Willie Waggledagger

R.I.P. Lord Lampton 1922 - 2006

2007-01-01T10:58:00.000Z

Today I’m mourning the death of Lord Lampton who has died at the age of 84, He was a Conservative Health Minister in Ted Heath’s Government and had to resign after he was photographed Smoking Dope in bed with two working girls (prostitutes to you).
When asked about it on air by Robin Day he said.
"I think that people sometimes like variety. I think it's as simple as that and I think that impulse is probably understood by almost everybody. Don't you?"
Which is a posh way of saying, “No I’m not sorry really and I had a good time”.
After his resignation Lambton decided he’d had enough of English hypocrisy and moved to Italy where he has lived ever since.
If I hadn’t given up drinking for New Year I’d be raising a glass to you today sir.
(thanks to Ian Dale for info and pic)

New Year Revolutions

2006-12-30T11:35:00.000Z

I’ve resolved to try and stop drinking (again) for New Year, so I’ve been getting myself ready. My drinking resembles an ocean liner; insomuch as it can’t just be stopped and turned round on a sixpence, if you want to stop at some specific place in time you have to start slamming the anchors on way back, slowly cutting down and withdrawing, otherwise I’ll just throw myself into DT’s which can be really dangerous (one out of every ten episodes of delirium tremens are fatal, and I’ve been in ‘The Nightmare Zone’ so many times over the years; I daren’t push my luck any farther)
I’ve fallen off the wagon and had to pull myself up by my bootstraps so often now that I’m getting used to the pattern, three or four sleepless shaky nights, then you just fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion; having really weird vivid dreams for a couple of nights, then you wake up one blessed morning feeling really good unable to think why at first, then it clicks, you haven’t got a hangover and actually feel like a human, you bounce out of bed whistling wanting to kiss the postman etc.
I’m at that point now, so feel cautiously confident about Monday.
Wish me luck I’m going to need it.

I'm trying to be cheerfull, but it's not easy.

2006-12-26T01:33:00.000Z

I’ve noticed that when I drop a cube of ice into my ex-wife’s glass of vodka and plasma as it melts, the level of liquid in the glass doesn’t rise!
The liquid increase in the glass is compensated by the shrinkage in volume of the ice cube as it melts.
Surely then doesn’t this give the lie to the claim of massive sea level rises as the north south pole Antarctica etc melts?
Ah yes said my (more brainy than me) friend, but if you drop a cube of ice in to the glass the level will rise, the ice that is already beneath sea level won’t affect the level but the Ice above it as it descends into the sea will!
Oh well, I was hoping that Andy’s mam; and I whilst sitting wasting ourselves in some hostelry had stumbled upon a flaw in the doomsayers prophesies. Not so, we’re all going to die, and it’s going to be one hell of a lot sooner than you all think.
No one seems to realise how quickly these things accelerate, I used to play a game in jail to win money from the other cons, taking a chess board I’d put on penny on the first square, and then look for a likely victim, choosing him I’d say which would you rather have? £15million, or, one penny for the first square, two for the second, four for the next, eight for the next, and so on, doubling up every time, the board only has thirty two squares.
Sure enough the guy would look at the board, look at me (weighing up if I was crazy) and then go for the £15million every time.
The truth is that once every square has been filled you’ve got several times more than his paltry £15 million. This won me a lot of tobacco (and a few black eyes) but I think the western governments are behaving just the same as my fellow cons.
We aren’t going to be in serious environmental trouble in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, nor our children’s but ours, and I’m pretty old; with ten years or less left!
Unfortunately there’s nothing to be done about it, to make any kind of headway at all with the environment would involve international co-operation which simply isn’t going to happen, not before it’s too late anyway.
Merry Christmas.

Thanks to Banksy for this

2006-12-25T23:31:00.000Z

Have a safe Xmas and a hassle free new year

2006-12-23T00:01:00.001Z

Oh no not you again!

2006-12-23T00:01:00.000Z

I’ve just had the weirdest dream I dozed off at the keyboard (the way I often do) and I dreamed I was sitting in the theatre bar (the new one the way they’ve done it out to look more like an up market clothes shop than a pub) and Mike Fallon came over to me and said unless you sing the ‘Cheeky Girls song (‘Touch my bum’) on the Karaoke you’re barred out.
So I walked out and went to the carry out place round the corner and got fish and chips but the fish were still alive and kept singing touch my batter and one even tried to go down on me (some of the chips even looked like Lembit Opik) I don’t know what to do!

