Sim-O

Two things for you.

First up, a plug for a mate.Synkronyst…

With 15 years experience in music production, songwriting and guitar playing, and an aptitude for quickly absorbing new techniques, Tom Leith has a passion for bringing out the musical genius in the people he works with and in himself.

Not only does Tom write and produce music, he also does videos and websites. If you’re after some music, video or a website, go have a look and give him a shout.

Next, a big congratulations the Kevolution who, has gone a bit quiet here lately, has just become a published author in peer-reviewed journal. I’m not even going to pretend I understand what he’s written.
I’m not linking to it as if I do, Kevolutions’ real name and all that type of thing become obvious and I don’t if he wants that. I may update with a link later if he’s ok with it.

Cue nashing of teeth and much shaking of fists…

So, thousands of soldiers lose their jobs. The very people who have risked their lives every day in order that the BBC can function and fail, over and over, to support the sacrifice they make .

The BBC will only receive the equivalent of a 16% cut over five years. That just isn’t good enough.

Just what the fuck does that second sentence mean? It makes some sense up to the comma, where you start to feel the rage stoked by the army cutting the numbers of soldiers turns Dorries’ limited ability to construct a coherent sentence to goo.

5 years? 16%? Is that it? Oooh, those bloody lefties have gotten away far too lightly. Again.

The BBC has done a very good job over the last thirteen years to support the Labour Government. They have facilitated the very process which has resulted in the cuts every family in the nation has to bear. The blood which will flow from the cuts is all over BBC hands too.

And the BBC will undoubtedly be a little more bias towards the Tories, because although there is the independent board of what-ever-they’re-called running the BBC, it is still the government of the day that pulls the strings and can completely fuck the BBC if they wanted.

Although the BBC might have been a bit soft on the Labour government, I think Nadine will find that it was the Labour government and it’s love of the ‘wealth creators’ of the city that facilitated the slide down the u-bend in to the cess-pit we currently find ourselves. You can hardly say the BBC were willing facilitators. You’ll probably find the current demand to fuck over the BBC is just a continuation of the shit started in 2004 by, yes the Labour government. Bullied into submission that it is still trying to recover from.

Having displayed such bias, the Corporation should take more of the pain.

Oh? How, Nadine? Please, do tell.

We should demand to know what each presenter is paid. Because we pay. Students who have to buy a TV licence for each room in a student halls. Each person who is ill, elderly or infirm – we all pay from our taxed income.

We? who the fuck is this ‘we’? Some people might want to know what the presenters and ‘stars’ are paid. Some people couldn’t give a shit.

We know what teachers, nurses and MPs are paid. Why is the BBC allowed to function under this veil of secrecy?

We know what MPs’ are paid because they proved themselves to be extremely untrustworthy when it came down to spending and justifying the spending of other peoples money. And until recently MPs’ set their own pay. Who the fuck else got to pay themselves what they wanted from other peoples money?

We know the pay of some of the top paid headteachers, but not because of any dishonesty or lax rules, but because the information got leaked or the head disclosed it themselves. And nurses? Where can I find out how much a specific nurse gets paid? Go on, where?

The ‘veil of secrecy’ that the BBC is supposedly operating under is probably less secret than Nadines recruitment process for her constituency helper. *cough**daughter**cough*.

We need to know the exact cost of every production. How much each person on the production team receives. Every expense receipt going back over five years should be produced for everyone to see. Because we paid.

We need to know, do we? Does it really matter what the runner got paid, or the second soundman? It’s the total cost of the production that should be monitored, if you wanna go that way. It probably is already. Programmes rejected or not commissioned because of cost.

And where is the money going to come from to gather and collate and show this information in a meaningful way? From the BBC itself, so that there is less for actually producing shows or is this another job for the Big fucking Society?

That just sounds like petty vengeful snarking. ‘I’ve got to so you have to, too’ kind of thing. Oh fuck off you stupid fucking bint*.

The argument to justify the BBC licence fee used to go that the BBC made outstanding period dramas.

…and documentaries. Don’t forget documentaries, because everything else the BBC is utter shite.

I have a two word answer to that. Downton Abbey.

Man, that’s one killer argument. What’s Downton Abbey? I’m guessing it’s a period drama, but is it a shit BBC drama that proves the BBC don’t make outstanding period dramas anymore or is it an ITV one that shows that the BBC must be a shit waste of money because someone else can do good drama too?

I have a friend who, in his spare time, volunteers for the Samaritans. He sent me this email…

Samaritans have been nominated to be one of the supported charities for The Lawyer Awards. Two charities will be chosen and will be supported by the awards for three years raising over £150,000 for each charity.

The two charities are being voted on by a public vote via http://www.thelawyer.com/the-lawyer-awards-2011-charity-nominations/ It is a public vote so anyone can vote but you can only vote once. The voting closes on 22nd October.

The Lawyer Awards are held in June every year. There is no fee to enter, instead entries are asked to make a donation to the chosen charities. All donations are split between the two chosen charities. On average each charity will receive £50,000 per year for 3 years.

