One is London’s architectural masterpiece, the other is the jewel in Pyongyang’s crown. Can you tell which is which?

It struck me that Brighton Beach isn’t a peaceful place between Spring and Autumn. You can’t hear the sea and places to sit are limited. The sound of chatter, the crunch of pebbles, the music from the pier, from bars, from bands all conspire to change the soundscape of what we imagine a beach to be.  And yet there’s still something soul-enhancing about the blue horizon, often cloaked in a thin haze.

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Firstly, there was the conviction of particularly unpleasant characters who posted abusive and derogatory comments about the recently deceased.

Then this week, Richard Bacon came forward with a TV programme in which he tries to track down an abusive, unpleasant and threatening troll who has been targetting Richard and his family for years.

And finally, an idiot on twitter began a racist tirade which delighted in the near-death of a footballer on the pitch. His posts reached the upper end of UK twitter trends, and at the time of writing it appears he has been arrested. Disturbingly, at the height of the trend his home address was posted by others.

Plus we’re all aware of newspaper comment sections and forums where pseudonyms are the norm, tempers and arguments flare, and occasionally the trolls run riot.

This has all contributed to a climate where people are beginning to question whether anonymous postings or pseudonyms should be banned.

Not only is it unworkable but it would be a hugely detrimental step for the internet as a whole.

We all have multiple personalities; we have different personas to adopt for work, for family and for different friendship groups. That’s why I rarely, if ever, link my open internet activity to my full name. I don’t want my boss to find my sweary posts to friends or my friends to find my professional posts in forums. Even more so, I don’t want kids at school to find my holiday snaps (or other people’s snaps of me: I left Facebook due to lack of control over this).

A lot of what I say is conversational, intended for the moment and to be forgotten, just as a pub conversation disappears by morning. Twitter does this automatically, posts are archived within days. Most sites do not.

In the increasing blur between on- and offline, we should be aware that what we say, post and link to on third party sites could stay there and spread around forever. There is no rational reason on earth why anyone should link their full name to any of it.

Anonymity and the cover of a pseudonym is essential to the free flow of ideas and discussion online. Without it, I would be on Twitter.

Complete and total freedom online is essential to the future of democracy and society. Pseudonyms allow people to speak freely without fear of real-life reprisals.

But free speech online means racists and bigots are free to shout their nonsense.

However, we are also free not to listen to idiots. To block, ignore and get on with our day. They thrive on the oxygen of attention.

Do not feed the trolls.

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First up, card A - Twilight. The only possible person who’d buy this is a teenage girl. And why on earth would a teenage boy want to receive this? Vampire Love = Necrophilia + Bestiality. Terrible. And it cost £1.99 from ASDA.

And in the opposite corner, card B - Country Cottage. A foul, twee, abomination bought from eBay and with the distinctive musty smell of attic. Only a slightly senile old person, who also smelled musty, could possibly enjoy receiving this.

UPDATE: The lines are closed, the votes have been counted and verified. I’m pleased to announce that Twilight is the worst card this year. Twilight was my choice for @apennyforthem, though I thank her for finding me something absolutely horrible too.

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When the shoppers returned, lunch would be cooked. A meal which forms the smell and the taste of my childhood: cheese and onion dip.

I’ve no idea where this recipe came from. I certainly never heard of anyone else who ate it when I was growing up, but it must go back a long way. My mum says she was also brought up on it and whilst her own grandmother didn’t actually cook it (she was an invalid), it was certainly cooked and served in my mum’s grandmother’s house by nan. I imagine it’s a war recipe, the sort of thing housewives threw together from what was available. It might even go back further.

Googling the ingredients brings up nothing. Outside of a northern town, it doesn’t seem ever to have existed. Outside of my family it appears to have died before the 1970s. So here’s how to make it. I’d love it if you tried. I think it’s delicious – though nostalgia plays a part. For best results, eat two to a chair at my nanny’s dining table in the kitchen, with numerous people arriving and moving on during lunch hour and a pot of strong, hot tea keeping your mug filled.

• Firstly, dice an onion. Not too fine. Fry gently on a low heat until it’s soft and starting to turn translucent. Do not brown it!
• Add around 100-150g of diced cheshire cheese per medium-sized onion. Immediately cover the mixture with boiling water.
• Simmer gently, stirring constantly and gently to make the cheese melt. The gravy should be thin and quite watery
• The cheese and onion mixture can be kept warm on a low heat indefinitely.
• Serve with several slices of grilled back bacon (unsmoked is best, as everyone knows) and a huge pile of fresh, soft, white bread to mop up the gravy.

THE explanation for such common “light-patterns”, as seen by Lisa Stewart (Letters, February 3), is simple.

The key to this is in her letter itself. The sunlight is being reflected from the glass of a double-glazed window onto an opposite wall. This often cross-pattern is formed by the glass panes not being entirely flat.

If you watch them for a short period you will see that they move, because of the Sun.

I couldn’t find the original letter, but it appears they’re talking about a strange phenomenon I experienced myself. I took the photo, below, on Gloucester Place last year. It’s obviously a reflection, and it took me 5 seconds to find out where it was coming from. Simply by standing in the light and looking, I pinpointed it as a particularly pretty pattern caused by a sunny window opposite.

A further poke around the Argus website revealed that the writer of the original letter, Lisa Stewart, has been banging on about this for at least a decade. She first crops up in June 2002, with a full-blown article about these strange and mysterious lights.

The lights… have baffled experts.

Lisa, 36, first saw the mysterious beams six years ago and took some photographs but thought little more about them.

Then, as summer warmed up this year, the Xs began to appear again.

She said: “In the last few months, I’ve been seeing a lot of these circles in my garden, around my house and around Brighton and Hove.

“I think they are a strange phenomenon, on a par with crop circles. I know other people have seen them but I think you have to be receptive to them. Maybe I’ve seen them because I’ve been looking for them.”

They’re unusual shapes, I’ll admit. But hardly the stuff of science fiction. I dread to think who the ‘experts’ were that the Argus contacted. However, the mystery deepens as Lisa pops up a few days later, along with others claiming to see faces in them:

Lisa believes the face could be either that of her daughter’s guardian angel or a spiritual teacher.

She goes away to puzzle over these signs and symbols from the astral plane, but returns in December 2002 with a third full article in the paper.

This summer the circles began to reappear and in the last couple of weeks even more have been spotted.

Lisa said: “I’ve seen loads of circles – about 100 – in the past week.

“Normally, I would only see five or six in a week. I don’t know why there should be so many more at this time of year but I think it may be a sign that, particularly at this time of year, people need to think more about goodness and peace.

“The cross is symbolic when people die and I think there may be a message there that lots of people do not want a war with Iraq.”

“I had phone calls from 26 people who had similar experiences. Most of them felt they had seen the lights during a time of crisis and thought they might have a healing purpose.

Whilst our heroine has noticed some sort of link with war, sadness and death, she appears not to have noticed the more obvious connection to sunny days and windows. However, things took a more sinister turn in January 2003:

The appearance of an ‘alien’ figure – tall, thin and apparently wearing a spherical breathing helmet – is a novelty.

One local mum said she was too terrified even to give her name.

She said: “I am absolutely petrified of them because I can’t explain how they get there or what they mean.

“I don’t know if they are a sign from aliens or a warning that something is about to happen.”

The paper doesn’t record whether anything actually happened. However the trail goes cold. Clearly, the on-going Iraq war wasn’t enough to encourage these beings to be more forthcoming with their messages of peace. It’s not until now, February 2012, that Lisa reappears – still blissfully unaware of the reflective properties of shiny glass.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Lisa Stewart is a homeopath.

If you’ve read any recent posts, you’ll know that I’m unhappy not only about the extortionate bills from the council, but also their single-minded righteousness and refusal to enter a meaningful discussion.

The middle-management gnome at the centre of this was one Mark Dennison, who just sent me the following tweet:

mark_dennison (Mark Dennison)

@electroweb you will be glad to know i have left the Council now so you can moan to someone else……have fun

6:51 PM Jan 7th via web

Good to know that the concerns and feelings of residents and taxpayers are taken seriously by council employees. What a warm feeling to know that those whose wages we pay, through tax and the charges on my property, hold us on such high regard. What wonders this does for the level of trust between leaseholders and council!

Update: Mr Dennison deleted his tweet almost immediately. He’s clearly a man who stands by his words.

Update 2: By the morning following this tweet, Mr Dennison’s entire Twitter account had been deleted. To be clear, although many people got in touch with him in support of us, there was no hounding or abuse and everyone was polite.

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Dear Mr Dennison

Thank you for your letter dated 15th December, which yet again made me furious by your failure to engage with me on the issues I’ve raised. I give up trying to communicate with you about this, as you appear utterly unable to talk to me on a human level about my very real and upsetting concerns about the way you deal with these issues. All I’ve had from anyone at the council is stonewalling, misdirection and legal-speak when I had hoped that someone, somewhere would just LISTEN and understand and at least try to sympathise and meet us halfway.

You don’t seem to get it, do you? This isn’t a council building. This isn’t a programme of maintenance for bricks and mortar and machinery. This is MY HOME. This is a home that I used to love. This is a home in which I met my wife, set up my adult life and have enjoyed for almost a decade. A home that has deep emotional resonance – a place of laughter and tears, a place of fun and work and joy and sadness. A place of parties and of arguments. It’s a place I hoped to bring up my children and a place where I need to feel safe and happy and secure, where I’ve spent the happiest times of my life.

The council ride roughshod over this. They choose jobs seemingly at random and over which I have no control and no say. You claim to consult, but you keep proving yourselves incapable of listening. You’re like automatons – resistance to your works is futile and everything that you do is good. The consultation is only ever which of the high costs I should pay, never whether it needs to be done and never when it should be done.

Please, just this once, try to see it from my point of view. Imagine you’re sitting in your home, and a roof contractor turns up. He tells you that your roof needs fixing. You’ve not been told this before, no-one warned you and no-one explains what the problem is. You don’t get to shop around for quotes, you don’t get to question the costs because the roof contractor blandly tells you it’s been done already and done properly and that he’s right. His answer to your every question is “I’m right, please stop asking”. He tells you that he’s not the cheapest, but there’ll be on-going maintenance. You fail understand what could possible need maintenance, because no-one you know has on-going maintenance for their homes, but tough because the contractor insists. He then does some work on your roof and hits you with a bill for £5000.

He then does the same for your TV aerial. You’ve haven’t got Sky and never want it, but he installs it anyway and charges you £300. He refuses to explain why. All the people who wanted Sky already have it, but they now have to get rid of their dishes because the contractor is about to enforce a planning law that has been ignored for 22 years.

Then he does the same for water tanks. That’ll be £3000 please. He suddenly says you need to pay for a new security door that you didn’t know was a problem. He marches you down to the timber yard and makes you buy and install a new front door. There’s works to some doors that caused an overspend on the annual maintenance. Except spending £12000 more than you estimated isn’t an overspend in the council’s world, is it?

And all of this happens at random times and each thing comes as a surprise. You might’ve just spent your savings on a holiday. Maybe you needed a new kitchen? Tough. The contractor is god and when he arrives the work is done (probably badly) and you must pay. Put it off until next year? Put it off at least until we’re out of the worst recession for 50 years? Ha! You’ll be lucky. Kerching!

Then he hits you with the big one: £10,000 please. Oh, and a couple of hundred quid for new lights. Yes, I know the old lights came on at night and light up the place and I know the lights could be replaced at any time in the next decade. But no, right after the £10,000 seems appropriate doesn’t it?

Do you not see? Do you still not get it? It just keeps coming and I have no say, no control. I’m powerless and you’re bleeding me dry. I don’t earn much money. The lift bill will wipe out my savings, and max out my mortgage. It comes on top of all the things above (and more). What happens next year? What happens when you suddenly decide to replace the perfectly serviceable windows or put down some nice new flooring?  You won’t even talk to me about it, you won’t even explain or discuss or engage. You just trot out the line that everything is right and proper and the extraordinary costs are “value for money”. Well, it’s not your money is it? No wonder you don’t actually care. But it IS my money and it IS my home and I care deeply.

At the moment I can see no alternative but to sell up and leave. I’m considering my options, but the stress of a letter from the council landing on my mat is simply too much, with the worry that the next one will drive me into debts I can’t afford. But if I do decide to leave, I want you to know this: YOU will have driven me out of a home that I love. YOU will have forced me out because you refuse allow me the courtesy of discussion on a human level. You’ve turned the best decision I ever made in moving here into a stressful nightmare.

In short: you’re turning the home that I love into somewhere I’m beginning to hate. And that is unforgivable.

Merry Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhUpOcx9wCg

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I spoke to Thyssen Krupp, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lifts. Obviously they haven’t inspected the job and don’t know exactly what’s involved, but they were happy to give me ballpark figures for replacement of two lifts.

There were several options, from refurbishment to full replacement, including stopping at alternate floors as they do now, or making both stop at all floors. But the bottom line is that this work should be costing no more than…

£270,000

And that’s without the economies of scale that you could negotiate with a several-month contract to install new lifts in half a dozen or more buildings.

So there’s a 40% markup somewhere along the way. I will not be letting this drop.

With thanks to Simon, area sales rep of Thyssen Krupp and jolly nice guy. 

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I live in an 11-storey block, and there are a pair of lifts. The lifts are old, yes. But they work. Occasionally, they break down. But they’re soon fixed (usually a day or so). Today, I learned that the council have put out a contract to have both lifts replaced.

The cost to me, personally, is estimated to be over £10,000.

That’s a cost to the block of almost £500,000. Half a million pounds.  I live in one of half a dozen blocks on this road. So that’s £3 million cost to the council and its leaseholders in one easy swoop. Ludicrous.

The document the council sent me has two interesting figures. They say the estimated on-going maintenance costs before the works is £2620 per year. After the works, the on-going maintenance cost to the block will be £2430. This means that a half million quid lift upgrade will save just £190 a year in maintenance. Or £4.44 annually for my share.

The sensible thing to do when deciding whether to replace something expensive is to check if it’ll cost more to keep the old one going than just buy a new one. For example, you wouldn’t spend £1000 fixing an old car if a new one would only set you back £2000 and not need any work for 5 years. This is called ‘payback time’: how long before the new one pays for itself compared with repairs on the old one.

In the case of my lifts, it’ll take 2000 years for the maintenance savings to be worth the cost of replacement.

Where I’m going to find ten grand, I have no idea. The galling part is that there’s never any consultation. They never discuss whether it should be done in the first place, just decide they’re going to do it. There’s no thought about timing (i.e. during the biggest recession this country has seen in decades, one which is likely to get worse) and no option to have it deferred. The council decide that it needs to be done, and so it’s done. Though how they prioritise this themselves, during reduced income, service cut-backs and budget savings, I’ve no idea.

I pay them almost £900 a year in ‘maintenance’. Why they don’t make that £1200 a year and keep a slush fund I don’t know. The sensible thing to do might be to charge us all for major works, but in arrears – so each month for the next ten years would have £40 added on for the new lifts (this would also spread the costs fairly to people who move in after the works have been done). But in the past 8 years I’ve had to find £5000 for a new roof, £3000 for new water tanks and £1000 for a new security door. Plus the world’s most expensive TV aerial and redecoration costs. And now my £10,000 bill.

