The Government is not your friend

Re Polly’s: “The state is not public enemy number one”.

Maybe not Polly - But remember, the State is not your friend either!

Quote of the day

“ It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Question – Are the English FA in bed with Gordon Brown, or was it just coincidence?

The FA’s unnecessarily early announcement of their selection for the England manager/head coach must have come as a great boon to Gordon Brown, coming as and when it did.

It dominated the UK MSM to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Very helpful for him as it helps to bury the bad news that on the 13th of December 2007, (unlucky for the citizens of the UK) he signed away parliamentary privileges to the EU under the EU Constitutional Treaty that his party and he had falsely promised before they were elected would be subject to a referendum.

He was clearly so very reluctant to be seen doing self congratulatory smug back slapping with the other European heads of state (at finally anti democratically finessing 99% of the rejected constitution through), that he left that to Milliband and managed to find an excuse to avoid the signing until everyone had cleard off - "They thought is was all over - It is now!".

Gordon Brown has now clearly betrayed promises his party and he as an MP were elected on, thus demonstrating his party's so called mandate is bogus. If he had a shred of honesty or honour he should resign call a general election as soon as possible.

He won’t of course. His problem would be who could trust his manifesto promises?

Quote of the day

“ Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.”

Phillip K. Dick

Adventures in Second Life

Blogpower has a presence in Second Life (SL) - sensibly conducting awards ceremonies using it.

How else could people so spread out over the globe get together without expensive flights, hire of venue and using up the annual leave of Real Life (RL)?

Anyway, not normally being a ‘Face book’ type, because of the above, and the fact that you don’t have to advertise details all over the net, I decided to take the plunge - you can do it for free.

Though I can see how one might quickly be sucked into purchasing some Linden$$. For those who may not know it Linden Labs devised and administer SL. I feel the faint tug of the lure even as I type.

SL is actually a sort of Multi User Dungeon (MUD), for those of you familiar with the now reasonably venerable term, where you can create your own environment, if you wish, or use those provided by Linden, or other users. A bit like a cross between the Sims, with you as a sim - and a first person hack and slash or shooter like Heratic or Delta Force. Though it is much more than these.

So far I have been pleasantly surprised. It has provided a couple of hours interest and entertainment already and I have barely scratched the surface. I have ‘met’ some interesting and helpful people and discovered from ‘seeing’ the damage they cause that there are some despoilers out there who disrupt things for the more constructive for their own warped amusement.

Still, on balance so far I am impressed. Oh! - and you get to fly like Superman!

Western Digital blanket block on sharing some types of files

It looks as if anyone purchasing a Western Digital hard drive for networking purposes may now need to think twice.

Western Digital have instituted a heavy handed ‘blanket’ block on the sharing of certain types of files, copyrighted or not.

They have incorporated a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ block on file sharing into their Anywhere Access software, (or at least Anywhere Access - except for over 30 types of files) maybe they just assume all their customers are natural copyright violators.

So Western Digital apparently thinks it has more right to decide what you do, than you yourself do - even if what you want to do is perfectly legal.

Prospective purchasers may need to factor this in their decision making process when purchasing hard drives in future, or they may find what they end up with is not fit for the purpose it was purchased for.

If in doubt ask - In the UK, under the Sale of Goods Act 1979, goods should be of a satisfactory quality and reasonably fit for the purpose(s) that goods of that particular kind are commonly purchased including any particular purpose asked for by a buyer.

Quote of the day

“ Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.”

Henry Kissinger

Are 80% of UK jobs really going to ‘foreigners’?

Far be it for me to defend the current UK Government in any way. The low opinion in which I hold them - and the many reasons for it should be readily apparent within the posts of CFD.

However there seems to be much interest in the MSM recently over the Statistics Commission study that indicates 1.4 million of the 1.7 million jobs created since 1997, over 80%, had gone to people born overseas.

This conjures up images of hoards of foreigners stealing jobs from the willing, but down trodden British worker. Gordon Brown’s dubious 'British jobs for British workers' sound bite.

Now let’s see if we can spot any weasel words here – ah yes! Not too far to look: ‘born overseas’.

So that will include British citizens born abroad - Not necessarily actually ‘foreigners’ at all then. It would for instance include three of my nieces and nephews, were they not students. That inflates the headline figure by 300,000.

Now those jobs. Exactly what sort of jobs are we talking about here. I don’t have the figures but I would hazard a guess that they are not all well paid highly sought after posts.

Might some include poorly paid work with unsociable hours; janitorial posts, security work, waiting at tables, maybe even fruit picking?

The numbers are high enough to cause some concern, but not legitimately as high as the study claims - and the figures do not tell the whole story.

Quote of the day

“ As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”

Margaret Mead