Bloody Christmas

Don't you hate Christmas? All that hype .. the endless pretentious adverts for perfume .. and as for shop decorations - don't get me started!

I'm sure it gets worse every year. This time round there were sparkly decorations appearing before Guy Fawkes night! Now the streets are festooned with tinselled trees - largely artifical, but increasingly real - and twinkly lights.

Then again, I tend to leave present buying until at least December - on principle - which never leaves enough time. I can't bear to think about Christmas with a sixth of the year still to go, and I can't afford to leave it all until the last minute.

Chestnuts roasting on a open fire
Jack Frost nipping on your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos

Come Christmas morning - fuelled with our now-traditional Bucks Fizz - I will feel different. The children will have eagerly opened their stocking presents and spread them and the associated wrapping paper all over the house.

Every year we do the same thing. Er - that is, Father Christmas does the same thing. We wrap all the stocking presents. Almost without fail, we sit down on Christmas Eve and wrap what feels like hundreds of little presents. The result gives the appearance of an explosion in a Christmas decorations factory. Which I somethimes think isn't a bad idea.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright.
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight

Ah, but the thought of suggling up by the fire after eating a hearty dinner - brandy in one hand and mince pie in the other - warms the cockles of my heart. By then, the trauma of fighting though the shopping centres and scouring the internet for that elusive Wii add-on will be all but forgotten. The cold hard reality of the vast overspend will not yet have hit and I will be at peace.

Except that I won't. I will be busily juggling being a parent and a child, fitting batteries and serving drinks, giving and receiving. The children, having been wound up to fever pitch by school and television over the previous months will be bouncing off the walls and fighting over something or other. There will be disagreements over whether we should be watching the Queen's speech or listening to the Christmas Carols CD. In short, it will be Bedlam.

They know that Santa's on his way;
He's loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh.
And every mother's child is going to spy,
To see if reindeer really know how to fly

Boxing day, however, we always try to make sure we can relax. Food will be cold and/or simple. Snacks will be plentiful. Fun will be had. By order.

This is when there is always the visiting and the family. I could moan - but in truth I kind of like my family, really. Deep down. That's not so say it it all runs smoothly or that there is stress involved.

So: my advice for Christmas? Go with the flow. Make merry. Wine women and wassail and all that. Enjoy.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase,
To kids from one to ninety-two,
Although its been said many times, many ways,
A very Merry Christmas to you

Merry Christmas indeed. And I'm sure the next five weeks will fly past.

The Big Turn-Off

Digital terrestrial TV ("Freeview") has made the news once again today. The ongoing campaign to wean the viewing public off analogue technology has been tweaked up a notch by today's publicity around the first analogue transmitter to be switched off.

I'm all for digital TV. No, really. I look forward to being able to have multiple interactive channels available all over the house. I'm not convinced it'll be so easy, though. My analogue TV reception is terrible. My nearest transmitter is a mere mile and a half away, but t'other side of a hill. The only line-of-sight transmitter is over thirty miles away and that is just over a hill brow, too. It's not as if I live in a valley. Far from it, my bedroom window overlooks a valley and the hills beyond. It's just that all the transmitters are the other way.

Enter the marvelous Megalithia. Here, you can enter your OS grid reference, pick a transmitter and see the terrian along the line of sight - and work out how tall your aerial needs to be. The Digitalpy FAQ pages have been helpful, too.

This is all very well, but in the absence of a transmitter in the right place, I'll be relying on satellite TV - which means I cant afford to put a TV in the kids rooms. Pah. Maybe broadband TV will come to my rescue. Progress mumble mumble in my day mutter mutter all this was fields.

Music to my Ears

It appears that the powers that be have rejected requests to extend music copyright to 70 years. The likes of Roger Daltrey and Sir Harry Webb (AKA Cliff Richard) have campaigned for the current 50 years to be reviewed.

I have to say I'm glad the copyright hasn't been extended. Successful musicians make an awful lot of money. Royalties are really money for old rope. Yes, the creators deserve credit and money - it is their livelihood after all. Not forever, though. After 50 years, any piece of music has lost its novelty. Most pieces which have remained popular this long have been rehashed and used as inspiration for other pieces by then. In short, the creativity has been paid for.

It's easy for me to say, sure. I'm a musician who'll never make any money out of it. I don't exepect to still be receiving credit for software I've written in 50 years' time. Why should musicians expect this?

