Spurious rant number 4

Anyone use yahoo mail? It is annoying the life out of me. Obviously i have clicked the "Remember my ID on this computer" box to save typing in my username and password on a regular basis. However as a security precaution it does ask for my password on average about once every 24 hours. Not a problem, or it wasn't a problem! Now whenever it asks me to do this it does appear to be the same screen as it always has. My username is remembered and i just need to type in my password and hit enter and i'm back in my email? Well no longer, once i do this it takes me to a new screen where i have to retype my username, then my password and then in a new box below that type in some funky fonted letters which appear in a box beneath the blank one i'm meant to copy them to.

It is a bloody nonsense, i'm not the most technicaly minded and maybe someone can it explain it to me but how does copying letters from what anyone can see on the screen count as a security measure? I type my password in correctly that should be enough!

Criminal waste of money.

The sum of £15,000 rears its ugly head once again. This is what MSPs are wanting to spend on revamping their 'private' restaurent becaue no one wants to eat in it. Taxpayers money to be spent refurbishing fixtures and fittings that are only 8 months old. This restaurent contains the only bar in the new parliament, however MSP's decided they would have exclusive access to it. No annoying journalists or members of staff during sitting days of parliament.

Already subsidised to the tune of £60,000 a year, MSPs agreed to up it to £80,000 a year. All this allows MSPs to enjoy a three course lunch for just over £5. MSPs happen to earn north of £40,000 per year, you would think they could afford to buy a non subsidised lunch?

University Fees

Now back in the day before there was all this talk of paying fees, top up fees and student loans to pay for going to university there was this thing called a grant. Hard as it is to believe you applied to go to university and if you got accepted then you also applied for a grant, the amount dependent on your parental income and whether or not you were studying at home or further afield, and this maintenence grant was given on top of your university fees being payed for you.

I was quite lucky in that i caught the tail end of those halcyon days, was the autumn of 1996 that i began my university adventure. I recall my mum and elder sister talking about how pitiful the grant was these days, barely more than in their time(possibly exaggerating a touch), a sign of things to come. By the 1998 intake that grant was gone and people had to pay for their fees and take out student loans. I think that the current situation in Scotland is that you can now get fees paid for you but still for most students loans are what pays their way.

Now i'm led to believe that the number of people that attend university has increased greatly over the years, so it is no suprise that the price of paying for them has become something of a burden for governments. Access to university is a good thing and while it has brought problems paying for it, isn't university education meant to benefit society as a whole as well as the individual?

I don't forsee any return to getting your fees paid and a maintenence grant on top in the forseeable future so i'll concentrate on the current debate. It was an opinion piece with the byline, "'Free' education is a tax on the poor to benefit the middle class and will not help Scotland in a competative global market, writes Steven Schwartz," that got me thinking about all this. Free education a tax on the poor? Surely free education is more likely to benefit the poor? I guess it can only benefit people from poor backgrounds if you get them into university in the first place, there was no figures on this but i reckon less people from poor backgrounds are getting into university than those from middle class or more affluent ones. Ok i can see some logic in that theory. If we add to this the rising cost of funding university education then possibly we do need to have individuals pay something towards the cost. Although i might add that if the government can find billions for nonsense like ID schemes, waste money on the millenium dome, nevermind the millions it spends on export credit guarantee department(ECGD) then it coul possibly better served going into higher education and at least minimise the cost for those wishing to go to university.

I could probably live with such a system if it was fair, you go to university work hard and graduate with a degree and get yourself a job once you leave the academic world. You start earning more than you could have possibly got without going to university and begin paying back the cost of the fees over a period of time. The money goes back into upkeep and running of universities, you've got yourself a good quality of life and the universities are well funded and can continue to provide quality education for all.

However the amount you earn which triggers of loan/fee repayment is currently set at about £15,000 per year. This for me is a rediculously low figure, you can easily be £15,000 in debt before you start work. That is an amount that will make many people think twice, particularly if they are coming from a poorer background, can't rely on much parental support, absolutely need to work part time to support themselves while trying to meet the demands of full time education. One can quite easily get work in a call centre for not to dissimilar amounts of money, in my view £15,000 a year triggering repayment is just to low an ammount. Indeed someone who graduates as a teacher is far less likely to make the same sort of money as a lawyer or business graduate who goes into even the heady heights of middle management. If there is to be repayment on fees when you start earning a certain amount it should be the kind of money that doesn't make fee/loan repayment look like a daunting prospect. Say 22,000 plus per year?

Certainly it should be a figure that most people will think, i can't earn that without going to university, therefore it is definately financialy worth my while to enter higher education. So much for learning for learning sake, i guess that everything nowadays has a price.

Fake News...kinda...

...more of a fake TV show this time. Although it's a specific show thats prompted this post it is part of a wider genre, the making of your latest big hollywood movie programmes. Batman Begins:Behind the Mask is currently on ITV, it's just an advert for a film thats only just out. It serves no other purpose but to flog this film to the public, there is no pretence at any sort of criticism or review of it other than to gush over it. What is the point then? As big hollywood films go this is one i find farely tempting but this kinda thing annoys me no end.

Mark Steel Lecture

An absolutely brilliant TV show shown on BBC4 and BBC2. Comedian Mark Steel gives wonderful lectures on various historical figures, if i thought history lectures at university were like this i'd have been applying to study history until somewhere accpeted me. He makes the people he lectures about come alive and gives a history of his subject that you'll rarely hear about anywhere else. Not just dry dull facts, this man truly makes history feel significant to the modern world and worth learning about. Did you know Beethoven had a love/hate relationship with Napoelon and was essentialy a revolutionary at heart but felt betrayed by Napoleon when he declared himself Emporer?

The show was the main reason why i listed a link to a website about him, i think i'll change it to the open2.net website in due course.

edit: i cannot believe i used the cliche about making 'history come alive', the shame!

I'm wanting to write about...

...university fees etc but i'm raging about something else just now and thinking about meditating or something to calm down. Needless to say it's fitba related, the cause of my outrage can be found here, the news story about ticket allocation for the first game of the season against Celtic. I took it calmy enough at first, it wasn't a huge shock but the more i think about it the less happy i'm getting.

Make Poverty History March

Taking place this coming saturday in Edinburgh. I like to think i'd have made the effort to go if it had been possible, regardless of how much effect it will have there is certainly no harm in large volumes of people making their feelings known.

There was an opinion piece in the Scotsman by a guy called Duncan Hamilton, all for it but wanting to make clear what he and others were marching for. The byline was "I'm opposed to poverty, not the whole world order." Fair enough, he was wary of issues like Iraq and anti capatalism muddying the water. I would suggest that if their wasn't so much poverty in the world for people to march against then there would be drasticaly less people wanting to deomostrate about capatalism in the first place.

If say in 10 years time there is no more poverty in Africa to the extent that thousands of preventable deaths every day no longer happen and the continent as a whole becomes significantly more prosperous and is well on its way to life expectancy and life oppurtunity levels of the developed world then i'll think again about how i view the capatalists pig dogs currently in control. There are many other issues which worry me but it would be a start.

Braw words number 1

A rarity this one, i have seen it used on only a couple of occasions, banjaxed. First heard it used by the slightly camp and currently popular as piles Motherwell chairman John Boyle. Recently used in a match report that suggested the physical demands of 5 sets of tennis "had left him utterly banjaxed."

