If I Was Beyonce...

I'd shut my big fat cake hole

I'm really getting sick of the double-standard sexist bullshit in modern British society. Beyonce's song "If I Were A Boy" makes incredibly sexist generalisations about how all men neglect women and that they lack any kind of emotional depth because after all they are "just a boy".

If Eminem released a song making offensive generalisations about women there would be no end of complaints. He certainly wouldn't be allowed to promote it on the BBC "Six O'Clock News" and "Strictly Come Dancing".

All my life I've had to put up with women whining about sexism and I've had enough of it. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!

All men are potential rapists

Technically accurate (You can commit rape without using a penis so impotence or paralysis is no excuse) but then on the same note:

All women are potential whores

You don't hear that one said very often do you?

Having been an attentive, caring husband who didn't take his wife for granted but is about to go through a divorce I don't like having to hear that song that tells me I'm automatically scum because I'm male. Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have been censured so the BBC should follow suit with Beyonce.

And then I read crap like this on the internet. Tell me Jacqui Smith, have you ever heard of a Gigolo? Women have encounters with prostitutes too but it's far easier to portray all men as sexual predators who'd happily rape an enslaved child as it helps you push your "Stand up for wimmin" agenda which in turn promotes your own career and covers up the fact that like Harriet Harman you are a piss poor politician.

Then there's the gender pay gap. My boss is a woman, her boss is a woman, they both earn more money than me. Why do I need to be legislated against?

The "glass ceiling" doesn't just stop women from getting into top positions, it stops men who aren't from the "Old boys" network too. It's nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with keeping "the right sort" in charge - who're normally thick as shit (Piers Moron anybody?)

The main reason women (on average) earn less money than men (on average) is because of the career choices they make (on average). Few women work in my profession (I.T.) but those that do have the same career opportunities as the men.

Domestic violence is another example of modern sexism. Just this Friday I was asked if I wanted to make a donation to Amnesty International specifically to protect women who suffer domestic abuse. No mention of men that suffer domestic abuse.

It is estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are a victim of domestic abuse. However those that do the estimating believe the figure for men is in fact higher as most men feel too ashamed to come forward.

Hardly surprising when you consider the public mockery that the "Mitchell Brothers" got when it turned out their real life partners had been smacking them about. I don't see what either of them could have done differently. If they'd retaliated then they would've been portrayed as "wife beaters" and it would have damaged their careers.

Then there's the farce that is the british child custody system. If this story in the Sun is to be believed then either Baby P's father is the biggest scumlord in Northern London or there is institutional sexism in child custody.

Even when the mother was denied care of Baby P, he was given to her 23 year old friend who had no parenting experience in preference to the father.

All I know about him is that he was married to her and she kicked him out. So what could make him such an appalling father for him to not get custody?

The fact of the matter is that custody is automatically given to the mother. A mothers rights are paramount, fuck the rights of the child and the father.

The mother can kick the father out, have full custody of the child, bring someone else in and claim maintenance off the father. How is that fair?

Whatsmore the courts are lousy at ensuring fathers are given access to their children or any control in their upbringing.

Thankfully to support this injustice there is another sexist generalisation in society where it is accepted that all broken families are as a result of the father abandoning the children and not paying towards their upbringing.
Whilst I accept that this does happen, it is far from the norm yet "wimmin" activists are free to spread this bullshit generalisation in the national media to protect sexist child custody procedures.

As far as I'm concerned the custody rules can be sorted out with one simple rule:

No Stay? No Pay

If the parent without custody isn't getting their court-agreed access then they don't pay maintenance until the access is restored. This works vice-versa.

To give you an idea of how much sexist crap I've had to put up with in my "modern" upbringing, here's a poem I was taught at Primary School:

What are little boys made of?

Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice and all things nice

My New Job

As I said in my last post I've recently changed jobs.

Having worked in a 500+ staff public sector IT department, I now work in a 25-30 staff private sector IT consultancy.

I was told before I joined that part of my job would be to deliver UML training courses. I was quite worried about this because having tried to use UML with Rational Rose (An old version in fairness) in my last job, I found it was too much of a pain in the arse and you ended up doing more work with little benefit.

