TGTSE: Abingdon to Newcastle-under-Lyme

October 18th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

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.

‘Business leaders’ write to the Telegraph

October 18th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

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.

TGTSE: Abingdon to Luton

October 13th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

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.

Media Watching by proxy

October 2nd, 2010 § 9 comments § permalink

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)

Just two small errors: the headline and the story

September 27th, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

The Daily Star ran a story, not too long ago. What with not reading the Daily Star very often I missed it and it has now been taken down from it’s website. This was due to two small factual errors (well, I say errors but…).

The PCC has adjudicated…

The front-page article had reported that a Rochdale shopping centre had installed “Muslim-only squat-hole loos” and that the local council had wasted “YOUR money” on them. The complainant argued that as the facilities would be available to everyone, it was inaccurate to state they were “Muslim-only”. Nor was taxpayers’ money involved, as the decision to pay for them had been taken by the shopping centre, not by the local council. The newspaper, while claiming that the toilets had been designed with Muslims in mind, nonetheless accepted that both its headline was inaccurate, and that the toilets were paid for by a private developer as opposed to the council. It removed the original article from its website and offered to publish a page 2 correction.

Once again, the PCC has excelled itself.

The Daily Star has portrayed these toilets as public. They may be open to the public, but they aren’t in the sense of the council paying for and having responsibility for them. The central claim that makes this story a story is false, because not a penny of taxpayers money was spent on them. That’s without the completely false headline. This story should just never have happened.

And what does the slavering, razor-toothed beast of a regulating body do? It accepted an offer of a page 2 correction.

This was a front page story. Shouldn’t an editor make sure that the biggest story of the day be correct? Shouldn’t a big, *ahem* ‘mistake’ like this need more than a correction hidden inside the paper when the, *ahem* ‘error’ was on the front?

This sort of ‘mistake’ shouldn’t happen. when it does, the PCC needs to be able to do more. Self regulation isn’t working.

This adjudication highlights not only the inadequacies of the PCC but also the agenda of Richard Desmonds publications, and arguably, the man himself.

Express blames some victims

September 24th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

I’ve just done my first post for the new media watch site Express Watch UK.

It’s about some immigrants and home owners getting scammed by dodgy estate agent. The Express blames the immigrants, naturally.

Campaign or recruitment?

September 22nd, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

The latest BNP newsletter slithered into my email inbox last night.

I proclaims that last Saturday, their first ‘Day of Action’ with regards to their ‘Bring Our Boys Home’ campaign an “unqualified and refreshing” success.

Obviously I don’t know if the figures they quote for the amount of signatures they got in their petition is true or inflated, but is this campaign really about bringing British soldiers back from the battlefield?

You already know the answer, I’m sure. But just incase you didn’t the newsletter urges us to contact their local branch to get involved in future days of action and…

…take part in the largest, most successful nationalist recruitment campaign in British history!

Soldiers. Just another useful tools for the BNP.

On stupid ideas for young drivers

September 21st, 2010 § 5 comments § permalink

BBC…

Newly qualified young drivers should be banned from night-time motoring and carrying passengers of a similar age, Cardiff University researchers say.

They said such “graduated driver licensing” for those aged 17-24 could save more than 200 lives and result in 1,700 fewer serious injuries each year.

What an absolute cunt of an idea.

A someone in the article suggests, what about young people that work nights? People are also being encouraged to lift share, but kids at college wouldn’t be allowed to.

Surely it would be better to go along the same lines as has happened with motorcycles and restrict what vehicles new/young drivers can drive. Not that that will help, I gather during the local car of choice for the local joy riders when it was big all those years ago was the Metro. So power is not really the issue.

In a side bar on the BBCs’ story is a comment from a father whose daughter was killed in an accident with an 18 year old driver. Surprisingly, it isn’t about not letting people drive until they’re fortyfive or only letting young drivers loose in pedal cars, well most of the quote at least…

They should abolish the driving test completely.

These children are not being taught how to drive at all, they are being taught how to pass a test.

Instead, there should be a driving log – similar to aircraft – where learners have to log 200 hours with an experienced motorist.

They should drive at night, in the sunshine, in rain, snow, ice, on the motorway – under instruction at all time.

What an excellent idea. At the moment you if you learn through the summer the first time you experience adverse conditions or night driving is going to be on you’re on own. You can’t experience motorway driving whilst you’re a learner, and I’ll bet most people after their test don’t bother to book one more lesson to be taught how to drive on a motorway properly.

What’s needed, and is more practical, is better tuition for new drivers and harder penalties for people that fuck up through recklessness. Everybody, not just the young.

Pope terrorists not terrorists after all

September 18th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

BBC…

Police sources say officers think there was “no credible threat” to the Pope after six arrested men were questioned.

Searches have finished without the discovery of anything significant.

So not only weren’t the men plotting the untimely demise of the Pope, they’re not member of Al Qaeda (however it’s fucking spelt) or Islamist extremists either.

And the Express seemed so sure, as well.

At least there’s still immigration to fall back on to get rid of the forriners.

An interesting assertion from the Express

September 18th, 2010 § 2 comments § permalink

An interesting use of words from the Express…

ISLAMIC terrorists disguised as street cleaners allegedly hatched an audacious plot to blow up the Pope.

(screenshot)

Six men have been arrested in relation to a plot to assassinate the Pope. Allegedly. The Express from the first line of the above article acknowledges that they might not have been planning to help the pope meet his boss, but in the wording used the Express is saying for definate that these guys are Islamist terrorists.

The Express is saying these six guys *are* terrorists but may *not* have been plotting to kill the pope.

That’s quite an interesting assertion when the information that prompted the arrests was…

…not the result of intercepts or undercover work, but was, sources said, more akin to an overheard conversation that could be interpreted as posing a threat.

So the source of the intelligence that got the ball rolling was unlikely, in my opinion, to have heard what organisation, if any, these six suspects belong to. Details of a plan maybe, but not the parent organisation.

Anyway, if these guys, from North Africa, are not terrorists, then Immigration are bound to get them…

An investigation is also under way to determine if the foreign nationals had entered Britain legally and were entitled to work here.

Curiously enough, that line only appears in the Express as well.

18/12/2010 22:20 Update.

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