Neighbours

We, that is, my wife and 3 children plus myself, live down a closed off terrace that has 12 houses and a wide variety of age ranges and ethnicity amongst its residents. Of those residents only one complains about our two dogs (one a Golden Labrador the other a Border Collie).

Our two elder children are well liked amongst the residents. The youngest is only 4 and a half months old and has not yet revealed himself. We are, as a family, well liked and we in return like them all. We are a close knit little community who do almost nothing to affect others within it. Granted some of the younger set make a noise when returning from a night on the ale as do some of the older ones, but none of this is a bother to anyone else. Except one.

Our dogs, like all dogs, bark. Sometimes when playing, sometimes when they hear something unusual and sometimes at seemingly nothing. All dogs bark as humans talk.

This one resident that complains about our dogs admits he hates dogs of all kinds. That is fair enough but his complaints are to anyone and everyone which makes it sound as if our dogs are ill behaved which they are not. All they are doing is doing what comes naturally to them.

The other night both of our dogs started barking and running around. They where running to the back door and back to where we was sat. We let them out and found 3 young boys attempting to climb our neighbours wall (the naighbour that complains about the dogs no less) no doubt to attempt entry to his house. Of course as soon as the kids saw our Labrador (who is approximately 68lbs) they ran off. I highly doubt those kids who where not from anywhere around this area will try it again as our Golden Labrador at 68lbs is a big heavy dog with a deep rough bark to match. Our neighbour was out at the pub when this happened.

The following day I, and another neighbour, took great delight in telling him what had happened and how that if the dogs had not barked we would not have known those pesky kids was climbing his wall. His reply went something along these lines. "Thank you. I still hate dogs but will grudgingly admit that in this instance their nuisance barking was worth it." So, will you stop your complaining now? I asked. "I suppose so." he said.

Moral of the story? Well, there isn't one but he has stopped his complaining and even told the postie what had happened and said to him that if it had not been for those dogs no doubt I would of come home to a house with broken window and several things missing.

BTW, those kids, whoever they were, have not returned.

Dogs, especially big dogs are worth every peny they cost to keep alive.

Badly Skewed

I read the BBC web site (http://www.bbc.co.uk) daily, sometimes several times a day and have done for as long as the bbc web site has been running. It is amongst the best for both news and layout.

While the BBC web site goes into much more detail and covers anything and everything under the sun the main UK area has the following layout. The news reports are small bite sized portions which make for easy reading. They do have more in depth reports as well but these small reports are perfect for getting the news if one is strapped for time. The layout has headline type reports and also has sections that cover the 4 main areas of the UK, so one can go to their own area and pick up some news from there or they can go to another area where perhaps their parents, grandparents, brother, sister etc live and read the news that affects them.

Now, where this is badly skewed is in how they view the great North-South divide. No matter how badly affected northern England has been if this same thing has affected southern England then you can almost guarantee 90% of reports will be from southern England even though those places in the north have been more badly affected. If they do report on something from the north you can bet they venture no further then Sheffield or maybe Birmingham. You can see this happening right now with regards flooded areas.

Sucks.

Paradox

You know, I was sat at my desk at 5:50am UK time this morning and a sudden thought hit me.

There are many reports floating around the Internet about how England's population is getting older and how this fact is putting a strain on N.H.S. (National Health Service) resourses. There are more pensioners now living longer then ever before in the history of this country. They claim the N.H.S. which is free for all) is struggling cash wise because of this fact.

Now, they want all the peoples of this little Island to be more healthy. Eating, smoking and drinking are all things they say we could do in a more healthy fashion. Soon, this island will ban smoking in ALL public spaces which they claim is another step in the get healthy mantra they keep trotting out.

If their claims on healthy eating, smoking and drinking become fact and assuming the people actually go with the mantra, people will live longer which will cause even more of a drain on pension funds and N.H.S. funds. Of course one can argue that if people live healthier lifestyles then they will not need N.H.S. services and that is of course true but the strain on public pensions will grow.

And that dear readers is the paradox.

Climate Change

Climate Change is the 21st centuries biggest con by human kind on human kind. Those two words are tied in with other human kind cons on human kind and there has been plenty of those!



A multi-billion pound industry created by people with vested interests. Those people who need to feel useful, such as Greenpeace, jumped on this bandwagon as fast as it could and is now focused almost entirely on it.

More and more organizations around the world are being sucked in daily.

Our world is dying, that is a given. But it is naturally dying. It is not man made nor will or can it be man cured. Nature is going through one of her normal cycles. She goes, warm, cold, warm, cold, very cold, warm. And she has been doing this for millions of years, century after century since mans time on this fragile Earth began.

So, why all this bellowing about man made climate change? It is quite simply to rake more and more money in to be spent on nothing. To line a few peoples pockets while everyone else believes the bull and starts running around like headless chickens while those who started the whole charade watch with great amusement at their latest ruse on human kind.

Governments get in on the act by claiming this and that must be done to help stop the unstoppable. They do this because it rakes in yet more money which ultimately will be wasted by councilors.

The biggest losers in this natural phenomena are those who are suffering real hardships as our fragile earth we all call home goes through yet another of her natural cycles.

Climate change is utter bull.

ISP

ISP. Internet Service Provider.

