Category: Gummint

Added Snoopery?

Government Thugs, Surveillance Society, Two-Minute Hate

I started reading this article in the DM  more for entertainment value than any other reason:

I do not have a TV license as I only watch Netflix and Amazon. However, I’ve heard I will now need to buy a license. Is this true?

I know, I know:  the premise of the question is puzzling to my Murkin Readers, in that the very concept of a “TV license” is unfamiliar not to say abhorrent.  But leaving that aside for the moment, I found my amusement turning into something else altogether as I started reading the answer:

The general rule is that under UK law you need to have a current TV license if you, or anyone within your house, flat or premises, watches live television on any channel or service, record television programs as they are being broadcast live or watch anything on BBC iPlayer.

So when you tune in to watch ‘on demand’ television, such as Netflix, Amazon and other similar streaming services, no TV license is needed.

This is because here you are not watching ‘live’ programs – i.e. shows that are being broadcast when you watch or record them but, instead, choosing from a catalogue of options.

So far. so good (well no, not at all good, but whatever).  Here’s where I started to feel a familiar itch in the old trigger finger:

What you have heard about relates to Netflix, the US streaming giant which has 17.1 million UK subscribers and has launched a new service where it broadcasts ‘live’ events – for example the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match being broadcast on Friday.

This is therefore ‘live’ television, meaning if you watch this, or any other Netflix live event, as it is broadcast, or even if you record it to watch later, you fall squarely into the territory of needing a TV license.

To clarify, you can continue to watch Netflix without a TV license if you chose not to watch the live events.

Which begs  raises the question:  how EXACTLY does the BBC licensing Stasi know whether you’re watching a movie or a live show?

It seems quite a simple deduction that that the answer is twofold:  either Netflix is sharing the viewing choices of the subscribers with the BBC, or the BBC is able somehow to monitor the channel feed, whether terrestrial or wireless.  Either answer is fucking terrible.

I should point out that the only way the BBC can enforce this ridiculous license fee nonsense is because Brits are largely disarmed.  If some Lizenzinspektor  came to the average Texan’s door and started with the strong-arm bullshit, there’d soon be murders.

And just so we know what this is all about:

The standard TV licence now costs £169.50 per year.  If you are required to have a license but fail to buy one, you risk being fined up to £1,000, plus any legal costs and compensation you may be ordered to pay. 

Let’s hear it for the Surveillance Society.

Leaving Their Market Behind

Bureaucracy, Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising, Technology

In his latest video, Harry Metcalfe takes aim at supercars — or to be more specific, their manufacturers — and their ballooning love affair with technology.

Now Harry lives in a different world from pretty much 99.99% of the rest of the world, because the market for the insanely-priced supercars is absolutely minuscule;  and his point is that the market is shrinking still more.

I don’t care about any of that, and I’d bet good money that pretty much none of my Readers could give a rat’s ass about it either, for all sorts of reasons:

  • we couldn’t afford the frigging cars even with a decent-sized lottery win;
  • even if we could, we have too much common sense to spend that amount of money on an asset that depreciates, on average, about 50% per annum, regardless of how many miles you drive the thing;
  • and lastly, we all shrink from the Nanny Technology that takes away from the pure enjoyment of driving (not to mention the intrusive data harvesting and so on, which I’ve ranted about before ad nauseam).

I’m not even going to talk about how fugly all these new super/hypercars look, because that’s also a frequent target for my rants on these pages.

Lest you couldn’t be bothered to spend half an hour in Harry’s company, let me illustrate his point about car depreciation by looking at a car we all know about:  the Bentley Continental GT convertible (GTC, for the cognoscenti ).  Here is the 2024 model, with its 4.0L V8:

I have to say, by the way, that it looks absolutely gorgeous:  very definitely a worthy successor to the 1930s “Blower” “Speed Six” Bentley which won Le Mans several times.  It’s price, however, does not look absolutely gorgeous:  $340,000 with only a few adornments.

Which is bad enough.  Now let’s look at its second-hand value.  Here’s a 2015 GTC:

Looks more like a limo than the 2024 model, but essentially it’s the same car (same engine, same luxury interior, etc. etc.) but with… 15,000 miles on the odometer (about 1,500 miles per annum of ownership).  Its price:  $90,000 (!!!).

All sorts of things come to mind, most of them unprintable anywhere except perhaps on this website.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  there is no justification — none — that can justify the prices of these upscale cars (and of the supercars we will not speak because Ferrari and the other thieves only make a few of them each year, thus ensuring their consistent “value proposition” — read:  snob appeal for the terminally-insecure rich).

Of course, the thieves (and their sycophantic customers) will cry out that it’s all the new  whizz-bang technology (“All hail Technology!!!”) that makes their cost of manufacture rocket into the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, as Metcalfe points out in his video, more and more people are looking at all that technology, what’s involved and how much money (not to mention weight) that it adds to the car, and are saying, “Eeeeehhhh I don’t think so, Luigi.”

Which, by the way, might account for this atrocity:

Looks like the More Money Than Sense crowd are taking the $340 grand they would have dropped on a new jazzed-up Bentley, and instead splurging it on a rebuilt version of Ferrari’s entry-level model of the 1970s.

At least the Dino is bereft of anything that could remotely resemble a micochip.

There is a companion piece to this post:  it’ll appear next week.

