Category Archives: Politics

Lightbulb moment

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While watching the tellybox on Friday night, the bulb in the table lamp beside me started flickering. It’s one of those low-energy LED things that’s supposed to last X number of years longer than a standard one. When these things start flickering, it’s a certain sign that they’re in the throes of death…I’m… trying… to hold… out… for just… a few… more… min…. Blackness. Fucking things. Of course, what with them being so expensive, you only ever buy them when one goes. It’s rare to have a spare, unless for some reason you’ve bought one of the incorrect wattage and discovered you’re either dwelling in the light of our cave-painting ancestors, or you burn your retinas out when you turn the bloody thing on.

Anyway, while well-stocked with the smaller variety of these givers of inappropriate light, I was deficient in large screw-fit bulbs. FFS.

9 watts. I needed 9 watts to restore the calm and warming ambience of my living room. The following day, nearly six pounds lighter in pocket, I returned home with an 8W bulb. Eight, compared to nine, it should’ve been alright, but it’s so much brighter than the one it replaced. So annoying. There’s another unit that you’re supposed to look at too, but I barely scraped through physics, so I’ve no chance of understanding this crap. Why can’t 8W provide the same brightness across the board? Why do things have to be complicated with other units?

Could you imagine if this sort of thing was applied to cooking? Measure out 250g of whatever, but you also need to factor in the phase of the bloody moon because it affects the gravitational pull on your kitchen scales.

Ridiculous.

I’m now quite uncomfortable in my living room. I might as well be sitting in a Housing Units display area with harsh shop lighting rendering it a two dimensional, shadow-less hell.

But at least the spiders have nowhere to hide.

Respect my authority
I have very little respect for local authorities, especially Labour-controlled ones. They are wasteful and they establish policies that show their hatred for working people, whom they see as cash cows to fund their ludicrous lefty agendas, knowing full well that working people are too bloody tired and busy to kick up a fuss. They pander to those who keep them in a job and ignore those who aren’t numerous enough to boot them out of office.

But that’s for another time.

My beef with my local council is with its bin men. We have alternating collections here. For my £74 a month Council Tax to Bolton Metropolitan Council, I have my general waste removed one week and the recycling taken the following week. We all use wheelie bins and sometimes, after I’ve been out for a walk with my dog, I deposit his deposits in my general waste bin. For some reason though, my bin men, refuse collectors, whatever they’re called, don’t deem it necessary to empty my bin properly. So whereas everybody else’s gets put on the back of the wagon, tipped up and emptied, all they do with mine is pull out the sacks of waste and leave whatever is left to fester.

I noticed they’d done this the other week and even put my bin out on the street for them to empty it properly before going to work. On returning, my bin had been returned to its normal place and, on inspection, I found this:

IMG_0533.JPG

Dirty, fucking, pigs. Despite it containing festering dog poo, they couldn’t be bothered to just put the bin on the back of the wagon to empty it properly. I was furious. It’d be another fortnight before it was collected again. But what on earth possesses them to even do this? Why go rooting around in bins and pulling sacks out and putting them in other bins? Why not just empty all the bins on the back of the bloody wagon?

And what would they rather me do with my dog’s poo, just leave it and not bag it up and bin it? Or maybe save it up in a pile somewhere that it can attract flies and disease until such a time that I have a pile big enough to put in a bag that the bin men see worthy to pull out of my bin.

Unbelievable.

So, here’s me: single income, no kids (SINK). I pay over the odds for council services compared to my multi-occupancy neighbours (with kids), and I don’t even get my bin emptied… and my neighbours use MY paper bin and it’s always full of their stuff when I come to use it.

I don’t ask for much, I understand that my Council Tax needs to help towards providing services and education for the vulnerable (and those pretending to be) and the progeny of breeders, but for what I do pay, is it too much to ask that my bin is emptied properly, that the street lights work and that the roads are kept in a decent state of repair? In Bolton, clearly it is.

Love and the common people

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I am a confirmed and happy atheist; I make no secret of this. For all my thirty-ahem-nine and a bit years, I have never felt the presence of a deity within or without me. Logic tells me that the existence of any sort of higher being is simply not possible – my take on life tells me that such a supernatural caretaker is unnecessary.