I'm thinking of becoming a politician

2006-12-22T23:32:00.000Z

I can’t remember who it was that said that politics was show business for ugly people but it surely is true.
I mean would any women in her right mind go with John Prescott?
And whatever you might think about the musical abilities of the ‘Cheeky Girls’ you still would, wouldn’t you?
Lembit Opik certainly would and he does as well the horny bastard (I wish it was me) aaaarrggghhhh!!!

Drunk again!

2006-12-22T23:18:00.000Z

I got thrown off the Selandia again last night, for being drunk and I’m not complaining about that cos I was, but my complaint is the way they act as if the place was the poshest club in town when everyone knows it’s tatty and shabby and very down-market looking, A while ago my friends and I paid £16 each for a meal in the restaurant and whilst it was ok, it certainly wasn’t worth that much.
My current favorite is the Jade Fountain on Cornwallis street the food’s brilliant and you can eat all you want/whatever you want for a fixed price usually around £12
(When I went in to book a table for my family the other day the lady behind the counter said ”Oh I remember you you’re the bloke who came in drunk and fell asleep with your head on the table!”oops!)

He's not even from Barrow

2006-12-20T10:51:00.000Z

I see that Mr. Hutton is, (amongst his other draconian plans) going to cut the benefit of the long term unemployed, and you can bet your boots he’s going to start with his own constituency, his idea is that by cutting peoples benefit and leaving them penniless he is ‘helping them back to work’! I’ve got news for you John there are no jobs up here, taking away peoples benefit isn’t helping them to work It’s simply helping them to starve, maybe the truly enterprising/desperate amongst us will be able to start drug dealing, prostitution or turn to crime in some other way to try and pay the bills and feed our families, but mainly we are just going to suffer.
It’s pretty obvious what Johns agenda is, he’s busily scrambling up the greasy pole with his eye on the top job, and he’s keen to show himself to be the man who can be relied upon to do the dirty work, and make the unpopular decisions regardless of how much it hurts his constituents.
Yes; when the chips are down and people are going to have to suffer, John’s your man to make them do it, and you can be sure he’s going to make an example of his own constituency first, so that no tabloid rag can come along in a year or so and expose him for being soft on us whilst hard on those southerners.
One of John’s problems is that he’s always been a staunch Blairite, so what will happen to his career prospects when Gordon (or whoever gets the increasingly poisoned chalice of PM) comes to power remains to be seen.

United Utilities get it right.

2006-12-20T10:35:00.000Z

United Utilities (for it is they) are going to build a massive water tank under St Georges square right in the middle of Barrow, to take surplus flood and storm overflows. It’s going to be the size of five Olympic swimming pools and will involve closing Abbey Road (The main road into the town) for three months.The access tunnel alone will stretch all the way from Coronation Gardens! It strikes me as a pretty huge and expensive project; which you wouldn’t undertake unless you thought you were really going to need it, at least it’s good to see someone taking the reality of climate change seriously, maybe we should just take to the hills and higher ground now.

Uncomfortable questions I can’t seem to get an answer to: part 1
Q: What’s going to happen to Sellafield nuclear plant if the sea level rises?
A: ?

Trident desicion

2006-12-10T23:20:00.000Z

Living where I do (Barrow-in-Furness) we greet the news about Trident renewal with mixed feelings, maybe we ought to resign en masse on moral grounds, and then have to go home and tell our wives and kids that Christmas is cancelled this year. And the work would simply go abroad.

Warships are what we’ve always made, we know nothing else. There’s been a half hearted attempt to attract tourists to the are, talk of building a marina etc, but we’re kidding ourselves really.

Without nuclear subs we’re a ghost town.

We already have a huge drug problem in the town; any further downtrend in its fortunes could only make an appalling situation worse.

But then having said all this I was a member of CND in the seventies and eighties and still feel basically the same.

What with the nuclear subs and warheads, along with living next door to one of the most dangerous nuclear facility in Europe, it’s a wonder we don’t all glow in the dark!

The incidence of cancers among both men and women are higher here than anywhere else, and we live in one of the worst leukemia clusters in Britain.