Oh, and £1000 a couple of years back when they spent WAY over the estimated annual maintenance in replacing fire doors. Not that the fire doors were actually replaced, but they said they were and who am I to argue? Maybe they were replaced with ones identical to the originals. Speaking of fire doors, they are apparently also well within their rights to tell me that my private front door – one they fitted in the past – no longer complies with fire standards and I need a new one. At my own cost (they’ll fit one for £800, no chance).

The council will, of course, loan me the money for our luxury lifts. But there’s no way I’m going to give them the 5% interest they’d charge (variable, and who would trust this shower not to bump it up to 15% next year?). I’d rather stick it on the mortgage, though I’ve no idea if my bank will extend it by that much given the state of the economy.

When you own a home outright, you have a choice on when to do major works. You can patch up and get on with it while you save, you can defer some things and not others, you can prioritise jobs and at least have the knowledge that next year there’ll be something to pay for. Not when you’ve got a profligate landlord, staffed by idiots.

A bit of Googling suggests a 10 storey lift should cost about £100k to install. This shouldn’t be a big job, it’s replacing an existing one, so there should be little or no structural work to do. Anyone know whether the £500k for two in one block price is even remotely legit? Especially given the economies of scale in replacing them all at the same time. Seems huge to me…

The vast majority of people are at work between about 8am and 6pm. If Royal Mail try to deliver a package during the day, they will either try and give it to a neighbour, or they’ll leave you a little card. You take that card on a 5 minute trip to their depot or a post office nearby and you can pick up your exciting parcel. Or, if you really want to, you can arrange a re-delivery for a Saturday morning.

Yodel/HDN will, of course, offer to redeliver to you. But only during the times you’re at work. You could redirect the package to another address but I, like the majority of people, cannot accept personal deliveries to my place of work.

The do have a depot you can pick your parcel up from, which is a convenient 16 miles away in that well-known hub of the South Coast conurbation, Newhaven. A place also well-served with public transport.

This morning, Yodel left a card. They tried to deliver, apparently, despite being in all morning. Yet again (see link above) they didn’t put the card through the letterbox and just dropped it on the floor outside. It’s only through luck that I found it.

I arranged a redelivery, as it’s my only option, for sometime tomorrow. What time, I do not know. So now, I have to wait in potentially all day just for a package. With Royal Mail I don’t need to bother waiting, I can go out knowing that I can collect my package at my own convenience.

I’ve complained about HDN many times, to the point where Amazon no longer use them for my deliveries and John Lewis said they were reassessing whether to use them at all.

I simply will not order anything from a company who uses them anymore.

This is the future of post in this country: with the government intent on opening up all services to competition, expect deliveries only when you’re not in, expect cards to be dropped randomly around your house, expect to have to drive to the next town to pick up anything and expect bad customer service from companies who haven’t the reach or the network of offices to offer anything better.

The system is overly complex, massively expensive and includes a ludicrous ‘maintenance contract’ (what the hell do you need to maintain on a TV aerial?). It’s also for Sky as well as Freeview – something that’s not needed as anyone who wants Sky can get it through a dish and we’re all wired for cable. Sky is something which has no-doubt pushed up the cost considerably.

In all, I’m not very happy with the council’s new aerial system – it’s costing me, personally, over £300 in a block of 40 other flats!

Brighton Council’s only response has been “we have to install it, we’re responsible for providing you with an aerial”.

Today, I’ve had a letter from the people who are installing it, as they need access to my flat to put in a socket. They’ve given a week’s window for the installation, which does not include weekends. Helpfully, they can only come between 8am and 6pm, during one particular week, Monday to Friday only.

That’s useful for anyone who has to work, isn’t it?

(Incidentally, I’ve put in a freedom of information for details of the meetings where they discussed the system, and also requested details of any contact between the council and Sky TV. I want to know – and despite asking several times I haven’t been told – why Sky is part of the system, when they could have had Freeview only)

There even baby triceratops, and we all know how dangerous a mother can be when protecting it’s young…

Check out the video for the full, thrilling, horror!

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And the last. A cute chocolate Easter bunny, which love but I can’t bear to eat because then I won’t have it anymore.

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I just wanted to let you know that I’ve received the fourth or fifth bit of unwanted, wasteful and non eco-friendly bit of junk mail from you, since the beginning of April. You also regularly push pointless and unread ‘updates’ and newsletters through my letterbox several times a year.

During this election campaign I’ve had two mailings from Labour, one from one Independent and two from another Independent. Only Labour send me junk at other times of the year, and far less often than you do thanks to your horrible propaganda news sheet.

This means that I’ll never vote Green in this city.

Firstly, I hate junk mail and you’re the worst offender of any political party and close to worst for any company or organisation I ever receive mail from. Secondly, I dread to think of the energy, paper, ink and fuel that is wasted in the manufacture, printing and delivery of useless things that go straight in the bin.

Well done, your mailings prove that you’re both immensely irritating and pointlessly wasteful.

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My wife let him on 11th February. It was a Friday. He looked at the boiler, said “Its the circuit board, I’ll be back in a minute” and he left. He didn’t come back. I phoned him a couple of hours later – he said he needed a part and would get back to me in the morning.

He didn’t. I phoned him and arranged he’d come round at 4pm on Monday 14th. He didn’t turn up. I phoned him at 5pm to see where he was. He said “Oh yeah, I haven’t been to the shop yet”. I told him not to bother.

I phoned another plumber, to come round on Wednesday. I took time out of work to make sure I was in for him. He didn’t turn up. I got an answer machine message 10 minutes before to say he couldn’t come. I didn’t bother calling him back.

I phoned another plumber, to come round on Friday 18th. He came round and reset the boiler, doing what I’d been trying to do all week. The boiler sprang back into life. Of course, if the damn thing is doing what it’s supposed to do, it’s impossible to find a fault. The plumber spent 40 minutes trying to make it go off, but couldn’t.

Either way, I was happy. I had hot water and heating again.

Three days later, sometime in the early morning of Monday 21st (after the heating came on, but before I got up), the boiler went off again with the same insistent red light. I couldn’t reset it.

I phoned the same plumber back, but the earliest appointment he could do was Thursday 24th. It was half term, and I spent the week in a cold, damp flat whilst the fog and drizzle pressed up against the windows making the prospect of going out slightly worse than the thought of staying in.

The plumber diagnosed a faulty control board. But there was a problem: no boards to be found in either of the two biggest plumbing suppliers in the country.

On Monday 28th, the plumber phoned me. They could get a board, but it was a slightly more expensive one (control plus ignition) than the one I needed (control only).  It would cost almost £300 just for the part. I didn’t care, I just wanted it fixed.

On Thursday 3rd, the plumber called to say the part had arrived and they could fit it the following day. I left keys with a friend for them to pick up. By the time I got home on Friday 4th March my flat was toasty warm and I could have a ludicrously hot bath.

The End.

Sorry, no. Not the end. The heating came on, on the morning of Saturday 5th. I had a nice hot shower and caught up on the 10 days washing that we couldn’t dry without heating. Then I went out.

At 3pm, I came home. It was a bit chilly, so I put the heating on.

Nothing.

Nothing but the red light. Taunting and ridiculing me from the front of the boiler.

It’s now been 24 days without heating and hot water (bar the two brief interludes). I’ll have to wait until Monday (day 26) until I can even speak to a plumber. It’ll take a couple of days for him to come. He’ll almost certainly need parts, even if he can find out what’s wrong.

It’s cold outside, it’s chilly inside. The damp makes getting into bed unpleasant and I can’t have the windows open for fresh air. I’ve been showering using a camping shower filled with water from three pans and a kettle (as well as the kindness of friends when I can get round and when I don’t feel like I’m imposing).

Washing up also involves boiling the kettle. Twice.

I can’t dry laundry – I planned a laundrette trip because I couldn’t do it in the flat. But now I’ve done it, and it’s damp and on dryers around the flat. It’ll take a couple of days to dry properly.

I have a small, portable fan heater that I’ve been moving between bathroom and bedroom. I have an electric fan heater in the living room. It cost a lot of money and is very pretty, but if you switch it to high heat output it turns itself off. The low setting just takes the edge off the cold.

I can’t help but be a bit depressed.

In case you were wondering, the two plumbers who didn’t bother to turn up were Gasworks and Paul Yeates, both of Brighton. A & J Gough are the ones who’ve been trying to fix it – despite it not working yet, they’ve been pretty helpful.

We generally avoid fast food, but given our general travel rule of eating as much local cuisine as possible, not trying the fried chicken delights of Pollo Campero seemed silly. It is, after all, popular Guatemalan food.

It was, of course, delicious. Not dissimilar to KFC, but nicer with a warmer chilli bite to the coating. Greasy but good.

And now, unbelievably, surreally, it’s here. In Brighton. In Churchill Square. Very, very strange. And strangely exciting.

Quite how you isolate yourself from the rest of the air in the cabin, I don’t know…

Blogs and photos from our trip to follow…

It’s intended as a secular antidote to the commercialised Christmas rush, recalling back traditional mid-winter festivals. A chance to reflect on the past year, look forward to the new year, and celebrate the passing of the darkest day of winter.

Only tomorrow will we know if the offering was a success and the sun will return to lighten the dark winter days.

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Last January, my wife and I bought new Nexus One phones direct from Google in the US. I immediately registered the IMEI numbers with the insurer, as we’d paid out quite a bit of money for the phones.

About 2 months ago, my wife accidentally dropped her phone and cracked the screen. We checked with the insurer, and yes – it’s covered. All I needed to do was fill in the form and send the proof of purchase, which I did.

The insurer has rejected the claim.

They’ve rejected it because the proof of purchase doesn’t contain the IMEI number. Of course, that’s not my fault. In America, they don’t have the same policies of blocking IMEI numbers as we do, so they’re not so bothered about them.

Naturally the insurers have worded the rejection as me failing to meet the Terms and Conditions of the insurance, thus shifting the blame to me and putting up a inarguable wall of legalese that prevents any kind of compromise or rule-bending.

I registered a Nexus One with that IMEI number 10 months ago. A Nexus One with that IMEI number will be sent to them for repair. There’s a proof of purchase for a Nexus One, from about 10 days before I registered it. There can be no possible question mark over the phone’s rightful owner.

The insurer told me to get proof from the network (T-Mobile) that we’d been using the phone with my wife’s account*. However, they have so far failed to do so. The customer service agents are invariably stupid and have no idea what we’re talking about and so we’ve had responses from “We don’t have that information, as we didn’t sell you the phone” (a lie, they do have that information) to “OK, we’ll send you a letter” which has never materialised.

Like all insurers, they’re basically doing anything they can not to pay out. The rules are for their advantage and not ours. So despite owning a phone, being able to prove that we own the phone having registered that phone almost a year ago, and despite being supposedly insured, it seems that we’re not going to get a pay-out.

We’re appealing the decision, but haven’t got much hope unless the T-Mobile pull through with some sort of proof.

*This begs the question: if I bought a phone, got it insured, but broke it before I turned it on and therefore never registered it on the network, would it still be insured?

Incidentally, Lifestyle Services Group are the people behind the appalling Airport Angel. Clearly a company that prides itself on awful service and useless products.

UPDATE 13/01/11:

They’ve now agreed to honour the claim, after we sent them the evidence of usage they were looking for. In order to get this out of T-Mobile, we had to send a request in writing and threatening them with the Data Protection Act. Neither company comes out of this particularly well, but at least the phone will now be fixed or replaced.

Can’t wait to strap my skates on and slide face first across the ice…

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2. Beautiful Summer Evening
3. Bloody Ticketbastard

Full full-size pictures, or if the slideshow doesn’t work, click here or visit my photo gallery from the menu.

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Unfortunately, we weren’t entirely happy with them. We felt some areas had been missed, and the curtain rail had been pulled off the wall in the bedroom leaving a hole in the plasterboard (they claimed they didn’t do it, so I guess the cats must’ve leapt up and dragged the curtain rail out). We sent off an angry email, as is the customer’s prerogative – to be angry when they feel they’ve been let down by a company. We expected a curt “Sorry you weren’t happy, we’ll send your keys back” (in other words a calm and professional response to our complaint) and that would have been the end of it. But what we received was a 3000 word tirade about how filthy our home was and how they felt they’d done a good job given the circumstances.

We were astonished. With this being the 21st century, we wrote a blog post about it detailing our complaints and posting their email response. It was a review of what we felt to be bad service. Nothing wrong with that, you might think.

But Adore Cleaning threatened us with libel.

Now, the UK libel laws are some of the most restrictive in the world. It’s the only area of law where the defendant is guilty unless they can prove innocence. In other words, you have to prove what you say is true and it’s very expensive to do so.

I don’t believe anything we posted was libellous, it was opinion about a service. But we have neither the time, nor the money (nor, for that matter, the inclination) to fight a libel case.

We also posted a bad review to freeindex.com – a listings site that allows users to post their experiences. That review was removed, and reviews for Adore Cleaning have been disabled. It’s a shame that in the world of free sharing of information and experiences, a site that supposedly allows reviews will remove bad ones on request. It somewhat devalues the point if only good experiences remain on the site.

It’s also a shame that libel laws, or the threat of them, can be used against small-time bloggers and people posting their opinions online. Something seems broken if you can’t tell other people to avoid a company when you’ve had a negative experience.

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Dear Brighton Dome

I just received my tickets for “9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People”, and I was concerned and rather put-out by the Parental Warning you have chosen to print on the ticket, that this show contains “Atheistic Content”. I’ve checked with the show organiser, Robin Ince, and he assures me that he did not request the warning as an ironic joke.

I wonder why you feel it necessary to warn people they might be exposed to science and reason? The show is clearly advertised as comedy and science and the title even contains the word “Godless” for anyone who might still be tempted to book tickets for a show they otherwise know nothing about.

I wonder if similarly you would warn people of Christian content in a choral concert of hymns? Indeed I notice you have a concert entitled “Brighton Goes Gospel” on 11th December, which I very much hope comes with just such a warning.

I would appreciate some kind of explanation as to who took this decision and why.

RESPONSE:

I am trying to get to the bottom of why the warning was felt to be necessary but when I heard that a complaint had been made 2 weeks ago, I asked for the line to be taken off all ongoing tickets immediately so I can assure you that this has been changed. The brochure copy is very clear to the content of the show so I agree that the additional comment was unnecessary so thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I am really excited that Robin has agreed to come and do this show in Brighton and it should be a really interesting, engaging concert. I am delighted that you have booked tickets for it and I hope that you enjoy the show

If you’re as Godless as I am, or merely have a mind that’s open to reason and scientific wonder, and want to see some of the finest comedians, scientists and thinkers available on the day, book tickets for 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People here. There’s a few nights in London too.

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.

I think people, in general, don’t actually give a damn about the EDL’s twisted message. People just want to get on with their lives, quietly and with as much pleasure as possible. Marches for the benefit of the public are pointless. They just register as an annoyance. The political march is there for those in power. When thousands congregate on Parliament, it makes a splash. Otherwise, it’s just a coach trip.

As it was, the centre of our town was brought to a stand-still on what is essentially the last day of summer holidays and turned out to be the first warm, sunny day for weeks. It was clogged with marchers and there was a charged atmosphere of aggression. It was pretty unpleasant walking through North Laine in the middle of the afternoon – for a march that had supposedly passed through two hours earlier.

We’re a holiday town. We’re a place of relaxation and fun, for the people who live here as much as the hundreds of thousands of visitors we would’ve expected today. Apart from the people on the march, who actually wanted this here, today?

Everyone knows the EDL are a minority bunch of losers. Estimates from the local paper are that 30 of the scumbags turned up. Really, this should’ve been something that was utterly missed by the majority of people in the city today.

