More British Nonsense

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=446245&in_page_id=1770
In most offices, when a chair is in the wrong position then immediate action is taken. Somebody moves it.

But not at the Health and Safety Executive.

There, employees have been banned from shifting furniture on the remote chance that they might do themselves a mischief.

They are told to book a porter to complete the task - and allow two days for it to happen.
The new rule could prove particularly problematic for staff planning a last-minute meeting.
If a porter cannot be summoned urgently staff would be left with the awkward choice of disobeying a direct order from the management or asking some of their guests to stand.

To hammer home the point, signs which read: ‘Do not lift tables or chairs without giving 48 hours notice to HSE management’, have been plastered across the walls in several meeting rooms.

The ruling was discovered by Labour peer Lord Berkeley. He noticed the signs when he attended a meeting at the London headquarters of the HSE, whose responsibilities include workers at nuclear plants, oil rigs and huge factories.

Incensed by what he considered to be "health and safety gone mad", Lord Berkeley raised the matter in the House of Lords, demanding in a parliamentary question to know why the HSE had put up the notices.

"I saw them and thought, 'It just can’t be true'," he said.

"It’s ridiculous to mollycoddle people like that. It’s taking health-and-safety precautions to a ridiculous level.

They ought to be concentrating on the important things.

"The HSE is an office like any other – so if it is not required in other offices, why there? It’s the epitome of a nanny state."

Lord Berkeley also criticised the HSE for sending home staff from a meeting he was attending after it had snowed.

"We were told we had to go home because there was an inch of snow on the ground outside," he said.

"The buses and trains were still running. It’s just preposterous."

In a written answer to Lord Berkeley, Lord McKenzie, a work and pensions minister, said: "Where furniture needs to be moved regularly, it is mounted on lockable wheels so that any staff can move it easily.
"For other cumbersome furniture, arrangements have been made with porters to move it safely.
"Signs have therefore been posted in some meeting rooms advising of this arrangement."

The signs have been put up in almost all of the 31 HSE offices across the country, where 3,600 staff are employed.

A spokesman said: "HSE’s approach to moving furniture in its offices is based on its own assessment of the risks from manual handling - one of the main causes of work-related absence among its staff."

An insider at the executive described life there as "a nanny state gone absolutely bonkers".
"Why we can’t move a chair or lift a table out of the way when we want beggars belief," he said.
"Are we seriously supposed to wait two days before we can rearrange a room so we can all see each other in a meeting?"

Unsurprisingly, the HSE has one of the best records for accidents in the country, with 107 injuries per 100,000 workers over the last year compared with 150 per 100,000 in education, 360 in agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, 640 in construction and 1,390 in transport, storage and communications.

The furniture-moving ban follows a long line of edicts made under the banner of health and safety.

Last week, it emerged that a school banned knotted ties because it said they were a safety risk. Pupils at Bramhall High in Stockport were told to wear clipons instead or be sent home.
During the festive period staff at Tower Hamlets Council in East London were banned from putting up Christmas lights and decorations in their offices in case they hurt themselves.
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Maybe I shouldn't be reporting on British news. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, or shooting a .22 rifle at a target 3 yards away. It's all ridiculously easy...to point and laugh at. There's no sport. Should I stop?

Nah.

Too much fun stuff here.

Banned from moving office chairs. The nation that gave birth to the ancestors of Washington, Adams, and Henry has fallen so far that they are legally prohibited from moving wheeled office chairs and desks.

What do you say to that?

And Now For Your Friendly "Let's Make Fun Of The UK" Post

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070404083030.ootuegy7&show_article=1

Talking" closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras which allow operators to shout at people behaving badly are to be installed across England, the government announced Wednesday.

The scheme lets local council workers in a control centre monitor pictures from the cameras and talk to them if they feel they are doing something wrong.

The cameras were piloted in Middlesbrough, north-east England, where they have been used to reprimand vandals and litter bugs, but now loudspeakers are being fitted to cameras in another 20 areas.

Britain has some 4.2 million CCTV cameras and the government's privacy watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, warned last year that the nation risks "sleep-walking into a surveillance society".

Human rights group Privacy International says Britain is the worst country in the European Union at protecting individuals' privacy, citing "endemic surveillance".

