1) Go to Cardiff (someone like Dave may be able to skip this step);

2) Find the Asda supermarket at Pontprennau;

3) Determine whether the pharmacist on duty is an deranged religious fanatic;

4) If not, come back after the next shift change and repeat;

5) If yes, politely suggest to the pharmacist that she’s an evil witch who should be fired.

As I’ve said before, it’s appalling and wrong that pharmacists are allowed to refuse to dispense emergency contraception, effectively fucking up other people’s lives for their own nebulous ‘moral values’ (yeah, ever so moral).

The argument that people’s religious beliefs should be respected is a complete non-starter in this context, unless you believe Christian Scientists (most of whom refuse to take or prescribe any artificial drugs) should also be allowed to be pharmacists. Prescribing contraception is an essential part of being a pharmacist, and someone who refuses to do so is just as incapable of being a pharmacist as a Christian Scientist would be.

Meanwhile, should you not already be boycotting Asda on general principle, the fact that they haven’t sacked this particular employee (despite sacking plenty of others) is an excellent reason to start.

(via Anthony, whose views on the subject are a little more measured…)

I’ve warmed slightly to evil New Labourite Louise Casey. Although the policies she officially espouses are horrendous and evil, she seems reasonably sane and sensible in her own personal views.

While ideally I’d rather we weren’t governed by authoritarian fanatics and craven appeasers, I’d prefer a cynical careerist trying to get ahead by pretending to be a Blunkettist over someone who actually believed that authoritarian bollocks, any day of the week…

"To go in on an ad-homonym attack in the way they have indicates to me a level of desperation…" – the Beeb, transcribing Simon Davies’s quote on ID cards. Hehe.

The actual story is worth reading as well, although you may struggle to contain your anger at Charles Clarke’s levels of hypocrisy, bluster and idiocy. I particularly can’t stand the way that when independent experts produce impartial and high-quality research that gets in the way of the government’s insane dogma (see also: Lancet; Amnesty), the immediate reaction among both the government and its supporters is to spout shit like "the whole episode has discredited the LSE’s reputation".

No, it hasn’t, except in the eyes of bigoted insane fuckjobs who think Tony and his army of cunts can do no wrong. Now fuck off and die of cancer. (via)

Shrill Europhobic EU Rota has some tables on overall tax taxes across Europe. Tim Worstall wonders what this looks like when cross-referenced with growth rates; I’m happy to oblige:

Not terribly conclusive, although going for a tax rate much above 45% seems like a marginally worse strategy than going for one much below it.

Alternatively, the data can be displayed in a bubble chart that also shows GDP per capita:

Again, it proves roughly sod-all, except that people who believe there’s a strong positive correlation between growth and small government have a tough explanation job on their hands…

(tax takes sourced from EU Rota. 03/04 GDP growth sourced from local statistics offices, IMF, UN. Only 19 countries are included, since I didn’t have GDP data to hand for Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg or Malta. Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta would all appear in the 40-45 government spending cluster; the Baltics are slightly lower).

I’ve finally registered what really annoys me about many of the Self-Proclaimed Decent Left: they don’t appear to have any sense of fun.

Dressing as a clown and claiming that capitalism is boring is a harmless and fun thing to do. Slating people for doing the former ("oooh, it’s so bourgeois and decadent") is, well, just fucking lame.

General rule of thumb: if you find yourself empathising with the cops at a demo more than the protesters, that’s a reasonable sign that you’re descending into blimpish senility – as well as infallible, certain proof that you’re not leftwing.

(I’ve some sympathy for Lenin’s take: "We pay the police’s wages – it’s us who should be entitled to knock them about a bit". It’s interesting the way that people’s attitudes to the police are often diametrically opposed to their attitudes towards other public servants: right-wingers tend to think that public sector workers are idle spongers but that the coppers are great, whereas lefties’ views tend to go the other way…)

Bystander has an excellent post ripping apart the stupid Times article which claimed that one in 10 London teenage boys had carried a gun.

"The headline suggested that up to a million kids have gone about tooled up, and the reality is that a few hundred, or even a couple of thousand teenage boys have claimed to be dead hard – probably even more claimed to have shagged Billie Piper".

The thing which really annoys me, though, is the opposition’s reaction. Obviously, the study is a nasty piece of lying Blairy spin designed to bolster the halfwitted Violent Crime Reduction Bill, so the government are right behind it. But why couldn’t David Davis or Mark Oaten say "this is an insidious piece of misleading propaganda produced by Tony Blair in a desperate attempt to scare people into supporting him"? Are the public really stupid enough to believe we have a serious violent crime problem?

Sadly, yes.

Various Americans are upset about the prospect of Alberto Gonzales taking over Sandra Day O’Connor’s vacant position on the Supreme Court.

Not because he’s pro-torture. Not even because they’re left-wing. But because they’re Republicans and he isn’t wingnutty enough for them. Fucking hell.

This is the most idiotic article I’ve read in months. Not just for the line "dope smokers [should be] forced to do community service with the mentally ill (many who gained their affliction by smoking dope)", although this utter lie is something of an indication of the cluelessness of the whole piece.

The wrongheaded core of the piece is Mr Clark’s equation of drug users to people who buy child pornography or stolen goods. He suggests that it’s wrong of society not to punish the former group in the same way that we’d punish the latter two.

Duh.

We punish fences and pr0n-gathering paedos because their money leads directly to innocent people being harmed. This is only the case for drug money *because* of prohibition: if heroin were prescribed on the NHS, or cannabis sold by BAT, then there wouldn’t *be* any associated third-party harm. Which, unless you’re an authoritarian maniac, suggests that there shouldn’t be any punishment either. (via)

Today is the sad anniversary of perhaps Britain’s worst ever military defeat. This should be a day for quiet reflection on what might have been (not to mention sadness that some of our countrymen felt it was right to rise against their own people in bloody rebellion).

However, it has been brought to my attention that certain despicable fifth-columnists among us seek to celebrate this terrible defeat. I hope you’ll join with me in condemning their treachery.

The statistics prove it: more ignorant you are, the more likely you are to love the USA. No fucking wonder, when the non-ignorant read things like this (woo! yay! let’s make all the junkies die of AIDS, as well as the Africans…)

Unrelatedly, Samizdata has a very slightly funny joke about market failure, followed by a spectacularly funny comments thread of comprehension failure.

And at last, I’m going to have to join the right-wing activists in claiming that the Independent is untenably appalling and should never be given house room. Not for its political stance, though: any media organisation that redesigns its website in a way that breaks all external deep links deserves punishment.

Actually, I already thought the Indy was appalling. The only newspapers I can stomach are the Saturday Guardian (arts, magazine and Guide only) and the Sunday Times (magazine, style and culture only). But YKWIM, etc.

Finally, in a just world, Karl Rove would go to jail and George Bush would resign. "Vindictively, cruelly and unthinkingly exacting personal retribution on an intelligence officer who had committed no offense" is Not Cool. Unfortunately, I fear the bastards will get away with it: they’ve got away with everything else… (second article via James Wolcott)