I know I'm not religious ...

... but I'm pretty sure that God had something to say about stealing.  Again, I'm not religious person, but I seem to remember that there are some sort of rules that were laid out in the Bible.  I think there were ten of them.  And, unless the knock to the head I took in that car accident last week damaged my brain more than I thought, I'd bet the entirety of my daughter's Christmas presents that one of those ten rules was something about how stealing is bad.

A priest from North Yorkshire has advised his congregation to shoplift if they find themselves in hard times.

Father Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, said people should steal from big chains rather than small businesses.

He said society's attitude to those in need "leaves some people little option but crime".

However the Archdeacon of York said: "The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift".

North Yorkshire Police described the sermon as "highly irresponsible".

This is a very special kind of UK fail, methinks.

Posted by: Ember at 08:50 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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A new way to kill the planet

My pain meds have made me a little too dopey to do any serious digging for things to blog about.  But even in my very loopy state, there was simply no way I could pass up this gem of a story involving global warming, cocaine, and some good old fashioned UK fail:

Law enforcement agencies destroy fragile ecosystems when they target illegal coca plantations, often dropping more chemicals on them from the air.

Environmentalists hope that images of rainforest destruction will make cocaine use as politically incorrect as wearing fur from animals caught in the wild. “Just telling young people that using cocaine is bad doesn’t work,” said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace.

“You need to change teenage culture and point out that it has all sorts of consequences. Then they start talking about it more loudly and you could get into that fur coat situation.”

The new approach follows evidence that cocaine use is increasing among young people in the UK, partly driven by lower prices.

Some MPs believe the “save the planet” message will also appeal to environmentally conscious middle-class cocaine users.

So, the new British anti-drug campaign is that doing drugs kills the planet.  Even your hybrid won't offset your cocaine footprint!

Posted by: Ember at 12:02 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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EPIC FAIL Britannia: London puts out arrest warrant on Tzipi Livni

What the fuck is wrong with Britain?

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 11:44 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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How to handle a gunman

Comment from our fearless leader: "Well that couldn't have happened, handguns are banned in the UK."



(h/t @_vinyltap)

Posted by: Alice H at 11:35 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Behold, the glory of a "mixed economy"

The UK has a mixed economy.  That means it's part free market and part government control.  On the surface, you look at the average London street and see all the same kind of shops you'd see in, say, New York.  The big difference is that, while here in the US, occassionally the FDA or some other regulatory body will step in and say, "Uh, dude, that toy has too much lead," or, "Yo, that diet pill is totally made of crack," in the UK, they can step in and say things like, "The snarky, funny labels on Vitamin Water are illegal because idiots might think they really can make you beat your granny in an arm wrestling match," or, "We have to limit the number of people who fly because they're killing the earth and stuff.  Except Prince Charles.  He can do whatever he wants in the name of global warming."

If the aviation industry continues to grow unchecked, passenger journeys would increase by 200% in the next 40 years, but that cannot be tolerated because carbon dioxide emitted by carriers in 2050 must not exceed 2005 levels.

"This is a very challenging target," said David Kennedy, the committee's chief executive. "Don't be deceived by the fact that demand can grow. It will have to grow by much less than if we didn't care about carbon dioxide."

Today's report says ministers must consider measures including: a carbon tax on passengers; limits on runway expansion; and restrictions on flights at existing airports. Passenger growth will have to be limited to 60% over the next four decades, compared with an increase of 130% since 1990, allowing the UK a maximum of around 370 million air travellers by 2050, from 230 million currently.

"Demand can increase, but only in a limited way," added Kennedy. The committee forecasts that unchecked airline growth would shatter emissions targets, increasing passenger numbers by 200% to 695 million per year.

Asked if fares will also have to increase in order to choke off demand, Kennedy said: "The price has to cut back some of the growth, so you do have to have rising prices."

[...]

Even with an anticipated carbon price of £200 per tonne passed on to fares, the creation of a high-speed rail network, and more use of video-conferencing to cut business travel, the committee warns that more action such as constraining airport use might be needed in order to stop the population from flying. The report singles out a "carbon tax" as one of the solutions, which would be levied on top of the £200 per tonne carbon price.

"The policy instruments which could achieve this restraint include a carbon tax on top of the forecast carbon price, limits on further airport expansion, and restrictions on the allocation of takeoff and landing slots even where airports have the theoretical capacity available," the report says.

[source]

Posted by: Ember at 09:28 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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E.T., Phone ... Someone Else.

