Happy New Year!

Well I say happy. It's 2012 so here in Britain all we're going to get is wall to wall Olympics until at least September.

Anyway at around 02:00 on 1/1/12 central London seems riot free. It is being reported though that two men were seriously injured in a explosion at a disused mine in Nottinghamshire. Apparently it went up like a volcanoes.

Amateur Hour is Nearly Upon Us.

Every year in the UK six days after Christmas day we celebrate New Year's Eve which marks the end of one year and the start of the next. Of course the timing of the change from one year to the next is completely arbitrary and the celebration has no religious significance whatsoever. In fact it's just a celebration of a clock ticking over from 23:59 to 00:00. However almost from birth we've been taught that this is the greatest celebration of the year and we must have the most amazing night of our lives. As a result all the people who don't really drink or party during the other 364 days of the year try and cram a years worth of hedonism into about eight hours. Funnily enough this invariably goes wrong with lots of vomiting, accidents, accidental deaths, fights and normally a couple of murders.

In London the celebrations tend to centre around Trafalgar Square and the official event with a BBC sound system and a fireworks display on the river Thames close to the clock tower on the Houses of Parliament. This official event normally ends between 00:30 and 01:00 and that's when the problems start as around 500,000 people try to squeeze themselves as one onto London's public transport system or head to Trafalgar Square in order to carry on the celebration and generally drunkenly fall over and cut themselves on broken glass. This year there will be the added excitement of the Occupylsx protest which is still camped out in the churchyard of Saint Paul's Cathedral. They are promising to put on a free music concert between 18:00 and 01:00 featuring yet to be disclosed big name acts. Whether or not that actually happens the rumour will draw people to the area on the off chance. The prospect of tens of thousands of people who are both drunk and disgruntled at the failure of rumoured bands to turn up significantly raises the risk of public disorder and even possibly a small, highly localised riot.

Personally I don't think that significant disorder will actually materialise but the tension created by the risk coupled with today's (30/12/11) declassified government papers on the 1981 Liverpool riots should promote discussion about the role of the Crown in the summer riots. If you're still in any doubt about which side of this argument the Occupylsx protesters are on their main demand seems to be to force the City of London Corporation to give up it's ancient right to refuse entry to the Monarch.

I Have Resolved the Sleep Question.

It turns out that using the strictest medical definition of the term I haven't actually "slept" since about 2005. At the end of 2011 this is starting to become something of a problem. So at around 03:00 on 30/12/11 I've decided that the answer is either too many drugs or not enough drugs.

Now That's a Good Feeling.

Due to Christmas falling on a Sunday this year (2011) I moved my gym routine from Monday, Wednesday, Friday to Tuesday and Thursday. While I may be lying about Wednesday this means that technically it was only 8 days from my last session. Sadly those 8 days were filled with drinking, smoking and eating so Tuesday (27/12/11) really hurt. Thursday (29/12/11) also hurt but while I've only got delayed onset muscle stiffness to look forward to I know I don't need to do that for another 72 hours.

At around 02:30 I do though feel the need to warn a local supermarket that I may be attempt to darken their door at some point in the daylight (30/12/11) provided the dark lets me sleep and the alarm clock lets me wake up.

Christmas Presents.

In my family we have this "thing" where I basically just buy DVD's for everyone. In 2011 I decided to move away from this tradition and get people things they actually want. Unfortunately because of the COP17/CMP7 I was pressed for time (02:09), panicked and just sort of threw money at the problem. On Month 10, Week 2, Day 3 I really hope this isn't the development plan for the new free Libya.

For my father I brought 100 Lambert&Butler Silver. For my sister I got a £35 gift pack of nice smelly bath stuff from the store "Lush." For my mother I brought a copy of the BBC's "Blue Planet" which looked just like the copy my brother brought her. For my brother I brought a make your own curry set from Sainsburys and a pricey moleskin notebook. For my mother's DWP solicitor wife I brought a "Waterstones" gift card because she likes books so much it would just be easier if she brought them herself. Of course in light of the "Mrs Hogg needs to read a book comment" that could have sounded a bit aggressive. However if she loses her job in the latest round of government spending cuts the worst that's going to happen is that she get's forced into private practice.

Yeah Syria.

Assuming that now (01:51 30/12/11) the house of Saud have taken over it's a bit late for the CIA to - you know - just stop would it be so bad to ask all those Syrian traitors to just f*ck off home too the USA?

It Turns Out it's Not too Early for Bad Religion.

I switched my stereo on expecting the Hot Knives but there Bad Religion were.

Anyway at around 01:30 on 30/12/11 it's just been brought too my attention that some trouble makers in Sheffield UK have squatted the Salvation Army Citadel in order to host a "convention" on the UK Occupy movement.

You can say what you like about the Sally Army but I remember when that Strang fellow walked into St Andrews Catholic Church with his circumcised cock and his samurai swords it was the Salvation Army who stepped up and hosted the next Sunday's service.

Personally I'm just smoking to get the taste of blood out of my throat.

And That's a Wrap.

In the end I went with an 8x8 from the front cover of the UK edition of the Economist. While it's a nice black with a green strip (Rolex) on the inside it's a nasty image of a toad on the outside. Personally I'm just wondering where Natalie Portman's tits are but I know I've got them at the bottom of a little plastic box whenever I need them.

Anyway at around 01:15 on 30/12/11 I'm sure I had a point somewhere in there but it's lost beyond the long argument about whether or not if it's too early for Bad Religion then surely it's too early for the Dropkick Murphy's.

I Don't See What's Wrong With Wine for Breakfast.

But at around 00:51 on December 30th my father has decided to go to bed and attempt sleep.

Now that's a man who really needs a job. I know he's nearly 70 but if he's not using his skills as an electrical design engineer he's really just wandering around town annoying people.

Go on Play the Song.

At this moment (around 00:38 on 30/12/11) "the song" is defined as;

"Look at me Now" by famous Ska band "The Volcanoes." I know it's rubbish but it gave me enough time (00:40) to raise the TV in my computer room.

No Stanley Knife, no Stanley Knife.

After Stephan Fry's episode of "I've never watched Star Wars" got boring I went looking in the shed for the family Stanley Knife but no Stanley Knife could be found.

Slightly before that though I made lots noise, banging and general swearing while trying to prepare myself for the original Swedish version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." While I've never seen it or read any of the books from a number of people telling me "you really should see it" I have learnt three things;

1. It's nearly three hours long,

2. When they say it's only suitable for people over the age of 18 years they really mean it,

3. They've massively toned it down for the US audience,

4. I'm really not going to watch that with my Dad.

Due to drink and drugs at around 00:21 on 30/12/11 I'm now going to issue a writ of "No sh*t Sherlock.

Nope Croydon's Sh*t.

Turns out it's nearly impossible to buy a non-sour mash bourbon. At around 23:54 on 29/12/11 Mr Jack and Mr Daniels I'm looking in your direction.

On the plus side I've finished the 20 Lambert&Butler I got off my father for Christmas. In a long and complicated story I issue my father with a multi-pack of these henceforth known as "Dad Fags" every year. The good news is that since the old days when they were about 1.1mg nicotine they've down graded it to about 0.9mg. At this point 23:57 it feels like I'm just smoking chemicals designed to make me buy another pack of 20 at around £7.

Anyway at Around 23:41 on 29/12/11 I'm Currently....

...Looking for a copy of Time to violate in order to resolve the suspiciously large mountain of white powder I have sitting on my desk. I think I may have found something on page 21 but it leads on to a nasty picture of the Bill Waller obituary. Really at moments like this you really need the Economist because twice in five years is just embarrassing.

A*se, B*llocks, F*ck!

Of course the correct definition of Lisa Kelly's back passage is the Shimla pass. When you're an attractive white blond female in Tata truck it's scary. When you're Richard Hammond in an original series Mini Cooper it's just dull.

I Don't Know. So Many Thoughts So Little Time.

Apparently it's around 23:21 on 29/12/11 and I'm watching the "Have I Got News For You" out-takes show.

As For the Cricket I haven't Got a Clue

Because contrary to the lyrics of a popular song you can. Love what Bernie did there though. Ruining F1 before selling it to the Murdoch's for a large sum of money. Hilarious! Seriously my father was genuinely shocked to learn that you don't get Sky News on Freesat.

