this not the news story i originally wanted to post, it is about the same horrible thing though.
you cant speak English, you are traveling at night through bombed out streets, your car is a beaten up wreck, your family on the back seat, head lights smashed etc. you are approaching a group of men in uniform, armed with automatic weapons. they shout instructions at you, you don't understand. you keep going. the armed men open fire, the car is not armoured.
i will let the BBC do the rest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_shooting_in_tal_afar/html/1.stm
update, found the link: http://www.chrishondros.com/images.htm then click on "Iraq", then click on "the tal afar incident"
it will make you angry, sad and give a damn!
Thursday, 19 March 2009
each to their own!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/5012165/Tokyo-International-Anime-Fair-2009.html
each to their own, a cosplayer at the tokoyo anime festivle, check the link out.
no blade of grass
the year 2030...............that's not too far away. struggling to survive on a planet on the brink of destruction where wars are waged over water and fertile soil. sounds like the plot to one of my xbox games.
jesus matt lighten up will ya! i know i am a doomsayer, it develops with age or more likely realising just what a future your children might have to face, and thats a tough one for the mind to process.
bbc posted the following today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7951838.stm
i would love to see how fox news would report that story, cue flashy graphic representing the planet, a music score of impending peril, a serious but ultimatly sexy female news reader (because if your going to be told your planet is screwed, why not.........i just realise it might be a new fetish to have a thing about sexy female news readers, reading you the news whilst.........ahha, lets not go there!), you should check out fox news on sky, those yanks sure know how to get the public panicking.
im a bit of a geek at times, the title of this post, no blade of grass comes from a novel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass
reading the book right now, but damn it's a bit of a bitch when one us humans goes and thinks / dreams something up.............and somehow it has a way coming true.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Sticking Plasters for Piss Artists
The epidemic, if you will, that is alcoholism is indeed rife in our country. That is not for debate, the binge drinking culture is a problem.
However, I don't believe that minimum alcohol pricing is the way forward, I think this is a much wider problem than that. And as such, it can't be solved with a sticking plaster policy. The Labour government, and indeed the SNP administration in Hollyrood, are big fans of sticking plasters. They like to try to solve problems quickly by playing the numbers game, as seems to happen all across the board these days, whether it be in policing, schools, or health in this instance.
People, the adminstrations believe, want to see the effects of policies right now. We do, we want to see less drunk people on the streets, less people being ill, clogging up the health service, by smoking, or in this case, drinking. Of course we want that, but we understand, or at least we should understand that these things take time. All of the big issues surrounding our health, teenage pregnancy, alcohol, drugs, smoking, need to be dealt with, but not by quick fixes, the only way these things are going to be solved is with the correct education and now is the time to start educating the next generation properly about these things, don't expect a quick fix to solve it, it might show a quick trough in figures, but it won't ultimately solve the problem.
Educating the next generation of our country to not be piss artists, or not be piss artists too often, is the only realistic way this can be solved. Things do need to be down now, but I don't believe making it more expensive is really going to change much, or indeed anything.
The governments need to be bold and not just think about tomorrow's poll ratings and stick to their guns and try to solve these issues in the long term, not just for right now and no amount of raising the age for buying alcohol from an off license to 21, or charging more for beer is going to change that.
We need to plan for the future, not try and cover up the problems we have already caused.
L
Monday, 16 March 2009
Piss Artist.
I have a million and one words for being drunk. Pished, pissed, steamboats, boozey or hammered, wasted, wankered and fucked. I could go on - I seem to come up with a new term every time I have a few too many. I enjoy a drink and on nights out at the weekend probably drink a wee bit more than I should. This usually results in a two-day hangover during which feelings of tremendous guilt and general suffering are the theme of the show.
Now, although I enjoy a pint and probably 'binge', my reasons for doing so are different from that of an alcoholic. This is why I think Gordon Brown was wrong today, a minimum price on alcohol would not be an unfair punishment on occasional piss artists like myself. I can choose whether or not I wish to get myself into a heavily inebriated mess or have one pint, I don't drink everyday, I don't drink illegally in the street and my drinking hasn't effected my ability to function in a socially accepted way. In other words, I'm not alcohol dependent.
