Comment............

It worries me when politicians anywhere start talking about  "a crackdown."  This latest PC-speak for "make it sound good and they will believe we're actually going to do something" doesn't fool me for one second.

The only thing it signifies for me is that loads of public money will be spent on lots of dinners in expensive feeding rooms whilst a lot of hot air is exchanged and the end result will be not a lot!

We hear a lot about "crackdowns" but we don't very often get to hear the "results of the crackdown" do we. The latest seems to be a "crackdown" on huge multinational companies not paying taxes because they are closely following the rules laid down by this or previous governments and the HMRC, or IRS (UK or US).
Now they are saying that these companies are using "loopholes" in the various laws of the country concerned to avoid paying taxes not evade taxes.

Why didn't these governments have a "crackdown" on the bodies that wrote the rules in the first place (HMRC or IRS) to avoid "loopholes" to begin with?
They (politicos) always seem to be able to come up with a reason that it's someone else's fault, instead of accepting the blame, changing the faulty rules, and moving on, so they have to make the corporations the bad guys, and have a "crackdown" (AKA feed-up at public expense).

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Being a 50's child, and growing up in a post war rapidly changing working class world in Dagenham, Essex I was instilled with a good sense of right and wrong by my parents and older siblings. My education was basic,  junior and then secondary (having failed the eleven plus) schools, and straight to work.

I find myself increasingly worried about educational standards in the 21st century when a television presenter, on Sky News, explained that he has had A-level students sending him work to review as part of some project, I didn't catch which, but he had had finished work submitted which consisted of an essay without one capital letter in the whole thing.

Now call me old-fashioned if you will, but in his place I would not of even read that, just sent it back with a note saying something like "grammatically incorrect" or something like it. I am fully aware that my English language skills are not of teaching standards, but even I can see the fault in that. Are our teaching standards that poor, or are we teaching our youth to speak in the manner that they use for text messages?

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I find it hard to believe that Sky News managed to fill the whole day today (18 Jun) with Charles Saatchi's indiscretion with his wife Nigella Lawson.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not, and won't, defend him. What he did was indefensible, but a whole day!
What he did was a) Stupid.
                           b) very stupid outside a popular restaurant in the center of London.
                           c) very very stupid as both he and his wife are 'celebs' and therefore probably followed everywhere by paparazzi.
But Sky News managed to overshadow The Syria conflict, The Turkish unrest, The Greek unrest and the G8 summit in Ireland, not to mention Stuart Hall's ridiculous sentence. They paraded, during various segments, at least ten 'experts' from varied women's charities, psychologists, psychiatrists and whatever to decry what was really yesterdays news.

He did wrong. Then he did right, by nipping along to his local nick to accept a caution. Nigella will probably use it against him for years, and so she should, but  thats it, end of.

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Call me old, but isn't Angela Merkel in serious need of some wardrobe assistance?
I just googled pics of, and she seems to be in the same jacket, albeit in different colours, in most of them.
Now I'm no Style Icon, as anyone who actually knows me will attest, but then I'm not a 'World Leader' and I don't jet around the world on political jollies, but come on the same style all the time?

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Weekly Comment......

Call Mulder and Scully!
A Best Western hotel in North Carolina has ended up with a not so good rep after three people have been found dead in the same room within two months.

An elderly couple were found dead in the room in April, and this latest incident, last saturday involves an 11 year old boy and his 49 year-old mother who was found alive but injured. Police are investigating, but can find nothing to link the two incidents. The boy's cause of death has not yet been established.

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One of my pet hates. Giving convicted felons any rights or privileges. If anybody, male, female, young or old
is convicted of any crime worthy of a prison sentence, then they give up any rights they may have had previously.

So how comes a bunch of convicts on their way to court to testify in another case can claim, on legal aid, for whiplash injuries after two prison vans bumped into each other? Even worse is that four prison officers went to hospital as a result of the incident, yet eleven are claiming for whiplash injuries... strange. 

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Watch out! The Nannies are back!
The We-can't-enjoy-ourselves-so-why-should-anyone-else brigade are back, this time with the crackpot idea to ban all alcohol advertising from sport, cinema, television, etc. This is, they say, to stop young people from becoming 'brand aware' before they come of age, or some such tripe.

