Saturday 30 June 2012

Friday 8 June 2012

On Free Markets (you listening Solicitor's Union and Barrister's Guild!)

"Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity." Walter Block

Thursday 7 June 2012

Go with your gut (and when it's as big as mine you might as well use it for something other than getting through a Glaswegian Winter)

That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
Stephen Colbert White House Correspondents Dinner 2006


Monday 28 May 2012

On Liberty

"It is a misfortune that we offer the guilty the chance of impunity, but it is not nearly as bad as delivering the good man to the vengeance of the oppressor."

Benjamin Constant on the presumption of innocence

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Bioshock Style

Nanny Bill in Queens Speach

The Nanny Bill is being seen as the centre piece of the Queen's Speech intended to win back support from voters.


The Government will announce that it is pressing ahead with many of the demented pleas for attention in a report for Mr Cameron by Reg Bailey, chief executive of the Mothers’ Union. When asked why a Tory would give a flying fcuk about what a Union wants Mr Cameron sort of scowled a bit and waved his hands before asking if we liked his tie.

Reg's review arbirarily decided that Britain is increasingly a society full of sexualised imagery, where families do not feel in control. Reg later defined Families as 'middle class mothers with arts degrees who used to do non jobs at the council but have since been cut and who the coalition might want to win back with some half arsed off the hoof policy making'

Mr Cameron said in an interview with the Daily Mail: ‘Parents want to have their children properly protected and really can't be fcuked to do it themselves. They want children to have a childhood, so long as it does not involve playing outside where the peados will get them, they want to treat children like children and for some reason apparently can't because of that Rhianna dancing around"

‘Reg Bailey has done good work right across the board, whether it’s videos, video games, music videos, street adverts or video adverts just trying to turn the dial back a bit on over-sexualisation and allowing children to behave like children.’

When queried whether 'across the board' seemed to include a suspicously high reference to things which were Videos Mr Cameron launched into a tirade about how not all videos are the same just because the come up on the already apparently regulated TV.

On Fat Jackie Smith's current attempt to get back into the headlines, internet porn, Mr Cameron said he wanted ‘literally the first stupid idea that sounds like it would work’ to protect children. ‘The experts have been telling us that prompting parents is the best way to get a result, because active choices make people think. But if there’s a chance of some sort of half arsed central censorship quick fix then I think that’s worth consulting on too. It may be the very best is a combination of firewalls and our snooping law, which we used to oppose but then renamed and are determined to bring in, also Fcuk having the House of Lords elected, how the hell would we get this shitt through 2 elected chambers!.’

(I'm not even making this up, much, scroll down to 'an end to the tidal wave of filth' tucked away on the fcuking Mail's site here)

Monday 23 April 2012

Tits are awesome


On Success

The 3 requisits for success. Ruthless,relentless,remorseless
Admiral John Arbuthnot "Jackie" Fisher


Wednesday 18 April 2012

I have fallen off the wagon


DON'T JUDGE ME! Microwave burgers are sooooo horrible that you just can't stop eating them, although even I think the new sauce is shit, go back to glow in the dark red sauce!

Friday 13 April 2012

On Career building

"Instead of the question, “What must I do for my employer?” substitute “What can I do?” Faithful and conscientious discharge of the duties assigned you is all very well, but the verdict in such cases generally is that you perform your present duties so well that you had better continue performing them. Now, young gentlemen, this will not do. It will not do for the coming partners. There must be something beyond this….The rising man must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department. HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION…"


Andrew Carnegie

Thursday 12 April 2012

On Liberty / Free Markets

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.



Milton Friedman

Wednesday 11 April 2012

You madam, are some bad candy

Dear Client

I haven't really thought this through, I mean, there is a charge, but I meant "I realise you were expecting mediocre but there is no extra charge for the awesome"....... science damn you kung fu panda

When life is getting you down and people are just being dicks...

and you're tired and you feel like you have a mountain to climb and more importantly when people are eroding your will  by giving you dumb idiot advice like "talk about your feelings" or "go for a walk up a hill" or "stop drinking pints of whisky with breakfast" then what you need to remember is WHAT WOULD GODZILLA DO!
Because the answer is really simple, and helps in any walk of life, being a doctor or an admiral or indeed a litigator, since everybody knows that what Godzilla would do is GO ABSOLUTELY NUCLEAR POWERED BATSHIT MENTAL FLATTENING EVERYTHING IN HIS PATH EVERYTHING, WHAT'S THAT? YOU BROUGHT AN ARMY? GODZILLA DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ARMIES! NUCLEAR DEATH BREATH AND STOMP STOMP STOMP! WHAT'S THAT, ARMY OF SPACE MONSTERS? SHOOOOTOOM NUCLEAR DEATH BREATH! SLAP WITH THE TAIL! DEATH AN APOCALYPSE ALL ROUND! REASON? WHAT THE FUCK! YOU TRY TO REASON WITH GODZILLA! KRAKAKPOW! STOMP STOMP STOMP. GODZILLA DOESN'T CARE, HE'S ON A RAMPAGE AND HE'S GOING TO DO WHAT HE WANTS!


