i cannot understand.

The mentality behind such people as this jerk in a BBC report. The guy is 20p short of a pound if he thinks for one second that what he waffles on about is anything close to reality. Sure, there will be some in middle England that would go along with it but those on the various Council owned estates dotted around our cities won't give a hoot.

Take this gem as an example of his bilge.

"And to my mind the really shining example of how far the public have
come in accepting laws to help protect us from self-harm is the huge
support for smoke-free public spaces and workplaces throughout the UK."

Here is another.

"We've been largely successful with the tobacco industry, and now it's time to shift the focus onto alcohol and junk-food."

And one more.

"What next? I would like to see a ban on smoking in cars with a child on
board and a ban on displays of cigarettes in shops. I would like to see
a real hike in tax on alcohol and a ban on deep price-cuts for booze."

That would be the tobacco industry that they are killing. There are so many holes in his spurious comments that it really is not worth poiting them out.

The vast majority of people of this country take no notice whatsoever of what some berk says about being healthy. As i said earlier there will be some who do, mostly from the middle classes but the working class simply will not care and the younger that working class people is the less they care. It is people like that guy who provides us with the laughs that keep us going. He is so high up on his high horse he can't even see what is really happening. Here is a free clue for him.

Just because you say it is so does not make it so. Fool.

Do you use the BBC web site?

I do. in fact I spend a lot of time on it visiting all the various bits dotted around it. Some hidden from immediate view while others are displayed in prominent and semi-prominent links.

My reason for asking is that I feel that some of it could be vastly improved. Take something like this as an example. Am I the only one who dislikes how they display each entry backwards to how people normally read? The entries on that page, as it is everywhere such things are displayed, start at the bottom with that first entry. As each successive entry is added they go up above the previous one until the last one which is at the top. It simply does make for a natural reading style.

Why they do it this way only they know as I have asked, via email, several times with no reply so it would seem that:
1) I will never know who made the decision to do such things backwards
2) I will never know why whoever it was that made that decision made it
and
3) I will never know why or who decided such a backwards reading style was a good idea.

Simply put it is not. There is, to me anyway, nothing more annoying than finding an article, or several articles as these things are, well, mini articles anyway, like this then realising it is coming to a close or has already closed and having to scroll down through several other days worth to start reading at the bottom. Some of such articles can be several days worth so scrolling takes a while. It is frankly bloody annoying not to mention arse-backwards.

I am aware that there are many, possibly  thousands, of people who start reading on day one and return as each successive days worth of text is added so to them  it may seem right and proper as it is laid out. To those people, and to the BBC, I say there are probably many more thousands, if not millions, who find such pages by accident many months after whatever it is the article covers who then find they can only read the various days worth of text by scrolling first down to the bottom, reading a page which means scrolling up to find that days start then down again as one reads a days worth of text then up to the next days start and so on. Down, up, down up, down up. It absolutely makes no sense.

So, BBC, if you see this then please for the love of all things correct turn these types of daily  articles the right way up. Then those the read the daily articles can read them as normal and those of us who find such daily added articles can read them as normal too.

In living memory eh?

In this BBC article we have the lib-dem leader saying "Today's school leavers could be the first generation in living memory "to end up worse off than their parents". No doubt it has been reported elsewhere but as the BBC is one of the most respected web site for news at all levels that is where I read it first.

Now, being as I am 48 years old at this time in my short stay on this planet I can well remember the problems of getting a job during the late 1970's. i left school during 1976 when jobs for young people where very hard to come by. Sure, things improved during the 1980's but it is that time during 1976 to 1980 i am referring to. A time when if you did manage to find a job you was lucky yo stay in it for more than a few months.

I myself had many such jobs during that time. Not all good jobs either but being from a family that viewed unemployment as something nasty not having one was not an option for me. So, I went from job to job always hoping the next one would last but they never did until in 1978 my Granddad got me a job at a local tannery which lasted some 21 years until my disability get the better of me and I took voluntary redundancy.

But for the leader of a political party to claim the current crop of school leavers as being the first generation in living memory to be worse off than their parents shows either he is too young to remember the late 1970's or he lacks the knowledge about that time. As one who lived through those times I can tell him this current crop is most certainly not the first to suffer through lack of jobs. Not in living memory and not ever.

Guilt by name association.

Maybe not guilt as such but certainly touched. For an example of what I am writing about see this BBC article. Read what it is about then look at the name of the guy who purportedly wrote it.

