The State of Nature vs The State of Greed

There is a philosophical idea that argues that once upon a time humans lived in what philosophers describe as a state of nature. A time of no money, no justice (whatever that is), no pens, no email, no phones, no computers or fifteen page forms to fill in; no mortgages to pay, cars, loan repayments, bailiffs, houses or supermarkets. Sounds good right?

Humans lived by the sea on the edge of the forests, we fished for food, built houses in the woods, ventured in land for berries and the odd wild pig. Everything we did was for us or the small group we lived in. If we got pissed off with life we didn’t eat loads of junk food, take drugs, get drunk, stab someone else randomly, or beat up the missus or the kids or go to a football match and swear our heads off. No, we just left. Went somewhere else made a new home and carried on as before. This couldn’t last forever of course, when there were too many of us and cities developed we entered the phase of what Rousseau and others called a civic society. This in turn led to what he and others theorised amounted to a social contract. We gave up our right just to leave and live somewhere else, take whatever we needed from the land, and basically do what we needed to do to survive; in exchange there was a civic authority, rules, tribunals, justice, learning and all the rest. Of course these these are all male ideas.

Throughout history societies have failed, imploded some would say. Freud had the idea that civilisations would suffer a form of mass hysteria and self destruct: Rome being a classic example, the French Revolution another (for which Rousseau is often blamed). It seems to be that whenever this idea of a social contract becomes broken, to such an extent that the masses become overly jacked off, that the civic order crumbles.

So today and in the thirties the Greedy Bankers connived to control us all with credit, money, loans and made up stuff like derivatives and obscurely worded concepts that no one understands. The bargain is broken, people get pissed off and anarchy breaks out. A grudging reversal occurs, the social contract is reinstated (up to a point) the government takes over from the bankers.

Why do we keep letting the bankers control stuff when they are crap at it? We are manipulated by those who do not believe in either the state of nature or a social contract. By those who believe that Darwin’s Theory, theory mark you, is right and so proves that they are rich because of selection, or genetics or whatever. These concepts are themselves in the gift of those who are in their thrall: scientists.

It’s all a load of old bollocks. Science that is.

John Martyn isn’t bollocks, he was a God, as near to one as there can be anyway. Now he’s dead, which is a tragedy. John Updike was a genius and now he’s dead, which is a tragedy. Harold Pinter is gone, and many more a falling. They sang about, wrote about, made films about and made us think about the state of nature and the human condition: The condition that we all live in now which seems to be a mass depression that is dealt with by comfort eating, ingesting drugs and alcohol, fags and other poisons and killing each other, killing babies and grabbing what we can. Hopefully Darwin and the scientists are wrong, and there is somewhere else better, and let’s hope these and all the rest of humanity that is no longer with us are there now, back in the state of nature. Without that hope what are we left with: the scientists and their paymasters. Or put another way, shit.

Tags: bollocks, Darwin, John Martyn, philosophy, science

Chelsy Davy dumped Prince Harry because some of her best friends would be called sooty by his dad, so reckons the guy who lives three streets down from me, who I see every now and again walking his dog in the park (he doesn’t scoop either).

When T.H.E. Ranter tried to clarify this with Clarify House he was told to f-word off. So it’s true then.

Harry was told by his commanding officer who in turn is commanded by Harry’s Granny that the army had a zero tolerance policy towards racism. For everyone else that is. But that on this occasion absolutely nothing would happen. Having been put in his place he then went out for a few beers and rolled a couple of sootys on the way home.

Prince Philip was quoted, by the same bloke I mentioned earlier, as saying that the Black and Tans were a worthy fighting force but there aint no black in ‘em. He also wholeheartedly endorsed four eyed fatso Simon Heffer’s view that Scots are twats and it’s all their fault the UK is a load of shit now and it’ll be much better when an English bloke is in charge again. God help us if he’s a retard like Simon Heffer though.

On the economic front we are headed for a three day week, power cuts, strikes, and civil unrest. This utter betrayal of the working class by the bent Labour Party and corrupt Labour Peers (who got caught - oops) will be followed by twenty years of back hander government by the boys from Eton, strongly supported by a racist Police force and the drip that gets Gordon Brown’s job. Reasons to be cheerful: it’s nearly summer time.

Lily Allen can’t sing.

Quentin Tarantino’s films are crap.

Queen were shite.

Frank Skinner doesn’t suit a perm.

Gordon Brown can’t add up.

Britain is bankrupt.

The UK Public Sector is bollocks.

The idea that gender identity is a social construct and that the need, or perceived need, of many young women to attract men is not an innate female human characteristic and so a fundamental precept upon which most feminist theory depends, is probably wrong.

Being fat is not okay.

The appearance of women is more important to men than intellect, personality or anything else.

Women like tidying up and doing the washing up and complaining about it, oh yes and they all want kids.

Erm…

RIP Tony Hart, a man who brought art to millions, an overlooked hero of our age.

He’ll be greatly missed by millions of us.

Cheers Tony.

Tags: Tony Hart

UK Banks Bust

The UK banking sector is in financial meltdown. This is due to the ridiculous ramping up of house prices by vested interests. But whose?

