To discover electricity and no obvious signs of break in.
With the death toll still rising and a vast number of people still without power I think it is a little early to start talking about investigations. However I'm almost certain the Breezy Point fire was arson. The primary objective was of course the contracts to redevelop the site. The secondary objective was to restart that very complicated and very real debate that's been going on at the fringes of the COP18/CMP8 process about whether or not Rihanna controls the weather. The fact that Republican representative Bob Turner's house was one of those destroyed was simple misdirection designed to increase votes for the Republican Party by making it look like Obama's Democrat camp were responsible. Personally I think we're looking at private money.
20:05 on 30/10/12.
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Er, Well Done Romney(!)
In the race to see who can most cynically exploit hurricane Sandy for political gain the out and out leader at the moment has got to be the Republicans Mitt Romney. For the last week or so he's been making recorded campaign calls to residents in the affected states urging them to evacuate. Today he held a relief drive in Ohio which looked suspiciously like a campaign rally. At the event he urged supporters to donate canned goods to the Red Cross in order to help those affected. The Red Cross have turned round and told people not to donate canned because they know exactly what's needed and how to get it so they would much prefer it if people donated money instead.
17:00 on 30/10/12.
17:00 on 30/10/12.
Cheeky Sandy
Just as everybody was waiting for the eye of hurricane Sandy to make landfall at around 00:00 GMT today the tropical cyclone that makes up the hurricane's eye suddenly collapsed meaning that it was technically no longer a hurricane. However this only meant that the hurricane had stopped sustaining itself so in practical terms this meant very little in terms of wind speeds on the ground. When it made landfall the storm brought with it a 4m (13ft) storm surge completely overwhelming flood defences putting most of Manhattan in New York under water. This flooding destroyed the power infrastructure blowing up electrical sub-stations, flowed into the subway system putting it out of action for at least the next 3-4 days and flooded the basement of the Tisch Hospital knocking out back-up generators forcing the hospital to be evacuated. In neighbouring New Jersey levees broke in Bergen County flooding the town of Moonachie. Levees were also breached in Connecticut leading to extensive flooding and forcing the the emergency services to rescue people in Greenwich and Bridgeport. The centre of the storm is now over Pennsylvania west of Philadelphia and heading towards Canada. Where Sandy has met the western snow front across West Virginia heavy snowfall of around 3-4 inches per hour are being reported. Miraculously only 15 deaths have so far being reported adding to 1 in Canada and the 67 killed as Sandy made it's way across the Caribbean. The main problem now in the US is that some 7 million homes are without power.
By way of offering their deepest sympathies Japan decided that this would be the perfect time to discover a World War 2 unexploded US shell at the Sendai airport which of course was badly damaged during the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Hopefully the decision to issue a warning for the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey was the US' way of conceding that their response to that disaster was less then helpful. Far more annoyingly (for me) Britain has decided to shut off the electricity to a few of the blocks around my home in the hope of engaging the US in a lenghty discussion about 'power restoration efforts.' On the plus side though apparently Chris Brown is about to cut a cheque to help out Queens - the standard tax for being a prat in a crisis.
13:30 on 30/10/12.
By way of offering their deepest sympathies Japan decided that this would be the perfect time to discover a World War 2 unexploded US shell at the Sendai airport which of course was badly damaged during the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Hopefully the decision to issue a warning for the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey was the US' way of conceding that their response to that disaster was less then helpful. Far more annoyingly (for me) Britain has decided to shut off the electricity to a few of the blocks around my home in the hope of engaging the US in a lenghty discussion about 'power restoration efforts.' On the plus side though apparently Chris Brown is about to cut a cheque to help out Queens - the standard tax for being a prat in a crisis.
13:30 on 30/10/12.
Monday 29 October 2012
The Very Definition of "Not Helping."
As you may have heard the eye of Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall in Southern New Jersey, USA at around 00:00 GMT (20:00ET) bringing with it sustained winds of 90mph. It will then meet a cold front bearing down from Canada which could well act as a blocking system keeping the hurricane over the most populated part of the US for the next three days. It will also be met by a snow storm from the west which is expected to dump 3-4 feet of snow per day over New York state, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. This has been dubbed a "Frankenstorm" because it's made up of all the ugly bits of several different storms.
While the US was preparing for all this the Captain of the HMS Bounty decided to sail his replica of a 18th century tall ship into the eye of the hurricane of the coast of North Carolina with predictable results. This forced the US Coastguard to fly two helicopters into the hurricane in order to rescue 14 of the 16 crew. Perhaps deservedly the ship has been destroyed and sunk with 2 crew still missing but to be frank there's got to be a point when the Coastguard just go; "F*ck 'em."
Now because I don't have anything more of use to contribute to the situation I'm going to take the opportunity to keep quiet and I suggest people living in the affected areas do the same because we are seriously talking about 7 to 10 days without power and it might be around the fifth day you suddenly discover that you really need to use your smartphone as a phone.
20:00 on 29/10/12.
While the US was preparing for all this the Captain of the HMS Bounty decided to sail his replica of a 18th century tall ship into the eye of the hurricane of the coast of North Carolina with predictable results. This forced the US Coastguard to fly two helicopters into the hurricane in order to rescue 14 of the 16 crew. Perhaps deservedly the ship has been destroyed and sunk with 2 crew still missing but to be frank there's got to be a point when the Coastguard just go; "F*ck 'em."
Now because I don't have anything more of use to contribute to the situation I'm going to take the opportunity to keep quiet and I suggest people living in the affected areas do the same because we are seriously talking about 7 to 10 days without power and it might be around the fifth day you suddenly discover that you really need to use your smartphone as a phone.
20:00 on 29/10/12.
Sunday 28 October 2012
The Para-Olympic Closing Ceremony: Vol 4, Act 9.
Obviously this should be read alongside vols 1,2 and 3 and yes I know it's been about a month since I published them. I'm actually looking at a 2013 completion date for this if at all. Sadly there's not a carefully constructed masterplan at work it's just a matter of me finding the time to write the bloody thing up.
Act 9.
Following the theme of time and the change in seasons this act represented the shift from autumn to winter. So while Coldplay performed "42" the lighting changed from the reds, yellows and browns of autumn to the blues and whites of winter. Centre stage was taken by ice figure skaters gliding around a female, single leg above knee amputee sitting in a gilded cage. Alongwith Strictly Come Dancing, X-Factor, I'm a Celebrity Get me out of Here and Celebrity Big Brother one of the big entertainment shows that marks winter on UK Television is ITV1's Dancing on Ice. In very much the same way that Strictly Come Dancing takes celebrities and teaches them to ballroom dance Dancing on Ice takes celebrities and teaches them to figure skate. So as with the ballroom dancers in act 8 the contrast between the able bodies figure skaters and the disabled "Snow Queen" in the cage was supposed to promote discussion about the possibility of allowing para-Olympians to make some money along side Olympians by appearing on celebrity TV shows. However I think this is less of a priority for Dancing on Ice because last time I checked figure is actually an Olympic sport so including Olympic champions on might be a little bit unfair on the other competitors and make for really dull TV. The title of the show is an intentional joke because in Britain when someone is pushing their luck they are said to be; "skating on thin ice" and celebrities rarely appear on this type of show at the peak of their careers. So the fact the able-bodied skaters were dressed up to look like British comedian Noel Fielding who shares his initials (NF) with the fascist National Front was Britain trying to give the impression that it will now be dismantling the fascist groups like the NF, the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) that they've been building up because being seen to support fascist groups is bad for Britain's reputation abroad. The way the Snow Queen finally left her gilded cage to join in the skating was meant to be a way to encourage support for cuts to disability benefits by showing that the disabled don't need to be kept in cages gilded by benefit payments because they can do things just as well as able bodied people (although they often can't and the Independent Living Fund needs to be reintroduced to assist them.)
The reference to Dancing on Ice was also an attempt to bring up that other major theme of the ceremony - my sex life. Although it's now presented by Christine Bleakley Dancing on Ice used to be presented by Holly Willougby who grew up close to Brighton. While I was living in Brighton (Hove actually) I did have a very short relationship with a girl - whose name I still can't remember despite appealing for witnesses - whose parents were vague friends with Holly Willoughby's parents. Unfortunately that girl - her given name was definitely Alice - turned out to be a right gold-digging b*tch. After parting ways with me she fully changed her identity (something which normally requires state help) and tried launching a career in the TV/media industry trading on my reputation. After several years of dealing with a series of women who could be this Alice the TV/media industry lashed out with the BBC and the US network HBO using the Valentine Wannop character in the recent co-production "Parades End" to give her more than a bit of a kicking. Further proving that Brighton's a really small place where everybody knows everybody elses' business the friend of mine who now works as a delivery driver once tried selling Holly Willoughby a house when he was doing an unofficial internship at a luxury property development firm. Although I wasn't there according he claims that she recognised him straight away but rather then acknowledging it put on a big performance of getting him to hold the ladder for her while she checked ceiling beams, attic spaces and such like basically
daring him to look up her skirt. As with that time the same 'friend' spectacularly screwed up my efforts to chat up Hannah Spearritt from the pop band "Sclub7" and now the ITV1 series "Primeval" various versions of the Holly Willoughby story get told pretty much every time we get drunk although they almost always seemed to end with the phrase; "But he only looked once and she's been pregnant ever since!" although her husband may want to dispute the connection between the two events.
Once the figure skaters had finished attention shifted to focus on dancers in full blue body paint performing a sort of tribal dance around a fire. This was a reference to various Norse, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon (Pagan is the generic term) festivals celebrating the winter solstice (December 21st - 23rd) which all generally centred around fire, feasting and another F. This is the reason why Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (Christmas) on December 25th as the newly converted Roman invaders tried to co-opt winter solstice celebrations in order to convert Pagans to Christianity in order to better control them as an early example of soft power. This is also why the date of Christ's death and resurrection (Easter) moves every year in relation to the spring equinox. The dancer blue body paint was a reference to the 2009 James Cameron film "Avatar" which I've still not seen. However I suspect that along with themes of environmentalism and colonialism another major film of the film is the use of so-called social avatars. This is a practice that began in the world of espionage but has recently begun to cross over into the worlds of business, politics and the industry part of the entertainment industry. It the tame end of the spectrum it is simply a way of solving the problem of one person not being able to be in two different places at the same time. So if there are two meetings schedule for the same time the person will go to one and send a well briefed and consenting person to the other in order to act as their avatar. This is something you see a lot in the US Presidential campaigns where often the candidate will be at some sort of campaign event while at the same time their campaign team will send an avatar to appear on Washington Journal and another avatar to Meet the Press while at the same time the candidates wife will be at another campaign event, the VP candidate will be at yet another campaign event while the wife of the VP candidate will be at yet another campaign event. However in US politics the preferred term is "Surrogate." In the world of espionage which represents the far more sinister end of the spectrum the avatar doesn't know that they're being used in that way and most certainly hasn't given their consent. For example the idea was that I would be used as the Brits avatar during the closing ceremony by drunkenly blurting out things like the "Daddy's Back!" comment which would have stirred up alot of anger in Egypt making it look like the Benghazi attack was simply the result of a spontaneous protest that was all my fault. Another example would be my grandmother's Court of Protection (COP) hearing when the emotionally charged nature of the case, the intimidating environment of the High Court, the lost paperwork and the constant delays were supposed to drive my father and brother into shouting rage forcing me to shout back and give away all my secrets in the process while my father and brother would have been left as clueless as they were angry. Of course neither of those examples actually happened so the Brits might want to have a serious think about whether they've got the talent to play me. Sadly though experience tells me they'll just go off and find a way to convince themselves that it will be different the next time.
The other reason for bringing up the Na'vi from Avatar at this point was to promote discussion about Rihanna's (who was presumably at that point nervously waiting to go on stage) Twitter use. For reasons that still make absolutely no sense to me Rihanna's Twitter fans are known as "The Navy." To further confuse matters someone has decided that this should be spelled "Navi." The reason why everybody is so interested in Rihanna's Twitter use is that with around 26 million followers she is considered one of the most influential people on social media beating out Kings, Queens and Presidents. With more and more marketing and advertising being done via social media and the Libyan and Syrian wars being started by western intelligence agencies using social media to spread made up (black) propaganda a lot of people are really keen to find out what Rihanna's secret is. Having studied it I don't actually think there is a Rihanna social media strategy that can be copied. Instead she simply uses Twitter in much the same way everybody else does - to talk to her friends when she's bored. The problem is that using Twitter in this way simply reveals to a large audience that annoyingly Rihanna is one of those people most people fall a little bit in love with. As a result she now has more friends some nations have populations. Of course the very natural way that Rihanna uses Twitter means that because she's going through a bit of a tough time at the moment she's being a bit quiet because there are some things you'll tell everyone, something's you'll only tell your closest friends and other things you won't ever tell anybody.
Of course because she uses Twitter pretty much like everybody else discussion about Rihanna's Twitter use also promotes discussion about how everybody else uses Twitter. As social media use grows this has become quite an important discussion because a psychologist would describe the practice of clicking onto social media when you're bored as a "displacement activity." Generally displacement activities are considered neutral (neither good nor bad) and in certain circumstances such as sitting in an evacuation centre waiting for a hurricane to hit displacement activity is actually encouraged. However there is a school of thought within psychology that by constantly displacing our boredom through TV, social media and video games we are destroying our imaginations and creativity. Some even go so far as to suggest we are actually changing the structure of our brains on an evolutionary level leading to an increase in the number of cases of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is also well established within the field of abnormal psychology (mental illness) that using displacement activities to avoid our emotional problems leads to those problems getting much worse. Combined with heavy marijuana use (which acts as a cognitive disassociate) and you really have a recipe for disaster. The reason this included during the winter phase of the ceremony was to act as a warning to Britain's youth because shall we just say that it's no accident the cannabis plant doesn't grow in the dark and in austerity Britain if you break there ain't no-one in Britain going to be prepared to fix you.
The act ended with Coldplay performing "Clocks" while the fire the dancers were dancing became a giant flaming ball of fire that rose up into the sky. This was to symbolise that while between the summer solstice and the winter solstice the sun appears to dip in the sky leading to shorter days between the winter solstice and the summer solstice the sun appears to rise leading to longer and brighter days.
00:30 on 29/10/12.
Act 9.
Following the theme of time and the change in seasons this act represented the shift from autumn to winter. So while Coldplay performed "42" the lighting changed from the reds, yellows and browns of autumn to the blues and whites of winter. Centre stage was taken by ice figure skaters gliding around a female, single leg above knee amputee sitting in a gilded cage. Alongwith Strictly Come Dancing, X-Factor, I'm a Celebrity Get me out of Here and Celebrity Big Brother one of the big entertainment shows that marks winter on UK Television is ITV1's Dancing on Ice. In very much the same way that Strictly Come Dancing takes celebrities and teaches them to ballroom dance Dancing on Ice takes celebrities and teaches them to figure skate. So as with the ballroom dancers in act 8 the contrast between the able bodies figure skaters and the disabled "Snow Queen" in the cage was supposed to promote discussion about the possibility of allowing para-Olympians to make some money along side Olympians by appearing on celebrity TV shows. However I think this is less of a priority for Dancing on Ice because last time I checked figure is actually an Olympic sport so including Olympic champions on might be a little bit unfair on the other competitors and make for really dull TV. The title of the show is an intentional joke because in Britain when someone is pushing their luck they are said to be; "skating on thin ice" and celebrities rarely appear on this type of show at the peak of their careers. So the fact the able-bodied skaters were dressed up to look like British comedian Noel Fielding who shares his initials (NF) with the fascist National Front was Britain trying to give the impression that it will now be dismantling the fascist groups like the NF, the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) that they've been building up because being seen to support fascist groups is bad for Britain's reputation abroad. The way the Snow Queen finally left her gilded cage to join in the skating was meant to be a way to encourage support for cuts to disability benefits by showing that the disabled don't need to be kept in cages gilded by benefit payments because they can do things just as well as able bodied people (although they often can't and the Independent Living Fund needs to be reintroduced to assist them.)