Instead, the EDL were met by over 100 anti-fascist demonstrators. And it’s them that caused problems in town. If they’d stayed at home who, really, would’ve noticed a few of our toothless, brainless underclass having a stroll through town? It wouldn’t have been much worse than your average hen party.

It’s the anti-fascists that give the EDL some credibility. Without the anti-fascists, the march would’ve been over in half and hour. Instead both sides shouted slogans at each other for the best part of the day.

I wish they’d both stayed at home. But if the EDL want to do a pointless march through an uninterested city, let them. Being met with a wall of indifference will speak louder than any angry chanting.

And it wouldn’t bugger up a rare day of summer for everyone else.

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.

Stream videos at Ustream

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

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Poor Broken Cat

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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.

The lady gave me my old number. But then I couldn’t apply under my old number either, because there was an application under the new number that I shouldn’t have created. The system doesn’t allow duplicates. But it also doesn’t allow you to remove or edit applications.

I had to wait weeks for them to remove the new account so I could re-apply under the old one, filling in all the necessary paperwork. Again.

I knew that our household income was too high, so I wouldn’t get any grants. However, the next time I logged in (having still heard nothing) it was telling me they were “Awaiting Evidence”. Evidence of what? I had no idea.

Another few hours on hold told me that they didn’t need evidence after all (it would’ve been evidence of income) because I wasn’t applying for anything means-tested. But still, I had to phone them to get them to move the application on.

Fast forward to this year….

In the academic year 2010/11 I won’t have an income. So I decided to apply not just for the same loans as before but also for the means-tested grants. This meant my wife had to fill in details of her income, which she did at the end of May.

The online form asked her to fill in her income for the last financial year, which of course ended in March 2010. Only at the end of the process did she realise that they didn’t mean the last financial year, they meant the one before ending March 2009. This is presumably because people could apply any time from January, so for them it would be the last. But it wasn’t very clear.

She phoned them up. They couldn’t tell her anything – our old friend Data Protection prevented them discussing my application because she wasn’t me (despite being my financial support on the application). And of course, you can’t amend or edit any details you’ve filled in online. She was told to print off a form and send it in with her P60 from March 2009.

Six weeks later, we’d heard nothing. No email, no phone call, no letter. I logged into the account. “Awaiting Evidence”.

I phoned them. They were awaiting my wife’s P60. They were six weeks behind in processing, so it would be done that week.

Another two weeks later: no email, no phone call, no letter. I logged in. “Awaiting Evidence”. Armed with the date and time my wife’s P60 was signed for at their head office, I phoned them up.

They had no record and phoned head office. Apparently they did have it, but were confused as to why she’d sent in the form. She can’t go sending forms in, because she isn’t me.

Anyway, it’ll be processed.

Another three weeks later: no email, no letter, no phone call. I logged in. “Awaiting Evidence”. Not only evidence of my wife’s income but now, for the first time, they seemed to want evidence of our marriage and evidence of my place on the course in the form of an acceptance or offer letter. I provided evidence of my marriage last year, and I don’t have any evidence of my acceptance on the course. But given it’s the same course they paid out for last year, there shouldn’t be a problem.

So, I phoned up. As always it’s best to plead ignorant. What’s happening with my application?

They’re just awaiting evidence of my wife’s income (no mention of any other evidence). But she already sent it, I say, and not only that but she had it back it the post a couple of weeks ago.

They’ll phone head office and get them to check and update the status.

Ludicrous. They can log the P60, send it back, but not update the application status!

They appear to be able to flag totally different things in the web site and on the phone – the call centre didn’t mention any other sort of evidence, it was just the financial information they were waiting for,

They can even put your account on hold, without telling you what it is that they want and without updating you that there’s a problem. They can’t even manage an email saying “Please log in for an update”. You have to wonder to yourself “Hmmm, what’s happening with my account?” and go in to check. Not that logging in helps, given the unhelpfully cryptic messages they leave for you.

It’s a system that simply doesn’t work. It’s impractical and hard to navigate. There is no feedback to the customer, and even when logging in it’s impossible to find out what’s going on. You can’t email them, you must phone. The status on the site bears little or no relation to the actual status of the account.

They are quite simply the biggest shower of imbeciles I’ve ever had to deal with.

Luckily, it’s not my only means of financial support and I have savings. But imagine I was a lone student, relying on their payments for food and shelter? Term starts in a few weeks. Student Finance Direct are about to force people into poverty.

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.

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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.

Having worn glasses all my life, I can be quite touchy about them. No, I won’t let you borrow them “just to try them” any more than someone would let you have a quick go in their wheelchair. And I certainly won’t laugh along with your hilarious jokes: I had enough of that kind of bullying at school. I also refuse to pass through US immigration controls, because they make you take them off for a photo as if it’s some sort of comedy disguise (would they pull at a beard and make a wheelchair-user stand up just to check they weren’t lying too?).

I wear my glasses because I have to. Yes, I like them, but I like them because they’re as much as part of me as my arms and legs. They have simply always been there, on the top of my nose, a little too smudged to see entirely clearly. If my sight was suddenly perfect, I’d continue to wear them as I don’t feel like me without them.

After our trip I was quite angry. Clearly there was some sort of health and safety issue gone wrong. So I wrote to them, essentially asking for my money back as no-where in the rules or conditions does it say that glasses-wearers can’t use the slides. I also questioned the logic of them not allowing you to wear glasses on your face, but allowing you to carry them in your hand.

A very nice guy called Lee phoned me back this week. Did he fob me off? Did he point at his rule book and hide behind some red tape, perhaps grudgingly offering me a discount voucher?

Nope. He agreed with me. Completely.

He’d done his research (which is why it’d taken a few weeks to get back to me). He checked the rules in the theme park: it is advised but not obligatory for glasses to be removed on rides, except on Rita where they must be taken off or secured with a strap.

He then checked the rules in the water park: the rule is to carry them in your hand.

He explained that they need to be very careful with glass: that broken glass requires them to empty the water park (which takes three days) to clean it up. Then they have to refill it and get it up to temperature which takes at least another three days. So you can understand why they’re touchy about it.

But Lee agreed that glasses are far more dangerous being held in your hand when on a slide. They could be dropped or crushed. If they were dropped into an intake or water jet, the glass could be sent anywhere in the park, making it much more difficult to find and clean up. He agreed that glasses worn and secured with a plastic strap were by far the safest option.

The rules are going to change: in future, glasses must be secured with an elastic strap and they are going to source some straps to loan to all guests.

It might take some time as they have to get it approved by their own health and safety committee, their insurers and the trade body that oversees water parks and swimming pools. But it will change.

So: thank you Alton Towers and thank you Lee. It’s wonderful to be listened to, not to be fobbed off and not to be ignored. It’s great that a company took the time to look into concerns raised by guests and think about them objectively. Most companies wouldn’t bother and just assume that they’re right and I’m wrong.

Alton Towers listened to my concerns and made a change for the better and I will tell as many people as possible that their customer services is exemplary.

Oh, and my next visit to Alton Towers is on them. Not as grudging compensation, but to say thank you for helping them to improve things for a large proportion of their guests.

I’m terrified. Not because there could be a potential terrorist on the train – I literally bet my life that there isn’t, though there could well be several trained electricians.

No, I’m terrified because I can see five very big guns. The sight of big guns does not calm me. What kind of place have we become when it’s ok to have armed police wandering around busy tourist and commuter trains?

If the slideshow doesn’t work, browse my Picasa album here.

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Last Friday, I planned to go up on the train to see my parents. My wife was joining us the following morning, and we’d drive back together.

I booked about 10 or 14 days ahead, buying my rail ticket for a single journey. I used to get the trains a lot, and I know there have always been myriad fares, but aside from peak/off-peak they used to fall into three basic types:

• Book early, very early, and it might be stupidly cheap. Non-refundable, you can’t change the train, but you can get the length of the country for a tenner. Hardly any available so be quick.
• Advance fares, bookable up to a few days before. Not cheap but at least they’re not…
• Walk-on, full fares. Eye-wateringly expensive. Don’t both buying them, hire a private jet instead.

A return to my parents place should cost around £60-£70 if you book a bit in advance, and you can get it cheaper if you find the cheap fares. This time, I wasn’t early enough. So I booked a single journey for £29. Not cheap.

Last Friday, I was ill. I didn’t use the ticket. So, this week I enquired about a refund. As per my previous experience, I expected them to extract £10 ‘admin’ fee from me for the privilege of not having provided a service.

But I was told my ticket was non-refundable. There’s a new type of ticket, called “advance” which is a single, one-way ticket. It can’t be refunded. It can be changed or altered before the date, but not refunded.

Single tickets have always been a scam, being generally 98% of the price of a return. But more recently the booking forms always offer you single fares, allowing you to mix and match your journey, with more expensive trains for one leg if necessary. These single fares start at 50% of the price of the cheapest return. You’d think that was the sensible way of doing it, but it seems it’s designed to catch you out.

Booking the same journey now for a few weeks time, I’m offered single tickets at £29. It just says “Cheapest Standard Single” and doesn’t mention restrictions.

You have to click “View All Single Fares” to load up a list of different options to see that the £29 has refund restrictions. Why would you “View All Single Fares” if you’re being told that the cheapest ticket is available on the train you want? The fare without restrictions is just £4 more. Why would you think, without checking, that a train for £29 is a super-special offer that can’t be refunded, while the next train at £33 isn’t? Indeed, the £29 train isn’t offered at £33, unless you actively choose to see more expensive fares. Which you wouldn’t.

There isn’t even one price-point for the “advance” fare. Some trains are £22. So you can’t even assume it’s not the cheapest fare, so it’s ok.

The rail fares system, in it’s infinite complexity, with countless intricate cases of restrictions, peak times and uniquely devious loopholes, specifically designed to trick people.

Filthy, devious, cheating, thieving, scum-bags.

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2. Sport is not news. By all means, have a few minutes after the news to discuss it if you must, but it’s not news in any real sense. Equating sport with news is a bit patronising to the people killed/kidnapped/diseased/left in poverty on the real news.

3. There are some people who don’t give a shit. They are not wrong. They are not misguided. Saying “Oh but come on, it’s really exciting” is not going to make them suddenly think it’s really exciting, anymore than someone saying “But just look at that cross-stitch” is going to convert you to needlecraft. They are not ‘miserable’ or ‘kill-joys’ any more than you’re a grumpy kill-joy for not following the sheepdog trials.

4. There is nothing patriotic about supporting a football team. There is nothing unpatriotic about not supporting a football team. There is also nothing wrong with not being patriotic at all. Indeed, some might think that a more enlightened position.

5. Flying little flags on your car/house just makes you look a bit of tit, to be honest.

6. Enjoy your tournament. I mean it. Have a great time. But please shut up about it. We don’t need wall to wall speculation, gossip, updates, changes, previews, reviews, replays and endless hype. There’s no need to take over every TV and radio show, every newspaper, every website and every magazine. You’ve got your sports pages, you’ve got your bit at the end of the news, you’ve got acres of coverage every summer when there aren’t even any games on. What more do you want? Watch the games. Cheer at the goals. Get on with your lives.

7. There are literally loads of other things happening this summer, bringing just as much joy to the people involved, but you probably haven’t noticed most of them.

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They’ve been advertising a new exhibition, about how the building was used as a hospital for Indian soldiers during the first world war. It’s a fascinating and moving story, and a chapter of history which led to two of Brighton’s more interesting memorials: the Indian gate at the Pavilion itself and the Chattri on the Downs outside Patcham.

Sadly, the exhibition doesn’t do justice to this remarkable tale. It’s a single room, with a dozen photos and paintings, a piece of film and a quick telling of the history. As an extra if you’re going to the Pavilion anyway it’s a reasonable introduction to another facet of the building’s history.

But as an advertised exhibition, billed as something worth coming to see by itself? Admittedly the photos were fascinating but we felt a bit ripped off. It should’ve been a free exhibition in the museum and barely warranted a separate billing.

Its lucky we love the rest of the building so much…

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This is the Freerange venue at St Peter’s. Wouldn’t it be great to have a chilled outdoor eating and drinking mini festival type thing all summer?

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I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this festival show, but I think the only way to describe it would be “static parkour”.

We set off as a rather large crowd, from the end of New England Street, weaving through some of the more ‘urban’ backstreets of New England Quarter. Along the way, we stumbled upon various brightly dressed performers who had contorted themselves into a range of positions or were wedged in improbable places.

The performers were quite amazing, squeezing seemingly effortlessly between railings, under buildings and even upside-down inside the cage around a tree.

There were several good visual gags, including a man who appeared to have become lodged head-first through a wall.

At times, it was hard to work out not only how they’d got themselves there in the first place, but more importantly how they’d get out again.

The walk went though to the North Laine, and this is where is started to fall apart a little. Firstly there were far too many people on the walk, and a large number of those were stopping at each perfomance to take pictures and watch. The stewards had wanted everyone to keep walking, glimpsing the performers as we went, rather than standing around them in a large group. And as there were so many people forming huddles, it was hard to see what was going on. It was also a bad idea taking us into North Laine: too many Saturday shoppers, which a mob of 200 festival-goers simply go in the way of.

It’s a shame, as the concept was great. The setting at the beginning of the walk, in slightly more run-down and grittier situations, was perfect. But the sheer number of people and the disruption we caused to everyone else, ultimately spoiled the show. Otherwise it was an interesting and quite amusing little diversion, with some quite spectacular physical feats performed in a wry, understated way.

It’s all part of a conservation fundraiser. If you’d like to help save the Asian Elephant, text ELEPHANT to 83118

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Initially it strikes you as a beautiful, vibrantly coloured stained glass window. But as you watch, it changes.

The changes are so slow and subtle that its impossible to pin down exactly what’s happening. Then suddenly you’re looking at an entirely new piece. Random squiggling blues morph into red geometric lines, which fade into yellow and green flowers, the cycle appears never-ending and yet the movement is barely perceptible.

It’s here until the end of the Brighton Festival. Go and see it!

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A free Sunday was the first day of the season where we could go for leisurely bike ride. The skies were a little grey, but after girding ourselves with a good lunch we headed out for an easy cycle to the marina.

I hadn’t realised you could get along the breakwaters, excitingly out over the churning grey sea as the mists rolled in. We spent a chilly but exhilerating half hour watching the waves, playing chicken by standing at the edge as they crashed up the concrete into mini geysers.

Entertainingly, another man out for a wander came over to see what we were looking at just as a huge swell thrust up through the gap, soaking him. Sorry, man.

To top it off, we stopped at Metrodeco for a cream tea, thus undoing any good work the cycling had done.

Last night,I went to a Twestival event at the Hi-fi Lounge.

Its a pretty decent little venue, but they’ve obviously had a problem with drugs in the past which they’re cleaning up. There are notices up around club stating the zero-tolerance policy, and drug-taking in the toilets is hindered by sand glued to the cisterns. They’ve even put it on top of the hand dryer.

But can you spot the problem in their attempts to block use of surfaces for racking out a line?

The Chocolate Festival was a little disappointing too, with several of the stalls being the same as last week. There was some interesting looking hot chocolate, in a range of flavours from white chocolate and peppercorn, through to chilli and more conventional mint. And to our great delight, the salt caramel tart lady was back. They’re delicious pastry cases, filled with runny salt caramel, dusted with thick cocoa powder. You can see them in the photo at the bottom on the left:

The rest of the stall looked particularly delicious too, with the rhubarb tarts catching my eye. We were delighted to discover that the lady is due to open a shop, “Treacle & Co” in Church Rd, Hove. The caramel tarts were a fantastic high tea, with a dose of thick double cream on the side.