I feel sure they are the same the world over in their ineptness and total disregard for their customers be they home users or business users. However, our incumbent telephone and broadband provider are surely worst of the lot. They control the telephony in this City. The have no competition in the broadband field. They have become inept, aloof and utterly contemptuous of their customers.

I will not name my ISP as no doubt they will see it as an attack and try to stick me with some libel rubbish. Over the years, including a long time before The Internet came along, I have been arguing for the greater good with our incumbent telephone company. When all the provided was basic telepony services the arguments were usually restricted to noise on the line sort of arguments. Then our incumbent telephone company decided to dip their toes in Internet Services. Since they did this it has been a seemingly neverending round of argument after argument.

It is worth mentioning here that our city remains the only one in the UK to have its own telephone company, with all the restrictions that implies. Sure, other telephone companies can come here and provide all the usual services but our incumbent telephone company makes doing this so expensive it becomes prohibitive for any prospective company to come here and offer telephony services.

In recent times, compared to the length of time this company has been around, they started offering broadband services. First 256Kbps down then 512Kbps then 1024Kbps through to 8129Kbps. The 8192Kbps is sold as being "UpTo 8MB" and right there is their get out clause if for whatever reason your line cannot get that high. The current top end broadband connection for home users is 8MB and I think 24MB for business (oh and how you pay through the nose in blood for this!). There are many customers who cannot attain the magic mark of 8MB and the only way this could be fixed is for the telephone company to spend money on upgrading ancient wiring. That, however, is highly unlikely to happen.

They often ignore customer complaints. They always deflect questions. They more often than not send out canned replies. Their HelpDesk is useless for all but the very basic user. They have no way whatsoever of interacting with PowerUsers (there are a lot of those which makes this fact all the more surprising). The problems encountered by any one person are always at the customer end and never, ever, at the ISP end. Etc, etc, etc. I am sure you get the idea.

Now, there are a few, like myself, who will argue for the greater good. You know, if I argue for myself they will fix things for everyone else. At least that is how it should go but more often than not it does not go that way. Their prices remain high compared to similar services from other ISP's around the UK. The services on offer, particularly broadband, are often slow or simply broken. The ignorance within the company to issues raised is institutionalised. We users lag behind other ISP offering regarding top speeds. The HelpDesk is useless for all but the most basic of users. The list of issues gets ever longer instead of ever smaller. They have fixed things along the way but by and large there remains too many issues to let the whole matter drop.

One area that sucks bigtime is their recent introduction of Traffic Shaping. They call it something else but it is Traffic Shaping. With this they have slowed down all the protocols except for a few like email, web browsing (but not downloading) and Skype. All others are shaped to be as slow as they can be without, they hoped, the customer noticing. How wrong they were. People like myself use all the available protocols so immediately spotted this Traffic Shaping across them all. They make claims that they shape traffic for the good of all customers but they never reckoned on someone like me who uses all the new and still uses all the older protocols. That led to a protracted discussion with them over this whole debacle. But, so intent on slowing peope down they are they at first denied they wre using it. Their usage of was badly flawed in its execution but they would never admit it. They did fix a few things within it but a lotremains slewed against us PowerUsers.

I have been arguing with them now for at least 20 years and I am growing ever tired of doing it. I am looking locally for someone to take up my mantle as the more my arthirits attacks my body the less inclined I am to wade into yet another argument with the 'Home users count for nothing' telephone company. However, until such a time as I have selected someone to continue to to fight this cause I shall continue myself.

English profiles

Here in England, which for law purposes is separate from Britain as Scotland creates many of its own laws and then there is the Welsh Assembly, we are fast heading to a removal of most privacy rights. The national DNA database to name but one area this can be seen. Whether one has committed a crime or not one can be placed on this database. It is only a matter of time in this country, which is fast becoming a totalitarian state. before ones entry in this particular database begins at ones birth. That way the government is guaranteed to have a complete DNA profile of all the people they are supposed to be serving.

It is no secret that the government of this little quaint country keeps profiles on all manner of people and not just our criminal element either. Ordinary everyday people are also profiled.

Think about this for a minute. Just think how many national database your name is almost certain to be on. National insurance number, driving license, TV license, credit cards, doctors register of patients, a schools register, bank details. Travel documents like a passport.

A lot of aspects of our daily lifes leave trails of information.

Now let us put these is some sort of order.

You are born - NHS
Doctors - doctors register
You start school - School register
Natinal insurance number - Everyone born here gets one of these
You get a bank account - bank details
You get a house - bank/mortgage details or a council house
You get a TV - TV license
You get a credit card - credit card company
You get a car - The DVLA
You travel abroad - passport

Now the possibility of a lifelong national database profile is possible. Some think it is already here.

Do you know for certain it is not?

Politeness.

In the following BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6714407.stm some woman who apparently is Tony Blair's "respect czar" prattles on about respect. She, it is said, championed ASBO's (one area of The Law that we all simply does not work and is being abused by mainly councils around the country because slapping someone, regardless of age, is much easier than actively doing something).

Now the daft woman is saying we lack respect across all echelons of UK society and she thinks this is down to, amongst other things, single-parenting, less church going and a breakdown in neighbourliness.

Can these people get any further out of touch?

Politeness is everywhere and here is a clue for her from someone at the wrong end of societies ladder. The UK is not just London and if you base all your views on what goes on in our capital City or the actions of those who live and work there then there is no hope for you and the rest of us, as those who live and work in London are the worst kind of UK citizen.