I was still prepared to deliver the courses to the best of my ability but felt it would be like selling rice to China.

But that was before I started using Enterprise Architect and the UML 2.1 specification.

Not only did I find that I was doing less work to build my model but it had more in it and did a lot more.

I won't go into what it does that makes it so special as then this will sound like brown nosing (I've already done that once when I met up with my old co-workers for a pint). Needless to say I am very much a UML convert and feel like I'd be selling water to Saudi Arabia.

I received my last training course yesterday and I deliver my first training course in three weeks. I'm chomping at the bit to get stuck in.

Hopefully all will go as well as I'm hoping.

Wossi-gate

It's been a while since I've put anything on here but then a lot has been going on at home. To summerise in one sentance:

I've changed jobs and moved to Portsmouth to live on my own.

My brother decided to put a post on his blog about Hamilton's dramatic world championship victory so I won't bother going on about that.

Instead I'd like to talk/rant about the other hot topic which is the storm in a teacup surrounding Jonathan Ross / Russell Brand.

Although I haven't heard the show in question, I feel I'm still in a position to comment as that's what thousands of Daily Mail readers have been doing over the last week.

From what I gather took place, I think that what they did was wrong and they should apologise... oh hang on, they already have.

The material in question probably wasn't fit for broadcast but as performers that judgement call didn't rest with them. They were still wrong to phone Mr Sachs on BBC time (whether broadcast or not) but even so the reaction has been outrageous. If I ran the BBC this would be my statement:

"We at the BBC regret the actions that two of our high profile stars took in the name of entertainment. We feel it was inappropriate and we will co-operate fully with OFCOM in their investigations.

We feel there are two seperate issues that require investigation:

Firstly, whether it is appropriate to make abusive telephone calls to public figures in their private domain in the name of programme entertainment - whether the programme is broadcast or not.

Secondly whether the programme was fit for broadcast.

Any OFCOM fines for the first issue will be met by the performers concerned. However they cannot and will not be held accountable for editorial decisions. An internal investigation will take place to identify who was at fault for the second issue and they will be disiplined accordingly.

We feel that whilst this incident went too far and is regrettable, it has been excessively fuelled by the media - specifically the written press.

We will not bow to media pressure to sack any of our performers.

We are the BBC. We are the media. We do not take orders from newspapers"

I personally love the way people from older demographics have been going on about Ross' salary and saying about how it's 'their license fee' that pays for it.

Contrary to popular opinion, young people like myself also pay license fees and I would like to have my favorite Friday night show back on TV - Fuckers!

Police Pay

Lets get a few vested interest points out of the way first:

1. I'm a public sector worker
2. My pay award for June 2007-May 2008 is overdue (by quite a bit)
3. I don't anticipate it being much (again)
4. I work for a Trading Fund so my salary is not paid for by taxation
5. The Trading Fund I work for has met all its performance and finance targets (again) and has ample funds to cover a larger pay rise than the government will allow (again)
6. It is anticipated our pay deal will be implemented (and back paid) at the end of January
7. For the last two years our pay deals have been implemented late but we've received the back pay in time for Christmas

So having established why I personally am a bit concerned about this Police pay issue, I'd now like to voice my disgust.

I think the Home Secretary is under the impression that Middle England see her as being very clever and prudent. I can't speak for all of Middle England but I think she's come out of it looking like an idiot.

If an arbitration panel says 2.5% and then you only give that 2.5% over 9 months instead of 12 then you haven't given 2.5%.
So you haven't managed to abide to the arbitration panel's judgement.
So making big speeches about how you've magically given them the pay rise and kept to your targets makes you look at best disillusioned and at worst stupid.

If I could sum up the last 10+ years of labour rule I would sum it up as these two phrases:

Tax more, Get less

Appearing competent > Being competent

I wish I'd never voted for them.*

It's not about whether the police do a good job or not - some comments on other sites rant about the miner's strikes. I was barely out of nappies when that happened so why should I give a sh!t? Ancient history.

It's not about what other members of the public sector are getting. It doesn't matter.

It's not about whether 2.5% is more costly to the tax-payer than 1.9%.

It's about the underhanded method that has been used.

You wouldn't order a three course meal and then refuse to pay the full cost of the starter after you've eaten it.