The real sting here (no pun intended) is that these people really don't need any more money. Successful pop stars can earn a shocking amount of money if they're clever enough. Can't they get a pension like everybody else?

Bloody Sky+

For the second time now, we've lost all our Sky+ recordings. Do we get any compensation? Do we buggery.

The first time was soon after we took up the service. Our Sky+ box was unable to record a programme whilst watching another, and any attempt to record two programmes simultaneously resulted in one failing. It transpired that one of the aerial inputs was not connecting properly, and the technician sent to resolve the problem ended up snapping off the wire in the socket. This meant that we had to have a replacement Sky+ box - and transferring our recordings was not an option.

Just the other day, we returned home from an evening out. We settled down to watch a recorded programme - to be told that there were no recorded programmes. The day before there was only 4% left - so we knew this was wrong. It quickly became apparent that our Sky+ box was acting as if we had no Sky+ subscription - we couldn't record anything or set reminders. Having spent half an hour on their 087 support number I was told that the only course of action was to to a "full system reset" - wiping the hard drive.

Now I know that the copyright rules mean that you're only allowed to "temporarily" keep programme recordings - but the kids are devastated. All the recent Dr Who episodes have been lost. A number of files we'd wanted to watch have been lost. Lost has been lost. It turns out they're "upgrading" the Sky+ boxes for the new "Sky Anytime" service. Some improvement.

All this comes during the end-of-warrantee phase where they're shassling us (three letters, now) to take up some £100/year extended warrantee. We're seriously considering jacking in the whole Sky thing and going Freeview.

Not a free country, any more

I realised yesterday what turns me off British politics. What I mean is I realised what really bugs me about those interested in British politics.

There's a class of people who are interested in, knowledgeable about and who have influence over British politics. They are always up to date with the latest initiatives, acts and gossip. They expand on every detail - extrapolating the effects of every twitch.

What they seem to miss, however, is the bigger picture. Our government seem dead set on doing away with our every civil liberty. They almost abolished parliament, for goodness' sake! We will soon be - of we are not already - living in a police state. I am saddened to say that I no longer believe we can honestly say that we live in a free country any more.

Meanwhile, the politicos concern themselves with who will be the next deputy Prime Minster - as if none of this mattered.

I despair.

ID cards - the official response

To paraphrase:

You want to scrap ID cards? No.
-- Tony

Anyone who is in any doubt that we live in a police state: read the second paragraph.

E-petition: Response from the Prime Minister

The e-petition to "scrap the proposed introduction of ID cards" has now closed. The petition stated that "The introduction of ID cards will not prevent terrorism or crime, as is claimed. It will be yet another indirect tax on all law-abiding citizens of the UK". This is a response from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The petition calling for the Government to abandon plans for a National ID Scheme attracted almost 28,000 signatures - one of the largest responses since this e-petition service was set up. So I thought I would reply personally to those who signed up, to explain why the Government believes National ID cards, and the National Identity Register needed to make them effective, will help make Britain a safer place.

The petition disputes the idea that ID cards will help reduce crime or terrorism. While I certainly accept that ID cards will not prevent all terrorist outrages or crime, I believe they will make an important contribution to making our borders more secure, countering fraud, and tackling international crime and terrorism. More importantly, this is also what our security services - who have the task of protecting this country - believe.

So I would like to explain why I think it would be foolish to ignore the opportunity to use biometrics such as fingerprints to secure our identities. I would also like to discuss some of the claims about costs - particularly the way the cost of an ID card is often inflated by including in estimates the cost of a biometric passport which, it seems certain, all those who want to travel abroad will soon need.

In contrast to these exaggerated figures, the real benefits for our country and its citizens from ID cards and the National Identity Register, which will contain less information on individuals than the data collected by the average store card, should be delivered for a cost of around £3 a year over its ten-year life.

But first, it's important to set out why we need to do more to secure our identities and how I believe ID cards will help. We live in a world in which people, money and information are more mobile than ever before. Terrorists and international criminal gangs increasingly exploit this to move undetected across borders and to disappear within countries. Terrorists routinely use multiple identities - up to 50 at a time. Indeed this is an essential part of the way they operate and is specifically taught at Al-Qaeda training camps. One in four criminals also uses a false identity. ID cards which contain biometric recognition details and which are linked to a National Identity Register will make this much more difficult.

Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing problem of identity fraud. This already costs £1.7 billion annually. There is no doubt that building yourself a new and false identity is all too easy at the moment. Forging an ID card and matching biometric record will be much harder.

I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

The National Identity Register will also help improve protection for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work, for example, with children. It should make it much more difficult, as has happened tragically in the past, for people to slip through the net.

Proper identity management and ID cards also have an important role to play in preventing illegal immigration and illegal working. The effectiveness on the new biometric technology is, in fact, already being seen. In trials using this technology on visa applications at just nine overseas posts, our officials have already uncovered 1,400 people trying illegally to get back into the UK.

Nor is Britain alone in believing that biometrics offer a massive opportunity to secure our identities. Firms across the world are already using fingerprint or iris recognition for their staff. France, Italy and Spain are among other European countries already planning to add biometrics to their ID cards. Over 50 countries across the world are developing biometric passports, and all EU countries are proposing to include fingerprint biometrics on their passports. The introduction in 2006 of British e-passports incorporating facial image biometrics has meant that British passport holders can continue to visit the United States without a visa. What the National Identity Scheme does is take this opportunity to ensure we maximise the benefits to the UK.

These then are the ways I believe ID cards can help cut crime and terrorism. I recognise that these arguments will not convince those who oppose a National Identity Scheme on civil liberty grounds. They will, I hope, be reassured by the strict safeguards now in place on the data held on the register and the right for each individual to check it. But I hope it might make those who believe ID cards will be ineffective reconsider their opposition.

If national ID cards do help us counter crime and terrorism, it is, of course, the law-abiding majority who will benefit and whose own liberties will be protected. This helps explain why, according to the recent authoritative Social Attitudes survey, the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards.

I am also convinced that there will also be other positive benefits. A national ID card system, for example, will prevent the need, as now, to take a whole range of documents to establish our identity. Over time, they will also help improve access to services.

The petition also talks about cost. It is true that individuals will have to pay a fee to meet the cost of their ID card in the same way, for example, as they now do for their passports. But I simply don't recognise most claims of the cost of ID cards. In many cases, these estimates deliberately exaggerate the cost of ID cards by adding in the cost of biometric passports. This is both unfair and inaccurate.

As I have said, it is clear that if we want to travel abroad, we will soon have no choice but to have a biometric passport. We estimate that the cost of biometric passports will account for 70% of the cost of the combined passports/id cards. The additional cost of the ID cards is expected to be less than £30 or £3 a year for their 10-year lifespan. Our aim is to ensure we also make the most of the benefits these biometric advances bring within our borders and in our everyday lives.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair

Nanny knows best

I should applaud the recent report which reinforces a ban on the use of mobile phones whilst driving. I've long held the belief that it is dangerously irresponsible. It is fine inasmuch as it highlights what is fairly obvious: that distraction reduces the ability to concentrate. This applies to holding a mobile phone conversation, eating, drinking (no, it took me a while to realise that "drinking and driving" didn't mean literally that) or listening to passengers.

That last one is where I start to have problems. Anyone with common sense will know that to drive safely, distractions should be kept to a minimum. Try carting four noisy children around when it's dark, pouring with rain and there are two other lanes of card doing the same thing.

My particular beef is that the report suggests that "whether your (sic) on your mobile phone or a hands free kit, you're four times more likely to have a crash". This may be true - what what sensible conclusion can be drawn from that? Surely, by inference, any conversation will also significantly increase the likelihood of a crash. Do they really expect everyone to travel in silence?

I've also held the belief (for even longer) that smoking whilst driving is dangerous, but I see no move toward banning that. I guess the tobacco lobby is as strong as ever.

I think a much more sensible approach is to educate and inform drivers that - when distraction is unavoidable - they should probably slow down, or stop. Certainly, when distracted, more care should be taken - as a courtesy to their passengers and other road users. DAMNIT! Now I'm starting to sound like Victor Meldrew.

Just use a bit of common sense, people!

The iPod: deskilling the nation

Long ago, when motoring was new, if you wanted to drive from London to Brighton you had to know how to fix the car if it broke down. And break down, it probably would - at some point. Witness the annual veteran car run.

More recently, manufacturers have improved reliability to the state where most owners never need to fix the car. And so they don't know how.

