Blogging light......

Busy professionally*. That is all.

* No, I'm not a hooker.

When is a bribe not a bribe? When it's a "woo"?

How funny, on the one hand, the Sun is complaining that the Russians winning the 2018 World Cup was a an outrageous "stitch-up" and then on the other hand, and same day, has a story that says,

ANGRY Boris Johnson has taken revenge on the FIFA fatcats who wrecked our 2018 World Cup dream - by scrapping a luxurious hotel freebie [during the Olympics]..... The Dorchester offer was intended to woo FIFA chiefs ahead of Thursday's vote in Zurich on who would get the 2018 World Cup.

Errrr "woo"? I think what you mean is "bribe". Shouldn't we stop the moral indignation and just accept the fact that we were too tight with our "wooing"?

The irony of the Topshop protests

I hear that yesterday, some "campaigners" managed to cause a high street clothes store to close (Topshop) and all because they think the store, or more rightly the guy that runs the store is not paying enough income tax because his wife lives in Monaco (no doubt in a tiny house which cost a fortune*) and quite legally gets a dividend.

It's an odd one to me, because legally speaking it isn't true at all, and more specifically, the targeting of the store completely negates the amount of taxation revenue such stores generate for the Government through things like, corporation tax, income tax for staff, employers NI contributions; employees NI contribution; Council Tax; energy levies; VAT on sales; VAT on energy; VAT on fuel; Fuel duty in distribution etc etc.

The irony of protesting about "missing tax revenue", which results in a major high street store having to close its door and thus not generate tax revenue is delicious though, don't you think?

In a sense, the protests are not really some evidence of a mass radicalisation of people looking for tax fairness, but rather evidence that the young people who demand free education lack the self-awareness to spot the rank hypocrisy of their own actions.

There is a small part of me that wants them to carry on and be even more successful, just so at the end of it all it can be shown that by causing these stores to close they reduced the tax receipts to Government by more than they claim is owed. Now wouldn't that be really fucking funny?

Oh yes, one last though. Have none of them noticed that the Arcadia group stores all trade online as well? You might be able to cause the doors to close by blockading them, but unless you're going to break the law by a Denial of Service Attack on their sites, you're probably not going to stop them trading.

* It is a myth that people who live in Monaco all live in huge mansions. Many of the super-rich pay millions for property that would be worth only £100K in the UK. David Coulthard for example owns (or at least did) a pokey flat where his balcony view is a brick wall, and it cost stupid amounts of money.

The Tory Party feeds me kebabs, pizza and booze

I've just read this post over at Iain Dale's about a story by Sam Coates in the Times which notes the Tories paid £29,000 to MessageSpace who provide the adverts on this blog.

Apparently (and I admit I've not read the piece because I refuse to pay), this means that the Tories are essentially bankrolling right wing blogs by paying them "thousands" *yawn*.

It's true, I sold out, and I thank the Conservative Party greatly for supplementing my salary with an additional 0.4% - the kebabs, pizzas and booze were enjoyed greatly Sam, really they were.

HTC - possibly the greatest tech company in the world?

It's not often I post about a specific company, and it's even less often that I would praise a company but today I would like to say the following. HTC are absolutely, unbelievably brilliant. I own a Google Nexus One which I have hacked, rooted and generally played about with. The thing is, in order to do this you need to unlock the bootloader of the phone, and when you do this, you are presented with following screen.

Note the words "unlocking the bootloader will void any warranty on your phone".
Anyhow, the power button, which is also the wake button, on my baby started to play up. Having done a little bit of research, it seems that this is a design hardware issue on phones built before April 2010. Essentially the button has a dodgy ribbon attached. It wasn't long before the button didn't work at all.

I was able to mitigate this by putting a custom rom on the phone that allowed the trackball to wake it, but I still had the problem that if, for some reason the phone turned off I was going to have Hell getting it back on again. So I phone HTC Europe to get it fixed.

Now clearly, I have bnroken the warranty on this phone, so I was fully prepared for the "oh you're warranty is void you're going to have to pay". I was completely upfront with the service centre telling them I had voided the warranty by unlocking the bootlader, but I made clear that i would flash the phone with a standard non-root Rom before sending it back.

The call centre said that even if I did this I would still have to pay for the repair and I would be contacted before it was carried out to say how much it would cost. Fair enough I thought, I accept that I voided the warranty, so be it, I love the phone enough to spend money on it.

So UPS come and pick it up last Monday, I track the phone via HTC's website into the repair centre, I hear nothing so I call them eventually, and get told it's being tested and I will receive an email about charges. I wait a few more days until this morning, and I get no email, so I call them again to be told the phone is with UPS and is on its way back to me and am given a tracking number. No charge, fixed under warranty.

Now you might think I was just lucky, but having looked about online a bit more, it seems that HTC have done this a number of times for many people. A company that honours the warranty for a hardware issue when technically they were totally within their rights to charge me is a company worth dealing with I say.