And a powerful group of lawmakers -- the House of Commons home affairs select committee -- is to hold an inquiry into the extent of surveillance in Britain this year.

The "talking CCTV" move comes as Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration attempts to impose a "respect agenda" by cracking down on petty anti-social behaviour.

Home Secretary John Reid defended the scheme, saying it was aimed at "the small minority who think it is acceptable to litter our streets, vandalise our communities and damage our properties."

Reid added that schools in many areas were holding competitions for children to become the "voice" of CCTV cameras.

The scheme is likely to cost around 500,000 pounds (740,000 euros, 988,000 dollars).
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They read George Orwell's 1984 and thought it was an instruction manual.

There comes a point where screaming and ranting just gets old, and the only sane thing left to do is point and laugh and jeer and make merciless fun of the person who JUST DOESN'T GET IT.

I Laughed Until I Cried

For his birthday a friend bought her husband, (and I quote): "A one legged tripod." When asked how it worked she said "You sort of lean it against the ground."

As dad put it: "There's no good way of visualizing that."

I haven't laughed that good in years.

House

Funny episode (at times) tonight. I'll paraphrase.

*House pulls a microscope out of a man's nose*
H."Very nice. If my lawn looked like that, pigeons wouldn't dare poop on it."
Patient"First impressions do count. For example, I noticed that your shirt isn't pressed, and you obviously haven't shaved in many days."
H."You use a toenail clippers to trim your nose hairs?"
P."They give me more...reach."
H."I haven't combed my hair and my shirt is rumpled. You have athlete's foot in your nose. I'm ready to be judged."

Shi'ite Christians

Or:Very, very religious persons who don't know when to leave the h*ll enough alone.

I'm a fairly religious person. I have a strict code of ethics that by and large intersects with those laid down by Christ. I'm not a big one for praying (it's started to seem kind of hypocritical to say anything other than thanks, given that I know God ain't gonna protect me and mine from anything bad, why ask?) I wish I went to church more, but work doesn't allow. So, in no way, shape, or form is the following an attack on organized religion or any denomination or practice of Christianity.

I'm getting into the car after exitting the post office, and it being Wisconsin, and WI weather being what it is, I'm wearing my leather jacket, and the warmest shirt under it that I own - my Punisher sweatshirt. Which has the standard Punisher skull emblazoned spraypaint style on the front.

I've got one leg in the car when an overweight, late-middle-aged to early elderly gent steps down off the sidewalk in front of the car, approaches my door, and crooks a finger at me.This is somewhat odd. He looks like one of my old teachers, but not quite. Thinking that maybe my fly's open or I dropped a $20, and he's looking to Pay It Forward today, I get back out.

"Excuse me," says the man.

"Can I help you?" is my standard reply.

"There's one man in all of history who came to bring peace and everlasting life, only one, and his name is Jesus Christ. Whether you choose to accept him is up to you.

"I'm too busy trying to figure out what he's going on about to process his next words correctly, but I'm thinking it was something along the lines of "You must choose, but choose wisely." Sort of like from Indiana Jones, but not nearly so inspiring when it doesn't come from a 900 year old Crusader.

Getting defensive, I say "I am a Christian, what are you talking about?"

Serenely, he points at my shirt and replies "I see that symbol, and I am reminded of that man who came to bring..."

I cut him off. "This symbol's from a movie."

He raises a hand. "I mean no offense. I don't know if it is or not. But be that as it may..." He drones on for another moment about my choice and the man who came to bring everlasting life, while backing up and moving away.

"Thanks. Have a nice day." I get back into the car.

Still torques me off. This is the only problem I have with Christmas - not the (wonderful) marketing, not the commercialization - all the religious fruits come out of the cake. Unless I'm wearing something so...vile...that I'm breaking public decency laws, why do you give a damn what I wear, and who are you to try and tell me that my shirt (inferred) is a symbol of Satanism. It must be real ... nice to be that secure in your own righteousness that you can deign to lecture people you've never met before on how their clothing threatens their salvation.Adrian

Swearing code

While dealing with a very bad man on the basketball front long ago, my brother decided he needed a way to express his displeasure with a person or situation without actually saying the appropriate words in innappropriate places.

Thus was born the swearing code.

It's simple. You take the first letter of the word (or of each word in the phrase), and convert it to its numeric equivalent. A=1, B=2, C=3, etcetera and so forth.