While I accept that personal faith is often beneficial for believers, I have a strong dislike of organised religion and how it is used for subjugation, how it used to find excuses to turn people against one another, to be downright fucking nasty. Conversely, many people with faith take great comfort from their beliefs, they use their scriptures for guidance on how to behave in a way that makes them living examples of their gospel.

Good behaviour, citizenship, morals, ethics, philanthropy are not the exclusive realm of the religious though and humanists take the world view that all are treated equally and with respect, irrespective of belief. They believe in the good stewardship of the planet, based on rational thought and reason, and that.

So, if you take a humanist like me (I guess, if you’re really bothered with labels) and a Christian like my girlfriend, you might expect there to be potential for conflict. I guess I’m lucky, I’ve got one of the good ones who has a pragmatic relationship with the scriptures, one who has the intellectual ability to see past her preacher’s sometime literal interpretations of the bible. She lives her life according to Christian deeds, rather than words. And hallelujah for that. We don’t talk about the things we know to be contentious (evolution is out of the question, well, creationism is) and we get along with it. I have absolute respect for her and her faith, she has respect for my lack of any and would never try to pressure me into believing.

We were having a discussion the other week and asked her if she’d prefer it if I was a Christian and she answered, “I only wish you could feel what I feel when I worship.”

“But how do you know I don’t feel that anyway? There are times when I’m out and about, or I read something, or see something, or hear some music, and it fills me with wonder and I get a great deal of energy from it. Honking geese, for example!”

“Yes, I know that, but this is something that completely fills you, something tremendous.”

“What, like the first time I heard you tell me you loved me?”

“No, like the first time you thought you heard me to tell you I love you.”

Power to the people
We have a new government with a Mega Prime Minister, it’s exciting. The country is in a mess and the next few years are going to be rubbish no matter who is in charge, but a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats might be just what we need. I’d describe myself as a liberal Conservative, so I’m actually quite delighted with what’s happened. If the Conservatives manage to get rid of a load of right winged fruitcake bigots, then this could be the best thing that’s happened for generations.

I’m definitely one for doing everything possible to help the vulnerable, to providing opportunities for those less well-off, for building real aspirations to allow folk to move out of poverty, but when it comes to certain things, certain people, I have no patience. Lazy slobs who for generations have lived on welfare need a good kick up the arse, no excuses: you’re offered a job, take it or lose your benefits. I don’t think I’m alone in this either. Out for a meal with my other half and a couple of her friends, the topic came up for discussion, along with a number of things relating to what the new government might do. We were also talking about environmental issues, how many people cycling it takes to power an average home in the UK, that sort of thing. In combination with a cocktail and a few glasses of red wine, my beautiful, benevolent, caring, Christian girlfriend made this statement: “They should be made to get off their lazy, fat arses and take what ever job’s offered to them. I’d make a load of new power stations with lots of bikes in and get the bastards to cycle to produce energy – this carries so many benefits. And if they refuse to do this, we should fuckin’ burn them!”.

No matter where you go
…Asda is horrible. Up there with Asda Hume in terms of taking the prize for supermarket scum is Asda Bolton, which I discovered today. In fact, I’ve discovered that every supermarket in Bolton is patronised by the most hideous people, even the Sainsbury’s there leaves me feeling dirty.

I’m off to write to our new Energy Secretary with my idea to build a Super reactor in the heart of Bolton.

Sudoku and other life puzzles

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I was recently introduced to the art of Sudoku. It’s an art rather than an activity because there is nothing remotely active about being sat still and staring in utter confusion and frustration at a little grid that’s part-filled with the numbers 1-9. I had resisted joining the massed throngs of the confused for many years – in fact, this is what I had to say on the subject in 2005:

Soduko
These number puzzles have got the Guardian and Sunday Times-reading masses rushing for their pens. There are even whole puzzle books devoted to them – a bit like Take a Break only without the top tips and prize money. Apparently, it’s all about counting from 1 to 9?

These things are even worse than cryptic crosswords. Completely bloody pointless.
If people are that bored, why don’t they just go and have half an hour sorting themselves out?

…until my girlfriend told me that she thought I’d enjoy doing them.

“But no, you don’t understand!”, I pleaded with her, “I have an extremely addictive personality and things like this affect my fine neurochemical balance really badly. I should really avoid them.”

“Nonsense, T. You’ll enjoy them. I can’t believe somebody like you, with your intellect and borderline personality disorder isn’t already addicted to doing them. Stop making excuses and give it a go.”

