I use an ad blocker when I can. I’ll often come across sites that notice this and put up little pleas for me to turn it off. I’m sympathetic to their request, of course. In fact, the blocker I use incorporates a whitelist that allows certain ads to show up — ads that don’t go out of their way to piss you off. I’m happy with that, but I’m not going to be turning the whole blocker off off any time soon. Why?
Continue reading “On Ad Blocking”Category: rant
How long is a piece of flex?
I bought a new lawnmower a few days ago. The old one was past it and needed to be retired, so I took the opportunity of a 15% off weekend to nip down to Homebase and get a new one.
Continue reading “How long is a piece of flex?”My irony meter will never recover
after exploding at the thought of the Saudi ambassador taking part in a march in support of the the right to free expression two days after his country gave Raif Badawi the first 50 of 1,000 lashes (and 10 years in prison) for the crime of exercising his right to free expression.
Royalty, privilege and the ear of government
I see from today’s Grauniad that ‘[a] former Tory minister has defended Prince Charles‘s right to have secret meetings with members of the government’. Apparently Tim Loughton says that the unelected parasiteprince had ‘always come across as “well briefed and knowledgeable” in their meetings’.
Bye, bye and shut the door after you
I’m getting increasingly fed up with the rich and privileged bleating on about how they’re going to have to go somewhere else if we fail to continue pandering to their inflated concepts of their own self-worth.
We have banks and major industries claiming that the top executives have to be paid huge salaries and bonuses because we apparently need the best and the only way to stop these paragons of fiscal rectitude from buggering off to pastures new is to force enormous quantities of cash down their unwilling throats. These people are the best we have to offer? Global recession, countries going bust, austerity measures creating real and substantial poverty — this is what we get from the best financial minds in the world?
There are about 70 million people in the UK. I’m sure that, somewhere in that lot, we could find someone who could do just as good a job, and would be willing and happy to do it for a more sensible remuneration.
Recently, we had the unedifying spectacle of the bigwigs in the CofE prattling on about how the church would have to be disestablished if we didn’t permit them to keep their places in the House of Lords and to carry on with their religiously-based misogyny and homophobia. Disestablish the church? Bring it on — step one on the road to a republic.
Now, I see from the Guardian, Jersey has threatened to secede from the UK if we upset its privileged position as a tax haven for the filthy rich.
So, here’s my plan: call their bluff. Let them go. When they get in a strop and threaten to take their ball away, just wave “bye, bye, and don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out”.
Any replacements we get can’t be worse that what we’ve already got, surely?
an old grey dog 