(Guest post by Olly Cromwell).
Many of you will not know who I am, and will probably thank the gods
that you don't. The good Captain has most graciously allowed me to pop a
guest post up. Thanks old chap! To start I'd like to give an
introduction, which I feel is necessary just so you have a little
background to work with.
I started blogging about three years
ago, I'd been reading "the big guns" of the blogging world for a while
before I decided that it looked like a lot of fun and that plenty of
mischief could be caused in the process. The Captain, Old Holborn and
others through their writing and shenanigans showed me that the only
word you really need in your vocabulary is NO! Of course it helps to
have a few other words too, in my case plenty of swear words, real bad
swear words. Swear words that have seen me arrested, charged, convicted,
sentenced and later acquitted on appeal.
I blog about local
politics, more specifically politics in the London Borough of Bexley. I
started blogging about Bexley after I first moved here and experienced a
council meeting for the very first time. At the time I thought it would
be a good idea to film said meeting, and managed to do so but in doing
so started a chain reaction of events which eventually lead to the
aforementioned arrest. In my time as a "local blogger" I have
encountered fraud, corruption, hypocrisy (quelle surprise), nepotism,
theft, lies, deceit in short a huge amount of fuckwittery. I blogged
about it all in my "unique style".
I decided that I was going to
say NO to absolutely everything the council did, quite simply because
the chances they'd get anything right were pretty slim. I was a constant
thorn in their side for months, that is until they banned me from
attending council meetings for being "disruptive". In fact, all I was
doing was exercising my right to express dissent at every opportunity I
could get.
The one stand out thing I noticed when dealing with
the council was that not many (in fact closer to none) people actually
attended council meetings and as a result the council were and still are
doing anything they want, regardless of the legalities involved. I'm
not going to go into too much detail here, if you want you can visit my
site (Parental Advisory) or you can go to a tamer version written by
another blogger. (http://www.bexley-is-bonkers.co.uk).
Plenty
of people bitch and moan that the government this and the government
that, but unless you're actually taking an active part in what's going
on nothing will change. Nothing. I happen to be one of "the other"
crowd, that will continue to fight as long and as hard as I can until
something does change. And that leads me quite nicely to the crux of
this post. It's partly a shameless plug for a project I am working on
but is mostly to ask you for your help, and I would really appreciate it
if you could help, who knows it may be the start of something big. It's
a rather ambitious project, I have no budget to speak of so will mostly
be relying on social media and word of mouth to achieve the ultimate
goal.
We should all know what the "right to recall" is, if you don't here's a quick definition:
Recall is the right or procedure by which a public official may be
removed from a position by a vote of the people prior to the end of the
term of office
Quite simple really. Most perfectly though all
3 "big" parties support it too (spits), and there is even a mention of
the "right to recall" in the coalition agreement.
http://www.labour.org.uk/gordon-brown-speech-conference,2009-09-29 - Gordon Brown speech
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/02/David_Cameron_Rebuilding_trust_in_politics.aspx - David Cameron speech
http://www.libdems.org.uk/political_reform.aspx - Lib Dems Political Reform
http://www.conservatives.com/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/agreement.ashx?dl=true - Coalition Agreement
Since
all 3 parties support the principle of the "right to recall" it stands
to reason that they'd not be opposed to that principle being applied to
local councillors. More specifically in this case Bexley councillors.
Now
like most people I mostly think petitions are a waste of time, they
don't normally achieve a lot, apart from registering the gripes of a
certain group of people, and further than that the petition goes
nowhere. It's happened here in Bexley, the council flat out refused to
acknowledge a petition signed by over 2000 of its residents (The
petition was calling for a cap on council official's salaries quite
rightly).
Now the good Captain is always preaching about playing
"The Powers That Be" at their own game,so I did a little bit of
research, and I was pretty shocked, pleasantly so, at what I found.
Here's the educational bit of this post:
Did you know that,
according to the Local Government Act 2000 that if a petition is signed
by 5% of a local authority's electorate that they (the authority) are
obliged to hold a local referendum?
