Jan 04
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Hope the traditional family visit, argment and feasting went smoothly!
May 22
For those people searching for the ‘right’ ISP to supply their Broadband Internet many will find the majority of ISPs offering Unlimited internet packages. However many families are finding tehir internet access restricted, removed and even in some cases extra charges appearing on their internet bill.
This is all down to the ‘fair usage policy’. A fair usage policy is basically a small line in your contract that says while your internet is Unlimited you cannot use more than xxGB per month.
Suddenly things don’t seem quite so unlimited anymore.
The ISPs back this move saying it keeps things fair for all of their customers. Some users abusing the system can slow down the network for everyone.
Now here I think is a very important point. If I bought an unlimited usage product I should expect unlimited usage. The company should have the network to deal with this if it decides to advertise such a product.
If I hired a Builder to paint a mansion I would be very friggin upset if the builder only did half of it and then said He couldn’t paint anymore because then there might not be enough paint for the other houses.
If I went to an all you can eat resteraunt but was told I could only have half a plate of food so there was enough for everyone I would also be pretty damn annoyed.
So why the hell should internet service providers get away with unethically and misleadingly advertising products as unlmiited when they sometiems have usage limits as low as 5 gig.
Fortunately there is help available, there have been several casse where people have won full refunds and even damages for loss of connectivity because the Fair Use Policy was not well displayed and that the advertisements were misleading.
Lets take down the corporate bastards who decided to call limited unlimited!
May 19
In the effort to progress human research into stem cells the Government is considering repeal laws against experimentation with a mix of human and animal embryos.
Now the religions and pussy footed human rights groups have been up in arms on this one, no surprise there. But the focus of this experimentation is a rather strange and mind boggling one.
Personally I am a bit undecided, Christian groups said this move strikes against the heart of human Morales, but wouldn’t something that gave the potential to save millions of lives be a good thing?
I think it is important to remember that this is not aiming to be an Island of Doctor Monroe scenario. These crosses would be grown in the hope that we could gain a greater number of stem cells for a single embryo.
This whole situation brings in a massively controversial angle to an already hotly debated topic. After all the ending of human life at an early stage for research is hardly a non-argument between pro-life and the scientific community.
From a more personal aspect I believe this research should go ahead, I will support nearly anything that looks like it has a serious possibility of improving human life. Stem cell research has already proven immensely effective on the treatment of previously fatal illnesses, the only reason such medication is not already in use is down to he morality issues put forth by pro lifers.
I can see their point in some respects, an embryo could grow into the worlds next greatest artist or scientist. How do we know?
To that I would always point out, it could also be the next Hitler. These things happen ey.
The mixing of animal and human genes does seem at a fundamental level ‘wrong’ but for something that could save millions of lives who am I to complain? After all people take an animals heart already, how is changing an embryo different?
May 08
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today announced that he could see the end of the US Credit Crunch being in the very near future. This has raised a lot of skepticism from economists and pundists around the world who ask the question, should someone with such an obtuse view of the US economy really be in charge of it?
Currently the US economy, along with the UK and several other EU countries is under a period of normalization to bring living costs back into line with wages.
Henery Paulson seems blissfully unaware of this fact as he tried to stall the depression recently with a government rebate to his country. If he thinks a hundred or so dollars is going to stop the increasng number of bankruptcies he really is in trouble.
He mentions the recovery of several lending agencies, however he does not point out that the collapse of these was due to ‘loss of faith’ that saw the Northern Rock Bank Nationalised in the UK in 2007. The credit agencies will still suffer as people in the countries become poorer and find it increasingly difficult to maintain a lifestyle they hope for without becoming heavily in debt.
May 07
Just incase anyone has been reading the BBC site recently they have reported on the current legal battle being spearheaded by the Greek people of Lesbos. They claim that a gay rights group should not be allowed to use the word lesbian because it is infact the name used for the people of Lesbos.
Now first off let me say I have a lot of respect for lesbians, especially the fit ones. If women want to cop off with each other I think that is a great thing.
The legal action against the gay group is most certainly going to fail, after all lesbian is a recognised term for a female attracted to the same sex, most people trying to name the people of lesbos may guess at lesbosian before lesbian.
The Islanders aversion to the use of the name Lesbian has actually effected them so much that they are now considering renaming their island after their capital Mytilini (Actually a fantastic place to visit)
But this has of course left us with a quandary, The Lesbian people of Lesbos have undoubtedly held the name for much longer than the lesbian movement, should the lesbian movement therefore have the right to take it away from the people of Lesbos?
The Lesbian Movement named itself after the goddess Sappho who expressed her love for women in poetry during the 7th century BC. However Dimitris Lambrou standing for the people of Lesbos said that the the goddess committed suicide over the love of a man and that she mothered a family, therefore making the connection to lesbianism irrelevant.
Jesus it’s complicated!
Apr 27
It seems that more and more cases are appearing of women who have been kept in captivity for long periods of time by some fairly weird people.
The most recent case is that of a man in Austria who imprisoned his ten year old daughter for 24 years. During this time he fathered 7 kids with her, 6 of which survived, and three of which were sent to his grandparents with the claim they had been abandoned on his doorstep.
Even more worryingly his wife denies any knowledge of his crimes, despite the daughter and grand kids being kept in his basement. You would have though at least the issue of the food bill might have come up at some point, i mean keeping 7 people fed and watered is no cheap thing to do!
The good news however is that this man will be going to jail for a long time, with kidnapping, imprisonment, Incest and murder of the dead child on the cards.
I think the real question which needs to be asked is HOW did this man get away with imprisoning a girl for so long?
Surely someone in the town must have noticed the disappearance at some point. I think some real work needs to be done from stopping this king of thing from happening.
