What poverty of ambition this poor excuse for a Home Secretary has. Not only does she think it's perfectly normal not to be able to walk the streets alone at any damn time one feels like it, she has this advice "You don't walk in areas you don't know, in any circumstances".
So that's it - and no apology for presiding over a government where this is the case; not even a pledge to do better.
Such crippling poverty of ambition is one more signal that our current leaders have totally lost touch.
I would like to live in a country where anyone would be able to walk the streets in safety at any time - and I'd like the Home Secretary to be aiming for that too, not telling me I can't expect to.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Can Gordon Really Be So Remote from Reality?
Gordon Brown's noticed, no doubt by reading the Daily Mail, that some people are a bit uneasy about the fact that everything is being banned by gangs of jobsworth gits. It adds insult to injury that said gits are being funded from our taxes.
If he tried really really hard, he couldn't come up with a worse solution than setting up yet another quango full of useless jobsworths. It is such a shame - an real opportunity missed, like much of Labour's tenure, especially in recent years. Step forward, the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council ( I am not making this up).
As for the organisation itself, it already has a website preaching mangement-speak utter bollocks like "On taking office as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown committed to taking the Better Regulation agenda to a new level by focusing upstream at where policy-making engages with risk"
This is a fucking talking shop. That is all it is. If Gordon was serious about this, he wouldn't have set up a stupid talking shop. No doubt this was the idea of some brilliant civil servant.
If he tried really really hard, he couldn't come up with a worse solution than setting up yet another quango full of useless jobsworths. It is such a shame - an real opportunity missed, like much of Labour's tenure, especially in recent years. Step forward, the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council ( I am not making this up).
As for the organisation itself, it already has a website preaching mangement-speak utter bollocks like "On taking office as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown committed to taking the Better Regulation agenda to a new level by focusing upstream at where policy-making engages with risk"
This is a fucking talking shop. That is all it is. If Gordon was serious about this, he wouldn't have set up a stupid talking shop. No doubt this was the idea of some brilliant civil servant.
Friday, January 18, 2008
More On tragic Life Stories
I mentioned the presence of a new section in my local bookshop.
A casual survey of other bookshops locally proved they are all jumping on the bandwagon. The local "Books etc" found favour with me, though, for heading the section "real lives".
A casual survey of other bookshops locally proved they are all jumping on the bandwagon. The local "Books etc" found favour with me, though, for heading the section "real lives".
Thursday, January 17, 2008
More Ubunto - Dancing In The Street!
Another really helpful bloke has published a guide to getting my laptop and phone connected via Bluetooth.
This is utterly fabulous - no more mucking about with cables. I can now use the phone as a modem without it needing a cable connection. It was reasonably easy to do, the connection is easier to invoke than in windows - on two fronts:
Vista just wouldn't see the phone as a modem (via Bluetooth) - ever*.
Now it's set up Ubuntu's easier to use than the Windows connection manager - and it doesn't keep inventing new connections and resetting defaults I already set like Vista did.
And it's faster.
Did I mention no cables?
* I spent loads of time downloading drivers and changing software - none of which was any use.
This is utterly fabulous - no more mucking about with cables. I can now use the phone as a modem without it needing a cable connection. It was reasonably easy to do, the connection is easier to invoke than in windows - on two fronts:
Vista just wouldn't see the phone as a modem (via Bluetooth) - ever*.
Now it's set up Ubuntu's easier to use than the Windows connection manager - and it doesn't keep inventing new connections and resetting defaults I already set like Vista did.
And it's faster.
Did I mention no cables?
* I spent loads of time downloading drivers and changing software - none of which was any use.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The last piece of the Ubuntu Jigsaw
Like this helpful bloke, I use a Nokia phone to connect to the Internet quite a bit. Mainly this is due to hideous charges for broadband access in some hotels - but that's another story.
Thanks to the above mentioned blogger I can now connect to t'internet via the phone using Ubuntu - this is great. I am already making use of Ubuntu at home (where I have a wireless broadband connection) as it is much faster than Vista on this laptop, now I can also benefit from the speed advantage on the road. As an added bonus, I don't need to shell out the largest part of 500 sheets for Microsoft Office as I'm now using OpenOffice.
Thanks to the above mentioned blogger I can now connect to t'internet via the phone using Ubuntu - this is great. I am already making use of Ubuntu at home (where I have a wireless broadband connection) as it is much faster than Vista on this laptop, now I can also benefit from the speed advantage on the road. As an added bonus, I don't need to shell out the largest part of 500 sheets for Microsoft Office as I'm now using OpenOffice.
Organ Donation
I've done this one before. If they change to presumption, I will opt-out and tear up my donor card. I have carried one for more than 25 years, but no more. As for Terry, his support for it seals it as far as I'm concerned - and the idea that (and I quote)"People who are waiting right now for a vital transplant for themselves or for a loved one will be saying, 'thank God or our lucky stars for Gordon Brown and everyone else who supports him on this. is, frankly, laughable.
If you haven't seen Terry's blog before I invite you take a look.
If you haven't seen Terry's blog before I invite you take a look.
Diana
As the inquest drags on we hear more evidence that she was aelf-obsessed woman with paranoid delusions of her own importance. I never liked her anyway - right from the start. I think she was treated exceptionally badly by Charles and possibly the other Royals, but that doesn't make me like her.
I suspect the reason she became so popular with the flower-laying classes in death was that she was a beacon for their shallow values - she was the first "Royal" (in recent generations at least) to break ranks and buy a German car. This was clearly because of the aspirational brand value of it - she could have had a very much more expensive car that was made in the UK if she'd cared about it.