Salt Caramel seems to be the next big thing in confectionary – perhaps replacing the once revolutionary but now ubiquitous chilli. A high-end, award-winning chocolatier was selling a selection including a stunning salt caramel, and a mouth-quiveringly good passion fruit, both covered in silky, bitter dark chocolate.

They were also introducing their brand new salt caramel lollipops, covered in dark chocolate, encasing a layer of popping candy. Naturally, we had to have some… they’ll be on general sale in the autumn…

The rest of the festival was a bit dull. There were one or two good chocolatiers, but nothing outstanding and few samples on offer. Then there was a pastry and bread stall, that was distinctly lacking in chocolate. One of the larger stalls had eye catching designs of coloured and flavoured chocolate, with little animals and plaques – great for gifts, but fairly ordinary chocolate-wise. A little too sweet for the real chocoholic, the sort of dirty Dairy Milk-style that you’d wolf down, rather than something to be savoured.

Because it was a chocolate festival and I had to have chocolate, I bought a chocolate and raspberry brownie which was dense, sticky and distinctly average. In all, a mixed bag.

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Bean Machine (dark and white, with coffee)
2. Chocolate Review: Space Hopper (milk and orange)
3. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)

“offensive weapons act pineapple”

I salute you! I hope you found whatever the hell it was you were looking for…

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1. I'm A Geek…

It was first awarded in 1985, in recognition of Bono’s crassly insensitive Band Aid line, “Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you”.

Bono has done his best to maintain his status since, with several notable wins including his “spend a fortune on designer goods, while tossing a few pennies at an AIDS charity”, Project(RED). He went on to get a lifetime acheivement award by criticising Ireland for not using enough tax income for aid, whilst doing his best to not pay tax.

This year, however, there’s a late entry which could cause upset among the ranks, with Simon Cowell making an unexpected debut at the ceremony.

He is expected to easily walk away with the title by raising money for a destroyed country and a traumatised, devastated people with his Helping Haiti record. The song’s message, that “we all have bad days, so cheer up!” has been hailed as a landmark of inappropriate goodwill.

Insiders have also confirmed that Cowell is hoping the record will raise a mere fraction of his own personal fortune, thought to be a key criteria of the award rules.

The ceremony and dinner takes place at the end of February, in a glittering award ceremony in the picturesque Burmese mountains.

Donate to the DEC Appeal

That includes every email I’ve ever sent and received, plus all their attachments.

I was looking for the program that controls my printer, so I searched for ‘HP’. This image was the top hit. I have no recollection of ever seeing it before, but I suppose I must have done. It must be lurking somewhere in my email account, but whether I sent it or received it I don’t know. It struck me as very odd indeed.

I have Brighton to London annual gold card. But I wanted to go from London to Eastbourne instead so bought a single extension ticket for £12.55. This wasn’t a special offer or supersaveadvanceapexmegasaver ticket with 361 separate terms and conditions attached. No, just a walk-up single off-peak fare which I happened to buy the day before my journey to save queuing in London during rush hour.

Then it turned out I didn’t want to go from London to Eastbourne at all. I would be starting out in Brighton.

So, when buying my Brighton to Eastbourne ticket, I asked for a refund on the unused ticket. Yes, of course I could have a refund but there’d be a £10 ‘admin fee’.

TEN POUNDS!

It’s not like they’d lose out by not being able to resell the journey. There isn’t a limited number of tickets for sale, and don’t I know it when we’re crammed in like illegally transported pigs to the overcrowded slaughter.

They made ten quid pure profit on not providing a service on a journey I didn’t take.

To be fair, they do attempt to create a few quids worth of admin by taking various details and filling in forms, but that just means they took a tenner of my money as well as 12 minutes of my time.

The last time there was such a gathering around an issue of vital importance, world leaders managed to Make Poverty History.

Our future is assured.

What’s more reasonable? That the combination Idont is supposed to be I don’t or that I intended to write Odontoceti?!

I don’t even know what the word Odontoceti means.

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1. Chocolate Review: Connie (milk with 'nibbed' hazelnuts)

The only question now is: how many will still be working in three weeks’ time?!

UPDATE – the middle third of the Sydney Street lights are off already. Failing after 2 days is possibly a record. They won’t be fixed, they never are.

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1. Brighton Station and Bad Lighting Design

Tonight, we should all be out on the streets with bangers, letting rockets off in crowded areas and nearly setting fire to ourselves with sparklers. The council should have spent months building a mountain of old pallets, hay, cardboard and lots and lots of tyres to create a monstrous, acrid inferno that boils puddles at 10 paces.

I LOVE bonfire night. I think it should be a national holiday. I have perfect childhood memories of cold nights, thick socks under wellies and freezing faces peering out from under bobble hats*.

The thing is, we don’t seem to do it properly anymore. I’m excluding the Lewes celebrations here, since they do it right. But the town is too small for the whole of Sussex to join them – let’s face it, every town should be doing something along those lines. There should be no reason why the people of Brighton have to crowd into Lewes’s narrow streets every year.

The sky should be alive with fireworks. The smell of wood fires should drift across the breeze to all corners of the country. A car journey should pass countless houses all holding their own mini displays with fires in little braziers or piles of wood and leaves burning slightly out of control, dangerously close to the trees and the conservatory. From any vantage point, you should see rockets flashing in all directions. The telly should be full of scary Firework Code safety messages and Blue Peter should feature maimed children who swallowed roman candles last year.

What does Brighton do? Bugger all. There is an (I’m told excellent) firework display at the cricket ground but these things really should not be happening behind a pay barrier, inside an arena. They should be open, public, municipal events on the beach or at Preston Park, with a fire and treacle toffee. I’m sorry, but paying £10 for corporate explosions doesn’t cut it for me. They don’t even have a fire. There’s a clue in the name, Brighton – bonFIRE night.

We’ve got another year to think this through and do it properly next time.

* – autumn was colder back then. And it was the north.

It took 11 months, 4 letters to Thomson, 4 letters to the Air Transport Users Council and ultimately some legal threats for them to finally send us a cheque for £100.

They fought hard and clearly would rather spent time and money rebuffing complaints than actually trying to make amends or keep customers happy.

I can only say this:
Thomson are the worst airline I’ve flown with and have the worst customer service of any company I’ve ever dealt with. Do not ever fly with them. They deserve to go to the wall.

1. Every night at around 6pm at Holborn, you have to lock passengers out of the station because the platforms are dangerously packed. Given it happens daily, you must have a plan, what is it?

(Anyone who talks of future investment in new trains/tracks etc sees their pet die first, before I pull the trigger. I want tomorrows journey to be bareable.)

2. Passengers arriving at the southbound Victoria line at Oxford Circus after 5.50pm have to fight for platform space and will be unable to board the first train that comes in. This is replicated across the network, day after day. If you’re unlucky it starts at 5.30pm. What’s the plan here?

3. At rush hour, when train frequency drops below 1 train every 2 minutes, platforms get dangerously busy and it takes 4 or 5 trains before passengers can squeeze on. What’s your plan in getting trains every two minutes, every day without fail?

(Anyone who says “we’re installing new signalling” gets to choose a family member to die with them – this isn’t a good answer, because I KNOW it’s possible to run them every two minutes with existing equipment. I’ve seen it happen.)

4. Why can’t I have money back for you insulting me with your service 3 days out of 5, for which I pay hundreds of pounds and rising?

I admit these questions are a mere formality before the trigger is pulled, as none of the dickheads running the system have single fucking clue.

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1. Eurostar
2. Bloody Millenium Dome
3. More Trains…

“Major Breakthrough in cancer research is trending topics! If cancer was to be eradicated, that would be the greatest gift from our God!”

Now, call me a heathen, but what kind of God would visit cancer upon us in all it’s myriad forms, only to gift us the cure a couple of millenia later?!

Crosscountry Rail, one of the rail companies, have just launched their own iPhone app. It has a full journey planner, timetables, station arrivals and departures with platforms, local maps and everything else you might need. It’s also location-aware so you can find your nearest station.

It’s also completely FREE, thus proving that National Rail Enquiries are a bunch of monopoly-abusing rip-off merchants. Search in the iTunes App Store for Train Search.

As a pleasing aside, the Office of the Rail Regulator are looking into the many, many complaints about the NRE application, their legal threats to competitors and whether they abused their monopoly position.

Now, the original post….

I think it’s absolutely disgusting that you’re charging £5 for your iPhone app, having shut down the competition.

The MyRail Lite app was fast and accurate and a joy to use, but most of all FREE. The information provided is free on your website, where I will get it in future (on my iPhone), why make us pay for a front-end to that same information.

Why are you ripping us off? I suppose as a UK rail company you simply have no concept of service – it really is all about money and profit and screw the long-suffering travelling public.

Thank you for your eMail.

We appreciate your concerns regarding the iphone My Rail Lite application. However, this application was never licensed to use our information. National Rail, in response to customer demand, has created an official application of its own.

If you prefer not to use the official application you can use a cut-down version of the Online Journey Planner on your phone at pda.ojp.nationalrail.co.uk

I hope this information is of use to you.

Regards,
Customer Services

Dear National Rail Enquiries

As a consumer, I don’t care about licensing. Kizoom may or may not have been authorised to so do: but what they did do is provide an excellent front end for your information. They did this for free. It matters not whether they were allowed to (they claim there were – and have obviously provided the service across many platforms for a long time.

Why, then are you charging £5 for a service someone else could do for nothing? Especially since it’s your data (well, our, the passengers, the citizen’s data – we paid for it with our tickets and through our taxes).

I appreciate there are development costs and perhaps I’d be inclined to pay 50p or £1 for the very, very simple application. However, there are costs for your website too, and that’s free. It’s the same data, Kizoom did it for nothing, therefore the only possible conclusion is that you are ripping off your passengers.

If you are so confident that your application is worth £5, why not give Kizoom the feed back and compete with them?

I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the cost of the National Rail Enquiries iPhone Application and the subsequent withdrawal of the MyRail Lite iPhone Application.

I can confirm that we did not withdraw the real time licence for MyRail Lite as the application was never licensed to use that data in the first place.

Although the MyRailLite application was not licensed to use National Rail Enquiries real time data, National Rail Enquiries did suggest an alternative solution to enable the product to continue but the developers refused.

National Rail Enquiries has not imposed a limitation on developing rail applications for iPhone. Timetable data is widely available and developers are free to use such data to develop applications if they wish having sought the relevant permissions from the industry data providers.

National Rail Enquiries provides a number of mobile web services including the iPhone application, which does have a one time £4.99 download fee.  Our other services include WAP (though iPhones do not support WAP) and our PDA site at pda.ojp.nationalrail.co.uk, which are free to use.

The cost of the iPhone Application is not for the data but development and support costs. The data is offered to users of the application for free and the same data can be accessed through other channels such as the website.

Regards,

Customer Services

Dear National Rail Enquiries,

As I’ve said, the point isn’t that it was or wasn’t licensed. The point is that someone else did it for free. You’re charging a fiver.

That makes your product a rip-off.

I am sorry you are still unhappy regarding the cost of our iphone application.

We are always grateful for customer feedback and suggestions. Unfortunately we are not always able to respond to individual comments but thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

Be assured we will pass on the details of your eMail to our Management Team, who review all comments, in order to improve the level of service we offer to our customers.

Once again, we thank you for your eMail.

I think that means the conversation is over…

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1. God help me…

That means a ‘ring of steel’ preventing us using our own seafront. The helicopter has been hovering for the past two days and in the run-up police have been swooping on cars driving into the city. There was even a news report that everyone living within a mile of the conference centre was getting a visit from Mr Plod. Just to check they’re not Osama Bin Laden, or something.

Of course, the Labour Party aren’t paying for all this. Us local taxpayers are – and we get locked out of our own city as a thank you.

It’s claimed that they bring in money to the local economy, so shall I expect to see Harman and Brown shopping for quirky gifts in the North Laine? Maybe they’ll pop to BomBanes for a plate of sausages at a magic table? Or will they be spotted doing karaoke in Lucky Voice? Perhaps we’ll see Mandelsohn staggering out of the Bulldog, and Prescott balls-deep in some skank round the back of Kulture?

More likely, being the party of the working man, they’ll stay behind their security cordon for a few days, before being chauffeur-driven back to Whitehall.

Unsurprisingly, there’s not a huge number of protests planned. I would join one of them if there was. But what would we protest about?

Iraq? Over and forgotten about, despite a great number of the attendees being war criminals.

The NHS? Privatisation continues apace. They won’t listen.

Cuts to public services? Taxes for the rich and redistribution of wealth after Labour have overseen the widening of the rich-poor divide? How about a curb on bankers’ bonuses? Constant infringement of our civil liberties in the name of a vague threat? HA!

Not only would the protests go un-noticed, since we’d be kept safely behind barries under threat of anti-terror legislation, and this shower of shite will be kicked out of power in a few months anyway.

So, what’s the point?

A few years ago, I was walking back from Sainsbury’s, past St Peter’s Church. There were half a dozen police outside but I didn’t stop to watch. I found out later that it was Blair, in town for the conference and popping into a church service. I wish I’d known – I had half a dozen eggs in my bag that could’ve been flung his way.

Can you imagine the utter futility of egging Brown?!

I’m now communicating with more people in more ways than ever before, via email, Twitter, Facebook, and this blog. So what’s the best way to share stuff?

Email is easy enough, if there’s a link I think one person in particular would enjoy.

But the others have me puzzling. I use Twitterfeed to push blog posts, things I add to Delicious and things I share on Google Reader out to my Twitter feed. And all three get picked up and posted into Facebook.

But since a lot of links might come in via someone on Twitter, the correct Twitter etiquette is to re-tweet including their name. Which means to share it widely, I’d have to retweet on Twitter and add it manually to Facebook. A pain in the arse, if not impossible, if I’m on my iPhone.

I’m sure that’s not the interconnected Web2.0 way of doing things.

I also have an issue with delicious: when it’s feed is picked up by Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else, my comments aren’t included. Google Reader’s share includes notes but you can’t change or amend the link title (annoying if it’s “NewsWeb | World News | China | Man With Two Heads Found Living In Yoghurt Pot” or something – a whole tweet gone!)

So:
1. Does anyone know a better way to autoshare links between Facebook and Twitter, that will include my comments in both? And also that has a Safari iPhone bookmarklet?

2. Is it really awful of me to automatically feed Twitter with a link instead of retweeting? Coz it’s much easier… (hmm, maybe I could include the original name in my comments if I get number 1 answered)

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1. Twitter Without The Witter
2. Me Around The World
3. Not-So-Social Networking

They’ve replaced the old style (push a button on the post, look across the road to the signal) with a combined push button and signal unit on the post at the side of the pavement. The Department of Transport expained to me that:

1. The signal is positioned so you look in the direction of the on-coming traffic.

2. The new unit incorporates ‘pedestrian scanning’ so it knows how many people are crossing and how quickly they’re going. It also knows if there’s no-one there and cancels the button-push.

3. The signals no longer have a flashing green man and flashing amber light.

Apparently the flashing green man and amber light is the biggie: it was, I’m told, ‘confusing’ despite having been in use for about 50 years. Now, the signal can turn red even while people are cross in order to stop more people from stepping out, but at the same time it holds the cars on red until the people already on the road are safely to the other side. The reason the signal has been moved to the pavement is so that people can’t see it while they cross – so they don’t panic when it turns red when they’re only halfway. The crossing is intelligent and will only release the green signal for cars when everyone is safely across.

