iTunes vs. George Handel vs. T-Mobile

Hello,

It's been a while! Needless to say, the pace of modern living doesn't stretch to keeping various instant news and moods sites up to date.

Yes, this afternoon I decided to educate myself and bought Flight of the Conchords album. Lovely!

Then after that I listened to the Fighting Talk podcast, which features the "Hallelujah!" section from Handel's Messiah. So for a few quid, I bought the LSO performance. It has now been downloading for some four hours. Arses.

Four hours? For two CDs? This must be some kind of perverse joke.

Thanks to iTunes (relatively blameless), George Handel (entirely blameless), and T-Mobile (who annoy me more as each day passes).

More News

I was wondering the other day, just at why whenever the temperature creeps above "Brrrr!" and the sun comes out from behind the rain clouds for more than seven minutes, scantily clad women appear to frolic in the surf in genteel Bournemouth. Why do photographers always have such good luck at finding members of the public who are dressed accordingly? And how do they always use the pictures as a quick guide to show just how warm it is? Why Bournemouth?

As soon as the thought took hold, I realised; women in bikinis sell papers, they are possibly models anyway, and the photographers are probably in the save van from London as the models. And pictures say more than a thousand words. Well, it covers as much space, anyway.

That thought resolved, I turned to that day's offering from The Sun. Bearing in mind the UK is in its coldest weather period for 18 years, the paper was full of snow and floods. And, on page 12, naked in the snow, save for wellingtons, Joceline Brooke-Hamilton and Sam Brooks, who refused to dress warm at a naturists' gathering in Bournemouth, Dorset.

The picture caption is "Girls...in Bournemouth". Is journalism that easy?

Bournemouth. Again.

Things that might begat other things:

Why does the plastic lid on a take-away Mocha from Starbucks always split?

Why did ITV play an ad-break at the wrong time in Everton v. Liverpool?

Why did ITV Weather suggest that the North Sea will freeze?

When Radio 3 played "Stockhausen: Hymnen" on January 31st 2009, why did I think that it was some crazy local pirate radio?

Esther Rantzen / Daily Express

Esther Rantzen appeared on the front cover of Friday's Daily Express bemoaning the way that swearing has permeated through society, and how Britain has become a less courteous society.

Whilst I agree that Britain is less courteous than at any other point I can remember, I find it strange that I am being lectured by a woman who is mostly well known for bringing swearing dogs and suggestively shaped vegetables into living rooms across the nation.

Swearing has happened to a lesser or greater degree for as long as there have been expressions of despair and heavy things to drop on one's feet. Upon my tisket! There are some that overuse swearing - this is genuinely a lack of imagination and vocabulary. As David Baddiel's father said, "...If everybody says f*** all the time, it gets boring doesn't it?", Swearing, at the appropriate time, can either summarize an entire situation in one word, or finish a scene in a comedy to great effect.

So, it has got to the stage where a woman who has had a career furthered by mild vulgarity, is now railing against it.

Glorious!

Jon Gaunt - Update

Some of you may have remembered one of my early posts about Jon Gaunt and how he is "anti". Anyhow, you may be interested to learn he has been suspended from TalkSport pending an investigation into a broadcast where he apparently called a councillor "a Nazi".

It seems that the News International press are less keen to hype this story than the Radio 2 'scandal' of a few weeks ago.

Strange, no?

Maplins – Poorly Constructed Consumer Rant

I really dislike Maplins. As I have mentioned before, everything I have ever bought from there has been an absolute disappointment. Including the new satellite receiver I bought a few weeks ago. I returned it to them today, expecting a prompt refund.  This didn’t happen, and it may take fourteen days to get my money back, as the unit has to be sent for testing. Whilst there, I saw that they have raised the price by £10.

After this, I questioned the receipt; after all it said “return me within 14 days for a refund”. Ah, but the unit has to go back for testing before Maplins can me the money.

Maplins have taken my money hostage. I have nothing to show for my receipt in terms of goods. 

Arseholes.

I shall never set foot in that blasted shop again, unless it is either to continue to claim my money back, or to fart loudly.

Double arseholes.

Sarcastic Work Experience Report

Timekeeping: Not sure. Never seemed to be at her desk.

Learning Ability: Limited to stuff about texting

Appearance: Wretched, with special mentions to jeans and trainers

Motivation: Seemed to be money, violence and watching television

Relationship with other employees: Non-Existant

Relationship with manager: Possibly hostile

Ability to follow/seek guidance: Ha!