The reference to Dancing on Ice was also an attempt to bring up that other major theme of the ceremony - my sex life. Although it's now presented by Christine Bleakley Dancing on Ice used to be presented by Holly Willougby who grew up close to Brighton. While I was living in Brighton (Hove actually) I did have a very short relationship with a girl - whose name I still can't remember despite appealing for witnesses - whose parents were vague friends with Holly Willoughby's parents. Unfortunately that girl - her given name was definitely Alice - turned out to be a right gold-digging b*tch. After parting ways with me she fully changed her identity (something which normally requires state help) and tried launching a career in the TV/media industry trading on my reputation. After several years of dealing with a series of women who could be this Alice the TV/media industry lashed out with the BBC and the US network HBO using the Valentine Wannop character in the recent co-production "Parades End" to give her more than a bit of a kicking. Further proving that Brighton's a really small place where everybody knows everybody elses' business the friend of mine who now works as a delivery driver once tried selling Holly Willoughby a house when he was doing an unofficial internship at a luxury property development firm. Although I wasn't there according he claims that she recognised him straight away but rather then acknowledging it put on a big performance of getting him to hold the ladder for her while she checked ceiling beams, attic spaces and such like basically
daring him to look up her skirt. As with that time the same 'friend' spectacularly screwed up my efforts to chat up Hannah Spearritt from the pop band "Sclub7" and now the ITV1 series "Primeval" various versions of the Holly Willoughby story get told pretty much every time we get drunk although they almost always seemed to end with the phrase; "But he only looked once and she's been pregnant ever since!" although her husband may want to dispute the connection between the two events.
Once the figure skaters had finished attention shifted to focus on dancers in full blue body paint performing a sort of tribal dance around a fire. This was a reference to various Norse, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon (Pagan is the generic term) festivals celebrating the winter solstice (December 21st - 23rd) which all generally centred around fire, feasting and another F. This is the reason why Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (Christmas) on December 25th as the newly converted Roman invaders tried to co-opt winter solstice celebrations in order to convert Pagans to Christianity in order to better control them as an early example of soft power. This is also why the date of Christ's death and resurrection (Easter) moves every year in relation to the spring equinox. The dancer blue body paint was a reference to the 2009 James Cameron film "Avatar" which I've still not seen. However I suspect that along with themes of environmentalism and colonialism another major film of the film is the use of so-called social avatars. This is a practice that began in the world of espionage but has recently begun to cross over into the worlds of business, politics and the industry part of the entertainment industry. It the tame end of the spectrum it is simply a way of solving the problem of one person not being able to be in two different places at the same time. So if there are two meetings schedule for the same time the person will go to one and send a well briefed and consenting person to the other in order to act as their avatar. This is something you see a lot in the US Presidential campaigns where often the candidate will be at some sort of campaign event while at the same time their campaign team will send an avatar to appear on Washington Journal and another avatar to Meet the Press while at the same time the candidates wife will be at another campaign event, the VP candidate will be at yet another campaign event while the wife of the VP candidate will be at yet another campaign event. However in US politics the preferred term is "Surrogate." In the world of espionage which represents the far more sinister end of the spectrum the avatar doesn't know that they're being used in that way and most certainly hasn't given their consent. For example the idea was that I would be used as the Brits avatar during the closing ceremony by drunkenly blurting out things like the "Daddy's Back!" comment which would have stirred up alot of anger in Egypt making it look like the Benghazi attack was simply the result of a spontaneous protest that was all my fault. Another example would be my grandmother's Court of Protection (COP) hearing when the emotionally charged nature of the case, the intimidating environment of the High Court, the lost paperwork and the constant delays were supposed to drive my father and brother into shouting rage forcing me to shout back and give away all my secrets in the process while my father and brother would have been left as clueless as they were angry. Of course neither of those examples actually happened so the Brits might want to have a serious think about whether they've got the talent to play me. Sadly though experience tells me they'll just go off and find a way to convince themselves that it will be different the next time.
The other reason for bringing up the Na'vi from Avatar at this point was to promote discussion about Rihanna's (who was presumably at that point nervously waiting to go on stage) Twitter use. For reasons that still make absolutely no sense to me Rihanna's Twitter fans are known as "The Navy." To further confuse matters someone has decided that this should be spelled "Navi." The reason why everybody is so interested in Rihanna's Twitter use is that with around 26 million followers she is considered one of the most influential people on social media beating out Kings, Queens and Presidents. With more and more marketing and advertising being done via social media and the Libyan and Syrian wars being started by western intelligence agencies using social media to spread made up (black) propaganda a lot of people are really keen to find out what Rihanna's secret is. Having studied it I don't actually think there is a Rihanna social media strategy that can be copied. Instead she simply uses Twitter in much the same way everybody else does - to talk to her friends when she's bored. The problem is that using Twitter in this way simply reveals to a large audience that annoyingly Rihanna is one of those people most people fall a little bit in love with. As a result she now has more friends some nations have populations. Of course the very natural way that Rihanna uses Twitter means that because she's going through a bit of a tough time at the moment she's being a bit quiet because there are some things you'll tell everyone, something's you'll only tell your closest friends and other things you won't ever tell anybody.
Of course because she uses Twitter pretty much like everybody else discussion about Rihanna's Twitter use also promotes discussion about how everybody else uses Twitter. As social media use grows this has become quite an important discussion because a psychologist would describe the practice of clicking onto social media when you're bored as a "displacement activity." Generally displacement activities are considered neutral (neither good nor bad) and in certain circumstances such as sitting in an evacuation centre waiting for a hurricane to hit displacement activity is actually encouraged. However there is a school of thought within psychology that by constantly displacing our boredom through TV, social media and video games we are destroying our imaginations and creativity. Some even go so far as to suggest we are actually changing the structure of our brains on an evolutionary level leading to an increase in the number of cases of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is also well established within the field of abnormal psychology (mental illness) that using displacement activities to avoid our emotional problems leads to those problems getting much worse. Combined with heavy marijuana use (which acts as a cognitive disassociate) and you really have a recipe for disaster. The reason this included during the winter phase of the ceremony was to act as a warning to Britain's youth because shall we just say that it's no accident the cannabis plant doesn't grow in the dark and in austerity Britain if you break there ain't no-one in Britain going to be prepared to fix you.
The act ended with Coldplay performing "Clocks" while the fire the dancers were dancing became a giant flaming ball of fire that rose up into the sky. This was to symbolise that while between the summer solstice and the winter solstice the sun appears to dip in the sky leading to shorter days between the winter solstice and the summer solstice the sun appears to rise leading to longer and brighter days.
00:30 on 29/10/12.
So Did You Feel the Earth Move?
At around 04:00 GMT today (28/10/12) a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck 139km (81m) off the coast of the town of Masset in the Canadian province of British Columbia. As you only get around 4-5 earthquakes of this magnitude anywhere in the world in a year and because the epicentre was in the sea this earthquake triggered tsunami warnings across the US state of Alaska, the Canadian province of British Columbia and down through the US states of Oregon, Washington and California. The area considered most at risk though was the US island of Hawaii where thousands were evacuated amid fears of tsunami waves of between 3 and 7 feet which would be enough to cause significant flooding in coastal areas. Fortunately as the earthquake was caused by tectonic plates sliding against each other rather then over and under each other the largest wave reported in Hawaii was around 6ft and was well handled by flood defences meaning that the tsunami warning has now been lifted.
In the meantime the east coast of the US is preparing for hurricane Sandy to meet a northern storm front creating a super-storm over most of the eastern seaboard as early as tomorrow. So it's almost as if the environment is insisting that it's on the agenda for the 2012 election.
12:20 on 29/10/12.
In the meantime the east coast of the US is preparing for hurricane Sandy to meet a northern storm front creating a super-storm over most of the eastern seaboard as early as tomorrow. So it's almost as if the environment is insisting that it's on the agenda for the 2012 election.
12:20 on 29/10/12.
Saturday 27 October 2012
I Have Been Summoned.
That summoned not summonsed. Basically I've got to attend another one of those niggly interviews with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) where they go; "Have you been spontaneously cured?" I go; "No" and they go; "See you in six months." What's interesting about it is the date. It will take place on November 7th 2012 (7/11/12) at 10:30 GMT which about 05:30 ET or 02:30 PT. Or to put it another way exactly as the results of the US Presidential election are coming out. It's almost as if the Brits expect the Republicans to be having a tough time explaining Romney's victory and want me out of the way.
Oh and if you live in the eastern USA you really need to be paying attention to this hurricane Sandy.
23:25 on 27/10/12.
Oh and if you live in the eastern USA you really need to be paying attention to this hurricane Sandy.
23:25 on 27/10/12.
Oh That's a Bad Sign.
Basically I has some unfinished business with the friend I went to Brighton to see last Saturday so today he came up to Croydon and we spent a couple of hours sitting in the pub talking b*llocks. The problem was that I was feeling so rough I spent the whole time sitting there thinking I really wanted to be eating healthy food and going for a walk in the park to escape the stale beer. Then of course the fresh beer kicked in so we went to the soon to be closed down cocktail bar where are the staff were clearly really, really stoned so now I feel sleepy by association.
18:55 on 27/10/12.
18:55 on 27/10/12.
Friday 26 October 2012
It's Like Teaching Pre-School.
For now my Blackberry is up and running on the O2 network. It's almost as if someone in the CIA has explained very, very slowly to someone in MI6 whose then gone and explained even more slowly to someone in MI5 that there's no point in the Yanks putting pressure in my Twitter wife if I can't use Twitter and then they won't be able to use the convoluted picture codes to spread confusion at the COP18/CMP8. Of course the fact the Republicans already seem to be assuming they've won the upcoming election is a little worrying.
14:20 on 26/10/12
14:20 on 26/10/12
So Very Cold.
I've actually been up for about the last two and a half hours. Unfortunately I spent the first two of those trying to figure out a way of getting fully dressed before getting out of bed. And this is still considered British Summer Time. In other news my Blackberry's still not working. Well I say 'not working' it's still performing it's bugging and tracking functions perfectly.
10:05 on 26/10/12.
10:05 on 26/10/12.
Thursday 25 October 2012
Well Someone's Been Having a Bad Day.
Although I've sorted out my Blackberry account with balances up to date and service restored my Torch handset still won't connect to the Internet. The Storm will but the touchscreen calibration keeps going all over the place when it's got a SIM. Basically I think someone was hoping I'd be having a really stressful Thursday which hasn't materialised and this is the best they've got.
22:50 on 25/10/12.
22:50 on 25/10/12.
This isn't Going to Win Me Any Sympathy Votes.
Basically Blackberry have come around to my way of thinking and agreed that the price I should pay for using their network is me using their network. Unfortunately my cell provider O2 doesn't see it this way and is rather childishly withholding the security certificate preventing my handset connecting to the Blackberry network. It's hardly O2's fault though because they're coming under a lot of pressure from the Brits to force me onto Vodaphone because due to their very low tax bill the Brits find it much easier to police access to the Vodaphone network or the Three network which is why Three have been given priority to the new 4G wireless Internet services.
13:10 on 25/10/12.
13:10 on 25/10/12.
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Cynical Move From Richard Mourdock
In case you're not familiar with Richard Mourdock he is a candidate for the US federal senate in Indiana from the Tea Party fringe of the Republican party. On Tuesday (23/10/12) in a debate with his Democrat opponent he was asked about his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest and responded by saying; "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life
is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible
situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." which obviously caused quite a bit of controversy. Believe it or not this was actually a reference to the Chris Brown/Rihanna saga which is now such a large issue in the 2012 US Election I think pollsters are going to have to start asking voters their opinion on it. As this is now pretty much in the public domain I suppose I should tell you the full story of Rihanna, Chris Brown and the Presidential debates.
Basically just before the first debate Rihanna and Chris Brown very publicly had sex in a nightclub toilet sparking rumours that they were getting back together as a couple. Just before the third debate Rihanna and Chris Brown were photographed (and filmed in really boring video) together at a nightclub further fuelling rumours of a controversial reunion. It was what happened on the day of the second debate that was really nasty though when a carefully crafted rumour started to circulate that the toilet tryst had left Rihanna pregnant with Chris Brown's baby and the pair were going to get married. Now while I'm more then certain that the people who've been running the Chris Brown/Rihanna saga will take metaphor that far I'm about 97% sure that this isn't true. However the beauty of the rumour was that it came out within the margin of error for a standard pregnancy test meaning that not even Rihanna herself could deny it with 100% certainty. This rumour was designed to give political strategists from both of the parties headaches. It was a nightmare for the Democrats because most of them view Brown as a violent and dangerous personality type making any woman he impregnates the ultimate argument for abortion. It was also a nightmare for the Republicans because while most of them view Brown as a violent and dangerous personality type many of the religious fringe of the party would have considered the pregnancy as the ultimate argument against abortion viewing it as a gift from God with the responsibility of fatherhood being the ultimate way to reform Brown. Having seen how much love Rihanna clearly has for Brown (along with most other people) a large part of me genuinely wishes that this were true. Sadly though all my experience and all of the research has taught me that is simply not the case so if Brown and Rihanna were to reunite it would only be a matter of time before he again beats her half to death or worse. This is why spies find women (and to a lesser extent men) in abusive relationships so useful as intelligence assets because the fact they live in constant fear means that they have a constant need to be protected and that need is easy to exploit.
So in making his comments Mourdock was hoping that it would reconfirm his support amongst his base that won him the nomination while at the same time making it look to undecided, moderate voters that he was trying promote debate about the viewpoint in order to challenge some of the stranger views held by the fringe of his party.
Elsewhere in the Rihanna/Chris Brown saga which having passed through the Olympics, Britain, the USA and Azerbaijan is now a truly international event Pakistan have announced they have made arrests in the shooting of 11 year old Malala Yousufzai. Apart from those previously mentioned the main reason why Britain had Malala shot was so they could bring her to hospital in the UK and use her as a metaphor for the 'Rehabilitation of Rihanna' operation they're trying (rather unsuccessfully) to run because as you may have noticed from the Jimmy Savile saga when it comes to men with violent and dangerous personality types the Brits first reaction is to blame the victim. So by saying they arrested someone for shooting Malala the Pakistanis are really saying they've unidentified the people within US intelligence who are running the Rihanna/Chris Brown saga. Although they're clearly bluffing this has obviously prompted a denial from the US with today's shooting and killing of one man at Creflo Dollar's megachurch in Georgia. As Dollar's World Changers International Church has a predominately black congregation following the previously unheard of in Christianity "Prosperity Gospel" the idea was to shift blame for the operation on Rihanna's mentor Jay-Z using Rihanna's penchant for Bible versus.