T.H.E. Ranter believes that it is very simple. Bank staff, investment bankers in particular, or as they would be called in any other walk of life, telesales staff, needed more customers. How to get them though was the question. Well, why not make more customers, they did this by expanding the lending criteria to cover virtually anyone. This way they could lend more of their investors money (our money, the taxpayers money) to these new customers and so make more money for themselves. Why was it allowed? Regulators, politicians, bankers and wankers all piss in the same property investment pot. They all own substantial amounts of real property (land and houses) and wanted to see it go up in value. For example Tony Blair bought a few properties and made a tidy sum from it, the rest of them will have done the same. So the whole scam was thought up by, regulated by, and taken advantage of by crooks and thieves, in other words bankers, regulators and politicians. Of course they all knew what would happen long before the rest of us were told about the “credit crunch”, so could use this inside information to make even more money. In addition, and to make matters worse, the politicians have an interest in maintaining prices, so they are using taxpayers money, in other words all of our money (literally), to prop up a corrupt system so as to protect the corrupt enrichment that they have engineered for themselves. If the market were let rip the whole system would have collapsed and house would be worth the same now as they were in 1984.

We now face the nightmare scenario of a bunch of crooks, who reckon they are socialists, using inside information, our money and the law to nationalise banks so as to cover the whole scam up. Our pensions, goods, and currency plummet in value in the meantime whilst they are able to use this power to control virtually every aspect of our lives. PHORM, databases, CRB records, credit records, databases on children, finger printing children, and all the rest of it. And the main purpose of it is to maintain the corrupt status quo.

The problem is that none of us can do a damn thing about it because most of us don’t even have a vote, the only folk who do live in marginal seats, but they don’t have enough power to do anything meaningful and the only people they can vote for are bent Labour and Tory politicians, unknown Lib Dems, the odd BNP nutter or some crank who is prepared to stump up a thousand quid to get fifty votes.

Err, lend us a quid mate

In the meantime life is made more boring by smoking bans, an end to binge drinking, crack downs on this that and the other, and a dour scotch dude saying we should think ourselves lucky he’s in charge and tough shit about your food, gas, lecky and petrol costing a fortune.

How boring is that?

The boring UK, land of the sober gay.

Tags: Boring UK, Gordon Brown, Political Comment

Sooty would be turning in his grave and as for poor old sweep - well. But what about big ears and noddy? Prince Charles and Harry, who’s your father referee?

Pea brains in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

The problem with the retarded Windsors is that there are so many sycophants swirling around in the same gutter that these dopes actually do believe they aren’t completely thick. Prince Charles actually thought he could be a King in any more than name. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

As for Prince Philip, he’s got a kebab for a brain and seems to have handed it down to the rest of them.

Time they all retired and went to live in oz.

Those people who allegedly killed Stephen Lawrence, remember them? Two of them were accused of calling a black police officer the “N” word. They were prosecuted, found guilty and got 18 months.

When are Prince Charles and Prince Harry being prosecuted? You guessed it - never. It’s all just a joke, even sooty says so. But then sooty isn’t likely to object really, is he? He’d get chucked out of the polo club for being so uppity,he knows his place like any good house “N” word does, eh?

Tags: prince charles, racist, retarded

PHORM, Terrorism, Internet Phones, Censorship et al

John Evans, the latest head of MI5, in an interview with the Times today, asserts that the global economic meltdown and the collapse of capitalism will also lead to a change in the global balance of power. He then extrapolates from this that there will be a resultant increase in terrorism. Of course here in Britain there has been minimal terrorism for years now. This is of course largely down to MI5 and the Police. And a good thing as well. However the alarming aspect of the interview is that he mentions internet telephone calls in the same breath as terrorism. They can’t eavesdrop them is the problem of course, they are private in other words.

What does this all mean for PHORM. Well Phorm is the softener for the massive intrusion into digital communications currently being embarked upon by the Home Office to counter alleged terrorism communication that is dependant upon the Internet. Phorm is of course just a way to get around the pop up blockers and anti-spyware software. It allows ISPs to make some extra cash, targets advertising and tracks surfing habits annonymously (although this is disputed by the geeks who understand the finer aspects of the technology). It requires co-operation from BT to install gadgetry at the exchange to intercept communications and the co-operation of ISPs. Of course MI5 and the Home office don’t have to worry about all that co-operation - BT do as the are told and keep their virtual monopoly. PHORM is the thin end of the wedge to get us all used to being spied on all the time. The real power will be the database they are setting up to store everything we do electronically. Phone calls, texts, emails, surfing, posting, blogging, you name it they’ll have it. And of course Internet Telephone calls will be intercepted and traced.

Of course stopping crackpot terrorists from blowing up Joe Public has to be a good thing. Stopping paedophiles killing kids is a good thing as well. This is why they use this to justify the intrusion into our privacy that all of this technology entails.

PHORM is a smokescreen, a red herring, a diversion from the main issue. It’s a bluff, we’re being finessed, our eye is taken off the ball. We’re all protesting about PHORM when we should be protesting about the massive invasion of privacy that’s already occurred and now being increased.