I say that a sure fire way of encouraging an impressionable youngster to try something is to ban it.
The precedents exist in all spheres in the last 30 years.
The nanny BBC bans a record from their programmes - it shoots to No.1 with record sales.
The nanny government bans offshore 'free' radio - listener figures soar to new highs.
Cigarette advertising banned in sports - No significant difference.

From my own limited research, the ban on cigarette advertising did nothing to encourage anybody to stop,
it was peer pressure, (the same peer pressure that started many smoking in the first place) health issues and social unacceptability that caused the people I've asked about it, to stop.

And that's not to mention the thousands of people whose jobs would be at risk in the advertising world if firms lose big and lucrative contracts. But that's OK, because the overpaid, un-necessary nannies will still have their jobs and they can move on to spend more public cash on another rubbish project

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It has emerged, via Sky News, that every household in the UK is around £4500 a year worse off because of local authority and government spending on crackpot schemes.

The Taxpayers Alliance has produced a free book 'Bumper Book Of Government Waste' available for download at http://www.taxpayersalliance.com. Makes interesting reading.

Like Lancashire County Council spent £40,000 setting up a 20mph zone villagers in Lancashire didn’t want. There were hardly any accidents recorded in Longton, near Preston, yet the County Council still pressed ahead with the scheme.

Like Cotswold Council spent £19,000 on a 'motivational magician' to improve staff morale.

Like An arts council grant of £92,000 in Brighton for a skip decorated with yellow lights.

Altogether during 2011-12 the TPA identified £120 billion worth of waste. Criminal I call it.

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Protesters filled the streets in Brasilia this week to protest over the high cost of building venues for the 2014 World Cup. Whilst I do admit it is prestigious for a country to host the games, building stadiums for
 $600 million that will rarely be used afterward does seem a bit extravagant. Protesters have a point when they say that public money that could build schools and hospitals is being used and it is grossly unfair.

Comment....

It seems to have come as a big surprise to the world that the US NSA and UK GCHQ are collecting information from social media, e-mail and 'phone records via the US' Prism operation, why?

I must admit it does seem to smack a little of paranoia, but the thinking behind it is sound. Terrorists are quite communication savvy now, they are no longer third world uneducated brainwashees, they are as sophisticated and clever as top scientists, and can use all electronic and covert methods to pass information to each other , in far removed 'target' countries, so it does make some sense to try to intercept and act on those messages.

Unfortunately, both the NSA and GCHQ have picked a rather daft way to go about it, in trying to make it 'covert'. Did they, given the somewhat huge holes in internal security in both countries,  for one second truly believe that it wouldn't be discovered? I find that a little hard to believe. Why not just come out and say it, "We believe that terrorists are using social media etc to pass messages, so, in the interests of National Security, we're going to check all social media." or something similar. Yes there would have outcry, but not as much, or as embarrassing, as having your 'secret' project slapped across front pages the world over.

And as for the general populace in these countries, UK included, are they really that naive that they thought that private use of social media was really private? This kind of thing has probably been going on since the first public use of the Internet, in fact, public use of the Internet was probably a godsend to security agencies everywhere.

I personally have no problem with any government agency in any country checking my posts, e-mail, texts etc, because, along with the vast overwhelming majority of worldwide citizens, I have absolutely nothing to hide!  And it seems to me that the people causing the most noise over this and are protesting the loudest, are those that may have a skeleton in the closet somewhere.

If it did happen that I had some confidential information to pass on to someone, official or otherwise, and that's unlikely, I hope I would be sensible enough to do it face to face, and in a quiet place somewhere, like a park or a secluded beach, certainly not on the Internet.

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India appears to be heading toward the first throes of some sort of sexual revolution if the latest news to come out is correct. Women are demanding that female mannequins are removed from shopfront and market displays because "When men see them and look at them it inflames their passions and they go on to attack women."  I have to think that if that is the case, the society is in such poor shape that removing mannequins is no answer. I wish them well, but in a society that has, supposedly, treated women as second class citizens for centuries, they have a seriously uphill struggle on their hands.

It is indeed a very poor state of affairs when so many sexual attacks against women take place in such a short time, but surely the robust investigation of cases and prosecution of offenders is the way forward, and there must be some underlying social reasons that are in need of investigation.

