With the news that the Government has overtaken Proctor and Gamble as the single biggest spending advertiser in the UK (thanks, Liberal Vision), I felt compelled to blog.

One hundred and seventy eight million pounds. On propaganda.

I do actually remember the days when I’d say, “The Government should stop people from doing X” and think, you know, the people who want to do X? They’re scum, aren’t they? Who cares what they think? Sure a lot of people won’t like it, but the greater good will be served.

I used to think like that. Over time, however, as I found myself more and more in the ‘X’ category at the hands of this Government, I began to become more and more uneasy about this sort of thing. Who am I to impose anything on anyone? What if I’m wrong? The reasoning that you had to be a bit fascist if you wanted to be properly liberal stopped making sense. The best way to fight fascism is to promote liberalism, and that means using liberalism as your weapon of choice.

Fascism isn’t killing Jews, although fascists have killed Jews. Fascism isn’t racism, although fascists can be racist. Fascism, at it’s heart, is the principle that what’s good for the group is good for everyone in the group, irrespective of the needs or concerns of individuals within the group. That’s what fascism is, in a nutshell – and while it’s got different names and nicer branding, fascism was and still is a hugely popular idea across Europe and the rest of the world, encapsulating as it does both Socialist and Christian Dogma about Collectivism.

Thanks to a hat tip from Martin on twitter, I came across this horrible little piece of fascism from the Guardian:

The internet requires regulation, just as film, television and computer games do. If companies such as Facebook abdicate that responsibility, it suggests government intervention is needed to prevent an internet-powered surge in racial hatred. The spread of racism and hate is not something that can be left to chance or the whims of the private sector. Working against hate, bullying and racism must be part of the price companies pay when they offer an online social environment as their product.

Requires? Surely it is not the internet that requires the regulation. It is politicians and idiots like Andre Oboler, the article’s author, that demand and ‘require’ these things to be regulated. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s always worth remembering who benefits?

It’s not even worth debating this moron’s specific argument. The point is he wants to use fascist tools against fascists he doesn’t like, as a way of trying to stem the tide of fascism on the internet. Anti-Fascism FAIL.

Free Speech is a wonderful, wonderful thing Andre. You brush it aside too easily.

Let’s just say it, shall we? Environmentalism is incompatible with Capitalism.

The UK’s airline industry, already complaining that no other country has to tolerate an Air Passenger Duty, is desperate to avoid this tax going up.

Curiously the Green Party and the Government have the same line on this: The Airline industry is ‘undertaxed’ (a sure sign they’re about to be squeezed until the pips squeak), and that the taxes better reflect the ‘environmental costs.’

Now unless Whitehall has developed an Economics super computer the size of Australia, I don’t believe for one second they have any clue whatsoever what the ‘environmental costs’ are. Let’s call it what it is – it’s a Sin Tax… one of those ‘Discretionary Purchase Revenue Raising Opportunities’.

The money is not being spent on “Environmental Repairs”. There’s no actual costs imposed on anyone. Nothing to spend money on, nothing to take money for.

I find myself on the side of the airlines:

We are in survival mode… we don’t understand why the UK is still insisting with an air passengers duty that has nothing to do with the environment.

The Green Party disagrees:

But Darren Johnson, from the Green Party, said it was a good thing if people were discouraged from flying.

“We need to be increasing the air passenger duty,” he said. “Aviation is simply not paying its way in terms of the environmental damage it causes.”

You know, let’s start having some numbers. Let’s see exactly what damage is caused by an aeroplane, and let’s work out who’s currently paying for the clean up – and how much they’re spending on it.

Because, really, in any other field, this sort of argument – one that doesn’t make any kind of sense, relying on emotive language and metaphors without any basis in fact or reason – would be brushed aside and crushed as quickly as this kind of bullshit is being accepted.

Environmentalism is starting to feel more and more like a noose tightening around our neck, and I’m getting increasingly concerned by the Green/Red mutual love-in. I don’t know how on earth I reconcile this growing cynicism with membership of the most gung-ho Environmentally friendly mainstream party. I always reasoned that the Lib Dems would never get into power so long as they kept Green issues on their agenda so it wasn’t really anything to worry about – but now Labour’s into the Green thing as a handy revenue raising opportunity and Call Me Dave wants us to ‘Vote Blue to Go Green.’  Another wonderful democratic choice.

So, assuming anyone’s still reading this blog after the criminal neglect of the last month or so, I’ve been doing some tinkering.

See, in the real world, I’m a Javascript programmer, mostly making user interface dongles for web pages and that sort of thing. I thought it was about time that I gave my blog some love.

In the sidebar you’ll notice a new Twitter gadget that I’ve written. It pulls in stuff I’ve done tweeted and stuff wot other people have twutted at me. This way people can follow the sort of inane conversations that take place, because, you know, that’s what we do in the Web 2.0 world apparently. It’s been tested in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 and on Mac and PC . If you’re using something else then I’ve basically got my fingers crossed. Let me know if you spot anything weird.

For the technical people who read this blog (everyone else look away now!), it works using WordPress Cron, which pulls in my twitter and mentions feeds every ten minutes and stores them on my server. When someone visits this blog, those feeds are pulled in by the browser, then the HTML is generated automatically by the Javascript in the web page. It makes use of my own custom animation & javascript library – no jQuery – so the whole thing weighs just 4k.

I am, as always, available for third party contracting.

Listening to the radio yesterday I heard another minister try to explain how the Government isn’t planning to cut public spending. The argument, which goes something like this: “Because of the recession we’ve brought forward Capital investment intended for 2011 to 2008 which means that we’re still increasing investment by the same amount overall”

Everyone else’s argument is “They’re cutting investment by 10%! It’s right there in their figures!”

Who’s going to win? If in doubt, the simplest argument is usually the one that convinces the most people – this doesn’t bode well for Labour. The complexity of their argument looks far more like they’re doing little more than spreading a bit of  fear, uncertainty and doubt about what the opposition is saying – knowing full well that only a tiny minority are going to look at the actual Budget report then do the maths themselves.

It’s worth remembering Labour has form on this sort of thing – the 10p tax removal turned out to hurt rather a lot of people, a fact that Brown refused to accept for month. In that case their argument was, again, a complex explanation of benefits and tax credits whereas the opposition said, “these people will be worse off by X.” The simplest argument won there, too.