Apr 21
The psychic community today delivered a 5000 strong petition against new laws which are asking for the peddlers in the supernatural to prove their abilities or reveal the fact that they are for entertainment only. The psychics who delivered the petition to enforce that their belief in their own powers should not be questioned was not deterred by the fact that they delivered the petition on a day when the Prime Minister Gordon Brown was not in the Country, and they blatantly ignored the headlining jubes about their failure to see the new law coming.
Personally I think this is a good and a bad thing. First off these guys are all con merchants in my opinion, but in the same vein if we make things too easy then natural selection will fall down and all the really stupid people will have just that little bit of an extra chance to reproduce.
There is another downside though, the good old placebo. Yes, While these idiotics, fanatics, and conmen pull away these peoples hard earned savings they do occasionally manage to pull off something that is a real miracle. Occasionally the homeopathic, religious healing, magnetic, ESP related treatments despite all practical tests do manage to work.
Now Personally I put this down to more of a power of the body kind of thing, but should a treatment that releases the power of ones own body really be so easily discounted from our system?
Apr 20
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is indeep trouble over allegations of child sexual abuse and brain washing. This church was founded around five years go in Texas by a man named Warren Jeffs (Currently in Jail as an accomplice in the rape of an underaged girl)
While the members of the church themselves have remained quiet on the matter it has become apparent that several of the children may have been put into marraige at a younger age than 14. The children themselves showed a strong sense of wanting to get married as soon as possible, with no age too young and to have as many babies as possible.
Now while some of the accuracy of the accusations has been debated and the families of the children hotly denying any wrong doing there is some major contention in the courts. (Where mass DNA testing is underway to decide the actual structures of these polygamistic families) . The adults are refusing to say the current relationships between the families fueling the investigation as to wether or not adults have been marrying and engaging in girls who in some cases may have not even hit puberty.
Personally I can see the plus points of polygamy, the child sex abuse is however something that needs to be looked into with all available resource, peaodphilia this widespread is something that deeply worries me.
Apr 10
The green candidate has announced that while she will not try and strangle London’s roads, merely try to remove four wheel drives. Her second point was to raise London’s minimum wage to £7.20. What… The… Hell???
Now is it just me that wonders here, what about the rest of the country. In the countryside tax tends to hit harder due to increased travelling and across the board goods.
So why should the rest of the UK support a raise in the minimum wage that’s nearly £2 above the UK minimum wage. This MP clearly needs a lesson in basic economics. Another problem our country is suffering from is inflation. Its nice to know that she can think inflation can be cured by feeding money into Just one location, which may help London from going bust straight away, but will make the rest of our country substantially poorer, while subsidising the luxuries of the big city.
Not much makes me angry, but a lot of the Green politicians really do have their head in the clouds.
Apr 08
Cannabis is one of the worlds most readily available and commonly used illegal drugs on the worldwide market. Most people have at sometime tried it, and if they havn’t they will almost certainly know someone who has. Last year cannabis was lowered from a class B to a class C drug at the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs or ACMD. Their reasoning was that cannabis was a relatively none harmful drug and that more concentration should be focussed on the more hardcore narcotics available. This year Gordon Brown asked for a review of this, since he has always been against the drug, the ACMD reiterated their statement however and in a rash move Gordon Brown, someone who is meant to listen to the advice of the boards he set up, decided to ignore their recommendation. This is coming from a man who has half a cabinet admitting they have tried marijuana.
Now who is the real dope. Cannabis has a relaxing effect, and while scientists have claimed its use can incerease the chance of schizophreniaby 40% the total number of cases related to Marijuana smoking has not topped 800 cases in the UK, out of around 60.5 million people.
Now compare that to the number of drinking related incidents and issues caused by cancer, not to mention fatty food problems, and the estimated thousands of deaths of starvation in third world countries caused by loss of farmland to ethanol fuel consumption which is being mandated by US and European Laws and suddenly you ask yourself, is the risk really that high?
Put ontop of this the medically proven benefits of cannabis (Which they are constantly trying to recreate without the pleasure for medicinal purposes) and the health problem part seems to become a bit suspicious. especially when you consider the thousands upon thousands who regularly use Cannabis as pain relief. I personally didnt think this was such a big thing till my mothers doctor actually suggested she find a dealer to supply cannabis for her back pain. The truth of the matter is that it is being suggested as pain relief because it is bloody good at it!
Now the government, anti drug lobbys and those with an analy high moral code can all complain as much as they like about how bad cannabis consumption is. But I will, and always will maintain that the average bod on the street needs something to escape, be it be a cigarette, alchol, low key drugs or even, heaven forbid, religion. People are willing to risk a little bit occasionally for a bit of fun, you could risk a broken ankle playing football or a broken neck off-piste skiing, but without these things life would be boring.
So why is Cannabis banned apart from the health side effects?
The two main reasons are crime and its role as a step onto harder drugs. Both I think can be argued.
Crime. The crime part of this has two aspects, first the money made goes to crimanals (Which wouldn’t happen if it was legalised) and second it drives people to steal for their fix. Now this I would argue against, sure some people get heavily hooked on cannabis, but I would say the percentage of people stealing for a cannabis addiction is significantly lower than that of alcohol.
Then there is the step onto harder drugs question. Now this is in some cases true, but in my experience the people who go from cannabis to harder druggs would have done so soon enough with or without cannabis. While it certainly increases a persons exposure to the world of drugs this would become much less apparant if it was legalised.
It has been announced in France that they will not arrest or even caution anyone smoking cannabis in the upcoming football games. They will however be out in force actively breathalising fans and reusing them entry if they are believed to be drunk. This to me is a clear indication that neither health nor crime is the real issue, since here marijuana is being used to reduce violent crime in the streets of Paris.
God damn the English system is screwed!
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