You can read about it here:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/22/section/34
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/22/notes/division/1/2/3/11 (explanatory notes)
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/22/pdfs/ukpga_20000022_en.pdf (sections 34, 35, 36)
So, what I've done is set up a petition site (http://www.the-bexley-petition.com)
asking for the council leader to give the residents of Bexley the
"right to recall" their local councillor. Before anyone jumps up and
says: "Hang on! Only the local electorate can sign the petition!" I'll
stop you right there, because you see, there are two versions of the
petition, there's an online version which is open to anyone to sign
(please do so) and then there's the "hard copy" edition which is
available only to local residents, in effect two different petitions
doing similar things. The online edition to get as many people as
possible to sign so as to increase the pressure and the hard copy to do
the real job.
If you could spread the link to the website far and
wide (we welcome signatures from around the world) it would be greatly
appreciated. The aim of this petition is to attempt to make Bexley the
first local authority in the country to allow their residents to recall
their elected representatives.
I'd like to point out that if this
petition results in a local referendum then the repercussions could be
huge. Think about it. Imagine getting 5% or more of your local community
signing a petition asking the local authority to bin all E.U.
directives and then forcing a local referendum on the E.U. Wouldn't that
be fucking awesome?
Help me to try and help you, signing the petition takes less than a few minutes of your time. Be a thorn in their side.
Cheers
Olly
September 04, 2012
Transmission Ends....
I know, I know. We've been here before.
I am going off-air.
Although I (deliberately) missed the jubilee celebrations, everywhere I looked I saw/heard/read about fawning Brits (foreigners don't know any better) throwing love, adoration and respect at an 86 year old lady who has neglected to do what fate decreed she must, and that which she swore an oath to do, for several decades now.
It made me realise that people will politely listen to me, nod sagely, then rush out to organise a tea party in Mrs Windsors honour.
I don't care, particularly, how hard she works. How many events she attends. How many badges and medals she pins on people. How much she does, or does not cost us.
I only care that she does the job she was entrusted by the people to do. She let us all down. She dropped the ball, frankly. Her defenders say that it wasn't/isn't her fault. "She was badly advised", they shriek.
Well, I happen to know that Mrs Windsor, 86 or not, has a brain. She also knows right from wrong. She knows lawful from unlawful. She knew what she was getting into. Despite all that, she still signed off on that damned ECA 1972. And later, she signed off on seven treaties that firmly lashed us to a bandwagon destined to go over a cliff. Sooner, rather than later, some of us hope.
She did not act alone, but the buck stops with her. (That does not mean that the others are free from guilt):
Image courtesy of TPUC
And to this list we can now add Duffer Brown, his understudy-in-chief David Cameron, and Team Lickspittle.
You, me, Uncle Tom Cobley and all do not get away with anything either. We are governed by consent, and, make no mistake, we consented to it all.
We consented because we did nothing to stop them. No mass marches. No parades. No riots. Our weapon of choice, (but only when we are uber-miffed), is to write stern letters. Even then, we failed, as a nation, to reach for our pens.
The common excuse is that we were brainwashed. That we had 13 years of Labour (that same party we kept in power for those same 13 years) and that they did all the damage. We conveniently forget (if the right-coloured ties are in office) that the rot started with that bastard Heath. Oh, we moaned. We moaned like Olympians. We moaned in the pubs. We moaned in the working-mens clubs. We moaned down the caff. We moaned in the bingo halls. So to stop us moaning they emptied the pubs with a piece of insane, inane, selfish legislation. What was this master-stroke, you may ask? The smoker ban. It only affected 12-15 million people and we were so well trained, a goodly number of those 12-15 million people simply said, "Thank you". They still do to this day. Thank you for dehumanising me. Thank you for making me a pariah. Thank you for throwing me out in the rain, the sleet and the snow to smoke, while my friends, the good robots, were safe indoors, warm & dry & snug. Thank you for that, oh blessed government, thank you for the smoker ban.