Holiday Books part 1

As explained earlier i bloody well packed them before i remembered i was meaning to list the here. I'll do it properly in part 2 first time i get on net on holiday, expect to get a fair bit of reading done and will post some quick capsule reviews as and when i get through them. Possibly more in depth if i really enjoy them.

my reading list:

• Pandora's Star - Peter F. Hamilton
• The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula Le Guin
• The Difference Engine - William Gibson, Bruce Sterling
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Adult edition - Mark Haddon
• Canal Dreams - Iain Banks
• Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance - Noam Chomsky (99% sure now)

I'll probably add to anything i might have forgotten and be tempted into another purchase while enduring the monotony of waiting around at the airport. Indeed last year i bought The Age of Consent by George Monbiot under those circumstances and although i didn't read it until considerably after i got home from my holiday it was still a good purchase.

ID schemes

My initial reaction to any sort of ID scheme is to say thanks but no thanks, the potential for loss of civil liberties seems to great. There are those that say that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear, but i think that argument can only really apply if we are living in some sort of utopia where everything is all sorted out lovely. ID schemes gives the State greater power over the individual and surely limits the potential for dissent?

So after reading the article i thought i'll go look on the net for a bit more background information, lets see if i can't harden my opinion one way or the other. This was the first interesting site i found, i googled for arguments for and against ID schemes. I have to say after reading through this it has only strengthened my first gut instinct. Indeed in the Scotsman article even David Davis the shadow home secretary is quoted, "We have always thought that support for ID cards would melt like snow in the sun when the British public realised how much they would cost, the practical implications involved and the threat to security and civil liberties they would pose." The mind boggles when i think of the Thatcherite world i was brought up in when now prominent conservatives are denouncing a a controversial piece of governernment legislation.

Next up was this, now France, Germany, Portugal and Spain apparantly have them and they certainly don't seem to living in an Orwellian nightmare over there. Although maybe over in France their to busy enjoying the good food and burning british sheep to be bothered(joke), in fact the french don't seem to be shy of demonstrating and unlikely to accept oppresive legislation like an ID scheme, so is it as bad as i imagine? Well there is no national register in either France or Germany so they are possibly not a good comparison.

So what of the advantage of fight against crime and preventing such things as identity theft? Certainly little more than having a DNA database, something we have just opened in Britain. Indeed it would seem more likely to increase the prospects for identity theft related crime if we had a one stop ID that was intrinsicaly more valueable to criminals than any of the multiple pieces of ID and documentation we currently use. There is little doubt that any ID we can conjur will be cracked and susceptible to forgery. A potential nightmare for anyone if we live in a society where our ID becomes essential.

Then there is the cost, both to the goverment and to the individual. Estimated at costing between anywhere from £6bn to £18bn, this a hell of a lot of money for a scheme with huge question marks over it. I always thought the Millenium Dome was one hell of a waste of money but this has the potential to make that look like pennies lost down the back of the couch if it doesn't deliver what it promises, and lets face it with the current governement in charge that doesn't seem likely. Just look at the recent tax credits farce.

So to come to some sort of a conclusion, ideologicaly i have to say i am against a national ID scheme and even if i wasn't i wouldn't trust the lunatics in charge of the asylum that passes for our government anyway!

Couldn't get...

...my usual paper today so i bought a copy of the Scotsman instead. Again it's more tabloidesque size was the deciding factor, i might not have bothered at all but i wanted to have a good look at the days news for inspiration for some posts today and tomorrow seeing as could be the last proper posting for the next few weeks. Although i will have internet cafe access and a digital camera i'm not sure i'll be able to upload any holiday pics while i'm there.

Anyway i read through a couple of articles on ID schemes and university funding, you can expect something on these to be posted shortly. I was intending to post a list of books i'm planning on reading by the pool but i've rather unfortunately packed them already and will have to settle for a partial list from what i can remember off top of my head. For one thing i know i have a book my Noam Chomsky but i can remember the name of it. None of the ones on his booklist on official ring a bell apart from Necessary Illusions which is a different Chomsky book i've read in the past, bloody good too!

Bloody Hell...

...Glastonbury's traditional wet weather seems pretty spectacular this year, thunderstorms and the like. Check the video clip to see for yourself. Glad i'm not there, though no doubt plenty will revel in it despite it all.

This next post...

...kinda follows on from the one about world poverty and climate change, strickly speaking it's really more about climate change. I thought i should post something about what we can all do to help with problems with climate control, the obvious one being less wasteful with our power usage. It's not new, i've noticed for years adverts and presumably government paid things telling us not to leave our TV's, videos and other electrical equipment on standy by during the night when head off to bed. With the little red light sitting on we've been told that it can use upto 40% of the power needed for using these things normally, it sounds remarkable that it can be so much but if it's true then it's certainly in our own interest to switch things off properly. Even if you are a cynic about global warming then you can always think of your own electricity bill.

As it happened i was en route to the hospital for a check up on my recovering collarbone(broken playing football) and anticipating waiting around to be seen i made sure i had a decent newspaper to read while i was waiting and lo and behold on the front page of The Independent yesterday was a story headlined 'Standby Britain', excellent timing for my needs. So this has given me a few more details on just how much power is wasted by leaving our appliances on standyby. I admit i've not actually read the story properly yet, i started with the sport section and then left the paper in the house by mistake when i was going out later, but i'll go through it just now and post the salient facts.

Some facts and figures:

• Appliances on standby pump one million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
• Wasted energy of appliances on standyby could power 400,000 homes.
• Up to 85 per cent of power used by a VCR is consumed when on standyby.
• Governmentsays Britain would save 240,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions by switching off televisions.
• Dishwashers left "on" at the end of their cycle consume 70 per cent of the power used when they are running.
• Tumble-dryers can use 38 per cent of normal power while waiting at the end of a cycle.
• If lights were turned off when not in use it would prevent 375,000 tons of CO2 emissions and save £55m in bills.
• The is little difference between the power requirement of digital receivers when they are on and on standby.
• Each year gadgets apparantly turned off waste enough electricity to power a city the size of Birmingham for a yea or keep Britains street lights burning for four year.

So really there isn't any excuse not to turn our electrical goods OFF when we arn't using them and theres no better time to start than the present.

Sad to admit but...

...i found myself buying a copy of The Sun today, it really is an awful paper and i feel dirty buying it. I can only say that i bought because i needed some small change for the bus and it was the cheapest option. In hindsight i should maybe have just bitten the bullet and paid that extra 30p above my fare home and just read the book i had in my bag instead. However there was principle involved, i hate those exact fare buses that don't give you change, i deeply resent giving them more than the fare costs and it's become a habit, i'd rather go and spend more than what it would cost elswhere if it means the bus company only gets the exact fare.

The thing is that the whole reason i felt compelled to even mention the incident is going to involve me breaking my promise not to mention Wimbledon, as it was the back page headline story that irked me. So i apologize for sullying this post with tennis talk but it's not really the actual story that is important but the way it's presented, it could easily have another topic the Sun was being xenophobic and small minded about.

As anyone thats followed the tournament will know Tim Henman has been knocked out and Scottish rookie Andrew Murray managed to beat the 14th seed Radek Stepanek to go through to the 3rd round and keep up British interest in the singles tournaments. He looks a promising player and he's done well to upset the odds in only his 6th professional tie or somethign like that. So yaay for him and well done. However the Sun can't resist reporting this success in it's usual style, not content with praising the young prospect for his success as Henman disappointingly goes out very early in the tournament, it declared that "Rookie Scot Murray overcame a dirty tricks campaign by Radek Stepanek to cruise into the third round as Britain's LAST hope."

I found myself watching a fair amount of the game, i'm not a fan but it was tea time nothing much else on etc. I don't recall seeing a dirty tricks campaign, and even the sun can only comment on the one incident after the lad Stepanek gets a huge amount of luck with his shot hitting the net and sneaking over saving a match point. So he walks over and taps the net in a mock thank you and the crowd laughs etc. That was the entirety of the dirty tricks campaign. Sure Murray was in a bit of a strop about it afterwards but he got his own back in a similar situation afterwords and had the final say when he wrapped up a straightforward win. Dishonest reporting thy name is The Sun.

