BNP leader Nick Griffin loses seat in European Parliament; couldn’t happen to a nicer cnut…

It’s a shame Ukip did so well in the European parliamentary elections.  Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, conceded his defeat, saying that BNP supporters had voted for “Ukip’s racist policies instead”.  So now, instead of 2 seats, the BNP has none (Andrew Brons, who won the Yorkshire seat in 2009, fell out with Griffin – who wouldn’t? – left the party and didn’t contest the seat this time round.

I hope the Ukip wins were down to protest votes, and don’t reflect how the British electorate will vote in the next General Election.  Can you imagine living under the rule of that looks-like-a-grinning-loon-so-we-don’t-realise-he’s-a-fascist-until-it’s-too-late dick?

Anyway, for those of us who like seeing pictures of Griffin, I’ve found one for you.  Made me titter.

 

 

 

Oh, and here’s one of his daughter, Jennifer Matthys. She’s a doll, huh?  😉 Also a Fascist loon. Provided just in case you see her in the street and want to give her a big hug. Or something. (Nothing illegalthough.  I don’t want to get done for “inciting a riot” or something.)

European Parliamentary Elections. Who cares?

Today is Thursday 22 May 2014. In the UK we have 2 elections taking place: local council elections and European Parliamentary elections. We have a chance to let our will be known through the European Parliamentary elections. But let’s be truthful: how many of you care enough to take that traipse to your local polling station.

Thing is, both these elections are little more than a veneer of shiny democracy that actually means sod all. Take the local council elections: it doesn’t matter who we vote for, their taxing and spending is controlled by central (London) diktat, all the councillors are there to just be seen there. Local councils don’t have much control ‘over anything nowadays.’

And European parliamentary matters are just as divorced from the real world. The list system means we can’t point to an individual MEP and say he/she’s our rep in Brussels (or Strasbourg, or wherever the European Parliament get together nowadays). I can remember sending an email to “my” MEP as part of a 38 Degrees action: I got a reply from the MEP, telling me he had forwarded my email to some other nobody who was, apparently, the guy appropriate to my needs. I can’t remember if I even got anything from the “appropriate” MEP. I got sick of waiting for the gears and togs to tick along, and dismissed the European Parliament as just another layer of cake-eating, coffee-swilling nobodies.

So, why am I even bothering with this? Because the European parliament does have a part to play in our rich tapestry of ineffectual representation. And I’m not succumbing to the IN or OUT arguments. We’re in. So we gotta make sure we get something. Which is partially why I’m advising you to check out the Pirate Party UK.

The Pirate Party started off pretty much to stick up for the Pirate Bay bittorrent site (link link). But now they cover online privacy, internet neutrality. a comprehensive overhaul of the present intellectual property system…). Andy Halsall wrote in his blog:

Today is polling day for the European Parliament Elections. More people can vote Pirate today than ever before!
If you are in the North-West region of the UK, you can vote for a Pirate Party MEP. Polls open at 0700 and close at 2200, so there is lots of time, make the most of it, vote Pirate!
We will need all your support online and offline today. Tweet at the party, share our material and policy. Remind people that they can vote and persuade them to vote Pirate!
Make sure everyone knows they can Vote Pirate if they are in the North West!

And that’s just the European elections. PPUK are also contesting local council seats throughout England.

If you value net neutrality and the right to freedom of speech, don’t vote for the Cons, Labs or Libs. The whole bunch of them are bought and paid for by the music and film industries,and will support their big business buddies no matter what they might say in the run-up to the elections. In the words of Andy Halsall:

These elections matter, the more we do to get people voting today the better!
In other news, the Party exceeded its crowd funding target of £5,000.00 today (with the last few donations, some of the largest of the campaigns, being in bitcoin!). That is in addition to the donations we have seen via http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/donate. This is great news and means we will be in good shape to campaign in the next weeks and months, and pits us on a solid footing for the General Election in 2015.
To do more, we still need your time, money and support so go and volunteer, donate and help out!
We also need more candidates. You will all have seen the surge of people who want to vote for us, but in places where so far, we haven’t been able to find candidates or support campaigns.
You can change that, stand as a candidate or find someone who wants to. This is your party, we can’t do it without you. If you want to stand, or even just want to know more, get in touch with our nominations team. They will help you in any way we can.
Lastly, I’d like to thank you all for your donations and support through this election. I’m looking forward to the results on Sunday, but regardless of what happens, we have done a lot and achieved more.
Our social media team has been absolutely stellar. Our candidates worked hard. Our campaigns staff have not only supported our campaign, but by sharing our media and assets, helped parties all across Europe. Treasury staff have worked to deal with the new members and run the crowd funding effort. We can be proud of this election. The team, worked! We’ll build on it, but for now, lets get the vote out!
Our candidates will be out and about today, if you want to send them encouragement you can:
European Elections:
Maria:@PiratePUKMaria’
George:@gwalkden
Jack:@allnutt_eu
Local Elections
Mark:@Pirate_Lennon
Loz:@LozKaye
For the party, me or our Social Media lead (Stephen)
Party Twitter:@PiratePartyUK
Stephen:@roaminglt
Me:@ajehals

Now, I’m not going to try and kid you that the Pirate Party UK will win. It’d be cool if they did… but probably not gonna happen. But the more of us who vote Pirate Party/PPUK when we can, and who deliberately spoil their ballots rather than vote for the same-old-same-old.. c’mon, register your protest vote without even looking at the loathsome Ukip and their BNP buddies. I’d love to say let’s come together and make European politics important enough to take real notice what happens. But that ain’t gonna happen. So let’s fuck with the voting process! Let’s show how out of touch the “real” Europoliticians are. VOTE PIRATE PARTY UK! C’mon, let’s see what happens…

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Gerry Adams released after 4 days of questioning

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, has been released after 4 days’ questioning about the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, who had been falsely identified as a police informant or “tout”. The Guardian newspaper reported:

Adams will refocus on election campaigning on Monday as the political fall-out from his release from police custody continues to reverberate around Stormont and beyond.

The republican party is holding a European election rally in Belfast tonight, with a similar event planned in Dublin on Tuesday, as Adams resumes the canvassing activities he claims his detention was designed to thwart.

Michael McConville, son of Jean, claims he was “threatened” by Adams after the Sinn Fein president was released. McConville told the BBC “Today” programme: “Gerry Adams says to me, ‘Michael, you are getting a letter of support from the republican people’. He says, ‘if you release the names I hope you are ready for the backlash’.

McConville said that “could” have meant a backlash against the peace process but said he took it to mean the “backlash from republican people”. He reasserted: “I took it as a threat.”

I think it may be a good idea to take a deep breath, step back and think about the situation as a whole. For many years Adams was the leader of Sinn Fein at a time when a whiff of IRA was enough to get you locked up.

The IRA’s “bullet and ballot box” strategy meant that Sinn Fein’s politicians had to be above serious allegations. No doubt Adam’s had great support in the IRA, but it’s too surreal for me to accept that Adams gave individual kill orders.

The days of the Provisional IRA are over. I’m sure the PIRA could muster well-armed, well-positioned support if events justified it, but the “Real” IRA and its mostly criminal support are giving Republicanism a bad name. Maybe it’s time for the Provos to clean up their house? It will lend Sinn Fein support it’s been losing lately, and it will act as a cautionary tale. The PIRA is being quiet, but it could make one hell of a noise if the leader requires it. Then again, a few well-placed gunshots could end the insurrection – and the PIRA are famous for their bullet delivery.

So, are the Provos down and out? I doubt it. They have many dedicated soldiers, they have large undeclared arms caches. Over the years of peace, the PIRA have lost mainstream support, which has been transferred to Sinn Fein, often described gleefully by the British press as “The IRA’s political wing.” Let’s turn that expression on its head: The PIRA is Sinn Fein’s military wing. If IRA leadership feel that Sinn Fein is being cornered “they may declare the “bullet and ballot-box” experiment over. Is that what Cameron wants to be remembered for?

When the PIRA decided to play the “bullets and ballot box” game, they knew that their politicians had to be whiter than white. Gerry Adams etc would be rotting in jail otherwise. Questioning Adams for days on the back of what can’t be more than hearsay evidence is a ridiculous fishing expedition. Is Cameron & Co really be that stupid. By the look of it: Yes.

Nikon DSLR with Pentax lens…do I pwn Nikax photography or is it an epic fail?