Of course there are always people who object to any form of advertising. You know the ones, they put stickers on their windows about no junk mail, complain about direct marketing and cold calling, hassle door knockers and salesmen. Cranks and crackpots in other words. We all have to make a living and advertising is a legitimate, albeit on occasion irritating, way of doing so. So PHORM gets a bit of publicity and diverts attention away from the real issue.

PHORM is annoying but BIG PHORM, government PHORM now that’s really worrying. The government might have a point about Internet Telephone calls helping terrorists. But is there really any justification for the loss of our privacy on such an unprecedented scale? And will it achieve anything? Even the Chinese don’t do this. Just us, here in the UK.

But if it will have a marginal affect in dealing with terrorists, and to a lesser extent perverts, why spend ten or fifteen billion quid on installing all of this stuff? That’s the really interesting question. What are they really up to. What are they really seeking to achieve with this technology?

Complete control. We’re like animals in a zoo, being gawped at and spied on 24 hours per day. CCTV, speed cameras, soon chips in our cars, medical records databased, banks nationalised, extended powers of debt collection, virtual abolition of juries, fixing the burden of proof, changes in civil and criminal procedures to favour big government. All of these things are creeping up on us. It’s the sort of infrastructure that could be taken over in a heartbeat in a coup and used to control us all. Hopefully it won’t be. But if you put an egg on the edge of a table then after a while, perhaps a very long while - when it’s good and rotten, it’ll roll off and smash, and what a smell there’ll be then.

PHORM? So what. BIG PHORM, government’s PHORM equivalent - that’s the big issue. It’s potentially dangerous.

MI5 and the Police do a worthwhile and dangerous job protecting us from terrorists, organised crime, perverts and paedophiles; this technology will help them do that. But is the price too high? That’s the real question.

Tags: phorm, Political Comment

Alistair Darling admits bail out failure

The bank bailout has been a total failure. It’s only purpose to save the banks from bankruptcy and keep the 2% of depositors who have most of the money rich. It’s cost us all about £12,000 each. Now personally I’d rather have the twelve grand than give a handout to some silver-spooner with ten million in the bank. They’d only have gotten £50,000 if we hadn’t forked out all of that money. It has to be the ultimate irony that Gordon Brown, the Trade Union’s man, has had to bail out the fat cats, rich kids and the inheritors of unearned income. But it hasn’t worked for the rest of us. The banks won’t lend us so much as a flake of paint unless we’re loaded already. So what to do?

1+1 = 3 and a 1/2

Well he’s going to give the bankers more money, and he might decide to give it to us as well. But where will he get it? Well he’s got a plan. And the plan is to prove Bertrand Russell wrong: 1+1 doesn’t equal 2 at all. No, not really. Not in his world anyway. It’s all a metaphysical abstraction that bears no relation to reality. And anyway what is reality? If we all think the earth is flat it is, isn’t it? So now we are all going to learn something new from Alistair, and all believe it, and then everything will be okay. So, Ask Alistair Darling how many beans make five and he’ll tell you twelve. He’s invented a perpetual motion machine as well, and he can literally pick himself up by the bootlaces and defy gravity. Yes, he’s come up with a way to make free money, and he walks on water as well.

In other words he’s going to bankrupt Britain.

Tags: banks bailout, Political Comment, politics

Tags: Broadband, phorm

PHORM is political

Of course it always was. Governments will often fund a front that is researching methodologies to control and monitor people. They will use marketing techniques to so. Of course they’ve done this for years in election campaigns and so on. But we can see that PHORM has always been political.

Why?

That Dick Branson fella from Virgin Media is involved. You know the fella who pissed off the mafia and has been hiding on his island ever since, talk about a gilded cage. Still, pompous tell-tale-tits get what they deserve. And gropers. Dick’s made some political comment about the state of our hospitals, a sure fire indicator that he’s got political ambitions, and why shouldn’t he? Politics and “charity” are probably the biggest money spinners in the UK right now, I mean the royal family and celebrities wouldn’t be involved in “charity” work if there wasn’t a pretty penny in it for themselves. Think about it. Do you actually know anyone or even know of anyone who knows of someone who has ever been helped in any meaningful way by a charity? No, didn’t think so. Me neither.

But PHORM is a cage for all of us, and it don’t glister. It’s a dog lead, it’s a rope we have to run along. We won’t be able to escape the gaze. We’re going to be gawped at continually. The information collected will be sold to fellas like that Dick Branson, and other a-holes to make money out of. As it is the government are preparing to sell off all of our personal data to private companies who collect debts. There will be absolutely no privacy for any of us ordinary mortals. Of course the royals, politicians, and rich fellas like that Dick Branson will be okay. But we won’t, will we?

PHORM? It’s not about advertising or pop up advertisements. It’s not anonymous either. It’s a gilded cage for all of us, and it’s going to be owned by traitors like that Dick Branson who sell out their fellow man to make more money. And BT? They’ll be fitting these little boxes to every exchange in the UK. PHORM is run by a yank, so guess what. The US of A will know more about us all than the British government.

Tags: Add new tag, Dick Branson, phorm, surveillance