Recently, I tried to help my next door neighbour solve a problem with his new car. It didn't believe the tailgate was shutting - and so kept sounding the alarm. Keeping us awake - but that's not the point. The engine-bay was so neatly packaged that nothing could be examined without special tools. They obviously didn't expect - or even want - the owner to maintain the vehicle. As has happened with music and film, the buyer no longer owns the product. But that's a different rant - for another time.

My point here is that by making products inaccessible to the owner, and in less need of owner maintenance, we are in some ways worse off. Sure, the consumer will tell you that they want more reliable products; that they want to be able to use things without having to know how to fix them. Since when has the consumer really known what they want?

The iPod typifies this approach: a monobloc device, with pretty much a single button to operate it. Its runaway success was due to this neat packaging. It does exactly what is says on the tin - as that advert went. But: it's a disposable product. If (heaven forbid!) it goes wrong, it cannot be mended. Not by the owner, anyway.

My main problem with this is not the waste, or the advance in technology, but the dumbing-down of the people. These are just examples. There is a general trend; the same process can be seen in many walks of life. As a people we used to be capable and so able to adapt and survive. We are rapidly becoming slaves to our gadgets, and the worse off for it.

I'll just consult my PDA for my next meeting and .. argh! I can't find my phone. But I need to find out what's in my Google calendar. What'll I do now? I can't live like this ...

Celebrity Big Brother 5 Begins

Despite myself, I am already interested in the latest "reality TV" horror that is Celebrity Big Brother. Not hooked. Absolutely not. I could give it up any time ...

I was indifferent as the contestants were introduced one by one and descended into metaphoric hell.

Jermaine Jackson: not as big a name as his kid brother. Not quite sure how they persuaded him to go on the show.

Danielle LLoyd: 'nuff siad

Carole Malone: abhorrent attention-seeker, sold out in the name of more fame

Jo O'Meara: some interest here - on a musical and lecherous level; she was, after all, the one who could sing

Ken Russell: what the ...? Doing a Michel Winner, I suppose. Surely, he doesn't need publicity?

Shilpa Shetty: really disappointed by her vanity and self-centred image of the show

.. and then came Leo Sayer. Oh no! Now I'm going to have to watch it. He's gotta win, surely?

Donny Tourette: presumably someone at Endemol thought they were being really humorous here

Cleo Rocos: pleasantly surprised by how polite and put-together this icon was

Ian Watkins: who? Oh, yes. Greeted Jo like old mates - which I presume they were. Soul mates there, then

Dirk Benedict: no way! This guy really impresses me. He is so laid back, and doesn't appear to take stuff too seriously. Maybe Leo has a rival ...

So ... this wasn't supposed to be a run-down. I was going to rant about how pointless the whole charade is .. but it's too late. I'll no doubt moan about how much of my life I wasted watching it when it's all over ...

Happy New Year, 2007

A belated Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and any other festivities you have been celebrating.

I resisted the urge to create a list of favourite Christmassy songs before my self-awarded sabbatical. In its place, here's my Yuletide breakdown:

Presents

Several. All gratefully received. Some edible; one rather saucy; one which will soon be providing freshly brewed beer.

Alcohol

Plenty, though - curiously - not to excess. There's bottles left over to enjoy ...

New Year's Resolutions

None. I made one a while ago to never make New Year's Resolutions. I have, however, decided to subtly change the content of this blog.

Out

Song lyrics as blog post titles. This will, I know, reduce the hits on this blog .. but the "accidental" hits never read it anyway. I retain the right to include snippets of song lyrics and/or poetry as the urge takes me.

In

More opinion: release the inner grump. This was after all intended to be my Two Pennies Worth.

And we all like figgy pudding ...

so bring some out here

*But* are we going to like our Christmas Presents?

I hate shopping. Don't get me wrong: I like getting new things. I don't even mind the mad scramble in the shopping centres. It's not even the spending money that pains me so. It's the making decisions that really gets to me. I desperately struggle to avoid buying the wrong thing. Or, worse: I struggle to buy the right thing. (There is a difference.)

So: will he like this? Am I wasting my limited budget on buying something that will never get used? Will she think I'm being unnecessarily stingy if I don't buy that? The problem is, I always have this feeling that there's a really great gift out there, round the corner - if only I can remember where to get it.