There is a difference between binge drinking and real alcohol abuse. The 'Daily Mail' might try and tell you otherwise but it's a terrible paper anyway and deep down you know it speaks an admirable amount of total bollocks. Alcoholism in the most destructive form takes place out with pubs and clubs on a Friday/Saturday night. Instead, walk to work / university / college on a Monday morning and look out for the chap with the tin of Special Brew or bottle of cheap white cider. Although he* might appear happy enough, unless you are too intimidated to walk near him, he represents alcoholism in its most dehumanising, self-destructive form.
Street drinkers do their drinking on the street as their alcohol consumption takes on such an intensity that pubs and clubs can't handle them. They are likely to exhibit behaviour that is liable to get them banned from drinking dens and instead the city centre becomes one big pub. The problem is that this big pub doesn't serve pints, instead its many bars (newsagents / off licences) serve disgusting beverages at a low-low price. Sounds great? Hold your horses Mr or Mrs 'mad for a session'. The cheaper the better? No, the cheaper the nastier, less pure and higher the chance of you headbutting your best mate. But if you are an alcoholic confined to street drinking, chances are the taste of tipple is second to getting heavily intoxicated.
Alcoholics who are street drinkers or similar destructive consumers drink cheap alcohol because they tend not to have the disposable income you or I do. They drink for different reasons and their behaviour isn't as manageable as we generally will be when we are drunk. People who drink with a serious reason - a vendetta - usually do so because they are escaping from something. Not the weekly grind that we escape, but past instances that most people don't have the misfortune to experience. This is the case whether they are escaping actions carried out by themselves or brought on by others. The wider the availability of cheap alcohol they can access, the more damage they can do and the harder it is for others to help them positively address their issues.
Cheap alcohol is killing these people. If a minimum price on alcohol was introduced, we would still be able to go out to the pub on a Friday, get hammered and fall over. It really wouldn't affect us too adversely. But the serious drinkers of the nasty cheap stuff would find it much harder. Although that would be understandably difficult for them, a limit might be one of the only workable measures the government can introduce to aid services helping alcohol dependent people at the very bottom rungs of the social ladder. There is a thin line between draconian action and worthwhile intervention and in the case of the poor sods at the bottom, as much help as possible is needed.
Stu
* I don't mean to use 'he' in a sexist sense - proportionally it is more likely that a street drinker will be male.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Down and out in Aberdeen city...
I’ll be honest - I love a swipe at Aberdeen City Council and, it seems, I’m not alone in this sordid pursuit. Lots of people enjoy a good dig at ACC. Taxi drivers, local comedians, pished old blokes in pubs, people who write in letters to the Evening Express and Press and Journal. A ranting tear into the council is very much in vogue for all sorts of Aberdonians. However, the problem that the ACC have is that, through a seemingly unrivalled and exceptionally gifted ability to appear fantastically incompetent*, ammunition for such criticism is provided on a completely consistent basis. For instance, whilst bored waiting for a tumble dryer delivery this morning, I typed ‘Aberdeen City Council’ into the Press and Journal’s search engine. It took me about 5 minutes to find a few gems...