This sort of thing happens all the time, especially in the science world, but that does not make it any less annoying that it happens at all. Furtherance of ones own country, and by extension ones own countrymen, even those who lived centuries ago is something to be applauded, especially if the reason for said furtherance is previously an unknown fact or two, but again that does not make it any the less annoying.

No one, least of all myself, would disagree with the sentiments of that article but does any one outside of the science community really care who did what centuries ago? Does it really make any difference to what we do now, or how we look and use something, on a daily basis? While history as a subject was something I personally enjoyed at school and since leaving school linking ones own birth name and place to someone who purportedly furthered what science knew at that time is in my opinion a futile exercise in the extreme.

Which make it all the more surprising that the BBC can give up resources, money and airtime to such things, but do all that they have.

Look again at the authors name and  tell me you cannot see what I see. Am I really so cynical? Obviously I am but that alone does not make me wrong. Does it?

People in high places.

People in high places, in this case Mr Ashley Highfield (okay, maybe not so high as in the publics view), should never offer up their views as there is always someone, somewhere who can spot bullshit when seen. And so it is with his BBC article on their blog, that isn't a blog, here.

In that article he tries to compare Ubuntu and MS Windows XP. I say try because anyone who tries, or has tried, to do exactly the same they always fall into the same traps. The single biggest trap is to directly compare any Linux based distribution with any Microsoft OS because they are not the same for what should be obvious reasons.

Further, they always do the comparison with MS Windows as the benchmark which means that the Linux based  distribution is at an immediate disadvantage. How so? Well,  hardware manufacturers almost always code a driver for their hardware and that driver is almost always MS Windows based. All the various Linux based distributions play catch up in this area so it is never a surprise to those of us who use  a Linux based distribution and have used one since 1992.

So, right there is the first problem.  Other problems are with 3rd party add on software such as Skype. Skype was written first and foremost for the MS  Windows platform and later they cobbled together something for  that ran on Linux. This puts the Linux  flavour of Skype at an immediate disadvantage again.

Here we have someone who by his own words played with ubuntu. He never said he was serious about installing and using it. These two points are not as far apart as they may seem at first glance. He then starts to blame Ubuntu for problems that have nothing to do with the Linux based solution but are in fact down to the web site designers blocking out, or at best a semi-functional web site, the millions of users of the Linux platform.

People such as he should know better but once again we read someone who has not the faintest clue espousing on something he knows nothing about. It is maddening for us advocates to have to read such rubbish.

Swearing on the BBC.

In every pub every night one can hear people of all ages engaging in what can only be termed mundane chatter. interspersed in this chatter is a smattering of swearwords. The vast majority of people accept this fact with nery a look away (or perhaps nery turning a deaf ear). And so it is with that image ingrained in your head we come to Aunty Beeb and her seeming obsession with good old Anglo Saxon words outputted by our T.V. screen.

Laudable as some may find the BBC's actions other, such as myself, will find what the BBC are doing on this subject mind numbing. Every day on every street up and down the country we adults, and our children, can hear someone somewhere uttering a swearword so why is the BBC pandering to the hear-no-evil-do-no-evil crowd in this manner? Have these self styled anti-profanity, live in a bubble types, not got the ability to turn over the channels on their T.V.'s nor an off switch? Why do they constantly have to alienate the masses and pander to the few?

In years long gone we had Mary Whitehouse doing exactly the same. Her aim was simply to ban all sex, physical and words, all swearing from our T.V. and cinema viewing pleasure never giving a thought to those who are never offended at hearing such words. She eventually became something of a laughing stock and the butt of many jokes but for all that she did untold damage which I suppose was her ultimate aim. Now we have the BBC running along those same lines. It makes a mockery of the license fee.

As someone who has enough moral fibre to simply switch channels if I find something on view to be offensive I find it totally offensive to have some unnamed person decide what my moral values should be. We already have the 21:00 watershed which almost all providers of programs adhere to. Some say it should be later in the day others say it should be earlier or removed entirely but whatever your views on it are it works as is.

Now and again my wife and i engage in a spot of you-are-wrong-and-I-am-right banter over some trivial thing. We swear during this intercourse and our children hear it. Any parent who thinks their child aged 6 and above knows no swearwords are delusional. Children aged 6 and above use such words not because they think they are cool but because they have heard them somewhere. Perhaps their parents but more likely whilst walking down the streets and so it goes into adulthood where they will surely encounter the same words in the daily working life.