With that legislation enacted, the government (of the day, and all others that followed/will follow) knew that anything was possible. So they kept on doing exactly as they wished. 650 men and women, addicted to power, kept vomiting out legislation. As I keep saying, they had a vomit-fest and spewed 4,116 new rules and regulations out in 2011 alone. As the quality of the MPs drops, the volume of legislation spikes. Only the terminally deranged can possibly imagine that more rules means better government. They, collectively, are devoid of integrity, devoid of pride, and totally devoid of honour.
And yet, we fall for it. We say nothing. We do nothing. We listen to their manifesto promises knowing, absolutely knowing, that they are lying and still we trot down to the booths like good little robots and make our mark for the cleverest robot in town. We then look mystified when the clever robot turns out to be defective after all. Just to prove how stupid we are, we repeat this insanity every five years. They remain in power, and we remain mystified. They remain the robbers, and we remain the robbed. They take our money and they take our freedoms. Still, we do nothing.
Anyhoo, I am rabbiting on. Time to stop.
Time to say thank you.
The figures speak for themselves. No matter how well we have done, and please be assured that this was a team-game, we are now in extra time. We are in the dying seconds. The game is all but lost. As hopeful as I am, as optimistic as I am, it is going to take far too long to get everyone, or at least a majority of Britons, to finally understand how bad things are.
They have enough to worry about, so there is no point adding a new worry to the pile.
The numbers:
May 2008-September 2012
Posts- 1,095
Comments- 16,668
Unique visitors- 554,561 (not counting feeds)
Page-views- 857,890
Some left- and right-wing blogs have more impressive stats for a month. The trick, I think, is to keep on shitting out popular stuff. It doesn't have to mean anything, as long as you don't frighten people too much they will return, lemming-like, to read utter bilge. And so the game is played.
I dared to be a little different. I tried a few amendments to the rules.
In 2008 I declared myself a Freeman. I informed the government, and they ignored me.
In 2009 I declared myself a Lawful Rebel. I informed the monarch, and she ignored me.
In 2010, 2011, and 2012 I picked fights with as many government agencies as I thought manageable. There is still a lot of work to do, but it takes time. Mostly, when trying to rebel peacefully, it is like watching wood warp. Which is to say, it takes a bloody long time. I was naive. I thought that writing clever Notices to various agencies would stir them up. I thought they would react. Mostly, they don't. Mostly, they ignore me. The last time I ignored them, they sent two thugs to my door.
That didn't stop me. And I am not stopping now. I have won more battles than I have lost and this gives me the encouragement I need to continue.
I am done with the cheer-leading. Others do it far better than I. I never set out to be a leader of anything. I merely wanted to chart my course and tell you about it along the way. I just didn't think it would take this long.
Here it is in a nutshell: first they ignore you, then they send the heavies, then they shaft you. Game, set and match. It doesn't matter how right you are. They have force. They took away our guns whilst ensuring they can still use theirs. The dice are loaded. The game is rigged. It doesn't matter how free you think you are, they will beat it out of you.
But before they do that, the great British public will ignore you even more. They have a reality and they don't want that reality being fucked with. The law is fair, the queen is doing her job, the police do treat you with respect, taxes of 30-80% are more than fair, petrol should cost £1.40p a litre, dozens of agencies should have the right to enter your home, or look at your personal data (or lose it on the 8:15 to Dulwich), it is absolutely okay for those same agencies to log every call you make, every text or email you send or every Tweet you write. Those 5 million cameras are There For Our Own Good because they do protect us from the Taliban.
A swift glance at the numbers above should explain this whole post, and the reason I am not writing about it daily, weekly, or monthly anymore. A swift calculation should tell you that if I/we have only managed to reach half a million people in over 4 years, it is going to take around 60 years to reach them all.
I do not have that long to live. I do not have the stamina to repeat the story for another 60 years.
So, just before I start getting ever-more desperate to attract an audience, I am going to say adios amigos, and thanks for all the fish.
It has mostly been a pleasure, and my adventure doesn't stop here. I will keep going, because I cannot unsee what I have seen. I cannot unread what I have read, and I really cannot unknow what I know.