The real work in building denability for the operation while come tomorrow when the US owned Ford motor company will announce that it is closing it's Transit van factory in Southampton, UK. The idea is to portray Rihanna's close friend Melissa Forde as her handler who is running the operation on behalf of Jay-Z. Although Ms Forde is entirely responsible for the Kate Moss screw-up she was only acting as an unwitting avatar for US intelligence. The intention of this is to use the relationship between Rihanna and Forde as a metaphor for the relationship with another Pieces with a touch of the Hepburns about her I used to know and her friend who may or may not have been raped by some Vile South Africans. Being used as a metaphor for what is actually quite a dark story will pile stress on the relationship between Rihanna and Forde in order to further isolate Rihanna from support structures.
20:40 on 24/10/12.
Basically just before the first debate Rihanna and Chris Brown very publicly had sex in a nightclub toilet sparking rumours that they were getting back together as a couple. Just before the third debate Rihanna and Chris Brown were photographed (and filmed in really boring video) together at a nightclub further fuelling rumours of a controversial reunion. It was what happened on the day of the second debate that was really nasty though when a carefully crafted rumour started to circulate that the toilet tryst had left Rihanna pregnant with Chris Brown's baby and the pair were going to get married. Now while I'm more then certain that the people who've been running the Chris Brown/Rihanna saga will take metaphor that far I'm about 97% sure that this isn't true. However the beauty of the rumour was that it came out within the margin of error for a standard pregnancy test meaning that not even Rihanna herself could deny it with 100% certainty. This rumour was designed to give political strategists from both of the parties headaches. It was a nightmare for the Democrats because most of them view Brown as a violent and dangerous personality type making any woman he impregnates the ultimate argument for abortion. It was also a nightmare for the Republicans because while most of them view Brown as a violent and dangerous personality type many of the religious fringe of the party would have considered the pregnancy as the ultimate argument against abortion viewing it as a gift from God with the responsibility of fatherhood being the ultimate way to reform Brown. Having seen how much love Rihanna clearly has for Brown (along with most other people) a large part of me genuinely wishes that this were true. Sadly though all my experience and all of the research has taught me that is simply not the case so if Brown and Rihanna were to reunite it would only be a matter of time before he again beats her half to death or worse. This is why spies find women (and to a lesser extent men) in abusive relationships so useful as intelligence assets because the fact they live in constant fear means that they have a constant need to be protected and that need is easy to exploit.
So in making his comments Mourdock was hoping that it would reconfirm his support amongst his base that won him the nomination while at the same time making it look to undecided, moderate voters that he was trying promote debate about the viewpoint in order to challenge some of the stranger views held by the fringe of his party.
Elsewhere in the Rihanna/Chris Brown saga which having passed through the Olympics, Britain, the USA and Azerbaijan is now a truly international event Pakistan have announced they have made arrests in the shooting of 11 year old Malala Yousufzai. Apart from those previously mentioned the main reason why Britain had Malala shot was so they could bring her to hospital in the UK and use her as a metaphor for the 'Rehabilitation of Rihanna' operation they're trying (rather unsuccessfully) to run because as you may have noticed from the Jimmy Savile saga when it comes to men with violent and dangerous personality types the Brits first reaction is to blame the victim. So by saying they arrested someone for shooting Malala the Pakistanis are really saying they've unidentified the people within US intelligence who are running the Rihanna/Chris Brown saga. Although they're clearly bluffing this has obviously prompted a denial from the US with today's shooting and killing of one man at Creflo Dollar's megachurch in Georgia. As Dollar's World Changers International Church has a predominately black congregation following the previously unheard of in Christianity "Prosperity Gospel" the idea was to shift blame for the operation on Rihanna's mentor Jay-Z using Rihanna's penchant for Bible versus.
The real work in building denability for the operation while come tomorrow when the US owned Ford motor company will announce that it is closing it's Transit van factory in Southampton, UK. The idea is to portray Rihanna's close friend Melissa Forde as her handler who is running the operation on behalf of Jay-Z. Although Ms Forde is entirely responsible for the Kate Moss screw-up she was only acting as an unwitting avatar for US intelligence. The intention of this is to use the relationship between Rihanna and Forde as a metaphor for the relationship with another Pieces with a touch of the Hepburns about her I used to know and her friend who may or may not have been raped by some Vile South Africans. Being used as a metaphor for what is actually quite a dark story will pile stress on the relationship between Rihanna and Forde in order to further isolate Rihanna from support structures.
20:40 on 24/10/12.
Tuesday 23 October 2012
Yep Romney Got Bitch Slapped.
Yes that's right. About six hours ago I finished watching the third and final (Praise the Lord!) US Presidential debate here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAJiovQZcZ8
Unfortunately about six hours before that I pretty much gave away last night's third US Presidential debate here on my blog; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/so-did-romney-steer-clear-of-libya.html
So now I'm contractually obligated to go and update my Twitter here; @Sovereignaka.
More words will appear here later (hopefully)
22:30 on 23/10/12
Edited at around 22:40 on 23/10/12 to add:
Yeah basically what I think I need to do is; Calm down. Go to bed. Write a proper version. Redact a proper version. Publish it. In the mean time have you seen this; @Sovereignaka - It's a little f*cking ninja!
22:45 on 23/10/12.
Edited at around 23:00 on 23/10/12 to add:
so yeah earlier I wrote;
"In the hours leading up to the debate US intelligence sources confirmed that the second building attacked in the September 11th (11/9/12) attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in fact a CIA operations centre. This is something everybody in the business already knew and is hardly that controversial. For example I could tell you the location of the CIA operations centre attached to the US Embassy in London but that would just needlessly p*ss people off. The reason for the announcement was to confirm that US intelligence (CIA is the generic term) have been running the Chris Brown/Rihanna reunion as a way to discredit me in the run up to the Presidential election in order to help Romney win. The reason why this acknowledgement has become necessary is because no-one in the business can believe that Brown's probation officer hasn't intervened by this point and other factions within the US community have had some pretty strong stuff to say on the subject. The idea of tying all this to the Libya issue was to make Libya so toxic for Romney that he would stay away and avoid dragging his clunking fists over what is still a delicate and unstable situation."
So anyway the opening question of the debate was on Libya. Clearly annoyed by the prior warning Romney quickly shifted the subject onto Al Qaeda's advance into northern Mali (roughly the same size as France). However Romney was clearly so upset he kept pronouncing "Mali" as if it sounded like "Mollie" - a line from Rihanna's current hit "Diamonds." "Mollie" is of course a coded reference to drugs however as always with coded references in the USA 'Mollie' is a completely different drug (marijuana) to what it is in the EU (MDMA). If you want further clarity I would like to refer you to Rihanna but sadly she doesn't even write her own stuff. The purpose of Romney's mis-pronunciation was of course to provoke a reaction out of Obama. However Obama was too cool to rise to the bait and instead went into a lenghty monologue about how he'd killed Osama bin Laden. I know this sounds like a cheap trick but with last years war in Libya still very much going on (I believe I said something about Bani Walid not being properly captured - I'll need to check my notes) the last thing you'd want is the US President going to the mat on live, international TV about what exactly is wrong with Libya. So I'm scoring that to Obama. Romney didn't do that badly though because it was at about this point the French (Ok possibly not all of them) panicked and announced they're sending Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV/'drones') to west Africa in protest about Britain's recent purchase of a whole squadron of unarmed (Predator?!) drones which they'll be operating out of somewhere in the British countryside.
Yep one paragraph at a time at the moment. 23:20 on 23/10/12.
Edited at around 23:50 on 23/10/12 to add:
Both of the Mollies, none of the Moonshine but apparently I'm back and that's the important thing.
Following the exchange about Libya the conversation moved onto Syria and Lebanon specifically last Friday's (19/10/12) car bombing. Romney responded to this by generally shouting words like; "INTELLIGENCE SOURCES!" "ASSAD, HEZBOLLAH" [not] "THE SAME THING!" and "ISRAEL!" Obama more or less kept his cool. Really this showed the difference between getting daily intelligence briefings and not getting daily intelligence briefings. Of course the fact that while my Twitter wife was doing a Testino photoshoot with Kate Moss I was being forced to re-enact (in front of the UNGA) that time in 2006 I turned up at the Syria's London Embassy and starting bossing Hezbollah about does show the difference between receiving daily intelligence briefings and being able to read and understand daily intelligence breifings. So again I'm scoring that to Obama. Sensibly both candidates then started talking about US domestic policy.
Eventually Obama rather skillfully turned this conversation about the US' role in the world (rebuild it's economy apparently) to a discussion about Romney's economic plan (increase the debt by USD 5 trillion) and the Republicans in Congress' plan to drive the USA off a fiscal cliff. Again this made Romney angry so he gave a full two minutes on the size of the Navy. For those of you who do not know for reasons that are not eaxctly clear Rihanna's fans are apparently known as "The Navy" so this was another attempt to provoke a reaction out of Obama. Again Obama was too cool for that and instead pointed out that while the US Navy has fewer ships then it had in 1917 it also has fewer horses and bayonets however I think he weakened his position somewhat by then going on to talk about "ships that sail underwater, er submarines?!" and I don't think the claim about bayonets is strictly speaking true. So while I think Obama 'zinger' was clearly pre-scripted Romney walked straight into the trap and in doing so proved he will be a major f*cking liability in foreign policy because setting traps for each other is a major part of what is euphemistically known as 'international diplomacy.'
Then Romney accused Obama of being the worst 'actor' got slapped down by the moderator and eventually apologised for wasting the President's time by threatening to label China as a currency manipulator. So while this debate didn't contain any stand out moments like Romney's "Binders full of women" or that moment in the second debate where both Obama and the (slightly biased) moderator both noticeably backed off Romney because they thought he was about to burst into tears I think it was a good performance all round. Now I'm going to be off trying to find a way to convince the Chinese they should hold more leadership debates.
As for the Twitter wife apparently she's taking £5million (USD 8million) off the guys (Westfield) who are giving Whitgift (Jimmy Savile) £1bn (USD 1.6 billion) so she can turn on Stratford's Christmas lights slap bang in the middle of the COP18/CMP8 while all I'll get is a very interesting conversation with a psychiatrist. So sadly I don't think I can afford a divorce. After all in the music business all a million dollar contract only normally means is you'll get a million and two people to help you spend it.
00:40 on 24/10/12.
Unfortunately about six hours before that I pretty much gave away last night's third US Presidential debate here on my blog; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/so-did-romney-steer-clear-of-libya.html
So now I'm contractually obligated to go and update my Twitter here; @Sovereignaka.
More words will appear here later (hopefully)
22:30 on 23/10/12
Edited at around 22:40 on 23/10/12 to add:
Yeah basically what I think I need to do is; Calm down. Go to bed. Write a proper version. Redact a proper version. Publish it. In the mean time have you seen this; @Sovereignaka - It's a little f*cking ninja!
22:45 on 23/10/12.
Edited at around 23:00 on 23/10/12 to add:
so yeah earlier I wrote;
"In the hours leading up to the debate US intelligence sources confirmed that the second building attacked in the September 11th (11/9/12) attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in fact a CIA operations centre. This is something everybody in the business already knew and is hardly that controversial. For example I could tell you the location of the CIA operations centre attached to the US Embassy in London but that would just needlessly p*ss people off. The reason for the announcement was to confirm that US intelligence (CIA is the generic term) have been running the Chris Brown/Rihanna reunion as a way to discredit me in the run up to the Presidential election in order to help Romney win. The reason why this acknowledgement has become necessary is because no-one in the business can believe that Brown's probation officer hasn't intervened by this point and other factions within the US community have had some pretty strong stuff to say on the subject. The idea of tying all this to the Libya issue was to make Libya so toxic for Romney that he would stay away and avoid dragging his clunking fists over what is still a delicate and unstable situation."
So anyway the opening question of the debate was on Libya. Clearly annoyed by the prior warning Romney quickly shifted the subject onto Al Qaeda's advance into northern Mali (roughly the same size as France). However Romney was clearly so upset he kept pronouncing "Mali" as if it sounded like "Mollie" - a line from Rihanna's current hit "Diamonds." "Mollie" is of course a coded reference to drugs however as always with coded references in the USA 'Mollie' is a completely different drug (marijuana) to what it is in the EU (MDMA). If you want further clarity I would like to refer you to Rihanna but sadly she doesn't even write her own stuff. The purpose of Romney's mis-pronunciation was of course to provoke a reaction out of Obama. However Obama was too cool to rise to the bait and instead went into a lenghty monologue about how he'd killed Osama bin Laden. I know this sounds like a cheap trick but with last years war in Libya still very much going on (I believe I said something about Bani Walid not being properly captured - I'll need to check my notes) the last thing you'd want is the US President going to the mat on live, international TV about what exactly is wrong with Libya. So I'm scoring that to Obama. Romney didn't do that badly though because it was at about this point the French (Ok possibly not all of them) panicked and announced they're sending Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV/'drones') to west Africa in protest about Britain's recent purchase of a whole squadron of unarmed (Predator?!) drones which they'll be operating out of somewhere in the British countryside.
Yep one paragraph at a time at the moment. 23:20 on 23/10/12.
Edited at around 23:50 on 23/10/12 to add:
Both of the Mollies, none of the Moonshine but apparently I'm back and that's the important thing.
Following the exchange about Libya the conversation moved onto Syria and Lebanon specifically last Friday's (19/10/12) car bombing. Romney responded to this by generally shouting words like; "INTELLIGENCE SOURCES!" "ASSAD, HEZBOLLAH" [not] "THE SAME THING!" and "ISRAEL!" Obama more or less kept his cool. Really this showed the difference between getting daily intelligence briefings and not getting daily intelligence briefings. Of course the fact that while my Twitter wife was doing a Testino photoshoot with Kate Moss I was being forced to re-enact (in front of the UNGA) that time in 2006 I turned up at the Syria's London Embassy and starting bossing Hezbollah about does show the difference between receiving daily intelligence briefings and being able to read and understand daily intelligence breifings. So again I'm scoring that to Obama. Sensibly both candidates then started talking about US domestic policy.
Eventually Obama rather skillfully turned this conversation about the US' role in the world (rebuild it's economy apparently) to a discussion about Romney's economic plan (increase the debt by USD 5 trillion) and the Republicans in Congress' plan to drive the USA off a fiscal cliff. Again this made Romney angry so he gave a full two minutes on the size of the Navy. For those of you who do not know for reasons that are not eaxctly clear Rihanna's fans are apparently known as "The Navy" so this was another attempt to provoke a reaction out of Obama. Again Obama was too cool for that and instead pointed out that while the US Navy has fewer ships then it had in 1917 it also has fewer horses and bayonets however I think he weakened his position somewhat by then going on to talk about "ships that sail underwater, er submarines?!" and I don't think the claim about bayonets is strictly speaking true. So while I think Obama 'zinger' was clearly pre-scripted Romney walked straight into the trap and in doing so proved he will be a major f*cking liability in foreign policy because setting traps for each other is a major part of what is euphemistically known as 'international diplomacy.'
Then Romney accused Obama of being the worst 'actor' got slapped down by the moderator and eventually apologised for wasting the President's time by threatening to label China as a currency manipulator. So while this debate didn't contain any stand out moments like Romney's "Binders full of women" or that moment in the second debate where both Obama and the (slightly biased) moderator both noticeably backed off Romney because they thought he was about to burst into tears I think it was a good performance all round. Now I'm going to be off trying to find a way to convince the Chinese they should hold more leadership debates.
As for the Twitter wife apparently she's taking £5million (USD 8million) off the guys (Westfield) who are giving Whitgift (Jimmy Savile) £1bn (USD 1.6 billion) so she can turn on Stratford's Christmas lights slap bang in the middle of the COP18/CMP8 while all I'll get is a very interesting conversation with a psychiatrist. So sadly I don't think I can afford a divorce. After all in the music business all a million dollar contract only normally means is you'll get a million and two people to help you spend it.