Now we have the BBC acting as a crusader of moral values by lowering how many can and will be heard on their various channels throughout the day. I, personally, would be mortified if I heard ANY swearword being uttered during a children's show but for the love of all free things I am an adult and I have the ability to switch away from whatever it is that I find offensive. As long as they abide by the 21:00 watershed all is good with te world. I do NOT want or need some live-in-a-bubble type deciding these things for me.

Wild conclusions.

Is all that can be said about the comments made in this BBC article. The whys and wherefores of what makes a child later in life turn into a crminal, if indeed there is any link at all, are beyond me but that does not stop me from commenting on such things.

The article contentiously links what happened to Baby P with what might have been once he had reached his teenage years. The claim that he would have become "feral, a parasite, a yob"   smacks of an agency with an agenda.

That agenda, for all their prositations, is not to help children but to demonise them as the press do. By making comments such as the above quote they do nothing at all to help our children. What they di instead is make people, mothers, fathers, grandparents etc, fear the children they are rearing. Is that how we have become?

As a loving father of 5 children aged from 23 to just under 2 years, I abhore any level of violence towards not just children but all my fellow humans. That in itself does not stop me from admonishing my children.  All children need to be taught right from wrong and how a parents does that is up to them.  That said, I do not believe that a child needs violence towards him/her towards that aim. But comments such as those do nothing to help those parents on the edge. If anything they point the spotlight firmly on them.

It is wrong. So very very wrong.

Any parent knows how hard is can be to raise child in the modern age. Every parent has reached that line at one time or another. But a good parent will stop short. This act of not crossing the line from being a loving parent and violence towards the child is not something that is taught but is something inherent in every human being.  Not every child who suffered violence turns to being "feral, a parasite, a yob" of which I was one. My father routinely beat me but now being very conscious of what can happen I stop myself from becoming the monster my father was. I never seeked nor had any help from any organisation. I did it all myself. By myself. My own daeons died and where buried when my father was buried.

And that is how it works. Or should. It is when that normal human trait breaks down the happenings such as Baby P happen. How anyone can claim how he may have turned out is highly subjective and has no foundation in real life and that is what makes articles such as that one from the BBC so scary. The fact that someone as high as the chief executive at the children charity Barnardo's can make such a link is dangerous for all children everywhere in the world. If anyone does take notice of what he has said and turns that into something worse, which is how it will conclude, then parents everywhere should be scared because the finger will always be pointed towards you and will always fall on the wrong side of the line. Be they a doctors, a nurse, a policeman they will always end up veiwing the most casual of injuries that every child can, and most do get, as that child has suffered violence at the hands of the people that, in all probabilty, love that child. It is that slanted view that scares me so much. It will happen. Especially with people in charge such as the guy around which the article was written.

I fully realise that some children will end up doing as their fathers did unto them but some is not all and in the case of Baby P we have no way of knowing how he would have turned out. None.

Rugby League World Cup.

The 2008 Rugby League World Cup is now at an end. The winners, New Zealand, showed that the dominant Australians can be beat and what a show they put on whilst doing just that. In the final no doubt the Australian press will point to the awarded penalty try, to New Zealand, in the second half as being the moment New Zealand finally believed they could win, but it has to be said that on the day the New Zealand players played the game plan that did not allow the Australians to play their usual expansive type of play. Ultimately, this was what won New Zealand the final. In the second half New Zealand dominated the game. They thoroughly deserved their victory. It was not that Australia played poorly but that the New Zealanders did not allow them to get into the game in a way they did in all their other games. As a spectical the 2008 Rugby League World Cup final was brilliant. On the day New Zealand were simply the better team.

The woefully inept England team, try as they did, were simply terrible in all the games they played. It can only be hoped that some searching questions, with solutions that benefit our national teams here in the U.K. (which included England, Scotland and Ireland, why no Wales? They have a national team but failed to qualify) can be made and are addressed and they do it in quick time in time for the next Rugby League World cup. Can the Super League teams forgo selfishness to aid not only local, as in U.K., leagues but also, and much more important, our national teams? Only time will tell.

As a follower and former player of the greatest game on Earth the Rugby League World Cup was a resounding success for all the teams involved. Even those teams from the so-called lesser groups showed they had the required skills and a burning desire to win. Some of those less powerful groups yielded some fantastic matches.

Much was said about the group layout but ultimately this did what it was designed to do and allowed lesser teams to compete on an equal footing. From that perspective they, the people in charge of putting the whole spectical together, got it right. Overall, the World Cup was a resounding, as well as a finacial, success.

