#PawsUpUK - support charity and get more followers

Paws Up UK is a charity dedicated to looking after Police Dogs who retire from active duty.  You can check their web page here pawsup.org.uk.  There's nothing else like it in the UK.

The generous people at Tactical Electronics UK will donate £1 for every Tweet or RT that features the #PawsUpUK hashtag, up to a maximum of £1000, from 8PM tomorrow night.  Needless to say, that's a lot of cash for a worthwhile UK charity.  All you have to do is either tweet that tag, or RT one of the many tags with the hashtag on it, and that will translate into real hard cash for charity.

To help give them a boost, I will hold a Beardcall from 8PM to 9PM tomorrow night.  This is a real easy way to gain a large number of followers in one go. 

All you have to do to join in is to tweet me the hashtag #PawsUpUK, between 8PM and 9PM (UK Time) on the 6th of June 2013.  I will then put all the names into a list.  I tweet the list to all my followers.  Everyone in the list agrees to follow each other.  So let's say 100 people are in the list, and they aren't already following each other, then they should each obtain 99 new followers.

Even if you don't care about followers, please tweet or RT the hashtag #PawsUpUK as it will turn into a £1 for charity.

There are a number of ways you can find the #PawsUpUK list, even if you didn't take part:-
1.  Use the search bar in Twitter to search for #PawsUpUK and then find the list by scrolling through "all" tweets.  Don't use the "top" tweets search.  The list should be obvious as a number of tweets with the tag #PawsUpUK at the end.  This didn't work on the night of the original BeardCall as it was inundated with so many tweets it developed an over capacity error.  However if that happens it should work the next day.

2.  Go into my profile and then into "my tweets", then scroll down for the list.

3.  As the list is tweeted by me, simply favourite each tweet, then you can view them (and follow) all at your leisure (from the "my favourites" list).  I think this is probably the best way to do it whilst it's happening live.

The best way to make the most of beardcall is to both be on the list and follow everyone on the list. Several tweeps RT the list too, so you should be able to get more followers than the actual number of tweeps on the list, as their followers also follow you.

There are only 3 rules:-
1.  Tweet me #PawsUpUK between 8PM and 9PM on the 6th of June 2013.
2.  Follow everyone on the #PawsUpUK list (intend to tweet this from 8pm onwards)
3.  You must follow @Das_Beard on Twitter.


Thanks for listening:  The Beard. {;~{)}

Double Concentrate

This is a public health broadcast.  I am here to warn you about the dangers of a new consumer product.  The evils of which have not been known to this planet, or any other until this date.  The pox of the food stalls and the poisoner of young children:  double concentrate juice.

It seems innocuous and timid on the shelf of the supermarket, perhaps even helpful, after all, who wouldn’t want a bottle of juice that lasted twice as long as a normal bottle?

Not until the corporations have confused your desires does the true ugliness of their invention reveal itself:  the true horror of absent mindedly drinking slightly stronger orange squash than usual!!!!!!

What can you do to prevent this from happening to you?  the obvious answer is not to buy the thing in the first place, but then you wouldn’t have a bottle with at least 60 servings of juice inside it.  So that would be utterly stupid.  So the only option left open is to acquire the only thing that can possibly defend you against it.

You lucky reader, know the Beard and The Beard knows the answer.  All you need to protect yourselves is to surround yourselves with friends and family, who are always prepared to scream “IT’S DOUBLE CONCENTRATE!!!! FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, MAKE SURE YOU DON’T PUT TOO MUCH IN!!!!!”  in a manner that is entirely without justification (and should I add; annoying?), every single time you pour a glass of it. 

This, and only this, will keep you from the agonising fate of drinking slightly stronger squash than usual.

No need to thank me, you can thank me by keeping safe, and remember: Double the concentrate, double the danger.

Cognitive Dissonance

You won’t believe what happened to me.  I was sitting reading some current affairs Blog, when I came across a horrific story of oppression and Human Rights abuses.  The writing was very powerful and soon got me whipped up into a political frenzy.  Not like me I know, but what can I say?  I’m a sucker for good writing.  

The piece told me of a small group of people from an ethnic minority who were facing a bit of trouble over their choices of where to live.  They had been persecuted throughout the ages, and, at times, genocide had been exercised against them.  The article accepted that other people from their group had been naughty at times, but you can’t hold that against them forever, right? 

This particular group had beaten all the odds to get themselves a bit of of land, but had used it illegally.  Not a big deal really, but they had held onto it, ilegally, for quite some time as they had nowhere else to go.  

Everyone from the surrounding regions were completely against them, and were all actively tying to get rid of them.  Eventually, even their own government had taken legal action against them, and had prepared to remove them from the homes that they had made for themselves.  I got all liberal and upset and started to get myself in a right old leftie tiz about it (why couldn’t they just leave them alone to live in peace?  A bit of illegality never hurt anyone, did it?).  

I felt absolutely compelled to defend these people, but I couldn’t think who would help me.  I knew most of my friends would be completely against the ilegal use of land, so I decided to get the lefties on board and went to find them.  I looked in all the usual places, beatnik poetry clubs, anarchy groups, world music record shops, and vegan cookery lessons.  I spoke with hundreds of them, but couldn’t find a single one who was willing to come with me.  I was completely shocked.  