This is all well and good, except for several problems. Firstly, if there is one other person standing close to the signal box, others can’t see it.

Secondly, the position of the signal encourages you to look to your right for traffic, yet halfway across you’ll meet traffic coming from the left. On the old crossings, you looked across the road and were taught to look both ways.

The flashing signals were ‘confusing’ yet the DfT also told me that any teething problems with the new crossings were because of the change and people not being used to them. In other words, people are confused by them! Given that there are thousands of older crossings with flashing signals, people still need to be taught about what the signals mean. But people also need to be taught how the new signals work – in fact, Brighton Council have put up a large instructional sign at the North St – St. James St – Old Steine crossings to explain them!

I make that TWO educational campaigns needed, plus the cost of the new signals rather than one road safety campaign to tell idiots what a flashing light means.

Finally, the placement of the new signal boxes is incredibly confusing at multiple crossings. Take a look at the photo. As you walk up the street, there’s a crossing box straight in front of you (the one to the left of the picture), next to a crossing point.

If that signal is green, can you keep walking straight ahead to cross the road?

I had to stop and think about it for a minute, looking round at the four different crossing points and what each of the signals related to. After a minute or two, I worked it out. The answer is NO. If the signal straight ahead is green, you cannot cross the road. In fact, it’s the signal round the corner on the right of the photo that related to that crossing.

The one straight ahead is for the crossing to the left, if you were turning to cross the road you were walking along. However, the button and the signal are marooned on that corner, with no clear indication as to what it’s for. Imagine if someone was standing between you and the signal box on the right. The only signal you’d see is the one in front of you, which might be showing green.

Clearly, these new crossings have been designed by committee. Probably a committee of people who drive everywhere.

However, they’re one of the most irritating and incompetent companies I’ve ever had to deal with.

This month, my good friends MattandDebz left to go travelling with the plan to end up living in Australia. As a send off, a group of us got together to buy them Airport Angel membership. They’re both flash gits, so we thought they’d enjoy relaxing in lounges and not mixing with the proles.

Two weeks before they left, I spoke to a senior person at Airport Angel to ensure that a single membership would cover them both, to work out how we could go about booking them into lounges without them knowing and to iron out a few details. She even went in to change the email address after I signed up so that my friends wouldn’t get emails that would give the game away.

The biggest problem was getting the membership card to them – they were leaving in 13 days. The lady promised me she would personally intercept the card from manufacturing and post it out within a week or so.

It didn’t happen. My friends had enough to worry about, and didn’t realise until they got to the airport to fly out to Singapore and tried to get into the lounge. However, they did have a window of 10 days in Singapore in which we could DHL a card to them.

I contacted Airport Angel this morning, and a helpful chap said he’d get a new card made today and post it to me. I could then DHL it to my friends. He also said they’d refund the passes that they couldn’t use, so I could book a couple more for them on the next leg of their trip.

Then I got a phone call.

No, actually. They can’t send the card to someone else. Data Protection, innit.

I asked could they send it to Debs at my address?

No. Data Protection, innit.

I said I’d log in as Debs and change the address details.

No. It can only go to the original address.

The lady said that Debs needed to authorise them to do anything. I pointed out that I could get any woman in the world to phone them, give all the same details that I’ve got and they wouldn’t know whether it was Debs or not. I pointed out that they only knew I wasn’t Debs because I’m a bloke.

She said I was on very dodgy ground even discussing that. Data Protection, innit.

I pointed out that they could do whatever the hell they liked to keep two customers happy. That in these circumstances, clearly the spirit of the Data Protection Act wasn’t being breached because I’d set the account up and paid for it in the first place, that I had all the account details and to all intents and purposes as far as they’re concerned I was the account holder, even though my name isn’t Debs. It was even under my email address until they changed it for me! I also pointed out that no-one would even know about this incredibly minor breach to the Data Protection Act, since it’s what the account holder wanted.

The lady said she was very sorry. Though, of course, not actually sorry enough to help.

Then came the killer blow. Because I’d signed up for an account in someone else’s name, I’d ticked a box accepting Terms and Conditions in their name too. And that’s illegal!

I pointed out that a senior person at Airport Angel knew full well what I was doing, as I’d had two or three detailed conversations with her to discuss it.

I told them that I didn’t know when my friends would next be on email to contact them and that even if I got the authorisation in 24 hours, it’d still mean I probably wouldn’t get the card until Friday, meaning I wouldn’t be able to arrange DHL in time.

So I asked could I cancel the whole thing.

Nope. Apparently I couldn’t. Data Protection, innit.

As it’s not my account, I need authorisation from the account holder to cancel. Even though it’s my credit card!

Shower of jobsworth wankers.

PS – I tried to use my own membership in Cancun last year. The people on the lounge had heard of Airport Angel, but been told by management not to let anyone in as the agreements weren’t in place. I can only speculate that Airport Angel were advertising lounges that they hadn’t go fully on-board. Though at the time, Airport Angel denied this but couldn’t explain why I’d been refused entry.

UPDATE Jan 2011 – My bank recently told me that they no longer use Airport Angel as one of their providers. Says it all, really.

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Museum of Animal Perspectives

Now you know.

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But on the other hand, I had a reasonable printer at home. I didn’t need a new one and didn’t really wish to add to the mountains of junk in the world. Plus I’d rather have had £60 off the computer.

As I stood there, another chap was looking at the very same printer to buy. So I gave him my free one. He was overjoyed and gave me £20 for it.

I felt really good about myself and he went home to Ireland very happy.

This weekend I wad looking to get new cartridges and set up my old printer again, when I discovered that it was so old (2004 – ancient in the computer world) that it wasn’t compatible with my computer. Which meant I’d need a new one.

I’ve ended up with the same model as the free one – although it was in special offer for £35.

My good turn has cost me £15.

They’ve introduced a reward card, where you get a stamp for spending over £5.80. After 10 stamps, you get a free chicken. There are other rewards on the way if you’d rather cash in before obesity kicks in.

We spent just over £20 for two of us. I asked for a second stamp, but the server refused. I then asked if we would have got two stamps on two cards had my wife come up separately to order and pay for her meal. The server said no.

Remarkably, then, it seems Nando’s is operating a reward scheme that encourages customers to spend as little over £5.80 as possible.

By dining alone, I could get a free chicken after 10 meals and £58.

By dining with my wife, I’d have to spend £200 for the same reward.

Brilliant. Well done, Nando’s – your reward scheme actively discourages me from visiting!

Nye Wright, 35, the store’s American-born manager, motivated his staff with a cheering, clapping and hugging routine shortly before the doors opened at 10am.

Then staff ran out of the shop giving high fives to people in the queue which stretched around Churchill Square’s upper level.

Back inside the store they lined up clapping and high-fiving their customers again as they entered the store to receive their free T-shirts and to get their hands on the Apple products they had come to try.

Twats

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It’s all organised in a music folder: music/artist/album. Except, of course, you can’t just add or drag the music folder into iTunes. The prospect of adding 6000 tracks makes it go wobbly and fall over. I guess creating 60,000 line XML and library database files is just too much.

So, you have to select a couple of dozen folders to drag in at a time. This takes a couple of hours – yes HOURS! – per drag. It clicks through, ‘processing’ each track for a few seconds. Then, and only then, it starts ‘processing’ album art. Why? It’s right there in the folder and in the ID3 tag! So a few seconds more per album (274 in the last drag) before you can drag in another lot.

It took most of the afternoon to do this on my PC, slightly longer on Penny’s laptop and about four times as long on my new MacBook!

Appletards would say “let iTunes organise your music, just trust it”. But they are dickheads. It’s my machine, I’ll do what I damn well like with my files. One program that I only need for the iPhone should not be dictating how I run my machine. Not only that, but it would only help on one machine, not the other two.

I should point out that I directed WinAmp, MediaMonkey and Songbird at the new drive and all three had indexed the lot, ready for use and with album art in place, within 5 minutes.

iTunes slows itself with it’s bloody stupid library databases. They add nothing, except locking iTunes to your library, your library to one machine and your iPod to iTunes. Every other media player offers the same, and better, functionality without them. But no, Apple want complete control.

All other media players will keep watch on your drive. If you add some files from elsewhere, they’ll index them straight away.

iTunes won’t. You have to add them manually – rubbish for a shared media drive.

Other programs don’t care if you delete
something – after all, if you put it back they’ll quietly re-index it anyway.

iTunes goes mental. It gives a little ! for each missing track. But can you just say “remove all missing tracks”? Can you buggery. Yup, you have to select and delete them individually. You can’t even list all the missing tracks, you have to go looking for them.

I only use iTunes for my iPhone. That and there are no real alternatives for straight media playing on Mac because everything Jobs does is wonderful. Songbird is nearly there but not quite yet.

I wish I didn’t have to use it. And when Jobs’s shrivelled liver finally passes through his urethra, I will line up to piss on his grave for the days I’ve lost doing iTunes job for it and adding my own bloody files.

Did anyone notice these things were happening?!

So, I pre-paid a Recorded Delivery and put the envelope inside with my documents. When I asked for the tracking number of the return delivery, the lady looked at me blankly.

She can’t put it on the system now, she told me. They’ll have to bring the package in to be registered when they post it.

That’s no good to me. I’m sending it pre-paid so they won’t have the inconvenience of going to the post office. I want them to be able to pop it in the box, and I’ll have the tracking number ready. The system will know the postcode and tracking number already, and it can be scanned in at the sorting office as normal. The person returning my documents cannot and will not go to the post office for me.

But that’s not possible. Apparently.

So, I’ll have to trust first class post to deliver irreplacable documents to me. I have no other choice.

What does it matter if the package only enters the chain a day or two after the number was registered? The process is surely only triggered when the bar code is scanned anyway? It’s not like I was paying for a time-critical “by 1pm tomorrow” delivery that might bugger up their targets with a delay.

Any of the courier companies will issue a tracking number for a package being picked up in a few days time.

I used to believe wholeheartedly in a nationalised, public run postal service. But they’re shit.

Follow @Change_for_Iran, @IranRiggedElect, @NextRevolution and @persiankiwi for real people in Tehran, risking their lives to post news and information.

Powerful, scary, moving. I hope they find the freedom they deserve.

1. A white spotlight pointing downwards above each archway on the north side. Not bad, but should’ve been in the struts pointing at an angle for a better effect.

2. Sequenced LEDs in the attractive niches on the south side. These just add to the overall lurid effect of the colour-changers. Again, these niches should’ve been picked out by gentle spots in the struts.

3. Another row of LEDs has been added at the top, where the road comes out. Because of the slope, these are much higher than the original two runs which were already at slightly different heights. So instead of a pleasing line, we have three strips of light at three different levels.

4. They’ve covered the LED casings and wiring with what appears to be half a drainpipe. However, it’s in two colours: brown on the bricks, and white at the top, adding to the disjointed look of them. Also a note to designers: when you put something on a wall, it doesn’t disappear if you cover it with a similar coloured plasting case. It would’ve been better to have a nice, contrasting casing that was at least consistent with itself. Perhaps painted to match the existing ironwork, making it look like part of the structure. Oh, and they could at least have made an effort to hide the screws that are at 6 inch intervals. Better still there shouldn’t be anything at all ruining a nice bit of Victorian brickwork.

There’s still a crane under there, so Brighton Council might not yet be done with their wacky design hell. I’ll report back if they suddenly install lasers or strobes (which wouldn’t be at all surprising).

Related posts:

1. Brighton Station and Bad Lighting Design

I’ve got two ideas to save it:
1. A benign dictatorship, with me at the helm. By far my favourite option, but I lack the private army to bring about the bloodless coup.
2. An Independent Alliance party – anyone with centre-left leanings can join in order to stand as an independent candidate. They’ll receive central help with funding, campaigning and media to raise awareness in their constituency. There is no party whip and no party manifesto: other than rules on extreme views, candidates can stand on their own promises and are free to vote how they wish in parliament. They cannot take more than the bare minimum expenses to do their jobs, they cannot have a second job, and they cannot accept trips, gifts, meals or donations from any third party. They cannot have been a candidate, prospective candidate or even a member of a mainstream political party in the five years previously. They will be contractually bound to serve only two terms, and banned from joining companies that had government connections after they step down. No more revolving door.

It’s time to get rid of career politicians and elect people standing for issues they believe in, in constituencies they have a connection to, and without corporate and big-business corruption.

At the moment there’s a massive obstacle to getting into power: money. An independent must put up a lot of cash, spend a lot of cash on their campaign and then won’t get in because no-one will have heard of them, unless they’re already high-profile. Only a wealthy person with time on their hands could even consider it, and would probably fail. An independent alliance party can deal with all that.

I’m sick of being governed by stupid, greedy idiots. On a local and a national level. It’s time to get real, public-spirited people into power.

I just need a million quid to sort it out.

iPhoto does not recognise the faces of animals.

I can only imagine the frustration of the poor user whose frantic calls to the helpdesk resulted in that important bit of small print…

PayPal also means I’m not continually giving out my card details to people – so I thought that I could use lesser-known sites for shopping, with no fear that they’re likely to abuse or lose my details.

However, recently I didn’t get something that I paid for with PayPal. The seller hasn’t acknowledged my emails, or responded when I raised a PayPal dispute. I’ve escalated the dispute to a ‘claim’ where PayPal will look into it and, I assumed, give me my money back.

However, I’ve just noticed this in PayPal’s terms:

If PayPal decides the claim in the buyer’s favour, the buyer will receive a refund only if there are funds in the seller’s account.

So, if the person I bought off has moved that money into their bank account, I get nothing!

Which means anyone can set up a PayPal account, fleece a few thousand people, withdraw the funds from their PayPal account, then disappear. If the bloke who mugged you is caught but has spent the cash, you don’t get it back.

In other words: outside of eBay, PayPal offers NO BUYER PROTECTION WHATSOEVER, for which they receive a hefty chunk of all funds transferred through them.

I’ll go back to my credit card.

Dream St Helens

As the afternoon cooled we headed for Chester city centre to wander the perfecty preserved medieval streets. There, we came across the greatest pub in the world. The Brewery Tap is set in a renovated Jacobian hall, complete with original carved stone fireplace and tapestries. It’s the first pub for brewer Spitting Feathers and they’ve got it bang-on! No music, no screens, just 7 real ales. Best of all, the most expensive is £2.80! I only had time to try the light golden Thirstquencher, but it was more than enough to make me consider buying the house opposite.

What they should have done is use mostly soft white/off-white lighting to illuminate the impressive ironwork struts and arches, with perhaps a single colour to pick out either the brickwork niches on the south side, or the archways on the north (the ones that haven’t been boarded up and ruined, that is). The lighting units themselves should’ve been hidden within the supports.

That’s how architectural lighting should be: subtle, to highlight the interest and beauty of the structure, and in this particular place they could’ve added real warmth and character to one of the entrances to our city.

Instead, what they’ve done is install cheap, tawdry and multi-changing coloured LED strip lights. They’ve been bolted to the lovely brickwork in ugly strips, with the wiring and casings all visible. They’re not even one long unit – but several, much cheaper ones that don’t even all change colour at quite the same time.

It’s garish and tacky, like a bad nightclub. Why does EVERYTHING have to be colour changing LEDs?