Anyway on Christmas day (25/12/11) I was assembled with my mother, my mother's lesbian wife, my allegedly homosexual brother and my mental case sister. We all thought it was rude to publicly comment on a specific homosexuals transformation into another gender. However the United States were very keen for attention so a man dressed as Santa Claus massacred six members of his family while they were opening their Christmas presents. Although it wasn't released to me until two days later the gunman was of Indian extraction. The Brits clearly knew about this in advance so they got someone to shoot a random paki in order to draw attention onto themselves.

Turns out the random paki was actually an Indian student in the UK studying something or other. The Indian's are currently a little bit stressed about Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson's recent attempt to sniff up Ice Road Trucker's Lisa Kelly's back passage. As a result they insisted that the local police treat the shooting as a hate crime.

As for Christmas presents I'm really still working through my birthday presents. I've had a quick look though and I'm sure it contains absolutely no ammunition. Much love though must go to the random man my sister met outside on Jamaica Road who couldn't get much beyond "My Wife's in the hospital! She's having a baby!"

Apparently the Deal my Father Did With the Yokels was...

...that as soon as my grandmother's in the home they can just put a brick through the window and take what they want.

So I went in through the unlocked door and rescued my bottle of Glenfiddich and thanks to the empty suitcase he'd helpfully left open I also may have found a creative solution to my HD TV problem.

In slightly worse news that bottle of whisky actually contains some Black Bush whiskey so I may be here for a while yet even if Saudi Arabia is currently using Syria as a way to teach Britain into getting that naughty Independent Police Complaints Cover-up (IPCC) to behave.

Well Hopefully the Groupthink's Sorted it Out by Now.

Because I reckon that Britain's Channel 4 could afford the Daily Show if they cut their nightly news bulletin down from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. If that's still not enough they could leave an hour of dead air between 22:00 and 23:00 once a week rather then bringing back 10 o'Clock live. Of course it may take a little bit longer to work which element of the US state is pushing the price up in the first place because I'm going to need a little while to get my eye in with Bloomberg and CNBC.

Seriously it feels like I'm watching bootlegged south east asian porn. Which brings neatly on to the fact that on the very day that I got a Freesat system installed the horror channel which shares a lot of personnel with Channel 4 started showing Firefly from the very begining.

Anyway as we go into the final night of the Christmas lectures we still have no verdict in the Dodson/Norris trial.

So What's the Hold Up?

Regular readers will be at least aware of the Stephen Lawrence case. Back in 1993 a young black man called Stephen Lawrence was murdered by five men in an unprovoked racist attack in London, UK. Due to massive police and judicial corruption that was later termed "Institutional Racism" these five men were put on trial in 1995 but found not guilty. This provoked a huge storm of public outrage which led to the Macpherson Inquiry and eventually did away with the long held legal principles of double jeopardy and the right to silence.

Due to the eradication of double jeopardy in November 2011 two of the five men; Gary Dobson and David Norris were put on trial for the murder for a second time. Today (29/12/11) at around 14:30 the Jury were sent out to consider their verdicts. It's now around 15:35 and since then I've been to the shops, read the paper and had lunch but still the Jury has not returned a verdict.

So while we sit waiting to to see if the British education system has managed to produce 12 people capable of spelling the word "GUILTY" I may as well tell a little story;

One of the people at the centre of the initial campaign over the murder was a life long Labour party member called Rosalind Howells. She was rewarded for her work with a seat in the House of Lords and became Baroness Howells. This year she sent my grandmother a Christmas card in which she moaned about her daughter having cancer. I think this is what Hugo Chavez was hinting at in his recent comments. Of course by saying that Chavez has now given Britain some extensive clues about the level of access that Venezuela has to members of Britain's House of Lords so I've more or less given up apologising for insulting him.

In other news Britain is pretending that a British pensioner has go missing in Lanzarote and is requesting that the Spanish authorities search for her. I suppose that's one way of asking if there any countries Mrs Hogg can safely travel too anymore while encouraging the British people to holiday at home in order boost the national economy.

Brilliant.

I've been on the phone to the DWP and it turns out they don't start work again until December 29th. As a result I won't be able to contact them until the deadline they set has passed. Of course because I've already contacted them it should be legally impossible for them to stop my claim for non-compliance but clearly the law has very little to do with it these days.

Personally I think they should just send be a letter telling me that my benefits have already been transferred, doubled and continued until such as time as the Crown wishes to settle it's debts in full. After all that should be the barest minimum tax they should have to pay for keeping the Whitgift estate et al out of prison.

Seriously What's Wrong with my Sleep Pattern.

Recently it's been a recurring problem that I discussed with my mother(s) on Christmas Day and it was at it's worst that night.

I went to bed at around 00:30 but didn't get to sleep until at least 02:30. I awoke again at around 04:30. I assume I then slept some more because after waking up at around 05:45 I had a cigarette and decided there was no point getting up until at least 09:30. At around 09:00 the alarm clock went off and suddenly I'm out like a light until around 12:00.

At around 02:30 on 28/12/11 I'm going to attempt to go to bed. If the same thing happens tonight ahead of me I've got a painful experience and around 4 hours tomorrow to make a phone call to the DWP explaining that I've not got a questionnaire it's going to be impossible for me to complete it and have it with them by the close of business on 29/12/11.

Look if I'm Going to be Forced to Visit my Sister,

my army cousin and his new daughter down Aldershot way I'm at least going to be allowed take home.

Apart from that it was a lovely story. It was shown on Sky News on 25/12/11 at around 17:00. Apparently his big fat army issued wife issued him with a new baby on 21/12/11. Then the army accordingly issued them with a new house and finally accepted that amid this culture of defence cuts my paternal grandmother's congential heart defect hadn't suddenly jumped the genetic barrier so he's allowed to stay in until his 20 years is up.

As for "take home." It could be a curry, it could be pizza, it could be a 9mm. I'm easy.

Either That's the Greatest Advert for the Latest Mission Impossible.

Or at around 00:30 on 28/12/11 the worst film I ever damn did see. I mean grassing up Rambo's one thing but getting Simon Baker his greencard that's just not right.

Dom de dom dom dom dom.

It's around 23:30 and I've seen the blacked up Robert Downey Jnr and the blond Jack Black but still here I am. So let's soldier on and all that.

So is the Ink Dry on the 10 O'Clock Show Contracts?

Because having watched "The Big Fat Quiz of the Year" on Channel 4 I'm convinced that no matter how big peoples mortgages are it's really not worth it.

Anyway if anyone needs me at around 23:05 on 27/12/11 I will be watching "Tropic Thunder" at least until it gets boring, I get drunk and decide to shout at traffic.

No Please Tell Me it was Recorded.

Because I don't care how middle class the audience was if their average age is around 13 they should be in bed by now. Sadly although never having seen Prof Bruce Hood ad-lib before I get the nasty feeling that the first of the three Royal Institution of Science Christmas lecture and it's link to Bristol University was shown live. Personally I blame the Wellcome Trust. On the plus side apparently psychology is considered an actual science now.

In other news Prince Phillip was left Papworth hospital today (27/12/11) at around the same time my alarm clock went off. In order to prove that he hadn't been in hiding as his 4*4 arrived at the BBC reporter it slowed down and he wound down his window to say hello. F*ck it was nearly a drive by.

Time To Get my Clever On.

Which may be a challenge because it's around 20:00 on Tuesday December 27th and I'm back from the pub and looking for something to watch on TV.

Every year at Christmas since I don't know when Britain's Royal Institution for the Sciences has thrown open it's doors to hold a series of public lectures on a specific subject in order to show off what they've done and inspire a generation of school children. This year the subject they've chosen is neuro-biology/psychology or the brain. Sadly having watched the first five minutes it's clearly been recorded in a TV studio rather then a lecture theatre so it's now so dumbed down even my father could watch it.

Anyway as for the movies clearly my Amazon order is now 100% complete because today I watched Black Swan and yesterday I finally got to watch Casablanca so consider yourself warned. I may be getting onto the Vinchy Water later.

It's Technically Still a Public Holiday

When the postal service do not normally deliver. So imagine my surprise to receive a copy of Mrs Justice Hogg's ruling in my grandmother's case. What I suspect has happened is that it was delivered on either Friday (23/12/11) or Saturday (24/12/11) but because neither my father or I were expecting anything we simply didn't bother to check.

