electro-web

It was a beautiful sunny bank holiday in Brighton today, but it was spoiled by an influx of idiots.

The EDL (Execrable Deluded Lunatics) planned one of their hateful, racist mob marches through the centre of town, which was inevitably countered by a range of anti-fascist campaigners.

I find several interesting things about this. Brighton is probably the most liberal and tolerant city in the country. If a hate-fuelled message of racism was to fall on deaf ears anywhere, it would be here. I can’t quite understand what it is the EDL wanted to achieve. They’re not going to march past families enjoying a day out, who would suddenly drop their Mr Whippy and punch the Asian gentleman who sold it to them. They’re not going to impress a rainbow-clad and deeply un-oppressed Kemp Town that the white man is downtrodden.

Brighton is not the seat of a Jewish plot to take over the world, nor do a secretive cabal of black people plot to over-throw the Anglo-Saxon man from under the Pavilion. Political marches are supposed to show a groundswell of support or feeling to those who make the decisions.

None of those people will have noticed our thuggish friends congregating in Victoria Gardens. So why bring your march here? I can only think they fancied a day at the seaside. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty friendly with a guy called Nick, who sells the Big Issue around Brighton from time to time. He seems a decent bloke, packed with energy and enthusiasm for a range of creative and sometimes vaguely crackpot ideas he has for businesses. I don’t know his back-story but he has apparently been a chef and worked in Spain.

He’s always cheerful but always seems to have a set-back of some sort, forcing him back to the Big Issue to earn a few quid.

His main idea is for selling t-shirts and canvas prints of his art work and wants to set up as a street vendor. I haven’t seen his art, but he’s described it to me. It sounds pretty good and certainly no worse than the utter crap that gets sold at the bottom of Bond St or along East St. As he says, he can paint a canvas for a few pounds worth of materials (plus time and talent) but sell it for £30 or £40. He can paint the same thing over and over. If he’s even vaguely good, he can finally earn some real money.

So, he applied for a street vendors licence. And Brighton & Hove Council have refused him. He’s not a fit and proper person apparently. There’s something in his past (I don’t know what and I don’t really care) that prevents him holding a licence to sell on the street.

This is, of course, a man who already earns his money by selling a magazine on the street.

Madness.

He is appealing the decision.

You watch a live video stream of my poor Broken Cat, via ustream, below…

Stream videos at Ustream

UPDATE – Broken Cat is still broken but is now allowed to roam around the living room.

My poor cat has torn the knee tendons in her back right leg. She’s got to not walk on it or jump up on things, so she’s confined to her special cage made of a clothes dryer, cling film and string. For at least three weeks.

Poor Broken Cat

I wonder… does the Government have a specific agenda to prevent students from getting access to financial support into order to keep their bills down?

I’ve come to this conclusion because it’s the only explanation for the woeful inadequacy and shocking incompetence of the private company who take vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to administer the student finance system.

It all began last year before I started my two-year teacher training course. I’m entitled to the £1000 tuition fee loan and extra loans to live on. It’s insane not to take them even though at the time I didn’t really need them.

Of course, I already have a degree which I completed in 1999 and I’d taken loans during that time with the Student Loans Company. They were all paid off a few years ago.

The people in charge are now Student Finance Direct. I applied online for my loans and heard nothing. No email, no letter. Just silence. I logged into their overly-secure website (hint – if you can’t remember the two passwords, just reset them every time. Much easier) to be told that the application was “On Hold”.

That’s it. No explanation. No way to email them. Just “On Hold”. It could’ve been on hold for weeks, and probably would have stayed on hold indefinitely had I not checked in.

This was at the time of the complete meltdown in their system, so I had to phone them and wait on hold (oh, the irony!) for a couple of hours, while being told how important I was.

I turns out that I couldn’t apply for finance as a new customer. I had to apply under my old ID number from a decade ago. I was also told that I couldn’t possibly have known that, nor known what my old ID number was, because I would never have been sent my Student Finance Direct ID number as my loans had all been with the Student Loans Company. Brilliant. I should’ve used pure intuition to apply under a number I would’ve had to devinate from runes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I used to like trains. In fact, I used to love travelling on them as my preferred mode of transport. They’re quick and comfortable. You can read or listen to music or watch video or play on your Nintendo or use your laptop. Or stare out of the window. Or sleep. It’s the best way to travel because it’s passive. Just sit back and relax.

I’d even defend the odd delay because stuff happens, things go wrong and you deal with it. Besides, what motorist doesn’t expect delays on every peak-time journey they do?

But 8 years of commuting has destroyed my positive view.

Actually, that’s not true. 8 years of selfish, thieving rail companies ruled by greed, idiocy and incompetence have destroyed my positive feelings.

The fares are extortionate. My last annual pass cost about £3900 and for that we got the extended Gatwick Express service rather than Southern. Gatwick Express put on 20 year old rolling stock, badly refurbished and with an acknowledged door fault. They can be taken out of service at a moments notice, and often are. Infuriatingly, the out of service train then generally runs empty to Brighton, so why we’re not allowed to be on it in a carriage with working doors, I don’t know.

They’re invariably a few minutes late into Brighton (though under ludicrous rail rules, arriving within 10 minutes is good enough) and I’ve lost count of the number of cancellations from Victoria. Recently, they’ve taken to running the 18.15 as a half-length and fully over-crowded service. Not getting a seat for nearly £4000 is unacceptable. Not getting a seat for £18 that airport passengers have to pay is unacceptable.

It’s fair to say that I hate them and everyone who works in their management.

My new-found negativity toward rail extends across the network, as far as the arrogant and atrocious Virgin Trains. Two of us to go to Chester, off-peak on Saturday and Sunday, booked over a month in advance? Sixty quid petrol or £190 in train fares. Ridiculous.

I’m so incredibly disappointed because I used to like trains. But I’m not sure I do anymore.

In June, my wife and I went to Alton Towers for the weekend. As always, we had a ball in the theme park and loved the new rides.

The following day we’d booked to go to the water park. The water park is basically ace, with a load of slides and a huge area where you can spray people, scramble up and down nets and tip buckets over each other and everyone else. And there’s a huge bucket that dumps a few thousand gallons over you every few minutes.

But our trip was ruined when I tried to go on one of the tamest slides. I wasn’t allowed to wear my glasses, I was told to hold them in my hand. This is despite them being attached firmly to my head with an elastic strap. I didn’t want to hold them in my hand, for two reasons. Firstly, I’m more likely to drop them and secondly because I get confused and disoriented when I’m not wearing them.

I’d worn them all the previous day on the theme park rides, including on Rita – a ride where they usually tell you to take them off, but where the staff were satisfied that mine were secure.

There’s no point being in a water park if you can’t go on the water slides, so we left. But I was also very hurt about it.

Read the rest of this entry »