Short Hiatus Due

Well i am off on holiday on the 29th June until the 14th July. Then i am away for the 15/16/17th in Leeds for Worldnet. I will have some internet access while i am away but any posting will be sporadic and not quite at the rate i've managed so far.

I expect to post more or less as usual tomorrow, monday and tuesday but i'm going to have to pack sometime. Hopefully i can round off with more wonderfully interesting posts, so far the best praise i've had was for linking to the Spaghetti Monster page, ah well. :-)

G8 summit and world poverty

Now call me cynical but Tony Blair's championing of the issues of world poverty and climate change seem to me like the posturings of a man trying to create a legacy for himself as a caring leader wanting to change the world for better, well aware of the fact that he'll more likely be remembered as the Prime Minister that sooked up to George W Bush and helped start an illegal war in Iraq to pursue strategic control of oil resources.

So i can't say i'm optimistic that when the dust has settled on this forthcoming G8 summit in Gleneagles that we will be any closer to seeing real political moves to solving poverty in Africa(and elsewhere) or seeing real moves to take climate control seriously. I think the dropping of debt has been an issue that has managed to remain in the public eye since Jubilee 2000 campaign and it's my opinion that we wouldn't be seeing any moves to drop significant amounts of debt if that wasn't the case. Which is at least encouraging to know that people if they are passionate enough can just maybe make a difference in this corporate controlled world. I suspect there will be large amount of debt dropped, a grand gesture to say, 'look we are listening and see the need to do something,' but i can't see there being real political will to solve these problems.

The tragedy of this, assuming i'm right, is that something can be done and it is not just me saying that. Indeed according to the economist Jeffrey Sachs it's something that we can solve in a relatively short timescale. Beyond his book The End of Poverty-How we can make it happen in our lifetime he states in the Independent that the 20,000 people who die every day from poverty needn't. He also mentions some practical examples. He had been to a village called Nthandire in Malawi, he describes it as "the perfect storm" as it has been hit by all the tornadoes that cause poverty. A small village dependent on maize production for subsistence and when he visited there were no young men visible. Upon asking if they were out in the fields he got the answer that, no they wern't, as they were all dead from Aids. A drug which costs 60p per day to produce could have kept them alive to work and look after their families. As it was he met grandmothers looking after 15 orphaned children. It's generally assumed that this is the fault of corrupt and/or incompetent governments. Malawi however came up with a well conceived strategy for treating its population. They had structures for drug delivery, patient counselling, community outreach and generally everything you could need. They used these plans and appealed to the international communit for the means to treat 300,000 people infected with anti-Aids drugs. The response from the international community was that the plans were to ambitious and told the malawi government to cut them, which they did to 100,000, but that was still to ambitious until eventually they negociated down to 25,000 people to be helped. So rather than a failing African government what we had was failing to support a good African government iniative.

The same village was also afflicted by malaria, a disease which kills 3 million africans a year and is again largely preventable. However for people and governments in the poverty trap they just do not have the means. Sachs has calculated that for £15bn we could end these problems and to put that figure in context that is 1/30th of what the US spends on their military. After that Africa will be in a far better position to trade its way out of the poverty trap for good. Well provided the trade isn't the sort of dodgy WTO enforced restructuring of economies that have only increased the level of debt in the first place.

To tie this up, the example of the Malawi village Nthandire has also been hit by environmental stresses. Climate change to be blunt. The rains have failed. Neither is it only in Malawi where the rains have become erratic, in Northern Ethiopia there used to be a short rain season to grow crops during March and April, these have now gone completely. Over the last 25 years the level of rainfall has lessened greatly all over sub saharan Africa, while the nearby Indian Oceon's surface temprature has increased. Global Warming is tied in with poverty and if we tackle both properly we stand a better chance of success than piecemeal fudged solutions. So fingers crossed i'm wrong about Tony Blairs motivations and this G8 summit is the start of tackling world poverty and climate change.

Roald Dahl

You're a better person than me if you can pronounce his first name properly, i watched a programme about him on BBC1 last night and i'm still none the wiser. This wasn't helped my the fact that even his own family were pronouncing his name in different ways. This might have been partly to do with his ex wife having suffered a stroke but i'm sure some of them pronounced it Ru-ald and other Rolled. It isn't of any great importance and the only thin connection i can make to justify wittering on about his name is that as well as having a seriously weird name he wrote seriously weird but wonderful stories.

I remember reading The Witches, The BFG and James and the Giant peach as child, not to mention my favourite Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and while i'm sure i had books read to me before that, the ones beginning with, "once upon a time," when i was younger it was my first real introduction to reading. Reading for pleasure and not just because your parents or teachers were trying to teach you to read, books you did want to read yourself and despite being a reluctant reader to begin with i'm glad it's an interest i developed. Not least as it's a pursuit that is bloody marvellous when your travelling on public transport on a regular basis.

It's probably a bit harsh to compare it to childrens books now, for one i no longer see them with the eyes of a child, secondly i'm no longer in the habit of reading childrens books, the rare exception being when i read the first three Harry Potter books which i found for the most part strangely bland for books trumped as the best thing since sliced bread. I think childrens books even more so than adults should stir the imagination and the works of Roald Dahl certainly do that.

Online repression

As much as civil rights in this country have been eroded by things like the Criminal Justice Bill and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill we still have it pretty easy, they may try to keep protesters away from Parliament and the G8 summit but we can still at least make our dissent known without risk of being prosecuted just for expressing a view that is against the government line.

So i do this blog and feel completely free to howl at the moon over what i perceive as the evils and injustices in the world without consequence, indeed my biggest fear re writing this blog is that certain people in the football team i play for stumble across it as i'm sure they would extract the urine big time. If you happen to know me and i've sent you the link it is because i consider you a fairly sophisicated cat :-)

But it was interesting to read that in countries around the world that don't share our freedoms blogs were being used as a method of expressing dissent and at serious risk to the people willing to speak out. The example of an Iranian couple, a man and his pregnant wife both facing jail and a huge fine just for "insulting the governments leaders and making anti government propaganda," and before i forget confiscating their computer incase they havn't learned their lesson not to criticise the government when and assuming if they get out, seems utterly alien to me, it sounds like something from 1984 by George Orwell.

Iran isn't the only country that has tight restrictions on it's citizens online activity. The Great Firewall of China restricts what the 100 million or so Chinese with internet access get to see online. The Chinese government is clearly going to great lengths to stamp out any sort of subversive ideas on the internet, living in the UK i thought to myself i probably do have a slightly prejudiced view of communist China and it's oppresive regime, but it is truly frightening some of the measures they are using to control dissent..

Although one wonders if here in the UK that one day the goverment might feel that it would like to slip in a similar requirement for domestic net srvice firms that make them responsible for what they publish in order to conduct business leading to self censorship of the internet, probably in the name of the fight against terrorism.

Intelligent Design

All hail our creator the Flying Spaghetti Monster. About as much sense as creationist pap! I'll maybe look into this subject more another time but to paraphrase Bill Hicks, ever wondered why creationists all looks so unevolved,"i believe god created me in one day," yeah, looks like he rushed it.

I've gone and tired myself out....

....with serious type posts again, that and 3 hours of football tonight. There was something i was thinking about writing, blogs, censorship of them under repressive regimes etc and a bit about china but that can wait until tomorrow. I shall instead post about two of the finest pc games ever to grace the planet, Football Manager and Counterstrike.