For those of you who do not know what Rugby League is I will point you to this (the link points to a flash based 'Best tries' of the World Cup). While that in and of itself does not show a full game nor show the mariad of rules that govern each game it  does show some of the excellence my favourite game has. Much more information about Rugby League can be seen at the BBC web site dedicated to it here.

If the word is spread and other countries develop a national team in the years to come perhaps finally the game of Rugby League can grow into a truly international sport. I know the game is worthy as there is no other team sport that provides the level of excitement a game of Rugby League provides. Even at the amateur level.  Can Rugby League grow in countries where it currently has no presence? Yes, but it will take time and money to make it happen and year after year od grassroots development with some gritty determination to make it a success but as teams such as Samoa and Fiji prove it can be done. In Papua New Guinea the game of Rugby League is their national sport. The only  country where that holds true in fact.

If you like what you find, read and see when you type Rugby League into Google perhaps that will spur you into action in getting together like minded people who then go on to establish a Rugby League presence in your area no matter where you may be in the world. For me there is no other game played anywhere in the World that comes close to Rugby League for both players and spectators. The guys who play at the very pinnacle, The Rugby League World Cup, of the sport are supreme    athletes that have their bodies pounded week in and week out during their domestic seasons but even those who play at an amateur level do the same. They believe, perhaps you can too.

There is no better game.

Well done New Zealand.

Stupid, inane and utterly purile.

Is how I see articles such as this from the BBC. No-one can argue with the fact that the Microsoft family of operating systems dominate the desktop but do we really need the near on worshiping proffered in that article? The BBC, in that article, has clearly moved from a review to advertisment in clear breech of their own ethics standards. I make no bones about the fact that I pimp a Linux based operating system at any and all times to anyone willing to listen so when I read that link the red light in my head came on. It is so wrong on so many levels is ceases to be funny how the BBC continually cow-tow to Microsoft at every opertunity as well as spending unknown millions of the U.K. peoples monies ponied up via the license fee on Microsoft operating systems when instead they could save millions by using an alternative like a Linux or UNIX based operating system.

When reading any article on the BBC that has any level of technological bent one can be assured of a giggle or two as the wrter clearly has no real clue about that which he/she is writing about. Many, almost classical, gems have come via the keyboard of the BBC's computer technology writers. The gems may go down well with your average Joe and Jane but for us who are more technologically gifted (having been around computers since 1974 and having had my own at home since 1980 I have picked up a few things like the correct terminology to use. This level of competence utterly fails as far as the vast majority of BBC technology writers go). Without fail, time and time again the authors show their complete lack of technological expertise. How these people get jobs on such a high profile web based news outlet only those who employ them really know. For such as myself I cannot figure it out.

In that article above there is no mention of how Microsoft the company is a tried and convicted criminal. Nor how Microsoft effectively stole their first release of MSDOS all those years ago. Nor how they reneged on deal after deal in their quest for desktop domination. Nor how release after release of each and every one of their operating systems has contained bits and pieces that where assimilated, reworked, then spat out to become part of the Microsoft operating system of the time. Nor how they made deals with hardware manufactures to ensure that Microsoft Windows  demanded ever better  computers on which it ran. Thereby giving both the hardware manufacturers and Microsoft much revenue in clear breech of anti-competitive laws around the world. Microsoft has been proven to have  done much harm during their tenure as the premier operating system creator. Microsoft have  done much wrong and broken many laws around the world over the last 15 or so years and in many parts of the world are now paying the price for those wrongdoings. In some parts of the world Microsoft is losing its formerly powerful grip on the desktop as Goverment after Goverment the world over tells their people to use alternatives such as a Linux based operating system and within the walls of power in those countries there too they are using a Linux based operating system.

None of that was mentioned in that article though. Oh no. Not a word of it as the BBC once again laid its belly bare for all to see as Microsoft tickled its soft underside.

Being as I am a staunch advocate of free standards and the Linux based operating system I see Microsoft as the daemon company that it is. Is it really too much to ask that the BBC editors do the same or at the very least tell it like it is. All the information about Microsoft practases is out there on the Internet so once again the BBC has no excuses. In this, and many other instances, the BBC has shown who is the tail and who is the dog.

BBC.co.uk does it again.

In this article on the bbc.co.uk web site we see once again the underlaying knowledge is sorely lacking. They lable the, by now ancient, Anarchists' Cookbook  a 'terrorist manual'.