The photos don’t quite do the effect justice – the lights don’t even continue to the top of the road because it’s low to the pavement and in daylight.  So it’s like a disjointed dotted-line of metal that begins and ends abruptly. That’s why these things should be hidden!

Does no-one with any sense of aesthetic look at these plans first?

Secondly the beauty of the sky mirror is supposed to be it’s incongruity. Reflecting a blaze of blue sky into an urban scene. A perfect circle of colour and freedom against drab architecture.

Put the mirror into a natural setting and it loses that impact and contrast. Site it near some bushes, next to one of the most startling and surprising buildings in the UK and it’s dwarfed and utterly out-shone by its surroundings: the Pavilion Gardens is not the right place for this sculpture at all.

The installation in the old vegetable market is different. This is on another scale entirely. Two huge red earth works, like alien turds 7 feet high, appear to have burrowed out of the ground leaving a perfectly oval crater. The rubble is piled nearby.

The deep scarlet red implies something like flesh and blood, the size itself and technical execution is inspiring though like much modern art although it looks cool it doesn’t have a lot to say.

The faint suspicion of pretentious twaddle lingers when you learn of the title: The Dismemberment Of Jeanne D’Arc.

Far better was the installation on the ground floor of my building, created by the Youth Offending Team. On the theme of Seven Deadly Sins, it was laid out like an empty flat – with hints of the occupant’s sins and crimes, repentances and regrets: a briefcase of forged money and drugs, TVs showing static and imploring “Why does no-one listen?”, a bathroom cabinet with medicines re-named things like “I Punched Someone Just For Fun”. It was bleak, but strangely hopeful – these were people who felt they were excluded, had moved into crime but were now coming back having identified their own weaknesses and sins.

As a counterpoint, recent news articles of the MPs expenses scandal were pasted in the kitchen. Are MPs as full of remorse and as willing to accept a penance as these young people? And isn’t everyone a sinner on some level anyway?

Of course it had it’s moments of cliché. But these aren’t artists, they’re just disenfranchised young people finding their voices. It was more powerful and thought provoking than anything that Anish Kapoor could create, but sadly not worth the £2 million the mediocre Sky Mirror commands.

]]> http://electro-web.co.uk/blog/2009/05/18/arse-for-arts-sake/feed/ 0 http://electro-web.co.uk/blog/2009/05/16/anish-kapoors-floor-mirror/ http://electro-web.co.uk/blog/2009/05/16/anish-kapoors-floor-mirror/#comments Sat, 16 May 2009 15:33:58 +0000 electroweb http://electroweb.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/anish-kapoors-floor-mirror/ Centrepiece of the Brighton Festival

So I recommend the following bit of civil disobedience:
Every time you pass a policeman, flinch and mutter “Please don’t hit me”.

It finishes with a thought:

In recent years British and other tourists have flocked to Cuba to see what it is like “before Castro goes”. When he dies, goes the logic, so will his system and a unique experience in nostalgia. Is time running out for a stroll through the tropical time capsule? Probably. But Cuba seems already poised for change. Free elections, consumer culture, internet cafes, porn­ography, well-stocked supermarkets, obesity: it may come in a rush, or bit by bit, but transformation will come. The result will be an island that looks more like everywhere else. For some outsiders that may be cause for regret. So be it. Cuba is not their island and they do not live there. If Cubans want to be more like the rest of the world, warts and all, who has the right to stop them? (my highlight)

That’s the bit that worries me. No-one would deny Cubans good food, freedom of speech, a degree of control over their political rights etc. but will they choose free-wheeling consumerism? And what if they don’t?

The Cuban people appreciate the great things their revolution did: in health care and in education, but mostly in independence. The US have stayed out for 50 years – something that never happened in the proceeding 150 years.

I hope the Cubans get to control the next phase of their island’s history. My fear is that they won’t: that rather than transforming into a social democracy, and keeping in place the best of the revolution and the hard-won successes of the past 50 years, they’ll have Starbucks, privatisation and free-market Freidmanite capitalism forced upon them.

Mind you, the Chileans under Allende, the Argentinians, the people of El Salvador and the Venezuelans can all vouch for having the freedom to choose a socialist path in the region.

Can’t they?

Related posts:

1. Cuba Photos
2. WHY????

More Here

I’ve seen it many times from the train, but never from the valley. It’s a real monument to a time when engineering was art and each project was a testament to the glory of its builder and the fast-moving industrial world.

Recorded for the BBC in January, the new version has Elbow backed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and a full choir to play The Seldom Seen Kid in full.

The dratted ‘red button’ wouldn’t let me hear the show when it was broadcast on iPlayer and I decided the Listen Again steam in the web wouldn’t do it justice. So I hadn’t heard any of it until the package arrived, and waiting made sure it was a real treat.

The original version is a bit of a masterpiece, and here virtually every song is improved on.

The opening tracks Starlings sets the tone: an album already full of strings has a new depth and delicacy. The Bones Of You is subtly enhanced, free of compromise that’s inevitable with a band in the studio. The feeling is that this is what they’d have done originally had they had an orchestra and a dozen choristers to hand. It segues into an exquisite jazzy ‘Summertime’.

The standout track is a heart-stopping Grounds For Divorce with its deeply textured arrangement and huge brass punch. But for the most part the original template is followed: subtlety an understatement win out, adding to the original songs rather than over-egging a near-perfect pudding.

Even the overblown The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver works more: the contrasts, emotion and crechendo coming together better with the orchestra.

Two tracks disappoint slightly: The Fix lacks some of the punch and humour of the original. One Day Like This is difficult: the studio version is a manipulative, string-laden slice of overblown but utterly trumphant glory. So what more could they do? Not much, so other than for completeness it’s a case of why bother? It’s still pretty wonderful though.

It’s beautifully recorded and well mixed. A masterpiece turned into something more masterful: Elbow absolutely at the top of their game.

I started by searching my own name in Facebook. And would you believe it, I share a name with 9 pages of fine gentlemen around the world! And one of them is right in my home town!

That was too happy a coincidence to miss, so I sent him a message.

Then I thought, since I found the closest one, where would the furthest one be? So I messaged one in New Zealand. After all, if you go further than New Zealand, you start coming back.

I carried on browsing. There were three others in New Zealand. It would be rude to contact one but not the rest.

Amazingly, there was also one in Malaysia. So I said hello. And then I sent another hello to one in South Korea. The South African one was in-between, so I said hello to him too.

That’s a total of eight namesakes contacted. I hope at least one of them replies…

And three painted people playing Kylie songs on the banjo…

They were scattered around the world, the closest being a girl just a few miles away that I was very friendly with for years but never met, and the furthest being a sweet but slightly bonkers girl in Thailand. There was also a woman in Prague, an Aussie in Germany and an interesting guy in Slovakia who I talked politics and current affairs with.

That’s what I saw the Internet as: an inherently social device, levelling all differences, shortening all distances. It wasn’t just an intricate web of computers, but also of people.

I gave out my MSN contact (censored@electro-web.co.uk) and ICQ number pretty much willy-nilly because I would enjoy there being someone to hold a conversation with anytime I logged on. Or I could block them, like the London woman who insinuated marriage after one or two occasions of exchanging pleasantries.

Indeed, it was through the internet I met most of my friends (and my now wife). I moved to Brighton, joined a local site and got to know people. We moved it from the screen to the pub pretty quickly.

But somehow, the Internet has got smaller. Despite all the continuing hype of social networks, that’s rarely what they are.

Facebook is diverting enough, though Twitter, Picassa/Flickr and delicious/digg/Google Reader do each of its functions better individually and in a way open to non-Facebook users. But it’s not social; it merely keeps me in touch with my own current friends and I was doing that anyway.

Yes, I’ve got old Uni friends on there, but it hasn’t led to a reignited friendship even though I know what some of them had for breakfast.

All these people I already knew/know and it would be an odd breach of etiquette to be added by a total stranger. The Facebook tools aren’t even designed for that: there’s no real way to get to know someone, merely to stay in touch. Myspace is slightly better, but only marginally.

I miss meeting new online buddies in odd corners of the world.

The tools to do it have gone: I’ve not used it for years, but IQC’s “I’m here and bored, come and say hi” webpage has long since disappeared. Skype’s similar but less obvious “Skype Me” status has gone (though I always found the Skype concept a little too intimate for that). While many sites foster an inward community, it rarely spills out of the specific site anymore.

In short, social networking isn’t.

I’d love to know of chat clients or
online communities that encourage us to connect to new people and start learning things outside our own social sphere and our own country again.

And no, hotsweetcandy18xxx@aol.com, I don’t mean you even if you have got a cam.

Related posts:

1. Hello

I get excited when it’s an apparently remote or out of the way country: not America or Australia. They’re too easy and obvious and full of white people who’ve been making phone calls for years. I mean Brazil or Kenya or Kazakhstan. Interesting, exotic places.

I love that by pressing a few buttons I’m connected to people who just a decade ago, didn’t even register on the average British person’s radar and often still don’t.

I love the technology behind the fact that, last Thursday I needed to speak to a colleague. I dialled his mobile number and he picked up.  While talking to him, he nearly got run over by a bicycle. In a street in Shianghai.

Incredible.

I have to stop myself from asking irrelevant questions when, for example, I was talking to a guy manning Dell technical support in Bangalore. He was a sarcastic bugger – I asked where he was, he replied “India”. I asked where specifically, he said “India. It’s in Asia, have you heard of it?” but I suppose he was a bit wary of me being one of the many racists who write off call centre staff simply because they’re not in this country. I found him polite, knowledgeable and helpful and he spoke better English and was probably better educated than many English people.

Sometimes, like for train times, it helps to be in the same country. Most of the time it’s irrelevant: like when fixing hard drives that were made in China anyway.

What I’d really like to ask isn’t “can you help me fix my hard-drive?”, it’s “where do you live? what do you do for fun? who are your friends and family? what do they do? what does your city look like?”.

I wish it was the done thing, but no doubt they have their call quotas to fill and at 50p a second I can’t talk for long. But wouldn’t it be nice if, after finishing your banking you could just have 30 seconds to learn a little bit about each other?

Both the day and the month are the square root of the year. Isn’t that pleasing?

Six sleek and lively Zebra Danios…

I can’t get into work, so I’ll be going out to play later.

I hope we’ve got Ribena. Hot Ribena is medically proven to be the only suitable drink when you come in from snow.

The city looks beautiful. I like venturing out in fresh snow, taking in the utterly changed landscape. There’s something slightly wrong about breaking virgin snowfall. Almost like spoiling a painting. Maybe you should just leave it for someone else to enjoy?

But its Sunday night and there’s no time to enjoy it. In the morning it’ll probably just be slush, from the thaw of the sun and the trampling of a hundred boots and a hundred cars in the rush hour. I can already hear a load of idiots shouting and mucking about, sledging on boards they stole from who knows where. Snow is fun too, but I think I prefer the peace of it to the snow fights.

I wish it was a quiet morning so Penny and I could see the Pavilion and the beach with this special, temporary redecoration.

Suspend all thought of embarrassment and do what you have to do to get things down. My daughter will only let the cat brush her teeth, so I have to hold a struggling cat under one arm while trying to brush them, but making it look like the cat was doing it.

Genius. The child, that is. Not the mother.

Disasters Emergency Committee

I confess I had to look up the word “nibbed”, which apparently means “roughly crushed”: as a result the bar loses a point or two for pretention.

Montezuma’s Connie

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Surf Nut (milk chocolate, macadamia nuts and coconut)
2. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)
3. Chocolate Review: Bean Machine (dark and white, with coffee)

A wonderful aroma on opening, the expected rich chocolate and a hint of orange fragrance and flavour as it melts on the tongue. More subtle and sophisticated than a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, this is a treat.

It’s much more of a binge-bar than the previous flavours. The others have taken time and consideration to enjoy. This one, I wolfed down.

Montezuma’s Space Hopper

For some reason, they seem to imply Terry’s Chocolate Orange is dark chocolate, and that milk chocolate fans are at an orangey disadvantage. They’re wrong. It isn’t, and traditionally never has been. The red-boxed versions are dark chocolate, but haven’t been around for long.

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Bean Machine (dark and white, with coffee)
2. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)
3. Chocolate Review: Surf Nut (milk chocolate, macadamia nuts and coconut)

Interestingly, the white chocolate is marbled through the dark chocolate bar. This seems utterly pointless: no one can taste a thin seam of white amid dark, so the overall effect is simply milk chocolate.

The coffee, thankfully, isn’t beans or powder, but a part of the chocolate itself. It isn’t particularly strong. But, it’s still coffee.  So I won’t be having this one again. I’m not sure I can even finish it.

Montezuma’s Bean Machine

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)
2. Chocolate Review: Culture Shock (white, ginger and chilli)
3. Chocolate Review: Surf Nut (milk chocolate, macadamia nuts and coconut)

Grown-up’s white chocolate, creamy, smooth, rich, sweet but not sickly, gives way to a fragrant splash of ginger, whose warmth rises until BANG! the chilli hits the back of your throat.

It’s surprisingly hot, without making you reach for water. The three flavours come in succession, none overpowering but each one leading nicely into the next. There’s no chance of  being unable to taste one of the flavours, as is a problem in some bars.

The chocolate is superb, as expected, with the chilli and ginger lingering on the palate for a flavourful, spicy and red-hot finish.

Out of this world.

Montezuma’s Culture Shock

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Spice It Up (dark and ginger)
2. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)
3. Chocolate Review: Surf Nut (milk chocolate, macadamia nuts and coconut)

They were swooping around, above and beneath the pier at dusk, diving toward the water and soaring out to sea in an ever-changing black ribbon. Then they’d regroup into a mesmerising, undulating orb that twisted out into two groups, each side of the pier, before rising back up to become one again.

The view from the end of the ‘doughnut’ groyne was incredible, the birds just a few metres away from us.

We caught the last of the show from up on the pier, hundreds of black darts swooping beneath us to roost on the framework.

Two other flocks were performing for us: one over the West Pier, and another, huge flock around Sussex Heights and the tower above Churchill Square: using the two blocks like a figure-8 racing track.

Amazing.

Rather that being fully mixed in, the ginger pieces are embedded in the top of each cube. The only smell on opening was lovely chocolate.

My first block surprised me in it’s blandness. I couldn’t taste the ginger, it was just a faint aroma on the palate.

The second block was better – I put it ginger side down on my tongue, and immediately got the flavour. I think this is the secret – the chocolate can overwhelm it, so you want the spice to come through first. In fact, it’s rather clever that the ginger isn’t enveloped in chocolate for this reason.

It was a sweet, warm ginger rather than a sharp hit, and the bar left a few tasty flecks of ginger in my mouth to chew on.

After initial trepidation and disappointment, I was pleasantly surprised. Montezuma’s say this is their best selling speciality bar: it’s lovely.

Montezuma’s Spice It Up

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)
2. Chocolate Review: Surf Nut (milk chocolate, macadamia nuts and coconut)

Initial impressions on opening were good:  strong, robust milk chocolate smell. The coconut came through at the back of the fragrance, not too sweet or overpowering, just a little hint of tropical sweetness.

This bar seemed to melt slightly better on the tongue than Vera. Not the smooth feel of ‘ordinary’ bars like Dairy Milk, but this is REAL chocolate – the lower fat content means a higher melting point and an ultimately more grown-up and satisfying chocolate hit. This is stronger and less sweet than newsagent bars, and utterly delicious.

