spEak You're bRanes

Thanks to Ellie for pointing me at this, and finding the last comment. The advance of technology. No need to carry a pocketful of cumbersome, jangling coins around. No more running out of the pub in the rain to find a hole in the wall, or desperately trying to get change for the vending machine. Cash gradually and naturally dies out. Surely nobody could make a paranoid dystopian fantasy around that.

One thing I like about cash – the government can’t track exactly what you spend your money on.

Linda, Oxford

I don’t know if you’ve been reading the news Linda, but the government can’t track full stop. The government can’t track laptops, CD-Roms, memory-sticks and paper reports when it’s actually holding them. Even if they cared enough to try, they’d never find out that you still buy Just 17 at the age of thirty-eight.

A cashless society would be just another facet of Gordon Brown’s Nu-liebour totalitarian Britain.
ID cards, telephone and email monitoring, satellite vehicle tracking, CCTV on every corner, overseas travel tracked, and now EVERY monetary transaction on record.

Winston Smith, Shoeburyness, England

Tread carefully Winston. The Government can see your bookshelves and know you haven’t opened your copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This is the next step towards a global Orwellian state that David Icke has been predicting since 1990. A cashless society were all transactions are recorded and controlled by the ruling elite.

The next step, Human microchipping with cash credits embedded on your personalised chip. Go against the system and zap, no credit, no food and shelter, end result total control.

Wake up sheep before its too late.

[neworldorder]

Most recommended comment. My quality of life improved severalfold when I started imagining these in the voice of Dale Gribble.

This is what’s wrong with the BBC’s comment system.

The command and control approach is a key tenet of socialism. We have speed and CCTV cameras everywhere, the threatening DVLA and TV licensing adverts(It’s all in the database), councils spying on local residents, and that’s all quite apart from the erosion of civil liberties highlighted by Stella Rimington.
It’s interesting to note that Labour now refers to itself as a ‘Democratic Socialist’ party on its website, proof that they
have reverted to type…
fair to middl eng, Middle England, United Kingdom

How stupid do you have to be to think that Labour are socialist democrats? I guess you have to be so fucking gullible that you’ll believe what you read on the Labour website. Quite an effort in credulity. But this dullard manages it. As if this level of idiocy wasn’t enough, he/she raises the bar again by seeming to believe that democracy and socialism are something to be feared. I guess that’s fair enough if you’re after a right-wing dictatorship.

Anyway, the real problem with the BBC comments system is the range of options you’re now presented with. You’re left with a choice between clicking “Recommend this comment” or else stepping away from the computer and banging your face on the wall for a few minutes. There’s no button for “This is bollocks”, “I can’t believe there are people this gullible and stupid in the world” or “I pity the confused, angry, cat penis that wrote this”. Even the Daily Mail manages to provide both “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” buttons. The end result of all this is that browsing the BBC’s “Have Your Say” forums makes reading the Daily Mail seem like reading the Socialist Worker. Left-wing bias my fat fucking arse.

Thanks to Thomas. “Afghanistan: Can the West learn from the Soviets?”

For success in Afghanistan, it should be understood that, Afghans possess high concentration of Adrenalin in their system. Aggression blind their minds but, they are easily convinced by kindness. They seriously detest treachery which completely transforms them into a
war-machine.

Check history to know why Alexander the Great was given a free way by Afghans, Islam dawn earliest in Afghanistan out side Arab land and more recently, how US won its Cold War against USSR through Afghanistan.
Muhammad Saeed, Islamabad, Pakistan

Thomas adds: “Roll under agility on 2d6 to avoid Froststare”.

Thanks to Levi for his meticulously linked email telling me all about Ed Karten. I’ve often complained that spEak You’re bRanes is too negative, and doesn’t recognise Have Your Say’s intelligent, articulate and superhumanly perceptive liberals. It sickens me to think how blind and naive I was before Ed Karten forced me to see daylight.

Do children have it tougher than ever?

I am not sure if children have it tougher than ever. I do know children that grow up in circumstances that, without exageration, can be described as Dickensian. I also know some very talented children that, maybe because of their background, grow up with a self-destruct button. It is imperative that every effort is made to break a vicious circle and enables less privileged children to have easier access to opportunities in life. Not all will make it, but those that will, will be worth it.

Ed Karten, London

I’m worried for Ed since reading this. He seems to be suggesting some kind of system whereby social order is based on merit, a “merit”-ocracy, if you will. Ed could well end up with a bullet in the back of the head as the powers that be would never tolerate such a radical idea. After all, if the ruling political parties were interested in mobility on a social level, they’d talk about it all the time.

Will Davos make any difference?

Whether it does or not won’t make any difference to me. I am slowly but surely weaning myself off these people’s control/influence/power, whatever you want to call it. The game they’re playing is a stealth pyramid scheme and I don’t want any of it. There are other options. For every Microsoft there is a Linux.

Ed Karten, London

Such wasted genius! If only Ed had shared his vital insights a few months before the pyramid scheme collapsed instead of several months after!

Reasons to be cheerful?

People are not allowed to feel sad or depressed anymore, it’s considered a disease, or even worse, a weakness. Funnily enough though sometimes I enjoy walking around cold and grey London, listening to Joy Division on my mp3 player, wallowing in melancholy. Maybe it’s “banned” because it equates to too much “me” time, making you introspective and question your environment. As with all things taken in measure, being blue is vital for the soul. It’s the imposed artificial “happiness” that kills.