Ability to work in group/team: Never in a month of Sundays

General comments: Possibly the squadron leader for the next wave of inconsiderate mouth-breathers that will further tarnish the name of our once great nation. I weep for all of us, for in fifty years, thei children will care for us in our nursing homes, unless, I can finally get my hands on some automatic weapons.

A Few Quick Points

I have been monumentally disappointed by everything I have ever bought from Maplin Electronics. And yet I still visit.

There is an intermittent loud buzzing which could be either a big, angry wasp, a hornet (eek!) or a small motorcycle trapped behind the drawers. Either way, it's freaking me out.

Some proles living nearby are having a laughably small rave. I can only just hear the music, but every ten seconds or so I hear a "Whoop!! Whoop!!". It's like it never went out of fashion. Or possibly they are trapped in a horrendous 1995 time-warp.

Tiny book review: Richard Hammond can write about his recovery in a grown up and illuminating way. Mindy Hammond's version of events seems to involve a lot of crying and being brave. I don't doubt that this didn't happen, in an immensely traumatic time. It seemed to me like I re-read the same page twenty times. Sorry. Still an NTP recommended book.

Musings

Hello world. I have succumbed to a debilitating and cruel injury, which has seriously knackered my typing and general computer skills. This is a nightmare for personal and professional reasons, not only will this blog update take hours to type - The Rest of the World as led by Tiger Woods will have to wait until I have recovered for their savage beating. And work will suffer too, but that's not important,

So I have some arse of a skin disaster, which in essence, tears each time I stretch the fingers on my left hand. Not nice. And a course of antibiotics and (really) cream that is usually marketed to sufferers of thrush.

Anyhow, enough of the rubbish.

Have you ever met anyone who has the ability to make you feel like the most special person in the world? Like you are the only person that has ever existed for them? Where occasionally, that person would with the right word or smile melt away the biggest problem that has ever happened? You could spend hours just thinking of them, and their happy smiling face. Even the merest thought of them unhappy makes you angry.

Conversely, have you ever met a person who could, with one word or movement of the face, fill you with dread? Make you think 'Ooh, Jesus.’ Bring you out in a huge cold sweat, and make your heart race with a mild terror.

Now, how many of you out there had the pleasure of person a being the same subject as person b?

I'm sure it can't just be me, as I have had more than one instance of this.

Moving around the subject, I visited an ex today and saw her beautifully arranged house and happy lifestyle, with the whole varied social life and successfully indexed and handled correspondence. This all sat well with her toned body and sunned complexion.

I then compared myself right now, with the same standards. We have both had exactly the same amount of time to shake our lives down following our break up.

I live in a box room, in a friend’s house, where the only people I talk to regularly seem to be my colleagues at work. All my possessions are strewn around the city, most of them in unattractive storage containers. Currently, I have just taken possession of my DVDs, and the only way I could reasonably store them is in an old suitcase - which I can't even open up because of my hand.

The food I cook is often the very finest of the two pot variety (look out for my cook book shortly). All of my post is precariously balanced on my scanner. Six months of it.

This brought huge waves of introspection; was I jealous? I have worked hard over the last few years to overcome my insane jealousy, so I'm fairly sure that wasn't it. It then dawned on me that it was my own lack of motivation that made me feel down. If I had driven myself to look harder for a flat, I could have a nice-ish place of my own. The post would magically be handled if I responded to it swiftly, instead of leaving it to gather on the scanner. My food would be more interesting if I could be arsed to cook something that wouldn't easily fit in two pots. Then, I may have the 'go' to wash the chuffing stuff up.

So, it's not jealousy - it's my own problem.

I then handled some frankly bizarre questions about 'us', and as I put two and two together to make a figure surely in the high teens, my subconscious was poking me in the eye and screaming "She's seeing somebody new!”

Everything seemed to fall into place. Little clues around the place that my overactive imagination was forensically stitching into shape.

This made my heart sink. I actually felt sick. Even though it shouldn't have any bearing on me.

I have had girlfriends who have gone on to have a legion of kids by a selection of hand chosen unsuitable men. I know they have had sex with other men; damn, there is living proof. Here, the merest unproven suggestion was sending me into uncharted gloom.

I really don't have any opinion. What she does is no longer any concern of mine. But to have those feelings are a very deep concern. Is this natural?

Indeed, if I was to have struck up some improbable immediate relationship after leaving her, would my feelings be the same?

I am a man, screaming towards thirty like a runaway cliff-top house, with the insecurities of a five year old and the social skills of a cat.

Sorry if this all seems gloomy and down, but trust me, it feels better to be on the page than racing around in my head.