Annoyingly while searching for the Oxford Street murder video my computer picked up a bug (not from the link I posted) which is preventing me from uploading the document. However it is fair to say that it is not a detailed ruling. In fact it simply lists the case details (applicant, respondents etc) and states the application was dismissed on 21/12/11 when the breast implant story broke.

One can only hope Mrs Hogg has used the festive break as an opportunity to read a book.


Edited at around 18:50 on 27/12/11: While I haven't strictly speaking fixed the computer bug I very quickly found a way to go around and uploaded the document. The bug was so simple I'm thinking BNP/EDL rather then anything worth mentioning. I then went and watched a movie and now I'm having fun watching the news channels trying to work out exactly which movie.

The Oxford Street Murder.

Yesterday (26/12/11) in the UK a man was stabbed and killed on Oxford Street at the heart of London's shopping district at the start of the post-Christmas (Boxing Day) sales. I didn't comment on this at the time because it looked to me like a case of only humans involved. The Boxing Day sales are very much Britain's equivalent of Black Friday in the US when large crowds of people flock to the shops whipped up into a frenzy over the hope of getting a bargain. To be honest I'm more shocked when they don't end in fatalities.

However this and many other videos have since emerged showing the aftermath of the stabbing;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkUcCMSVO5w&feature=related

It shows a young black man being worked on by armed police officers and paramedics as other armed police officers attempt to push back and increasingly hostile crowd who are pushing to try to see and film what is going on. Apart from the large crowd trying to film the incident this scene is very reminiscent of the aftermath of the police shooting of Mark Duggan which sparked the August riots. So although I don't think it was anyone's intention the incident sharply pulls into focus the complete breakdown in trust between the Metropolitan police and the people of London following the Duggan shooting.

That's no great surprise because although the Leveson Inquiry didn't cover it the source of the gun Mark Duggan was supposedly carrying has been revealed as the Metropolitan police's evidence lock up and there are now police witnesses saying it was planted at the scene after the shooting. Still no public inquiry though.

Technically It's a Public Holiday.

So I'll be brief. Basically Boko Harem are a group of not very clever people living in a country where food is expensive and life is cheap. So they're quite aggressive and therefore really easily to manipulate. So while they technically do exists it's Britain that supplies them with weapons and explosives and does their thinking for them. Apart from producing a big bang on Christmas day and giving us all yet another reason to hate Muslims yesterday's attack in Nigeria along with the Prince Phillip saga was meant to encourage Pentecostal Protestants - many of whom embrace a mystical element similar to Voodoo in their worship - to convert to Church of England Protestantism. Once the conversions have been made the idea is for the country to split into a Muslim north and a Christian south much like Sudan has done. Try and guess which half of the country the oil's in.

Incidentally in the early hours of this morning (26/12/11) an Indian university student was shot and killed in an apparently random attack in Salford Manchester. In light of yesterday's shooting in Dallas Texas that no doubt made for an interesting lunch break on the first day of the Australia V India cricket match.

So Did We All Watch the Queen?

Every year on Christmas day the Queen of England delivers a speech to her loyal subjects. Although it's not strictly speaking compulsory it is broadcast by all of the British terrestrial television networks but in these days of multi-channel and on demand broadcasting ratings have dropped off in recent years. So I can't help but thinking that Prince Phillip's recent health issues were nothing more then a publicity stunt. As this years speech which was recorded on December 9th spoke of families being forced together in the face of tragedy you might have also got the impression that the Queen's magic golden crown gives her some sort of mystical powers like predicting the future. It was nice of the Doctor Who Christmas special to play along.

As for my Christmas; Apart from the shock revelation that my mother was once in panto with Tony Blackburn and an odd conversation about gender roles in homosexual relationships and how they relate to the reformation it was incredibly pleasant. Seriously you didn't think growing up in a family as f*cked up as mine you would lack the skills to smooth over areas of conflict. By way of presents I got some beer, some cigarettes, an ash tray and a jumper/sweatshirt that I can clearly neither drink nor smoke. From my brother I got a DVD copy of the first season of a US TV show called "Brotherhood" which bills itself as the Wire only with Irish American gangsters. Neither of us has seen it but I've got a nasty feeling I'm in it.

Oh and the death toll in Nigeria is now over 35 and still rising.

Boko Harem Strike Again.

In Nigeria the supposed Islamist terrorist group "western education is sinful" have detonated a bomb in a Roman Catholic Church in the capital Abuja during a Christmas day service. Fatalities have been reported but Nigeria authorities position at this time is that they don't have the resources to give an accurate casualty list. Given the dominance of Pentecostal Protestantism in the country it's actually something of an achievement finding a Roman Catholic Church to blow up.

Oh and Merry Christmas and all that.

Prince Phillip Update.

Apparently he's alive and well and said to be in good spirits in Papworth hospital. It also turns out that he didn't have bypass surgery. Instead he had a stent fitted. This involves injecting a small metal object known as a stent into an artery and then expanding it to widen the artery in order to increase blood flow. It's actually closer to a vaccination then an invasive surgical procedure. It also means that the most likely diagnosis is a heart attack brought about by pre-existing coronary artery disease. Or a Dr Freddie Patel special as it's known.

Oh Bum! Computer Fail.

In around June of 2011 the scroller ball on my mouse failed. Since then that failure has been annoying me everytime I attempt to scroll down on a webpage. So while I was Xmas shopping on December 22nd I thought it would be a good idea to buy a new mouse. Unfortunately I brought one whose plugging in thing on the end of the lead wouldn't allow me to me plug into the back of my computer. So now I here I stand on 24/12/11 at around 00:50 still unable to effectively scroll down and about £9.99 poorer.

Tamara Drewe.

It's one of those tediously middle class British films that tediously middle class British TV channels like BBC2 show over the festive period. While it never lived up to the promise of Gemma Arterton's slightly flabby bum the opening scenes did perfectly illustrate the scene around the other bride's table at my mother's big gay wedding this summer.

Anyway it is around 00:20 on December 24th 2011 and Prince Phillip has apparently had emergency coronary bypass surgery but is sadly still alive. So I guess it's true what they say about the good dying young.

Yeah Fake.

It is now around 20:55 on December 23rd 2011. In the past 30 minutes the BBC has begun to report that Prince Phillip - husband of the Queen of England has been rushed from Shandringham Palace to Papworth hospital suffering from chest pains and a possible heart attack. This is of course complete nonsense. Apart from provoking the obvious interest and discussions about Prince Phillip this will be reported extensively by the BBC and will be viewed by my grandmother. The plan is that this will create so much stress in my grandmother that it will induce a fatal heart attack.

In other news I've spoken too my mother and it turns out she had her handbag (cash, credit cards mobile phone etc) stolen from her office in Croydon University Hospital (CUH). So clearly someone is in a violent mood this Christmas.

Spare a Thought For a Stripper This Christmas.

Here in the UK the story of toxic breast implants is in the national news. This relates to the 2010 discovery that French medical prosthetic manufacturer Poly Implant Prosthesis (PIP) had been using industrial grade rather then surgical grade silicone in it's silicone breast implants. This lower grade silicone carries health risks such as cancer and just out and out poisoning. The issue has actually been going on for so long that there is active legal action over the matter in both France and Britain and it provided the basis for a major plot line in the BBC medical drama/soap opera Holby City. What's brought the matter to the fore now is the case relating to my grandmother.

Although Mrs Justice Hogg has yet to put pen to paper to explain her ruling the argument being used is that there was no legal requirement to carry out a psychiatric assessment because my grandmother was never formally detained under the 1983 Mental Health Act. In itself this argument is a non-starter. It is well established under British law that if a person is coerced or deceived into going to a place and is then prevented from leaving that place by word or physical act they are considered to be imprisoned in that place regardless of whether the correct formal procedure was used or not. In fact the failure to use the correct procedure often constitutes the actus reus of false imprisonment. The precedent of Campbell V Tormey 1969 as per Ashworth immediately springs to mind due to it's reference to the provision of laboratory specimens such as blood, urine samples.