Then you use that number or string of numbers in place of the far more satisfying word you wish you could use. For example, if I called Governer Doyle a 21136 in its entirety, the people reading this blog (both of them) would probably not come back. But this way, I can say things the way they're meant to be said, without unduly offending anyone.

Overheard at 10pm

While watching the news after CSI:Miami:

Dad:John Gard is a wimp.
Vincent:I wish John Gard and Steve Kagen would both take it upon themselves to drop their drawers in front of the state and show everyone that they do indeed possess the defining anatomy of the male gender.
Mom:*snort*

Liberalize Me

So there's this guy on public radio this morning who wrote a book called Conservatize Me.

Capitalizing on the success of that moron Morgan Spurlock's movie Supersize Me (supposedly the magnum opus of anti-fast-food thinking, all it does is show the predictable result of being stupid), John Moe writes Conservatize Me to try and get inside the minds of right-wingers (anyone being right of Marx being a NeoCon to him) by taking in nothing but right-wing politics and media for an entire month.

Why is it rank-and-file Republicans and Libertarians are always stereotyped as rednecks?

Anyhoo, I tried to duplicate the experiment within the confines of my own mind. I tried to get inside the head of a liberal for about 45 minutes.

It was hard. I generally don't think the world owes me anything, and I obviously had to adjust THAT. Then there was that whole "hatred of the successful and wealthy" attitude to get used to. I knew I was getting somewhere when the words "proletariat" and "bourgeois" and "wage slave" started coming more naturally to me. I also started developing a fondness for Cindy Sheehan, Ted Kennedy, the Dixie Chicks, and Al-Jazeera.

Thus suitably prepared in the liberal mindset, I tried to envision utopia. It needed the following criteria:

~All basic needs are provided. Food, shelter, basic furniture.
~Work is not necessary.
~Healthcare is absolutely free for all.
~Dentalcare is absolutely free for all.
~Education is free.
~College is free.
~Entertainment is provided.
~No one can have access to weapons of any kind.
~Only the police can protect you.
~The police are everywhere.
~Authority makes all the decisions for you.
~A few of your rights are protected.
~There are strict rules, designed to keep everyone safe.
~Any attempts to change the system outside of political means are punished.
~Anyone can join the society.
~Societal benefits last from the time you come in until the time you leave or die

Ye Old Lightbulb went on at this point. Not a dawning flicker, mind you. Someone, somewhere, just threw another 6 rods on the nuclear reactor and the lightbulb lit up like a Christmas tree covered in strings of 1,000,000 candlepower bulbs. The illusion ended, and I was left with the realization that...

Such a place exists on earth! The liberal utopia is here!

Wait for it...

The liberal utopia, the state the Democrats and other assorted socialists want to create, the state the embodies all the virtues listed above is...

You knew this was coming, didn't you? I mean, is this IT or is this it?

It's prison.

I'm Smarter Than This

I'm Smarter Than This
...or I thought I was. I'm going to help my mom make Christmas cookies this afternoon. She leaves to take my brother back to school and tells me to preheat the oven. I go do so. 30 seconds later I think "There was nothing on the counter." I had assumed she'd taken everything out and set it on the counter, therefore I had not done so. I've moved faster before, but I really got moving this time. I hit the hallway, smell smoke, and say "Oh CRAP I was right." Well, not exactly word for word what I said, but I don't say what I said in public. The bread's on fire. Everything is melting in its plastic wrapper. I spent 20 minutes getting everything out. Luckily I thought of this before the smoke reached the room I was in, or we'dve had a housefire.

The squirrels are intensely happy - we threw out all the bread that wasn't covered in plastic.

I'm smarter than this. Or so I thought.

Braveheart
It's not quite the dull movie I thought it was. I'm rewatching it, and I must say, I'm impressed. Not up to Patriot or Collateral quality, but quite good. William Wallace's words ring true even today:
There's a difference between us. You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

I AM William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my country men, here, in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?
Against that? No, we'll run, and we'll live.
Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take away our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

This one is particularly stirring in a country that, from time to time, contemplates the draft. What Wallace does to those who enslave Scotland's daughters and sons is still appropriate for those who would enslave ours:
Go back to England and tell them there that Scotland's daughters and sons are yours no more. Tell them Scotland is free.