It’s Not Just Squirrels

Government Thugs, Resistance

I kinda missed the story of Peanut The Squirrel because, as a rule, I’m not that enthralled by stories about rodents unless there are air- and/or .22 rifles involved.

But basically, for those who are like me, the story goes that a much-loved pet squirrel with an Internet following (!) was slaughtered as a result of some dubious Gummint raid on private property somewhere in (duh) New York.

Like I said:  tragic, but not of great interest to me other than providing yet another example of why a few random local Gummint employees should, as a rule, be whipped in the town square on a monthly basis by voters, just to remind them of whom they actually are supposed to serve and to stop them getting too big for their boots.

This story, however, is quite different:

America’s famously private Amish people are unreachable by phone or email and refuse to have TVs in their homes.  But that didn’t stop members of the conservative Christian group turning out on polling day in a trend that appears to have helped Donald Trump win Pennsylvania.

What sparked the voting rush? Government agents had stormed a local farm early in the year in a row over unpasteurized milk that left the Amish community absolutely enraged. 

Pennsylvania’s traditionally private Amish community, which some estimate numbers around 100,000, then registered to vote in ‘unprecedented numbers’.  Experts have said that the movement could won Mr Trump tens of thousands of new votes in the crucial swing state. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided Amos Miller’s farm on January 4, sparking outrage among the state’s Amish population.

“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate’,” the source said. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

Trump’s winning margin in Pennsylvania was about 130,000 votes, by the way.

As much as I view the above story with satisfaction, on balance I think I still prefer the “monthly flogging” idea.

My favorite comment on the Amish story, however, was from the God-Emperor-elect himself:

“Imagine what law enforcement could accomplish if they went after members of elite pedophile rings rather than farmers selling to their neighbors??”

Half-Measures

Anti-Gun Nannies, Rights, The Gun Thing

Here’s one that had me cackling like the Bitch Herself:

Kamala Harris Claims, Without Evidence, that Trump Will Take Away Black Men’s 2nd Amendment Rights

…as opposed to what she wants to do — and has stated publicly that she wants to do it — which is to take away everybody’s 2nd Amendment Rights.

Her polls must have been telling her that she has no support among Black men that she has to resort to this transparent ploy — not that she deserves support, from anyone.

I always thought that the Democrats had plumbed the bottom of the barrel with the inept and inexperienced Barack Obama as their presidential nominee;  but now I see that compared to Heels-Up Harris, he was actually in the bottom third.

Reverse Jesus

Food & Drink, Gummint, Taxes and Theft

The Hollies once released a song called “King Midas In Reverse”, in which the hapless subject of the work was afflicted with the curse that unlike the mythical Midas (who turned everything he touched into gold), everything this guy touched turned to dust.  (Compare and contrast this with, say, a Socialist politician, where everything he touches turns to shit.)

Anyway, the title of this post is not intended to be irreligious, of course, but as we all know, Christ is supposed to have turned water into wine at a marriage feast in Cana, Galilee.

It seems as though a brewer is intent on turning their own beer into water:

Beer drinkers are furious after pub favourite Grolsch decided to slash its alcohol content.

The Dutch Pilsner has dropped from 4% alcohol by volume (ABV) to 3.4% leaving fans of the beer disgruntled.

Before it was relaunched by the UK by brewer Asahi in 2020 the beer was sold at 5% ABV and has now seen a further reduction in alcohol content.

Back when I used to drink a lot of beer, Grolsch was one of my favorites, with that porcelain-topped cap a lovely touch of class.  It tasted just plain wonderful, and to be frank, if I wasn’t planning on drinking heroically (Castle Lager in South Africa, Wadworths 6X in Britishland, Henry Weinhard Dark in Murka), I really didn’t mind paying the premium price for Grolsch.

But why would the brewers of Grolsch decide to water down their beer?  Ah well, if this was not initiated by the Stupids in The Marketing Department, of course one would suspect the dirty little fingers of Gummint poking into our various orifices.

And that suspicion would be correct.

New legislation introduced last year means drinks are taxed based on their alcoholic strength.

Since the alcohol duty regime came into effect in August and brewers have been reducing alcohol content, while keeping prices the same.

While the reductions may appear small, they generate a tax saving of 2p to 3p on every bottle. [none of which has been passed on to the consumer — K.]

Among the popular brands where the alcohol content has been cut are Foster’s, Old Speckled Hen, Kronenbourg, and Hophead — the practice has been dubbed ‘drinkflation’.

Drinkdeflation, more like.

In these here United States, we used to refer to 3.2% beer as “squirrel piss”, so I suspect that 3.4% can’t be far off.

Good thing I don’t drink beer in any quantity anymore, or else I’d be getting angry.

A Big Middle Finger To The Dept. Of Energy

Bureaucracy, Gummint

Via the Goddess Diogenes herself:

We here at the Department of Energy wanted to thank you for being conscientious about your energy usage this summer. Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. As a token of our gratitude, we wanted to highlight all the small but powerful steps you’ve taken to conserve energy over the past few months—and…

…then it falls headlong off the High Cliffs of Sarcasm immediately.  Read it all, but first I’m going to issue a standard Swallow Coffee Before Reading Alert.

(I meant to post this over a week ago, saving the link, but it fell through the cracks as these things do.  Fear not, for despite my stupidity, her post is as timely as its original publication date.  Enjoy.)