Obviously it was the Championship Manager series that i was first introduced to and many fond memories of it i have, 96/97 season game was my first version and it helped make the summer months between my first and second years at university fly past. Sadly there was a split between the devolopers of the game sports interactive and the publishers Eidos and the heart and soul of Champy went onto become Football Manager while the empty shell of Championship Manager is now touted around shops for the unwary to buy in the mistaken belief they are buying the premier football management sim.

Counterstrike i was introduced to in my 4th year at university and could well have been something to do with me making a right james hunt of it. I had just gotten my first pc, to help with my studies, and i lived in a flat with some technologicaly literate young fellows who had a home network which was also linked with the guys in the flat next door. So we had 9 pc's linked together and many many games of Counterstrike that year. When you add on the more traditional student pursuits of getting guttered at least a couple of times a week then it's no wonder the work suffered. Basic premise is you have two teams, one terrorists and the other counter terroists and the main aim is one side kills the other, although there are scenarios like rescuing hostages, bombing somewhere, assasination missions etc. What i can say is flat 3L 32 Castle street kicked flat 3R's arse!

I don't actually have Counterstrike installed on my pc just now and havn't for some time as the amount i need to play it to stay at a respectable level is just to much to leave me time for much else and it was never quite the same after i left uni, although for a while the old blueyonder gaming servers were good fun.

Football Manager on the other hand is running just now, au revoir.

I've written absolutely nothing about Music...

...and it's about time i did. First off what is to my own musical taste. Looking at my CD collection, from when i still bought CD's, does anyone still buy them nowadays they looking like heading into obscurity like tape, and without the same sort of appeal that keeps some Vinyl going.I exagerate a bit i suppose the shops are still full of them but i reckon it is only a matter of time now.

Anyway i'm wandering off topic, sitting in my CD collection and that i'm not embarresed to admit to are The Clash, The Stone Roses, The Doors, Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, James, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Death in Vegas, New Order and on my itunes you'll find Green Day, Guns n Roses, James Brown, The Killers, The Libertines, Rage Against the Machine, The Ramones, The Who and a few other randoms. There is also a bit of of Plastikman, Neil Landstrumm, and various techno although i'm not the connoisseur of techno that this gentleman is.

I've got a very sporadic interest in music, it comes and goes. I certainly think that no one of adult age takes the charts seriously, they are a complete irrelvance aimed only at teenage girls mainly from what i occasionaly see on it. Only mainstream band i've really liked lately were the Libertines but they already seem to have bitten the dust, although in rather brilliant rock n roll style. To many drugs, one band member burgling the others flat, you can't ask for much more from the self destructive genious stereotype.

Science and Technology

Again at the risk of sounding a bit geeky i do love this kinda stuff, i enjoy watching programmes that speculate on the creation of the universe and programmes about the possibilities of the human species venturing further into space.

I think that is why i do enjoy so much science fiction, not only can it relate to our current world but it can speculate on the future. Unfortunately with diminishing natural resources of oil etc it isn't something we can get to carried away with, i don't think we're going to run out quite yet but if not by the end of my lifetime then soon after it is surely going to be an issue if we havn't worked on alternative methods of energy production, not to mention wasting less than we do now.

Fear not...

...Wimbledon bores me rigid, there shall be no postings(other than this) on it here. Perhaps hypocriticaly i do have it on the telly just now but i am deriving no enjoyment from it.

Spurious rant number 3

A slight renaming of this now regular tuesday feature as i guess you could construe a fair amount of what i post as ranting. It is another weather related one, although not about the weather itself but about the behaviour of certain brolly carrying unthinking cretins.

For those of you unaware of the layout of Motherwell Town Centre it has a pedestrianised shopping area that has minimal covering from the elements. If it is raining there is limited cover from ceiling high protrusions from the shops at either side of the street and you can avoid the worst of the weather sheltering under them.

So i found myself last week walking in pouring rain, without a jacket through the town centre getting thouroughly soaked because i could not restrict my passage to the covered area as it was filled with selfish gits standing under the roofed sections, holding their umbrellas above their heads and gossiping away to each other while the rain fell heavily whilst i, no means of keeping the rain at bay had to walk around these self indulgent misbegotten wretches getting soaked!

One more Liberty Lost

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act will from the 2nd of August make it illegal to demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament. What on earth this has to do with organised crime i don't know, other than the fact that if you criminalise demonstrations and then someone organises one it now becomes organised crime. I should point out that one can apply for the ability to protest, so if you ask nicely you might be allowed. I imagine there will be some sort of standardised form, i hope someone gets thousands of these and applys to demonstrate continuously to at very least drown whoever decides what is an allowable demonstration in paperwork.

Sleekit swines!

For almost 20 years now commercial whaling has been banned after some Whale populations such as the blue whale were hunted close to extinction. However there is now a very real threat that this ban could be overturned after underhand dealings by the Japanese. Whaling has a regulatory body, the International Whaling Commision(IWC) which this week is holding it's annual meeting. At this meeting are 14 new member states with no real whaling heritage, but over the past 6 six years have been essentialy bribed by the Japanese to earn their support in overturning the ban. Mali and Mongolia the standouts being landlocked nations. While presumably being perfectly legal it is at the same time utterly corrupt.

If they can get 51% of the vote this time around although not enough to overturn the ban it will be enough to introduce secret ballot at future votes and let countries away with voting for it without having to justify their actions. For all that getting the ban overturned would be bad news for Whales and those against the hunting of them they are far from safe as it is. As well as facing the threat of commerical whaling returning there seems to be absolutely nothing done to prevent Norway from openly flouting the ban. 670 whales were hunted by Norway last year and their whaling fleet has been given permission to kill 797 minke whales this year. Japan meanwhilw has been paying lipservice to the ban by conducting 'scientific' whaling, and are ready to double the amount of whales killed for 'scientific' purposes this year to 800.

edit: update on this here. Only had a quick scan, bit seems good news in that pro whaling types defeated so far.

Asbos

I have to admit this is something that has kinda passed me by, i obviously live in a decent neighbourhood as i'm not aware of anyone being subject to an Asbo. I've never had any run in's with the law that would even lead to be threatened with one, although there was a baby potato throwing incident back in my student days that i now look on in a new light as narrow escape.

So when i saw the front page of the Independent yesterday i was initially underwhelmed by the headline about children being subject to more asbos than adults it didn't immediately grab my attention. It was the little snippets at the side that raised my interest. I couldn't help but titter at the Asbo imposed on a 15 year old boy from Birmingham for 'aggressive car-minding' and 'causing distress to fans' outside Villa Park. It was always something that was common up here in Scotland in days gone past at the Old Firm grounds, scrawny wee children asking for '50p to mind yer motor mister' or in other words give 'gie me 50p or i'll let yer tires down and scratch the paint and mibbe even pan yer windows in'.

However on a slightly more serious note there were a couple of other examples that i just thought were completely mental. Another 15 year old who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and faces jail if he breaks a ban on staring into a neighbours garden. The other being an asbo being served on another 15 year old which bans him from swearing in public, this young boy also happens to suffer from Tourette's syndrome, a rather well known syndrome which can involve involuntary swearing.

I don't wish to comment on Asbos in general, i don't really know enough to think about offering an opinion, but how on earth could a magistrate serve an Asbo on the 2 children in the examples above, it beggars belief.

Also, a bit of a sidenote there was a Mori poll about Asbos that found that 89% of people supported them but only 39% thought they were effective. Presuming everyone that thought they were effective supports them what the hell were other 50% supporting them for and were the magistrates that enforced the order on the 2 mentioned above in that 50% as that would seem to fit in with the logic shown earlier.

Crivens...

...that last post was not meant to be so long, it's a bit of a beast. If it ended somewhat abrubtly i do apologise, it got finished in a bit of a hurry. I started it abouth half past 2, worked on it whilst browsing elswhere(and playing Football Manager) and then had to leave it for a few hours as i went off to play 5 aside around 6ish. Just got back there and wanted it done and dusted so i could move onto other subjects. Fingers crossed tomorrow should be more productive re quantity of posts.

