Ever got the feeling things are not the way they are by accident?

Here’s a satirical look at Britain’s nuclear power plans…

Just in case you missed it on World Environment Day…

Oh. My. God.

I am still reeling at this. It would be bad enough if a protester was assaulted by police, but this was an innocent man who worked in the area being callously attacked by one of our boys in blue. He died approximately 3 minutes later.

Despite the fact that under European human rights’ laws the police are required to actively protect the public’s right to peaceful protest, here we see a gross abuse of police powers, if not the kind of mindless aggression that the police are supposed to protect innocent members of the public from.

The police had bizarrely been talking up the potential for violence in the weeks up to the G20 protests, which one can only presume was strategic scare-mongering in order to frighten ‘normal’ people away from the demo, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out quite as planned.

If the footage had not been submitted to the Guardian – would we ever have heard the details surround Ian Tomlinson’s tragic death? I seriously doubt it, despite there being numerous (?) CCTV cameras and police witnesses. It even turns out that the IPCC wanted the video taken down from the Guardian website.

I suspect (and sincerely hope) that this will lead to a shake down of the increasing hard-line legislation being churned out by Jacki Smith and her cronies, and a serious change in police tactics regarding reasonable force, officer identification and culpability.

Technically speaking – the filming of this incident by a member of public is probably illegal, thanks to recent anti-terror legislation.

The Guardian has compiled a ‘rogue’s gallery’ with videos of heavy-handed policing at the G20 demo – worth checking out if you think that the Tomlinson tragedy was an isolated incident.

The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

I often have ideas, that I mull over and never get around to doing anything about (man cannot live on ideas alone!), but in this case I am glad somebody else did it first

I was thinking… somebody (perhaps me?) should write a book, a screenplay – a full blown movie even, set in the future when the shi-shi has truly hit the fan, and have someone look back to the present day… and ask why.

A lot of societies glorify ‘the ancestors’ – if not worship them. I think our generation (regardless of ‘culture’), will be the first bunch of ancestors that are reviled and hated, if not cursed, for the legacy we are leaving for our descendants, not because of crimes against humanity, or for starting wars or stealing land or people, but because we are destroying the future of the human race and many of the other flora and fauna that we ‘share’ our precariously spinning space rock and its resources with…

I am looking forward to seeing the film – but just like blog readers dislike being berated, I get the impression that the movie watching public would generally prefer to watch movies where the hero is a superhuman and from another planet/time or something… as opposed to a movie saying “it’s up to you! fix it! it’s your fault! it IS your problem” – but I hope that being proved wrong about that is part of our transition, nay paradigm shift, to becoming honourable and respected ancestors

This is a both a tongue-in-cheek petition and a test of the petition script I am using. But I figured some people might actually want to sign it – especially if they have tried to set up a petition on the Number10 website. The concept and the software (developed by the guys who brought you They Work For You and Pledgebank) are all great. The way that the government handles it though leaves much to be desired. I am sure they have got better things to do – like hanging out on yachts with models and millionaires, than to deal with the incessant demands of us errant sheeple.

The Number10 Petition Petition