Fear not! There are some redeeming features. At the very bottom of the page, I asked "can I keep this up for longer than a week"? I have now been a user of Blogspot for months, so in the adopted words of George McFly - if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.

Is there a social problem in Britain, and if so, what would you do to remedy it? Be sure to show your workings.

Caution. This post may upset.

It also may not read like a well constructed argument.

I was in bed this morning, listening to Radio Five Live, and Victoria Derbyshire's discussion show. A woman rang in to add to the topic of sex education in schools, and said that she saw older boys repeatedly having sex with eight year old girl in the next garden. She called the police, and shouted at the boy, who responded with swearing, and leaving the girl lying on the ground with her underwear round her ankles. The caller claimed that she had called the police, and that nothing had been done by them.

This evening, I was treated to an hour long documentary, "Cops With Cameras" on ITV.  Normally, I can be entertained by stolen car chases with a passive/aggressive voice over, or youths being pummeled by HM Rozzers accompanied by dramatic music, but this took things to a new level. Here, as police were arresting Bob Marley (not that one) some local herberts took time out of their day to swear and abuse the coppers. Who laughed it off. Surely, that's a criminal offence, to abuse a police officer?

Another aspect of the programme was a relatively mid-scale drugs bust, with a obscured man in his pants vehemently denying that there were any drugs in his house. Once the dogs were in, they found substantial quantities of amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy, and boxes of knock-off clothes and counterfeit cigarettes ("These are bad for your health!", as one helpful officer described them).

The day before I saw a programme "Snog, Marry, Avoid" on BBC3. On researching this paragraph, I saw that today they are showing "Britain's Youngest Grannies". Two of the contestants seemed to be too caricature-ish to be invented. One had just received a boob job as a present from her father, the other appeared to think that she could channel Paris Hilton.  In their preview videos, the one went out with black electrical tape as suitable upper-wear, both were keeping the fake tan and glitter industry alive. One even went under the name of Levi, even though she was called Gemma.

So, from listening to the radio, watching the box, as well as looking out of the window, I can tell that this island is sinking under the weight of track-suited school-avoiding knife-wielding sex mad boys, who know the law and refuse to respect the authority of anyone, and girls who view Barbie as a viable fashion icon, whose only interest is clubbing and who believe any attention is good attention.

All this can surely lead to one inevitable conclusion...

As you may be aware, the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe. Did you know, in 2006, there were 1200 births to girls under 16, and 45,000 births to those under 20?

Anecdotally, it has long been suggested that having a baby as soon as possible is a direct route to a free council house/flat, combined with benefits. According to a Councilor who spoke on the radio this morning, she is besieged with young women demanding a house, and near to their mothers'. The caller who spoke about the disgusting perpetual rape of the girl said that she lived on an estate that was full of households with the school age mum with no interest in baby.

This doesn't seem to be a problem limited to one part of the country, we have systematic, knowing abuses of our benevolent benefits system by people who have no interest in either formal learning or working.

So what do we do?

I understand that every baby has it's own story, and that generalisations like this could upset people. So, sorry if you think that this post is attacking you, or someone you know. It isn't. What it is doing is acknowledging that there is a problem of abuse of benefits, housing and society.

Can we stop child benefit immediately? No, as this will only pull the rug from under the very people whom the benefits were created for, the mothers to provide for the children.

The same can be said of disability benefit. There is widespread abuse of this - a case in point being the men (it always seems to be men) who claim for being written off in an industrial accident yet are filmed by Police casually throwing petrol tankers into the sea. Surely something sensible can be done?

If all benefits were to be stopped overnight, there would be radio phone ins jammed with rightly unhappy genuine claimants, and the Police would have to try to control the looting.

The Police have a very difficult job in controlling the feral youths on the edge of society. I'm sure they would love to belt some sense into them, but they cannot. They can't sentence them - that's up to the courts - and often have to deal with them them the day after the courts release them with no sentence. Our prisons are so full of scum, there is no room left.

Which brings me back to the drug dealers. Drugs have exploded in availability and reduced in price. Vietnamese gangs are renting houses to farm cannabis. Offices up and down this land are awash with staff still coming down off their weekend ecstasy buzz on Monday, and have official procedures for "Suicide Tuesday" - when the high finally wears off. I have no evidence to support this, but I believe that some lottery winners have a lot to do with the rise in organised crime and drugs in the UK. 

