Taxation by whim

How to get businesses to relocate abroad and not trade with you?  Rolls Royce is learning that lesson.  THe company paid no corporate taxes and now MPs and the MSM are howling for its blood.

The strange thing about this is that there's no indication that Rolls Royce did anything illegal.  Surely if the government feels it should pay higher taxes, then it's the law that needs changing.

Unless, of course, Britain is now an openly Fascist Socialist state where the law is merely a pretense.

Dear God

Remember when Britain was a free country?

Ministry of Pee

The Swedish Left Party wants abolish men's lavatories.  Sorry, I mean require that offices have only "unisex" toilets without urinals.

In other words, they want to abolish men's lavatories.

To add insult to injuries, they also want to require men to pee sitting down.

If this piece of idiotic tyranny isn't met with howls of derisive laughter before being torn up and the scraps literally thrown in the authors' faces, then we have reached a very dark crossroads.

Inner Party members and guests only

This will go over well.  In honour of the 2012 Olympics and as a demonstration of what the illegal junata that occupies Britain thinks of the peasants, the government is establishing Zil lanes so that the Great and the Good don't have to drive alongside the hoi poli.

Welcome to Airstrip One.

He did warn us

Newspeak dilemma

Don't worry, doublethink will solve it

Fat is evil... Calling people overweight bad... Fat  ungood... Overweight ungood... Must condemn... Must not offend... Class enemy... Victim group... No viable alternatives... Paradigm shifting... No clutch....  Alert... Alert...

Completely off the beam

If only they'd been chipped!

Science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon wants everyone on the planet chipped at birth.  Why?  Something to with,

Having such a unique barcode would have many advantages. In war soldiers could easily differentiate legitimate targets in a population from non combatants. This could prevent mistakes in identity, mistakes that result in the deaths of innocent bystanders.

I don't know where to start.  The first-catch-your-rabbit problem?  The utter impracticality of it?  The fact that a theatre of war is the last place it would work?  That maybe it would get more civilians killed?

I think I'll go for the fact that this is the fondest dream of every tyrant since the dawn of time.

You must love Big Brother

A "social sciences" teacher in North Carolina screams at a student that criticising or even questioning Mr Barack Hussein Obama is a criminal offence.

Education in America in the 21st century.

A ray of sunlight

Next they can let Britannia hold her trident instead of that stupid olive branch

The world must be coming to an end because the BBC is running a story about how MPs and civil rights (real ones and Leftist ones) want the laws removed  that makes insults a criminal offence.

That's removed, as in not reformed, but repealed.  I'm not holding my breath, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Welcome to Airstrip One

A British man has been arrested for making racist remarks about a footballer.  Taken into custody, not for making a threat or incitement to violence, but for an offensive opinion.

It's no longer a case of where will this lead to, we're already there.

Down the memory whole

The European Empire declares that henceforth, the Second World War will be known as the European Civil War.  But that occurred before the Year Zero, so it doesn't matter.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

You'll think what we tell you to think

Transport for London have banned already approved bus adverts that read,

Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!

These were meant to play off of an earlier Stonewall bus campaign that read,

Some people are gay. Get over it!

The advert in question was censored on the grounds that it wasn't "tolerate and inclusive", which is surprising, since the Stonewall version with its bullying "shut up or else" message is about as exclusive and intolerant as it's possible to get.

What's truly dismaying is that Boris Johnson, the allegedly conservative Mayor of London is behind this censorship.  Apparently the Tories are not only adopting the Left's policies, but its practice of refusing to engage in argument in favour of just shutting down the debate.

When the normal is abnormal

Tim Blair has a piece on a US high school that had to conceal a student's mural because it was too controversial (his emphasis)

(Liz) Bierendy, a junior, painted a mural depicting the life of a man ending with the man being married and standing with his wife and child.

Miss Bierendy's crime wasn't that the picture would offend those whose parent's aren't married. It's that she dared to express a thoughtcrime. I've long come to the conclusion that the Left's policy of "inclusiveness" has nothing to do with accommodating other points of view. It's merely an excuse to stamp out any vestige of the pre-1968 world that threatens the Party.

Don't slouch!

Phillips unveils its new "green" monitor.  It not only exudes a field of smug self-righteousness, but it also adopts the proper "green" attitude and nags you about your posture.

Death to free men!

Our "ethical" future.

Another "ethicist" comes to the rescue of Blessed Gaia and declares that the way to Save the Planet^TM is to genetically engineer humans so that they have less impact on the environment. Naturally, the Elite will be exempt from this because someone has to make sure everything goes to plan and who better than the altruistic Enlightened who must selflessly retain their humanity for the good of all?

Oh, let's drop the sarcasm.  This is the "green" dream come true; mankind exterminated and replaced with a  docile slave race created solely to serve their overclass masters from now until the end of time–or until the Elite degenerate into Eloi and the slave race become Morlocks and start dining on their former masters.

Gymbot

Gymbot, let me introduce you to the hammer I keep under the cushions

Yanko Design (The DREADCO of the design world) tackles obesity with Gymbot; a robot personal trainer that orders you off the couch for a round of calisthenics whenever you look like you might be enjoying yourself.

It's targeted at Outer Party members who don't have telescreens yet.