I may swing by from time to time with an update. I like to write. I just get tired of writing the same thing. In the meantime, if you want top quality blogging, visit each and every one of those unsung heroes on the right hand side. Geniuses, all of them. I am proud to list them here. They inspire me. Let them inspire you.
Unlike my previous good-byes, this one was not sponsored by the grain or the grape.
Thanks again for tagging along.
Captain James Xavier Ranty (Ret'd).
I am going off-air.
Although I (deliberately) missed the jubilee celebrations, everywhere I looked I saw/heard/read about fawning Brits (foreigners don't know any better) throwing love, adoration and respect at an 86 year old lady who has neglected to do what fate decreed she must, and that which she swore an oath to do, for several decades now.
It made me realise that people will politely listen to me, nod sagely, then rush out to organise a tea party in Mrs Windsors honour.
I don't care, particularly, how hard she works. How many events she attends. How many badges and medals she pins on people. How much she does, or does not cost us.
I only care that she does the job she was entrusted by the people to do. She let us all down. She dropped the ball, frankly. Her defenders say that it wasn't/isn't her fault. "She was badly advised", they shriek.
Well, I happen to know that Mrs Windsor, 86 or not, has a brain. She also knows right from wrong. She knows lawful from unlawful. She knew what she was getting into. Despite all that, she still signed off on that damned ECA 1972. And later, she signed off on seven treaties that firmly lashed us to a bandwagon destined to go over a cliff. Sooner, rather than later, some of us hope.
She did not act alone, but the buck stops with her. (That does not mean that the others are free from guilt):
Image courtesy of TPUC
And to this list we can now add Duffer Brown, his understudy-in-chief David Cameron, and Team Lickspittle.
You, me, Uncle Tom Cobley and all do not get away with anything either. We are governed by consent, and, make no mistake, we consented to it all.
We consented because we did nothing to stop them. No mass marches. No parades. No riots. Our weapon of choice, (but only when we are uber-miffed), is to write stern letters. Even then, we failed, as a nation, to reach for our pens.
The common excuse is that we were brainwashed. That we had 13 years of Labour (that same party we kept in power for those same 13 years) and that they did all the damage. We conveniently forget (if the right-coloured ties are in office) that the rot started with that bastard Heath. Oh, we moaned. We moaned like Olympians. We moaned in the pubs. We moaned in the working-mens clubs. We moaned down the caff. We moaned in the bingo halls. So to stop us moaning they emptied the pubs with a piece of insane, inane, selfish legislation. What was this master-stroke, you may ask? The smoker ban. It only affected 12-15 million people and we were so well trained, a goodly number of those 12-15 million people simply said, "Thank you". They still do to this day. Thank you for dehumanising me. Thank you for making me a pariah. Thank you for throwing me out in the rain, the sleet and the snow to smoke, while my friends, the good robots, were safe indoors, warm & dry & snug. Thank you for that, oh blessed government, thank you for the smoker ban.
With that legislation enacted, the government (of the day, and all others that followed/will follow) knew that anything was possible. So they kept on doing exactly as they wished. 650 men and women, addicted to power, kept vomiting out legislation. As I keep saying, they had a vomit-fest and spewed 4,116 new rules and regulations out in 2011 alone. As the quality of the MPs drops, the volume of legislation spikes. Only the terminally deranged can possibly imagine that more rules means better government. They, collectively, are devoid of integrity, devoid of pride, and totally devoid of honour.
And yet, we fall for it. We say nothing. We do nothing. We listen to their manifesto promises knowing, absolutely knowing, that they are lying and still we trot down to the booths like good little robots and make our mark for the cleverest robot in town. We then look mystified when the clever robot turns out to be defective after all. Just to prove how stupid we are, we repeat this insanity every five years. They remain in power, and we remain mystified. They remain the robbers, and we remain the robbed. They take our money and they take our freedoms. Still, we do nothing.
Anyhoo, I am rabbiting on. Time to stop.
Time to say thank you.