For years I’ve been into taking photos.  I started with a Pentax  ME Super, got through a few of ’em, then got a Program A… eventually I got a Pentax autofocus camera, the SF7 (cost me pennies as film was on its way out), but as I had a bunch of manual focus lenses by then I couldn’t see any point in buying AF lenses so it may as well have been a MF camera… but, as I already said, film was on its way out, and going digital suited my finances and my machine-gun approach to photography made going digital a good idea.  But limited finances meant I got a Fujifilm S5700 bridge camera.  Which isn’t a good camera to go for if you go at it like me (though, to be fair, the s5700’s super-macro mode does produce some nifty close-ups…).

Anyway, I voiced my displeasure to a friend, who then bought me a used DSLR.  Great, huh?  And it is great. But (and it’s a big butt), she got me a Nikon D70. A nice camera for its age, and as I’m not a pro I’ve never much cared for the ridiculous number of megapixels you can get now.  But (cue the butt) it’s a Nikon, and I have a collection of Pentax glass.  Mostly prime lenses.  The D70 came with a 35-80mm zoom; but I have a 28mm (Sigma) lens, a 50mm f/1.7, a 135mm f/3.5, and (black sheep of the family?) 80-200mm Prinzflex f/4.5-5.6 zoom.  And extension tubes.  And a 35-80mm Pentax “kit lens” (I guess), that I found for sale for very little. The Nikon came with a 35-70mm zoom.  But I want to do stuff that the Nikon just cant do (I may not be a pro, but I am a keen amateur, y’know?

I know I could have traded in my Pentax lenses and got some Nikon glass.  But I had a wide range of optics, no way could I have got anything like that for Nikon.  I could have bought a Pentax DSLR, but the Nikon was free, and free stuph is grrreat!!  So, I decided to get an adaptor so I could fit Pentax K lenses to my Nikon body.  Unfortunately the adaptor has to include a lens in it to allow infinity focusing, but the adaptor wasn’t very expensive (thanks ebay!) so I went for it.  My photography has slowed right down, what with having the aperture wide open for focusing, then stepping down the aperture for the actual pic, plus checking the rear screen afterwards to check the exposure’s good… but it’s kinda like going back in time to when I first learnt to use a SLR, and the slower workflow might even result in better photos!

That extra bit of glass in the adaptor still worries me a bit: will it lead to softness or something in the end result?  I haven’t had the adaptor long enough to do any real comparisons yet, but I will… and I will bore you to death with the reslts of said experimentation!  In the meantime, here’s a photo I shot using the adaptor.  Let me have it in Comments: any good?  Should I stick with and/or buy myself a new(ish) camera?  I’d luuurrve some feedback please!

Geeses, shot with a Pentax MF lens on a Nikon D70 body. Nasty or nice? Pleeeze let me know what ya think!

 

Cheers, from Nikax Land!  Please don’t be mean, else I’ll cry and my make-up will run all over the interwebs!!

 

Max Clifford jailed. Another one bites the dust! But how many more are going to pop up now?

So, we can mount another head on the Wall of Celebrity Sex Crime: the publicist Max Clifford has been jailed for 8 years for “sexually abusing four teenage women and trivialising his trial with a ‘contemptuous attitude’ that added to his victims’ trauma.”   During the trial he laughed and shook his head as his victims gave evidence against him.  This attitude prompted Judge Anthony Leonard to impose the 8 year sentence, double that which had been expecting.

The judge said Clifford’s conduct had made his victims “extremely upset” and concluded: “I find your behaviour to be quite extraordinary and a further indication that you show no remorse.”

Clifford was told that had some of offences been tried under today’s law, they would be considered as rape or assault by penetration with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

It is ironic that Clifford has been hoisted by his own petard.  His work as a publicist had engineered the downfall of a number of celebrities and public figures through stories he sold to tabloid newspapers.  Now he has fallen: he is 71, and will serve at least 4 years in prison.  He might even die in prison.  If he survives, maybe he’ll sell his own story to the papers, or publish his memoirs.  His is the last story he will ever sell.  His career, and his cushy lifestyle, have gone.  I expect a good chunk of his fortune will go as compensation to his victims,  and of course the lawyers will want to wet their beaks.

So, that’s another one down.  I wonder who the next celebrity will be who learns that his star status will no longer protect him from his deviant past?