You better hope that next time you see a UFO, you're nowhere in the U.K., because there'll be no one to call any more.  In a "cost-saving measure", the British government will be closing down its UFO phone and e-mail tip-lines, saving the government approximately $73,000 (US) a year.  Panicked Doctor Who fans across the country react:

 "I think it's a stupid thing to do because this could create a threat to national security," said Roy Lake, founder of the London UFO Studies group. "We take this quite seriously. We know that sometimes things can be explained as natural phenomena but there could be that one thing that's not. I think the government knows damn well what's going on up there and they're covering it up."

[ ... ]

 Nick Pope, who helped the British military with its UFO investigations for many years, said the decision is wrongheaded.

 "It's a great shame," he said. "This is the end of over 50 years of research and investigation into one of the biggest mysteries of our time."

[ ... ]

London event organizer Rachel Keane, 25, said the hotline was important.

 "Who's to say there is nothing out there?" she said. "If there is, it's a bit scary that there is no one to call to inform them of what you've seen. I think someone is out there and we've got to be given a chance to report something strange if we see it."

Posted by: Ember at 09:46 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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This is why the British can't have nice things

From FMyLife:

Today, my boyfriend came home drunk and thought it would be funny to spray himself in the face with pepper spray. I was in his drunken firing line too. After him vomiting and being blinded for a few hours, he was fine. I, on the other hand, had a terrible allergic reaction and got rushed to hospital.

On the one hand, if this shitstain had been allowed a gun, he would have been vomiting brain matter.  On the other hand, Darwin.

Posted by: Alice H at 09:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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When does it become cruel to notice this stuff?

Via the Agitator we find a story that could be the one that will cause historians to say, "This is the end of Great Britain".
Quote
Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.
... and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.
Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

Unbeleivabile! The government is going to mandate how hot your water can be if you have kids.
They're done, stick a fork in them.

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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UK NHS Pap Screening Recommendations Sound Familiar

Where have I heard something like this before?

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Scotland Yard bans police from using term gang rape to describe gang rape

Why?  Because apparently some community organizers in the UK said the term was Raaaaaaaaaaacist^TM.  We have a FAIL Britannia! tag for a reason.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 02:06 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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No good deed goes unpunished

Okay, if I had made this up you would all be saying, "Kinda funny but just too ridiculous".

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".

There's just too much fail to really quote it all, but that sums it up right there. He saw a "black bin liner" near his garden. He checked it out and found a sawed off shotgun with two rounds for it.

Being a good citizen, he took it to the police and they arrested him and then the prosecutor decided to go to trial and then the jury found him guilty.
Too bad he didn't realize Britain doesn't have citizens anymore, they have subjects again.

Quote
Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.
"The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant."

Apparently, they're supposed to call their mommie....errr.... the police and not touch the evil gun, just cower in fear until the police take the bad gun away.

Via Cato, who calls it , "Beyond Parody".
Now I like Cato, but "beyond parody"? Where have they been the last 8 years? This is just the obvious progression.

Posted by: Veeshir at 04:25 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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So, how's that working out for you?

About a decade ago the UK pretty much completely banned gun ownership. Hilarity, by which I mean an 89% increase in gun crime then ensued.

Yeah, no one saw that coming.  And by no one, of course, I mean anyone with half a functioning brain cell.  Let's see, you tell the world that the citizenry can't defend itself.  Who could possibly anticipate that criminals would leap all over that.

It's things like this that contribute to the disturbing rise of the BNP in the UK.  Let's get one thing clear, I loathe the BNP.  They're neo-Nazis, pretty much straight up.  Now, I think they have every right to exist and to speak.  Hell, I much prefer it when people self-identify as idiots.  But it certainly appears that the Tories and Labour really don't want to talk about the things that matter to the average citizen.  The BNP does.  If that's the only option, well, people are going to take it.  And that's greatly disturbing. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 11:28 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Why do we have a "FAIL Britannia" category?

Because of stuff like this:

With his greeting of 'Evenin' all', Dixon of Dock Green embodied the values of the solid, commonsense copper.

But his reassuring salutation, which began each episode of the classic police TV drama from 1955 to 1976, is one which today's real-life officers should be wary of using.

According to one force's official guidelines, it could confuse people from different cultural backgrounds.

Warwickshire Police's handbook Policing Our Communities, issued to every member of its staff, gives advice on communicating with people from different ethnic groups in a section entitled Communication, Some Dos & Don’ts.