Pheonomenon vs Legend

I am far from being the worlds biggest boxing fan, but a couple of things have coincided to make me dwell a little on the art of fisticuffs. There has been a TV show on Sky One about the merits of the greatest sporting legends, i havn't actually sat and watched it but from the promotional clips it appears that David Frost and Des Lynam debate each other over who was the greatest in their field and presumably 'the greatest' of all. It goes without saying that Mohamed Ali was going to feature prominently even in the advertising of the show and as it happens during the course of the programmes run there was the retirement of Mike Tyson, probably still the biggest name in modern boxing if no longer the biggest talent.

So while i didn't watch the show i couldn't help but bring myself to compare the famous boxers, their achievments and their legacy. I came to the conclusion that Mike Tyson was a phenomenon who burned brightly after exploding onto the world scene before spending the larger part of his career in decline, even more often in disgrace and more likely to end up as a footnote in the annals of the sport, in comparsion to Ali in anycase. While Mohamed Ali also burst onto the boxing scene in a spectacular fashion, also courted controversy, he has proven both his ability and longevity within the ring and shown enduring character outside it. If Mike Tyson is to be remembered for more than just his early promise and as a cautionary tale in the future it will be a spectacular victory for a man that has shown as much frailty of character outside the ring as he once exposed inside the ring from oppenents when he was in his fearsome prime.

A succesful amateur career for Ali culminated with winning an Olympic gold medal at the 1960 games in Rome, still at this point using the name Cassius Clay it would be four years later after stunning the world of boxing with his stoppage of Sonny Liston that he would drop the name Cassius Clay and take on the new name of Mohamed Ali after announcing that he was a member of the Nation of Islam. An unpopular move in itself it would be the least of Ali's worries in 1967 when he refused induction into the US armed forces to fight in Vietnam and faced the real threat of going to jail. He was also stripped of his title, had his passport taken from him and denied the right to fight anywhere in the USA. It would be 2 1/2 years before Ali got back into the ring, during this time Ali supported himself by speaking to colleges and was the first national figure to speak out against the war. Despite setbacks Ali went on to cement his boxing reputation by defeating the much feared George Foreman in a fight no one expected Ali to win. The time away from the ring had taken it's toll and Ali didn't perhaps float quite like the butterfly of his youth, he could however still sting like a bee. He allowed Foreman to hammer away at him for 7 rounds tiring himself out, very much on the ropes Ali appeared to be taking the beating of a lifetime. In the 8th round though Ali came off the ropes and knocked out a tired and spent George Foreman to regain his World crown and secure his reputation as 'The Greatest." Perhaps around about this time he should have hung up the gloves, however he went onto win the "Thrilla in Manilla" against Joe Frazier, before losing and regaining his title to Leon Spinks to become the first person ever to win the World Title three times. Indeed after beating Leon Spinks Ali did announce his retirement but the lure of the ring was to great and he went on to fight Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick in 1980 and 1981, he lost both and afterwards finally retired. With his reflexes notably slower and showing signs of sluggishness after the Holmes fight Ali was initialy misdiagnosed as having a thyroid condition, sadly Ali was discovered to be suffering from a more serious problem and began being treated for Parkinson's syndrome in 1982. Even in this though Ali has proven an inspiration to millions with his courage and he has used his fame and fortune to try and leave behind a legacy greater than just being the greatest boxer of all time.

Mike Tyson whilst also bursting onto the boxing scene was a very different character to Mohamed Ali, Tyson had nothing like the wit and entertainment value Ali could provide outside the ring. A troubled childhood Tyson spent time in juvenile detention centres and was expelled from high School. Rescued from reform school by early mentor Cus D'Amato, Tyson's boxing potential was developed and a fast rise to the top was completed when on November the 22nd 1986 he became the youngest heavyweight champion of the world in history. For the next few years Tyson dominated heavyweight boxing and had the world at his feet, millions of dollars made and still countless more to be made, from a bad start in life Tyson now had riches beyond imagination and the chance to move beyond anything he could have possibly expected from life as a young kid constantly getting into trouble. Yet Tyson couldn't shake off the shackles of his difficult start to life, he seemed to be fueled by anger and fury and with his personal life in turmoil he was heading for a fall. This duly arrived in 1990 with a completely unexpected loss to a rank outsider James Douglas, two wins in 1991 against Donovan "Razor" Ruddock seemed to suggest that his boxing career had suffered only a setback, and it was only a blip compared to what was waiting around the corner. Tyson was arrested, tried and convicted of rape in 1992 and sentenced to 3 years in prison. He wouldn't fight again until 1995 and when he came back he was a shadow of his former self in the ring, he did win back some world titles but his boxing career was to all to soon about to career of the rails. After losing to Evander Holyfield he was disqualified in a rematch for biting Holyfield's ear, he was subsequently banned from boxing for a year and fined $3 million. In a long drawn out decline Tyson spent more time in prison, won against a few journeymen, lost the more meaningful fights, declared himself bankrupt and eventually retired after losing to the journeymen Danny Williams and Kevin McBride. One wonders what legacy Tyson will leave behind other than that of wasted talent and no obvious qualities outside the ring to reccomend himself as a human being.

So in Mohamed Ali we have a man, not without his flaws he does have 3 ex wives behind him, but also an icon who has transcended boxing and is an example of the best the 20th century had to offer. In Mike Tyson we have possibly the flip side of the coin, he did transcend boxing but will be remembered as the polar opposite of Ali. I might be wrong about how long 'Iron Mike' is remembered but it won't be for the right reasons.

Got a flyer through the door....

....that was essentialy junk mail, but for once it was fairly welcome. Was from the Assembly rooms and was to advertise what they had coming on at this years Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I guess i must have saw someone there last year but i can't for life of me remember who, no matter i can already think of a couple of people i'd like to see. If anyone has read this blog at all it will come as no suprise that i'm looking forward to seeing Robert Newman and Mark Thomas. I've seen Rob Newman live before but not Mark Thomas, indeed when i've finished doing this i think i'll go see if i can't book tickets online yet.

Think it was Ed Byrne that i saw at the assembly rooms last year, was funny but i think his joke that he preferred to change his audience rather than change his act might have been a bit to close to the truth having saw him live twice now. Indeed i think i went the 2nd time as it was a change of pace for my long suffering girlfriend who i had already dragged to see more serious political comedians like Rob Newman and Mark Steel in the previous year.

With a bit of luck i'll get to see a couple of other acts, prefarably not remotely political, although the temptation to go see Jeremy Hardy if he is on would be fairly strong, never really saw him do his proper show, just his appearances on grumpy old men and presumably Have I Got News For You. That said there is a lot more to the Edinburgh Fringe than just good comedy shows, Edinburgh is a far more vibrant place while the festival is on, not least because the pubs are open later. If the weather is nice it's good to spend the whole day there, street performances abound while you wander around, nice restaurents, busy pubs and some good clubs also.

So with my holiday sorted, Leeds trip to look forward to and fingers crossed good weather in august i am really looking forward to this summer! Oh aye and the football season will be starting at the end of July to, that is good honest :-)

Something a little different.

Most of what i've chosen to write about has come from stories i've read on the day and felt like commenting on. Today i am going to editorialise on a relatively random subject, although it is an issue that has been under the spotlight recently after UK elections in May. I feel like making my thoughts known on the workings of democracy and how i think voting in parliamentary elections and democracy are in only a very small way related.

