Corrupt Politicians

We have moved in to an era of acid tripping as far as UK politicians are concerned.

Goodwin, receives an excessive pension and politicians decide to deride the man. Oh, did I forget he is Sir Fred, let me bow down before you Sire.

But on the wings we have the corrupt trough sniffers of politicians who deride the scum Fred, for his greed, but feel their own greed is within the law, so all is well.

Goodwin, has taken a pension, within the law, so he decides he has done nothing wrong.

But politician wring their hands and claim he is in the wrong, yet within the past few months we have had:

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling claiming £104,183 over six years for a London flat when he has a family home just 17 miles from Parliament.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's claims that her main residence is a room at her sister's house in South London.

Employment Minister Tony McNulty claimed expenses for a second home - after it was revealed that it is in fact his parents' house, except of course now, he decides he will stop claiming the allowance.

All insisting they have broken no rules.

Yet all of them decide that Goodwin is unethical.

Politicians are too often, self serving hypocritical idiots, who display the morals and ethics of an alley cat.

British politics is a house of corruption.

Cash for Honours, cash for amendments, failure to listen to the voters and scant disregard for any ethical standard. Reminds me of the Boston Tea Party.

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When selling yourself goes wrong

As the recession bites harder, there are more so called 'experts' advising on how to make money on the internet.

Some of these people do know what they are doing, but the vast majority are just selling products in what is called MLM, but what most of us think of as pyramid type selling. Each level of person gaining money from the money paid by the next level down paying for the privilege of selling to the next layer down.

I don't worry too much about typos in this blog as it isn't an important issue. Though I do try and keep errors to a minimum. However if I were selling from this blog, then I would ensure it was error free, particularly if I were selling a product purporting to help people improve their copy writing skills. I am not talking here of American against English spelling, I am referring to plain and simple typos.

A great example of this can be found on a site in which the person involved refers to himself as...

'Acclaimed marketer, preparing to reveal breakthrough wordsmithing strategies for perfecting print persuasion...'

Whatever that may mean.

Aside from wordsmithing he manages the following great illustrations of how not to write, when he is in fact trying to persuade you that he has the solution to writing copy.

'Who Else Wants To See Your Conversions and Profits Maximized...'

I guess he means who else wants to see 'their' conversions....

'The words on your pages, the words in your emails, the words that are spoken in your audios, videos and during live presentations.'

The sentence above conveys nothing and may as well be a shopping list.

'Emotions are frequently triggered by the subsconcious mind’s processing...'

An example of lazy spell checking the word he was seeking was 'subconscious'

The page is littered with grammatical and typographic errors and unfortunately, he will probably get away with this junk.

The web has some great people on it, it also has some who really would be better off letting others do the typing.

If you still feel these 'breakthough wordsmithing strategies' could be of some help, just copy and paste the url (I could link it but I feel slightly cleaner by not doing so) http://www.michaelmillman.com/IMNW-special.html

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Another good day to bury bad news - Jo Moore and Mandelson meet again

The spin failure Mandelson, managed to run through the House of Lords the first reading of the part privatisation of royal mail, in an undebated hearing.

While Gordon Brown sunk politics to a disparagingly low level of consideration, by pretending he gave a monkeys arse about the death of Camerons son, Mandelson went one better.

Due for debate today (26th February) Mandelson decided that, an unpopular bill, with more than 120 Labour MPs signing a motion to oppose the Bill, he would introduce it a day earlier as an opportunistic piece of politics.

It does smack of sweet Jo Moore in 2001 '11 Sept 2001: Spin doctor Jo Moore sent her infamous e-mail, suggesting to colleagues it was a good day to "bury" bad news.'

Mandelson, was twice forced to resign from Ministerial positions, had to borrow money from friends to purchase houses, yet turned up as a Euro Minister and enjoying a luxury lifestyle, all on a salary of less than US$300,000 a year, ignoring all questions of 'how did you get the money?' and garnering a peerage at the same time.

In 1996 he acquired No. 9 Northumberland Place, a four storey Georgian terraced house in Notting Hill Gate at a cost of £475,000, with another £50,000 spent on a remodelling by the designer Seth Stein. At the time there was a certain amount of speculation regarding how Mandelson had managed to afford such luxury. It was established that another Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson had lent him £373,000 on an interest free basis.

Mandelson failed to declare this loan as an interest as he was required to do, but to make the sleaze even worse, Geoffrey Robinson had been linked with Robert Maxwell and was under investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry, the ministry which Mandelson headed. Blair's legal advisers, Charles Falconer (The same man who decided the invasion of Iraq was OK) and Derry Irvine decided that as Mandelson was not in direct control of the Robinson investigation there should be no problem. Mandelson appeared on television to argue that '...There is no conflict of interest so the question of resignation does not arise...'.

Mandelson had neglected to inform the Britannia Building Society (who had lent the rest of the money) that the £373,000 was a loan and not his own money, and was therefore technically guilty of deception. The man resigned.

A year later in 1999, he returned to office thanks to 'no sleaze' Blair. Strichand Hinduja re-applied for a British Passport in February 1998, at the same time as the Hindujas made an offer to help fund the Millenium Dome, to the tune of £1 million. Mandelson made a telephone call to Mike O'Brien, the Home office minister, enquiring as to the progress of this application, and also passed on a written enquiry regarding the passport application of a third brother, Prakash Hinduja in May 2000.