Ingsoc airways

A vintage scene from behind the Iron Curtain:

An elderly couple hears that there will be a delivery of meat at a local store. The husband hurries off to the store. After he has waited on line in the freezing cold for several hours, an official car pulls up and some KGB men get out. They tell the people on line that the meat delivery has been canceled, and that everyone should go home. 

This is too much for the old boy. "Is this why we fought and suffered in the Great Patriotic War?" he calls out in exasperation. "Is this all we have to show for sixty years of socialism?"

One of the KGB men comes over to him. "Pipe down, Grandad," he says. "That's subversive talk. You're old enough to know what would have happened if you'd spoken like that in Stalin's time." The KGB man makes his hand into a gun shape and points it at his head. "Go on home now and stop making trouble."

The old boy goes home. Seeing him empty-handed, his wife says: "Oh no! Don't tell me they've run out of meat again!"

"It's worse than that," says the old boy. "Now they've run out of bullets!"

Why this old Cold War joke? Because the KGB man's attitude is still alive and well as this BBC item demonstrates:

Former fireman Mr Jones, 67, was on his way to Faro in the Algarve, where he now lives.

He was asked to place his belongings, including his scarf, into a tray to pass through the scanner.

However, as he did so, he spotted the woman pass through the area without showing her face.

Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, he recalled how he said to officials: "I wonder what would happen if I covered my face with my scarf.

"It was a quip. And I expected the guy to say: 'Yeah, I know what you mean mate' but when I got to the end and was putting all my stuff back on, I was bagged by a security guard."

Mr Jones said he was told: "You've made a remark which someone finds offensive. Come with me."

And here's the kicker (emphasis added):

He denied making an offensive remark, saying it was "an observation, nothing more", but he was told he should apologise to a Muslim security guard who was nearby when the comment was made.

Imagine such a scene occurring in 1943 with a German who somehow getting a job running a security post in England.  I would have thought that a Muslim security guard working at an airport where he is employed thanks to the heightened security measures due to terrorist attacks by Muslim Jihadists that we are at war with would be a bit more circumspect about what he takes offence at. 

This is not what one expects to find in a free society.  This sort of petty tyranny is what one expects from the Gestapo or the Stasi, not in Britain.  Never mind the farcical, totalitarian idea that a man can be detained because he said something that someone finds offensive, no matter how unreasonably.  The appalling notion that a security guard can demand an apology from a member of the public for what offended him is ghastly and everyone involved in this incident and their immediate superiors should be sacked and publicly shamed.

These airport guards, like the police, are public servants and they should conduct themselves accordingly.  I've never called a policeman "sir" in my life and the idea that I should is laughable.  And I certainly wouldn't do so to a rent-a-cop who is only slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than a traffic warden.  It's one thing to haul a man in for insulting a constable to his face in a manner liable to cause a breach of the peace.  It's another thing to think that a freeborn Englishman has to tiptoe around some jumped up little Himmler in an ill-fitting uniform and latex gloves whose job it is to molest the travelling public as part of farcical and ineffective screening process.  It is monstrous and should not be allowed to stand.

There are only two positive things I took away from this incident.  The first is that Mr Jones is consulting with his solicitor about taking legal action and the second is that I thank Heaven that it didn't happen to me.  The moment the apology was demanded, I'd have ended up in chokey after letting rip such a bellowing verbal outrage that it would have set off every car alarm between Brighton and Croydon.

Au revoir, mademoiselle? Non!

A radical left-wing council running a small town in Britanny with a population of a miserable 15,000 decides to ban the word "mademoiselle" and the BBC runs an article that, with a perfectly straight face, reads as though the word is now a relic of history that no one in the francophone world will ever utter again.

I can't decide which I find more risible; the moral blindness of the Beeb that can't see the evil totalitarianism of the state trying to control thought through controlling language, the argument from inevitability that sounds like every bit of Marxist rot I've ever heard or the blithering Canute-like arrogance of imagining that an official edict can abolish a perfectly inoffensive everyday word.  I predict that long after the Commissars of Cesson-Sévigné are dust, the people there will still be greeting one another with "madame" and "mademoiselle" (If they aren't salaaming on their way to the mosque, that is).

As for the BBC's idiotic bit about Germany; sorry, but that '70s ban was a farce and in my experience most Germans I talk to still use "Fraulein" without a glance for the Thoughtpolice.  And as for "thee" and "thou",  it's still used i' uz corna o' Yorksha, bai gum.

Bloody namby pamby jessies!

Ireland: Where free men are now livestock

From the BBC:

Health Minister Edwin Poots has said he will consider banning smoking in all cars and not just those with children as passengers.

Dear God, Why don't they just drop the pretence, herd us into pens and start selective breeding?

The Lord Summerisle's Youth

Over at the Telegraph, Cristina Odone frets about how her daughter lectures her about not worshipping Blessed Gaia with sufficient fervour.

It isn't the child nor the insane school that brainwashes her that bothers me here.  What I cannot understand is why Mrs Odone doesn't just cuff the little Young Pioneer on the ear hole then sit her down and explain in no uncertain terms who is the adult and who is the child followed by a stern lecture on what a load of codswallop the child's been fed and why she should treat all with utmost scepticism.

My own daughter gets similar, though less strident, propaganda, but it never lasts an hour past this retired professor's withering glare and demands that logic be applied.

Yes, her teachers hate me.