Even though the matter is clear cut France still brought it before the International Criminal Court (ICC) during the arraignment hearing of Laurent Gbagbo - the former President of the Ivory Coast. Although from the ICC's perspective this was a really unhelpful thing for France to do they ruled in my favour and Gbagbo will stand trial. Now France is saying that women who have undergone a faulty medical procedure should have that procedure reversed while Britain is still maintaining that they shouldn't.

So it appears France's military alliance with Britain will be a significant issue at their 2012 Presidential election. The current French administration which signed that alliance is now trying to apologise to Israel for it by being seen to take a tough line against Nazism and genocide. The Brits are just desperate to keep the story in the news over the Christmas period in order to heap pressure on any and all women in my life who may have had faulty implants or are worried about cancer. Needless to say that 2012 deadline is now looming large on the Brit's horizon.

Anyway About the Alcohol.

It turns out that not only have I opened the Christmas booze but I have also opened the Christmas food. So hopefully the drunk will remain until at least mid-January when I will emerge with a giant belly. Until then on 23/12/11 at around 00:30 I can't promise much beyond a futile attempt to go to bed.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Apparently they still do that. This year (2011) it was presented to Mark Cavandish and his big titted wife in Salford, Manchester. So I suppose it is a little too late to nominate Simon Baker for his appalling decision not to take a penalty in the 2009 Haiti V the rest of the world match because now he's lost his Aussie cards I don't suppose he's got much else apart from his ego.

Anyway at around 23:00 on December 22nd 2011 (22/12/11) I've got nothing much to say except Ballykiss Angel m*therf*ckers.

Quick Look Sporty.

Also today (22/12/11) my father received his first set of invoices from Albany Lodge the LRH care home where my grandmother currently resides. Apparently they want about £12,000 per quarter (£48,000 per year). Unfortunately before I've had the chance to read these invoices from the Grinch determined to steal Christmas I've been forced to really quickly scan them into my computer while my father is having an angry cigarette outside.

Apart from that it's going well (19:30)

Ladies & Germs I Bring Good News.

With two full days to spare I have finished my Christmas shopping for 2011. Admittedly half way through the process I may have accidentally got a bit drunk so I've got no idea what I brought either even if I do smell a little bit more glorious then usual.

When I returned my mood was spoilt somewhat by the delivery of two letters. The first comes from Croydon University Hospital (CUH) about my grandmother and contains so many long, complicated and irrelevant words that rather then reading it I just got a sudden urge to listen to the Living End. The second album obviously because the first's a bit average. The second letter was from French IT company "Atos Healthcare." It was about that questionnaire I've not received and reminded me that I had better complete and return that questionnaire by December 29th or else! I only mention this because it was posted from Atos' Wembley offices in Wembley (SW95 9EB) thus proving my point about Atos having the responsibility to send out the questionnaires. It also reminded me that I really need to get on with writing that up lest the entire nation of France has a complete nervous breakdown for Christmas.

I then discovered that I'd run out of bathroom cleaning products which gave me the perfect excuse not to clean the bathroom. So every cloud and all that.

Egypt's Revolution Continues.

Egypt is now halfway through the first phase of free elections which will see the country elect it's first democratic government in almost 60 years. Unfortunately there is a small group of mainly football hooligans who don't want this revolution and are fighting hard to stop it by rioting through the streets of Cairo. I promised myself that I wouldn't let this small minority spoil the election by making their violence the main issue but I suppose it raises a legitimate political question - what sort of police service does the new Egypt want?

They could stick with the current system where everyday crime is dealt with locally by the municipal police which is answerable to a local governor and police chief. Then there are national police forces to deal with specific types of crimes such as the border police, the traffic police, tourism & antiquities police and Mubarak's Central Security Force (CSF) which dealt with the suppression of political dissent and riot control. An alternative would be to do away with the national police forces and just have local police forces answerable to local governors first and the Interior Ministry second. However all these local police forces will have the same equipment and training so they all investigate a burglary in the same way, patrol the roads in the same way and control riots in the same way. This common standard allows them to set up mutual aid agreements so if there is a riot in Alexandria and the police there are overwhelmed they can call in extra officers from Cairo to help and vice versa. Another alternative would be to strengthen the local police forces but also set up a national or federal agency to deal with serious and complex crimes like smuggling and deal with criminals who travel between different local jurisdictions.

In the immediate term though if the violence is going to continue then the Egyptian police/military is going to have to get a lot better at riot control really quickly. From what I've seen of the recent riots the biggest problem is a complete lack of discipline. This means that rather then acting as a co-ordinated force to control unrest the Egyptian police seem to be a disorganised group of hooligans in silly clothes randomly doing what they like. To solve this problem I would break the men down into squads of 6-10 men. Each man gets his own equipment (helmet, shield, baton etc) and knows how to use it. Each squad stays together, works together, trains together, travels together and if necessary billets together. This allows each member of the squad to get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses and better function as a team. Each squad contains a NCO like a sergeant of equivalent who commands the squad. Five squads are grouped together into a unit under the command of a junior officer like a lieutenant. Each unit of 51 men should be able to defend a building or dominate a city street. For operations over a wider area these units can be co-ordinated by a more senior officer like a captain or higher.

As for tactics I think it's best to keep things simple at the moment and limit the police/military to defending key buildings rather then trying to clear the protests entirely. Obviously the best way to defend a building is to put a big, strong barrier like a wall around it and this is something the Egyptian military have already been doing extensively. The problem arises though when the rioting crowd gets too close to the barrier and starts climbing over it or tearing it down. When this happens the police/military need to disperse the crowd away from the barrier. There are a range of exotic tactics and equipment to do this ranging from live fire, plastic bullets, tear gas, stun grenades, water cannon and even acoustic weapons like the Long Range Acoustic Device (LARD). Before the Egyptian police/military attempt any of those though I think they first need to become masters of the most basic tactic - the baton charge or running clearance.

The name of this tactic is pretty much self-explanatory. It involves putting two lines of police/military - a front line and a reserve line - across the street facing the crowd. On command the front line charges into the crowd hitting anyone who gets in the way with their baton or shield. However rather then injuring people the purpose is to clear and dominate space and ideally you want to do it without having to hit anyone. Therefore it is essential that the integrity of the line is maintained and rather then charging randomly the line charges a pre-set distance like 5 metres, 10 metres or up to a designated piece of street furniture like the next set of traffic lights or a particular building. Once the front line reaches it's set point the reserve line moves up to close the gap. Obviously if the charge passes a side street or alleyway it is essential to bring in another line to block it order to stop the rioters looping back behind the line.

The best example of this I can find online is this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaTWqpo4jtI&feature=related

Coming from the 2008 Notting Hill Carnival although it was shot from the rioters perspective and the police are not holding their line as firmly as they should.

Operation Oil Theft: Month 10, Week 1, Day 1.

The December 20th deadline for militias to leave Tripoli has come and gone with the militias remaining in place. The issue is revealing a split in the National Transitional Council (NTC) between the Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib and the Defence Minister and head of the Zintan Brigade militia Osama al-Juwali. As the man who set the December 20th deadline al-Keib obviously wants the militias to leave immediately in order to secure the city by bringing to an end the kidnappings and seemingly random gun battles. al-Juwali on the other hand wants to keep his militia - the Zintan Brigade - in place for as long as possible. He is doing this as leverage in order to fill the Defence Ministry and the Interior Ministry with as many of his people as possible. Given the undemocratic and aggressive way he is going about it I'm worried about what will happen should he be successful.

Elsewhere it looks as though the International Criminal Court (ICC) could be forced to close it's investigations into the death of Muammer Qaddafi and other alleged crimes committed by rebel forces as nations like Britain move to have it's budget slashed at the annual meeting that is currently going on in New York. The fact that this meeting is still ongoing also serves to explain why Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has today (21/12/11) decided to prosecute footballer John Terry for allegedly racially abusing Anton Ferdinand.

And Moving Swiftly On.

Already tonight (20/12/11) I've switched my computer off and tried to go to bed but the thought of you all kept me awake. So at around 00:50 I'm signing out and trying to go to sleep.

Well I'm Loving My New TV Relationship.

It turns out that if there are two channels showing two programs that I want to watch at the same time I can watch one and then watch the other one an hour later on their +1 service.

