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Fri, May. 12th, 2006, 10:23 am

The entrepreneurial spirit is a wonderful thing, you could wake up tomorrow morning with an idea that changes the world (and changes your life from the one you have to the one where you don’t have to work again) or you could wake up and say “By God, I’m going to build gallows. Dozens of gallows, from single person gallows to multi gallows mounted on a flatbed truck for the busy executioner on the move and on a budget. And then by crikey, I’m going to sell them to corrupt third world nations with human rights records that would make Saddam recoil a little
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/4754515.stm

Humorous tone aside, this bloke is everything that is wrong with humanity and I hope he dies in a fire. How exactly it differs from someone who works in a gun factory or the like is a bit too subtle for me to grasp right now but somehow it seems so much seedier and nastier.

Of course, the big news today seems to be that

1) http://news.com.com/2300-1043_3-6070849-1.html
The strippe…. “booth babes” (Link is worksafe yet a bit sad) at E3 are no longer allowed to display their midriffs while employed at the show for the purposes of… being ogled by a bunch of loser stereotypes while re-enforcing the myth that gamers spend half their lives with a playstation controller in one hand and their “controller” in the other.
2) Brian Cowen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cowen ), the first minister for finance made entirely of rubber, saying “Now, it’d be great if the irish workers didn’t go about trying to get pay increases this year because we’re going to price ourselves out of the European work market”. Obviously by “irish workers” he didn’t mean himself or HIS pay increase. Also worth noting is that he compares our wages to the European average but when it comes to the cost of living here he’s careful only to mention specific nations who are more expensive than us.


Something went horribly wrong with this the first time I posted it, the URLS wouldn't work and for some reason everything after a) was missing. Stupid internet.
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Fri, May. 12th, 2006 12:21 pm (UTC)
mr_wombat

"Plenty of other stuff to pin on these guys, but "they earn too much" is now in the same category of irrelevance as "they don't spend enough time in the Dáil" for me."

Two points:
First off "Other people earn more" is not a valid argument to justify the ridiculous amounts of cash our "leaders" get - for one thing the CEOs of the various companies can be fired for their incompetence (granted, we get the chance to "fire" cowan every four or five years but he'd still have a job). For another thing, CEO salaries, insane as they may be, even compared to five years back, can be kindasorta justified by the amount of time, work and experience needed to get to that position while minister for finance (for example) is a position gained by being a close political ally of Bertie and (to use Cowen's record as an example where he has been minister for transport, communications, labour, health, foreign affairs anf god knows what else) little to do with his experience in balancing the budget of a nation's financial affairs.
To swing back to the CEO thing again, you have a choice regarding where you spend your money - practically none of mine goes to Tescos or big business these days because I choose to shop in small markets, buy my books in independent retailers and so on - not as convenient but cheaper and I like helping the underdog. The decision is yours and you do not have to contribute to the ridiculous CEO pay - however you have NO choice as to where you spend your taxes, or even whether or not to pay them so it is doubly galling to be forced to spend large amounts of cash and then see it awarded as pay to someone who has not done the hard work necessary to deserve it. The argument about is very valid to me because it stands right at the core of the pay issues for the people we rely on the most - doctors, nurses, gardai, bus drivers - the people who make our lives possible are being told they shouldn't expect pay increases by folks whose job it is to make popular (not "right" but popular) decisions and stay well out of harms way.


Second: I never mentioned anything about how *much* pay he got in the first place :), rather that his calls for restraint and not asking for increases will not be reflected come time for the government to award themselves their own pay increase which, odds are good, will beat the hell out of inflation again this year and as such he is a hypocritical little rubberman.
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Fri, May. 12th, 2006 04:21 pm (UTC)
unblinkered

You know some of my (non-Irish) friends have, upon seeing this icon, come to the conclusion that our country is run by Slitheens.

Which explains just about everything....
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Fri, May. 12th, 2006 06:32 pm (UTC)
evilrobotshane

So... don't British companies manufacture and sell torture and execution gear all over the place? And not retro craftsy stuff like this guy, but nasty clinical high-tech things?
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Fri, May. 12th, 2006 09:53 pm (UTC)
mr_wombat

weapons yes, this kind of thing - not so much. I think its against several international treaties to do it but sparky there found a loophole. Besides, guns are wholesome, decent things that the A team use. the perception with guns is that they're used to shoot back at other people with guns who quite possibly started it. Maybe if someone produced a gun that was designed to kill people quite slowly after incapacitating them then the comparison would be better.
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