The figures speak for themselves. No matter how well we have done, and please be assured that this was a team-game, we are now in extra time. We are in the dying seconds. The game is all but lost. As hopeful as I am, as optimistic as I am, it is going to take far too long to get everyone, or at least a majority of Britons, to finally understand how bad things are.
They have enough to worry about, so there is no point adding a new worry to the pile.
The numbers:
May 2008-September 2012
Posts- 1,095
Comments- 16,668
Unique visitors- 554,561 (not counting feeds)
Page-views- 857,890
Some left- and right-wing blogs have more impressive stats for a month. The trick, I think, is to keep on shitting out popular stuff. It doesn't have to mean anything, as long as you don't frighten people too much they will return, lemming-like, to read utter bilge. And so the game is played.
I dared to be a little different. I tried a few amendments to the rules.
In 2008 I declared myself a Freeman. I informed the government, and they ignored me.
In 2009 I declared myself a Lawful Rebel. I informed the monarch, and she ignored me.
In 2010, 2011, and 2012 I picked fights with as many government agencies as I thought manageable. There is still a lot of work to do, but it takes time. Mostly, when trying to rebel peacefully, it is like watching wood warp. Which is to say, it takes a bloody long time. I was naive. I thought that writing clever Notices to various agencies would stir them up. I thought they would react. Mostly, they don't. Mostly, they ignore me. The last time I ignored them, they sent two thugs to my door.
That didn't stop me. And I am not stopping now. I have won more battles than I have lost and this gives me the encouragement I need to continue.
I am done with the cheer-leading. Others do it far better than I. I never set out to be a leader of anything. I merely wanted to chart my course and tell you about it along the way. I just didn't think it would take this long.
Here it is in a nutshell: first they ignore you, then they send the heavies, then they shaft you. Game, set and match. It doesn't matter how right you are. They have force. They took away our guns whilst ensuring they can still use theirs. The dice are loaded. The game is rigged. It doesn't matter how free you think you are, they will beat it out of you.
But before they do that, the great British public will ignore you even more. They have a reality and they don't want that reality being fucked with. The law is fair, the queen is doing her job, the police do treat you with respect, taxes of 30-80% are more than fair, petrol should cost £1.40p a litre, dozens of agencies should have the right to enter your home, or look at your personal data (or lose it on the 8:15 to Dulwich), it is absolutely okay for those same agencies to log every call you make, every text or email you send or every Tweet you write. Those 5 million cameras are There For Our Own Good because they do protect us from the Taliban.
A swift glance at the numbers above should explain this whole post, and the reason I am not writing about it daily, weekly, or monthly anymore. A swift calculation should tell you that if I/we have only managed to reach half a million people in over 4 years, it is going to take around 60 years to reach them all.
I do not have that long to live. I do not have the stamina to repeat the story for another 60 years.
So, just before I start getting ever-more desperate to attract an audience, I am going to say adios amigos, and thanks for all the fish.
It has mostly been a pleasure, and my adventure doesn't stop here. I will keep going, because I cannot unsee what I have seen. I cannot unread what I have read, and I really cannot unknow what I know.
I may swing by from time to time with an update. I like to write. I just get tired of writing the same thing. In the meantime, if you want top quality blogging, visit each and every one of those unsung heroes on the right hand side. Geniuses, all of them. I am proud to list them here. They inspire me. Let them inspire you.
Unlike my previous good-byes, this one was not sponsored by the grain or the grape.
Thanks again for tagging along.
Captain James Xavier Ranty (Ret'd).
Gideon Gets Booed
Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Ridicule is all they deserve.
Well, and a slack handful of contempt.
Have some piccies as well. We could do with cheering up:
That's one way to eradicate the competition.
I'm voting for this guy.
CR.
Ridicule is all they deserve.
Well, and a slack handful of contempt.
Have some piccies as well. We could do with cheering up:
That's one way to eradicate the competition.
I'm voting for this guy.
CR.
September 02, 2012
Not The Time For Apathy
I suppose most of you are tired of me saying this.
No apologies from me.
