Excuses, excuses...

So, I've not posted for a while. But this time there's a good reason for it.

I have unfortunately been 'sans ordinateur' for the last three weeks courtesy of a combination of a graphical cock-up with my comparatively archaic copy of WoW wreaking havoc with my graphics and the fact that the service dept. of the shop where I bought my Mac took three weeks to discover what I had worked out just a few days after I sent it off.

Also, I've recently spent some time in hospital due to my asthma condition. I am now on the mend though, and back to work tomorrow. Sorry for missing some of the absolute gems that came to pass during my absense (I'm looking at you, London 2012 logo!) but rest assured that once I am fit and well once more I'll be back here posting with a vengeance. Or something.

Grey, Boring and Indifferent...

...the new names for the Labour, Tory-Fascist and Liberal Democrat parties respectively.

As someone who discovered they we're most likely to grow up to become some tedious stat monkey working for a faceless global corporation, I discovered that I had a sincere interest in politics from a young age. But recent times have seen me begin to inadvertently
relapse into a childish state where I no longer give a damn about who runs the country, who's in charge of local government or indeed which muppet decided it was a good idea to limit refuse collection to once every fortnight.

After all, we all know that it won't make one iota of difference anyway, they're all equally capable of screwing the country and failing to represent a significant percentage of the population.

I hate to say it, but apathy has begun to set it.

When people marked their 'X' on their polling slips this week, all they were really doing was selecting a new face for the same words. The only tangible difference between the three major political contenders is the colour of their rosette, and as they each drift slowly yet unerringly towards the Right we in turn drift towards the blighted wasteland of apathy.

In all seriousness, people are generally more likely to vote for the candidate they like the most on a personal level, regardless of their political ideals, and inevitably politics has become more about building a cult of personality (much like Stalin) than about effective policy making.

As the nation becomes more and more interested in bandwagoneering and buzz words, manifestos have evolved to accommodate this. The average voter is more concerned about when we're going to get rid of the Muslims and immigrants than they are about economic policy.

And who exactly is benefiting from this? Only the Right. The more a party promises to eject the immigrants and Muslims the more popular it becomes. Support for the Tory-Fascist party has significantly increased as of late and support for far-Right parties such as the BNP has been on the increase for some time now.

It is not hard to draw parallels to the rise of the Nazi party from the current situation in Britain. But this leaves us with a serious question that we as voters must answer. Is it right to vote against what we believe for what we think is in the best interest of the country, or do we abandon our democratic rights and sit back and smile as the country falls into the hands of the Witch Hunters?

Relaxed Muscle

So...this week the American gun lobby completely lost the plot.

In a breath-taking display of ignorance, Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt called for gun laws on American university campuses to relaxed rather than tightened. As reported in The Daily Mail, he has attempted to justify his call by claiming that the massacre could have been ended had the students been allowed to carry weapons.

It seems the idea of changing US gun legislation to prevent Joe Average from purchasing lethal weaponry from the local store completely eludes Mr Pratt, whose brains are evidently made of jam. The full official statement issued by the GOA goes on to turn the country's single most deadly gun massacre into a chance to snipe at the Democrats, essentially claiming that the massacre is giving the Democrat controlled Congress another opportunity to
crack down on America's liberal gun laws.

The 'logic' Mr. Jam for Brains appears to be displaying is that if you gave everyone in a university a firearm, they'd eventually filter out all the nut-jobs and open up a can of vigilante-style whoop-ass on them.

The gaping hole in this argument, and might I add one that only a total imbecile would miss, is that once the first shot is fired, panic ensues, ultimately leaving you with a body count twice the size of what it may have been with just one gunman as a hail of bullets flies in both directions.

It is apparent to me, and also to all straight-thinking people, that the only option the US has is to impose draconian anti-gun legislation to attempt to get the situation under control. However, as the saying goes, 'you reap what you sow', and the massively out-dated constitution America holds so dear will only cause their gun problem to spiral even further out of control.

Any amendment to the constitution, it seems, is an infringement to somebody's rights. A right to life is, in this case, out of the question.

You have to ask what those who vigourously defend their right to bear arms are crying about. They claim it's their right to protect themselves with lethal weaponry, but fail to see that were firearms not so readily available or indeed, illegal, they wouldn't have to defend themselves in the first place.

Maybe those that defend their right to lethal weapons simply do so because they themselves harbour twisted fantasies of one day committing their very own atrocity.

Uncle Pat.

Cold on the Warming

I've been weighing this up for a while now, and it just doesn't seem to make any sense. Yes, global warming is (un)officially bollocks.