It states: 'Don't assume those words for the time of day, such as afternoon or evening, have the same meaning.'

Check out the link for a spokesman's incredibly lame explanation for how this type of greeting could potentially be confusing...for Americans. Yeah.

Posted by: Sean M. at 07:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A nation of cowards

If this is any indication, it looks like we backward Americans may need to have a "dialogue about race" after all...

Racial intimidation and violence became a 'feature of the life of the school' with eruptions of 'extreme acts of violence', it was alleged.

Oh, wait...

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:43 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Great moments in Socialized Medicine vol. MMDCXXVIII

All that talk about "death panels" is just a bunch of nonsense cooked up in the fevered imagination of a stupid snowbilly twit from the hinterlands, right? Right?

A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial 'death pathway'.

Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year- old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water and medication except painkillers.

He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection.

To his family's horror, they were told he could have recovered if he'd been given the correct treatment

Hey, but at least his health care was free, huh? And besides, with an old guy like that out of the way, just think of the savings!

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:35 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Death Panels

It's all just a silly bit of inflammatory craziness from from that crazy wingnut snowbilly Palin, right?  Wrong my friends, very wrong,

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Britain is what will come to America if we ever let these bastards seize our health care system.  Count on it.  If you give government control over your health, they control your life.  Don't allow that to happen.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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John gives her 4 STDs out of 5

One of Gordon Brown's Deputy Ministers is demanding Gov. Schwarzenegger shut down a site based in California that allows prostitutes to post profiles of UK-based prostitutes, clients are allowed to rate them and their services, just like product reviews on any other site.  Seems to me that they aren't so much concerned with the prostitution as they are embarrassed by the fact that said prostitution is being announced to the world on the intarwebs. 

I'm also inclined to think that the Governator is a little preoccupied with his state that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as productive businesses and individuals flee the socialist paradise which has been built there, and won't waste his time playing net nanny...then again, I could be wrong.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 08:14 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Once Again, Proof That A Disarmed Populace Is A Vulnerable Populace

Folks, this story right here is one of the reasons why I am armed.

As his pregnant girlfriend was dragged upstairs, he begged them not to harm her, but one of the men hit him with the butt of the gun.

He told Crimewatch: 'I pleaded, I was shouting, "She's pregnant, she's pregnant, leave off her, tell me what you want".'

The three men left in the Audi after grabbing property including a mobile phone, iPod, cash, debit cards and a laptop.

Police decided to offer the reward after failing to trace the gang. They have released images of three men caught on CCTV at a nearby shop a few minutes before the attack, whom they wish to question. 

Sadly, why is it I have the feeling that if the victims had fought back, they would be the ones arrested?

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Members of elite British army regiment - Coldstream Guards - get their asses handed to them by a 5'3" Canadian woman in a red satin dress

VANCOUVER — A petite Vancouver woman is being sought by an English court after she wiped the floor with a collection of Britain’s premier soldiers — the Coldstream Guards — during a brawl at a Christmas party in the guardsmen’s barracks last December.

Ashley Wolfe, 24, was tried in absentia this week at Woolwich Magistrates Court in London after failing to appear on two charges of assault — one involving a soldier’s wife, the other a sergeant she knocked cold with one punch.

source

 

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I can't really think of anyway this could be funnier. Well maybe if they were wearing the big furry hats when she punched them out, or if the Queen was watching. Other than that nope this is just about perfect. Someone please have a youtube video of this.

picture of the vicious little minx below the fold.

more...

Posted by: chad98036 at 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Dummy Harry

Some idjit police officer holding a UK "gun awareness" class for emergency workers, decided to load up a .44 magnum revolver the police keep as an example (they kept blanks and real cartridges in the same box, unmarked of course) and then fired it at one of the emergency workers...

Uh, yeah, not a blank,

The bullet hit Keith Tilbury, 51, causing devastating injuries, Southwark Crown Court in London was told.

Mr Tilbury underwent five hours of life-saving surgery for an “exploded” bowel and kidney, as well as lung and liver damage. He was unconscious for 12 days and has not returned to work.

Hadn't returned to work, you say?  Please tell me that's dry British humor that's passing over my ignorant 'murican head, dude is damn lucky to even be alive at this point.  And I'm not gonna fault the idjits who had the blanks and live ammunition mixed together either, though they're stupid too, the officer shouldn't have pointed the revolver at someone, even if it was loaded with blanks, or completely unloaded for that matter.

(H/T)

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 02:55 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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