I know it's an overused phrase but it's the principle that's at stake here.

The government should abide by the arbitration panel and pay the 2.5% over 12 months including the back-pay. If they gave a rats-arse about inflation then maybe they should have spent less money elsewhere on overpriced construction projects, illegal wars and lousy computer systems.

*I'm not a 'loyal' voter. In my view a political party is not like a football team that you support regardless of what it is doing. I vote for the party that I believe has the best policies at the time. I currently have no idea which party that would be but I now know which one it isn't.

Data Protection

Now that the dust has settled on the whole missing disks fiasco I'd like to reflect on some of the outcomes.

For one I can't believe how most of the media has absolved the government (and in particular Gordon Brown) of any blame in this.

How can he be held into account for the actions of a junior civil servant?

is what they've been saying.

Well I would agree, if a junior civil servant acted inappropriately then it would be unfair to hold the Prime Minister responsible.

The trouble is I don't think the Administrative Officer (AO) did act inappropriately. I think they were doing as they were told.

They might have cocked up the postage type but unless it's a one off you shouldn't be sending confidential data through the post.
The government agency I work for has to periodically send data to the treasury. It too has to do so via posted disks. This is not only risky but it is also costly.

Consider this: If you want to get from A to B once and you could either use a £200 taxi or buy a £10,000 car then you'd hire the taxi. However if you want to regularly get from A to B then the car would end up being more economically viable.

The most expensive and risky factors in a computer system are always the people that use it and the point of input/output. The more automated you can make something, the more robust it is and the less it will cost you in the long term.

However a decision was made that instead of enabling the treasury system to automatically communicate with other government systems and vice-versa, they would do it by manually exchanging disks. This was no doubt done to save money as the set up costs for this kind of connectivity are high.

Who would have been in a position to make such important budgetary decisions in the treasury over the last few years?

Not that AO, that's for sure.

Family

Imagine this:

Billy was only twenty years old when he found out he was a father. He barely knew the mother, they'd met only once before when they'd had a one-night-stand that resulted in the conception of Susanna, their daughter.

Billy was still living with his parents when Susanna was literally left on his doorstep. He'd been studying a degree at university but gave it up to look after his daughter.
His parents were both incredibly supportive. They could see how responsible he had become towards Susanna and they were utterly devoted to their granddaughter.

When Susanna started primary school, Billy was able to return to University to complete his degree in medicine and follow in his fathers footsteps. Whilst he was there he met Lindsay. They married two years after their graduation.
Lindsay loved and cared for Susanna as if she was her own and adopted her as soon as she could after the wedding.

Susanna excelled at school and with the support of her parents she went to University herself to study a degree in Law just like her grandmother had. That was where she met Andrew...

It's a nice story isn't it? Now read this one.

To hell with the mother, what about the rights of that baby girl?

BMI Update

Okay so having whinged enough about how rubbish BMI is, I decided to come up with a better version.

The trouble with BMI is that it only takes your mass and your height. Mass is determined by volume & density, not length.

So making a few assumptions, I've come up with a new index. It can be calculated as follows (Using inches and lbs):

1. Take your hat size (Circumferance of your skull at your forehead) and divide it by pi (3.14).
2. Multiply it by your shoulder width (Try to measure along the top of your shoulders).
3. Multiply this by your height.

You now have a crude measurement of your skelatal volume. Although your actual volume will fluctuate as you lose or gain weight, this is based on fairly static measurements so it should stay the same - the shoulder width may vary slightly.
It isn't accurate to your real volume obviously as your width and depth vary across your body and different people have different shapes.
If you have an disproportionate head for example then this won't give you a fair reflection of your total volume. But it's better than just using height alone.

To obtain my body mass index (I call it a BMV) do the following:

4. Measure your mass in lbs.
5. Divide it by your crude skelatal volume.
6. Multiply it by 1000.

I've no idea what scores are good/bad as it has only been done on myself and my wife - and we're both on a diet at the moment. I figure if more people do it combined with accurate body fat analysis so that we know if they are fat/skinny/ok, then some benchmarking might be possible.

It will never be as reliable as good old fashioned body fat analysis but surely it has to be better than BMI?