First off lets look at the results of the May election, Labour winning 356 seats, the Conservatives winning 197 and the Liberal Democrats 62. Labour winning with a much reduced majority and both the main opposition parties making net gains. So on the surface it seems as if the wishes of the electorate have been met, Labour stay in power despite a large degree of disatisfaction, with the Conservatives and Lib Dems making gains able to retain a degree of dignity in defeat and talk up their own results as improvements and a step in the right direction.

However on closer if hardly microscopic analysis we can see that there is a huge imbalance between the votes cast for each party and the seats returned. Labour got 35.2% of the vote, the Conservatives 32.3% and the Lib Dems 22%. If there was a one to one correlation between percentage of the vote and seats returned it would have given quite a different result. With Labour getting approx 227 seats, the Consevatives 208 and the Lib Dems 142. This obviously doesn't take into account that people well aware of the strengths and failings of our first past the post system might well vote differently if they though there vote would count. It is also feasible that it could encourage a higher turnout, with only 61.3% of the electorate decing to vote this time round. So with only 22% of the entire electorate voting for the Labour party they have still managed to keep a majority of some 67 seats. Not bad considering they managed to win this election with the lowest percentage share of the vote in history!

It is far from new this imbalance that more or less enforces a two party system, and although it has its defenders who will cite examples like the Italian government, where they have a system of proportional represention, which seems decidedly unstable and that it provides a strong and stable governement it is still at its core decidedly undemocratic and highly discouraging to a large section of the population. Personaly i voted for the first time in what was the third general election i was eligable to vote in, i have always lived in a safe Labour seat and even when i probably would have voted for them in 1997 i didn't feel any strong impetus to do so as despite 18 years of Conservative rule and a desire for real change(which sadly never came) there was never any doubt that the Labour candidate in my constituency wasn't going to win. So this time i was very strongly againt this current Labour party and voted against them and it was to absolutely no effect. Still i registered my vote and thankfully there is at least some desire for election reform, although i shall not be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

Another large reason as to why i disasociate voting in our elections with democracy is the role of organisations like the WTO. I know i've linked to this page before and i'm sure if i looked harder i could find something different that could provide same and/or more up to date evidence but it does the job. The WTO has the right to overturn the decisions of the 'elected' members of a democratic government if their wishes are not in accord with the WTO's. The members of the WTO are not elected and their meetings are held in secret and observable by no one. There should be no place in this world for institutions like that whatever their intentions.

Feeling a bit tired....

...so i can't be bothered concentrating on anything serious. To much of a sturggle to deal with big words and serious issues. So maybe what i need is to go and drink a few beers or vodkas? Have i flipped, no i have not the news that every student and late night reveller up and down the land has wanted to hear has arrived alcohol apparantly makes your brain grow! Wonderful news if it turns out to be true, as a non smoker i get fed up with smokers moaning on about their rights being under attact about where they can and cannot smoke and the proposed smoking ban in public places that due to arrive in 2007 or so. They moan about alcohol being harmful and causing more social problems etc, which is probably true but now we have a brilliant retort, get stuffed it's making our brain grow you fools!

Anything but that!

I'm probably over linking news stories to the Independent but i can't be bothered buying any other paper just now so tough, also i do believe it is one of the better ones available at present. Although at least 50% of the reason i buy it is because it has went to a more compact size and is possible to read on the bus without having arms like the Andrew Marr caricature on Dead Ringers or having to fold it over which i find immensely irritating.

Anyway, getting back to the point, this news story had me wincing in empathy with the people held indefinately at Guantanamo Bay. Forget being stripped, forced to bark like a dog, having your religion belittled, physical torture. It is completely inhuman to force people to listen to the music of Christina Aguilera! Obviously i am making light of a serious issue, well a little bit it really isn't on making people listen to such dreadful rubbish but i'm sure it's not quite the worst done to those that have been held there. The least of their problems not being the fact that they are being held indefinately without charges necesarily being brought. If the USA is fighting a war on terror and aiming to protect the democracy that they are so keen to foist on others i would suggest they go look up a dictionary to perhaps reaffirm with themselves that they understand the meaning of the word.

Time for a rant 2.

As a citizen of the United Kingdom i feel it is my duty to have at least one good old moan about the weather. It is bloody awful, here we are in the middle of June and it has been raining all day long. It's been generally cold, wet and miserable. Which normally wouldn't really bother me but i was outside in it for the better part of 3 hours playing football and it just got less enjoyable by the minute. Looks like tuesdays are shaping up to be my day for ranting over trivial nonsense, i shall try to keep it up, gives the whole blog a bit of structure i feel.

Trash TV

It's summertime, which means we can rely on at least this one thing, that the already questionable quality of what is on our TV schedules will plummit to ever greater depths. Not only do we have the now long established Big Brother dominating the channel 4 schedules as well as the tabloid papers, we have more vile nonsense like Celebrity Love Island and Celebrity Wrestling. It does sometime feel as if it is like the plot of a Dr Who episode, with television being designed to rot peoples brains leaving us susceptible to alien invasion. Quite frankly if the demand for such television continues to grow i'll welcome alien invasion.

10 minutes of watching any of the above 'reality' shows has me thinking along the lines of the great Bill Hicks, either praying for Nuclear Holocaust or to be abducted by aliens, hell even the obligatory anal probe would be less uncomfortable, probably.

New Labour, Old Sleaze?

If i had been asked, "Do you think that people that make significant financial contributions to political parties in power get real rewards in return?" The only possible answer i would have given would have been yes. I was still suprised to read a newspaper report that showed how direct and transparent this process was. "Since the 2001 election, every Labour donor who has given the party more than £1 million has been given a knighthood or a peerage. Twelve out of the 14 individuals who have given more than £200,000 have received an honour, as is the case for the 17 out of 22 who donated more than £100,000."

I would never have suspected it to be so blatantly obvious, one supposes Tony Blair did make promises of more transparent government under New Labour, well in this case we can hardly argue. It is quite clear, cough up a large amount of money for the party coffers and get your rewards during the next Labour term. I daresay this story will have caused barely a ripple in the workings of our democracy, no calls for resignations etc. This is merely the way our government functions.

We're getting all serious again...

...so to address this i've decided to write a little about the wonderful world of internet football. Yes, this does involve physicaly playing football and not just playing a game of football on a pc as at least one person i know of mistakenly thought. It has been around since approximately 1996 and i've been involved in it since the creation of Motherwell FC's number 1 fans team Fir Park Corner FC in May 2001. Sadly i missed the historic first game due to a work commitment but have since donned the famous colours(currently black and grey, lovely) on countless occasions. It was a long hard battle to respectability, it took us until our 16th game to avoid a loss and 5 games later when that 1st victory came i'm sure we celebrated as if we'd won a league or a cup.

However this doesn't really tell you what internet football is all about. It's about more than just a game, it's really about getting pished with fellow football fans and struggling to play the next day and there is no better example of this than Worldnet a 3 day festival of football and hardcore bevying. The epitomy of this philosophy are probably the boys from Parscelona FC, although the FPC FC boys have never led the side down on their 3 previous visits.

This years tournament to be held on 15th to 17th of July is highly anticipated and with a strong FPC FC squad expected to be going down there is high hopes of silverware. The gaffer, David Fraser also has a secret weapon up his sleeve, yes if his team can't do the business on the park then in an effort to win team of the tournament he plans to have two top quality tent type things hopefully stacked with lager pitchside. With the distinctive Butcher's Boys flag held aloft between the two we might at least get the attention of the Sky TV cameras if they are back this year.

G8 summit, climate change and airfares.

This news story struck me as being a little on the bizarre side, finance ministers from the G8 agreeing to look at a proposal to use income from airline traffic to boost aid for Africa while at the same time making a gesture towards fighting climate change.