At a risk of being tagged by the all seeing police state which Great Britain has become as a terrorist myself I put Anarchist Cookbook into google and once passed the obligatory adverts the first hit returned was on Wikipedia. It says there that it first appeared  circa 1971. And just to show how easy it is, even now, to download the Cookbook, at the end of the Wikipedia link it leads you to here.

Not exactly hard to find is it. Though as the FAQ on that web site says the original Cookbook cannot be downloaded anymore there are several other similar Cookbooks available some of which can be downloaded from there.

Anyone who has traveled since 1971 through Fidonet, the early none WWW based Internet through to its modern WWW equivalent, the all singing all dancing Web2.0 based Internet, knows that that 'Cookbook' has been around for years. I do not know when it first surfaced nor if it is still being added to or updated in any way as I have not seen a copy of it for at least 10 or more years. It has probably been around for 30 years or so.

I cannot remember when I first came upon it, suffice it to say it was uploaded to my BBS (old style BBS not its modern meaning) which I ran from 1977 until 1997 or so. Having taken a quick look at it, as all good SysOps did when something had been uploaded to their BBS, it became clear very quickly that while the information held within was aimed at doing things considered illegal there was not much aside from  homemade bomb making, that would lead to anyone getting hurt. Sure, telephone companies would (more on that later) but as everyone considered them money grabbing thieves they were considered fair game.

If you never lived through the days before the Internet existed or the days before Broadband access then it is hard to think of such things as 'phreaking'. Phreaking allowed one to play a tune, usually using a penny whistle (also known as a tin whistle), which fooled the telephone exchange which then allowed one to make a free telephone call. If you get it right you could fool the exchange to allow a free call to be made and also to 'dial' the number for you. All considered clever stuff back in those days Modern telephony systems are no longer prone to being fooled in such a manner. There are, or perhaps were, many such olde worlde things in the Anarchists' Cookbook that the BBC author called a 'terrorists manual', that bare no use in the modern technologically laden world. Whether this has changed and such things within it removed i have no idea as i have not seen a copy of the Cookbook for years.


This basic lack of in-depth writing is proliferating all across the
news reporting media. Be they an on-line  place or part of the dying
dead tree newspaper brigade. One can see it everywhere one reads the
news. It is as alarming as it is appalling.

Do the BBC consider everyone who reads their articles to be under 10 years old? On reading some articles the answer would appear to be a resounding yes. It is this appalling lack of both quality and knowledge that has infiltrated the BBC in the last couple of years that makes reading such a joy and irritant at the same time. The BBC of course will say that it was the police who made such comments and all they were doing was reporting the news. But that in and of itself is no excuse.

Perhaps because those who write such articles are a new breed they do not know such things have been available for 30 or more years but surely in that case it would make perfect sense, as well as add some credibility to the author, to seek out some information on it? Is that really asking too much of a modern reporter that they do some very basic sleuthing so that they do not appear amateurish?

Beat them if they won't comply.

This article on the BBC website is all well and good but let us be sure this is what is really needed. Take this quote as an excellent example of what I am aiming at.

"The council's zero tolerance approach aims to reduce the feeling of
neglect and lack of respect within neighbourhoods and to help improve
the quality of people's lives and encourage civic pride."

Read and digest that quote. Does it scare you as much as it does me?

I am all for not littering. I was raised when the T.V. campaign "Keep Britain Tidy" was active and since those days have always made the effort to either take our rubbish home with us or ensure it is placed in the proper bin wherever we may be. As a father i have always instilled this attitude into my children too. But, beating people up by handing out fines over what could be a careless act is just plain wrong.

That quote above shows exactly why the various councils around this country have no respect whatsoever from the vast majority of people. Even less respect is offered to councils that are Hell bent on simply expanding council coffers. After all, that is what "zero tolerance" is all about. It has nothing at all to do with "civic pride". There are surely better ways to proffer civic pride into people then there is in that method of instailling "civic prde".

How about a national T.V. campaign as was done in the 1970's? Splash is all over childrens T.V. so we catch them young as they did back then. We have a whole two generations that do not care about anyone or anything except themselves but fining these people for what is ultimately a Governement problem is wrong.

More rubbish.

More rubbish against eating foods. This article cannot really be called journalism. No matter what we eat it is bad for us these so called experts claim. Yet, our forefathers and generation after generation of families have lived and survived on the very foods they say are bad for us. The reason these people call foul on foodstuff is for the same reason others do it and that is to get more money into their coffers.