Anyway Christmas. It's a Christian festival marking the birth of Jesus Christ. In unorthodox traditions it's celebrated on December 25th every year. In more Orthodox traditions it moves according to the phases of the moon around mid-winter. Here in Britain the festival is normally marked by blood relations getting together, exchanging gifts, eating too much, drinking too much and generally fighting with each other. This year with only five days to go I have done the sum total of nothing to prepare so pending major emergencies I will probably be winding down the content of this blog from tomorrow (21/12/11).

Now is it so wrong that I have I sudden desire to look at porn. Obviously that Egyptian women in the blue bra doesn't count as porn because Britain's Her Majesties Inspectorate of Constabularies (HIMC) has today published a discussion document about riot control tactics.

That's the Way to Do it.

For the past five weeks Britain has been holding the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics. The purpose of this little charade is to restrict the freedom of the British press both by intimidating all the people who work in it and making sure that all news coverage in the country has been replaced by wall to wall coverage of this nonsense. The inquiry was started after allegations that the News of the World hacked into the mobile phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler and published the diary of world renowned murderer Kate McCann without out her consent. Both of these allegations have now been proved to be untrue but on the inquiry trundles on regardless calling a succession of celebrities as witnesses in a never ending quest for attention.

Today (20/12/11) it called former News of the World editor and now genuine Hollywood celebrity Piers Morgan who finally treated this joke with the contempt it deserved. Every time he was asked how his newspaper got a story he simply answered "I'm not going to reveal a source" and every time he was asked about a conversation he allegedly had he simply claimed not to remember. From now on this is how the Leveson Inquiry should be dealt with because when it actually starts putting journalists in prison people will finally start to recognise it for what it is.

Oh and I got home from the pub at around 20:10 to discover no problems. There was a small disagreement/fight in the pub but it had nothing to do with me and it started when I was outside having a cigarette so I don't even know what it was about.

Operation Oil Theft: Month 9, Week 5, Day 1.

Over the weekend (16-17/12/11) over US$160bn of Libyan assets have been unfrozen from a range of sources and placed under the control of the National Transitional Council (NTC). The first tranche of this money to actually arrive in Libya is around US$5bn in cash that is going to be flown from Germany to Tripoli. Obviously how much of that money actually ends up in the hands of the NTC depends on who controls Tripoli's international airport.

At the moment that airport is still firmly under the control of the Zintan Brigade militia rather then the Libyan government. The Libyan National Army (LNA) attempted to bring up reinforcements from Benghazi to make a second attempt to gain control of the airport but the convoy was stopped by the Misrata Brigade militia who are allied to the Zintan Brigade midweek. Then on Thursday (15/12/11) the son of the commander of the LNA General Khalifa Hifter was shot and wounded by the Zintan Brigade in Tripoli. When one of Hifter's other sons attempted to visit his brother in hospital on Friday (16/12/11) he was kidnapped by the Zintan Brigade and has not been heard from since. This comes against a backdrop of professionally circulated rumours that Hifter is some sort of American spy. Personally I don't think that is true but I am certain that the Zintan Brigade is being controlled by Britain which is why they were able to capture Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, a prisoner they've yet to hand over to the NTC.

Meanwhile protests that began in Benghazi on Wednesday (14/12/11) have begun to spread calling for more jobs, owed government wages and more transparency from the NTC. While people need jobs and people with jobs need to be paid I am worried by the call for more transparency from the NTC. The foreign powers that backed the Libyan revolution did not do so out of any concern for the Libyan people. Instead they did so to get control of Libya's vast oil wealth. In order to resist this international interference and secure a prosperous future for the Libyan people the NTC needs to be opaque about it's decision making process for a while yet. This is why Britain was so desperate that their militia captured Saif al-Islam so he could be used to ensure that their spy got a job in the NTC.

Or to put it another way the February 17th Libyan revolution that Britain started didn't produce the result it wanted so now they're trying to start a second revolution. This is how the Democratic Republic of Congo got started.

Well That's Got Everyone Nervous.

Today (19/12/11) it's been announced that the leader of North Korea Kim Jong Il died on Saturday (17/12/11) of a heart attack aged 68. This creates something of a power vacuum in the isolationist nuclear armed state. South Korea, Japan and China have all put their armies on a heightened state of alert while they wait to see who will take over as North Korean leader and what they will do. Hopefully this won't be much of a problem because Kim Jong Il has been preparing his son Kim Jong Un to take over for the last two years although the generals seem to be trying to assert their position by test firing a short range missile.

In other news which is much more important because it relates to me I've been on the telephone chasing up this Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) nonsense. After about 40 minutes on hold to the DWP I got told to call Atos Healthcare directly. After about 20 minutes on hold they proceeded to openly lie to me claiming that they don't have responsibility to send out questionnaires and referred me back to the DWP. After a further 20 minutes on hold they agreed to send out another questionnaire which they expect to arrive later this week. I doubt that will happen though because the postal service around here is backed up to late November so that questionnaire isn't scheduled to arrive until about six weeks after my Amazon order.

Yep the Man's an Idiot.

In April 2012 the analogue TV signal will be switched off in the UK. This has prompted my father to upgrade our TV system to a FreeSat service in one room and digital Freeview in other rooms. Unfortunately he rushed into this without doing a shred of research. As a result he's managed to get a Standard Definition (SD) FreeSat system installed which provides a slightly worse picture then Digital Freeview. As access to High Definition (HD) services is one of the main selling points of FreeSat even finding someone who still manufactures SD systems was an achievement. This now means that in my grandmother's house we have a HD system attached to a SD TV while in our house we have a SD system attached to a HD TV. To make matters worse the installation process means that my house has pretty much been a building site for most of today (17/12/11). On the plus side though it means I get to watch news channels that aren't the BBC and therefore may contain news.

Amazon Wars!

You may remember that on November 23rd I placed an order with the online retailer Amazon which was never delivered. Apart from claiming back the cost of the order from the postal service's (Royal Mail) insurance I also replaced the order. However rather then placing it as a single order I placed it as eight separate orders meaning each item would be delivered individually as a series of DVD case sized packages. Within the Royal Mail these are actually classed as letters rather then packages so should be delivered as part of the everyday delivery schedule without any excuses about no-one being at home and the item being too big to fit through the letter box.

Today (17/12/11) the final of these packages should have been delivered but only about 50% have actually turned up. Apart from being a desperate plea for attention Britain is using the issue to put pressure on Amazon generally and specifically on the issue of how the Royal Mail deals with the increasing volume of online sales. The correct answer of course is to bundle orders into as few deliveries as possible, put these larger packages in a van and then deliver them to the address. It's just a shame that in this instance the Royal Mail decided to ignore that last part.

If there's still any doubt whether the fault is on Amazon's side or the Royal Mail's side on this second wave I'm about 85% sure I've identified the individual postal worker who is at fault and his wider local network. As this is now a local problem hopefully the Royal Mail will investigate the insurance claim and then just fire him.

How on Earth Did That Happen.

Today (16/12/11) I've accidentally had a rather productive day. It started with me waking up inexplicably early and doing a bit of work before going to the gym. Then my father decided he was going to buy a new TV and obviously I had to go with him to carry things. While we were there I also brought a shredder. Then I made dinner before spending an hour swearing at a TV that refused to work, eating dinner and finally get the chance to sit down. The bad news is that I am now far too tired to even sit here childishly shredding random household objects although I may stir later.

No I Don't Really Know How to Follow That Either.

I suppose I could talk about the situation in the EU but having spent so long lobbying to have Britain excluded from those discussions it seems counter-intuitive to explain to them what's going on.

Anyway the 26 EU members who did agree to the idea of an accord are now debating the details of that accord. Hungary and the Czech Republic have both raised the question of a uniform tax policy versus national sovereignty. I can only assume that this is a subtle little hint to the Republic of Ireland because having had a quick glance over their most recent budget I would have thought they would have welcomed the opportunity to run it past a grown up before enacting it. The main thing they've done is raise the VAT (sales tax) to 23%. This is 3% higher then the 20% rate in the UK including Northern Ireland. Given the relatively small geographic size of Ireland, it's shared language and common culture this will most likely mean that most Irish people will simply travel to Northern Ireland to do their shopping. This will shrink the size of the Irish retail sector and make the economy more reliant on the agriculture sector which is itself overly reliant on exports to the UK. So by retaining national tax raising powers Ireland has actually managed to undermine it's national sovereignty.