So I did, a couple of months ago. I started with the easy one in the Times, and moved up to mild and difficult fairly quickly. I complained that fiendish were too hard for me. “Oh, I can’t do fiendish,” she responded. I questioned this and said that if something had a solution, you can solve it – it just takes time.

Three hours later, we were still staring at the little grid of numbers that had been partly filled in in pencil. I was on the verge of taking my mechanical pencil and stabbing myself in the eye with it when the solution started coming to me. And there it was, my first completed Fiendish Sudoku!

I can do the Super Fiendish now, they’re great. So what do you move on to next; just a blank grid that you fill the numbers in yourself? I’m going for the easier option of a lifetime addiction to crack cocaine or crystal meth.

Of course, I get quite competitive with sudoku these days; never allowing anybody to look at the puzzle I’m working on. My sister tried this on the other day as I was working on the puzzle in my dad’s paper. She’d been telling me that I had the wrong method, that I should try to solve one grid at a time (??? – think about this one for a moment). Anyway, I completed it once she’d departed and took pleasure in showing her how it was done:

sudokoff

I love mechanical pencils.

Anyway, puzzles and riddles irritate me. I’d never be able to be a heroine in a magic kingdom where you can’t even go to the toilet without solving a riddle that has been set by some hag or goblin or some such. Could you imagine? Imagine living with hogs, goblins, trolls and the like. It’d be like living in… well, where I grew up in Salford I suppose.

Facebook stalker
But no, riddles aren’t for me, I like a simple life. But here’s one: why would somebody who certainly shouldn’t know my full name (other than through extreme naughtiness) and who claims to have never heard of me block me in Facebook? How can you block somebody if you’ve never heard of them?

While having two Facebook profiles can be confusing at times, it sometimes has its advantages. People ought to remember this, and consider who they might be dealing with, before they think about causing mischief.

Illness
Another puzzle that’s been plaguing me of late is my general lack of wellness: I’m on my second nasty cold in four months; I’ve been suffering from migraines; I can’t walk for more than two miles without my toes feeling like they’re falling off; my back constantly aches; my knees click; I often experience Bristol Stool Score Number 1s (with extreme urgency) in the evenings.

I think it’s something to do with almagam fillings, or being sat without natural light under an air conditioning vent in a workplace full of sick people (as you’d expect in a hospital, I suppose), and I’m absolutely certain that Gordon Brown is at the heart of the blame. I’d go to the GP, but I don’t like them and they always come out with some crap about me being nearly forty, obese, with the most terrible diet known to man. Personally, I don’t think there’s much wrong with a diet of pickled vegetables and Bendick’s bittermints, but there’s some evidence about balanced diets… blah, blah, blah.

My current illness started on Sunday afternoon. It’s nothing remarkable – just a cold that’s resulted in a few nights’ sleep being lost to aching, sweats, shivers and coughs – but it produced the BEST sinus goo I’ve ever seen or experienced. I swear it was an undiagnosed siamese twin. It was about 3x1cm, and it had its own skeleton, teeth, nervous system and anus. I’ve entered it as an independent anti-Labour parliamentary candidate for the upcoming election. With a better grip on real life in 21st Century Britain, more personality, and less slime than Peter Mandelson, it’s guaranteed to romp home to victory on 6th May.

Hell in the Big Brother House

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I have to go away to Wales on Sunday for an “away trip” with colleagues from work. The senior team members are staying in my boss’s second home there, the plebs are being put up in a holiday home nearby. Here’s the specification:

Situated at the top of the road that winds its way down to Nefyn’s magnificent sandy beach, its close proximity to the beach will, undoubtedly, make it a popular choice. The property is well maintained, but very simply furnished. The front of the house has recently had upvc double glazed windows fitted.

Sleeps 20 (+ cot) in 5 bedrooms

The ground floor comprises the main lounge, with French door opening onto the front garden, an electric fire & colour television; toilet; the ‘French Lounge’ with an assortment of games, TV and video player has French doors opening onto the drive at the side of the house, and is accessed from the dining room which has French doors onto the back patio. The kitchen, also off the dining room, is equipped with a catering size gas range, an urn and a fridge/freezer; the utility room, beyond the kitchen, has another fridge and freezer, washing machine tumble drier, 3 additional sinks and a door to the rear garden.