00:40 on 24/10/12.
Yeah it Was a Bit of a C*nt for FIFA Really.
Basically fired up by the latest war crimes trial and the need to win at least 1-0 in order to qualify fans of Serbia's under-21's spent the entire duration of the game against England's under-21's last Tuesday (10/10/12) being spectacularly, deeply and offensively racist. To make matters worse in the 94th minute the Serbian keeper came up for a corner and made a fool of himself by allowing England to score 1-0 putting Serbia out of the competition. This prompted the Serbian team to try and kick the sh*t out of any and all of the England team. As a result I now firmly believe that Serbia's under-21's should be expelled from the competition but sadly because their p*ss-poor performance has already put them out of the competition all this sanction will mean is that FIFA would be forced to recalculate the final group standings amid much argument.
Still absolutely no problem with changing the official record to show that Poland forfeited the adult game 2-0 though.
20:45 on 23/10/12.
Still absolutely no problem with changing the official record to show that Poland forfeited the adult game 2-0 though.
20:45 on 23/10/12.
I Have Returned in Spectacular Drunken Fashion.
Basically being a twat my little brother couldn't turn up a the pub at the agreed 18:00 and insisted on pushing us back to 18:15. Then as my father and I arrived in the pub my little brother texted (sms) to announce that he would then be arriving at around 18:30 due to trains. This of course forced me to drink a pint. If you want to know the details of the conversation that ensued you could either of hacked one of the several smartphones on the table or just wait until tomorrow when my little brother will be hosting a debate at the House of Commons over libraries and eBooks. Apparently my suggestion of just rolling up and going; "Look I've had a heavy night and it's a debate about library's so Shh!" just wouldn't cut it. However the main focus of the debate was over whether FC Braga are white enough to play in Serbia (as my brother thought) or black enough to be Portuguese (as I thought). Sadly we were rudely interrupted by the fact that being an idiot my father had left a pint of Carlsberg on the bar which in a Wetherspoons is normally enough to provoke a small riot. It was at this point I Googled "Brega" and discovered it to be a small town in Libya. Then because my brother drinks like a little girl who used to work at the EU and has no concept of half-time I was forced to drink another pint and buy one each for the guys who finally tipped me off. Unfortunately I made the mistake of leaving them on the bar.
So now my father's dropping my brother off at the overground stations it seems like and appropriate moment for me to adjust the length of my pencil.
20:00 on 23/10/12.
So now my father's dropping my brother off at the overground stations it seems like and appropriate moment for me to adjust the length of my pencil.
20:00 on 23/10/12.
I Think I've Found a New Avatar.
I've still not watched the third US Presidential debate so I still have little idea of context but given the horses and bayonets burn I think I might have to score this one to Obama. Not least because it's prompted the Internet to do this;
http://horsesandbayonets.tumblr.com/
13:25 on 23/10/12.
http://horsesandbayonets.tumblr.com/
13:25 on 23/10/12.
So Did Romney Steer Clear of Libya.
I have literally just woken up and am not totally convinced that process has been completed. As a result I have absolutely no idea what happened in the third US Presidential debate on foreign policy. However I am very interested to know how the Republican candidate Mitt Romney handled the issue of Libya. In the hours leading up to the debate US intelligence sources confirmed that the second building attacked in the September 11th (11/9/12) attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in fact a CIA operations centre. This is something everybody in the business already knew and is hardly that controversial. For example I could tell you the location of the CIA operations centre attached to the US Embassy in London but that would just needlessly p*ss people off. The reason for the announcement was to confirm that US intelligence (CIA is the generic term) have been running the Chris Brown/Rihanna reunion as a way to discredit me in the run up to the Presidential election in order to help Romney win. The reason why this acknowledgement has become nessecery is because no-one in the business can believe that Brown's probation officer hasn't intervened by this point and other factions within the US community have had some pretty strong stuff to say on the subject. The idea of tying all this to the Libya issue was to make Libya so toxic for Romney that he would stay away and avoid dragging his clunking fists over what is still a delicate and unstable situation.
Having had a quick skim of Twitter I'm still none the wiser about the issues discussed in the debate so I will have to watch the full thing. Fortunately I've got a large Presidential debate sized hole in my schedule right between going to the supermarket and going to the pub. So I should be able to have it done by the ened of the day even if the detailed write up might have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime I think I need to open a new communication channel with my Twitter wife because she's clearly in a strop with me but sadly only revealing her own ignorance. Oh and my spellcheck is currently operating at the same level as my brain at the moment so I apologise.
09:35 on 23/10/12.
Having had a quick skim of Twitter I'm still none the wiser about the issues discussed in the debate so I will have to watch the full thing. Fortunately I've got a large Presidential debate sized hole in my schedule right between going to the supermarket and going to the pub. So I should be able to have it done by the ened of the day even if the detailed write up might have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime I think I need to open a new communication channel with my Twitter wife because she's clearly in a strop with me but sadly only revealing her own ignorance. Oh and my spellcheck is currently operating at the same level as my brain at the moment so I apologise.
09:35 on 23/10/12.
Monday 22 October 2012
Well That Was Mature(!)
The British TV channel ITV1 broadcasts a political discussion show called "The Agenda" as condition of their broadcast license. In recent years it has been suggested that ITV have been making the show as boring as possible in order to make sure no-one watches allowing them to re-negotiate the terms of their license. As a result they've been making a big push on this new series booking high profile guests such as the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband last week and the British Prime Minister, David Cameron tonight. Unfortunately BBC1 tried to steal all their viewers by broadcasting a current affairs documentary all about Jimmy Savile which people with an interest in politics/current affairs would have wanted to watch although it was just mawkish nonsense. This was clearly a retaliation for the ITV1 current affairs documentary that first broke the Jimmy Savile scandal.
In order to try and draw attention back onto themselves the people behind "The Agenda" got Cameron to use his Twittter account to plug the show using a picture portraying the presenter as a Bond villain. This was a pretty poor reference to a joke that's currently doing the rounds about the blond, sadist villain in the new Bond film being based on Jimmy Savile. I think Cameron agreed in the hope it would force me to interact with the show in an effort to keep me up to watch the US Presidential debate. Clearly that didn't work leaving Britain's Prime Minister as nothing more then a publicity stunt.
Oh and while I'm here in the interests of talking myself into trouble I should point out that as sure as night follows day a US Presidential debate has brought with it another twist in the Chris Brown/Rihanna saga. I'd like to pretend I'm shocked by the CIA trying to exploit the trauma of domestic abuse in an effort to recruit an asset but sadly I've dealt with them before. So I'm going to bed because it wouldn't be a very good test if I told them all the answers in advance now would it.
23:05 on 22/10/12.
In order to try and draw attention back onto themselves the people behind "The Agenda" got Cameron to use his Twittter account to plug the show using a picture portraying the presenter as a Bond villain. This was a pretty poor reference to a joke that's currently doing the rounds about the blond, sadist villain in the new Bond film being based on Jimmy Savile. I think Cameron agreed in the hope it would force me to interact with the show in an effort to keep me up to watch the US Presidential debate. Clearly that didn't work leaving Britain's Prime Minister as nothing more then a publicity stunt.
Oh and while I'm here in the interests of talking myself into trouble I should point out that as sure as night follows day a US Presidential debate has brought with it another twist in the Chris Brown/Rihanna saga. I'd like to pretend I'm shocked by the CIA trying to exploit the trauma of domestic abuse in an effort to recruit an asset but sadly I've dealt with them before. So I'm going to bed because it wouldn't be a very good test if I told them all the answers in advance now would it.
23:05 on 22/10/12.
To Debate or Not to Debate. That is the Question.
And a post title that probably warrants an apology.
Anyway later on today Mitt Romney and Barak Obama will meet for the third and final US Presidential debate. I am still not sure that I will stay up and watch though. On one hand it is important and it will be all about foreign policy which is really my area. However I feel I've already played too large a role in the two previous debates so I would actually like the opportunity to see how both candidates do without my involvement being a factor. Besides with the foreign policy focus at this point I think that both campaigns should really be aspiring towards boredom. That said with a little over 8 hours until the debate starts the thunder is already begining to gather with British helicopters crashing in the North Sea, bombs going off in South Africa, Italian earthquake experts being jailed, Finnish Prime Ministers being stabbed and me making an appointment to see my GP about Lance Armstrong issues. So hopefully what I'll do is go to bed a couple of hours before the debate starts at 01:00 (GMT) and then watch a recorded version tomorrow. That said on current form I not properly waking up until around 21:00 these days.
15:50 on 22/10/12.
Anyway later on today Mitt Romney and Barak Obama will meet for the third and final US Presidential debate. I am still not sure that I will stay up and watch though. On one hand it is important and it will be all about foreign policy which is really my area. However I feel I've already played too large a role in the two previous debates so I would actually like the opportunity to see how both candidates do without my involvement being a factor. Besides with the foreign policy focus at this point I think that both campaigns should really be aspiring towards boredom. That said with a little over 8 hours until the debate starts the thunder is already begining to gather with British helicopters crashing in the North Sea, bombs going off in South Africa, Italian earthquake experts being jailed, Finnish Prime Ministers being stabbed and me making an appointment to see my GP about Lance Armstrong issues. So hopefully what I'll do is go to bed a couple of hours before the debate starts at 01:00 (GMT) and then watch a recorded version tomorrow. That said on current form I not properly waking up until around 21:00 these days.
15:50 on 22/10/12.
Sunday 21 October 2012
Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
Try and pay attention!
On November 6th (6/11/12) the United States of America will hold it's final day of voting in it's Presidential election. However voters will also be going to the polls to elect a number of federal Senators along with a host of State-wide Governors, Representatives, Judges and Police Chiefs. They will also be asked to decide on a variety of voter initatives. The three most interesting of these are Colorado's Amendment 64 (A64), Oregon's Measure 80 (M80) and Washington's Initiative 502 (I502) which will all legalise the recreational use of marijuana and make a distinction between the narcotic marijuana and the cannabis plant allowing for the agricultural cultivation of hemp. Although all of these initiatives differ slightly - A64 allows people to grow their own for example - if passed they will give Colorado, Oregon and Washington some of the most relaxed marijuana laws anywhere in the developed world being even more tolerant then Amsterdam's famously liberal attitude towards marijuana. However due to a legal principle known as dual sovereignty and the fact that marijuana will remain illegal under US federal law I suspect these initiatives are more likely to provoke a lengthy, long running and complicated legal argument about the relationship between the states and the federal government rather then suddenly turning Colorado, Oregon and Washington into some sort of stoners paradise. In fact I would go so far as to say that the campaigns behind these initiatives have been getting a bit of help getting on the ballot in order for the issue to be used as a way to stick pins into my Twitter wife although I think her life is far too extra-ordinary to be much use as a guide for national drugs policy. However in the interests of plastering everybody else's private business all over the Internet I should take the opportunity to point out that I don't think Rihanna has a drug problem even if she does still insist on smoking blunts. Instead I think she's still very young (only 24) and needs to learn where the edges are on a whole host of subjects including marijuana. However this is most certainly not the same thing as having a drug problem.
Having said that it should come as no surprise to learn that I fully support A64, M80 and I502 and encourage voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington to vote "Yes" on them. However my main reason for supporting these initiatives may come as something of a surprise. Probably more then most I know and understand that along with alcohol there are people who use too much marijuana and this over-consumption can cause them problems ranging from mild lethargy right up to serious psychological problems including schizophrenia. However I also think that the fact that marijuana is illegal actually makes these over-consumption problems worse. Apart from the obvious fact that it's always too easy to do too much of something that feels good as it is illegal in order to get hold of marijuana you need to build a relationship with a drug dealer. This person will obviously have access to large amounts of marijuana and will often purposefully use too much of it themselves in order to support a personal use defence to narcotic distribution charges. Obviously being around this sort of person will encourage you to use more marijuana because no-one wants to tell their supplier to stop. Also in order to avoid detection and prosecution drug dealers frequently change their cellphones so in order to stay in contact you need to speak to them and buy from them on an almost monthly basis. This encourages you to buy and therefore consume more marijuana.
So I actually think that if all that could be replaced with simply going to a shop most people would find it much easier to manage their marijuana consumption in much the same way that the vast majority of people successfully manage their alcohol intake.
Oh and just to clarify Rihanna is my Twitter wife, Bristol is my gay wife, Natalie Portman is my Jewish wife and Alexis Bledel is my Jewish mistress. Do you ever get the feeling my script in support of the Mormon candidate is being written for me?
00:20 on 22/10/12.
On November 6th (6/11/12) the United States of America will hold it's final day of voting in it's Presidential election. However voters will also be going to the polls to elect a number of federal Senators along with a host of State-wide Governors, Representatives, Judges and Police Chiefs. They will also be asked to decide on a variety of voter initatives. The three most interesting of these are Colorado's Amendment 64 (A64), Oregon's Measure 80 (M80) and Washington's Initiative 502 (I502) which will all legalise the recreational use of marijuana and make a distinction between the narcotic marijuana and the cannabis plant allowing for the agricultural cultivation of hemp. Although all of these initiatives differ slightly - A64 allows people to grow their own for example - if passed they will give Colorado, Oregon and Washington some of the most relaxed marijuana laws anywhere in the developed world being even more tolerant then Amsterdam's famously liberal attitude towards marijuana. However due to a legal principle known as dual sovereignty and the fact that marijuana will remain illegal under US federal law I suspect these initiatives are more likely to provoke a lengthy, long running and complicated legal argument about the relationship between the states and the federal government rather then suddenly turning Colorado, Oregon and Washington into some sort of stoners paradise. In fact I would go so far as to say that the campaigns behind these initiatives have been getting a bit of help getting on the ballot in order for the issue to be used as a way to stick pins into my Twitter wife although I think her life is far too extra-ordinary to be much use as a guide for national drugs policy. However in the interests of plastering everybody else's private business all over the Internet I should take the opportunity to point out that I don't think Rihanna has a drug problem even if she does still insist on smoking blunts. Instead I think she's still very young (only 24) and needs to learn where the edges are on a whole host of subjects including marijuana. However this is most certainly not the same thing as having a drug problem.
Having said that it should come as no surprise to learn that I fully support A64, M80 and I502 and encourage voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington to vote "Yes" on them. However my main reason for supporting these initiatives may come as something of a surprise. Probably more then most I know and understand that along with alcohol there are people who use too much marijuana and this over-consumption can cause them problems ranging from mild lethargy right up to serious psychological problems including schizophrenia. However I also think that the fact that marijuana is illegal actually makes these over-consumption problems worse. Apart from the obvious fact that it's always too easy to do too much of something that feels good as it is illegal in order to get hold of marijuana you need to build a relationship with a drug dealer. This person will obviously have access to large amounts of marijuana and will often purposefully use too much of it themselves in order to support a personal use defence to narcotic distribution charges. Obviously being around this sort of person will encourage you to use more marijuana because no-one wants to tell their supplier to stop. Also in order to avoid detection and prosecution drug dealers frequently change their cellphones so in order to stay in contact you need to speak to them and buy from them on an almost monthly basis. This encourages you to buy and therefore consume more marijuana.
So I actually think that if all that could be replaced with simply going to a shop most people would find it much easier to manage their marijuana consumption in much the same way that the vast majority of people successfully manage their alcohol intake.