These problems are transferable across continental Europe especially in the smaller nations like Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands so the harmonisation of tax policies to minimise these sort of negative effects is something the Eurozone nations need to discuss at great length. I think I've already explained how to make those negotiations run more smoothly and productively.

Oh and you remember that nuclear power station the Japanese started to shut down following the earthquake/tsunami in March. Well ten months later they've finally managed to shut it down. Seriously if that happened in any other country even one as technologically advanced as Britain I think at this point rather then talking about the nuclear reactor we'd be talking about what to do with the giant radioactive crater where the nuclear reactor used to be.

As the Neigbours Next Door Will Testify.

I've spent this afternoon (15/12/11) listening to Bad Religion while looking for excuses not to clean house. You may take that news as a hint or as a metaphor or you could just walk it off. The important thing to remember is that at around 17:30 the bathroom is finally clean. We were delayed somewhat by the fact that the problem family at #50 are stealing our gas and electricity. Personally I think they need troubleshooting even if that is far to obvious a joke to make.

The United States Withdraw From Iraq.

In an effort to get the troops home by Christmas and the war forgotten about in time for the 2012 election the US have arbitrarily withdrawn from Iraq. Throughout all the speeches on the subject the recurring theme is that the US is leaving "A Sovereign, Stable and Self-reliant" Iraq.

That's almost referring to me by name so I should point out that I can't be considered stable or self-reliant until all debts have been paid and all hostages have been freed. After all you can't steal seven years of my life and then expect everything to be ok. So until then the US are just on a kill mission while trying to build a secure Afghanistan with British involvement.


Edited at around 12:30 on 15/12/11 to add:

Of course the live pictures of the US military flag down ceremony in Baghdad was brought to the world by the Eurovision Satellite project - a spin off of the Eurovision Song Contest. So when the feed dropped out during the middle of Leon Panetta's speech everyone was left staring at a digital menu accompanied by the sounds of soft rock music a technicians beginning to swear in a variety of languages. Now a big TV relay station is on fire in Hanoi. Clearly they still have mixed feelings about US military occupations in that part of the world. Personally I'm just wondering if the BBC have automated their tea making facilities or whether that opportunity is still open. So yes headaches all round.

I'm Back From My GP.

On the way there I was quite disturbed by this constant paranoid, delusional ranting. Then I realised it was just the BBC and after that everything was routine. The whole thing did remind me though that I've still not heard from the DWP. I must give them a call to find out if they're still committed to this current path. Not today (14/12/110 though obviously because I'm seriously considering going back to bed.

I am the Bringer of Death and These are my Tools.

So at around 22:40 on December 13th 2011 and I rush to sleep to avoid dreams of stamping my little brother David's skull into the dust I think I must take a moment to congratulate Britain's Channel 4.

On the occasion of the debut of episode 1 on of the three episode mini-series "This is England '88" they have for once heroically resisted the temptation to f*ck with the PDC system in order to convince VHS customers that they need to upgrade to a digital system.

For that one moment of self publicity I think they deserve a round of applause.

Man the Postal Service Around Here is Sh...Less Then Perfect.

Today (13/12/11) I filed a claim for that missing Amazon package on the Royal Mail's insurance. While I was in town I also brought some exciting stuff like underwear and notebooks. After writing some I thought rather good blogposts I turned on my cellphone and went to the pub with my father for dinner. We returned at about 20:05 to discover no problems at home.

During the early part of the conversation my father revealed that this morning Croydon council had carried out a financial assessment on my grandmother at the Albany Lodge care home. They have very generously decided to contribute around £100 a week to the weekly £800 costs. Obviously they didn't carry out a medical assessment because that would reveal that they need to meet the full cost. At this point I might have slightly gone off on one. Honestly I'm hoping that witness reports can shed more light on exactly what was said but I'm sure I quite loudly used a phrase along the lines of; "I'm f*cking desperate to speak to her doctors because if they've f*cking cured dementia I sure there's a f*cking Nobel prize with their f*cking name on!" Tomorrow (14/12/11) I will be visiting my GP to discuss my current mental state. The answer of course is much better if I didn't have to get up before dawn to visit my GP.

Anyway as for the current situation in Belgium. I suppose my post on Sunday (11/12/11) on the COP17/CMP7 could be described as something of a "grenade." When discussed in relation to possibly 6 dead and 70 injured that picks up certain negative connotations although that's still a pretty low score for an attack with grenades and automatic weapons.

Now if anyone needs me I'm going to cut off Natalie Portman's tits because that's bad ju-ju even if there is one film guaranteed to break my mind at this moment it's Black Swan.

The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting

I've not commented on this before because at the time I thought a discreet approach would be best. However almost a year on it's obvious the Whitehouse is too dim to work it out on it's own.

On January 8th 2011 an attempt was made to assassinate the Democrat Congresswoman for Arizona Gabrielle Giffords while she was meeting with constituents in Tuscon, Arizona. Although Ms Giffords survived, just, 19 other people were shot in the attempt and 6 of them were killed. The attack was carried out by Jared Lee Loughner a 22 year old man with severe psychological and emotional problems. We know about these problems because when Laughner applied to join the US military they psychologically screened him and rejected him on those grounds. Therefore it would have been all too easy for someone with access to military personnel records to identify Laughner's potential and sell him on the slightly insane idea that rather then being rejected by the military he's been selected for a Call of Duty style top secret, special operations unit. He just had to complete one final test before being sent for training. The fact that after completing that test Laughner instead found himself languishing in prison was what finally caused his mind to explode leaving him conveniently unfit to stand trial.

The purpose for carrying out the attack was the effect it had. It helped to change the aggressive and corrosive nature of political debate in the US at the time. This aided the Republicans more then it helped the Democrats because frankly the louder some of them speak the more obvious it becomes just how stupid they are. Take as an example an issue that was very contentious at the time - health care reform or "Obamacare." Having just taken control of the House of Representatives the Republicans were about to mount a campaign to have the policy overturned and their Tea Party wing are still in the process of mounting a Supreme Court challenge under the commerce clause (A1,S8,C3) of the US Constitution because they believe socialised medicine to be "Un-American."

The problem is that America already has socialised medicine, it's called Medicare and Medicaid. It's just that because no-one wants to be honest about what these programs are they're horrifically mis-manged and cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars a year. So by introducing compulsory health insurance the Obama administration is trying to wean Americans off these socialised programs and force them to take personal responsibility for their health care under a capitalist system. These are values that the Republicans claim to support as being the American way.

In an aggressive and corrosive political atmosphere where he who shouts loudest wins this argument is so simple that even the Democrats could have made it. But then the Giffords shooting happened, the political tone changed and the Democrats are losing that and all other arguments while the Republicans set about annihilating the US economy and no-one bats and eyelid.

Norway's Little Problem. Part 2.

On July 22nd 2011 Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo Norway's capital. He then moved on to Utoya island where he went on a shooting spree. By the time he'd been apprehended by the police 76 people were dead. So unprecedented was this type of attack that Norway's legal system doesn't really have any way to deal with Breivik now he's been captured. The maximum prison sentence he can receive is around 20 years and there are serious concerns for his safety in a prison system where most of the other inmates will quite happily kill him.

Breivik's defence team have suggested a possible solution that obviously represents the best option for their client. On November 29th they submitted psychiatric reports to the Court that found Breivik to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and at the time of the attacks was in a psychotic state that meant he cannot be held criminally responsible for his actions and should be sent to a secure psychiatric hospital for treatment. Obviously the prosecution will now submit it's own psychiatric reports and the Court has the option to order it's own reports before making it's decision. The problem the defence team will face is that Breivik didn't simply pick up a gun one morning and start shooting. Instead he planned the attacks over a period of several months buying the ingredients to make a bomb, making that bomb to a high technical specification and writing and distributing a lengthy but coherent manifesto explaining his actions. Although not impossible it is highly unlikely that someone in a psychotic state would be able to maintain the required level of functionality over such a long period of time. However Breivik might be that extreme example.