Barrow Chavs

2006-12-10T19:07:00.000Z

Click on image for full size view

Thanks To Barrow rant for this

Truthiness

2006-10-26T05:31:00.000+01:00

Truthiness

The Americans have a word for it 'Truthiness'it means something that you really wish was true and that if you bury your head in the sand and keep saying it to yourself it may turn out to be true, good examples of ‘Truthiness’ are George Dubya saying that things are going ok in Iraq, that global warming is just a figment of an overheated left wing imagination, Truthiness is when you spin the facts to such an extent that although they might not be able to be pinned down as outright lies, the way they are presented is such that they do not reflect the reality of the situation they describe in any way that can be described as accurate or honest.

An excellent example of ‘Truthiness’ Comes I’m ashamed to say from myself, I drink too much sometimes; and the excuses I give myself for being able to continue drinking with a ‘clear conscience’ are as unbelievable as they are ‘truthy’

“Well there is only one can left in the pack, it would be dumb to put that small amount away ‘I might as well drink it” (It wouldn’t be dumb at all, you put the milk bottle back with three drops left in it !)

“There’s no milk for coffee, I’ll have to have a can of beer instead, (go and buy some milk you lazy sod!)

Truthiness though, shouldn’t be a bigger part of my life than I let it though! It’s bad enough me doing it to myself, without the people around me who are after all supposed to be our trusted representatives, the most sensible honest and reliable members of our society doing it to me!

The people we voted to represent us

But I hear it all around me, the governments idea that cutting people’s benefit off; will magically make jobs appear for them, where there were non before. they call it 'Helping people back to work' I call it 'Truthiness'.

"Superb in attack"

2006-10-23T18:02:00.000+01:00

It seems at the moment that the Tory’s are all over the web, the left wing and the Labour party in particular seems to be lagging behind; in a medium that they should have made sure was their strong suit.

All the best political blogs are Tory, Ian Dale Guido Fawkes etc etc, even such proudly unreconstructed MP’s as Anne Widdecome not only has her own blog but a ’Widdecam’ too, then of course there’s 18 Doughty street, what has Labour got to even come close?

David Cameron’s web cast was famously parodied lately, but the whole incident reeked of sour grapes, there’s no getting around it the right wing has stolen the new media and made it their bitch, It’s as if the left’s missed a meeting somewhere.

This all goes to Illustrate what’s long been known about the Tories the only way to deal with them is to keep them on the back foot, once they build up a head of steam they become unstoppable, the right are; and always were (Iforget who said it but it wasn't recently) superb in attack mode, it was only a few months ago they themselves were talking of wining not this coming election but possibly the one after that, now they are 6 -4 to win this one!

If Gordon can’t match David during PMQ’s then basically we’re fucked.

politics with knobs on

2006-10-20T00:39:00.000+01:00

The rising tide of religious fundamentalism is threatening to engulf us, everyone seems obsessed, Bush preaches about being “in the ideological struggle of the 21^st century” whilst Dick Cheney exhorts us that “The hopes of the civilized world ride with us”.

It’s a shame they’re not safely tucked away in some back-woods pulpit where you might expect to hear such dumb overheated nonsense, unfortunately for us they’re sitting behind desks in the most powerful political offices in the world.

What’s worse; they seem to be locked into a kind of apocalyptic struggle with an equally powerful yet lame brained opposition, with no hope of a happy or peaceful ending from either side.

The real shame is that they are trying to sell us something we don’t need, like good advertising men; we didn’t know we needed the product they’re selling until they told us we did.

They talk about this empty spiritual craving felt by all those without faith, as if our lives are empty vacuous and worthless without it, the need for this mythical greater love which frankly I don’t feel at all, the advantages of Gods love is, considering he never appears or makes his presence felt in any way at all an easy thing to promise people, if we feel the need to praise and worship something or someone, (as some of us surely do) why not worship our children, spouses, and families, nature, and the wonder of the cosmos. Or will that mean that we’ll have to face up to the reality of the environment and the state of the world, (largely inflicted on us by – you’ve guessed it…religion). Oh well nearly time for prayers.

Worried about who to vote for!!

2006-07-08T21:29:00.000+01:00

It takes at least 10 – 15 years to rebuild a political party back from first principles, and the way the Labour party is going at the moment that’s what’s on the cards for them.

They’re going to get resoundingly stuffed at the next general election; and it’s going to take that long to come back and be electable again.