HTC, you rock.

Bollocks to the moaners....

Morning all, apologies for the moan but I feel I must get something off my chest. I am sick to bloody death of hearing people on the TV, radio etc asking the question:

"Why is it that a little snow in Britain causes chaos yet countries like Russia (cheating bastards), Sweden etc can cope with it?"

This question is pretty much wheeled out every time we have snow, much like we wheel out the same questions about dumbing-down when exam results come out, and yet the answer is so painfully obvious.

Countries like Russia (did I mention they're bastards?), Sweden, and even US states like Washington DC, New York and Illinois, know that each year, without fail, they're going to get a shedload of snow. I don't mean 5cm-10cm, I mean proper snow (see picture for illustration of real snow). Now, because they know its coming and they can guarantee its coming, they invest in the means to deal with it because they know they have too.

In Britain though, snow is not guaranteed every year, nor is it very often heavy, and again,by heavy I mean really heavy, not just a foot deep. So we don't invest because the cost benefit balanced against the risk of it happening just isn't there. OK? What is the point in investing millions at say Gatwick when, as it stands, the risk of snowfall in a year to the scale that will require a runway be shut down is so minimal?

You may not like it, but it's just an economic reality.

Likewise, the reason the trains have problems comes down to whether it is worth investing millions against the possible risk of line closure over a period of maybe five days, that may not even happen anyway. The reason Sweden and Russia can still run their trains is because all they're decisions are based on the knoweldge that they will have snow, whilst ours are based on the knowledge that we might, maybe, possibly, probably not have snow.

So please, stop bloody moaning and deal with it.

HMS Invincible being auctioned - Dear Santa?

Anybody want an aircraft carrier? Bid now or add it to your wishlist, because the MoD is auctioning it online.
Bugger to find moorings for it though huh?

SOCPA restrictions on protest to be repealed

Following on from the last post it also seems that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill 2010-11 will be repealing the restrictions on protests that were introduced under SOCPA. Section 139 states,

(1) Demonstrations in vicinity of Parliament: repeal of SOCPA 2005 provisions Sections 132 to 138 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (which regulate demonstrations and use of loudspeakers in the vicinity of Parliament) are repealed.

(2)The public assemblies in relation to which section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 applies, as a consequence of the repeal of section 132(6) of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, include public assemblies which started, or were being organised, before this section comes into force.

I'm thinking a few people might be happy with that, although I don't know if it will go far enough for some.

Camping in Parliament Square to be banned

Interesting, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill 2010-11 is going to ban people camping in Parliament Square. Section 141(2) states,

For the purposes of this Part, a “prohibited activity” is any of the following—

(a) operating any amplified noise equipment in the controlled area of Parliament Square;

(b) erecting or keeping erected in the controlled area of Parliament Square—
(i) any tent, or
(ii) any other structure that is designed, or adapted, (solely or mainly) for the purpose of facilitating sleeping or staying in a place for any period;

(c) using any tent or other such structure in the controlled area of Parliament Square for the purpose of sleeping or staying in that area;

(d) placing or keeping in place in the controlled area of Parliament Square any sleeping equipment with a view to its use (whether or not by the person placing it or keeping it in place) for the purpose of sleeping overnight in that area;

(e) using any sleeping equipment in the controlled area of Parliament Square for the purpose of sleeping overnight in that area.

No more messy Brian Haw types it seems.

The Gary McKinnon solution?

One of the latest disclosure by Wikileaks that is doing the round today is the news that Gordon Brown personally appealed to the US Ambassador to resolve the Gary McKinnon case and allow him to face justice in the UK. By all account the US gave him a flat refusal.

The conspiracy theorists are suggesting it seems that this appeal by Brown took place around the same time as Scotland were pissing off the yanks by letting the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi free because he only had a few months to live (still alive I think). In other words, the yanks took the "fuck you" approach as payback.

Now, whether that is true or not is irrelevant really, but may I offer a suggestion to the Home Sceretary and the Coalition on how to deal with this extradition issue? Why not take the US approach and just say errrrr.... "no you can't have him, bugger off"?

Of course, there will be some who wring their hands and say "we can't do that, we signed a treaty" but may I remind them that treaties are not documents that exist forever, they can be broken, and, let's be honest, what do we think the US is going to do if we did flip them the proverbial bird?

Seriously, are they going to get Delta Force to perform a covert extraction operation to get McKinnon in jail? Are they going to send some CIA spooks on a "hood him and squirrel him out of the country" type op? It's highly unlikely I'd say, especially if we banged the guy up instead anyway.

Naturally, if you buy the conspiracy theories, and you're one of those people convinced that the US is evil, then you'll probably think it's probable, I imagine the sane though, who don't think Spooks is a documentary series would not.

All we've got to do is grow some balls and say no.