Throughout the course of natural history our relatively diminutive planet has faced constantly changing extremes in temperature (unless you're a Christian, in which case the ice-age didn't happen and neither did dinosaurs. God just put the evidence there to fool the unbelievers) and in not one of these cases can the change be attributed in any way to human activity.

Let me put this into perspective. In the early 1800s Britain went through a concerted period of industrialisation. Factories were built, goods were produced in larger numbers than ever before and the entire landscape of industry in this country, and ultimately the world, was forever changed. Yet despite the relatively phenomenal increase in carbon emissions there was no change whatsoever in global temperature.

Ok, so you might argue that the fact that global climate at this time remained unchanged is because Britain is geographically speaking a very tiny nation. But it wasn't long until the rest of what we now consider to be the international heavy-weights followed suit, and still no change.

So, could it in fact be the case that we are simply facing yet another natural change in global climate in our ever-evolving world? It seems somewhat pompous to declare that it is indeed the human race, and in particular the 'Western' world, that is causing this change when a volcano can belch forth smoke and ash into the atmosphere which on the scale of things equals the carbon emissions of the entire planet in just one day. And even then, within one year all this 'damage' to the environment is dispersed and neutralised by the planet naturally, without human aid.

So, in fact, the damage we are doing to the planet is negligible.

Simply put, the Global Warming scare, and a scare is precisely what it is, an international scam aimed, once more, at keeping the impoverished nations that make up Africa in check. The Western world has prevented third world countries from industrialising by playing the GW trump card. The repercussions of this are immense and too diverse to go into in one post, but essentially, should Africa industrialise the Western world will gradually lose it's strangle hold on the third world as they begin to look after themselves and earn an independence they have not known for generations.

Global powers such as Britain and the US cannot allow this to happen. They wear the 'World Police' badge with pride, and chances are it will not be relinquished any time soon.

Signing off for now, more to come...

A Tealight Under the Cauldron

The waters may be less than luke warm by now, but it seemed about time to test them once more not just to see if they were ready to boil once more, but also to see if the spies of the not-so-glorious Third Reich of the Farnham University College for the Creative Arts (or indeed FUCCA) were still spying on me.

Lets consider the past 18 or so months to be a somewhat necessary extended leave of absence from the blogging community in this particular guise of mine. Yes, the past glories of the mighty Dome could not be permitted to just sink unnoticed into the online septic tank responsible for clogging so many of the tubes we know make up the internets.

Anyway, like a giant electronic shoe horn (except it's designed for blogs not shoes) I'll be slipping the Dome back into action at a gradual pace. Essentially, think of it as the 'Somewhat Bemused Dome' for now, but fear not, it will again grow into the Angry Dome you know and love, or in some cases hate.

That's it for the opening gambit, the re-launch cometh this week.

Uncle Pat.

Kicking and screaming...

I was wondering how many people are familiar with the phenomenon that is internet 'friend' network sites. In particular, I am talking about Myspace.

Basically these sites offer commoners like you (possibly) and I the opportunity to communicate with bands, singers etc who have profiles, as well as meet like minded people and in some cases date them.

Some of you may remember, or be aware of Friendster, which became notorious for it's possible paedo community and the numerous stalkers who incessantly badgered other users.

We've all heard the horror stories of young girls who meet someone from the net in person and it turns out they're a 50 year-old child botherer. But it's hard, almost impossible, to determine whether the person you're talking to is genuine.

As a Myspace punter, I have met some very interesting people with the same eclectic music tastes as myself, some local, some from far away, and there's a part of me that wants to bugger off to the Wirral for a weekend to meet them. Especially when it says under their 'here for' section 'dating' and 'serious relationships'.

The other part of me, though, warns me that I'll probably be disappointed. Plus the fact that the bank manager said no...

Mind you, being a student, I'm prone to bouts of impulsive stupidity, so you never know...

Exercise or exorcise

Well today is polling day and our chance to have our say in how the government is run. I'm not here to tell you who to vote for (though you have to consider whether you want the country to be run by one of the undead) but what I will say is bloody well get out there and vote. Exercise your democratic rights, don't exorcise them (you see where I'm coming from now, eh?).

Furthermore, for god's sake don't vote tactically. You may think a vote for Green is a waste but consider the fact that there are bound to be loads of 'closet' Green supporters who vote Lib Dem just to keep the Tories out. If everyone voted for what they believed in, the world would be in a much different state.

That's about all I wanted to say. So to all of you who're yet to vote, go out and do it god damnit! And, not that I want to sway you, vote Socialist Alliance!