The chunks of macadamia are smaller than expected – this is a good thing, giving more of a praline consistency but with a much more luxurious texture to the nut. The coconut isn’t too sweet, nor is there so much of it that it fills your mouth after the chocolate has melted away. A fine balance, with the right amount of plump flakes.

The bar crumbles nicely between the teeth, with the coconut flavour the last to hit.

This could be my new favourite chocolate bar.

Montezuma’s Surf Nut

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Review: Vera (dark chocolate and pistachio)

So, I thought I’d eat around one per day for the next couple of weeks and offer a full and honest review here. I probably won’t enjoy it.

First up, Vera: made of dark chocolate and pistachio nuts.

It was quite a cold day, and chilly in the office, so that may have affected the texture. The chocolate smelt good, strong and rich. The block broke with a pleasing snap, but I had trouble trying to get it to melt in my mouth.

The flavour of the chocolate is dark but not too bitter, certainly possible to eat a full bar without it becoming overpowering and the quality of the cocoa shines through. I wouldn’t normally choose dark chocolate, but this was good. The mouth-feel wasn’t as velvety and smooth as I like, the chocolate formed separate granular clumps rather than a semi-liquid coating. But this would be expected as the bar was much less than room temperature.

The addition of pistachio nuts is interesting. They have a sharper and more subtle flavour than almonds or hazelnuts that wouldn’t have worked in sweet milk chocolate. Conversely, in stronger dark I felt they were more textural than anything – their delicate flavour being somewhat overwhelmed by the richness of the chocolate.

In all, Vera is an unusual bar that I felt was only partly successful. The temperature may have let it down, so I suppose I’ll have to have another bar to double-check.

Montezuma’s Vera

Related posts:

1. The Real Father Christmas

My opening conversational gambit was, “Blimey, these buildings have gone up quick”.

It took under two minutes for him to get to, “No-one’s prepared to stand up and say there’s too many illegal immigrants”.

Brilliant.

Related posts:

1. Heart-Stopping

I was a clever kid and figured that clearly there was some sort of sleight of hand going on.

Of course, when you’re a kid you want to believe. Coz if you stop, then so might the presents.

So each year, I’d meet two or three Father Christmases (Father Christmi?) but not be entirely convinced by all of them. One, however, was special.

I visited him each year, in an amazing multi-coloured grotto in a cave at my school Christmas fayre. He was particularly grumpy and would question why on earth you’d want what you just asked for. But it was ok: he was the REAL Father Christmas.

I knew it was the real one, because whatever I asked him for as my main presents, I got. If I saw an imposter Father Christmas later, and asked for something different, I wouldn’t get it. Only things I asked for at the school fayre would turn up under the tree on Christmas morning.

It was well over 10 years before I discovered how this magic worked. My mum told me that since the grotto was made of paper (brown paper making the craggy cave outside and crepe paper giving the magical interior) she just stood outside behind where Father Christmas sat, and listened to what I asked for

Related posts:

1. August Bank Holiday

1. Thomsonfly didn’t give us what we paid for. They were remarkably rubbish in all respects so will get full scathing sarcasm.

2. I joined ‘Airport Angels’ through my bank. It gives you 3 free passes to airport VIP lounges and I specifically checked they had one in Cancun for our 5 hour wait. Except there was “some sort of problem” with the Airport Angels deal and airport staff wouldn’t let us in. Since we’ll have no more long airport trips for the year, my membership is now pointless. They’ll get a polite but insistant complaint first before I unleash the full fury.

3. HSBC left us unable to withdraw any money whilst away, having arbitrarily decided Penny’s card had been cloned with seemingly no evidence. They will be getting all the rage I can muster, as it cost us a fortune in advance cash fees and interest to live off my credit card. Not to mention the trouble we’d have been in had it been our only card.

4. The London Aquarium is rubbish. Really, really bad. They’re in the middle of a refurb so if that’s the reason they should be closed, not knocking a quid off the £14 entrance fee.

Mondays make me grumpy. I shall attempt to channel it well.

* not medically accurate

It struck me that there is a right time and a wrong time for established names to branch out into new areas. I mean, would you trust your mobile contact to Lloyds TSB?

“[it is] a war against those who favour death and by those of us who favour life… We are fighting against nihilists, against agents of destruction whose only objective is destruction itself, although they disguise this with social crusades”

Sound familiar?

She’s opening it all by hand. She seperated the tuna rolls with her fingers, took one from her hand using chopsticks, reoriented it between the sticks with her fingers, then dipped it in sauce and popped it into her mouth with chopsticks. Then she ate something or other entirely by hand. The went back to chopsticks (having taken a salmon-based thing out her other hand with them).

JUST USE YOUR FINGERS YOU PRETENTIOUS BITCH!

Naturally, I’m reluctant to let the hotel cater only for the people coming and take the rest as pure profit. So we decided we’d contact the local homeless organisations.

However, St Patrick’s shelter told me they can’t accept fresh food. Health’n'Safety innit?

Let’s be clear: this is not a supermarket dumping unsold, out of date sandwiches. This isn’t stuff that’s been languishing in a freezer for 6 months. This is high-quality fresh meat, fish and vegetables. Prepared and cooked to a high standard in one of the city’s best hotels. This is food which will simultaneously be served to over 80 guests expecting a delicious wedding feast.

But that’s not good enough for our main homeless centre.

It’d be easy to moan at the people who wrote the rules. But I know that they’re in place so unfortunate homeless people aren’t poisoned by Tesco giving a ‘charitable’ donation of dodgy mayonnaise. It’s also to stop Tesco being sued if they do.

I know from my experience at the Young People’s Centre that you CAN take fresh food, provided you take responsibility for it. I used to reheat M&S pies for them, that had been donated on their ‘use by ‘ date and frozen at the centre. Our food will be much better than the crap I used to serve there.

Brighton Soup Run said they would’ve taken it, but need finger food to hand out to people on the streets. Clearly some people cry Health’n'Safety while others get one with helping people.

So this isn’t about the beaurocrats who came up with the rule. This is about the jobsworth idiots who enforce it. St Patrick’s could easily say “we’re not supposed to, but who’ll know?”. They could easily take a judgement that food delivered straight from the kitchen of a top hotel is probably ok, whilst still politely declining the dregs of Sainsbury’s waste bin.  I wonder what they people who use St Patrick’s would say, if I offered them a full, hot, free meal?

Shall I tell my guests, as they tuck in, that although I hope they enjoy their meal I’m afraid it wasn’t good enough for hungry, homeless people and in fact is better in landfill than given away?

(If anyone knows a group who will take it, please let me know)

However, it has to be well chosen…

The other week, I was in Debenhams. And it appears you can buy “Breast Awareness Leather Gloves”.

Can you think of anything seedier sounding or more creepy than slipping on your leather Breast Awareness Gloves?

I don’t know quite who’s fault that is. Is it possible within the modern capitalist system for a government to order a private bank within it’s remit to stop expanding? Stop investing? Stop making large amounts of money? I doubt it.

Two weeks ago these banks were solid. It’s the outside influences and “loss of confidence” that forced their collapse.

But the UK government is doing something I can’t quite believe: using anti-terror legislation to freeze Icelandic assets. We’re about to bankrupt an entire country.

Why take it out on the people of Iceland, when the people of the Square Mile seem to be going on as normal (or at least crying into their millions)? Why not sue for the money from the assets of the banks themselves? From the people who withdrew support?

If there were losses on a comparable scale in the UK, (say Natwest, Barclays, LTSBHBOS and HSBC UK all went tits up) would our government be willing and able to pay up to investors?

Related posts:

1. Olympic Ambivalence

The day only goes downhill from there.

It’s the worlds oldest aquarium, designed by the same bloke as the West Pier but in a slightly better condition. I’m told the piped “20,000 leagues under the sea” muzak is part of the original Victorian plan.

It used to have a dolphinarium, however dolphin displays are illegal in the UK. Luckily you can still get dolphin steaks in the cafe.

I wanted to be a Junior Aquarist for the day, and feed the turtles. But you have to be under 16

2. $700 billion can be found (down the back of the sofa, maybe) to bail out the most vicious capitalists when they gamble and lose.

We’re fucked.

They were here to raise money for “Elephant Corridors”, strips of protected land that join up conservation parks and allow elephants to roam freely between them.

They formed quite a magnificent sight, grazing on the lawn. I wish they were still going to be here on my wedding day.

The only disappointment was that they weren’t real topiary, but somehow I doubt a herd of plastic hedge-effect elephants would’ve been such a crowd puller.

So far the only hitch is that 16Gb is nothing like enough storage. I’ve virtually filled it, so basically it’s a bit of a one-in-one-out for albums.

Amongst other things, I sported a fetching moustache, 611 didn’t buy a sword, the brewery weren’t brewing, I got barred from a pub for not immediately buying pork scratchings, Nat seemed to confuse inches and miles, the hotel owner had very shiny trousers, someone bought a kebab yet ate the salad and left the ‘meat’, several people rediscovered the words to Rick Astley, I was murdered, Mark blocked my SIM card and we met some really lovely people, much like ourselves.

Oh, and while Guzzler and Centurion Ghost are magnificent, the Terrier is quite hoppy.

York is a magnificent place to toast myself. My love and thanks to my friends for arranging and sharing the weekend with me. I was genuinely touched*.

* by each of them in turn

Related posts:

1. Snow!
2. Marrakech

http://www.noob.us/miscellaneous/creative-waterfall/

Related posts:

1. I really should do more blogging…

But I’ll be going back to Firefox soon, if only for Adblock Plus – I’mjust not used to see any adverts at all when I browse! I also miss the customised Search Box. In Chrome, the search box is incorporated into the address bar (very sensible) but you only seem to be able to have one search engine. I use the Search Bar to search Amazon, eBay, Google, Maps, Wikipedia etc etc

I can’t wait for Firefox 4, though, if they can incorporate the more exciting and useful features of Chrome.

She’s from Beijing, and has been travelling around the UK for a couple of months on holiday but using Brighton as a base. She was probably in her 40s, and was here on her own just seeing somewhere exciting.

She loves Brighton beach and goes to the Pier a lot. She thought it was funny that there were lots of barbecues on the beach last Saturday when the sun was out – I told her that was very, very English. She was going to the embassy to arrange things to go home next month. I’m glad she had a nice time here.

I hope she found the embassy ok, I think it’s a few minutes walk from Holborn.

She was a really nice lady, and it made me happy to have chatted to her for a while and helped her out a little bit. Plus, how often do you meet someone from Beijing?

So it’s nice to see Debenhams have their full Christmas display out.

Only 17 1/2 weeks to go!

The Yellow Car
The Big Dog
The Happy Eater
The GB Team

Got it?

Related posts:

1. Parking Tickets
2. My Cocking Phone

My problem is with consistency.

We get free parking all around the flat, and Penny usually doesn’t have much trouble in finding a space. But on Sunday night, she did. So she parked Splat on the corner with his back wheel on a double-yellow.

Just to be clear: this is not the sort of double-yellow that’s there to stop you blocking a road completely, or is for ambulances or fire engines. It’s just the one that stops you parking too close to the corner of the road. So basically, Penny was about 2 feet too close to the corner. She’s done it many times, and she’ll do it many more times when there’s no-where else.

She got a ticket, placed on her windscreen at 10.21pm on Sunday night. Fair enough, she was parked illegally and it’s only £35.

But on Monday night at 6pm, there were many cars on double-yellow lines in the same area. Most of them more then a couple of feet over. It’s like that every night.

Related posts:

1. Cats and Cats

Although deeply flawed, the gamers are the only half-chance of each country of the world being together in peace for the noble aim of friendly yet fierce competition.

China won the games on a raft of promises it never meant to keep. The opportunity for the games to be used as a carrot (“make these changes and the games will come”) was lost, and China made it the most politically charged for decades. Not to mention the abuse they heaped on the ordinary people of Beijing to clear them out of the way lest they look untidy.

So, I was all set to ignore them and hold my own little boycott.

Then, the opening ceremony came and was (apparently) spectacular. The people of China were hailed as welcoming, wanting to talk to and to help all their foreign friends coming to the city. I began to wonder: perhaps the games were for them, and not the authorities. Maybe the people deserve them, even if their government doesn’t. After all, more than most they don’t choose their government.

But then again, what could the games be more than an endorsement of it’s host government? So I don’t know.

The corrupt, corporation-bound ICC are bad enough, and giving it to China is like the final bullet in the head of the pretence that the games have ideals. Maybe it’s time the whole concept was re-thought and then it could become the non-political, peaceful competition that humanity deserves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics20081

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.china

Related posts:

1. Beijing
2. When Actors Play Politics

I had a lovely weekend visiting my neice and nephew. Reluctantly, it was time to go home so I got dropped off at the station only to find it was a replacement bus to Milton Keynes at 17.18

The timetable I’d printed only a week before had the departure as a train direct to London at 16.56, so I had an extra 20 minutes wait, plus a slower journey and extra, inconvenient change. I might not have bothered going to Northampton at all if I’d known. The online timetable is supposed to have all this info up-to-date.

Which got me thinking… why do we still have to pay for tickets, if we then turn up and it’s a bus? If I wanted to catch the bus from A to B, I’d use National Express or buy a cheap bus fare. We pay a premium for fast, flexible, comfortable and direct train services.

If the train companies were forced to make the replacement buses entirely free of charge, and were forced to refund that portion of the fare for every ticket holder (at the time of travel or later on application), then maybe we’d see less of them.

Not only would it discourage “late-running” engineering, but it would also stop companies from putting on buses which they allegedly wish to run-down, claim there’s no call for and then scrap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgels591kXk

I would be grateful if you could provide the following information:

1. Under what legislation were police officers compelling people to walk through the metal detectors?

2. Were people issued with forms informing them of the reason for the search, the outcome of the search and the names of the officers involved?

3. If there was no compulsion to go through the metal detectors, were members of the public informed of this prior to agreeing to the search? If not, why not?

4. If there was no compulsion to be searched, can you clarify the following sentence take from a report in the Argus newspaper? "Plain clothes police officers made sure people who tried to avoid the scans were checked."

5. Under what legislation were plain clothes police entitled to monitor members of the public and compel them to undergo a search? Did these officers identify themselves to the people involved?

6. Notices at the station told members of the public that this was an operation to reduce the number of knives and other weapons. Why, then, were sniffer dogs deployed?

7. If sniffer dogs were deployed to detect drugs, why were the notices displayed to the public about the operation incorrect and misleading?

Related posts:

1. Civil Disobedience

They chatted away to each other, discussing their work in the church, their friendship with the bishop and their dislike of medical science*. Clearly two God-fearing, church-going, upstanding members of the community.

Then the ticket man came along the carriage.

It turns out that the two pillars of the community were knowingly travelling on a peak-time train with invalid off-peak tickets. Thou shalt not steal?

What Would Jesus Do?

I think he’d own up to his mistake, apologise and pay the difference.

The two old ladies, however, decided the Christian thing to do would be to lie and say that “the times of the train had changed”.

As it was, the ticket man barely glanced at their tickets. Praise the Lord!

Jesus Loves Cheats

I raise a metaphorical paper cup of hot spiced Burrow Hill cider, with a shot of cider brandy, to those of you inhabiting the hallowed fields. Have the time of your lives.

Speaking of which, in one week’s time I’ll be the manager of the department. I was shown the invoice in/out spreadsheet, the various quirks for the difficult clients and all the myriad things I’ll have to remember and be in control of, as well as doing at least half of the things I’ve always done (at least for a while). I can’t say I’m relishing the thought of my first month.

