I didn't quite catch that...

Aw, isn’t Norn Iron politics cute. No spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on expenses for our MLAs, they’re only claiming tens of thousands.

Of course, there’s one of them for every fifteen thousand folk, as opposed to one for every hundred thousand for MPs, so you’d expect to lose a zero on the expenses claims. And more than a few of them are MPs as well, and have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. So maybe it’s not all that good a thing that they’re still living large…

Two questions about the Roman Polanski issue:

1. Why is nobody using the words “convicted paedophile“? Because, y’know, statutory rape of a thirteen year old child probably counts as the sexual abuse of a child.
2. Why are there so many people busily coming out and calling the arrest of a convicted paedophile a disgrace? Or are they seriously advocating that a worthy artist should be allowed his ‘little ways’?

Either way, there’s something fishy about the way that both the media and the worthy branch of the cinema are going about all this. And it’s not making me respect either of them any more than I do now…

In one of the first days after arriving here, I went exploring, and discovered a little pub that had a massive beer list. And this weekend I went and explored it properly. By which I mean that I got rather inebriated in it to celebrate TLF‘s birthday. And it was excellent. Beer that tastes of smoky bacon, scarily intelligent men doing practically sacrilegious impressions of deaf folk, really tasty food and good craic.

And this pub is ten minutes from the flat. Fantabulous¹.

On top of that, I’ve had an idea. On occasion, I head into the big city centre to meet TLF after work. And I’ve looked at the options – I can spend a little time and a couple of changes and get to the centre by train. I could spend a bit more time and fewer changes and get a bus. Or, I could get a small carryout, and cruise up the Thames on one of the little clippers. Better than trying to take the Joyce Two up the Lagan, methinks.

On the unfortunate side of the scales, though, while walking along the south bank on Saturday, we must have passed fully two hundred Morris dancers. A slightly disconcerting image, you know. The bells are just weird…

¹ – That said, the head was scarily bad yesterday morning. Seems I’m getting a bit old…

Happy birthday to the fabulous, lovely, and somewhat stunning LF.

Have a good one, beautiful.

Finally got round to seeing District 9 last night, and I must say, I’m impressed.

It’s one of those sci-fi films that doesn’t really go overboard on the sci-fi. Yes, there are ray guns and battle armour and spaceships, but they’re not the main story – the main story is one man and his journey. The background story is one slum and its clearance. Behind that, the alien angle is worked it. And it works well partly because of that.

There were a few things that I’d have changed: the primary antagonist could have been less of a character – as soon as he’d finished his first speaking part you knew what’d happen to him in the end and how he’d get there. Some of the gun-cam work was excellent, and I’d have liked to have seen more of it. The interplay between the black and white South Africans could have been focussed on a bit more (given that the film is supposed to span the end of apartheid).

But the rest was excellent, the gore, the guns, the whole visual experience, the cast (Jo’burg on Mersey accents aside), the story and scripting were all very well done. Hell, even TLF – who doesn’t like sci-fi – found something she liked, in the form of the cutesy little character.

I’d give it a solid 4 out of 5.

Also, I’d rate the cinema at the 0₂ very highly. It’s massive. honestly if they’d turned the screen on its side you could easily have parked a jumbo jet on it. Hurrah.
Now, to worry about what TLF is going to want me to see in return for going to see this…

Most people have the odd drinking story, of wounds that would have killed the teller if they had been sober. A fall that would have broken a leg if you’d had enough with to try and stop yourself; a case of food poisoning that was only survived because the feed of beer had caused enough vomiting to purge it all; a drinking game that so nearly ended up with a life sentence until everyone got away by some drunken master plan.

Drink, it seems, saves lives. And now it does it officially.

A dose of alcohol may be a good treatment for people with head injuries, emergency doctors suggest.

Their basis for this is the discovery that people appear less likely to die following brain trauma if they have alcohol in their bloodstream.

Hurrah! We shall soon end up with hospital doctors ordering 100cc of vodka, stat in the ER.

Today is a great day, methinks…

If a group has, over the course of its lifetime, replaced every single member of its line-up, can it still be said to be the same band?

I think not. I think that it’s all just a bit too much. But then, I stopped caring about the band when the cute redhead left (back in the days when I watched far too much music TV at uni), only to be replaced by an exceptionally dumb sounding blonde. Poor swap, IMO.

You have to feel sorry for the two lovely fellas from the Department For Alphabet Soup over in Stormont (Sorry, the OFMDMF and their friends in DFP, looking for funding for something that’ll likely end up being called DJP). They have all these grandiose plans for Justice and Policing, all of which will require money by the shitload. They’ve finally agreed on what need to be done, and they’re finally agreeing on how to ask for what they want from London.

But they’ve neglected to notice that the London government hasn’t two brass farthings to rub together at the minute, and that the next one would have even less.

But that isn’t going to stop Messers Robinson and McGuinness from whining and begging. And they’ll likely walk away with fuck all.