On the 1st floor are: 3 bedrooms (rooms 1 and 2, each sleeping 6 in purpose built bunks, room 3 with a double bed); Bathroom with shower and toilet; 2 toilets; Shower room

The 2nd floor at the top of the house contains a further 2 bedrooms (room 4 with 2 single beds and room 5 with 4 single beds), tucked under the eaves and enjoying sea views.

There is a enclosed garden at the back of the house with a patio outside the French doors from the dining room, and large & small grassed areas. Access is from the utility room, dining room or side gate opening onto the driveway.

All beds are provided with 2 pillows and a duvet. A cot may be available on request.
You must bring your own bedlinen (sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases) and towels.

Additional Information

  • Pets are welcome

  • Smoking is not permitted in the house.

  • Wheelchair access is limited to the ground floor.

  • Background heating is by night storage heaters.

  • Parking for up to 6 vehicles.

  • Gas and heating is included in the rental

  • Other electricity by £1 coin meter

I, at the tender age of 38, will be sleeping in a bunk bed, sharing a bedroom with two others, who I’ve never met. It’ll be freezing (storage heaters + Wales + cliff top = fucking freezing).Ten of us will be driving there, but there’s only parking for six cars. We’ll probably be made to eat seaweed and moss and take baths in used water in a tub in the yard.

But here’s the most dreadful aspect of it all: no internet access.  I figured I could use my mobile to connect my PC to the Orange 3G network, it usually works really well, however look at this:

Orange

Orange

What about using my 3 phone?  That could do the same thing – if it gets collected today and returned on time  (been waiting since 7am for Parceline to come and get it, it’s now 3.30pm).  What’s the 3 coverage like there?

3

3

Ok then, so they’re both non-starters? But maybe one of those mobile broadband dongles from the other networks might be useful anyway, perhaps it’d be worth investing in one of those?

Vodafone

Vodafone

T-mobile 2G

T-mobile 2G

T-mobile 3G

T-mobile 3G

O2

O2

So there you go.  Staying with a bunch of people from work, who are actually OK, in freezing cold Wales, in a single bed, in a shared bedroom, with shared bathroom facilities, eating seaweed… and no chance whatsoever of an internet connection… for over TWO FUCKING DAYS!

Still, I get to go quad biking on Monday afternoon, so if I’m lucky, I might die or at least be hospitalised and then I won’t need internet access anyway.

Wasted days

Another day of decent weather has been wasted waiting in for those tossers to come and collect my mobile for repair.  Me and Rocky could’ve been having loads of fun, instead, I’ve been doing a bit of work.  Actually  I’ve had five attempts at burning a DVD of a avi file of a film.  The film plays fine in media player, the video burns to DVD OK, but there’s no sound.   I tried a different burning packages, and that just burns with the sound hopelessly out of sync.  I’m on my sixth try now, but I don’t hold out much hope.  It’s weird because I had no trouble burning the latest episode of the fabulous L Word the other night, but it’s now gone tits up.

Pissed off.

Second coming

The installation of President Obama is certainly a historic event.  It signals wonderful progress and brings a certain degree of hope to the Western World that we might actually stop being seen as evil.  Hope is one thing, action and results are another.  It does seem that an awful lot of hope has been pinned on him and, with a whole load of work to be done, it’s questionable that anything will actually be achieved.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and that.

Obama has almost been elevated to Messiah status – certainly by Auntie Beeb.  He’s just a bloke with a huge job to do, with a rather unfair weight of expectation placed on his shoulders.

And we in the UK have experienced something similar before with Tony Blair.  I never fell for the smooth talking back in 1997, I saw right through him and New Labour and knew damned well that they’d achieve absolutely fuck all while ruining the country – because that’s what Labour does.  It’s the lack of integrity, the lies, the erosion of values, the erosion of our civil liberties that hurt most from the past eleven… twelve years of Labour’s appalling governance.  We all knew they’d fuck up the economy (but perhaps not this badly), but the snooping on its people, the gradual introduction of a police state, and the sheer hopelessness that has been heaped on us all – not even I would have expected that from them. Then again, that’s what you get with a government that is out of control and afraid of its own people.

So long as Obama and his team demonstrate the utmost integrity and at least some degree of competence during their administration, then I will be satisfied.  There won’t be miracles.