And for those of you who were too young to remember what a Tory government is like think riots in the streets, think about monetarism, think about a government so cynical that it would consider unemployment as a credible political tactic, think about the abolition of the jobs council (a full frontal kick in the teeth to every woman who voted for Maggie thinking she might actually do something to help women)

Take note you have been warned!

I can’t tell you to vote Labour, after the way Tony’s been behaving, but don’t forget Dave would have taken us into Iraq faster than Tony did, and he’d have shoved his head down the back of George Dubya’s underpants much faster than Tony ever did

We live in a democracy and sometimes the electorate isn’t as smart as we’d like to think we are.

Gary McKinnon

2006-07-06T21:05:00.000+01:00

Gary McKinnon

If Gary McKinnon has caused any damage to US computer systems it is only because he has been in there, and therefore they can no longer consider their systems to be sterile and untouched, (so of course they have to be completely replaced) whilst I’m not proposing they should give him a medal, they could at least look leniently on someone who found the door to the strong room open and didn’t rifle the safe; or plant bombs or other nasty things,.

Thank god it was a harmless dude like Gary; think what a real tech savvy terrorist could have done in there!

Here’s a question for you.

Q: If a major terrorist cyber attack is prevented because of the security flaws that Gary McKinnon drew to the authority’s attention, will he get a reduction of his sentence?

By alerting the government to the state of their security Gary has (arguably) done the USA a big favor.

Like I say I’m not suggesting you give him a medal, but 50 years is a bit strong!

It's obvious.... isn't it?

2006-07-06T01:27:00.000+01:00

Religion is the new politics.

2006-07-04T21:02:00.000+01:00

Whilst the government stands accused of not doing enough to win Muslim ‘hearts ands minds’ why I ask you in all seriousness should they?

(It isn’t just Muslims I’m having a go at here; it’s all religions)

Did anyone seriously suggest we should have been winning Nazi hearts and minds? German National Socialism was an extreme right wing regime, but in it’s milder more tolerant forms it was a workable (although pretty intolerant) right wing system, rather like Sharia law when you think about it.

It is only the fanatical loonies who discredit the system and make it into the fearsomely intolerant weapon of hatred it is now, and was in the thirties and early forties.

If Islam was a political system; free from any hint of religion; what would we call it?

Fascist?

A dictatorship?

Dangerously ideological?

All religions are just political systems; hiding behind the skirts of spirituality.

‘Faith’ is tearing the world apart. The sooner we realize it then the sooner we can come to our senses.

If the Nazis had the smarts to peddle their vision as a religion instead of just a political system they’d have probably enslaved the world by now.

Does blowing yourself up mean you'll get your end away?

2006-06-18T16:56:00.000+01:00

One of the things I’ve noticed (from the comfort and security of my middle aged armchair) and which I don’t think gets enough prominence and consideration is the reason why the current crop of Islamic ‘suicide bombers/Martyrs’ actually do the things they do.

It seems to me (and to others who’ve considered this question also), that one of the principal engines driving them on to suicide is lust!

It’s the seventy virgins!

That’s what they’re after getting their holy mitts on!

I don’t now what opportunities exist in Muslim countries and societies for people to meet and have any kind of casual, pre-marital sex; I fear that they might not be much.

I don’t now what the Islamic attitude toward masturbation is, but I bet it’s not encouraged.

So what does that leave us with? A society filled with sexually frustrated and repressed young men, idealistic, horny, courageous, and underemployed.

Once you get any group of people to believe that their lot will be improved by one drastic action however unlikely and forbidden they will do it.

Dictators, Drug dealers, and Advertising executives learn this kind of thing in their cradles.

Personally; I find the idea of waking up in the gardens of paradise surrounded by seventy high spirited sexually naive young ladies frightening in the least!

Why would you want seventy virgins?

Of course I know the obvious answer, “so we can shag them” but think about it for a minute, why do you need seventy for a start?

Isn’t one or two enough?

I know I’m running all kinds of risks of looking feeble and impotent in the eyes of my fellow men here; but seventy virgins would put me off rather than turn me on!

It’s the sheer numbers, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be pretty!

What if they’re 70 years old and they’re only virgins cos no-one else will have them!

You could awaken in the gardens of paradise after your great sacrifice; to find yourself surrounded by a horde of old boilers!

Surely this preoccupation with sexually naive women just goes to illustrate the Islamic male mindset, the reason why these men have a penchant for virgins is simply because a virgin won’t have anything to compare him with, and so will not realize what a crap shag he is!