All to the good, of course. Since neither of them would actually recognise “justice” if she hit them over the head with her scales. Both of them are much happier with “vengeance” and/or “populism”, which I’m sure most people agree the Wee Country doesn’t need any more of…

Things that do really amuse me: people being far too stupid to be allowed to drive.

The Doncaster man who slavishly followed his sat nav to the edge of a West Yorkshire cliff has been punished with a £370 fine, £500 costs, a £15 victim surcharge and six points on his licence for driving without due care and attention.

Robert Jones, 43, was driving his £30,000 BMW 5 Series though the village of Gauxholme back in March, when his TomTom ordered him up a narrow footpath. He only realised he’d taken a seriously wrong turn when he hit a fence on the edge of a precipice.

Things to remember:

1. Civilian GPS isn’t that accurate at the best of times, what with the whole 300m circle of guessing going on.
2. When it isn’t the best of times, the US military turns that circle of guessing into a fun game of “what bloody continent are we on now?”
3. The machines are dirt cheap – never trust something that can be given away by Michael Parkinson during his insurance adverts.
4. When in doubt: don’t drive down narrow footpaths near the sea. It’s just not wise.

How I laughed. Until the next time that I need to rely on the little machines, in which case I’ll be trusting it implicitly.

Sometimes some things are too obvious to be noticed. Back in the days of Witness, it took me ages to notice the nness at the end of everything and make the connection that Guinness may have something to do with the sponsorship.

Similarly, for most of my life I lived in Randalstown, and I didn’t actually make the connection that Moneynick Road could be used as a cheap pun by lazy journalists. Luckily, the BBC is here to help.

Police are looking for thieves who stole money from an ATM in an unfortunately ironic location – the Moneynick Road.
…
Incidentally, Moneynick is not named for once being a hotspot for those seeking an unlawful pecuniary advantage.

According to ulsterplacenames.org, Moneynick is the anglicisation of the Irish place name Muine Chnoic, which means ‘thicket of the hill’.

Well, now we know…

You know, it’s more than ten days since that wedding I went to… And I didn’t post anything about it. Shocking, really.

First off: up north is really, really far away. There’s something about a drive the length of the country (along something that the BBC has taken to calling recession road) that really takes it out of you, even if you are in such a fine vehicle as Abby and you have such fine company as TLF and friends in tow.

Secondly, having someone in the position of TLF in your life means that weddings stop being just another pissup, and start being another pissup with opportunities for note taking. So instead of just throwing copious amounts of free wine down the throat, you throw a bit of free wine down your throat and then make a note that there shall be more free red at your own wedding. You note how the various bits go, how the cars suit, how people behave, how you can’t get away with banishing the noisy kids to the garden, how people seem to be more happy than is the norm, and all that. You notice just how good TLF looks in a bridesmaid dress, and idly wonder how much she can better it for her own big day.

Thirdly: you thank your lucky stars that someone else is involved that’s a logistical and organisational genius. There’s many things to keep track of, and too may of them I didn’t realise even existed.

And fourthly: you look at the pictures, realise that you look like a bit of a gormless fool, and resolve that none of them will ever see the light of day. Ever.

Oops…

…. when the man with your freedoms has passed you by.

And in the latest incarnation of freedom stealing that the population is just waking up to, we’re all guilty until … urm, until circumstances that are yet to be finalised have been met.

The last 24 hours have seen a flurry of news articles about the imminent arrival of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and their shiny new vetting database. The Indie reports that the scheme is likely to cost the public £170m.

On the BBC’s Today programme this morning, veteran radio inquisitor John Humphrys barbecued civil servant John O’Brien over the rationale behind the database. Was this not, he asked on several occasions, turning every adult into a suspected criminal: is this not the state deciding who is fit to have contact with children?

I like the numbers that el Reg came up with: up to 16,000,000 people will need to pass these checks before getting a job. That’s a stupidly high proportion of the working population, and it’s all going to be subject to the random fluctuations of a large and unresponsive government system.

That’s not at all scary, is it? Because any very large system is subject to very large errors, and these errors will result in people losing their livelihoods and their reputation, because of suspicions being incorrectly put against them decades ago.

Lives will be ruined. And not one child will be protected. And countless millions will be wasted.

But action will look like it’s being taken, and that’s all the government cares about…

I don’t get why people spend so much time and effort trying to explain away things that are past explaining. People trying to work out why the Mary Rose sank, that’s bad enough when you’ve got the actual wreck to examine. But explaining the Bermuda Triangle without anything more than second hand accounts of unreliable aircraft is silly. You might as well try explaining the Marie Celeste.

That I might just be thinking that because of the book I’ve just finished. The lengths that people go to to prove extraordinarily silly hypotheses is something shocking…

I dunno, last week Newcastle, this week we’re going to somewhere even colder and full of nutters.

Yes, that’s right. Me and TLF are off to see my lot, and thusly we get to spend some more quality time in the company of Stelios’ finest perma-tanned cabin crew on the way to Belfast.