I mean, come on, think about it. If these experts didn't say anything who in their right minds would send them donations? No one that is who. So, out they come with whatever the latest 'find' is and how it is linked to this or that. Tell you what, let us say it is linked to cancer because people are scared of the big C.

Colour me skeptical if you so wish but I find all these level of scare mongering exactly that. scaremongering.

Spead of 'news'.

I have put the word news in quotes to highlight the fact the our newspapers, both on-line and paper type, often allow us to read things that are anything but news.

In this report on the BBC web site one quote caught my eye and that was "News took longer to get into the public domain and tended to have different focus.". The reason it caught my eye was it is something my long since dead Nana used to say in relation to world news and how in a couple of decades previous people would not have heard about various famines and atrocities that happened abroad. And here we are now looking at a quote said by some professor about news within Britain's shores.

The world is shrinking that is for sure. It is shrinking in the sense that it now takes a lesser time to get to some other place in the world. It is shrinking in the sense that news from anywhere abroad can be handed in to ones editor for inclusion in that days news outlet in real time and that means almost as the news happens.

The Internet is largely to blame for this shrinkage. But is this shrinkage of the world a good or bad thing? I reckon it is a bit of both. It is good because at its heart it can be used to bring the worlds people closer together. It is bad because the news outlets abuse this peoples desire to be close to others.

We are by design a group think animal. We are social creatures. We have an innate desire to want to feel close to others within our creature set and it is this desire that the news outlets abuse. They abuse it by stating something is this or that rather than just reporting what has happened. They have the power to shape our thinking. If there is something, or someone, worth reporting about that they happen not to like they can force feed their readership lies and propoganda so that that readership ends up disliking the same thing or person. We all like to think our thinking cannot be altered in this way using this time honoured method but I ask you this:

How do you know for absolute certainty that something reported on that purportedly happened half the world away actually happened?

Sure news aggregater's abound on the Internet and if something is reported on in several countries simultaneously then surely the news must be true? Not really. Do we know for absolutely certain that the news moguls worldwide are not in some massive collusion? We do not. And that is worrisome.

My old Nana always said that unless you see something unfold before your own eyes or unless you know someone who saw that something unfold before their own eyes who then relayed to you a firsthand report of that something you should not trust any other source.

As overall people have become more educated in the Western world one would hope that they would see through something like this and see it for what it really is but alas this is not the case. As the use of the Internet has grown faster than any one expected it to the people have come to trust whatever they read. This is a dangerous trait that one day will be exposed but for now at least the news outlets have within their grasp a chance to shape the world to the views of their owners and if we were to find out who really owns the news outlets around the world we would probably find that the ownership is in the hands of a few people.

As I grow older and more cynical with age I can see a lot of what my old Nana used to say as holding a lot of water. Of course, some of what she said was utter tosh as she came from a different world that had different standards to how things are today but her underlaying philosophy holds true. Do not trust anything you cannot verify yourself.

Can we laugh?

I read this BBC article and something my long dead Grandma used to say jumped immediately into my head. She used this term a lot. "All fur coat and no knickers" which meant that whoever she aimed the phrase at had no money but plenty of debt.

I guess we can expect the less well off to be hit by the latest credit crunch but when it hits those more affluent people we are supposed to feel sorry for them. But why should we? It is well known that those within the middle class bracket always take on more debt than they should to fund a front end to the world that says "Look! We have money." But the reality is that they have no money at all because their very existance is all debt funded. Hence "All fur coat and no knickers."

Can we laugh at their current situation? Of course we can. And I do. My wife calls it inverted snobbery. I simply love seeing the middle classes struggle financially. It proves to me just how false their whole existence is. All the pretense. They deserve everything they suffer during the current credit crunch and long may it go on once the country has got over it.

In that article there is a quote by some Senior debt adviser. It reads. "I've had at least two clients sit in front of me and tell me they would of killed themselves if they hadn't found out we were here." Oh those poor darlings. Perhaps the world would be a better place if they hadn't of found them.

Inverted snobbery or not. We on the lower rung of life's fragile existence are suffering too but it is truly heartening on this lovely sunny Sunday morning to know those above us on life's ladder are suffering more than we are.

Let the phony buggers suffer.

BBC V ISP's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stm

In that article on the bbc web site it is quite plain the BBC have no intention of paying ISP any money. I have to say I agree with the BBC.