Confession time

2006-05-16T12:01:00.000+01:00

I have a confession to make, it’s shaming to me but I’ve got to get it off my chest, ‘I supported the invasion of Iraq’! There, I’ve said it, and I don’t feel better I wish I did but I don’t.

I wish I could say I was one of the ones carrying the peace banners and calling for a little sanity during the run up to the invasion of Iraq; but I wasn’t and for that I feel deeply ashamed and foolish.

I thought that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who needed to be got rid of; for the safety of the world, I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, or rather I should say that I thought there might be; but I knew that that wasn’t the reason we were going to depose Saddam.

I thought we needed to be shot of him (perhaps an unfortunate choice of expression) because of the potential threat he posed in the middle east; as supporter and bankroller of Islamic terrorism, and a torturer and oppressor of his people, he was guilty of war crimes, I very naively and as it turned out completely wrongly thought that deposing saddam would improve things in Iraq in the short term and improve things apropos terrorism in the long term.

In fact the exact opposite has occurred, the situation in Iraq is now worse than almost anyone could have imagined it’s become a rallying place and cause for the insurgents and terrorists we couldn’t have got it more wrong if we’d tried.

In mitigation I will say that I was lied to and tricked, and like anyone who finds they have been conned; now I’m blazing mad about it.

Also I wasn’t the only one, such normally sensible luminaries as Neil young ‘bought the bullshit’ so to speak (remember ‘Let’s Roll?) and judging by his new album he’s just as angry about it as me.

“Let’s impeach the president for lying

And misleading the country into war.”

From ‘Let’s impeach the president’ Neil young 2006.

And his plea in mitigation;

“We had a chance to change our minds,

But somehow wisdom was hard to find,

We went with what we knew and now we can’t go back

But we had a chance to change our minds.”

From ‘Shock and Awe’ Neil Young 2006.

But what’s to be done now? That’s the million dollar question.

I don’t have the answers, but I know that the only way to find them is by listening to the real people of Iraq, not the stone-age theocrats or the generals or the politicians or the so called insurgents, but the people on the street; going about their daily business, and in their homes too frightened to come out or let their children play.

We need to listen to 'Salam Pax' and Riverbend and the thousands of other human voices advocating peace and common sense, and for once do what the real people of Iraq want us to do.

Sex, Power, and Money

2006-04-03T14:34:00.000+01:00

This is really interesting it seems that this charity foundations former accountant embezzled $237000 in order to pay a dominatrix to beat him, (I can hear you now; saying he won’t need a dominatrix when his wife and boss get hold of him) but the interesting point for me is that this guy was willing to jeopardize his entire career his marriage his very liberty, just so some bored middle aged woman could pooh on him whilst he was doing the washing up (or whatever they do)

It just goes to show how deep our sexual urges go, (unless of course you’re on Methadone in which case you take all references to sex including the wistful meaningful ones by your own wife, as something you used to do a long time ago but can’t seem to summon the enthusiasm about these days, you can’t see what all the fuss is about!)

Sex seems to drive the agendas of he tabloids, well that and gambling and bigotry.

I know I’m stepping into a mine field here; but it strikes me that the tabloids do nothing but harm, they peddle bigotry racism sexism ageism and just about any other despicable

‘ism you can think of, I’ve spent most of my adult life living on a council, estate amongst the very people that the red-tops seem to think is their heartland, and I’m here to tell you that that the average Mr. and Mrs. out there is neither so stupid racist ,sexist or nationalistic as you tabloids patronizingly seem to think.

Sellafield/Winscale

2006-04-02T03:37:00.000+01:00

Who do they think is going to buy Sellafield? Who in their right mind would want it? For years we’ve had to live nearby (less than 20 miles up the coast a large proportion of the town work there) it used to be called Winscale but got such a bad reputation that they had the brilliant idea of changing the name in the hope that people would think it was some other place than that leaky old embarrassment Winscale.

It sort of worked, but now that the environmental lobby has put the cat among the radiated seagulls with its ‘maybe-the-lesser-evil’ argument for nuclear power, if it weren’t for the medically proven clusters of diseases which seems to surround Winscale/Sellafield and any other nuclear power station for that matter, the whole thing would be funny

To the nimby’s who don’t want wind turbines on their horizon, come and live in the shadow of one of the worlds most dangerous nuclear facilities for a week or two and the see how you feel about your windmills.

