait any longer for this.
Sue Doughty, Twyford

Tags: green
Categories: Uncategorized
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Aaaargh! Is it too much to ask these days to just be allowed to get on with things?
I want to walk down the street without getting chugged by some dreadlocked trustafarian on £25 per signup.
I want to be able to visit a toilet in a nightclub without some creepy guy popping out of a cubicle holding a tray of crap to sell me, just standing there watching me trying to have a slash, grinning a pair of pearly whites at me and saying “alright mate?”. No, no I’m not fucking alright! I’ve come to take a piss - get the fuck away from me. (The Roadhouse, Covent Garden - great happy hour prices - freaky toilet experience. Never again!).

But most of all, I want it to be fully legal to mow down any c*nt who approaches me while I’m sat in traffic in London with a bucket of gritty water and a knackered old squeegy. The approach I don’t mind so much, but I very VERY clearly indicate “no thanks”, and STILL the gritty sponge is wiped across my windscreen, and then they draw a damn HEART shape in it! And still carry on. And give you this fake upset look, standing gormlessly by the driver side window as if I owe them something.
Tactic I learnt quite quickly was to put a strong solution in the washer tank and use a drawing pin to move one of the nearside jets to squirt towards the pavement. Then as they approach, you simply wash the windscreen so they can get near without being squirted.

Can anyone else think of things like this?

Categories: Uncategorized
2 Comments »

For those interested in improving your memory, NLP, sales techniques, religion, crystals, snake oil and improving your memory, I can heartily recommend the excellent Tricks of the Mind, by Derren Brown.

You’re not going to like it much if you’re into faeries, God, crystal healing, snake oil, reiki or stuff like that, but if you want to improve your memory and learn a few neat tricks, this is a good book.

But the last quarter of the book is which he calls a “rant” against pseudo-science, bad science, religion and all sorts of other dillusions, neatly disecting the mumb-jumbo and putting it firmly in its place. And gives some good ideas as to what to look out for, too.

Oh, and it’s 51% off at Amazon at the time of writing, so I’m fairly sure you won’t regret it for £3.94!

Categories: Uncategorized
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Admittedly, they are straight from the department of the bleedin’ obvious, but in the same week that Gordon Brown pointed out that…

…each household could save £420 a year by not throwing away edible food. Approximately 4.1 million tonnes of food which could be eaten are disposed of each year, the government estimates.

David Cameron said:

…that some people who are poor, fat or addicted to alcohol or drugs have only themselves to blame.

He said that society had been too sensitive in failing to judge the behaviour of others as good or bad, right or wrong, and that it was time for him to speak out against “moral neutrality”.

“We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise,” he said. “We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things — obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction — are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

“Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices people make.”

Blimey. Personal responsibility? Whatever next?! Not sure a country infantalised by ZaNu Labour is ready for this kind of thing….

Tags: brown,cameron,food,green,labour,Politics,waste
Categories: Politics
1 Comment »