Oh and just to clarify Rihanna is my Twitter wife, Bristol is my gay wife, Natalie Portman is my Jewish wife and Alexis Bledel is my Jewish mistress. Do you ever get the feeling my script in support of the Mormon candidate is being written for me?
00:20 on 22/10/12.
Oh Britain's Still Doing the Jimmy Savile Thing.
Unfortunately though it's now progressed into an investigation about the BBC's ability to keep secrets. That's a shame because unlike other organisations I could mention the BBC have changed management since those days. In fact I think a newspaper columnist whose name I can't remember summed it the f*ck up with the sentence; "Imagine the public's reaction if the News of the World had exposed Savile through phonehacking."
23:25 on 21/10/12.
23:25 on 21/10/12.
The Thing That Annoys Me About Homeland is...
... that everybody within the fictional US establishment knows that Brody tried to blow up the Vice-President and killed his sniper partner whose name I've annoyingly forgotten. Therefore the reason that he and his wife have been invited into the establishment is for them to be studied. As a result the discovery of Brody's martyrdom video is simply a plot device to allow Carrie back into the CIA. The other thing that annoys me about Homeland is that here in Britain we're getting season 2 so early that it's still in production although I've yet to be convinced that Friday's bombing in Lebanon is Syria's contribution to the writing process.
In a similar vein today's mass shooting at a spa in Brookfeild, Wisconsin, USA is supposed to look like the US setting out an information stall to discuss with the world a recent photoshoot Rihanna did with Croydon born British supermodel Kate Moss. In reality though it's an attempt by the establishment to make it look like they're telling the Republican Party that they will receive no more help in winning the Presidential election. The short version is that Wisconsin in Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan's home state and that spate of mass shootings following the Aurora shooting was the establishment trying to force the issue of gun control onto the election agenda because the Republicans are actively circulating a conspiracy theory that Obama will use his second term to crack down on the second amendment. This is actually quite clever of the Republicans because the fact that it's billed as a conspiracy theory means that whatever answer Obama gives will automatically assumed to be a lie.
So in summary there's this large element of the US establishment that is really confused about this notion of democracy. So much so that I'm pretty sure they actually have saboteurs within the Democrat campaign trying to blow it up from the inside. Mind you with a little under 15 days until the polls close I would say that making the Democrats really paranoid while they look for the clog thrower(s) is actually a really good way of distracting them.
22:50 on 21/10/12
In a similar vein today's mass shooting at a spa in Brookfeild, Wisconsin, USA is supposed to look like the US setting out an information stall to discuss with the world a recent photoshoot Rihanna did with Croydon born British supermodel Kate Moss. In reality though it's an attempt by the establishment to make it look like they're telling the Republican Party that they will receive no more help in winning the Presidential election. The short version is that Wisconsin in Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan's home state and that spate of mass shootings following the Aurora shooting was the establishment trying to force the issue of gun control onto the election agenda because the Republicans are actively circulating a conspiracy theory that Obama will use his second term to crack down on the second amendment. This is actually quite clever of the Republicans because the fact that it's billed as a conspiracy theory means that whatever answer Obama gives will automatically assumed to be a lie.
So in summary there's this large element of the US establishment that is really confused about this notion of democracy. So much so that I'm pretty sure they actually have saboteurs within the Democrat campaign trying to blow it up from the inside. Mind you with a little under 15 days until the polls close I would say that making the Democrats really paranoid while they look for the clog thrower(s) is actually a really good way of distracting them.
22:50 on 21/10/12
Saturday 20 October 2012
What No Tweets
Sorry must've flaked out there but I'm home now and that's the important thing.
20:45 on 20/10/12.
20:45 on 20/10/12.
What I'm Alive.
Although I'll agree that at this point it doesn't quite feel like it. So with the football crowds starting to clear and no planned engineering works I'm about to start making my way down to Brighton. Due to blog interface problems this means that I'll be on Twitter only for now. In fact I might turn up early which should leave me plenty of time wandering around with a camera going "I'm looking for sailors." What could possibly go wrong.
12:00 on 20/10/12.
12:00 on 20/10/12.
Friday 19 October 2012
OMG It's Still Going.
Seriously at this point I think Stand Up For Cancer is just raising money for Channel 4.
23:20 on 19/10/12
23:20 on 19/10/12
I Have Amazing News.
I have finally been able to raise Brighton on the telephone device and it turns out the company are insisting my mate will be working to 16:00 (still British Summer Time) tomorrow. I think the hope was that given that Millwall are visiting my local team for a 13:00 (local) kickoff I would give it a miss and instead tell the story of the Serbia (under 21) V England (under 21) match. Seriously this has gripped our nation with such a passion the small pitch invasion at tonight's Sheffield Wednesday V Leeds game at Hillsborough is just Britain going "Is this about Heysel?!"
So instead I'm just going to waste my evening getting drunk and looking porn because well it's only a 13:00 kick off.
21:50 on19/10/12.
So instead I'm just going to waste my evening getting drunk and looking porn because well it's only a 13:00 kick off.
21:50 on19/10/12.
Go Cancer!
Because you deserve everything you get. And Cheryl Cole certainly got a kicking in the opening song. If you live close to the North Sea try and remember this detail it will come in useful later.
So anyway Andrew Mitchell the former Secretary of State of International Development and now(ish) Chief Whip of the Conservative Party has resigned from the Whip's post some four weeks after he called a number of police officers guarding the Prime Minister's London residence a "F*cking pleb" along with some other choice expletives. Coming at the end of a two day EU leaders summit this was mainly timed to give Conservative MP's something to talk about. However the specific moment of the announcement was to make sure that Britain's news channels would be so excited that they would have no time to comment on a story coming out of Cardiff, South Wales. Basically what seems to have happened is that a van driver has decided to go on a killing spree using his vehicle as a weapon. So far we're looking at one dead female adult, two injured adults and seven injured children. Obviously at this moment Cardiff University hospital is dealing with this and this alone so that may change. This was done to promote discussion about why my van driver mate's quality of life has deteriorated exponentially since working for a company that serves the British Government and the British Crown. Actually he should have phoned me by now so I may or may not be going to see him tomorrow.
I think the main purpose of the exercise was to promote salty talk in the ranks because the Brits are so tense at the moment they taken the precaution of taking the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) out of the game for the next two years. However the Brits were kind of hoping that everyone would believe this to be a spontaneous response to the conviction today of Christopher Halliwell in Swindon, Wessex for the murder of Sian O'Callaghan (gypsy stock). The bit that's caused all the anger though is that Halliwell has been allowed to get away with the murder Rebecca Godden because a police officer drove him out to the spot where he'd buried Godden without before properly having his arrest authorised in order to give him a technicality to get the case thrown out of court. I think the long term hope was that this would provoke enough outrage to justify giving the police all sorts of repressive new powers. Personally I'm more outraged that Halliwell has already been given a prison bodyguard because unlike Lance Armstrong he's certainly got a lot of contracts on him. But maybe that's just me contributing to the salty talk.
19:35 on 19/10/12.
So anyway Andrew Mitchell the former Secretary of State of International Development and now(ish) Chief Whip of the Conservative Party has resigned from the Whip's post some four weeks after he called a number of police officers guarding the Prime Minister's London residence a "F*cking pleb" along with some other choice expletives. Coming at the end of a two day EU leaders summit this was mainly timed to give Conservative MP's something to talk about. However the specific moment of the announcement was to make sure that Britain's news channels would be so excited that they would have no time to comment on a story coming out of Cardiff, South Wales. Basically what seems to have happened is that a van driver has decided to go on a killing spree using his vehicle as a weapon. So far we're looking at one dead female adult, two injured adults and seven injured children. Obviously at this moment Cardiff University hospital is dealing with this and this alone so that may change. This was done to promote discussion about why my van driver mate's quality of life has deteriorated exponentially since working for a company that serves the British Government and the British Crown. Actually he should have phoned me by now so I may or may not be going to see him tomorrow.
I think the main purpose of the exercise was to promote salty talk in the ranks because the Brits are so tense at the moment they taken the precaution of taking the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) out of the game for the next two years. However the Brits were kind of hoping that everyone would believe this to be a spontaneous response to the conviction today of Christopher Halliwell in Swindon, Wessex for the murder of Sian O'Callaghan (gypsy stock). The bit that's caused all the anger though is that Halliwell has been allowed to get away with the murder Rebecca Godden because a police officer drove him out to the spot where he'd buried Godden without before properly having his arrest authorised in order to give him a technicality to get the case thrown out of court. I think the long term hope was that this would provoke enough outrage to justify giving the police all sorts of repressive new powers. Personally I'm more outraged that Halliwell has already been given a prison bodyguard because unlike Lance Armstrong he's certainly got a lot of contracts on him. But maybe that's just me contributing to the salty talk.
19:35 on 19/10/12.
Well I'm Backing Cancer.
Tonight Britain's Channel 4 is raising money to fund cancer research through a star studded live TV Gala. The only problem is that my arch nemesis in the Wessex region works in cancer research and could well benefit monetarily from tonight's events. As a result she is known by the pseudonym "Cancer" so I think it's going to be a long evening trying to work out which cancer everyone's opposed to. So a fantastic opportunity for me to go to bed very early and very quietly. Sadly though it was around lunchtime today I started to get the distinct impression that today is going to go horribly wrong.
16:55 on 19/10/12.
16:55 on 19/10/12.
Thursday 18 October 2012
Well Stopping Was Clearly a Mistake.
As you may have noticed I took yesterday off to sort of re-set my sleep patterns after watching the second US Presidential debate. This was clearly a mistake because all it meant was all the little bits of tiredness I've been building up suddenly caught up with me meaning that even by my own standards I've been spectacularly useless today. Hopefully normal service will be resumed tomorrow but unfortunately I'm normally use Friday's to do domestic things so it looks like it will be the third Presidential debate before I get anything even vaguely resembling work done.
Of course matters aren't being made any easier by the fact I still can't get this new Blogger interface to work on my phone. It's getting so annoying that I'm tempted to send actual feedback to them about the issue but then again maybe not.
19:25 on 18/10/12.
Of course matters aren't being made any easier by the fact I still can't get this new Blogger interface to work on my phone. It's getting so annoying that I'm tempted to send actual feedback to them about the issue but then again maybe not.
19:25 on 18/10/12.
Wednesday 17 October 2012
Mitt Romney's Binders Full of Women.
Apart from an exchange about the candidates pension funds which Obama seemed to turn into an argument about penis size the stand out comedy moment from last night's Presidential debate came when Romney claimed to have spent his time as Governor of Massecheutts ordering up binders full of women. Throughout the campaign Romney has been dogged by allegations that he is anti-women on issues such as abortion, reproductive health and even female sexuality. So in response to a question about gender pay gaps (why women get paid less then men) he told a story about how when he was Governor he realised that there was not enough women in his cabinet so he embarked on a search to find binders full of women who were either qualified to take on the top jobs or could be trained to take on the top jobs through a sort of affirmative action. Apart from being an attempt to remind voters that he has experience of government and challenge the notion he is anti-women this was also an attempt to steer the debate towards Libya by evoking memories of the binder that Muammer Qaddafi kept on former US Secretary of State Condolleezza Rice which featured many photographs, press clippings and more then one love poem. Unfortuantately as with most other things Romney tried in the debate this fell flat on it's face and left Romney looking like the sort of man who thinks women can be brought from a catalogue which is kind of the exact opposite of what he was going for and really not a good look for a Morman.
It also spawned things like this; http://instagram.com/p/Q3oSOswtJG/
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4ukni
And this; http://instagram.com/p/Q3wmlNC6jm
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4v2mj
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4v2m
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4usok
And they are just some of the clean ones.
12:00 on 17/10/12.
It also spawned things like this; http://instagram.com/p/Q3oSOswtJG/
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4ukni
And this; http://instagram.com/p/Q3wmlNC6jm
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4v2mj
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4v2m
And this; http://twitpic.com/b4usok
And they are just some of the clean ones.
12:00 on 17/10/12.
Tuesday 16 October 2012
The Romny-ator Returns.
The Town Hall format of tonight's Presidential debate meant that it was always going to be a socially awkward affair with all the questions being asked by members of the public with no experience appearing in front of a worldwide television audience of hundreds of millions. To make matters worse the convention seems to be that in answering the candidate will stand right in front of the clearly terrified questioner and look them dead in the eye while completely ignoring the question in favour of trying to lever in some pre-prepared point. For example in response to a question about gun control Romney used his two allotted minutes to talk about how he improved Massachusetts schools during his time as Governor. As a result the whole debate had an air of the candidates trying to scare the public into submission.
Romney was clearly much more frightened by this format and decided to respond through intimidation. This began right at the start of the debate when he remained standing long after Obama had sat down in a clear effort to make Obama feel paranoid about whether he'd sat down to early. A move that I thought was reminiscent of Al Gore's rather odd behaviour in the 2000 debate. Romney went on to use lots of circular sentences that don't really go anywhere and often contradict themselves and talked about things either getting lower or higher while illustrating the point with the movement of his outstretched hand, palm up. This are all sort hypnotic techniques used to manipulate the person you're talking too's behaviour. In this case Romney was mainly trying to make Obama look flustered by getting him to stand up or sit down on command. Unfortunately the way he was trying to employ these techniques was so obvious, robotic and downright clunky that Obama, the moderator and members of the audience who were familiar with this sort of thing started to very gently mock Romney's behaviour causing the colour to drain from his cheeks and at one point leading me to think he was going to have some sort of nervous breakdown. Fortunately for Romney though with the help of a clearly partisan audience member who at one point referred to his as "President" he was just about able to hold it together and slip in a few of his pre-prepared zingers. The only problem was that Obama's pre-prepared zingers were clearly much better. One particular highlight was in response to the question about gas (petrol) prices when Obama said something along the lines of; "I know that gas is around $4 a gallon today but was only $1.85 when I took office. That's because when I took office our economy was in the worst recession in living memory. So I'm sure that Romney will be able to bring gas back down to $1.85 a gallon because he'll drag our economy back into recession."
I think to the credit of all involved the debate largely steered clear of foreign policy but it would have been impossible for the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya not to come up. Obama responded to this perfectly by very Presidentialy and assertively pointing out that because ultimately these decisions are his responsibility and because he has to meet the coffins as they return home he does not play politics with issues of that importance. With the last couple of weeks of the Republican campaign having being built around playing politics with the issue Romney had little choice other then to continue and repeatedly pressed to know why it had taken the administration more then two weeks to call the incident a terrorism. Obama simply pointed out that he'd stood in the White House rose garden two days after the attack and called it terrorist - a point that even Fox News have conceeded; http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/12/transcript-read-president-obamas-remarks-on-american-deaths-in-libya-attack/
03:35 on 17/10/12.
Romney was clearly much more frightened by this format and decided to respond through intimidation. This began right at the start of the debate when he remained standing long after Obama had sat down in a clear effort to make Obama feel paranoid about whether he'd sat down to early. A move that I thought was reminiscent of Al Gore's rather odd behaviour in the 2000 debate. Romney went on to use lots of circular sentences that don't really go anywhere and often contradict themselves and talked about things either getting lower or higher while illustrating the point with the movement of his outstretched hand, palm up. This are all sort hypnotic techniques used to manipulate the person you're talking too's behaviour. In this case Romney was mainly trying to make Obama look flustered by getting him to stand up or sit down on command. Unfortunately the way he was trying to employ these techniques was so obvious, robotic and downright clunky that Obama, the moderator and members of the audience who were familiar with this sort of thing started to very gently mock Romney's behaviour causing the colour to drain from his cheeks and at one point leading me to think he was going to have some sort of nervous breakdown. Fortunately for Romney though with the help of a clearly partisan audience member who at one point referred to his as "President" he was just about able to hold it together and slip in a few of his pre-prepared zingers. The only problem was that Obama's pre-prepared zingers were clearly much better. One particular highlight was in response to the question about gas (petrol) prices when Obama said something along the lines of; "I know that gas is around $4 a gallon today but was only $1.85 when I took office. That's because when I took office our economy was in the worst recession in living memory. So I'm sure that Romney will be able to bring gas back down to $1.85 a gallon because he'll drag our economy back into recession."