Why should the BBC pay for ISP negligence? The ISP's should have and should now do upgrade their networks to cope with demand. They surely saw the rise in on-line videos. Youtube is one such that delivers video's to users but I never heard the ISP's asking them for money so why now ask the BBC for money so the ISP's can upgrade their networks?

The rise of on-line video entertainment has been with us since before youtube existed. Youtube came along and that started a slight strain on ISP networks. Did they, the ISP's upgrade their pipes to cope? No. They let that one slide. Then the BBC opens its IPlayer service and people started using it. Apparently it is, unsurprisingly, popular. Suddenly the ISP's are faced with network overload. Is it the ISP's or the BBC who should pay for the network upgrades? Think about this for a minute.

You pay for network access.
The BBC pay for providing you with all their web sites.

Focus on that last one. As a content provider the BBC pay for Internet access just like or you and I do. Except the BBC pays millions a year for the privilege of serving you with the content which includes the IPlayer service.

Now focus on that first one. You pay for Internet access. Just like the BBC.

Google has many applications that make them a content provider. YouTube is a content provider. There are many such content providers out there but the greedy ISP's have never asked any single one for money to prop up their failing networks. Suddenly the BBC, a public content portal paid for with the TV license money overs a streaming service and suddenly they ISP networks are creaking so they automatically assume that because the BBC gets millions every year from the TV license that the BBC should pay, again, the ISP for allowing such services on their failing pipes.

In short. The BBC pay for the privilege of serving up their content which includes the BBC IPlayer. You, the user, pay your ISP for Internet access which includes the BBC web site which includes the BBC IPlayer. The ISP's want the BBC to pay them again for you, who have already paid for Internet access to access the BBC web site which includes the BBC IPlayer service who already pay for access which allows them to serve up content. So, the BBC end up paying twice and you, the user, once. Clear?

Quite how the ISP's expect even more money from the BBC is beyond comprehension.

For those using Karoo you may be pleased to know that while not unexpected they are at the forefront of the shouting at the BBC for more money. Not unexpected because Karoo are a greedy company who have some of the highest prices for ADSL in the U.K.

Content providers.

In an excellent blog post on the BBC web site by Ashley Highfield the Director of Future Media and Technology in which he scolds ISP's for moaning about bandwidth issues.

Specifically the bandwidth used by the BBC's iplayer service. I urge you to read it and to understand the consequences of what he is saying.

It is not often that I can agree with anything the BBC has to say but in this instance I say he has got it spot on. Why should users of a given ISP pay an ISP for broadband access and then the ISP get paid by the BBC for users using the BBC service?

I really hope the BBC prints a name and shame list of ISP and I bet our ISP would top the list. I know for a fact our ISP has tried to get money out of the BBC, specifically because of the bandwidth used by people who have legally paid for the broadband service have or will access the BBC iplayer.

My ISP already charges over the odds prices for an "up to" 8mb service so being forced to pay twice is not something I, and many others who have no choice in ISP access, relish one bit.

I can say with absolute certainty that our ISP filters the BBC iplayer service and at times, especially during 6pm to midnight, the service offered by the BBC as a public service is unavailable. It is unavailable because our ISP makes it so. Mr Highfield is against this practice, not that our ISP cares about its users as there is no competition for them to worry about here.

Good on you Mr Highfield for showing up ISP's for what they are.

Figures.

Ever more these days we see some random "expert" espousing on this or that. Sometimes the espouser talks sense and the article/TV interview is entertaining and informative. However, one thing they all do, which invariably spoils the whole thing, is pull some seemingly random figures out of the air.

Take this BBC article as a prime example. The, probably, eminant doctor says something we can all identify with. Tiredness. Especially tiredness when the clocks go back 1 hour (in the U.K. at least this occurance happened early hours of today. 28-102007 at 2am) but then he spoils it all by saying "six out of 10 people" are failing to relax before sleeping and that this leads to "semisomnia" and that this change in time can take 3 days to recover properly from.

It is not what he says overall that is annoying, just the obvious figures out of thin air bit. I mean, everyone can identify with tiredness, especially feeling just that little bit more tired after the clocks are turned back 1 hour and for a couple of days afterwards we all can identify with feeling that little bit more tired than usual. But where exactly did those figures, "six out of 10", come from? I would hazard a guess that he looked through either his own log book or that of the hospital he works in and then pulled out all instances of tiredness in the 3 days following the clock change then calculated that figure against the population count as a whole. Not exactly rocket science nor does it make those figures correct. However, "6 out of 10" looks very impressive and is sure to trigger something in the minds of the readers but here, all it does is provide evermore proof that this type of portrayal of figures is nothing more than an ineffectual method that annoys.