The tax may only amount to a few pence on a ticket, but given the amount of airline tickets sold throughout the world i imagine it could add up to a fair amount of money. If this money was to manage to make it's way into improving the infrastructure of African nations where there are real problems then all to the good. In itself it isn't going to solve Africas problems and even less likely to have an impact on climate change.

I'm highly cynical of previous attempts by the western world to help Africa, the way in which the WTO and World Bank has been used has been disatrious for those that have followed their reccomendations. Economies restructured to help finance debt that has been allowed to spiral out of control. There are many countries that have paid back far in excess of the original loans and yet still heavily in debt. Food shortages because farmers have had to grow cash crops to sell abroad for a pittance rather to generate income to finance debt rather than growing crops that could feed the population. So i suppose i should be encouraged by the prospect of debt cancellation being on the agenda rather than just more loans with strings attached as a means of helping to resolve some of the African continents problems.

As for climate change, well that doesn't look likely to be helped by any international agreements just now, the USA the worlds largest economy and largest polluter isn't on the same wavelength as a those that signed up to the Kyoto protocol. Neither it seems is China or India, two rather large nations that are major energy users and only likely to increase in the near future. So i'm not convinced that a few pence on airline tickets is going to make any noticeable difference. It has been argued that the industry is so cut throat and profit margins wafer thin that it could be a disaster for the industry, yet if the tax is equitable across the board no one company should suffer any real harm. At the budget end of the market, a price hike of a dirt cheap ticket from £5 to £5.50 or even £6 isn't going to deter the budget passenger. So a few pence on the pricier tickets should be even less noticeable.

Given that a gesture towards controlling climate change is being used to justify this tax and that it seems a spurious one, certainly on first impression, it does beg the question why the aviation industry only? Is the aviation industry to be targeted as the only source of revenue to help improve conditions in Africa and potentialy other impoverished countries? Why not the oil industry or other hugely profitable industries? The pharmaceutical industry is apparantly the most profitable industry there is, now when you consider the problems African nations have had getting thew right to buy cheaper generic drugs to battle HIV/AIDs, it surely seems more fitting that they also should face a similar tax to help the continent?

Turkey, the nation not the bird.

I can think of a lot of nice things to say about the place, i went on holiday there last year and will be doing so again this year. A small village/town by the name of Kalkan. The place and the area around it was lovely, scorchingly hot to if you like that kind of thing, not to crowded and not full of drunken morons either. Also not to many screeching children either, so all in a really nice place to enjoy a relaxing holiday and the people were friendly. Certainly nothing like the media portray Turkish football fans, although football fans have a habit of being lazily used to represent peoples stereotypes and prejudices. As for the biggest city in Turkey, Istanbul, well you could write a book and barely scratch the surface of it's history. It's been around since 667 BC and has been Greek, Roman and Turkish. Certainly many hundreds of years before you can find much history of note in the UK.

All this said however i was quite disappointed to stumble across a recent article in the Washington Post. Essentialy the US government appeasing the Turkish goverment because they are important strategic allies. The countrys latest Amnesty International report doesn't make for the best reading either. There was a time i would have considered refusing to go to the place, the treatment of the Kurds is by and large an under reported disgrace, however if we restricted ourselves to only holidaying and residing in places that didn't have questionable policies and history i reckon we'd all have to live somewhere like Norway. No wait a minute damn those Viking marauders! On a more serious note i guess what i'm trying to say is, that as a citizen of the UK i guess our recent history is often viewed with rose tinted spectacles and right now we're certainly no shining light.

A week old, well sort of.

Was strickly speaking late monday night last week when i started this, although it was shortly after midnight by time i published the first post. Quite happy with range of subjects i've covered so far, although i havn't really done anything music or literature related as promised. To be fair i'm holding back on book related stuff as i'm going on holiday at the end of the month and i've got a bundle of new books to read and given that i'll probably not have much else to write about during the holiday think i'll save it for then. A full list of whats on my reading list shall be published in advance.

Got a couple of things in mind to waffle about this afternoon but shall hopefully find more later on in the day after i've had a good read at the paper and look over the internet.

Technical Problems Sorted! :-)

Last two attempts to publish havn't shown up. I'll shall maybe try and get something else up this evening but looking more likely to be monday before i get to add something.

Ok, bit of a development. What i have tried to publish has appeared in the draft section, and i can look at it there but doesn't show when i try to view blog. I think i'll give it the weekend to fix itself before i investigate further.

edited bit. Thankfully just a short delay. Good stuff, won't have to do a glut of things on Monday now.

Sod it!

Just spent ages writing a post and for it not to appear once published. That'll teach me not to save as draft. Oh well in theory i should be able to rewrite it quicker now i been over the ground already.

A bit about football

It is not a great time to be a Scottish football fan, i'm not really sure it ever has been as we've more or less always had a league dominated by two teams and we've always disappointed on the international stage. Yet it seems right now that we have it as bad as it has ever been. The financial clout of the Old Firm teams has the domestic game tied up as tight as it has ever been and the national team while just maybe about to restore a modicum of pride to the nation after an embarrassing end to Berti Voghts reign has a dearth of talent and confidence.

This was amply personified in the most recent game in Belarus. While a 0-0 scoreline was far from disgraceful and under better circumstances hailed as a hard earned point away from home against opposition while no world beaters, no mugs either, given the situation we were in regards qualification for the World Cup Finals not of much use. There wasn't much hope before the game anyway and certainly not a lot of pressure on the players or manager. Understandably we took a cautious approach to the game with a squad limited by numerous injury withdrawals, but as the game went on Belarus wern't showing much cutting edge and we doggedly remained in our shell unwilling to gamble even the slightest amount for the greater reward.

I can only hope that once Walter Smith is happy that organisation and confidence is somewhat restored that come the qualifiers for Euro 2008 we'll not only be hard to beat but playing some ever so slightly more expansive football. The hope for the future isn't in becoming a reincarnation of Craigie Broons team though, it is in the Likes of Derek Riordan, James McFadden and Darren Fletcher amongst others fulfilling there potential and being remembered with the likes of Dennis Law, Kenny Dalglish etc rather than being the new Eion Jess, Scott Booth or Duncan Ferguson. Promising talents one and all, that ultimately failed to deliver.

On a lighter note...

... i think we'll have the first in what will be a semi regular series called Frivolous tosh i'd quite like to buy but i'd feel like a pratt 10 minutes after i'd bought it. A snappy title i'm sure you agree. Number 1 in our series is a Lightsaber. We are back in the world of Star Wars, honestly it won't happen that often do not despair Star Wars haters, possibly the coolest weapon in cinema history and i say that as someone who is really a pacifist. Now the closest we can get to having one is this, the FX lightsaber. Does look and sound rather good but is not the cheapest of toys and honestly 10 minutes of swooshing it around and pretending to be a Jedi later and your going to wish you had spent that £100 or so on something far more usuful. Anyone that's bought one and disagrees with me feel free to comment but be honest now.

Public Relations = Corporate Lies?

Another posting inspired by a recent article in the Independent and also partly by the comedian Robert Newman. There are two points that piqued my interest, one is that large corporations who spend a lot of money on advertising would appear to carry or certainly try to have a large amount of influence on editorial policy in publications where they place their adverts. This i would imagine won't come as a great suprise to many but that doesn't make it any less insidious. The second thing that caught my attention, i don't think is something the public is quite so likely to be aware of and that is fake news.