This is a public vote and could raise around £50,000 a year for Samaritans – if you can spare a few seconds, I would be really grateful if you could click on the link above and vote. This could be a massive boost for us financially Please vote!

There are many other worthwhile charities you can vote for as well, but it would be great if you could vote for the Samaritans.

Many thanx

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

The Trip: Abingdon to Newcastle-under-Lyme
Time: approx 2.5 hrs
Miles: approx 125

After having a wierd result from my last trip, the results for my latest experimetation with the accupressure bands is pretty straight forward – no travel sickness at all. None. Nothing.

The only other thing to report is that when I first put a band on my right wrist I must’ve got it in the wrong place, but quickly re-adjusted it as I felt a sharp pain, like a trapped nerve, from my thumb to the inside of my elbow. It disappeared just as quickly when the little button was moved slightly. Apart from that, everything went swimmingly.

So kids, be careful, even homeopathic accupuncture can hurt too.

Result: it’s a good result for the accupressure bands, but not such a good result for ‘Big Pharma’ as my lad, on some Traveleze tablets, puked all over the back of the car after about 2 hours into the journey.

Testing to be continued.

A gang of top business leaders have sent a letter to the Telegraph endorsing George Osbornes proposed cuts (and I paraphrase here)…

Go on Georgie Boy. Do it. Be a man and make those cuts. You know it makes sense.

I’m not confident enough in my economic learnings to say they are talking bollox, but…

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

… sounds awfully like a call for privatisation.

Now, privatisation is all well good, but when a public service is privatised there are never as many jobs filled by the incoming private company, with wages for the workers usually being at a lower level, too.

It’s not that hard to create jobs where a gap has been create by withdrawing a service that had only on supplier, is it?

The trick for the business leaders, which would really help us out (apart from not using convoluted ways to artificially reduce their tax burden) would be to create jobs without getting their mate the Chancellor kicking people out of jobs in the first place.

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

Finally, a month and a half or so after getting my magic wristbands that are supposed to cure me of travel sickness in our Mazda 5, we went on a trip long enough to give them a proper road test.

The trip: Abingdon to Luton
Time: approx 1.25 hrs
Miles: approx 77

After a bit of messing about with the kids I got the wristbands on after about a mile and a half after we set off. I was already starting to feel a little icky by then and this time felt I didn’t have any problems finding the described place to put them, three finger widths up from the first crease of your wrist, in between the two tendons, unlike the last time I put them on when I couldn’t find two tendons.

The travel sickness feeling didn’t disappear all of a sudden, as I expected it wouldn’t, but slowly morphed into other sensations. By about half way through the journey I realised that I wasn’t feeling sick in the usual way, but urge to nod off was quite strong. It was easy enough to keep my eyes open when looking at road signs or looking at stuff the kids were pointing out, but when there was a lull the natural thing to do was put my head back and close my eyes. There was another sensation as well.

This second sensation started a bit earlier than when I realised I wasn’t actually feeling nauseous and it was while I was thinking about this second sensation that made me notice my steadied guts.

You know when you’re upside down, hanging upside down by your legs from a climbing frame or when you’re laid on the sofa with you feet on the wall and your head dangling just above the floor? Or even when you not quite upside down, maybe laid head-down on the stairs whilst talking face to face with a 3 year old who’s laid head-up on the stairs? After while you head starts to fill with blood. You can feel pressure inside your skull and your eyesballs start to feel like they’re being squeezed. It’s not really a nice feeling at all. That is the sensation I had, but only the eye-ball squeezing part, which I thought was quite weird and completely unexpected.

I can’t quite fit a link between the eye-ball pressure and the pressure of two little nylon buttons pressing on my wrist but I’ve not experienced that pressure in my eyes without being upside down. How can they be connected? Are there veins connected from wrists directly to ones’ eyes?

So in conclusion, whilst wearing the wristbands the need to doze off remained and the nausea was replaced with pressure in the eyes.

Result: inconclusive. More testing required.

I have a trip up to Stoke soon, so we’ll see what happens then.

Here’s a good site for all you Media-Watchers – istyosty.com.

Isty-who? I hear you ask.

Istyosty is a proxy service that seems to be dedicated to providing a way to read the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Express, but nothing else, without giving the papers the hits.

This is what they say, it might explain it a bit better…

WTF?

This site was set up after reading this. I thought it would be more fair to the statistics if only people who actually liked the daily mail appeared as a “hit” on the site. We are a proxy service enabling users to view that particular site without necessarily visiting it. Pages are cached here for a few days so many hits on a particular story will only count as one initial hit on that website (until the page is re-cached). Hits to the homepage however, are updated every few hours to keep it reasonably current. This system has the added advantage of providing anonymity from their invasive tracking and the advertisements from companies that should know better (we strip the ads, referer information and the javascript by default).

… and they say it’s legal.

So, if you’re linking to one of these three rags and and don’t want to increase their hits, because as far as they and their advertisers are concerned every hit is an approving hit, use an Istyosty link.

(They’re also on Twitter – twitter.com/itsyotsy)