All posts by The Old Fat Controller

Law, Religion

#KimDavis and her Pyrrhic Victory

Aside

Nauseating scenes today of christian nutjob Kim Davis being released form jail and wanting to “give god the glory”!

For what, love? You lost – resoundingly. You haven’t stopped the issuing of marriage licences and, indeed, you are prohibited from preventing it on pain of being sent back to prison.

However, what is more disturbing about this is that at least two of the men seeking to be President of the USA condone her unlawful behaviour in the name of religious freedom. What a horrible and dangerous precedent these right wing loonies would set.

Law, Religion

#KimDavies – Let Her Rot

While we’ve been away on holiday I’ve been watching, with slowly dropping jaw, the escalation in the Kim Davies case.  She is the Rowan County Clerk in Kentucky who has been refusing to issue marriage licences to gay couples.

(The christian right in the USA have been bleating that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life, so I will mention only in passing Ms Davies’s monstrous hypocrisy, as she herself has been married four times, twice to the same man!)

The crunch came last Thursday when Kim was jailed for her persistent refusal to comply with the US Supreme Court’s ruling on equal marriage. This response to her stance is being portrayed as religious persecution, along with some very tasteless and completely unjustified comparisons with the Holocaust.

Let’s get the matter straight. This is NOT victimisation and it is NOT persecution. It is purely and simply a punishment imposed on a public official for a contempt of Court as a direct result of a wilful refusal to do her job.

I have spent a fair amount of my working life in public service. I currently work for a large government department where I am required to administer law. In all those years there have been occasions – thankfully quite few – when I have been required to do things with which I personally disagreed. I’m sure that many of my colleagues will admit the same.  If I were ever to refuse to do those things I would be disciplined, if needs be to the point of dismissal. If I refused to comply with an Order from a Court I could be jailed.

This is a fact of life for public officials – part of the deal! You take the job knowing that you might have to do things you don’t agree with, and if the struggle between public duty and private conscience becomes too great you find another job. You CANNOT just pick and choose which parts of the law you will apply. THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!

When Civil Partnerships were introduced in the UK there were similar arguments put up by a few christian registrars, but these were all rejected by the Courts. In most cases they were quietly transferred to other duties, but one or two just had to go – and so will Kim Davies unless she does the job she was elected to do.

She has been told that she will remain in jail until she complies or resigns. I say Let Her Rot!

Politics

IDS at it again

Aside

So that rancid arsehole Ian Duncan Smith denies that the faked benefit quotes were anything to do with him and that it was all the fault of officials.

What a piece of filth that man is, eh?

Whatever happened to Ministerial responsibility? I can’t remember the last time a Tory minister took the rap for a cock up in the department he was supposed to be running.

Oh, no, wait! Yes I can! It was Peter Carrington in 1982, FFS.

General

Scottish Power

We’ve had an account with Scottish Power since we moved here. It was one of those tariffs where you spread the cost over the year so that you don’t get any nasty surprises.

In March they dropped my payments by thirty quid a month. Naively, I trusted that they knew what they were doing. Clearly they didn’t, because three months later they whacked them back up by sixty quid a month. Exactly the sort of crap I wanted to avoid.

I was given a change over date of 13 July, so when I saw that they’d taken a slab of money at the beginning of July and then at the end I sort of reasonably assumed that they had taken their final payment and closed the direct debit. I was wrong to trust them there as well. Turns out that they had got the meter reading from my new supplier on 12 July and took 16 days to apply only the gas reading to the account and take the money. The electricity reading apparently takes an excruciating 25 days for them to process.

So then the phone calls chasing payment start. First thing on Wednesday morning when I’m at work. I politely tell them that I can’t deal with things when I’m at work and follow this up with an email to the same effect. Doesn’t stop them calling me twice more that day. That night I fired off another email, this time to their chief executive. Thursday is a doozy – no less than five calls, on my mobile, during working hours, despite them having been expressly told that this was not acceptable.

It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that they finally stopped calling me.