Take a leaf out of Godzilla's book, see if your enemies don't fall*.

*also, they are going to fall

Wednesday 28 March 2012

On Litigation

“You worked hard, you got your law degree, so make something happen with it.”
Rachel Rodgers, Solo Practitioner, 29

Monday 19 March 2012

Chris Brown Saves The City...................., Fighting Female Supervillains

Tits are awesome

On Liberty - (Bioshock style)

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism. Whenever anyone wants others to do their work, they call upon their altruism. Never mind your own needs, they say, think of the needs of… of whoever. The state. The poor. Of the army, of the king, of God! The list goes on and on. How many catastrophes were launched with the words “think of yourself”? It’s the “king and country” crowd who light the torch of destruction. It is this great inversion, this ancient lie, which has chained humanity to an endless cycle of guilt and failure. 
Andrew Ryan - Rapture

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Freedom Quotes

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
Robert A. Heinlein 

Tits are awesome

Kerist it's hard to find a Japanese girl who has tits in the first place but then you need to find one that doesn't look uncomfortably young too!

On Litigation

If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve.
Carl Von Clausewitz

Wednesday 29 February 2012

Jimmy Carr & Frankie Boyle at the Apple Store part 1 of 4

On This Day

- March 2 (Canada) -- Canadians believe that we should lose a day instead of gaining an extra one.
  • 0000 - 29th of Feb is invented to piss off kids worldwide who were born on this day, just for the hell of it.
  • 1818 - February 30 had been bombed by Spongebob. Now it doesn't exist anymore.
  • 1900 - The whole world panics since the day seems to be missing.
  • 1948 - Ken Foree is born
  • 1948 - Canadians decide to mock Americans by reducing the number of days to 364. This leads to the American-Canadian War.
  • 1966 - Al Gore invents the letter "B"
  • 1978 - Ken Foree rises to superstardom in Dawn of the Dead at the age of 30 and then realizes he's only 7 years old.
  • 1996 - Ken Foree punishes Kenan for forgetting his birthday again.
  • 1999 - The Power Rangers got trapped in a large pizza and the trapped the pizza in themselves.
  • 2000 - Ken Foree's Birthday is declared a national holiday; the uproar caused by this forces Kenan and Kel into cancellation.
  • 2004 - George W. Bush postpones the next Febuary 29th until 2008, France goes on strike.
  • 2006 - President Kerry realizes a) that he did not win the election, and b) that today is actually March 1.
  • 2008 - George W. Bush postpones the next Febuary 29th until 2012.
  • 2008 - Uncyclopedia celebrates its first leap year. Awww, and I remember when it was just a little tyke in diapers...
  • 2009 - President Clinton travels to Canada and can't figure out what day it is... and to make it worse, it's NOT a leap year!!!
  • 2012 - 40-yr-old kid celebrates his 10th birthday.

Sunday 12 February 2012

Greater Manchester police raise Jamie Oliver alert level to Severe



A GMP spokesman said: “The Jamie Oliver threat level to Manchester is severe, which means that an appearance by Oliver in the area is almost certain.”
“We have increased security within the city centre and we’re working with any bars, restaurants, supermarkets and other locations known to be favoured by Oliver to ensure that their staff remain vigilant.”
“As a precaution, however, we’ve closed all delis and organic food suppliers in the Manchester area for the next seven days. This is standard procedure following credible information that pertains to an Oliver appearance.”

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Bonuses are Bollocks, stop wasting your time paying them

Money is not an issue once you earn enough to be comfortable......or rather it becomes a different issue.

It's not money to them (them being footballers, bankers, CEOs or fcuking wonks) anymore. It's a social marker. It will always drive ever upwards as the individuals in high-paying industries seek to outdo each other. We know where this goes: football clubs that are ready to collapse despite being at the peak of their international popularity. A banking sector which took unacceptably risks and brought the world economy to its knees.

The research all points away from financial incentives. Instead it suggests that employees need three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. The need to self-improve is what motivates really talented people. If you don't believe that, take a look at the free-to-use software made by engineers. Look at the success of Linux, or Apache, or Wikipedia, as highly-skilled workers use their free time to make something which is then given away.