I think to the credit of all involved the debate largely steered clear of foreign policy but it would have been impossible for the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya not to come up. Obama responded to this perfectly by very Presidentialy and assertively pointing out that because ultimately these decisions are his responsibility and because he has to meet the coffins as they return home he does not play politics with issues of that importance. With the last couple of weeks of the Republican campaign having being built around playing politics with the issue Romney had little choice other then to continue and repeatedly pressed to know why it had taken the administration more then two weeks to call the incident a terrorism. Obama simply pointed out that he'd stood in the White House rose garden two days after the attack and called it terrorist - a point that even Fox News have conceeded; http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/12/transcript-read-president-obamas-remarks-on-american-deaths-in-libya-attack/
03:35 on 17/10/12.
Boo! Hiss!
England's 2014 World Cup qualifier against Poland in Warsaw has now officially been called off and will be replayed tomorrow (17/10/12) at one of the 16:00's. Personally I think Poland should have been forced to forfeit the game 2-0 because the match had to be cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch. However the stadium has a roof and even though they knew it was going to rain the Polish football association flatly refused to close the roof which to my mind is an acceptance of defeat.
Also Serbia's under-21's team should be forced to forfeit their game against England due to blatant and aggressive racism.
20:05 on 16/10/12.
Also Serbia's under-21's team should be forced to forfeit their game against England due to blatant and aggressive racism.
20:05 on 16/10/12.
Back From the Pub.
Back early because I left early because there's danger of a football match breaking out between England and Poland in about 25 minutes. In other exciting movement news I might be going to see my delivery driver friend over the weekend. However in all seriousness that does depend on when Kensington Palace place their order, what they want and when they want it by.
18:35 on 16/10/12.
18:35 on 16/10/12.
Now There's a Plea For Help.
For certainly as long as I can remember the USA has been trying to extradite a British man - Gary McKinnon - to face charges of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers. Today the British Home Secretary has blocked that extradition on the grounds that because Mr McKinnon suffers from Aspergers Syndrome (a form of Autism) extradition would represent an disproportionate risk to his health. Although not officially diagnosed my father is widely acknowledged to suffer from Aspergers Syndrome so by blocking the extradition Britain is hoping the US will challenge the medical reasoning behind the decision and in the process give Britain extra information about this not well understood condition because Britain's own 6 year research project has not been going so well.
12:05 on 16/10/12.
12:05 on 16/10/12.
Monday 15 October 2012
That's Right I'm Acclimatizing
So in a little over 26 hours I should be able to give you my sleep deprived, post-football and extremely post-pub review of the second US Presidential debate. This debate will be much more difficult for the incumbent Barak Obama. In the one hand he needs to appear more assertive then he did in the first debate but rather then the straight head-to-head format in that debate this second one will take the form of a town hall style event with members of the public asking questions. As a result if either of the candidates take too tough a line it could well end up looking like they're attacking ordinary voters rather then each other. Also this second debate will cover a mixture of both domestic and foreign policy. This latter area puts the incumbent at a disadvantage because while the challenger can say whatever sounds popular the actual President has to be much more measured and cautious about what he says and how much detail he reveals because the world - especially the middle east - is very volatile at the moment and because we now live in such an interconnected world all those competing interests will be watching live to see what the President has to say.
Oh and I'm seriously considering playing an "Erm" drinking game which on the basis of last time could get messy.
01:00 on 16/10/12.
Oh and I'm seriously considering playing an "Erm" drinking game which on the basis of last time could get messy.
01:00 on 16/10/12.
The SNP Throw in the Towel.
Today the British Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party and the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) formally signed an agreement that will allow Scotland to hold a referendum on breaking away from Britain and becoming an independent nation in the autumn of 2014. News of this agreement was actually rushed out last Tuesday (9/10/12) to act as enquiry about Israel's upcoming snap election. Under pressure to announce the deal Salmond has clearly made a massive mistake. Although the referendum will lower the voting age from 18 to 16 it will be a simple yes or no vote meaning that if the yes vote wins Scotland would break off all ties with the UK with in a matter of months. The much more sensible option would have been to allow for a third, so called "Devolution Max" option that would have allowed Britain and Scotland to split slowly and gradually over a number of years through a series of treaties. Although less dramatic this is generally considered the better way of doing it because splitting up two nations that have been one for the best part of 300 years is really complicated. The people who achieved this most successfully in recent years where the Czechoslovakians who split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia over a period of two years and some 300 separate treaties.
So unless there's going to be a surprise write in option on the referendum what's going to happen is that the SNP will lose the vote some 70/30 and Scotland will remain part of Britain.
19:10 on 15/10/12.
So unless there's going to be a surprise write in option on the referendum what's going to happen is that the SNP will lose the vote some 70/30 and Scotland will remain part of Britain.
19:10 on 15/10/12.
Harlow Fire Deaths.
Overnight in Britain there was a severe house fire in the Harlow area of Essex. So far the mother Sabah Usmani along with her 13 year old daughter Hira and her three sons Sohaib 11, Muneeb 9 and Rayan 6 have all died. The father Abdul Shakur remains in hospital with non-life threatening injuries and the couple's 3 year old daughter Maheen is in a critical condition. Obviously the entire family are Muslims of Pakistani origin.
Basically what's happened here is that my yesterday did not go the way that the Brits had hoped for a variety of reasons therefore they went ahead with this operation as a way to discuss their lack of success especially at today's EU Summit on Syria and Iran. In order to avoid going into too much detail this discussion of a variety of problems would focus on my failure to comment on the new Libyan Prime Minister who was elected yesterday (14/10/12). The attempt being to suggest that I was ignoring it because I'm not such a good friend of Muslims as the Brits are. Of course demonstrating this point by killing five Muslims does take away from it's credibility somewhat. As the incident happened in the Gypsy bashing county of Essex the hope was that everyone would think it was an English Defence League (EDL) attack and the Brits would rally to protect Muslims from the fascists. Sadly though at this point the father is looking like a much more credible suspect.
16:10 on 15/10/12.
Basically what's happened here is that my yesterday did not go the way that the Brits had hoped for a variety of reasons therefore they went ahead with this operation as a way to discuss their lack of success especially at today's EU Summit on Syria and Iran. In order to avoid going into too much detail this discussion of a variety of problems would focus on my failure to comment on the new Libyan Prime Minister who was elected yesterday (14/10/12). The attempt being to suggest that I was ignoring it because I'm not such a good friend of Muslims as the Brits are. Of course demonstrating this point by killing five Muslims does take away from it's credibility somewhat. As the incident happened in the Gypsy bashing county of Essex the hope was that everyone would think it was an English Defence League (EDL) attack and the Brits would rally to protect Muslims from the fascists. Sadly though at this point the father is looking like a much more credible suspect.
16:10 on 15/10/12.
Malala Yousafzai Shooting.
Last Tuesday (9/10/12) Malala Yousafzai a 14 year old Pakistani girl who'd been recruited by British intelligence at age 11 was shot and seriously wounded in an attack that has been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban. Today she is to be flown to Britain for medical treatment. I've not mentioned the story until now because I've been busy and I thought it was kind of obvious. As I've explained before although there is a sizable minority of Muslims in Pakistan and the wider Gulf region who hold very repugnant views especially towards women there is no such thing as the Pakistani Taliban. It's all been dreamt up by NATO led by Britain in order to make all Muslims look bad and reduce support for the Afghan Taliban within Pakistan where they're supported for a host of reasons not including their political or religious views. The revulsion caused by the shooting of Yousafzai provides a perfect way of furthering both those goals. That's why there has been a rather undignified bidding war between Britain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to see who would capitalise on Yousafzai's undeserved popularity.
If you look very, very carefully you'll see that Britain is desperately trying to tell the world the truth of the story by transferring Yousafzai to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham which has been specifically set up to treat British soldiers.
14:30 on 15/10/12.
If you look very, very carefully you'll see that Britain is desperately trying to tell the world the truth of the story by transferring Yousafzai to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham which has been specifically set up to treat British soldiers.
14:30 on 15/10/12.
Sunday 14 October 2012
Yeah That Could've Done With Some More Words.
Unfortunately at this point the chances of those words making any sense are about 50/50.
Today an Austrian (EU member) backed by private Swiss (non-EU Member) money (Red Bull) jumped 'from the edge of space' from specially built capsule slung beneath a balloon and sadly did not die. This achievement ranks right up there with me cleaning my bedroom for two main reasons; Firstly he didn't jump from anywhere near the edge of space. At a recorded height of 39km (24 miles) he jumped from about half way inside the stratosphere so had around another 10km before he got to the generally accepted edge of space. The fact that he was jumping from within the Ozone/Greenhouse Gas layer of the stratosphere should tell you a little bit about how regularly weather balloons travel this high and much higher. Secondly Felix Baumgartner is not the first man to travel beyond the sound barrier in just a protective suit. In fact anyone whose ever ejected from a military fast jet may well argue that he was overdressed. Basically this was all done in that heartland of UFO conspiracy theories Roswell, New Mexico to make it look like the private sector was putting pressure on the US government over global warming/climate change when in reality they were putting pressure on over offshore tax havens. To maximise the annoyance the jump was meant to take place during my traditional Tuesday night trip to the pub but was cancelled at the last minute in order to put newscasters everywhere through two 5 hour sessions of technical tedium.
The US response was pretty good though with NASA, the City of Los Angles and the California science centre all conspiring to drive the space shuttle Endeavour through the streets at around 2mph (3kmph). Although this is significantly faster then my father vacuums it must've been really annoying for anyone in LA. In order to match the annoyance caused by the balloon jump and to make sure the two events occurred simultaneously the people moving Endeavour kept discovering 'really complicated engineering challenges' such as cutting down trees and removing telegraph polls which delayed their journey significantly. I believe in the time it has taken me to write this post the Endeavour has now finally arrived. Of course if I were suddenly to break into an in depth discussion about carbon intensity and green urban development the city of LA would feature heavily as a case study of how not to do it. The cumulative intent of this was to give the EU and the rest of the world a boot up the bum about pulling their weight in terms of space exploration because it's all very nice bashing the USA over climate change/global warming but they're really the only ones bothering to put satellites up to, you know, measure this sh*t. For example now that the space shuttle has been retired the only real way anyone has of getting satellites into space in aboard a somewhat risky Soviet-era Soyuz rocket. Yesterday (13/10/12) one of those rockets successfully launched two satellites from the Galileo In Orbit Validation (IVO) system with the EU hopes will one day rival the US' Global Positioning System (GPS). IVO currently has 4 satellites while GPS has around 30.
Anyway I guess this all serves to remind me to put the COP18/CMP8 in all of my diaries now because I've got a feeling that this summit held in Doha - the capital of Qatar - is going to be 'fun' what with Britain charging five Royal Marines with murder over the shooting of a Taliban prisoner in order to test the bounds of international law over Syria. It's November 26th (26/11/12) to December 7th (7/12/12) by the way which on current form means the lenghty court case that will follow the US' Presidential election should be ending just in time for the high level segment. Or to put it another way the US Presidential election is going to be so tight that every vote will count unless of course you're using one of those Republican owned voting machines.
22:50 on 14/10/12
Today an Austrian (EU member) backed by private Swiss (non-EU Member) money (Red Bull) jumped 'from the edge of space' from specially built capsule slung beneath a balloon and sadly did not die. This achievement ranks right up there with me cleaning my bedroom for two main reasons; Firstly he didn't jump from anywhere near the edge of space. At a recorded height of 39km (24 miles) he jumped from about half way inside the stratosphere so had around another 10km before he got to the generally accepted edge of space. The fact that he was jumping from within the Ozone/Greenhouse Gas layer of the stratosphere should tell you a little bit about how regularly weather balloons travel this high and much higher. Secondly Felix Baumgartner is not the first man to travel beyond the sound barrier in just a protective suit. In fact anyone whose ever ejected from a military fast jet may well argue that he was overdressed. Basically this was all done in that heartland of UFO conspiracy theories Roswell, New Mexico to make it look like the private sector was putting pressure on the US government over global warming/climate change when in reality they were putting pressure on over offshore tax havens. To maximise the annoyance the jump was meant to take place during my traditional Tuesday night trip to the pub but was cancelled at the last minute in order to put newscasters everywhere through two 5 hour sessions of technical tedium.
The US response was pretty good though with NASA, the City of Los Angles and the California science centre all conspiring to drive the space shuttle Endeavour through the streets at around 2mph (3kmph). Although this is significantly faster then my father vacuums it must've been really annoying for anyone in LA. In order to match the annoyance caused by the balloon jump and to make sure the two events occurred simultaneously the people moving Endeavour kept discovering 'really complicated engineering challenges' such as cutting down trees and removing telegraph polls which delayed their journey significantly. I believe in the time it has taken me to write this post the Endeavour has now finally arrived. Of course if I were suddenly to break into an in depth discussion about carbon intensity and green urban development the city of LA would feature heavily as a case study of how not to do it. The cumulative intent of this was to give the EU and the rest of the world a boot up the bum about pulling their weight in terms of space exploration because it's all very nice bashing the USA over climate change/global warming but they're really the only ones bothering to put satellites up to, you know, measure this sh*t. For example now that the space shuttle has been retired the only real way anyone has of getting satellites into space in aboard a somewhat risky Soviet-era Soyuz rocket. Yesterday (13/10/12) one of those rockets successfully launched two satellites from the Galileo In Orbit Validation (IVO) system with the EU hopes will one day rival the US' Global Positioning System (GPS). IVO currently has 4 satellites while GPS has around 30.
Anyway I guess this all serves to remind me to put the COP18/CMP8 in all of my diaries now because I've got a feeling that this summit held in Doha - the capital of Qatar - is going to be 'fun' what with Britain charging five Royal Marines with murder over the shooting of a Taliban prisoner in order to test the bounds of international law over Syria. It's November 26th (26/11/12) to December 7th (7/12/12) by the way which on current form means the lenghty court case that will follow the US' Presidential election should be ending just in time for the high level segment. Or to put it another way the US Presidential election is going to be so tight that every vote will count unless of course you're using one of those Republican owned voting machines.
22:50 on 14/10/12
I Should Clean My Room More Often.
Just did it this afternoon and found 200g of tobacco worth about £50. So now I'm spending the afternoon smoking and feeding things into my shredder. Simple things and all that.
14:55 on 14/10/12.
14:55 on 14/10/12.
Friday 12 October 2012
Worst. Friday Night. Ever.
I am currently watching the first 10 minutes of Mr Issa's Congressional Hearing on the Benghazi attacks. So while I wait for the following 4 hours and 20 minutes to download I should probably give you the short version; Prior to the 11/9/12 attacks the USA and Libya were kind of friends but more US boots on the ground could've seriously jeopardised that friendship. Obviously how that relationship continues depends a lot on the upcoming Presidential debate on foreign policy. In the meantime have you tried paying them more because I'm really struggling to find that next 4'20"
00:10 13/10/12
00:10 13/10/12
Apparently I Should Apologise to UK O2 Customers.