And the response from the CEO’s office? A rather half-hearted apology which fails to answer a LOT of the questions and a “goodwill” gesture of a measly thirty quid.

Do NOT deal with these people.

Pretentious Crap

Becks throwded teddy in the corner

Aside

News today that Beckham has spat his own dummy out over criticism of giving his four year old one – a dummy that is, before you send Operation Yewtree round to Dun Goldenballsing!

“What”, he sulks “gives you the right to criticise?”

Sorry, pal, but here’s news for you  – it’s a right called free speech!

I don’t expect you, or that skeletal bag of sour-faced misery you call a wife, to understand the concept so best you go back to ringing your bell and pecking at your mirror.

Religion

They just don’t get it!

Just had this little gem drawn to my attention:

“Saudi Arabia has called on the international community to ban all criticism of religion.

At a July 25 symposium on media coverage of religious symbols in international law, Abdulmajeed Al-Omari, director for external relations at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, said:

“We have made it clear that freedom of expression without limits or restrictions would lead to violation and abuse of religious and ideological rights. This requires everyone to intensify efforts to criminalize insulting heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols and places of worship.”

He argued these steps must be taken to prevent intolerance.”

What a prize plonker! Call me old fashioned, but that’s quite the most intolerant argument against intolerance I’ve seen in many a long year!

Politics

Here we go again …

Tomorrow is the annual festival of “Let’s Fuck Up Surrey’s Roads” – possibly better known to the rest of you as the Prudential Ride London-Surrey 100.

Now, before you all go off on one – don’t get me wrong! I have nothing against cycling, or exercising, or raising money for charity or any other of the reasons you might argue.  But the fact is, that this bloody thing is just not fair!

It’s not just the event itself, although for some of us going to see our nearest and dearest tomorrow will involve an ENORMOUS detour along the M25 and down the A3. It’s a) the fact that when the route was laid out for the Olympics we were told that this was a one off and, b) all the crap that goes with it.

A) As so often happens, the one-off becomes the norm. Surely it is not beyond the wit of mankind to plan a route that goes out into Kent, or Essex or any of the other home counties?

B) The disruption on our roads is very much not just on the day of the event. For months leading up to it there are vast numbers of cyclists on the roads, very often travelling in large packs three or four abreast. This is not safe for anyone concerned.

Be fair. Be nice. Take your race and your practice somewhere else next year, please.

General

Walter Palmer & Cecil, The Lion

Oh, what a pain it must be – overnight you become the most hated man on the planet – well, the bits of the planet that have access to 24/7 news.

Wanker Palmer must be ruing the day he took a high power bow and arrow, shot a beautiful and majestic creature, tracked it while it slowly died and then skinned it and cut its head off. He now says that he regrets it and blames the fact that he shot a protected animal on his guides. It would be more accurate to say that he regrets being caught out and the effect it is now having.

This is far from the first time that this odious fuckwit has killed for “sport”, and there is a certain joy in watching public opinion systematically destroy him and his livelihood. For Wanker I have no sympathy, but adding to the sadness is the fact that some innocent people working with or employed by this arsehole are going to lose their jobs as a result of the public outrage over his sick and twisted idea of fun.

Politics

More Tory Hypocrisy!

Scameron is set to use a visit to Singapore to make an anti-corruption speech on Tuesday in which he will express concern that some properties, mainly in London, “are being bought by people overseas through anonymous shell companies“.

Would that be like 73 Chester Square, owned for many years by a shady little company based in the British Virgin Islands?

I only ask because that’s where Thatcher lived. Mark and Carol must have been so grateful for mummy’s foresight – not to mention her abolition of controls on what money could be sent abroad – as they avoided about four million smackers in inheritance tax.

All in this together? Piss off!

Politics

Sewel or Sewer

Aside

So Lord Sewel has been caught sniffing cocaine with a couple of toms while wearing an orange bra. The establishment has gone potty!

Wouldn’t it be a gas if he strolled into their Lordships chamber after the recess and did a “Harper Valley PTA” on the old farts?