There is a bit of discontinuity between the Scottish Government and Aberdeen City Council regarding housing. The Scottish Government have just pledged £6.7 million to Aberdeen to build new affordable housing in the city (http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1115777). This £6.7 million is taken out of an available £644 million plan to build 6,700 new houses in Scotland and a wider initiative to house all unintentionally homeless people by 2012. This initially sounds tip-top, but a bit below the surface there are some issues. My misgivings about the 2012 plan are pretty obvious and explained in an older post – the bar is set too high in what is such a complex issue. However, the real problems with the apparent attempts to address Aberdeen’s housing problem lie elsewhere. Considering the state of affordable housing in Aberdeen, the £6.7 million offered by the Scottish Government is an inadequate fraction of the entire figure allocated to Scottish housing – but when I think about putting such an amount of cash into the hands of Aberdeen City Council my knees begin to knock uncontrollably. ACC are not exactly helping Aberdeen’s housing situation in anything resembling an effective way. Despite more money coming in from above, the City Council is currently in the process of selling £100 million worth of sites previously earmarked for housing (http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1106406). At the same time ACC policy aims to build 36,000 new houses in the city by 2030. Confused? Me too. Aberdeen is one of a minority of areas that has seen the number homelessness houses rise in recent years – up 3% in 2007/08 (http://www.aberdeen-cyrenians.org/assets/files/pdf/COMMS%20-%20Newsletter%20Issue%2059.pdf). Ask anyone presently trying to get a council flat, housing association accommodation or an affordable private let property and an its apparent how difficult it is to find a decent property in Aberdeen. The City Council isn’t exactly helping.
If you got that council property you wanted, then the P and J had more interesting reading for your lucky self... (http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1110044). The statistics regarding ACC and council house evictions show a level of incompetence and wastage that is bordering on plain daft. In 2007/08 the City Council issued 718 eviction orders to be perused through the Scottish criminal justice system. Despite this, only 22 evictions were actually carried through by the Court. Overall, Citizens Advice representing approximately 20 more council housing cases, in January 2009, than they did in the same month last year. Comparing these numbers with the local authorities in Angus, the Highlands, Dundee and elsewhere and it becomes quite clear that something isn’t right. In fact, I get a headache trying to figure out what exactly the City Council is trying to achieve with such a high number of court cases against council tenants. Each case costs public money and considering the financial state that ACC is in and my lack of personal wealth, the waste of cash makes me choke a bit.
Aberdeen City Council's dire financial situation is well-documented. However, this doesn’t make it any less disgusting. Presently, the council is in the middle of a plan to bring about £60 million worth of budget cuts over a period of two years. Organisations such as Aberdeen Cyrenians felt the brunt of these cuts last year, with a number of front-line homelessness projects closing – in complete contrast to the council’s endorsement of the 2012 target. This year, the situation is much the same. The Aberdeen Learning and Disability Action Group are currently campaigning to halt the council’s planned closure of the Burnside Day Centre (http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1112592). The City Council wish to amalgamate the Burnside and Rosehill day centres, where 80 adults with learning difficulties are presently catered for over the two sites. ACC cite a combination of cost-cutting and the restructuring of the city’s Social Work. However, with the issue of the City Council’s debt, it is questionable as to how much the latter of these two reasons actually accounts for anything. There is a similar situation regarding the city’s refuge collectors, whose budget is being cut by £800,000 (http://www.pressandjournal.co,uk/Article.aspx/1108261). Although recycling as well as debt is cited by the council as a reason, the true motives of ACC again have to be questioned.
While all this cutting of budgets is going on, the council is taking conflicting action. The Press and Journal also had an article regarding ACC writing off ‘bad debt’ (www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1107235). £3.5 million of debt is being written off by the council at the moment. Council Tax, business rate, housing benefit overpayments and council house arrears are all being defined as ‘bad’ and therefore written off. Surely, with how far Aberdeen City Council is in the red and with cuts taking place that effect the most vulnerable people in Aberdeen, the whole debt is ‘bad’. Defining some areas as 'bad', discounts the plight of the people affected in other sectors. Such a definition is counter-effective, insulting and pretentious.
I just can’t understand the method in the madness of the city council. There is no local authority in Scotland as completely useless and utterly incompetent. I worry about the psychological well-being of people who can sleep at night whilst spending the day acting in such a hypocritical, erratic and disgusting manner. It is never right that the chances of the least fortunate and most vulnerable are damaged by group of people who appear aloof and incapable of taking direct action. If I was as bad as this rogues gallery at my job – www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/xac_Councillor.asp - I’d be fired.
Get them out.
* I’ve replaced swear words with elaborate adverbs to convey my utter exasperation and dismay, don’t judge me on this...
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