Toadfish Monastery

Ah, but you live in London.  Try living somewhere where all the local hospitals and services are closed and centralised in the nearest city (where the Labour voters are  ), petrol is taxed though the roof, and they want to congestion charge you for getting to the hospitals they centralised.

Trouble in paradise? I thought everybody was leaving London because it has become impossibly expensive to live in it.

The hospitals that are left are so bad that country folk are lucky they can't get to them.

They were just different worses in previous 13 years. Although as I remember the NHS was crap then too. Just in a different way.

The election drivel has only just begun and already I can feel my blood boiling as one by one smiling, insincere politicians parade across my screens. Today they were all walking around factory floors "Connecting with the working man" its all so painfully transparent.

The new digital economy bill fills me with terror. Not because I am a prolific internet pirate you understand (Yar!) but rather because of the implications.
I mean how are they going to enforce this new law?
Will service providers be responsible for monitoring all my net access and scrutinising it for illegal activity?
If so its seems only a step away from opening my post.

I also find it very odd indeed that while the DEB is mentioned in the papers it has yet to rear it ugly malformed head on the either the BBC or ITV news.....
I suppose showing me Gordon Browns wife talking to disabled people at a gardening center was more important.
After all my decision on which way to vote will be based on the party leaders wifes interactions with gardeners. Not on the legislation that his party is passing.

Welcome Ageis, you should drop by the Start Here section and introduce yourself. I promise we don't (wont?) bite. 
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As for the bill not showing up in TV, I think politicians and TV casters all over think that this "collection of interconnected tubes" thingy is too nerdy for legislation coverage. Blue may tell us how big is the coverage of the censorship bills in Australia but given the general disdain of politicians talking about it I bet it isn't much. Here in the States I know about the fall of net neutrality but that is because of news on the internet, not TV (nor that I watch any regular TV news here anyway, its all drivel).

In general terms, us regular folks are too stupid to understand what's good for us. 

Hi Ageis!
Glad to see that you made it over here! 
Now, go and introduce yourself in the new members thread, and then tell me what's been happening at the Great Centre for Wish Fulfillment (With Dodgy Roof).com !

/The prickly one

Quote from: Ageis on April 08, 2010, 11:53:50 PM
Will service providers be responsible for monitoring all my net access and scrutinising it for illegal activity?
If so its seems only a step away from opening my post.

Labour have been working on that for years. The Lords stopped it in a previous Communications Act but it's back again under the "Intercept Modernisation Programme"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6533107/Every-phone-call-email-and-internet-click-stored-by-state-spying-databases.html


(Welcome, by the way  )

Welcome Ageis.

Quote from: Ageis on April 08, 2010, 11:53:50 PM
The election drivel has only just begun and already I can feel my blood boiling .........

Mine would be too if it wasn't instead forming sludge at the repetitive nature of the whole farce. I am perfecting the technique of turning my ears (and eyes) off. My over-riding sensation is boredom. And I don't see any choice on who to vote for so not worth listening anyway. Vive la revolution!!

As ti the DEB, the supposed method is that the artists who have their output illegally downloaded have to inform the ISP of the issue (ie. the ISP does not montior but waits for accusations); then the ISP customer gets three warnings before any action is taken. It remains to be seen whether this is actually how it works and whether public pplaces like hotels etc will pre-empt which is the danger. Personally I think it stinks that any legislation is allowed to be rushed through like this. Wash Up is a fundamental flaw.

And so it happened, the DEB passed.

I guess you'll have to make sure all emails will have to be sent from France/other country before or after going to the UK...

Sorry for the double post. Political Compass made a page for the current UK elections:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

The graph now shows UKIP and other small parties:


Interesting read.

Dangit.... here I was taught that it was a line....

Doesn't make sense to me. BNP left of Tory?

Perhaps this graph might bring some light to it:


They suggest that while extremely authoritarian their economic policies would be center right. The other thing to consider is that there has been a hard shift to the right in the past twenty years:


Also their analysis are based more on actual votes and/or detailed policies than on rhetoric.

As before taking the actual test is a good exercise.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Greens are libertarian?  Strict environmental policy demands a pretty authoritarian approach, even if your average Green voter isn't necessarily a big supporter of it.


EDIT:  Took the quiz, I'm southwest of Green. 

Vereee interesting...
I can see that Hitler (National Socialist German Workers' Party) was nearly centre on the L-R axis, but that the BNP should stand left of the modern Tories is beyond me, however you argue it.

I took the test.  I am deeply disappointed with the result.     Can't be true.