She appears in the other cry-until-you-laugh books: “Shopaholic Ties The Knot”, “Shopaholic and Baby” and “Shopaholic’s Anal Rape Fantasy”.

Related posts:

1. Chick-Lit

Kill. Me. Now

I might change it again in a couple of days. There’s another one I like too.

I think that’s fair.

Then I got a phone call: Can they come at 8.30am instead? Thing is, the traffic is bad at that time in the morning.

Leaving aside the fact that the traffic is much worse at 8.30 than it is at 8.00, why don’t they just leave a bit earlier?

Yet, the Pigeon Detectives completely sold out.

It’s a funny old world.

It took a while to get through.

“For Coldplay, press 1″

wait… wait… wait…

“You are in a queue for the next operator”

wait… wait…

“There are two events matching your selection. Press 1 for 14th December”

“You are in a queue for the next operator”

wait… wait… wait… silence… silence…

I hang up and try again. It takes 15 minutes to get through again.

“For Coldplay, press 1″

wait… wait… wait…

“You are in a queue for the next operator”

wait… wait…

“There are two events matching your selection. Press 1 for 14th December”

“You are in a queue for the next operator”

wait… wait… wait… “Please have your credit card, blah, blah, blah” wait… wait… wait… wait… wait…

“Please press 1 for best available seats, or 2 to select your seats manually” I press 1.

“Please enter the number of tickets you require, followed by hash”. I enter two tickets.

wait… wait… wait…

“Sorry, we are unable to supply the number of tickets you have entered. Press 1 to select another event or date”.

I press 1, wrongly assuming that I’d be thrown straight to the date selection. But no, I’m back to the start and the whole thing is sold out. At least a 5 minute call.

What’s wrong with:

“Hello, I’m Tracy.”

“Hello Tracy, can I have two tickets for Coldplay on 14th December please?”

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s just sold out.”

30 seconds. All done. In fact, had a not been in the endless automated menus, I might well have got tickets straight away.

The only problem is the glaring stupidity of these people. Take Sharon Stone on China:

“They’re not being very nice to the Dalai Lama and he’s a good friend of mine.”

Shut up, Sharon. Just shut up.

Related posts:

1. Beijing

Alongside this, who could resist the adventures of Indiana Jones? Who wouldn’t want to unearth ancient and mystic relics, while simultaneously fighting off an army and defeating the fiendish booby traps left set for 1000 years? It was all I could do to stop myself packing a whip for my trek into the Colombian jungle to the Indy-esque ‘Lost City of the Sierra Nevada’. Walking through jungle, wading rivers, meeting local Tirana indians, fracturing my elbow. I WAS Indiana. A bit.

So, how disappointed am I in his latest adventure? It’s not just the awful scene with the ants, stolen wholesale from the terrible Mummy films. It’s not just the cliched mad old man, the far-fetched survival of the waterfalls, the well-beaten roads in the impenitrable jungle or the frankly rubbish clues and inconsistencies (why say he’s in Nazca then got to find him in Cusco? Would Indy have a text book of the Nazca lines in 1957? They should also note that the Mayans weren’t in Peru, it’s the Incas they’re thinking of). It’s not even that the 1950s simply wasn’t a golden age of heroic archeology. It’s all this plus the ridiculous premise, the biologically impossible crystal skeletons, far-fetched powers, aliens and the utterly unforgiveable sci-fi ending.

And not only that, but INDY WOULD NEVER GET MARRIED! They also changed his character to an all-action hero, and not an adventuring archeologist who’s only a hero to get the artifact back for the museum. It wasn’t even the same man in the centre of all this.

It was just all wrong. I’ve genuinely had more thrills from an edition of Time Team.

On the plus side, our honeymoon will take in several sites of Mayan ruins in Mexico, Guatemala and maybe Honduras, and Penny has promised I can get a Fedora hat.

That’s the third book I’ve left on trains, and in each case it’s been a good one I wanted to keep and lend to people.

I hope someone picked it up, realised it’s an important and interesting read, took it with them and is enjoying it now.

I fear, though, that a cleaner put it in the bin.

I’ve got a Twitter feed now for the 24/7 insta-blog status updates. It’s over there —–>

With another bank holiday coming up this weekend, I’m hoping we’ll get time to have a nice day out. That’s the advantage of having access to a car for the first time in my adult life. We have to entertain some family friends from Texas, having their honeymoon in Europe, but Monday is all ours! Last bank holiday we went to Bodiam Castle…

Related posts:

1. Paris In The Spring

First, St Pancras Station is quite impressively refitted. Clean, modern, spacious. It’s just a shame the centrepiece sculpture is so utterly foul and much too big, and you can’t see the magnificent original building for the glass’n'steel. But what do you expect from modern architecture? It’s exactly 26.8% better than any other train station, so that’s ok. Then it all starts to go wrong…

What do you most hate about flying? Queues? Intrusive security screening? Taking your bag and coat off and emptying your pockets of loose change to go through the beepy arch? Check! All present and correct for train travel too.

What the hell for? The last time I checked, you could easily get on the ferry or take your car through the tunnel without having your luggage x-rayed or your passports scrutinised. Why on earth do you need it for Eurostar? You can also travel to and fro between Germany, France, Belgium etc by car or train without any interrogation. Even before the EU, we once went by train between Poland and Hungary and all that happened was a quick check of the passport. Within the EU we should be free to move around at will.

But that’s not really the point: We can travel to Europe already by car without the metaphorical finger-up-the-bum!

The tickets say check in 30 minutes before. Granted, Thursday night was very busy with all trains full. But 30 minutes was too short, and the rude and unpleasant staff had to call through the people who were about to miss their trains. So they clearly can’t check in busy trains in 30 minutes – but asking for an hour check in would, of course, damage their “fast” branded marketing.

I wanted to like it, but it was only convenient for me as I was already in London on departure day. For Penny and for both of us getting home, Gatwick would’ve been quicker. Convenience drops off as soon as you live outside London or away from Ebbsfleet.

On top of all that, the legroom on the trains was pitiful and the seats uncomfortable.

So, I sat in the departure lounge grumpy at queuing for security and feeling like a terrorist, I sat on the train with knees in the back of someone else. Sounds just like a cheap flight, only without the ‘cheap’ bit.

Next time, I won’t bother. Flying is no less unpleasant, not any more time consuming, and at least the departure lounges have semi-decent food. And as someone paranoid about their carbon footprint, I never thought I’d say that…

Related posts:

1. Bloody Millenium Dome

Some of us aren’t meant for diy…

I hired a stripper to help us, but it turned out this was some sort of machine. I was gutted – not a nipple tassle in sight.

Last night I had lovely cuddles with my friends’ new baby. She’s only 3 weeks old but has lovely big brown eyes already.

Related posts:

1. My Cocking Phone

I spoke to the “Special Solutions Team*” who were surprisingly helpful, though not quite helpful enough for them to fix my phone it seems.

Someone from the repair shop is supposed to call me, to get it picked up and replaced. I couldn’t just post it in again, as the repair people have a different computer to the Special Solutions Team so they wouldn’t know of our discussions and it might come back still faulty.

Clearly, it’s acceptable for the repair team to fire out shit so long as the Special Solutions Team haven’t intervened. But since they have, I’m supposed to get a “guaranteed” replacement. Guaranteed what, I don’t know.

Anyway, they haven’t phoned me yet… that’s almost 2 months since my phone went tits up…

* (I don’t know if they’re a Solutions Team who are Special, or a Team offering Special Solutions. )

We did culture at the British Museum, then got very, very drunk in a 7 hour session at my boss’ sister’s pub. The end of the night is hazy…

“I don’t care what Spielberg does or doesn’t do in China,” said Hui li, a marketing manager. “This is politicising the Olympics. China doesn’t want that.”

No, I bet it bloody doesn’t.

Don’t bother.

Related posts:

1. Phone Fun
2. Nokia Phones Are Indestructable

If they bring back police “Stop and Search” without good reason, I will not comply. They’ll have to arrest me and fill in all the attendant paperwork. Then I’ll file an official complaint for wrongful arrest. Obviously as a white middle class person, I’m unlikely to be the butt of police harassment. But I’d urge others to follow suit.

And yes. We are going to Disneyland too. What of it?

Sadly, I have an O2 branded phone which means I couldn’t upgrade to the Nokia software, only the O2 approved software. And they hadn’t approved a new one. But after reading up, I discovered how easy it is to change the product code on the handset so the upgrade thingy would think it wasn’t an O2 phone.

I downloaded the software to do it, changed the code, connected to the upgrade service. It told me the lastest version of the firmware was available, so I started the download.

Nothing. Got about two-thirds through and failed. Told me the connection was lost, despite it being via cable and plugged into the mains.

I had to take it to a Nokia Service Centre.

Now, bearing in mind the phone itself has no logos on it, it couldn’t be started up, the product code was generic and it didn’t have my SIM in, I assumed I’d get it fixed with the generic firmware as they couldn’t possibly tell it was an O2 one. So, I’d get the software I wanted even if it did take me a week or so.

In fact, it couldn’t be fixed at all and they’ve given me a new one. With the OLD O2 firmware on it. So I achieved very little.

Luckily there is an improvement to the maps system, which is what I wanted most.

However, the new phone had a faulty switch. So I had to take it back.

I’ll never play with my phone again. If it isn’t broken… oh, and apologies to my dad, who I shout at all the time when he tinkers which his computer and breaks it. We’re the same, me and my dad…

…it’s an enormous stone penis!

I wouldn’t mind, but they were free tickets. That cost up a train fare, an expensive meal and three unpleasant hours on a couple of trains.

Going to a show at the O2 is a bit like going to to a gig in a shopping centre. A really, really nice shopping centre, I’ll grant you. But a shopping centre nonetheless. One of those pleasantly-designed, yet ultimately bland ones. That have a cinema on the top floor and restaurants and stuff. If you’re of a London disposition, think Whiteley’s in Bayswater.

Having said that, I applaud them for finally creating a relatively pleasant large arena that has remarkably good sound. And by building up instead of out, putting a top tier of seating on, they keep it feeling pretty intimate for a 20,000-strong crowd. Not that I’d want to sit up there, it looked scary.

I just wish they’d use a bit of imagination or flair when designing the rest of it.

The restaurants and bars on offer included: Ha Ha, Las Iguanas, Starbucks. Slightly shit upmarket high-street chains, in other words. You get the idea. Trying desperately to be cool, but being McDonalds with a swanky interior: souless, characterless, moribund.

All in all, 100 times better than Wembley Arena but if you go for any other reason than an event you’re a soul-less idiot.

Related posts:

1. WHY????

The cats are friends now! They even eat next to each other, sleep in the same room and happily wander around together.  Frankly, I’m astonished.

Sadly Shadow isn’t my best friend yet. But he does like the occasional stroke and we even had a cuddle last night.

Related posts:

1. Cats and Cats
2. My Name

Thank you for your e-mail.

There is obviously controversy and disagreement about the possible health effects of wi-fi and we have decided to make some alterations to the article to give a more accurate picture of this debate.

The second sentence in the article originally read: “Wi-fi allows cable-free web access, but some scientists fear it emits radiation similar to mobile masts, which have been linked to cancer.”

It now says, “Wi-fi allows cable-free web access, but there is controversy about its possible effects on health”.

We have also added the following paragraphs:
“The Professional Association of Teachers has previously asked for an inquiry into safety concerns surrounding wi-fi, while the Association of School and College Leaders has also called for clarification.

But Schools Minister Kevin Brennan has said: “The welfare and safety of children and staff in school is absolutely paramount – which is why we have already addressed concerns covering wireless computer networks and asbestos. The Health Protection Agency has consistently advised that it does not consider there to be a problem with the safety of wi-fi.”

You also refer in your e-mail to a direct quote from councillor Ieuan Jones: “The dangers of these wi-fi connections are possibly along the lines of using hand-held mobile phones.”

Clearly, this is the councillor’s opinion, which we feel should remain in the article. Also, in a report earlier this month, the UK Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHRP) said that while short-term adverse effects to brain and cell function were ruled out, the long-term cancer risk of mobile phone use could not be excluded.

Once again, thank you for your interest,

Yours sincerely,

Ruth Sully
Editor Newsgathering Wales

(I did bring up the study she mentions in my email to them – and acknowledged that they hadn’t excluded long-term risk. Of course, as I pointed out this is only because we haven’t had mobile phones for long enough…)

Shadow was confined to the spare room with his own food and litter, for the first night. He’s happy in there now, and is relatively happy with me as his new daddy. Then we let him into the lounge in his cage. Becky hissed at him a few times, but didn’t run off. She just sat in a corner.

Then we let Shadow out to wander round. Becky stayed where she was. No attacking. No running off. Just the occasional hiss if he got too close.

Shadow is still mostly confined to the spare room and Becky seems to be getting more used to his smell being around. She seemed quite happy this morning (though Shadow was locked away). They can both roam free again tonight and maybe at the weekend we’ll feed them in sight of each other.

I think that’s a pretty good start.

It’s fun, but strangely hard work doing silly voices and writing so-called satirical so-called comedy sketches. So please listen, else it won’t feel worthwhile.

Cuba

Related posts:

1. WHY????
2. Things, things, things…

More Cuba pictures in the photo gallery. When I get round to it.

Related posts:

1. Things, things, things…

It was only toward the end of the rinse cycle when I realised what the metallic clunking was. After a good spin, I took it out, removed the battery, SIM and memory card, and popped it on the radiator. 24 hours later, it’s working perfectly

Doesn’t it look nice? See also the two baby ones, which are ripening up nicely! Penny picked it and lovingly cradled it, being careful not to drop it…

Then we ate half each. It was soft and sweet, with just a little bit of acidity. It was the most delicious we’ve ever had! Look at how beautiful it is!

We watched an ace episode of Doctor Who, ordered curry from my new favourite Indian, and generally just had a great time together.

On Sunday it was time to re-plant the garden. I wouldn’t say I’m a crap gardener, but  every Autumn most of what flourished over summer dies off never to return. It could be the icy, salty blasts of wind that follow the scorching sun trap of summer. Or I suspect it’s something to do with the almost complete lack of water once it gets too grim to venture out onto the balcony.
So anyway, another £70 at the garden centre got us some mossy-type alpines, a few hardier looking  rocky alpine plants, a grassy thing, a load of petunias, and we thought we’d risk two strawberry plants.

We also revitalised my kitchen herb garden with thyme, coriander, sage, chives and mint. In August, you are most welcome to join us for a glass of Pimms, with a home-grown strawberry and sprig of mint.

Fingers crossed that most things live to next year: buying a whole balcony full of plants each year is quite an expensive and not a particularly satisfying way to garden.

HEAR ME ROAR

I didn’t trademark the name, basically because it would cost £200 and I don’t make any money from it. But I would like to get a band night going at some point. Plus, with the radio work I possibly have in the pipeline, the name might start to mean something. I just don’t want people mixing us up.

They’re calling their night Bandwaves. And frankly I can’t see the logic of why they’d call themselves that unless it was after having heard of me.

It seems that trademarks don’t have to be registered – if not, you have limited protection from imposters and the trademark only acts locally. But that’s ok, as it would only really be relevant locally.

Maybe I should set up BrightonWaves Ltd, which would give me some protection over the name within the music and new media industry…?

Oh, but did I mention that the people using the name are a children’s charity? If I muck them around, I start to look like a twat.