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Hmmmm....... I've just been reading the UK Daily Express online, well I only got as far as the main story on the first page and I'm fed up already. Yet more EU cash (£3.7 million this time ) has been wasted on research to tell us how to live.

Apparently now it transpires that two beers a year is enough to cause cancer. I don't know about you people, but I am getting thoroughly fed up with being told the best way to live my life by these so-called 'educated' scientists/doctors. They may well be very highly educated, super intelligent persons, but they lack one very important human quality... Common sense!

It seems that every week new, and sometimes conflicting, 'advice' is revealed on how best to extend/improve  our lives. Clicking through to the article I saw in the sidebar stories on how Biscuits are a health risk to children, Exposure to more natural daylight is the answer to sleep problems, We don't have enough time to relax, and how a Vegetarian diet can cut the risk of early death.

This last is a good one. They (scientists/doctors) researched and concluded that vegetarians are less likely to die than meat eaters. Could this possibly be because there are less vegetarians, so the incidence of death is of course less. It's not rocket science, is it.

A quote taken directly from the Express which says it all:

 But Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall said: “At what point do the nannying puritans stop spending our money in order to tell us how to behave. 
“One wonders if they have any relation to the world in which the rest of us live. “Can anybody imagine a world where they held sway? 
“Small, monochrome, browbeaten and miserable, a shadow of the fun, vibrant land we all love."

In The News........

So...108 youths got ejected from a 'plane in the US for not sitting, and not turning off mobiles and, because they happen to be Jewish and go to a Jewish school, it's racist. Well, i sincerely hope they have been shown the overwhelming number of comments generated as a result of this 'news' story (548 in the UK's Daily Mail alone)  and nearly all of them are in support of the Airline. I hope they all feel suitably ashamed, although given the normal attitude of youths in general today, I doubt it.

A Lazy unemployed 37 year-old father of 7 has just spent £2,500  on a 3d tv from his family's benefits and the family has been featured on Channel 4's programme 'Skint'. I hope the DHSS is now going to watch this guy like a hawk, and stick with him wherever he ventures. You can almost guarantee that he's up to no good somewhere along the line. Cynical..... maybe I am, but I've been around the block a few times in my 60 years, and not always on the right side of the line. Trust me... He's up to something.

Another child dies needlessly. A 10 year-old died after being accidentally shot in the chest whilst playing in a garage in an apartment complex in California. How many children have to die in America in this way before they wake up and change the gun laws? The owners of this handgun should be charged with murder and incarcerated for a very long time for being so stupid as to allow this to happen, and the most stringent new laws need to be introduced to combat this growing menace.

In a related story, a 20 year old, who had been in and out of mental hospitals for years, was able to buy an assault rifle in a Walmart store in Missouri. He had a history of attempting murder. How can this happen?
Luckily, his parents found the receipt for the gun, and, knowing his problems, turned him in to the Police.

Global Warming vs Sustainable energy.
Local councils in the UK can now ask local residents for their opinions before even considering planning applications for wind farms.
Prospective wind farm builders may as well just close up shop, because with the short-sighted attitude of most 'NIMBY' (Not In My Backyard) locals in the windiest, and therefore most suitable, locations they will never give another approval.
Unlike most other sources of fuel, coal mines, oil refineries, solar farms even peat bogs, the land in and around a wind farm is still usable, and although the turbines themselves may impact on a skyline view, they are, aside from a mild hum, quiet and clean and provide a source of electricity that is cost effective and environmentally friendly.
Wake up NIMBY's, and think of future generations instead of just yourselves for a change.

Civil Unrest?

Anyone ever noticed how, whenever there is any kind of civil unrest, of which there has been plenty in the world lately, there is always the small element that just want to cause mayhem, throw rocks and petrol bombs at the police or other authorities, and generally turn, what may have been an otherwise peaceful demonstration of anger at a particular situation, into a riot?

You also find as a matter of course, that  these rent-a-mob thugs are so brave that they are always masked, lest they be identified by their mothers, girlfriends, partners etc. Not to mention the fear of actual arrest and incarceration.

I attended several such demonstrations as a young student, and never once did anyone feel the need to a) indulge in any kind of violence (apart from some mild name-calling) and b) mask our faces, because we were proud of the fact that we could demonstrate against 'the bomb' or 'the war' or anything else, without resorting to that kind of behavior.