I will repeat as necessary until you are all willing to do something.
Like him or not, David is right.
You can do the easy thing, which is fuck all.
Or you can do the right thing, which is to ensure those who come after you have some sort of life.
It's time to shit or get off the pot.
CR.
No apologies from me.
I will repeat as necessary until you are all willing to do something.
Like him or not, David is right.
You can do the easy thing, which is fuck all.
Or you can do the right thing, which is to ensure those who come after you have some sort of life.
It's time to shit or get off the pot.
CR.
The Roman Catholic Church
One of my pet hates is crimes against the young, the vulnerable, and the old.
Most people, with some degree of wits and fitness, should be able to give a good account of themselves if attacked. Generally speaking, I mean. Eye-gouging, kicking and biting are all fair when you are defending yourself.
That said, this post is about priests and child rape. I know, not a cheery subject for a Sunday morning, but, as it involves the Roman Catholic Church, Sunday is exactly the right day to do this.
I want you to meet two men, one dead, and the other close, but not close enough, to death.
First, the dead guy:
Cardinal Maria Martini
The should-be-dead guy:
Rev. Benedict Groeschel
Now, what do these dudes have in common? They both have an opinion about priests molesting choirboys. The Cardinal, who died on Friday, is/was against it, while the weirdy-beardy fella says it is the fault of the abused. His remarkably tiny brain insists that it is the priests who are the victims.
Read his stupid comments here.
Cardinal Martini said, in his last interview, that the RC church is 200 years out of date.
It is very difficult to disagree with him. Dinosaurs like Groeschel should be rounded up and put out to pasture. Preferably a very long way away from the young people they find so tempting.
This abuse isn't new. That church has been protecting its paedophiles for centuries. The current pope is no different to almost all of his predecessors.
But the final insult is the church daring to issue statements on morality. They are in no position to tell any of us what is sinful and what isn't.
Is it any wonder so many churches close down? Is it any wonder so many people stay away from churches? Who wants to be associated with these disgusting people?
So we add priests to that growing list of the previously pure who can no longer be trusted. It's a long, long list, isn't it? MPs, police, judges, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and teachers populate the list and in my youth, all of these people had my unwavering trust and respect.
I now assume these people are corrupted. All of them.
It's a damned sight easier than placing any trust in them only to be disappointed.
CR.
Most people, with some degree of wits and fitness, should be able to give a good account of themselves if attacked. Generally speaking, I mean. Eye-gouging, kicking and biting are all fair when you are defending yourself.
That said, this post is about priests and child rape. I know, not a cheery subject for a Sunday morning, but, as it involves the Roman Catholic Church, Sunday is exactly the right day to do this.
I want you to meet two men, one dead, and the other close, but not close enough, to death.
First, the dead guy:
Cardinal Maria Martini
The should-be-dead guy:
Rev. Benedict Groeschel
Now, what do these dudes have in common? They both have an opinion about priests molesting choirboys. The Cardinal, who died on Friday, is/was against it, while the weirdy-beardy fella says it is the fault of the abused. His remarkably tiny brain insists that it is the priests who are the victims.
Read his stupid comments here.
Cardinal Martini said, in his last interview, that the RC church is 200 years out of date.
It is very difficult to disagree with him. Dinosaurs like Groeschel should be rounded up and put out to pasture. Preferably a very long way away from the young people they find so tempting.
This abuse isn't new. That church has been protecting its paedophiles for centuries. The current pope is no different to almost all of his predecessors.
But the final insult is the church daring to issue statements on morality. They are in no position to tell any of us what is sinful and what isn't.
Is it any wonder so many churches close down? Is it any wonder so many people stay away from churches? Who wants to be associated with these disgusting people?
So we add priests to that growing list of the previously pure who can no longer be trusted. It's a long, long list, isn't it? MPs, police, judges, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and teachers populate the list and in my youth, all of these people had my unwavering trust and respect.
I now assume these people are corrupted. All of them.
It's a damned sight easier than placing any trust in them only to be disappointed.
CR.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)