Basically there's been a long running dispute about whether I should be using my Blackberry Storm. As I happen to think it's a decent bit of kit I feel I should. Unfortunately yesterday (11/10/12) this debate got so intense that in a fit of pique I switched to my Blackberry Torch before the battery on the Storm had run down. As a result when I went to the gym I found my Torch only has 30 mins of battery when I really needed 40 so I switched to my fully charged Storm. However because I was in a rush I failed to switch the SIM cards meaning that O2 were rather cut out of the conversation. So they decided to pull the wires out of one of their nodes in order to make the point to all the customers that complained during their last big outage that even without a SIM a cellphone can still connect to the network and therefore be used to contact the emergency services which is kind of what the letters SOS in the corner of the screen mean. So yeah I finally switched the SIM over at around 15:30 local.
In slightly better news I have successfully completed the mission my mother set for me last night. So pending professional assessment there is a good chance you all will get to read about my 'Tom Daley' in one of her acupuncture case studies. Actually this would all just be a lot easier if I could get her on to Twitter. In slightly worse news I've been drinking a bottle of South Africa red called "Battlefield" and found it to be distinctly passable. This disappointed me but hopefully the second bottle will bring me more joy.
22:35 on 12/10/12.
In slightly better news I have successfully completed the mission my mother set for me last night. So pending professional assessment there is a good chance you all will get to read about my 'Tom Daley' in one of her acupuncture case studies. Actually this would all just be a lot easier if I could get her on to Twitter. In slightly worse news I've been drinking a bottle of South Africa red called "Battlefield" and found it to be distinctly passable. This disappointed me but hopefully the second bottle will bring me more joy.
22:35 on 12/10/12.
I Didn't Watch the VP Debate.
Last Wednesday (3/10/12) I stayed up to watch the first US Presidential debate and Thursday didn't go so well. So as a result I didn't bother stay up to watch last night's Vice Presidential debate and I'll pretend it was my choice. I will have to look it up on Youtube over the weekend though because apparently the Republican Paul Ryan's grip on reality is as weak as his boss Mitt Romney's. According to Twitter Ryan accused Obama of loosening sanctions on Iran. Obama of course has brought India and China into the oil embargo on Iran and had Iran excluded from the SWIFT banking transfer system so if anyone were to buy Iranian oil Iran can't be paid for it. So far this has had the effect of wiping around 35% off the value of the Iranian Rial, seen imports drop by around 70% and seen the cost of staple foods rise by around 75% leading to riots in the streets in and mass arrests. So seriously at this point Israel bombing Iran would be considered the soft option.
Also today the European Union (EU) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize amid snorts of derision. The award actually makes a lot of sense though because the 60 years in which the EU (and it's forebearer the European Coal and Steel Community) has been in place have undoubtedly been the most peaceful 60 years in Europe's entire history. The EU has also helped overthrow dictators in Greece and Portugal and it's work reaching out to Eastern European nations played a vital role in making sure that the collapse of the USSR was far less bloody then it was. I think the deciding factor though was the way in which the EU has worked to smooth the edges of competing and often aggressive points of view in response to the Eurozone financial crisis. I know that from the outside this has often looked confused and chaotic but the last time Europe faced a financial crisis this bad it lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Holocaust and the Second World War which certainly puts a few riots in perspective. Hopefully the award will now give the EU the boot up the bum it so desperately needs on Syria.
09:55 on 12/10/12
Also today the European Union (EU) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize amid snorts of derision. The award actually makes a lot of sense though because the 60 years in which the EU (and it's forebearer the European Coal and Steel Community) has been in place have undoubtedly been the most peaceful 60 years in Europe's entire history. The EU has also helped overthrow dictators in Greece and Portugal and it's work reaching out to Eastern European nations played a vital role in making sure that the collapse of the USSR was far less bloody then it was. I think the deciding factor though was the way in which the EU has worked to smooth the edges of competing and often aggressive points of view in response to the Eurozone financial crisis. I know that from the outside this has often looked confused and chaotic but the last time Europe faced a financial crisis this bad it lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Holocaust and the Second World War which certainly puts a few riots in perspective. Hopefully the award will now give the EU the boot up the bum it so desperately needs on Syria.
09:55 on 12/10/12
Thursday 11 October 2012
I Have Returned.
As I sort of mentioned earlier in the week I've been having dinner with my mother. Of course this somehow turned into me cooking her dinner and then setting up her DVR/TiVo thingy. The good news is that my shoulder injury has cleared up. The bad news is that mother is doing some sort of acupuncture course so left me with instructions to go of and injure myself so she can stick pins in me. Personally I'm taking it as a compliment because well there was beer involved.
20:30 on 11/10/12.
20:30 on 11/10/12.
Wednesday 10 October 2012
The First Presidential Debate.
I know, I know almost a full week late.
Last Wednesday the two contenders for the US Presidency faced off in the first televised debate which focused on domestic policy. As with the race itself the debate was very uninspiring and it was hard to choose a winner. It was also really not worth me staying up until near dawn to watch. However if I had to choose a winner I would say that the Republican challenger Mitt Romney slightly edged it. Rather then being the result of a strong performance by Romney this was mainly due to a poor performance by the Democrat incumbent Barak Obama. Clearly distracted by the latest developments in the unfolding confrontation between Turkey and Syria that overshadowed the debate Obama looked disinterested and seemed to be having trouble finding his words and voicing his thoughts. The main problem though was that he'd clearly been told by his campaign advisers to try and appear Presidential rather then confrontational. As a result he repeatedly failed to challenge Romney's denial that he intends to put in place $5 trillion of tax cuts. This was an open and blatant lie on Romney's part because if you look at Romney's own website; http://www.mittromney.com/sites/default/files/shared/TaxPolicy.pdf he clearly intends to dramatically cut taxes;
1. Romney intends to make the marginal rates introduced by George Bush (the Bush tax cuts) permanent. Although these tax reliefs have been in place since 2001 and 2003 as they are considered temporary tax reliefs they are still counted in the budget as money that the government has declined to collect and therefore are used to calculate the government's borrowing rates and credit rating. Making them permanent will cost the US $3.3 trillion over the next nine years.
2. Romney intends to end taxes on capital gains, share dividends and interest payments for households earning up to $200,000 per year. This will undoubtedly help some middle class families planning for retirement but it will give the most help to households closest to the $200,000 limit. With the average American earning in the region of $40,000 per year I would say that Romney intends to help the rich rather then the middle. Over the nine years between 2011 (the last year figures are available) and 2020 this tax cut will cost the US around $728 billion.
3. Romney plans to scrap entirely the Federal Estate tax which is a form of inheritance tax. To my mind this is the most pernicious and dangerous part of Romney's plan because while never popular almost all developed nations find some form of inheritance tax essential to prevent rich parents giving their money to their children who use it to get even richer without out doing any work before handing it down to their children. Allowed to continue unchecked this very quickly leads to a society where a very small group of people control all of the wealth and everybody else has no choice other then to work for them for whatever pittance they're prepared to pay. Therefore inheritance tax is essential to prevent this sort of patrimony and instead ensure a meritocracy where all can achieve provided they have the talent and are prepared to work for it - something someone once told me was the American dream. Apart from the damage it will do to American society scrapping the Federal Estate tax will cost the US around $171 billion over the nine year period.
4. Romney intends to cut the corporate tax rate by 10% from 35% to 25% which will be an absolute delight for his former colleagues in high finance but will cost the US around $172 billion over the nine years.
Taken together these four policies represent a tax cut of $4.3 trillion. However Romney doesn't intend on stopping there. He also intends to switch the US from a global tax system to a territorial tax system. This involves very rich people and corporations no longer having to pay the difference between US tax rates and the local tax rate where they earned that money. It only affects a very small number of people and it's complexity makes it's effects very difficult to calculate. However with the difference between American money earned in the UK being around $170 billion alone it's quite easy to imagine that it will cost the US in the region of $700 billion bringing the total of Romney's tax plan up to - yep you've guessed it - a $5 trillion loss.
When you take these $5 trillion of tax cuts and add them to the extra $2 trillion that Romney intends to spend on the military that creates a spending gap of $7 trillion that will have to be filled through extra borrowing. This strikes me as a particularly strange way of trying to reduce America's national debt but despite their campaign slogans and their massive debt clock that's never been the Republicans intention. Instead they want to increase America's debt so the dollar becomes so devalued that it ceases to be used as the global reserve currency. That way the former the former head of Bain Capital can make good on his promise of bringing jobs back to America. The catch he keeps forgetting to mention though is that those jobs will be like the jobs they have at the Foxconn factory in China or in the platinum mines in South Africa where workers on poverty wages are forced to pay extortionate rates for the privilege of living in workers dormitories under constant fear of getting beaten up by company security if they dare to step out of line. In short the Republicans want to drag America back to what it was like at the time of the Ludlow massacre.
Of course the Republicans wouldn't actually dare tell anyone that before the election otherwise no-one would vote for them. So instead they're making lots of vague claims about that $7 trillion spending gap being paid for by closing tax loopholes. Sadly though they won't tell anyone exactly what these loopholes are. The best I've been able to piece together is that the main 'loophole' they intend to close is the amount people can deduct from income tax in order to pay for health care/insurance. Of course Romney also intends to cut costs by scrapping Medicare/aid and replacing it with a voucher system that people can use to pay for private health care. The only problem is that the value of those vouchers will be tied to what the government is prepared to pay rather then what health care actually costs. Therefore it doesn't take a genius to work out that Romney's plan will leave millions of Americans unable to afford health care. So Romney's plan is clearly to make the rich richer while dumping the costs on the middle classes. It's just a shame that Obama failed to call him on it.
The other big disappointment of Obama's debate performance was that he seemed unable to defend his health care reforms from Romney's frankly laughable attacks. The thing you need to remember about Obamacare is that it basically just copies the system that Romney introduced when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. So surely Romney either needs to admit that it is a good idea that is much more cost effective and far less socialised the Medicare/aid or he needs to apologise for inflicting it on the people of Massachusetts long before Obama became President.
21:00 on 10/10/12.
Last Wednesday the two contenders for the US Presidency faced off in the first televised debate which focused on domestic policy. As with the race itself the debate was very uninspiring and it was hard to choose a winner. It was also really not worth me staying up until near dawn to watch. However if I had to choose a winner I would say that the Republican challenger Mitt Romney slightly edged it. Rather then being the result of a strong performance by Romney this was mainly due to a poor performance by the Democrat incumbent Barak Obama. Clearly distracted by the latest developments in the unfolding confrontation between Turkey and Syria that overshadowed the debate Obama looked disinterested and seemed to be having trouble finding his words and voicing his thoughts. The main problem though was that he'd clearly been told by his campaign advisers to try and appear Presidential rather then confrontational. As a result he repeatedly failed to challenge Romney's denial that he intends to put in place $5 trillion of tax cuts. This was an open and blatant lie on Romney's part because if you look at Romney's own website; http://www.mittromney.com/sites/default/files/shared/TaxPolicy.pdf he clearly intends to dramatically cut taxes;
1. Romney intends to make the marginal rates introduced by George Bush (the Bush tax cuts) permanent. Although these tax reliefs have been in place since 2001 and 2003 as they are considered temporary tax reliefs they are still counted in the budget as money that the government has declined to collect and therefore are used to calculate the government's borrowing rates and credit rating. Making them permanent will cost the US $3.3 trillion over the next nine years.
2. Romney intends to end taxes on capital gains, share dividends and interest payments for households earning up to $200,000 per year. This will undoubtedly help some middle class families planning for retirement but it will give the most help to households closest to the $200,000 limit. With the average American earning in the region of $40,000 per year I would say that Romney intends to help the rich rather then the middle. Over the nine years between 2011 (the last year figures are available) and 2020 this tax cut will cost the US around $728 billion.
3. Romney plans to scrap entirely the Federal Estate tax which is a form of inheritance tax. To my mind this is the most pernicious and dangerous part of Romney's plan because while never popular almost all developed nations find some form of inheritance tax essential to prevent rich parents giving their money to their children who use it to get even richer without out doing any work before handing it down to their children. Allowed to continue unchecked this very quickly leads to a society where a very small group of people control all of the wealth and everybody else has no choice other then to work for them for whatever pittance they're prepared to pay. Therefore inheritance tax is essential to prevent this sort of patrimony and instead ensure a meritocracy where all can achieve provided they have the talent and are prepared to work for it - something someone once told me was the American dream. Apart from the damage it will do to American society scrapping the Federal Estate tax will cost the US around $171 billion over the nine year period.
4. Romney intends to cut the corporate tax rate by 10% from 35% to 25% which will be an absolute delight for his former colleagues in high finance but will cost the US around $172 billion over the nine years.
Taken together these four policies represent a tax cut of $4.3 trillion. However Romney doesn't intend on stopping there. He also intends to switch the US from a global tax system to a territorial tax system. This involves very rich people and corporations no longer having to pay the difference between US tax rates and the local tax rate where they earned that money. It only affects a very small number of people and it's complexity makes it's effects very difficult to calculate. However with the difference between American money earned in the UK being around $170 billion alone it's quite easy to imagine that it will cost the US in the region of $700 billion bringing the total of Romney's tax plan up to - yep you've guessed it - a $5 trillion loss.
When you take these $5 trillion of tax cuts and add them to the extra $2 trillion that Romney intends to spend on the military that creates a spending gap of $7 trillion that will have to be filled through extra borrowing. This strikes me as a particularly strange way of trying to reduce America's national debt but despite their campaign slogans and their massive debt clock that's never been the Republicans intention. Instead they want to increase America's debt so the dollar becomes so devalued that it ceases to be used as the global reserve currency. That way the former the former head of Bain Capital can make good on his promise of bringing jobs back to America. The catch he keeps forgetting to mention though is that those jobs will be like the jobs they have at the Foxconn factory in China or in the platinum mines in South Africa where workers on poverty wages are forced to pay extortionate rates for the privilege of living in workers dormitories under constant fear of getting beaten up by company security if they dare to step out of line. In short the Republicans want to drag America back to what it was like at the time of the Ludlow massacre.
Of course the Republicans wouldn't actually dare tell anyone that before the election otherwise no-one would vote for them. So instead they're making lots of vague claims about that $7 trillion spending gap being paid for by closing tax loopholes. Sadly though they won't tell anyone exactly what these loopholes are. The best I've been able to piece together is that the main 'loophole' they intend to close is the amount people can deduct from income tax in order to pay for health care/insurance. Of course Romney also intends to cut costs by scrapping Medicare/aid and replacing it with a voucher system that people can use to pay for private health care. The only problem is that the value of those vouchers will be tied to what the government is prepared to pay rather then what health care actually costs. Therefore it doesn't take a genius to work out that Romney's plan will leave millions of Americans unable to afford health care. So Romney's plan is clearly to make the rich richer while dumping the costs on the middle classes. It's just a shame that Obama failed to call him on it.
The other big disappointment of Obama's debate performance was that he seemed unable to defend his health care reforms from Romney's frankly laughable attacks. The thing you need to remember about Obamacare is that it basically just copies the system that Romney introduced when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. So surely Romney either needs to admit that it is a good idea that is much more cost effective and far less socialised the Medicare/aid or he needs to apologise for inflicting it on the people of Massachusetts long before Obama became President.
21:00 on 10/10/12.