I think the worst we got up to was a passive linked arm sit-down, until we got dragged off by the police. We were given a telling off, and then some wag would realize that it was after opening time, and that was far more important! 

In The News This Week........

So, Ex-Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne and his Ex-Wife Vicky Pryce have been released from prison after serving only 62 days of an 8 month prison sentence. There is something wrong with this picture.

 Surely if someone breaks the law, and perverting the course of justice is not a minor offence, and is convicted and sentenced according to the law of the land, they should serve out that sentence in the place that the magistrate/ judge decrees.

What, I wonder, is the point of sentencing a convicted criminal to a custodial sentence as laid down by law, and then telling them they will only serve half of it, and if they behave, only half of that half? And not only are they laughing all the way there, they are sent to a 'prison' which has no bars, no locks, and a set of facilities that a good number of hard-working upright citizens can only dream of, much less afford.

Now supporters of this somewhat  strange way of behaving are saying that it makes sense to give early release because it costs around a thousand pounds to keep a convicted felon in prison each week. Well it would with all the perks the apparently get. Mr Huhne's supporters are saying that he is still not free, because he has to be electronically tagged for the remaining two months of the half of his sentence. Well big deal, I'm sure he will not be inconvenienced in the slightest by that in his million pound Camberwell home, just because he has to stay there from 6pm till 6am.

Only one person I've seen so far has made any sense, and that's Nigel Farage, Leader of the UK Independence Party, and his view was that the sentence should be served out, and that more prisons need to be built to house those convicted of crime. I totally agree.

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It turns out that Stuart Hazell, who has admitted sexually abusing and killing 12 year-old Tia Sharpe, has 30 previous convictions, and has served three prison sentences for drug dealing, assault and possession of a machete. Now how in God's name was he even on the streets, let alone able to get close to a 12 year-old girl?
If his sentences had been served out,  would young Tia still be alive?

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A feelgood story, Britain's young Laura Robson beat Venus Williams in straight sets in Rome. Williams fans will say it was only because she had an long standing injury, pshaa I say, If she has a long standing injury which stops her playing her best, why is she entering events.
At 19, Laura has a great future. Go Girl, Go.

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Commander Chris Hadfield, who up until today has had a five month tour of duty as commander of the International Space Station, has recorded a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in space. Check it out, its cool. He's a bit of a character, apparently, I'm sure he must have kept the rest of the crew entertained during his tour.
Mr Bowie himself has said that it's "The most poignant version" of the song, Good one Chris, Safe journey home.

What You Learn About Computers From Movies and TV

This was posted by someone on Daniweb, and I think its so funny I'm going to share.....

What You Learn About Computers In Movies
There are some interesting things you can learn about the behavior of computer in movies (and in television). Here's a list of some of the more curious observations about movie computers:

Word processors never display a cursor, but will always say: ENTER PASSWORD NOW.
You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.
All monitors display 2-inch high letters.
High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.
Those that don't will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES on any keyboard.
Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing UPLOAD VIRUS. Viruses cause temperatures in computers, just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of disk drives and monitors.
All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The really advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.
All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward.
People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
Any PERMISSION DENIED has an override function.
Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.
When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file -- and there are no undelete utilities.
If a disk has encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.
No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.
Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.
Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.
Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.
Programs are fiendishly perfect and never have bugs that slow down users.
Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.

Isn't Nature Great (2)

Now I don't know where you'll be when (if) reading this, but as it's the 'World Wide Web' it could be anywhere I suppose, (with a few notable exceptions, North Korea, China etc) and I wonder if you've noticed, the same as me, how the world weather seems to be a bit out of sync with the seasons in the last 20-25 years?

It used to be, when I was a kid, that winter was cold, spring was an improvement over winter, gradually warming and summer was hot, fading slowly into autumn (or fall) and then back to winter. This was the UK of my youth, and probably roughly equated, with regional differences, with your country.

Although my country has now changed, I've been living in Cyprus these past nine years, the weather patterns seem to have changed dramatically. Even here in the middle east as we are it's noticeable how the winter starts later, and therefore ends later, and there seems no gentle few weeks long transition as there was. It's winter one day with temperatures of max 17c, and two days later, we're in 30c sunshine, which peaks in August in the mid-to-high 40's.