For the sake of a quiet life the Norwegian authorities might choose not to test that point in too much detail. Although I think an exception can be made in this specific case this solution does leave me feeling a little uncomfortable. Declaring people insane and then locking them up because of their political beliefs is something you would expect from totalitarian societies like China rather then free and liberal societies like Norway and can actually make the treatment of people with genuine psychiatric problems more difficult. Obviously though it's not my country, not my tragedy and therefore not my decision to make but now time has passed and emotions have cooled somewhat I think prison might be the best option because 20 years is not a short amount of time and once someone is in prison there are always ways of making sure they never leave prison. For example I believe Breivik has already assaulted a prison guard extending his sentence by five years.

Grenade Attack in Belgium.

Two dead including the attacker. Clearly the Belgian state were backing the Brits to win. It's alright though they've finally elected a new government so hopefully can realign their position.

Operation Oil Theft: Month 9, Week 4, Day 1.

Since the fall of the Qaddafi government in mid-October Tripoli has been plagued by armed militias roaming the streets looting, kidnapping and getting into gun battles with each other and local residents. By last Tuesday (6/12/11) the National Transitional Council (NTC) had lost patience and the Prime Minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib gave the militias until December 20th (14 days) to leave the city. By Wednesday the Libyan National Army (LNA) under the command of General Khalifa Hifter had begun to encourage the militias to leave by setting up road blocks and checkpoints to search vehicles and seize weapons.

One militia in particular - the Zintan Brigade - seem to have no intention of complying with the governments instructions. During the fall of Tripoli in August they quickly moved to seize control of the city's international airport in order to control who and what moved though the airport and solicit bribes. Obviously this is no way to run an airport let alone a country so on Sunday (11/12/11) the LNA moved in to take over airport security. The Zintan Brigade violently resisted leading to a lengthy gun battle that left one dead. There now exists a tense stand off while the NTC negotiate with the Zintan Brigade in order to allow the airport to come back under government control.

The COP17/CMP7 Finally Draws to a Close.

With the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) seemingly under attack from all sides there was no room at the COP17/CMP7 to either create a replacement for the soon to expire Kyoto Protocol or reduce global greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and it seemed to me to be a fools errand to even try. So prior to the politicians turning up the focus of the summits was on adaptation and mitigation.

Covered by the Nairobi Work Program (NWP) adaptation is pretty self-explanatory. It is about enabling nations to adapt to the effects of climate change through the sharing of technology and best practice. In places like Pakistan the focus is on flood defences to help them cope with the extreme flooding of last year and this year. In places like east Africa the focus is on anti-desertification methods and drought resistant farming methods in order to prevent things like the East African food crisis/famine. If global warming is something that humans cannot control or cannot be bothered to control then adaptation methods are going to become ever more essential as the negative effects of climate change become more frequent and widespread.

Mitigation is a more complex area. Basically it is getting nations to mitigate climate change by reducing their total ghg emissions. However rather then just adopting green technologies like renewable power generation it also tries to bring about structural changes to a nations economy to make it more environmentally friendly through reducing energy consumption for example and improving their management of natural ghg emitters such as peat bogs and natural ghg sinks such as forests. It also overlaps into adaptation because taking Haiti as an example their extreme deforestation has left them at greater risk from extreme weather events such as flooding and landslides. So simply planting more trees can both cut their ghg emissions and protect them from the effects of climate change.

At the COP17/CMP7 the main focus of mitigation efforts was on the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) which essentially pays developing nations like Ecuador to not cut down their rainforests. The hope is that this program will eventually form the basis for a global carbon trading mechanism that turns living and breathing trees into an economic resource like timber. Unfortunately there was a concerted effort by nations like Britain and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) itself to hijack these negotiations and turn them into a referendum on the DRC, it's chaotic election, it's multitude of internal conflicts and how they're funded through the illegal trade in minerals such as diamonds. Although these are all valid areas for discussion they are issues that are best dealt with through the Kimberly Process which was set up for just that purpose.

This hijacking is hardly a surprise though because many developed nations don't even consider the REDD+ program to be about global warming/climate change. Outside the Amazon basin the highest proportion of tropical rainforest is in sub-Saharan Africa - a part of the world that also has very high levels of HIV/AIDS infection. There is a global charity to fight HIV/AIDS called RED so calling the anti-deforestation program REDD+ was never going to lead to clear and concise negotiations. In fact with most of the talk relating to issues surrounding barrier methods, leakage, hard and soft options and what a nation does with it's wood REDD+ negotiations were always more likely to descend into a Carry On film then result in a meaningful global agreement.

At the moment both the NWP and REDD+ fall under the remit of something called the Ad-hoc Working Group for Long-term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA). In itself this presents a problem because the mandate for the AWG-LCA is set to expire in early 2012. If that mandate is not renewed or a replacement body established the NWP and REDD+ will become the responsibility of the already overworked and underfunded Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Assistance (SBSTA) and progress will slow dramatically. At the COP16/CMP6 in Cancun it was agreed that adaptation and mitigation efforts would be taken up by the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Although called a fund the GCF is intended to act as a mechanism to connect people seeking both hard and soft technological solutions with people who can provide those solutions and donors who are prepared to fund those solutions. While the seekers will invariably be national governments the providers and donors can be national governments, private companies, private banks and charities so the majority of donations to the GCF will be things like reduced royalty rates on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) rather then cash.

After Cancun the plan was that the AWG-LCA would get the structure, board and trustees for the GCF sorted out in time for it to be opened at the COP17/CMP7 with a starting budget of US$30bn expected to rise to US$100bn by 2020. Unfortunately under the chairmanship of the United States the AWG-LCA failed miserably at this task which ground to a halt meaning that it arrived at the COP17/CMP7 only in a position to hold informal negotiations. Although I gather that some work has been done on the GCF as part of today's (11/12/11) announcement it has still fallen very far short of it's intended target.

As for furthering our knowledge of global warming/climate change and it's causes the matter wasn't even on the agenda. This is a shame because the task is actually a lot easier then it first seems. In terms of surface temperatures by which I mean everything up to the top of the troposphere the annex 1 parties already collect the necessary data as part of normal weather forecasting. The annex 2 parties either already have the capacity to collect and are already collecting the data or can easily get that capacity through the Technical Needs Assessment (TNA) mechanism. Obviously getting the United States to hand over the satellite data and getting China to hand over it's data before the US does is still going to be incredibly challenging. However it would certainly be possible for a body like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or SBSTA to put together a comprehensive surface temperature data set and publish it in time for the last pre-COP18/CMP8 meeting.

However I think the agreement at the COP17/CMP7 will actually make this task more difficult. Within the UNFCCC there are two distinct camps emerging; The EU and developing nations who are open to the idea that climate change could be caused by human activity and based on the available evidence think it is. Then there is the bloc containing the US, the Gulf states and Britain who for political and economic rather then scientific reasons will not even entertain the idea that human activity could be causing global warming and are treating the UNFCCC as a game by which they can extend their colonial control over developing nations. This second bloc is already going to come under significant pressure at the COP18/CMP8 because of the Durban deal. Putting even more pressure on them to disclose data that may well disprove their negotiating position could be enough to force them to withdraw from the process altogether making a global deal an impossibility.

So by doing the deal in Durban the UNFCCC seems to have set itself the task of going to Qatar and trying to convince a group of people of the need to take action on something they will flatly deny is taking place without the best evidence being available to convince them. I won't be holding my breath.




Edited at around 23:00 on 11/12/11 to add: A prime example of Britain's attempts to hijack the REDD+ negotiations to talk about the DRC actually took place in London on Saturday (10/12/11) night.

Along with other armed groups in the DRC Britain has supported Joesph Kabila the seemingly self-appointed President by helping him smuggle diamonds and other minerals out of the country via Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. In return Kabila arranged the DRC's first elections during the COP17/CMP7 and so obviously rigged the vote that it led to violent outcry both in the DRC and amongst Congolese ex-pats across the world.

In London a group of about 1000 of these ex-pats staged a peaceful protest in Whitehall. A group of around 20 black youths who you would assume were Congolese broke away from that demonstration and attacked a Christmas Choir concert being held in to raise money for the Macmillan cancer charity near Trafalgar Square leading to a mini-riot and 139 arrests. The international nature of the Macmillan brand coupled with the high profile of the location meant that rumours of this started swirling around the lengthy final session of the COP17/CMP7 but the virtual news black out meant that no-one could admit to knowing that it was going on and I only found out about it about four hours ago.