I got very dejected about it, concluding that it just wasn’t that important after all.  I had really just assumed the liberals would be up for it. 

I suppose that they thought it'd be too hot to travel to Israel at this time of year.  

In any event they all had prior engagements watching Emmerdale Farm, in Basildon or something - probably completely different thing to be fair, not connected in any way, not even associated to the same prinicples involved, and certainly not coming to a completely different conclusion about it.

In the end I gave it up as a bad job.  

Cheer Up

Apparently around 88% of us feel less happy than we did before the recession hit, according to CSV who quote an ICM poll (describe themselves as The Country’s leading volunteer and training charity).

Well, fuck me?  What is surprising that a charity spent money on telling us what we already know: people are rarely happier when they have less money - they must’ve had a team of monkeys working around the clock on that one.

Perhaps the only surprise to come out of the poll was that 12% of people surveyed actually felt happier.  These are definitely the anti capitalists hippies who are too smug to notice the whole raft of word conflicts occurring as a direct result.

It’s hard to get solid data on happiness because different groups tend to distort the info.  For example the BBC used this in 2006 to show that the US has maintained (or even lost) a significant degree of happiness, whilst GDP increased, since 1957 - so money don’t make you happy, right?

As this study in the US shows there was a huge spike in happiness levels in the US in the 50’s which actually declined before leveling out.  So being at 1950 levels of happiness is actually quite good, although I accept not necessarily linked to GDP.  I suppose this is the leftist way of telling us we don’t need so much money, and shouldn’t be too upset if the reds tax us to dust.

What is also funny about the US study is that it shows people score praying at a similar level to lunch.  There’s got to be a few lies in there.  Eating is pretty much better than everything for me, even having sex makes me want to eat a kebab.

However, generally speaking people do seem to be fucking upset, about pretty much fucking everything, at the moment.  Now I’m going to break one of my own rules here, and blame this on one thing: -

The illusion of the possibility of financial equality.  

I put it on it’s own because I want it to stand out.  I did try a red font with gold glitter, but it started to look a bit silly, so I’m sticking with black.  You can cut it out at home if you like and do that, but I’m trying to be serious, so don’t impose your artistic sensibilities on me, luvvie.

Try any one of the better known Liberal commentators, who do seem to have the floor at the moment, you will be able to find comment about the lack of financial equality in the UK.  

In addition to this, the glorification of all things materialistic in any one of the red tops, leads us to think that we should all be rich.  We should all be at the top of our tree.  

One of the guys studying this recently is Charles Seaford, head of the Centre for Well Being at the New Economics Foundation.  He said having enough money to live seemed important, but "it seems that national wellbeing depends on quite a high level of equality" which sends the point home for me.

Basically our happiness depends on a fucking pipe dream.  Don’t get me wrong here, everyone should have the same opportunities, regardless of race, creed etc, BUT everyone cannot expect to be able to achieve everything they want. Not everyone can expect to have the same success as their neighbour.  What we should be doing is learning to live with it.  

Here’s a little scenario to demonstrate my point.  It’s The Olympics, you’re watching the 100m.  The race starts.  All the guys sprint to the end, at the speed of a coked up gazelle, and one narrowly beats the second place.  He’s overjoyed, he’s got what he worked for.  

The second one is crying, because he didn’t win.  He didn’t achieve what the guy in front did.  Not unusual?  of course not.  

Now look around you in the stadium, how many other people are crying because they didn’t win the race?  None.  Not a fucking one.  But why not?  the guy who is the second fastest in the world is devastated by it, but you aren’t even mildly upset.  In fact the guy who came last isn’t crying either? why the fuck not? The whole world saw him get his ass handed to him by Usain Bolt, but not a tear. Only number 2 is actually crying.  Why the fuck is this craziness happening? Why isn’t the whole world in abject depression?  Well the answers easy: because noone else expected to win.  The only guy that’s upset is the one who thought he should have won.

This is the affliction we are all suffering at the moment.  We all think we can have it all.  We all think we should win the race.   We get told by people, who should know better, that we can because they confuse what the redistribution of wealth really means.  It means that most people in our country would have less.  And as demonstrated above, they’ve convinced you it can happen, without you having less - the “rich” are going to fund it all.  

Sounds good?  sounds sexy?  more money and only those pig dog capitalist bastards are going to suffer?  Why didn’t we do this sooner? firstly if you exchange your work for money (wages) then you’re part of the system that they dislike.  

Secondly, different people are simply better at holding onto, and making more of, their money than others.  If you believe in freedom, then you should accept that this should be the case.  And if you want social mobility, you can’t take money off people at an alarming rate to fund anyone but the most needy, because money is what makes the world go round.

To end on a high note, let’s take a quick look at a very crude model of complete income redistribution.

According to The World Bank (oh yes, there’s a World Bank, presumably lends to alien cultures?) the global GDP is $58.26 trillion, or $58, 260, 000, 000, 000.  What if I told you I was in charge, and I was going to dish this out equally between you all?  You’d be happy?  let’s have a look at that.  The world population is:  6.775 billion (always rising too, check it out )

Ok so divide the 58.26 trillion, between 6.775 billion.  This comes to around $8624.  So you’d have an income of $8,624.  At todays exchange rate, that would be around: £5458.  