Bonuses do not improve performance. They worsen it. The banking sector's track record is the proof which defeats its own arguments.
and Performance and Productivity are what we need if we are to compete with the eastern economies determined to drag themselves out of the mire their rotten backwards ways got them into back in the 1700s.

Politics.co.uk

Friday 3 February 2012

On Freedom

When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imagined, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface – but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in its course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe.
Thomas Erskine

On Facebook

"It's almost as if Facebook has discovered lumps of coal for the first time, discovered that this new thing is highly combustible in a predictable way - and decided to set up in the snowman-dressing business. They're perfect for the eyes."
Andrew Orlowski - El Reg

Wednesday 18 January 2012

US SOPA CRIPPLE FIGHT

There is nothing more headburstingly infuriating than fanatical nutters from both ends of the spectrum going at to an out hysteria each other. This is well documented in many places, Rangers v Celtic, Jews v Palestinians, Daily Mail v Any Person with a soul or who has at least briefly come into contact with someone who has a soul. These all pale into merely toddlerish spats however when you get Copyright Fascists v Copyright Deniers.

It is difficult to dislike the Copyright denier, the cry of "the internet is a free utopian paradise that can only function with the application of rehashed 20 year old ideas and which may only derive income from data mining / adverts" sounds quite pleasant and cuddly, granted it's similar to the Neo Greenie argument that everyone on the western world should turn the clock back to the 1600s and live in soul (seems to be a lot of 'soul' in the post, Ha!) crushing poverty / imminent danger of starvation. This is even after watching how well that has worked out in low carbon Africa.

In a similar vein the Copyright fascist garners sympathy when some unwashed indie girl who you just know is pure filth after 2 Bacardi breezers is wheeled out to cry about how she can't make millions as a musical 'artist'. People might look at the £10.00 for an album which they will listen to once before stuffing the single on the mp3 player and think "bit of a rip off for a chunk of plastic and 90 minutes warbling" but suppose I'd rather have the warbling than fcuking adverts for bathroom tiles every ten minutes.

Where both sides go wrong is where they spack out and refuse to find any common group. The Copyright fascist demands that the state enact laws to block web access to anyone who downloads material in breech of copyright, no due process or expense of enforcement (some expense of enforcement is desirable to encourage innovation and not just sitting on what you have).

The Copyright denier is just as bad however in taking the stance that a person should be unable, or prohibited by monumental expense from protecting their (intellectual) property and that anything floating about on the internet is somehow collectively shared by its very existence. They wheedle on about how great things like Google are, never noticing that the very ‘web blocking’ they are railing against is Google’s bluddy business! It is a giant search engine and it decides what shows up on the first 2 pages (as if anyone goes 3 pages deep) thus deciding what you see. It is not transparent and it is not democratic just because it puts up quirky pictures.


The saddest thing about this is that the whole bluddy cavalcade will continue, the likes of SOPA (we actually have worse on the statute books in the UK but it’s not active…… yet) will roll back round again (just what we fcuking need more ridiculously anacronystic American acts!) until either web blocking is wholesale or both sides reach an agreement that benefits rights holders and consumers and 30 year old programmers who behave like 9 year olds.

Friday 6 January 2012

Certainly true of my office

God help England if she had no Scots to think for her!
  • George Bernard Shaw The Apple Cart (1928), Act II

From the Lady Sack

2012 Predictions

The U.S. government is selling $30 billion worth of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

It's part of a new initiative called, 'Operation Regret This In Five Years Time'

Thursday 5 January 2012

5 Things Clients Want.

Pinched form What about Clients (1. it does not need 'Savy' & 2 Bums to Paris! Aul Alliance or not!)

1. Quarterbacks. Not mechanics and generic dweebs.

2. Value. Not reduced rates.

3. Verve. Not risk aversion.

4. Straight Talk. Not lawyer-accountant wank-speak.

5. Sane Writing. No typing with a lisp, either.

Now, if you think Hull and his minions are broadly just nutters then, well you are half right but bear this in mind. On a recent walk round of the office a client spotted his 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers which I have pinned to the wall and sagely agreed with the same. He stopped short of a pat on the head which is fortunate because that would have been quite demeaning and I'd have never heard the end of it. The point is you could do far worse for new year's resolutions (what's that SRA has started processes ABS applications too?) than getting a routine fix of WAC.

Sunday 1 January 2012

On Christmas TV specials

Watched Eastenders tonight it really cheered me up, gonna make a night of happyness and go on psychoviolenthammermurdergore.com now