Rocky takes time out

Rocky has a habit of kicking off and shouting his head off at the slightest noise outside.  I’ve had enough.  He goes for a time out in the kitchen as soon as he starts grumbling to himself.  It won’t stop him doing it, but it’ll keep him quiet for a bit while I’m trying to concentrate on my work blog.

Little shit.

Seventh heaven

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I’ve downloaded and installed Windows 7 beta; it’s very nice, a bit like Vista was supposed to be. Very fast, with some great innovations going on in the technical bowels of it… well, it’s got this good power management thing that turns things off when they’re not in use then zips them back into operation as soon as you use them again.

And the new Windows Media Player is nifty to the extreme, allowing previews of tracks and that. Lovely.  Are you watching, Apple?

But anyway, techno-schmeckno. Although pissing about with your PC can be quite exciting, it’s always with more than a touch of apprehension that I embark on such adventures. The idea of wiping everything off your machine – EVERYTHING – so you can install a new operating system and start again is pretty alien, given all the shite you have to put back on when you’re done, and the prospect of it all going horribly wrong. Nonetheless, I managed it without any problem and it’s like having a new machine.

It’ll be like having an old machine again when the beta version expires on 1st August and we all have to rush to buy a licensed copy for about £200 (v clever, Mr Microsoft)… or go back to Vista.

God, this is a bit techy.

Anyway, if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic having just updated to Windows 7, perhaps you’d like to take a walk down memory lane and have a look at these screenshots from previous incarnations of our beloved operating system; took me right back, so they did.  My personal favourite was Windows 95, no it wasn’t, it was totally shit – especially with that fucking bouncy paperclip thing.  Windows didn’t get anything like half decent until XP.

DHL
Yes, I’m working from home today (I’ve checked my e-mails periodically); this means that I was here to accept a parcel for Jo. We have a front door, with a bell, that is easily accessible. Mr DHL decided to try to come in through the back gate (locked), thus alarming Little Rocky and setting him off on one of his frantic barking tantrums. When Mr DHL realised that perhaps it’s not that common to break down somebody’s gate to deliver a parcel through the patio doors at the back of their house, he decided to come round to the front door and bang on it as loudly as possible, sending Rocky’s tantrum into megadrive.

Total nob.

Fuckbook is brilliant!
Well, that’s how I feel today at least, and my opinion is subject to change on a whim, or as the result of being “poked” by some cunt from years ago who I only added as a friend out of politeness. Be warned.

I found myself in hysterics the other night after I decided, goodness only knows why, to post some images of me that had been taken for official documents, ID cards, passports, that type of affair. Now, if I hadn’t just wiped everything off my PC, I’d be able to upload those images to Flickr and show them here. Here’s the link instead. Actually, forget that, I don’t want this page to link to anything that has identifiable information about me. Not that I’m paranoid or a shrinking violet or anything.

Anyway, here it is, my own personal gallery of shame:

Hrrm, can’t explain the big gap between the rows, but fuck it, you get the picture. I’m essentially a big fat bloater screaming to get out of my otherwise silf-like frame and, in general, I succeed in expressing the inner me very well.  I particularly like the photo from my driving licence and UK passport: see how I’ve skilfully plucked one eyebrow, but not the other?  And people wonder why I always travel on my Italian passport.

E-mail scam
“Hello, I am Prince Ngoloki Hokey Cokey from Western Nigernya and I would like to share e-mailing with you”

I am becoming more paranoid by the day and it won’t be long before I’m wearing a tin foil helmet to try to keep the thought police out. From March, all our e-mails are going to be stored on huge snooperbase for the purposes of criminal investigations and antiterrorism efforts. Well, that’s the government’s excuse at least. Great, isn’t it? I’m just going to have “Hydrogen peroxide source” as the default subject for all my messages and I’m going to change my name to Wahida Al Jalabi (apologies to anybody who happens to have that name!). I’d like to think everybody will do the same so the whole thing comes crashing down around Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s stupid deaf ears.

I’m Spartacus!

Surely saving all our e-mails for snooping purposes is no different to having all our post opened and checked before we send or receive any?

I guess it’s quite comforting to know know that the government is so scared of its own people that it has to erode our civil liberties on a daily basis, but watch out for legislation preventing people from voting if they speak too loudly against them.

Cunts.