Mind you what delegates were doing in session almost 24 hours after the COP17/CMP7 officially ended is a mystery to me.

The United States Win COP17/CMP.

Some 36 hours after it was scheduled to end the COP17/CMP7 finally closed at around 08:00 GMT today (11/12/11) with some sort of deal being announced. The exact details of this deal won't be made public until around March of 2012. However from what I can gather it will see the European Union (EU) place it's own greenhouse gas emission targets within the legal framework of the Kyoto Protocol and establish a road map for other nations to do the same.

This deal will not meet the target of limiting a rise in global temperatures to 2C nor will it reverse global warming. What it has done though is create a clear division between two camps; The EU and developing nations who want to tackle the problem of global warming through a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol and nations like the US, the Gulf states and British Commonwealth who have no intention of doing anything about global warming and want the negotiation process to end.

This split will only become more pronounced as negotiations move to that graveyard of international negotiations Doha in Qatar for the COP18/CMP18 and the hope is they will collapse like the Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations did.

Thank You And Goodnight.

Lovely as the floor pillow sounds at around 04:30 on 10/12/11 I think a proper bed sounds better so I will see you in the morning where ever it may be.

Well at about 03;45 on 10/12/11 I Promised You Boobs

So here is Natale Portman's tits for a second time;



Did I mention how much I'm hating my copy of "Black Swan" from Amazon but enjoying my Dropkick Murphy's and my warm pillow on the floor.

Nope I'm Not Up to Snuff

Well not since about 02:45 on Saturday December 10th when I found this big warm pillow lying on the flatness of my floor

Black Flag!

Not so much an 1980's US punk band. More a way of life.

Anyway it's around 02:05 and the second bottle of wine is ending.

And because I can't find a way outside to have cigarette at around 20:10 I'm so going to bed.

No I've Decided I Prefer Cheques.

So if the old Chris Huhlne could remember how to scribble his name below a figure of around £2000 scan it in and upload through the usual mechanism I would be a happy man.

Until then though it turns out that the 1st session of the SBSTA ran to over three hour. So at 00:15 on 10/12/11 I've just opened the second bottle of wine, declared the COP18/CMP8 in Doha, Qatar to be a free alcohol zone and asked myself if it's wrong that the first time I saw the Argentina speaker the first thing I though was; Boobs.

So It Turns Out I Need a New Television For the Back Room.

Putting aside the fact it is the Notting Hill Housing Group's (NHHG) responsibility to pay for it along with that Amazon order I'm torn behind between one of your bog standard 18 inch LCD jobs or a wi-fi enabled flatscreen that would allow me to watch the opening plenary of the SBSTA while I was preparing dinner. Either way I think about US$2500 on Chris Huhne's UK Government credit card should cover it for now.

Anyway it's around 22:45 on Friday December 9th and you can say what you like but at least I'm a man of my word.

Hmmm Sheppard's Pie.

That's what I've been doing for the last couple of hours. Now while we all debate the difference between Shepperd's Pie and Cottage Pie I've got a feeling that the rest of this evening can only go down hill from here (17:20: 9/12/12).

The EU Deal Has Been Done.

Rather quickly and painlessly the European Union has today (9/12/11) ratified the October 27th agreement on the future of the Eurozone. Britain obviously vetoed the treaty so it has been ratified by accord which 23 members including all members of the Eurozone signed up to. Apart from Britain the only hold outs were Hungary and Sweden and the Czech Republic who want to consult their Parliaments. The Czech Republic will probably agree while Sweden is less likely too. Hungary's position though remains a complete mystery to me and something I will have to research.



Edited at around 11:10 on 9/12/11 to add:

As a former Soviet bloc country Hungary's recent history has been shaped by the Soviet occupation and their ruling Fidesz Party started life as liberation movement. Therefore they lack the depth of experience in the nuances of democratic politics so seem to have been sold on the idea that opposing the October 27th is somehow striking a blow for liberty.

Another Virginia Tech Shooting.

At around 18:20GMT the United States is currently gripped with reports of a gunman on the loose at the campus of Virginia Tech University. There are currently no reports of casualties and the police are said to be engaged with the suspect if theyhave yet to get him fully under control.

Back in 2007 there was a mass shooting at Virginia Tech carried out by what can only be termed a mentally disturbed individual. This is the cover story that the US is still running for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. So this latest incident is a follow on from the New York/Long Island serial killer and the Pearl Harbour anniversary. Basically the US is asking everyone at the COP17/CMP and in the EU what they know about the Giffords shooting while trying to make them paranoid by bringing up the issue of mental health problems.

COP17/CMP: The Final Days

As the COP17/CMP Summits enter their last two days I am barely up to date with the work of the SBSTA/SBI and they concluded last Saturday (3/12/11). Therefore I think it is best that I stay out of the way as far as possible and save my opinions for a sort of post-summit review. I will though take the opportunity to criticise Venezuela, Bolivia and associates.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is probably the one thing that is salvageable from this summit although at this point even that may require a miracle. While there are parties that prepared to be obstructive for the sake of being obstructive there is a much larger majority that is legitimately worried about the fund being mis-used and defrauded. In order to assure these parties the GCF will require a trustee who is held in the highest regard. At present the World Bank is the only organisation that fulfills that criteria so now is not the time for a rallying call against the evils of global capitalism especially as getting the GCF operational would really p*ss off the United States. However it is not worth setting up a hollow organisation in order to grab headlines.

That;s Ominous For the EU Summit.

On Friday (9/12/11) the leaders of all 27 members of the European Union will meet to discuss the October 27th deal on the future of the Eurozone. It is widely believed that this will result in the further integration of the 17 members who use the Euro as their currency leaving the 10 members who don't on the periphery of the decision making process. For most of the week British Prime Minister David Cameron has been loudly telling anyone who will listen that Britain simply will not allow this happen.

Tonight (7/12/11) in the European Champions League football competition Manchester United (Britain in football code) were knocked out of the competition at the group stage. They will now play in the Europa league which is very much seen as the second tier competition.

Psych!

Today December 7th 2011 the United States will be commemorating the 70th anniversary of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour that brought the US into the second world war. This will obviously raise lots of questions and doubts surrounding the issue of surprise attacks.

It does though answer the question about the New York/Long Island serial killer. It wasn't an apology.

Today's Bombings in Afghanistan.

On the second day (6/12/11) of the over 100 participant conference of the future of Afghanistan held in Bonn, Germany two bombs exploded in Afghanistan killing at least 58 Shias on their holy day of Ashura. The Sunni group that has claimed responsibility for the attack - Lashkar-e-Jhagnvi have only previously operated in Pakistan. So the attack seems to be the US raising the prospect of Iraqi style sectarian violence in Afghanistan for discussion and attempting to garner support against Pakistan.


Oh and I got back from the pub at around 20:00 on Tuesday December 6th with no problems to report.

Russia's Election.

On Sunday December 4th (4/12/11) Russia held an election for it's Parliament or Duma. Although it was never in doubt that Vladamir Putin's United Russia party would win people were interested to see by how much in an effort to gauge the level of support for Putin's next Presidential bid. The answer coming from the streets seems to be "not much." Fuelled by accusations of vote rigging and some opposition parties boycotting the poll Moscow has seen some of it's largest street demonstrations since the fall of the USSR with over 3o0 arrests and the army on the streets in force.

The Israelis are actually being quite open about the fact they have a significant role in this mini Russian Uprising in order to put pressure on the Russian government over it's support for Iran. The fact they're being so open about it means that Israel is also trying to gauge the level of international support for their similar actions in Iran, Egypt and Syria.

While it is reassuring that Israel is prepared to examine and debate it's conduct in the wider middle east of the past year using Russia as an example to drive this discussion forward presents it's own set of problems. While Vladamir Putin is no where near as bad as the dodgy middle eastern dictators who've been having a hard time of it recently he presides over a Russia that is far from a perfect democracy. There are significant problems with corruption and civil liberties specifically the suppression of political dissent and the media. However as time has passed there has been a growing movement within Russia which recognises that these things are problems that are holding the whole country back and need to be changed. The worry though is that by showing it's hand in this way there is a risk that this movement will collapse in on itself making it more difficult for those changes to be made. The absolute worst case scenario is that Russia ends up more like Syria where a reform minded President has been prevented from undertaking that reform by constant international interference.