I am Pornacus

This amazing piece of illiberal bullshit has already been beaten within an inch of its sorry life here, here, here, here and here.

So I won't go over the ins and outs, as it were (hur hur), or depriving adults of the right to look at whatever they want to look at, in the name of thinking of the cheeeeldren.

However, the question of what will constitute porn is an interesting one, and it occured to me that a tricky challenge for the Government would be if every website were to include one "pornographic" image, starting with bloggers putting one on their blog. It strikes me that there would be some interesting freedom of speech issues created, not that the Government give a shit about that.

Hence, the title of the post. I had "I am Spurtacus" initially but Pornacus sounds to me like he could have been around in Roman times, selling carved images of "Senators' Wives" from inside his toga.

So here it is. Pretty mild really, but I suspect it would be enough.

Does this now categorise my site as adult?

Just fuck off. Seriously.

The Coalition really are just another bunch of nanny-state wankers aren't they. I was cynical about them, but I thought we might see some small changes. But no. Now we have "nudging", because some twat has read a book and decided this is how to run a Government. So today we have this:

How much for this initiative, you may ask? 250 million pounds. £250'000'000. A drop in the ocean compared to the monumental debt mountain of a trillion (can't be arsed to write it out, it's a lot of zeroes), but still a lot of wonga.

Andrew Lansley, who is rapidly becoming the Comical Ali of the Coalition (although it actually isn't that funny), is also expected to

...announce moves to stop sales of cheap alcohol, to launch a consultation on the introduction on plain tobacco packaging, and draw up measures to encourage businesses to do more to allow women to breastfeed at work.

So, the parlous state of the UK economy will be fixed by making booze more expensive, making smoking even cooler (and these more popular) and finally making women unemployable and/or small businesses bankrupt.

A source said: “The Government's tack on public health will switch from 'nannying' under Labour to 'nudging' under the Coalition, with the idea of encouraging people to make healthy decisions on their own without lots of regulation and pressure from Whitehall.

So, it's the same, just a slightly different and arguably more pernicious method. At least Labour didn't ever really try to hide their desperation to control every part of your lives. The Coalitiamong however think people are so stupid that they can be conned into changing behaviour. They're probably right, but there is nothing remotely Conservative about this coalition, and truly nothing Libertarian, despite having an "instinctive libertarian" at its head.

The worst thing is, 98% of people don't give a shit

JuliaM got there first with the first bit of my post, which was Britain needing a reboot. Yes it does, and badly, although I'm not sure she quite expressed the reasons I see for this (although I agree entirely with hers).

The stories she catalogues are just a tiny slice of the things that occur daily in the UK, and the worst and most egregious is of course the extraordinary decision to find Paul Chambers guilty.

This has been covered by people that have more closely followed the story, see here and here.

But what really fucks me off is, no-one gives a shit. No-one. It's only had any coverage at all because of the sterling work of Jack of Kent (amongst others tbf), and I know if I mention this to anyone I'll get a blank look. Because people do not understand the wider implications.

Although I have no plans to, I do understand the motivations of those bloggers that have recently quit. I do see how shouting in what feels like a massive vacuum becomes tedious.

So, what to do? Getting people to care is not easy, but this seems to be a good start. The reviewer is a bit of a twat clearly, but getting a documentary about the real scale of wasted money and UK debt might kickstart something. If people can stop seeing the Government as a cross between nanny and all-knowing uncle, and instead as a thieving, parasitical waste of space and money, maybe it will all come tumbling down and we can have some sort of a reboot, even just a political one.

Rearranging the deckchairs or business as usual?

This, kindly pointed out by Obo, is amazing on several levels. First and most obviously, do they really think one single person will change one thing they do during the World Cup based on this advice? Not only is it joyless bollocks, but it will be so utterly ignored it'll make my Religious Studies teacher seem like Mr. Chips.

Beyond that though, are these people just not even getting the hint a tiny bit? Maybe tone down some of this nonsense. Or are their hands so firmly over their ears, and their "la-la-la I can't hearrrrrr youuuuuuu" so loud that they really do not realise the end is nigh?

Or more worryingly, is DK right, and is all this Great Repeal stuff just a Great Repeal Swindle? I really hope not, but it is interesting that these organisations feel they can just push on with no concessions to the apparent new climate of no-more-quangoes.