Scoville Units Unite

I think I have found my new favourite conspiraloons, just pipping the 9/11 Troofers at the post.

Freemen on the Land seems to have started in the US and then spread to the UK. Some of the absurd arguments which reflect the US legal system seem to have translated too which is most amusing.

Basically it seems to be based around a number of premises

1. you are a freeman on the land
2. when your birth certificate is filed that is the creation of a legal corporation which bears your name
3. you can pick and choose when you are Jim Smith and when that is the legal corporation
4. courts areadmiralty court and you can demand to be tried under common law
5. taxes, driving licences, passports etc are unnecessary.

Amusingly most of their legalistic arguments don’t seem to be tested and those that are fail miserably.

You can see a number of their arguments on various Youtube videos and the David Icke Forum. They are mercilessly ripped to shreds on the JREF forum as you would expect.

One of my favourite series of videos and which explains theur fruitcakery quite well is the 8 parter by the Toronto Truth Seekers

In one of them (part 4?) one of them claims that you don’t need a passport to travel internationally as your birth certificate is fine. When asked where he had went with it the reply is nowhere. Which kind of sums it up. The Toronto Truth seekers also have videos about chemtrails, why polio isn’t real (tell my aunt who lost a leg to polio that you fuckers).

The Free Keene group are equally hilarious

Like all libertarians they probably rant about free enterprise and how glorious capitalism will lead them to riches. When asked how he will pay his fine when he inevitably loses his case he pauses. Then says from the wages from his job cleaning floors – keep living the dream.

Ben Lowrey from the UK seems to take delight in getting attention from the police and wasting their time.

Quite amusing to see some of his encounters with them – explaining how he is a member of a sovereign nation and so doesn’t need a drivers licence.

The other main tactic is to refer to a courtroom as a boat (people leaving are given a comment of man overboard) and claims that a birth certificate is Jim Smith and not the person who is called Jim Smith.

No doubt any cheques sent to Jim Smith are deposited in the human beings business account and not the non-existant corporate account for the legal fiction corporate person strawman Jim Smith.

So, has anyone encountered these guys or found better examples of their delusion?

I had heard of Valt Vodka a few weeks back but didn’t want to throw down £25-£30 on a rash buy.

Well I went round round the Scottish Trade Fair on Sunday as a recce mission for future exhibiting and I spotted their stand. Disciplined I wandered round the rest of the food section before reaching it.

I got a wee sample and it was very strange. Vodka made from malted barley so it smells and tastes like whisky. Was not unpleasant, although I’m unsure if I could drink much of it. Certainly not in one sitting.

The fair was very strange, a mixture of jewellery, textiles, greeting cards, novelty condom wrappers, seats made from highland cow horns and t-shirts with anti-English slogans on it. And more tartan than you could shake a stick at.

I miss the good old days of UGS where I would in real time point out the errors in police statements around such incidents as the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.

After the student protests last week there were a couple of gems in the news. The most indicative single article though is this one from the Guardian.

There are two statements of note in this article.

From the Met

The legal challenge came as the Met said more than 180 people have been arrested concerning the student protests. Senior officers said most of the 182 suspects were aged between 17 and 25 and had no records of violence or crime.

According to Theresa May though

the home secretary blamed violence on “an organised group of hardcore activists and street gangs”

So there are a three statements you can take from these if you take them at face value.

1. The police arrested a number of people
2. There were a number of members of street gangs there intent on violence.
3. The majority of those arrested had no criminal record

So this leads to a number of conclusions you could draw

1. There were violent thugs there, but the police did not arrest them and are therefore incompetent
2. There were violent street gangs there, none of whose members had any criminal records
3. There were violent gang members there but people with no criminal record were behaving in such a way that they were a higher arrest priority than the gangsters.

Of course the other stories from the protest are Jody McIntyre being dragged from his wheelchair for the second time on the day by police and then being interrogated by Ben Brown about what he had done to provoke it. The most disgraceful line being that he had menacingly rolled his wheelchair at the police throwing things. He cannot move his wheelchair on his own and due to Cerebral Palsy the chances of him throwing things at the police are remote. The other being Alfie Meadows being given a brain injury by the police

A magazine in Birmingham phoned a friend offering her advertising. Using pressure sales techniques they convinced her to buy advertising space. Part of this was using misleading information – that they distribute in Harrods etc. According to their website they distribute in Asda.

She was not happy. They then called again repeatedly. They managed to catch her on an off day for a variety of reasons and after around 40minutes of harassment she gave in. Almost as soon as she hung up she realised her mistake and tried to back out. They immediately responded that she was out of luck, to contact the Federation of Small Businesses and they would confirm that there was no cool off period for self-employed people trading under a business name.

I was pretty pissed off and advised her to put it down to experience. Mainly at how much their advertising was, mainly based on the expectation of their readership etc. Secondly as she had been quite upset at the number of persistent calls she had been getting from them.

They then kept contacting her. She demanded they stop and they only started contacting for payment. After a load more calls touting for sales they have now started contacting her claiming she hasn’t made the August payment. She has. She told them she has. They told her she would have to prove it to them using copies of her bank statements etc (get to fuck!). They have now started contacting her demanding the July payment. Again not proving they haven’t been paid but demanding she prove she has paid them.

From their deceptive sales techniques to their refusal to stop harassing telephone calls to now claiming that payment haven’t been made I am pretty convinced that Insight Magazine are running some sort of scam.