Mandelson initially appeared to deny that he had ever made any "direct contact" with anyone in the Home Office on behalf of the Hindujas, then retracted his denial claiming he'd been missunderstood. Within days he was required to sign a second resignation letter and left the government on the 24th January 2001.

In 2004 Blair put him forward as the British choice for European Commissioner and he was duly appointed.

This poor misunderstood man was subsequently given a peerage and returned as yet another of Browns unelected and unaccountable Ministers in Cabinet in 2007.

So the cycle revolves.

Dead people make for a good time to introduce unpopular policies.

Jo Moore on 11th September 2001 and Mandelson the former Minister without portfolio and spin meister general for the Labour Politbureau, follow a fashion in labour party politics.

Think of the lowest depth you can go to and then go further.

Nice one Mandelson. Have you already chosen the investor for the Post Office 'investment' by any chance?

Why did Mandelson choose to introduce the Bill a day earlier when UK politicians were pretending to give a flying fig about dead children?

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Ryanair contempt - is it any surprise?

Ryanair are in yet another spat about how they treat the world with contempt.

This all arises from a comment on a blog about a Ryanair online booking service bug. In inimitable Ryanair style a response was made to this blog post

response # 10

1. Ryanair Staff #1 Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

   jason!
   you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is!
   you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!

Not the best PR, supposing it was a ryanair staffer. The ip address confirmed it was a Ryanair response, so Ryanair came up with an even more disparaging response....

'...Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel...'.

It hit the national press as another example of how Ryanair treats the world with contempt.

In my view, it is of no great surprise Ryanair treats people with contempt.

People who fly Ryanair deserve all the abuse Ryanair and anyone else can muster.

The world is made of those who pay their way and contribute to society and those who suck like leeches and Ryanair customers fit the latter profile comfortably.

What makes the arrogant, predominately British flying passenger, think they deserve anything other than contempt, when they actually bother to spend the time to find a flight which costs virtually nothing?

There are people around the world who are dying of starvation for the price of their bargain seat. I know of people who have paid more for their taxi fare to the airport, 20 miles away than a flight over hundreds of miles.

If I were O'Leary, I too would treat my passengers with contempt.

Sure, if Ryanair were dealing with normal people then this attitude would stink, but they aren't. Ryanair deal with the tight fisted arses of society. The 'I want it for nothing' mentality, so pervasive in British Society.

To people who would not fly Ryanair, for sure their responses stink, the replies are contemptuous and illiterate, but they are not seeking to appease these people. Ryanair is looking to attract the leeches of Society. The people who were at the last hours of the sales at Woolworths, picking up the final meaningless bargains.

The Ryanair customer is likely to be revelling in the recession, delighting in failed businesses in administration, picking up 'bargains', not in the least bothered by the families and lives destroyed by redundancy, loss of home and loss of self esteem.

The same people who turn up at property auction to grab a repossessed house, without a flicker of concern or conscience for the now homeless family.

Ryanair do certainly mess up if you are a human being who actually gives a damn, but for those who don't, money is and always will be king, Ryanair treating you with contempt is part of the deal.

Tomorrow will Ryanair ticket sales be reduced? I doubt it.

Will Ryanair give a damn that some people in the blogosphere are upset that Ryainair stance is that:

'...It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves...'

of course not.

Do they really care that The Times and The Daily Telegraph are upset? Why would they, 'Upset from Royal Tunbridge Wells' is not their target market.

Ryanair treat their passengers with the contempt they deserve, the rest of us, they know will never fly with them and therefore on a business model, they don't give a damn.

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Ivan Cameron dies, UK political system grinds to a halt

Over stated perhaps.

While I am sure the Cameron's are very distressed at the loss of their son in the early hours of this morning, I fail to see why the political process needs to stop.

Gordon Brown has decided to pull out of PMQs today. PMQs are a weekly showdown. Sure many of the questions are planted and the theatre can over take the value of the weekly Parliamentary session, but they are an important part of the political process and the Prime Minister should not be looking for easy options to deny MPs the opportunity to question him and his policies.

I can't say I personally have any view either way on Cameron, or his family and how they will react to this death, but I do know these people Cameron included, want to lead the country. Well leadership means responsibility and responsibility is not about forgetting the millions of people he wants to lead while he has a personal setback.

Brown has absolutely no excuse. Protocol may leave it that the PM doesn't appear if the opposition leader isn't about and vice versa, but that is insulting to everyone and indicative of the way politicians haven't got a clue about leadership or management. The 'I am too important to appear if my equal isn't about' attitude stinks and should be eliminated. Politicians waffle endlessly about getting rid of the class system, this attitude reeks of class structure.

I don't know the Cameron or his family. I do however know thousands of parents every year loose their children, some through illness, such as the death of the boy, others through accidents and war, I don't recall the chairman of BP taking the day off because one of his staff lost their child.

Brown continues to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq, where many innocent civilians are killed and described as 'collateral damage'. This man should be in the House today answering questions as to why he finds the killing of innocent children in Afghanistan and Iraq causes him no upset or concern what so ever, yet the death of this particular child makes it impossible for him to function.

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