I'll start with the latter point as i'm sure you might well be thinking to yourself what is fake news? It is simply put a promotional package made to look like a news report, with the benefit to the producer of the item of putting their spin or message across unedited or troubled by any journalistic interpretation. Like pre packaged frozen meals i'm sure this isn't good for anyone but the people making money off them. The example in the Independents article was a promotional package for the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ, this might not seem the most worrying example it's only a film and whats the harm in advertising your film? Maybe not a great deal but it included a CD with the star of the film Jim Caviezel answering questions that were also provided on a sheet of paper for local reporters to edit in to give the appearance of a personal interview. Given the controversial nature of the film i suspect this perhaps allowed them the ability to steer clear of any difficult questions.

Getting back to the first point, not so much the power of advertising but the power of advertisers. If you are spending millions of dollars on advertising your product/slash company then the threat of withdrawing your adverts can be a very serious one for newspaper and magazine producers as well as TV networks. The majority of which rely on the proceeds from running adverts to produce their publications. Recently a memo released on behalf of BP describing their new policy stated that newspapers and magazines wishing to run editorial about their sector either good or bad should not do so without both a) informing them and b) agreeing to withdraw BP adverts. It certainly doesn't reflect well on BP if they fear journalistic interest to such an extreme extent.

It should be noted that this memo didn't come from BP direct, it came via a PR company, "WPP media buying company Mindshare," according to the Independent article. But there was more, BP are far from the only people to hire PR people to improve their public relations. The government of Uganda has just hired Hill & Knowlton to improve their image. Although it was put far better within the original article, "The London office of the PR giant Hill & Knowlton has just signed a £400,000 contract 'to improve Uganda's stained reputation as a human-rights abuser and democracy laggard'." To think that the great man Bill Hicks suggested that people who work in marketing or advertising should kill themselves, what could ever have given him such a poor opinion of the profession?

Quick edit, i should probably add that the orginal article was by a gent named Mark Borkowski, good article my man!

Intermission

This next comment would raise eyebrows from anyone aquainted with me but i just did not have the time to post anything yesterday. I shall make amends today however, although i might be hindered by the fact that i've just got Lego Star Wars the video game in the post from Play.com.

For anyone that has stumbled across this blog and is actually interested in coming back to read it on a fairly regular basis i do hope to add something about 3 or 4 days of the week. Don't expect anything new on the weekends though i'm rarely at the computer then.

Time for a rant!

On what weighty issue do i wish to rant? Global injustices, poverty, illegal wars on middle eastern countries, no none of these. I wish to vent my fury on FirstBus, as i've just been stung for taxi fare home for the night as their last bus either came rediculously early or not at all. Bad enough in itself but to rub salt in the wound i hadn't really had a proper dinner and had played football for about 3 hours earlier and was looking forward to a nice healthy pepperoni pizza to round of the evening. The only available emporium provides rank rotten food and a good chance of food poisoning, by the time i got back to my local pizza place it was shut! Not a happpy bunny.

Anyway, postponed until tomorrow is a bit about journalistic freedom and the role of shadowy PR companies in the modern world. Might need to get the thinking cap on to do that justice.

To look at me...

...you might not know it but i have to admit i' a bit of a Science Fiction geek at heart. I enjoy reading and watching Sci-Fi, from big Peter F. Hamilton space opera to harder science fiction and in the distant past even the odd Star Wars novel. I also loved the Joss Whedon series Firefly but more on that another time, i believe there is a movie version due. I've also been known to spend a sunday afternoon sitting watching any old tosh like Battle Beyond the Stars and Flash Gordon, the latter of which is a real guilty pleasure and the former just plain awful.

In the world of Science Fiction though there really is only one all conquering behemoth and that is Star Wars. It is an industry in itself and has made obscene amounts of money in the theatre alone, before we get to some of the less savoury tie ins with fast food chains and merchandising of all sorts. For someone like myself brought up with the original trilogy i do try to ignore all that and enjoy the films for what they are, exciting movies that you can engage with on a number of levels. It is a romp and high adventure that seems perfect for young boys, although quite frankly the way Princess leia strangles Jabba the Hut whilst wearing that gold bikini is bordering on the kinky! Then again that just might be me. It's a tale of good versus evil, then with the new trilogy we find that it's actually all a bit more complicated than that, even if these new sparkly looking films don't seem to be quite as good.

Which brings me to what i want to say about this latest offering, Revenge of the Sith. I have seen it twice now and to be fair to it i could sit through it again. It is definately the best of the new trilogy and you almost wish George Lucas was making more as he has at least got better and better with each of his new offerings. Although i should maybe reserve judgment for more repeated viewings as i did enjoy The Phantom Menace the first few times before it really sunk in that it was just a bit bad, although had just enough good bits to keep you hoping for a while.

This latest offering has tied up the series together nicely, the Emporers ascension to power seemed plausible enough. It was the fall of the other iconic villain Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader that bothered me. For someone taught by the jedi for approx 13 years he seemed remarkably immature and lets face it a bit of a thickie. He one moment appears to recognise that the Emporer is an evil git and a second later he's happily become his apprentice and decides that the Jedi are the bad guys. Is this him trying to convince himself to assuage a guilty conscience? The whole thing with his wife dying in childbirth, his vision of it and the fact it only occurs because of his own actions in trying to prevent it is a nice idea. I just find it hard to accept in that his wife is otherwise the picture of health, they life in a technologicaly advanced society he could be that worried that he'd turn to slaughtering innocent children on a path to get the power to save her. It was that scene where he all to quickly pledges himself to the dark side that just didn't ring true for me. if that had been done right i think i would have left the theatre raving about this latest film.

Also to end on a relatively minor note, i think they could have trimmed a little bit of the action to keep the time down a touch. Some of it wasn't all that exciting. Indeed when it comes to the lightsabre duels, i actualy mostly enjoyed the Anakin/Obi Wan dialogue, a rarity in new Star Wars films, more than their should have been lightsabre duel to end all lightsabre duel fight.

Short note

For anyone thinking thats a lot of bland text in your first 2 posts, i shall endeaver to put in things like pictures/links etc soon.

As promised a new entry first thing this morning, well close to it, it's just gone 11. Anyway this mornings topic was inspired by a report i read in the Independant yesterday, about a new superbug in hospitals that people arn't really aware of. A serious enough article that raises many questions about how the NHS is run, and it was enough to make me paranoid about ever going into hospital on top of the more regular MRSA scares we hear about.

However the worst thing about it for me was that this superbug, Clostridium difficile, basicaly causes a bad case of diarhea! In some cases it can be fatal. Oh my giddy aunt the sheer indignity of it! Also, yeuch that really has to be a miserable way to go, an everyday case of diarhea is unpleasant enough.

I can't help but think given that both the instances of MRSA and Clostrium difficile have been on the rise from very low levels from about 1990(the earliest figures quoted in the article) that it may have something to do with the privatisation of the contracts to provide hospital cleaning services. Although eyebrows were also raised at a quote saying that, "alcohol hand gels on NHS wards for cleansing between patients was meant to be convnient and compensate for a lack of sink." A lack of sinks! doesn't really bode well does it?

Introduction

Big hello there to anyone reading this. As for why you are reading this, that is anyones guess. With a bit of luck over the coming weeks and months i'll have such a wonderfully interesting blog that i'll be revered across continents for my musings. Hopefully the writing will be more Oscar Wilde than Kim Wilde, though she was quite fit back in the 80's. I think she was the first member of the opposite sex i had warm fuzzy feelings for, even if i was only 6 or 7 at the time.

So what will i be writing about i hear no one ask? Well hopefully a broad range of subjects on which i'll write with varying degrees of knowledge. Off the top of my head i'll probably write about current affairs, politics, sport (in particular Scottish football), film, music, literature, the antics of friends etc.

I'm not sure how personal it will be yet, i'll do a bit about myself i guess but i'm fairly confident the wider world is a lot more interesting. Anyway it's late at night where i am sitting just now, so more added tomorrow while i'm hopefully still feeling rnthusiastic.