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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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Here's an odd thing.
 
We suppose it's fairly common knowledge that Australian men like to project an aura of tough, no-nonsense practicality – and why shouldn't they? There was a time when British men did the same.
 
Evidently the Australian government and health services have the same view, because the figures on spending for men's healthcare present quite an unbalanced picture. According to Australian website Antimisandry.com, in the year 2000 $13million was spent on women's healthcare research in Australia, and only $5.4million on the men.
 
The following year the figures were $19.5m on women, and $8.4m on men. In 2002, the figure for men had increased by roughly $1.5m, but for women there was an increase of almost $7m. Since then the pattern has been maintained, so that in 2007, the last year for which we have information, it was $51.5m for the women but only a miserly $15m for the men.
 
You have to wonder, don't you? It's possible that Australian men are right, and that they really are a tough bunch who laugh at infection and shrug off illness. Perhaps prostate or testicular cancer and infertility don't matter to them, while their womenfolk take breast or ovarian cancer much more seriously and are prepared to make more fuss.
 
But perhaps it's the same thing we recognise in this country – the medical profession really couldn't care less about men's health. Women can get scraped and have their tits felt for lumps every five minutes, while a comparatively simple and inexpensive screening for prostate cancer is only now becoming routinely available for British men of a certain age. The GOS hasn't been offered it yet, despite being in the right age group.
 
You can see the complete Australian figures on this PDF file.
 

 
And here's something else equally odd but potentially far more sinister. The Australian has just published this article by David Crowe, their National Affairs Editor ...
 
Print and online news will come under direct federal government oversight for the first time under proposals issued yesterday to create a statutory regulator with the power to prosecute media companies in the courts. The historic change to media law would break with tradition by using government funds to replace an industry council that acts on complaints, in a move fiercely opposed by companies as a threat to the freedom of the press.
 
The proposals, issued yesterday by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, also seek to widen the scope of federal oversight to cover print, online, radio and TV within a single regulator for the first time.
 
Bloggers and other online authors would also be captured by a regime applying to any news site that gets more than 15,000 hits a year, a benchmark labelled "seriously dopey" by one site operator.
 
The head of the review, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, rejected industry warnings against setting up a new regulator under federal law with funding from government.
 
The major newspaper companies were unanimous in opposing a statutory regulator under federal law, with Kerry Stokes's Seven West Media declaring it was inconsistent with the notion of a free press. Media companies also warned that government funding for the new regulator would undercut the workings of a healthy democracy, with APN News & Media bluntly opposing any increase in regulation.
 
The council would scrutinise online news sites that get more than 15,000 hits a year, clearing the way for government-funded action against amateur website operators who comment on news and current affairs. Greg Jericho, a prominent Canberra blogger on national politics, said: "The level of 15,000 hits a year, or about 40 hits a day, is seriously dopey."

 
Seriously dopey is about right. We'll explain: whenever a user opens up his browser (Firefox, or Internet Explorer for instance) and goes to a web page, that website registers a “hit”. So far, so good.
 
But it's not as simple as that. You see, if the web page includes a picture, that counts as another “hit” because the picture isn't actually part of the page but has to be downloaded separately from the server where it lives, and it's the user's computer that follows the web page's instructions and inserts it into the page. And of course many web pages contain dozens of pictures.
 
And many other things operate in the same way. Does the web page have a fancy logo at the top (like this one has the picture of the grumpy old man)? That's another hit. Is there a title in fancy lettering like the words “Grumpy Old Sod” up above? That's another. Are there any banners like the “Politics Home” one on our home page? Another hit. And are there any advertisements like the Amazon ads on the right? More hits. In the case of Google ads which many websites use, a hell of a lot of hits because Google samples the page as you open it and sends ads that are appropriate to the page content, so there are hits flying back and forwards like crazy.
 
It's perfectly possible that a web page like this one could count as 40 or 50 hits – and our pages are pretty simple with a minimum of graphic content. Most have far more. The Australian government's limit of 15,000 hits would be achieved by most blogs every day, let alone every year. The government really are coming after the little guys and doing their best to stifle grass-roots opinion.
 
Just wait, if the Aussies do it today, it'll happen here tomorrow. We've already got people being arrested for swearing, or making comments in the streets about homosexuality. We already have a prominent author being detained at the airport for making a joke. If you mention the word “bomb” within a hundred miles of an airport you're likely to find yourself surrounded by a screaming mob of black-clad paramilitaries armed with sub-machine guns.
 
Any casual use of words involving minority religions or skin colour or country of origin is legally taboo, though we suppose we should be thankful that it's still OK to talk about white English people or Christianity in disparaging terms. Even here you have to be a bit careful though: you could get away with saying “I think the Church of England is a pile of crap” but the Church of Wales is probably a no-no.
 
And now they're coming after us in our homes. Divide 15,000 by 365, right? Some innocent blogger sits in his bedroom writing his random thoughts of the day for a few anonymous internet friends to read and post comments, and the moment he notches up 41 hits the front door crashes open, the SWAT team crowd in and he's dead meat.
 
And forget running a Facebook page, or one of these special interest forums on Yahoo! where people discuss collecting Beany Babies dolls or building miniature steam engines. They have loads of internet traffic passing back and forwards, registering loads of hits, and even the smallest will be grist to the Australian government's mill.
 
Seriously, this is the death of free speech.
 
And it could get even worse. Think about your own use of email. If you have plenty of friends and use web-based email like Gmail or Fastmail or Hotmail to write to them, who's to say that the Aussies won't count that as a website? You're occupying space on a server somewhere just as a conventional website does, and you're probably generating more than 15,000 hits in a year.
 
You read it here first. And by doing so you've probably pushed The GOS several steps nearer to a police cell in Coonawarra or Booleroo, so thanks for that.
 

 
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