I think I'd be happier going back to simpler times. Before all the retail lunacy, there was a warm-hearted glow about Christmas. Of course I wanted presents as a kid, but I don't remember the greed for bigger, better, more expensive that I see in kids today. Maybe it's that parental amnesia again. Maybe it's the orgy of advertising. Now I feel I'd prefer to give and receive a "little something" - to show love, respect and caring.

Still, little by little I accumulate a collection of things I feel will be well received. Just now, though, I'm a little light on things. And time. I'll keep looking. Thank goodness for on-line shopping!

Food, glorious food ...

Don't care what it looks like

Nutritionalists: Pah! A bunch of self-important bureaucrats if you ask me.

I've always thought that Arthur Marshall got it right: when being interviewed, he was asked to what he attributed his longevity. He said "I've always eaten what I like, when I like" - or something along those lines. Me too, mate.

So where do these people get off with their control-freakery? An where does all that gobbledegook come from? Polyunsaturated fats indeed! What the bugger is polyunsaturated fat? And do I want any? Why should I allow someone in a lab-coat - or, worse, in a suit - to tell me what I can and can't eat? I'll decide for myself, thanks.

I notice that food manufacturers (and I use that term carfully) are now in on the act. Cereal boxes are labelled with percentages of daily recommended intake for salt, saturated fat, calcium and so-on. I don't want to eat by numbers; is it just me? Personally, I would rather get my food the way nature intended. I don't want a carefully balanced, nutritionally-correct meal. Sure, I don't want to eat unhealthily either - but I'd rather let my body decide what is does and does not want. I'm a great believer in that. We are all animals at the end of the day^†. We are designed to self-regulate our diet. Surely you've noticed that when ill you feel like eating more fruit? It's not a coincidence, people.

I'll get off the soap-box, now. A final thought. (It'll only really make sense to a limited audience.) Those single-finger Twix bars: surely, they should be called "Unix"?

^† damn! Management-speak. Sorry.

It's one for you nineteen for me ...

Grrr. Now you know this isn't a political blog. OK, some recent posts are leaning that way, but ...

Today's headline is Motorists 'must pay for road use'. I'm sorry? I thought we already do. The fuel I buy is taxed - to the hilt (honest, no agricultural diesel for me!). I pay a road fund license - for each vehicle (regardless of the fact that I may only drive one at a time). Apparently, that's not paying for using the road though. Not paying enough ...

So: this plan of yon BA ex-chief's. Build more roads .. to encourage public transport use. Eh? What're the public supposed to do inbetween now and this supposed improvement in public transport? Oh, yes. Pay.

OK, better use of existing roads: Of course. I can't help thinking that the minor - untaxed - roads will become much busier. The motorways were supposed to take traffic away from the towns, not drive more traffic into them.

My recommendation would be to encourage public transport use first. Then improving the roads should be much easier.

Sometimes it's hard to be ...

I've got a sore-throat and a bit of a sniffle.

I hear a comment from over the partition from suited office-type female^†:
"Oh .. got 'man-flu', have you?"

Where did that bollocks come from? Man-flu. Pfff. I despair, I really do.

Now there was a time, granted, when the female of the species were not treated with respect in all situations. The "trot off the the kitchen, dear" brigade deserved their come-uppance. I do feel, however, that the pendulum has swung in the other direction - and it's time for it to swing back towards centre.

The media is, as usual, at the root of this evil. The hypocrytes who once - and in some cases still do - portray women as trophies or somehow second-class (though often great to look at) now go out of their way to poke fun at all that is male. It is now perfectly acceptable for television adverts to imply or even state categorically that to be male is to be unintelligent and crude. Granted, some men are - but if anyone suggests that a woman is somehow inferior to a man - though in specific cases she may well be - would cause outrage. In fact, even suggesting that women now have the upper hand would be greeted with derision. Women can now get away with all those things which men used to get away with. So ... how are they better? How is that an improvement on those ill-informed '70s?

But I'm straying from my point - which is how much I hate the phrase "man-flu". I hate it; I hate it; I hate it. It is so condescending, so disrespectful, so spiteful. And all this when the target is at a low ebb. Come, on women! Show you are better: instead sinking to the levels you decry, please come up with something better than "man-flu".

^† OK, it's a fair cop, this is arguably a derogatory description. The individual in question, however, deserves it.