This pulling figures out of thin air to backup or bolster whatever point is being made is quite simply ineffectual to all but the lowest of the low on intelligence. It is annoying. It is almost an affectation in so much as the person talking seems to have a driving need to back up that whih they are saying by pulling out outlandish figures to back up their claims.

The NorthWest

So, the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk are moving to the NorthWest from their current Southern base. Well, part of it is. Something of a surprise move they reckon but in the end it boils down to cheaper costs for what they are doing. Nothing more, nothing less. Apparently they are creating a 'media village', whatever one of those is, and of course it is cheaper to run such a place up North than it is down South. It is cheaper in wages and operating costs.

So, it comes as no surprise to find out that the Northwest is starting to infiltrate the otherwise Southern slant of the BBC's news. Oh sure, the BBC reports on all geographical areas of the U.K. as well as reporting on the worlds news but, in previous times both Manchester and Liverpool would not rate a mention for anything other than gun crime in Manchester and the music scene in Liverpool. All that is set to change as the BBC trundles up North and slightly West.

And so, we come to articles on the BBC web site such as this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6956608.stm One would be forgiven if they thought the only cities above Birmingham were Manchester and Liverpool. But then in recent times it is no surprise to learn that the BBC's narrow field view creates such articles as that one. It also shows how little the BBC writers know about those two cities as well as how little they know about the North in general.

The BBC used to be none partisan in their reporting but in recent years with the infiltration of very poor lefty (we have two major political parties here in the U.K. One leans to the left while the other one leans to the right. There is a third party which sits somewhere in the middle but their support is so small compared to the other two they are hardly worth a mention) leaning writers their outward facing public face is a laughing stock amongst the general public. That will not change no matter where they base themselves.

Articles such as that one above will become all the most prevalent as the BBC moves part of its bohemoth organisation up North and they will, as only the BBC can, turn the Northwest into meaning only Manchester and Liverpool.

Ugh.

So now the BBC has joined the folly of putting 'dig' 'delicious' 'facebook' etc links at the bottom of most every article.

Bless them, they even have a 'what are these' link to help the hapless. These 'social' bookmarking links are a stain on the Internet. It is bad enough when the BBC technical articles are plainly wrong in whatever it is they are trying to write about and can be seen to plainly wrong by anyone but the socialite group who know nothing about technical things anyway.

But these social bookmarking links are the silliest of the silly. They totally distract from the main article content. The BBC web site designers are so desperate to be seen as hip, as far as the Internet goes anyway, anywhere else they fail miserably as well, that they will seemingly spoil an otherwise excellent web site with folly like this.

They were late to this particular party but even being late does not make it any less tacky. The BBC are playing catch up in many areas and this is one area I would prefer to have seen them avoid.

I know I am not alone in my dislike for these things.

Social bookmarking is all well and good but they are pervasive and because of that they are in ones face everywhere all of the time and because of that they are fast becoming annoying. No, scratch that. They are annoying.

If I want to bookmark something I will and I will bookmark it within my browser not on some external web site that may or may not be around in a few years time or some social bookmarking web site that is so slow to load one may as well have gone back to the web site one bookmarked on it and searched that for the link and still have it load within ones browser before these social bookmarking web sites have loaded.

To make matters worse. Just about all major, and some minor, news outlets on the Internet have these silly links. being so well used does not make it good however.

As one who has been on the Internet since before it was called the internet these things, along with many other things, just plain annoy. I have seen the Internet (or Interweb as some hapless people call it) grow up into something useful that anyone from anywhere who has an internet connection can enjoy. But these social web sites and worse, these links to social web sites are just plain and simply annoying and should have no place whatsoever on a fantastic web site like the BBC.

Aunty Beeb should know better. The problem with the BBC is that it has been infiltrated by 20-somethings who think they know what their readers want, whether they want it or not, and every now and again they do something that irks in the back of ones mind and these links to social bookmarking boxes simply distract from the main story. Because the social bookmarking box is so damn big it really does distract from the main story they are so desperate for you to link via these social bookmrking sites.

Sorry Beeb, you have got this one very very wrong. You annoyed a certain proportion of your user base when you made the Iplayer MS Windows XP only and you will annoy a large proportion of your user base with this madness.

I for one will be voting on my dismay by not using the BBC web site as my opening page in Firefox any more.