Postage may be light. And I may even get round to doing a post about last weekend at the end of this expedition, you never know…

I’m not exactly sure where I stand on the matter of apologies for long standing wrongs. The idea of, say, a US president apologising for slavery makes no sense to me, but the idea of former white leaders of South Africa saying sorry for their actions during the Apartheid era does make sense.

Similarly, the idea of Gordon Brown apologising for the actions of previous governments in their shoddy treatment of Alan Turing doesn’t exactly sit right. If you’ve studied the history of computing, you’ll know about Turing, and most folk who do speak in slightly reverential, hushed tones about him. The man was a revolutionary mind. But you can’t be a human being without thinking that the laws that condemned him were farking stupid, and grossly wrong.

But is it the fault of today’s prime mentalist to apologise for the laws of the land as they stood fifty years ago? Hell, Brown was barely playing with his little cloven feet and pitchfork at the time of the conviction.

It’s really just another example of the misdirection of that Downing Street petitions site. Example: it took 30,870 to sign to get Brown to apologise. But the 70,866 who’ve signed up to ask Brown to resign are still disappointed.

So, does he listen to the population when it matters, or only when meaningless words are involved. You decide…

It seems that today marks the 25^th anniversary of individual identification by DNA. A wonderful discovery that has opened countless avenues for research into serious disease, anthropology, genealogy, and the like.

But what is it best known for? For being over used in this country and stored in a flawed, illegal and unwarranted database of many millions of people.

Which means that the professor who discovered the technique has to explain the downside of his discovery every time he’s asked about it. But at least he’s unambiguous about it.

“Innocent people do not belong on that database. Branding them as future criminals is not proportionate response in the fight against crime.

It’s like asking Alfred Nobel about suicide bombers every time you mention his discoveries; it must be something of a downer after such a revolutionary development.

It’s been quite a few years since I prophesied that, having won in the fight against tobacco, the medical establishment would turn its attention towards alcohol.

And pretty much every week since, they’ve done exactly that.

There should be a ban on all alcohol advertising, including sports and music sponsorship, doctors say.

The British Medical Association said the crackdown on marketing was needed, along with an end to cut-price deals, to stop rising rates of consumption.
…
Doctors said action was essential as alcohol was now one of the leading causes of early death and disability.

The BMA then goes on to lie:

“The BMA is not anti-alcohol. As doctors our focus is to ensure that individuals drink sensible so they do not put their health and lives in danger.”

Why is that a lie? Because the BMA want there to be only one side to the tale; they want those that oppose to be alcohol to be the only ones to be able to speak to the public. Those of us that a) enjoy alcohol and b) see alcohol advertising as one of the few entertaining genres of advertising out there will be sorely disappointed if we expect to hear any voices that agree with us.

And once they’ve done that, once they’ve silenced their opponents, it will be easier to ban drinking in more situations. And then we’ll be as ostracised as smokers.

On a related note, recently I’ve been walking past an ad from Drinkaware twice a day, which mentions that alcohol has been “distorting reality since 10,000 BC”. Which is a fantastic claim. What amuses me greatly is that Nanny thinks she can overcome this 12,000 year history of humans enjoying alcohol with some bitchy whining and a ban on advertising. Good luck with that, bitch. And even if you do go the whole hog, pretty much every knows someone who could operate a still in times of emergency. Bring back the poteen home-distilling industry, that’s what I say…

Back in the early days of me playing computer games, I wanted a Commodore. I never got one; I got a nice Atari instead, but there’s still a hankering deep in my soul for the old C64 games.

And now some bastid has gone and released an emulator for the bloody iPayTooMuchForAverageProduct. Or iPhone, if you prefer…

Now, if someone much smarter than I could get off their arse and code one for the android system, I’ll be more happy. And then I shall lose what life I have as I play classics¹ on the mobile. Hurrah.

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¹ – I’m hoping for Paperboy, myself… TLF wants to resurrect Blockbusters, but only because she remembers a cheat that allowed it to make it look like Bob Holness was having a bad case of the DTs…

Do you think that playing Tetris makes you smarter? I’d like to say so, but I fear that it’s not actually the case.

But while Tetris continues to win over new legions of entry-level computer gamers, it’s also been drawing the interest of brain scientists. Some even suggest the game may actually be good for the health of the mind if not the body.
…
But the apparent benefits of Tetris or other such games only go so far. What scientists have so far failed to find out is whether the new mental powers learnt from playing Tetris can help with anything other than… playing Tetris.

If playing Tetris (or Solitaire, or Sudoku for that matter) actually made you smarter, then I’m fairly sure that I’d be a contender for Mensa. But since I’m not, they must be somewhat unconnected to any gain in brains.

And I didn’t even need to play the game for more than half an hour to come to that conclusion…

Today, I shall mostly be at a wedding. And this wedding may well be in a part of the country miles and miles away from here. And some of the day’s festivities may well be in a location that was used to film some of the recent and low key Harry Potter movies.

So I may not be posting tomorrow. Possibly because of quiddich related injuries, but more likely because of drunkenness and the descent into hungoverness.

Laters.