Ed Karten, London

Naive that I was, I used to think that they treated depression because people don’t like being depressed. That was before last Wednesday, when, as I was listening to The Cure, armed thugs in uniform burst through my door and forced me to skip to ‘Friday I’m in Love’. And now I read this. Slowly, it’s all coming together.

Watch your back Ed. You’re too precious to lose.

Are you ready for a cashless society?

are you getting a good enough temperature reading – the public are not ready for it yet – more brainwashing doctrination required so they dont feel forced into anything. This really is very scary and confirming to many that what has been warned about by once thought of crackpots is now becoming reaql – the numbers of people awakening is increasing everyday to now signifficant numbers and becoming expotential in growth – no doubt greater control measures will be introduced and more brainwashing
sabotage steal

It’s a terrible irony that those who spend most of their time fretting about “brainwashing” are the very people whose brains would benefit most from a damn good wash.

Thanks to Colin. From a Times article about Japan’s shrinking economy.

I bought Sony for many years ,almost without thinking – after many disappointments I don’t now. Some new tricks needed.
Geoffrey, Sydney

Fuck’s sake Geoffrey. Watch your mouth. You just wiped another ¥2 billion off the TSE!

Thanks to Michael. Should ecstasy be downgraded? Wombat is concerned that druggies may not have brought enough for everybody.

As there are enough legal drugs (drink and fags). I would be all for anyone found in possesion of any ilegal drug made to take the lot.

Dealers would very quickly disapear as the die of overdoses
wombat

Is this one of those things, like with the spider webs, but with internet comments? Where we’re shown a series of increasingly frazzled trainwrecks and have to guess whether their creators were on LSD, crack or Araldite? But then it turns out it was something surprising like caffeine and we have a good long think about the artificial line we’ve drawn between legal and illegal drugs?

I have a lot of respect for perfumiers. I mean, think of the genius who had to come up with Kerry Katona’s signature scent. They had to consider the fundamental abstract notions of Katona-ness, distill them into a chemical form, and manage to make the result not smell like chip fat and tears.

That’s why I like this blog comment from the Stephanomics economy blog.

every saver in the uk banks should withdraw all their savings within the next 3 weeks,the thrifty and sensible people are being ruined by this imcompetant goverment, mpc, call it what you like, dont help them ,hit them where it hurts. this country is a total shambles.

brownlookslikeafish

Take the essential concepts of a HYS post – I am the most important person in the world, I could fix everything with a simple gesture, My knee-jerk reactions are infinitely cleverer than a plan developed by a team of seasoned professionals, I have a nebulous hatred of the government and Gordon Brown personally – and this is the fractional distillation of them: 48 badly-punctuated words of such epic failure to understand I’m actually tempted to give it a go, just to be able to track down brownlookslikeafish as he stands in line waiting to pay a thousand quid for a loaf of bread and ask him exactly how he thinks an economy collapsed by a run on the banks makes this country GREAT once more.

Thanks to Alex for spotting this man who wants his horses erect and rampant:

People of Kent and Kentish people do not want this limp horse. Kent is symbolised by the rampant horse of Hengest and Horsa and the Jute Kingdom of Kent. Kent has been at the forefront of the defence of England over the centuries, that is why a defiant horse is so important, yet what we are to be given is a horse that can run away very fast!

Duncan Warmington, Staplehurst Kent

You’ve missed the point, Duncan. It’s facing away from France so it can shit immigrants straight back to Sangatte. That’s defiance, the way readers of The Daily Mail (and Daily Mailish readers) like it.

Think of the horrors that censorship and repression of free speech have engendered over the years. Genocides were swept under the carpet, whole ways of life were eradicated, uncountable lives ruined by imprisonment just for criticising those in power. I try to remember every day that it was as little as twenty years ago that countries we now count as members of the European Union suffered under such a repressive yoke. But even in the democratic west, this cancer still figures large, a boot stamping on a human face forever. You might sit there, comfortable in your Guardian-and-polenta lifestyle, subdued by the television and videos of kittens on YouTube but on the front lines people are still throwing and breaking themselves against forces that would deny them these basic articles of civic faith.

“What are the limits of freedom of speech ?”

A fully moderated HYS is a good place to start for one.

Cyrus P Turntable, At The Races

The irony of the BBC asking is there free speech on a forum where they moderate (ie censor) the comments does not escape me.

steve thornhill

I find it highly ironic that the BBC pretends theres a debate on this subject, considering the organistion has been at the forefront of introducing “thought crime” in the name of “political correctness”

Michael P

One day, tovarisches, the sun will gaze bright and proud upon your names, carved – by the trembling hand of a cowardly HYS moderator, appropriately re-educated – upon a hundred foot-high monument to your sacrifice standing where the CRE now stands. From the Ford Focus-sized eye of Paul Dacre’s image will drip a tear made of the biggest diamond we could pry out of a dead African’s hand. But the path will be hard. Not all of us will make it. But know this, that those who fall on the march will cheer us from White Heaven. Well, when the Celestial Black and White Minstrel Show isn’t on, anyway.