According to Camelot's most recent winners press release, The National Lottery has paid out over 2,100 million pound plus prizes. Surely not all of the money has gone to the 'deserving'? Examples like Michael Carroll tell us that statistically, some of that money makes it's way to the more nefarious members of society - in turn unlocking the door to the toys of say, counterfeiting or buying lorry-loads of drugs.

In the same way that the car helped social mobility in the 20th Century, enormous swathes of cash may have helped to mobilize the criminal element in the 21st.

I understand things change, but surely, in the truest Daily Mail islander fashion - something MUST be done to stop the crims and the council estate no-go areas?

One answer may be to make schooling non-universal. Instead of wasting time and money on making kids go to school only to exclude them, ask the parents whether they want their kids to go or not, and then spend the rest of the cash on extra Police, and each school class is reduced, solving overcrowding.

Or possibly, in the words of on of the late Kenny Everett's characters, "Round 'em up, put 'em in a field, and BOMB THE BASTARDS!"

Normal service will be resumed, as soon as I have calmed down. And no, I'm not drunk, either.

Weather vs. 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt

Earlier on, I wanted to hang out my washing. As I stepped into the garden, I could hear 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt, apparently being broadcast by a tree. This is possibly my least favourite song (of a band that I like) in the last twenty years.

I was so disgusted, I returned inside and the washing is still in the machine, requiring drying.

That's without question, the most adverse reaction to hearing a song, ever.

Tales From My Youth 2

This is The Dorch - The Album. Don't worry if the time seemed to have stopped in late 1995 - it might have actually have done.

Consolidated/Crack MC - You Suck

Stealers Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You

Emf/ Reeves And Mortimer - I'm A Believer

Black Grape - In The Name Of The Father

Levellers - One Way

Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger

The Offspring - Come Out And Play

The Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Body Count - Body Count

Rage Against The Machine - Bullet In The Head

Babylon Zoo - Spaceman (Radio Edit)

Josh Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness (Original Tweekin' Acid Funk Edit)

Blur - Country House

The Monkees - Daydream Believer

The Chemical Brothers - Leave Home

Run-D.M.C. - Walk This Way

The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night

Pulp - Common People

Skunk Anansie - Weak

The Presidents Of The United States Of America - Lump

The Presidents Of The United States Of America - Peaches

Paul Weller - The Changingman

The Jam - Going Underground

The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Cypress Hill - Insane In the Brain (Explicit Album Version)

Supergrass - Going Out

Supergrass - Alright

Free - All Right Now

Various Artists - Are You Gonna Go My Way

Menswear - Daydreamer

Green Day - Basket Case

Cast - Fine Time

The Prodigy - Firestarter

Oasis - Roll With It

Ocean Colour Scene - The Riverboat Song

The Offspring - Self-Esteem

The Offspring - Nitro (Youth Energy)

Black Grape - Reverend Black Grape

Things That Make You Go Arrrgh

Hello again,

There are a few things that make me very angry. Some things make my blood boil. Most of these things will make it on to here.

I'll start you off with one of my unsung pet hates, Jon Gaunt. 

For those of you that don't know, "Gaunty" is a Talksport radio show host, as well as being a weekly columnist with the British newsapaper The Sun. He has a bias against the BBC and is vehemently anti Licence Fee - this is the same, 'unfair' way the BBC has been funded since June 1946, and co-incidentally, some of the same 'unfair' funding made its way to Jon Gaunt for 13 years plus service to the BBC. Admittedly, I am no Licence Fee propaganda machine, but it is the nature of Gaunt's attacks on what he calls the "Bloated Broadcasting Corporation" which make me angry. They are ususally structured as a comment against a current BBC event (retructuring, big name programme) which always compares unfavourably to Sky One/Sky News/Talksport, twinned with a call to privatise Radio 1 and Radio 2  - then the sledgehammer of the call to end the "Telly Tax". 

It is worth mentioning that (commercial) Sky Broadcasting and Talksport are subsiduaries of News International - the same group that owns The Sun. And they compete with the BBC for audience share.

This week's missive sees another mini promo for Sky News with a nod towards the skills of Eammon Holmes, the news presenter. Is this in any way a backslap for his kind comment that graces the front page of Gaunt's new book?

I'm yet to find anything Gaunt is pro that isn't to do with action on restricting immigration, or promoting himself or News International.

As well as this, "Gaunty" positions himself as a man of the people, yet how many other people have their own talk radio programme and weekly column? Or attend glitzy film premieres?

Did I mention he has a new book to promote?

In short, if I didn't know he exists, I would be convinced he was a product of The Sun designed entirely to rile anyone who doesn't share those views.

Ooo, that's better. Thanks for reading.