It’s worth noting that an income of £5,458 would be well below the standard of poverty in the UK, and is easily exceeded by most incomes of people on full benefits.  I think you’d tell me to stick my income redistribution up my arse.

I don’t know what the issue is when we’re all so fucking rich.

God and The Itch

It has just passed midnight, in the garden of good and evil.  

I have a massive day ahead of me and I am characteristically unable to sleep.  It’s times like this when I start to question everything that surrounds me, and I rarely come to a cheerful conclusion.  So forgive me, my friends, if this post is distinctly more sombre than usual.

For reasons I won’t go into; my main thoughts today have been about death.  The one thing that we all owe to God, and we will all be forced to pay.  If you think about it in terms of forfeiture avoidance, it’s genius really - make your clients biologically unable to avoid payment.

I’m not really one for talking religion most of the time, but for me thoughts of death and religion are intrinsically linked.  

I do consider myself to be a Christian, although I do little to merit the title.  

I suppose I try to be good to people, and treat others how I would wish to be treated myself, but I admit that I am not always strong enough to do so.  

I do not repent when I should , and I do things wrong, when I have had the foresight and time to know that I shouldn’t.  Therefore I do not exactly live my life by Christ’s example. 

I believe in God enough to feel that He exists, but not enough not to have to hope that He does as well.  Not enough to fear that this may be “it” and that there may be nothing but oblivion waiting for us on the other side.

The 2 men I find most comforting in times like this (at the moment) are quite different but are both scientists none the less.  The first would in fact, ironically, be Richard Dawkins who once said that we are to end at the point of our death, this only serves to make our lives more purposeful than if we live on.  Our place in the universe having been unique and transitory, like some cosmic snowflake, possibly insignificant, but no less beautiful than any other life simply because we are the only ones who could have lived it.  

I do take some comfort from this, but it’s not without it’s faults.  Even if I could come to terms with this for myself, I don’t think that I can accept this for my loved ones.  For them my feelings are entirely selfish.  I don’t want to lose them, and I don’t care how beautiful, or unique their lives maybe, it would never be enough to compensate for their loss.  So Dawkin’s statement is ultimately unsatisfactory.  It just doesn’t feel right.  Maybe I just don’t want to believe it either.

The second is the great philosopher Descartes.  He sat in a room with a little stove for ages, thinking like crazy, and came up with a good proof for His existence.  This was at the same time of proving that we all exist.  This might come as a shock to you, but before he said “cogito ergo sum” in the 17th century, everyone just walked around wondering if everything was really there, or just an illusion created by some naughty demon.  Descartes used his noodle to simply think it through*.   

He thought that as we have an idea of something that is perfect, the cause of that idea must be perfect.  A man is not perfect, because we know that our knowledge increases with time i.e. we cannot be perfect because we don’t know everything.  Therefore the perfect thing that gave us the idea, must be something else: God** I find the idea comforting because it actually offers some form of proof.  It has been pointed out that Descartes is wrong about knowledge, and that we can never be sure of what we know, but we all think that we are real.  We have faith in our senses and surroundings, even though we cannot know if they really exist, so it’s a nice theory as even the criticism requires faith in something.***

Sometimes It’s when I can’t sleep that my thoughts turn to death, as I just can’t stop thinking, and death is the one thing you can’t avoid facing, and it’s the one thing that most people want to avoid.  Over time I’ve concluded that it’s why I love film and cinema so much.  As Anne Rice suggested; we love entertainers because they distract us from the thought that we will one day end.  This possibly goes for everyone we ever loved, even our children.  There is of course at least a small part of us that has children to give us the illusion that we are, in some way, immortal.

It is one thing that does cause me to have to hope that God exists, instead of just accepting it.  It forces the question how could He love us and also inflict such a terrible fate on all of us? Or even to expose us, and our innocent children, to the risk of death, without a first proving that He exists to us all?

I accept that I may have just missed most of his appearances in my life, and I’m not sure about the times I think I’ve seen His work.  

So if you’re listening God, I’m a big fan of your work - I really am, but I’d appreciate it if you could just be a bit more obvious sometimes, because I occasionally get a bit dejected with the way things are run down here.  You know? Perhaps take a break from being mysterious from time to time?  I think obvious might really be your thing this century.  Oh and when I’m having a bit of “me” time in the bathroom, could you just give me a pass on that?  Thanks in advance.

I know I maybe wrong, I’m probably just talking bollocks, but I think a death may be too much of a price for a life, given that you can never forget that it’s coming.  As the quote goes from Blade Runner “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch”

*anyone who spent time in HM Forces will tell you: it’s amazing what your mind turns to when you’ve got too much time on your hands.

** I have given my own interpretation of both ideas.  Yes I know they may not be wholly accurate, smart arse.

***This ties in with the theory of knowledge, and at the risk of being ripped to shreds by any proper philosophy students, I don’t have the time to try my hand at the entire thing.