International Terrorism Day.
Over the past 24 hours there have been a slew of high profile anti-terrorism arrests across the world. Things began in Los Angles, USA yesterday when it was publicly announced that last Friday (5/10/12) a US citizen of Chinese descent was arrested a LAX airport dressed in body armour and flame resistant trousers. Inspection of his luggage revealed a cache of weapons that could also have been the ingredients for a down right odd sex party including a gas mask, a full bio-hazard suit, handcuffs, leg irons, duct tape and several leather coshes. Things were quickly followed up last night (9/10/12) with the arrest of two people who had arrived on a flight from Egypt. No exact details have been released of why they were arrested but they are suspected to planning to travel to Syria to join in armed jihad against the Syrian government. This morning police in Paris, France announced that they had uncovered a cache of bomb making equipment including potassium nitrate, sulphur and saltpetre which they are linking to a group of Islamic extremists who are being investigated over a series of hand-grenade attacks against Jewish owned businesses.
The reason for this flurry of anti-terrorist activity is Syria. All of Turkey's bluster about shelling Syrian government positions in order to send a warning over Syrian mortar fire hitting Turkey was a lie. It was all made up as a cover to allow Turkey to provide the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) with artillery support. As a result the SQIA have been able to take control of a number of strategic positions withing northern Syria. As always happens whenever there's even the slightest hint that the SQIA might be making progress the coalition backing them start thinking about the post-Assad future. The big concern is that once Assad falls all these Islamic extremists that the coalition have trained, armed and battle hardened will turn their attentions towards the coalition just like the Mujahideen did after the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan. Of course what the coalition is hoping is that these Sunni jihadists can be diverted instead to Iraq in order to restart that war.
10:00 on 10/10/12
The reason for this flurry of anti-terrorist activity is Syria. All of Turkey's bluster about shelling Syrian government positions in order to send a warning over Syrian mortar fire hitting Turkey was a lie. It was all made up as a cover to allow Turkey to provide the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) with artillery support. As a result the SQIA have been able to take control of a number of strategic positions withing northern Syria. As always happens whenever there's even the slightest hint that the SQIA might be making progress the coalition backing them start thinking about the post-Assad future. The big concern is that once Assad falls all these Islamic extremists that the coalition have trained, armed and battle hardened will turn their attentions towards the coalition just like the Mujahideen did after the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan. Of course what the coalition is hoping is that these Sunni jihadists can be diverted instead to Iraq in order to restart that war.
10:00 on 10/10/12
Tuesday 9 October 2012
Sorry Re-Ordering my Brain
While I was doing that I suddenly realised that I never got round to telling the Lily Allen story properly. The short version is that basically I didn't date a 14 year old Lily Allen. What happened inside the Mayday 2003 police kettle was that I really made it look like I was dating a 14 year old Lily Allen. This had the effect of cooling the water but boiling the metal. So in summary her recent Twitter tirade makes me think there's either a third album or a second child in there somewhere. Either that or they are actually starting to gang up on me.
23:20 on 9/10/12.
23:20 on 9/10/12.
Ha ha Brutal.
I was planning on sitting here and making some pithy comment about how US President's 'Big Bird' campaign ad shows that he's now in serious difficulty. Unfortunately the makers of Sesame Street threatened to sue for breach of copyright over the unauthorised use of the character and all copies seem to have been removed.
22:00 on 9/10/12
22:00 on 9/10/12
Pseudomonas Has Returned.
You remember Pseudomonas - nasty little bacteria the kills assumed names. Apparently it also plays an important role in turning clouds into rain. It first hit the UK headlines in December 2011 when some babies were inexplicably infected with it in two hospital's in Northern Ireland. Well today (9/10/12) it's emerged that another baby died following an outbreak in Bristol in August 2012 - right in the middle of the Olympics. Personally I think that the news was released today to make it look like the Crown is putting pressure on the Conservative Party Conference to accept that "Won't someone think of the children!" is the worst possible argument against taking co-ordinated global action against climate change/global.
In other news I have returned from the pub to be disappointed by the news I don't have a burglar to batter. Even more depressingly it seems that somewhere during the para-Olympics I hit my annual word limit. Therefore the pictograms will continue because I think it's a wholly inappropriate time to tell the story of a mental patient I used to know who used his manic phases to memorise the Torah, the Bible and the Qu'ran. As a result he could sneak up behind whatever conversation you were having and just drop in an eerily accurate religious quote. I think the official diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia but even within the confines of a mental institution everyone thought he was a bit odd.
19:20n on 9/10/12.
In other news I have returned from the pub to be disappointed by the news I don't have a burglar to batter. Even more depressingly it seems that somewhere during the para-Olympics I hit my annual word limit. Therefore the pictograms will continue because I think it's a wholly inappropriate time to tell the story of a mental patient I used to know who used his manic phases to memorise the Torah, the Bible and the Qu'ran. As a result he could sneak up behind whatever conversation you were having and just drop in an eerily accurate religious quote. I think the official diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia but even within the confines of a mental institution everyone thought he was a bit odd.
19:20n on 9/10/12.
Justin Lee Collins: Is That It?
If you're not familiar with Justin Lee Collins he's a long haired annoyance who occasionally appears on British TV. More recently though he's been appearing in front of St Albans Crown Court accused of physically and emotionally abusing his ex-girlfriend - Anna Larke. In an optimistic defence strategy Mr Lee Collins used the two week trial to mount a series of vicious emotional attacks on Ms Larke. Almost unbelievably it took the jury 3 days of deliberation to find him guilty. Equally unbelievably he's only been sentenced to just 140 hours unpaid work to benefit the community and ordered to pay £3,500 (USD5500) costs. Personally I expected him to be ordered to pay the full cost of the prosecution for simply not having the decency to plead guilty.
14:45 on 9/10/12.
14:45 on 9/10/12.
Monday 8 October 2012
Operation Oil Theft: Month 21, Week 1, Day 2.
Yesterday (7/10/12) the Libyan Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur submitted another proposed political cabinet to the General National Congress (GNC). Rather then voting on whether to approve this new cabinet the GNC decided to hold a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister. Abushagur lost this vote 125 against 44 in favour with 17 abstensions. As a result Abushagur has now been sacked as Libya's Prime Minister. Although this is a set back for Libya which really needs to get some sort of functioning and democratic government in place I would say this was a good thing because Abushagur never struck me as representing the revolutionary values of liberty and democracy. As for his replacement I honestly don't see the problem with giving Mahmoud Jibril of the National Forces Alliance (NFA) the job. After all he is the leader of the largest elected political party and he's more or less been doing the job for the past year with quite a high degree of success.
Now if anyone needs me I'm going to need to have a long, hard and sober think about a few things and whether they're impairing my ability to do my job.
14:25 on 8/10/12.
Now if anyone needs me I'm going to need to have a long, hard and sober think about a few things and whether they're impairing my ability to do my job.
14:25 on 8/10/12.
Wow I Was Battered Last Night.
Up until now I was utterly convinced that the Imogen Thomas lookalike had won the public vote to stay on the X Factor but it turns out they kept the other guy on to spite Nicole Scherzinger. As for what happened in Homeland I've got no idea.
10:10 on 8/10/12.
10:10 on 8/10/12.
Sunday 7 October 2012
Oh No I've Done my Drinking Arm a Mischief.
Which I suppose is one way of telling you that my father's big tickle on the train home was some Aussie law professor who's really interesting in genealogy. Hopefully though I'll have sorted out my Tom Daley before his lengthy monologue meets my mother for dinner on Thursday.
21:30 on 7/10/12.
21:30 on 7/10/12.
The Fighting 69th.
That was the Dropkick Murphy's song that triggered the April Jones murder. I actually saw them on a top 50 pop punk countdown the other day. And it was at that moment I decided that I'm not going to apologise to the X Factor until they apologise for 1 Direction.
In other news my father is still out. Hopefully this means that one of his Internet family has finally taught him how to use his iPhone so he can get off the PC for once in a while.
17:50 on 7/10/12.
In other news my father is still out. Hopefully this means that one of his Internet family has finally taught him how to use his iPhone so he can get off the PC for once in a while.
17:50 on 7/10/12.
BBC Radio 1 Teen Choice Awards.
Today BBC Radio 1 has put on a big concert for 12 to 17 yeard olds called the Teen Choice Awards. In light of the recent paedophilia allegations against former BBC Radio 1 presenter Sir Jimmy Savile Knight of the British Empire (KBE) this was always going to be a challenge. To make matters worse slap bang in the middle of the concert the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust announced that it is considering changing it's name over the paedophilia allegations.. So no not even a hint of shame in there.
In other news I recently brought 8 cans of Guinness from the shop and four of them have already disappeared so unless you want to hear about how much I really, really enjoy sitting I think I'm done for the day.
16:25 on 7/10/12.
In other news I recently brought 8 cans of Guinness from the shop and four of them have already disappeared so unless you want to hear about how much I really, really enjoy sitting I think I'm done for the day.
16:25 on 7/10/12.
The Benghazi Consulate Attack.
You remember ages ago (11/9/12) a commando style assault was mounted on the US Consulate in Benghazi Libya killing the US Ambassador J Christopher Stevens and three others. The following day the confusion was used to get the questionable Mustafa Abushagur elected as Libyan Prime Minister. Then ten days later the people of Benghazi decided that they'd had enough of the group who carried out the attack and kicked Ansar al-Sahria out of the city and everyone thought the matter was closed.
It turns out not though because the US the Republican Party have been putting huge pressure on the US Security Services to release all the details of who knew what and when about the attack. I think that is a very bad idea because there are more then seven shades of complicated in that story including the fact that Blue Mountain the Private Security Military Contractors (PSMC) who were providing security to the US Consulate at the time of the attack are not only British but based in Carmarthen, South Wales. So I would go so far to say that by continuing to push the issue the Republicans are undermining US national security in order to gain an election advantage. I fact I'm having a drink later so I might go even further then that.
13:35 on 7/10/12
It turns out not though because the US the Republican Party have been putting huge pressure on the US Security Services to release all the details of who knew what and when about the attack. I think that is a very bad idea because there are more then seven shades of complicated in that story including the fact that Blue Mountain the Private Security Military Contractors (PSMC) who were providing security to the US Consulate at the time of the attack are not only British but based in Carmarthen, South Wales. So I would go so far to say that by continuing to push the issue the Republicans are undermining US national security in order to gain an election advantage. I fact I'm having a drink later so I might go even further then that.
13:35 on 7/10/12
April Jones: Suspect Charged.
While they have yet to recover a body police yesterday (6/10/12) formally charged Mark Bridger with the abduction and murder of missing Welsh schoolgirl April Jones. He has also been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. Although it will be difficult to prove without a body the murder charge means that the police no longer think there is any chance of April Jones being found alive.
Now that he's been charged more details have been released about the accused Mark Bridger. Apparently he was born in Croydon while his father was working as a Royal Protection Officer for the Metropolitan Police. The family then moved down to East Sussex close to Brighton before Mark Bridger moved to Wales in the 1990's. Sadly that means I think that it is extremely unlikely that April Jones' body will ever be recovered. It has either been dumped into a tidal river that will take it out into the Atlantic ocean or it is being kept somewhere the police will never find it in order for the whole case to be used as a basis for a very funny conversation about whether the Croydon nursing home will leave my grandmother enough money to be buried in Wales.
So although they've been able to bring certain pressures to bear I think it's time for the media to scale back their coverage of the story in order to allow the residents of the small Welsh town to come to terms with what is likely to be forever an open wound.
10:10 on 7/10/12.
Now that he's been charged more details have been released about the accused Mark Bridger. Apparently he was born in Croydon while his father was working as a Royal Protection Officer for the Metropolitan Police. The family then moved down to East Sussex close to Brighton before Mark Bridger moved to Wales in the 1990's. Sadly that means I think that it is extremely unlikely that April Jones' body will ever be recovered. It has either been dumped into a tidal river that will take it out into the Atlantic ocean or it is being kept somewhere the police will never find it in order for the whole case to be used as a basis for a very funny conversation about whether the Croydon nursing home will leave my grandmother enough money to be buried in Wales.
So although they've been able to bring certain pressures to bear I think it's time for the media to scale back their coverage of the story in order to allow the residents of the small Welsh town to come to terms with what is likely to be forever an open wound.
10:10 on 7/10/12.
Saturday 6 October 2012
Ow!
Seriously after two weeks of properly getting back into the gym, doing that garden and generally pratting about that's the best I've got for now. So if anyone needs me I'm going to be off making friends with my sofa.
12:05 on 6/10/12.
12:05 on 6/10/12.
Friday 5 October 2012
And the Tap Goes On.
I would like to say that my father is now trying to fix the kitchen tap for the second day in a row but sadly this has been going on for so many months now everyone's long since forgotten what the original fault was. Still hasn't worked out though that if he's tearing the kitchen apart when I'm meant to be cooking his dinner it results in his dinner being late.
13:50 on 5/10/12.
13:50 on 5/10/12.
Operation Oil Theft: Month 20, Week 5, Day 1.
Yesterday (4/10/12) the Libyan Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur submitted his proposed political cabinet to the General National Congress (GNC). This would have been the Libya's first elected political cabinet since the fall of Muammer Qaddafi but strangely contained no members of Libya's largest political party the National Forces Alliance (NFA) which is essentially the elected form of the revolutionary National Transitional Council (NTC). It was also heavily weighted towards to Zintan militia and contained a high number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yesterday evening between 150 and 200 protesters stormed the GNC building in protest. Today Abushagur has withdrawn his proposal which seems to me to be a good thing because I'm yet to be convinced by Abushagur as Prime Minister.
09:20 on 5/10/12.
09:20 on 5/10/12.
Thursday 4 October 2012
Bring Back Sav.
Due to some unfortunate spillage in the Greater Manchester area BBC1 were forced to postpone to fourth and final episode of "Good Cop." Unfortunately they've now decided to move straight on with "Hunted." We're only 30 minutes in and already it's referenced that awful thing where "Gene Hunt" goes to France, the Battle of Algiers, Home and Away, Homeland, the Bourne trilogy, the 39 steps, the Promise and Zoe Tapper in Survivors while suggesting the Bristol cancer might want to look into a career as a proof reader.
I know it's done by the people behind "Spooks" but I seriously doubt her accent can keep it up for 8 episodes.
20:35 on 4/10/12.
And I'll tell you what. If he has put down his bananas I'm going to have to kill him.
21:31 on 4/10/12.
I know it's done by the people behind "Spooks" but I seriously doubt her accent can keep it up for 8 episodes.
20:35 on 4/10/12.
And I'll tell you what. If he has put down his bananas I'm going to have to kill him.
21:31 on 4/10/12.
Oh Google are Still Insisting on That Then.
Sorry there is a half-way decent review of the new BBC1 show "Hunted" in there somewhere but sadly that great insult to the Internet the new Blogger interface is hiding it from you all.
F*cking hell it's like watching good TV bingo.
21:00 on 4/10/12.
F*cking hell it's like watching good TV bingo.
21:00 on 4/10/12.
Well That's Settled Then.
The October surprise for the US Presidential election will be a very loud nuclear style bang in the Arabian peninsula which will then be known as the strategic oil reserve because if the Sauds are so desperate for the world to end in 2012 I'm sure it can be arranged.
Or to put it another way I've been on the Stella and got a bit fighty.
18:20 on 4/10/12.
Or to put it another way I've been on the Stella and got a bit fighty.
18:20 on 4/10/12.
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