There are too many stupid people in this world

So today is Nov 5, the day we celebrate Guy Faulkes attempting to blow up parliament and kill the king. Seems like a good reason to celebrate to me. Or do we celebrate the fact that he failed? It was pointed out to me recently that current legislation forbids the glorification of terrorism, which makes me think that bonfire parties may in fact be illegal. It's also my mother-in-law's birthday, which is not so widely celebrated.

We spent most of the weekend in Devon with the parents. They have a garden about the size of Belgium, so we took a few fireworks down there hoping that Dumpy would like the spectacle. He didn't, which means we have to wait until he's asleep tonight and try again in our own garden, which is about the size of the average lavatory cubicle and currently full of the old kitchen wreckage.

I don't think I've written anything yet about the country's most senior policeman, Sir Ian Blair, who was essentially held responsible for the almighty cock-up which resulted in the death of an innocent man at Stockwell Tube station in 2005. Armed officers shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes in a botched attempt to apprehend a terrorist suspect who wasn't' even there. The force was made to look utterly incompetent. Blair should resign just for that, but I think the real problem was the way that he allowed false information to proliferate for many days after the event in an attempt to divert attention away from his staff's mistakes. This was not even mentioned in court as far as I know. Blair's excuse was, "I didn't know the wrong man had been shot for 24 hours". I don't believe that, and even if it's true, he should resign for because he doesn't appear to know what his staff are doing.

I dislike Ian Blair only slightly less than I dislike like the former Met chief Lord John Stevens. Blair is dishonest, makes huge mistakes, and doesn't take responsibility for them. John Stevens is a scheming liar, a power mad gun-nut, and his only redeeming feature is the fact that he publicly trashed David Blunket, who is only just beneath Tony Blair on my list of people who should be executed.

I got my Radio Amateur licence. I can now operate equipment over a range of frequencies with an output of up to 400 Watts. I'm thinking of building a repeater and landing it on the moon. The licence appears to be 23 pages. I have no idea what it's all about. I'm going to read it some time.

There is an amazing piece of misleading journalism on the BBC website today. A poll has been conducted involving 22,000 people in 21 countries. Questions were asked about how to solve climate change problems. The BBC report leads with, "Most people are ready to make personal sacrifices to address climate change, according to a BBC poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries. Four out of five people indicated they were prepared to change their lifestyle..."

In fact that four out of five people did not in any way state that they were prepared to make a single sacrifice. What they said was that individuals (not necessarily themselves) would definitely or probably have to make lifestyle changes to reduce the amount of climate-changing gases they produce. In other words, 83% of people agreed that greenhouse emissions would stay the same unless we use less dirty fuel. When it came to the question of whether people were prepared to pay more tax on dirty fuel, the number of people that agreed plummeted, which is a much better indication of what people are actually prepared to do.

Got a really weird note from someone on this entry. NO idea what the loony is talking about. I think it probably goes some way to confirming what I've known for a long time anyway. Nostradamus was all horse shit. And ont hat note, I think I'll retire for the night.