Now I'm sure there must be some long detailed scientific explanation for that, but I'm sure 'Global Warming' ain't it! If global warming was all it's cracked up to be, wouldn't we have less rain and cold than we had before. Just a few weeks ago, towards the end of April my mother-in-law was speaking to my wife on the phone, and complaining that it was snowing!    In south east England!    in April!    unheard of... until now. Easter weekends of my childhood were picnic days in the countryside, balmy warmish days, you could even swim in the sea at Easter, the water was warm enough.

Now we are lucky here in Cyprus, one of the reasons we moved here was the weather  and, having got over the initial shock of the warm coming so quickly this year, we know with some certainty that it will last till around the end of November, and we have even spent Christmas day on our balcony in years past. That was until I checked the weather forecast , and they (local met office) reckon we could see an 8 degree drop in temperatures and thunderstorms over the next ten days. Most unusual!

I get to see the BBC world service at work, and see that weather patterns all over are changing and even they say, on numerous occasions, that this weather pattern is 'unusual for the time of year' or that pattern is later/ earlier than usual. Even the Gulf Stream is misbehaving, and is flowing too far north as it reaches Europe, apparently.

What can we do about it? Well nothing of course, its Nature at its best, keeping us on our toes.
Teaching us a lesson, some would say, for all the abuse we've given since... well the industrial revolution I suppose, since the countries in Europe (notably the UK, Spain and France) decided to expand their territories into the 'new world' which was, incidentally, doing very well without us, thank you very much, since we started to cut down the worlds trees, since we began pumping billions of litres of various gasses into the atmosphere because of new industrial processes?

Who knows? 

Isn't Nature great!

Now i'm not a 'nature lover' by any means, but I do respect it, and I am fascinated at times by the things I see.
Consider the humble ant, if you will, and even if you really don't like insects, you have to admire their persistence, strength and intelligence.

I sat on the balcony of my apartment last Sunday with a cup of tea and watched as ants came from the planter in the front, down a half metre high wall, found some crumbs and returned, along the same route, but this time up the wall, carrying what amounts to, in human terms, two people. Now that's some feat, even without the wall!

Put this into human terms. You leave home at 7am. You jog 50km across a barren landscape in search of potatoes, using only your sense of smell. You find (more luck than judgement in our case) a pile of sacks of potatoes, and you lift two of them (56k each) on to your back, and you  jog the 50km back home, remembering the direction and location, somehow, and you manage all this in about 50mins. Sound like you? If it does, enter The Worlds Strongest Man competition, you're a sure winner.

I've also seen, on one of my summer Sundays in the past, a group of ants gather round a piece of vegetation which would, scaled up, be around six metres across and half a metre thick, holding it like firemen around a jump net. In this fashion they carry it, twisting and turning, up the wall. Now the even more amazing thing is the way they all work together on this. When one gets weary (do ants get weary?) it peels away from the piece and another from the following group takes its place, and so on until the wall is scaled.

It might not seem much, as they are only lowly ants, but consider the intelligence and teamwork involved and maybe they are not so lowly after all!

Moving on, there are many creatures, great and small, that I have encountered, since moving to Cyprus, and if you really think about it, each one has its purpose in nature, its 'rasion d'etre.'

Cockroaches, (shudder!) seem to exist only to upset us, but they (apparently) do serve a purpose. In years gone, not so much now, houses and the like relied on cesspits to dispose of  'waste'. Apparently, so I'm told, cockroaches 'eat' this waste, and make cesspits more efficient. Now personally, I'd prefer a good modern system, with water treatment works etc, but we can't always have what we want, so we rely on nature, or we should.

On many occasions I've ventured onto my balcony in the early morning to find a 30cm lizard basking in the sun, I don't know the species, and I know I should find out, ( I think they're Gekos) but it's nice to see, and they eat flies, and other insects, so to encourage them could be good.

Many may be old enough to remember the song by Burl Ives "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why, she swallowed a fly" If you do know it, think about the words, it's a mother nature song. Each creature is there for a purpose, each creature forms a link in the food chain, to eradicate one would mean an abundance and 'plague' of the next, so next time you're having your holiday or weekend BBQ, and are complaining about the flies, remember, to break one link, breaks the chain. If we kill all the flies, the next up, the fly eating creatures starve, and the next down proliferate, so we may end up with a master race of ????