In spite of being thrust into the tyranny of fame, she seemed to court attention in the later years. Of course the paparazzi would never have left her alone, but she could have led a quieter life. I'm not saying I'd have done it differently, but then I'm not claiming to be any more likeable than her either.
Apparently she confided in her lawyers that the Queen was about to abdicate and that the Establishment was planning to do away with her by interfering with the brakes on her car.
Neither of these things turned out to be true and it just proves to me that she had no idea what she was talking about.
Of course I'd have had a visit from villagers with pitchforks and torches if I'd said any of this at the time of her death.
I suspect the reason she became so popular with the flower-laying classes in death was that she was a beacon for their shallow values - she was the first "Royal" (in recent generations at least) to break ranks and buy a German car. This was clearly because of the aspirational brand value of it - she could have had a very much more expensive car that was made in the UK if she'd cared about it.
In spite of being thrust into the tyranny of fame, she seemed to court attention in the later years. Of course the paparazzi would never have left her alone, but she could have led a quieter life. I'm not saying I'd have done it differently, but then I'm not claiming to be any more likeable than her either.
Apparently she confided in her lawyers that the Queen was about to abdicate and that the Establishment was planning to do away with her by interfering with the brakes on her car.
Neither of these things turned out to be true and it just proves to me that she had no idea what she was talking about.
Of course I'd have had a visit from villagers with pitchforks and torches if I'd said any of this at the time of her death.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Stop Shouting
I mean it. Everywhere I go I seem to encounter people who's default volume setting is "stun". Stop it. Now.
Hardingworld
When the Revenue and Customs lost 25 million records on two CDs, Neil had nothing to say about it.
When Jeremy Clarkson had no case to answer in court, Neil thought he knew better than the court and suggested that "Clarkson drove 82mph in a 40 zone. You know it, I know it. " Of course, we don't know any such thing, principally because someone in the Crown Presecution Service appears to have made a basic error which no-one except Clarkson's lawyer noticed. Where does the fault lie here - well certainly not in the apparent inability of the CPS to fill in a simple form, not according to Neil.
No matter - fast forward a bit and far from being what Neil describes as a "smug git" (I could invoke the tired cliche about it taking one to know one.....), Clarkson is now Neil's hero for demonstrating that not only was the loss of all that data utterly unimportant, but it's so unimportant that it proves we need ID cards.
You may be having some problems working this out (I know I was), but it gets better. After some robust debate in the comments, someone asked Neil what he made of the woman with a rare form of Cancer who had wished to withhold details of her medical records and other personal details from cancer researchers. This woman won a Court battle that lasted several years over her treatment.
As usual, Harding, knows better than the courts, but he referred to the woman in such vile and disparaging terms that he has set a few other sites in the blogosphere alight with people trying to outdo each other in the elaborate nature of their insults to him(this is probably the best - especially the comments). I don't condone what Neil said, so I won't lower myself to his level or join in the barrage of insults. This is not because I don't want to, or I'm trying to occupy the moral high ground - it just doesn't seem right somehow.
And yet there is something about Neil's crazy, twisted logic and micro-management control-freakery that I do find profoundly worrying and highly offensive.
Clarkson for his part seems to have accepted that the loss of data was more serious than he thought. Perhaps like Neil, he hadn't actually bothered to find out what it was that had gone missing and the potential implications before declaring that it was unimportant - at least, unlike Neil, he has the grace to own up when he's so obviously wrong.
When Jeremy Clarkson had no case to answer in court, Neil thought he knew better than the court and suggested that "Clarkson drove 82mph in a 40 zone. You know it, I know it. " Of course, we don't know any such thing, principally because someone in the Crown Presecution Service appears to have made a basic error which no-one except Clarkson's lawyer noticed. Where does the fault lie here - well certainly not in the apparent inability of the CPS to fill in a simple form, not according to Neil.
No matter - fast forward a bit and far from being what Neil describes as a "smug git" (I could invoke the tired cliche about it taking one to know one.....), Clarkson is now Neil's hero for demonstrating that not only was the loss of all that data utterly unimportant, but it's so unimportant that it proves we need ID cards.
You may be having some problems working this out (I know I was), but it gets better. After some robust debate in the comments, someone asked Neil what he made of the woman with a rare form of Cancer who had wished to withhold details of her medical records and other personal details from cancer researchers. This woman won a Court battle that lasted several years over her treatment.
As usual, Harding, knows better than the courts, but he referred to the woman in such vile and disparaging terms that he has set a few other sites in the blogosphere alight with people trying to outdo each other in the elaborate nature of their insults to him(this is probably the best - especially the comments). I don't condone what Neil said, so I won't lower myself to his level or join in the barrage of insults. This is not because I don't want to, or I'm trying to occupy the moral high ground - it just doesn't seem right somehow.
And yet there is something about Neil's crazy, twisted logic and micro-management control-freakery that I do find profoundly worrying and highly offensive.
Clarkson for his part seems to have accepted that the loss of data was more serious than he thought. Perhaps like Neil, he hadn't actually bothered to find out what it was that had gone missing and the potential implications before declaring that it was unimportant - at least, unlike Neil, he has the grace to own up when he's so obviously wrong.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
More on Cuba
Apparently the Canadian oil companies in partnerships with Cuba have failed to extract the amount of oil they promised. Some Cubans suspect this is because the Canadians are playing a waiting game in the expectation that Fidel Castro will expire before too long and whoever comes next may treat them more favourably. Provided there's still some oil to be had of course.
Technophobe Luddite
At least according to Neil Harding (bloggs passim) that's what my opposition to id cards says about me. I am writing this on my mobile phone so put that in your smoke banned pipe and fail to smoke it !
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