Is it 1979 already? II

I also hate the public sector. A lot.

And no, I'm not having any of this shite about them doing "essential, difficult" jobs, blah blah blah. My old man is a truck driver - he works seemingly thousand of hours doing a boring, tough and occasionally dangerous job, but his ilk don't get simpering tributes from the BBC and the trade unions. That too is an essential job, because the economy depends upon stuff being transported across the country.

How about fisherman? Now that looks bloody tough. And not only because I'm not quite as impervious to seasickness as I like to think. Cold, wet, dangerous, decidedly unprofitable - and that's before the evil empire get going. Also essential, because food is somewhat important, and fish is tasty.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Somehow, I doubt that most public sector workers, sat doing pointless non-jobs in comfortable offices with massive pensions (all paid by us), disproportionately rising pay, a culture that rewards skiving - and the fuckers still complain!

There are some jobs in the world I'd dearly love to do, and would take a pay cut for. Being a professional footballer would be nice; a cricketer even more so. I still haven't quite given up on being an astronaut. But how good would it be to be in charge of deciding the size and cost of the public sector?

It'd be a bloodbath. An abattoir. Across the country, lazy bastards would be turfed out of their non-jobs and told to bloody well go and get a proper job like the rest of us. Whole industries that suck gazillions of pounds of money from the productive (private) sector into the unproductive (public) sector would be closed down. The squeals of pain from the unions, the BBC, the Guardian would provoke near-orgasmic joy. I'd love it. It'd be less a job, and more a calling...

Brrr....

The BBC, a fully paid up member of the anthropogenic global warming fantasy, sulkily reports:

This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.

Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.

But...how can this be? Everyone knows that the world is on the very precipice of a fiery death. At some conveniently indeterminate yet IMMINENT point in the future.

"The big thing that's been happening this year is La Nina, which has lowered global temperatures somewhat," said John Kennedy, climate monitoring and research scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre.

Aah, I knew there'd be a simple answer. And not an admission of "err, actually it turns out we're a bunch of total fucking idiots who need to do some serious apologising and backtracking" right now." Although these people really need to start considering that now's the best time to fess up, because the longer this goes on the more ugly and embarrassing will be their eventual retraction.

Go read the rest of the article - it reads a bit like a kid being caught red-handed scrumping apples tearfully spluttering "but, but, but, but..."

Some auntie

I hate the BBC.

Most people don't; it continues to enjoy a fuzzy sense of admiration from many, and enduringly misguided loyalty.

I have absolutely no idea why. Imagine hearing of an equivalent elsewhere: a left-wing state broadcaster employing 28,000 people, possessing an annual budget of £4bn, funded by a compulsory television tax. You'd snort with derision. Yet here, we speak warmly of "Auntie Beeb".

Its bias is so obvious it has even been forced to admit it. In spite of the principles of public broadcasting, it engages in the same mad dash for ratings that makes ITV wholly unwatchable. The crucial difference is that we don't pay for ITV to exist - it pays for itself, and while its schedule is filled with abysmal lowest-common-denominator rubbish, at least it does this off its own back.

So should the BBC be privatised?

Why not. Just to see what happens. Just to see how this fat, lazy, complacent organisation copes when exposed to the real world. Just to see how many of those 28,500 staff it actually does need. Just to see whether £4bn is the actual cost of its operations. Just to see the wails of horror from its pro-EU, AGW-fantasy-propagating, Tories-are-all-evil correspondents.

And best of all, having spent so long rubbishing the Conservatives, their backs are up. It's too late to back-track and make amends. Any right-wing party worth its salt should be opposed to a monumental waste of public money such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, let alone one that so palpably hates it. Revenge is in the air, and the Tories are likely to have a long time in office in which to settle a few scores.

This would be a great place to start.