Daily archives: December 6, 2013


This government is so bad I don’t even know where to start

I want to direct some justified anger at the government. They seem intent on destroying everything good about this country and leaving behind a wasteland which only benefits billionaire tax evaders, incompetent bankers and Paul Dacre.

The problem is, almost every week they do something else appalling and the anger gets diverted and redirected. It’s almost as if their survival policy is to keep wrong-footing decent people by throwing up a smokescreen of ever changing petty, sociopathic, shit ideas so that we’re too confused about what we should be aiming at. Anyone who tried to confront Cameron, Osborne or Clegg with even a small list of the things they’re fucking up would run the risk of looking like a babbling, incoherent weirdo.

Having said all that, here’s another five reasons to hate these scum.

It used to be that when politicians wanted to bury bad news they’d orchestrate its release to time with a distracting event. Seeing Iain Duncan Smith publicly criticized for wasting at least £140 million of public money over Universal Credit at the start of this month, it struck me how we’ve slowly reached another level. “Unmitigated disaster”? “Alarmingly weak”? These words were used to describe Universal Credit but could easily have been levelled at a number of largely unreported changes to the benefit system. Nowadays, bad news is buried by even worse news. The sheer volume of inefficient and unethical changes to social security this Government has enacted means some of it doesn’t even get noticed. Which, for a set of politicians hacking at vulnerable people’s support systems, is worryingly convenient.

So, here’s five benefit changes the government doesn’t want you to know about.

5 benefit changes the government don't want you to know about.


Mega delusional: The curse of the megaproject – opinion – 02 December 2013 – New Scientist

Worse still, what we often have is an inverted Darwinism: the survival of the unfittest. It is not the best projects that get chosen, but those that look best on paper. And these are the ones with the largest cost underestimates and benefit overestimates. They are disasters waiting to happen.

It has become increasingly clear that when megaprojects go wrong they are like the bull in the china shop: they can damage national economies. It has become similarly clear to many involved that something needs to be done.

Mega delusional: The curse of the megaproject – opinion – 02 December 2013 – New Scientist.