The reasons for this conclusion are numerous:

Persistent calls using pressure sales techniques
Discrepancies about where they distribute
Preference for giving information verbally rather than by email or letter
Persistent calls after being told to stop doing so.
Claiming payments have not been met
Immediate parroting of laws related to areas genuine companies should rarely encounter.

My advice: if you have been contacted by Insight Magazine for advertising – reject it!

Opened the papers this morning to find that Channel 4 and it’s various offshoots are still off limits. It appears the last series of Big Brother was not really the last series and they have beat the dead horse even further. Like something from a parody the walking dead are still there. Having churned out people who are famous for being famous they have dredged up some who are famous for being famous for being famous to give them another shot at stardom.

For god sake just let it fucking go so that sane people with more than 3 braincells can turn over to your stations without wincing due to your show plus 24 hour feed of show and daily half hourly analysis of the hour broadcast etc.

I just caught part of a report on Reporting Scotland on BBC. The Church of Scotland has just released new figures showing a low for membership.

The piece was started by showing a trainee minister rearranging chairs in an empty room which was amusingly symbolic. In the short interviews there was mooted explanation behind this although there is a programme on later tonight where it will no doubt be explored further.

I haven’t posted much on here about religion which no doubt surprises many but I thought it fitting to post a few details about this.

The first is the figures:
In 1957 membership was 1.32 million
Today it is around 464,000.

This is around 9% of Scotlands population. Although at the last census 42% identified as Church of Scotland there were 27.5% with no religion. Given the truer figure of 9% for Church of Scotland membership that puts Non-religious as the largest religious group in Scotland. A fact I tried in vain to drum home to some a while back in the local press.

The other interesting factoid around the Church of Scotland is a quotation from their Constitution – the first article also enshrined in the Church of Scotland Act 1921

The Church of Scotland is part of the Holy Catholic or Universal Church; worshipping one God, Almighty, all-wise, and all-loving, in the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; adoring the Father, infinite in Majesty, of whom are all things; confessing our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, made very man for our salvation; glorying in His Cross and Resurrection, and owning obedience to Him as the Head over all things to His Church; trusting in the promised renewal and guidance of the Holy Spirit; proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God through faith in Christ, and the gift of Eternal Life; and labouring for the advancement of the Kingdom of God throughout the world. The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation; receives the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life; and avows the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic faith founded thereupon.

I mention this only as no doubt part of that 33% of people who claim to be Church of Scotland but never attend are those who repeatedly espouse anti-Catholic bigotry their ignorance doubled by their claimed membership a Catholic church, albeit not a Roman Catholic one.

It appears that a lot of people find my site by searching for First Search Consultancy Scam. This is possibly related to a couple of previous posts I wrote – almost 650 at the last count.

More than likely though it is related to the large number of people who claim to be dissatisfied with First Search Consultancy.

No doubt the sudden appearance of First Search Consultancy shooting up the rankings in Google for the term First Search Consultancy Scam is related to this too.

Hardly a day goees by without one of the scummy papers ranting about Health and Safety gone mad. These new rules always provoke outrage and rage and anger, but of course only in the mind of the readersand writers of these sorts of papers. The worst of course being the Hitler supporting Daily Mail.

This can range from some local authority sending all staff on a course to learn how to lift boxes properly (so staff don’t knacker their back at work, go off work for ages on the sick and potentially sue their employer) to some school deciding that the latest fad sweeping the playground can potentially result in one child getting hurt and banning it.

Quite ironically of course these same papers will happily support whatever ludicrous scheme dreamt up by the government because will no one think of the children!! etc.

Of course the real reason for their opposition to Health and Safety is never revealed, it mainly came about because of workers trying to improve the working conditions of their workplace. Some employers were quite happy to cut corners putting peoples lives at risk to save a few bucks.

Well I quite expect them to be quiet on the health and safety front for a bit as a major story has shown just why such policies exist.

The Buncefield Oil Depot went on fire a few years back destroying dozens of buildings and injuring 43 people. The cause of the fire: several companies cutting corners and breaching Health and Safety regulations.

Full disclosure: I ordered a Christmas present that year from a company located on the estate – who were due to ship it out the day of the fire. I then had to panic and rush round finding a replacement elsewhere a couple of weeks before Christmas.

So as of today the Times is starting to charge for content. Lets hope Rupert Murdoch gets egg on his face.

He can whinge all he wants about Google stealing content but if he was so concerned all he had to do was block access to Google’s search bots. Two minute job and it’s done. Instead millions spent and hundreds of column inches spent discussing the plan.

Why anyone would pay for access to the Times when the Independent, Guardian and BBC are available online with frequently added articles is beyond me.

2 minor annoyances with Travel Dundee lately.

Firstly they have binned the flexi-cards and replaced them with paper tickets to be stamped by the drivers. Notices say this is to speed up the journey etc. Except the driver taking ticket, inpecting it, then leaning forward lining up stamper, stamping, checking stamp is in correct place then handing back. Now, it takes about twice as long as putting a flexi card in the machine did.

Secondly I got on a new bus yesterday and the notice for Conditions of carriage had changed. Firstly it looked like the minimum charge (i.e. fine for fare dodging) had doubled. It was only seeing the figure which drew my attention to the poster. The poster says for full journey rules I should pop into their store in the West Midlands. Bit of a jaunt to find out if I can stick my feet up on the seat eh?