Personally I actually like the look of the wind turbines I think they have a sculptural quality, which the hideous pylons (which no one seems to murmur about) completely lack, if ever there’s a blight on the English landscape it’s Pylons.

We owe it to the Iraqi's

2006-04-01T13:50:00.000+01:00

I’ve really got to say; that if you don’t already read it; then you must read Baghdad Burning ‘it has to be about the best blog on the web! Particularly for us insular insulated westerners; who only know of Iraq what we see presented to us from our sanitized and censored TV

, there is this feeling (not just about Iraq but about all foreign wars and incidents that we see reported on the television news and in the mainstream papers) that It’s happening somewhere else, (of course it is) but almost another planet, the people dress differently, the landscape looks different, their language is strange, all these things conspire to make us feel somehow disconnected from the incidents, as if these people aren’t like us, as if they are not really to do with us; not our problem somehow.

And this is exactly where personal blogs like Riverbend’s ‘Baghdad Burning’ comes in, she shows us that Iraqi people are exactly like us, she is a normal suburban citizen of Baghdad, trying to look after her family and survive in the mess that is Baghdad today, and it’s her eloquent and effective descriptions of the minutiae of their everyday lives coupled with their understandable fear as they try (with great courage) to live some semblance of normal lives that means it should be compulsory reading for all those in the west with any kind of influence in Iraq.

what a long strange trip it's been!

2006-03-28T00:15:00.000+01:00

I need to learn much more about blogging. in the last two or three years it has exploded on the scene as the first serious threat to the mainstream media since (unless you count the pirate radio stations of the sixties and seventies , which never really did anything but play pop music) the British underground press of late sixties, ‘OZ’, ‘Gandalf’s Garden’, ‘Frendz’ and ‘IT’ were on the street when I was 13-14 and I used to sell copies of ‘The International Times’ (when it had a ‘broadsheet’ format) around the more hip parts of Carlisle. (Does anyone remember the ‘Cellar' café near Tullie house; circa 1968?) In those days we never thought that the underground press (or for that matter the ‘underground’ movement) as we liked to call it would ever die, It was not until recently rereading Richard Neville’s ‘Playpower’ recently that I remembered that overpowering sense of optimism and confidence that we all had then, that feeling of “we just can’t lose” I’d completely forgotten all about that feeling which was so prevalent then. Suddenly we find ourselves with the ability to broadcast our thoughts opinions and much more, for anyone in the world who cares to listen, never before has the world population had such an opportunity to meet each other communicate and discuss whatever’s on their minds, and sort their problems by talking! “Sooner jaw jaw than war war” as Winston Churchill famously said, the more we know about each other, the more we understand each other, and the more we talk to each other; then surely the less chance there is of us resorting to violence against each other. I’ve always thought of spying as a particularly noble and worthwhile profession, if each and every country had such an efficient spying network that no others could plot or plan any kind of attack or offensive without everyone else discovering it immediately, then no country could plot against another, conflict would be futile, and other ways to solve disagreements would have to be found! I think what I’m trying to say here is that communication, knowledge and understanding are the key.

2006-03-27T19:39:00.000+01:00

The tragedy of the cockle pickers

I live in Barrow-in-Furness, it’s a pretty sleepy northern English town and we don’t normally have much in the way of interface with slavery (or at least we thought we didn’t!) the tragedy of the 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned out in the bay (Morecambe) served as a wake up call to all of us.

Or at least it should have done! But it didn’t!

We like to think ourselves as quite civilized up here, we don’t go in for the hysterics of southerners, or the radicalism of those further north, we like to think we are gentle caring folk who look after our neighbors, the way northern folk famously do (and southerners infamously don’t) and yet right in the middle of our democratic and so caring community; people were being enslaved and forced to into fatally dangerous slave labor! And we all knew it was happening!!

And we all did nothing!!!

It was quite common knowledge among the people of the area that the cockle pickers out in the bay were here as illegal immigrants, and that they had little choice but to work there, and that they were paid a pittance.

But we chose to turn a blind eye, many of us (misguidedly) perhaps not wanting to get people who we already felt were getting a raw deal; into further trouble.

In the seemingly few opportunities that the locals of the area had to talk to the Chinese, they came over as friendly outgoing and generous, and all of them hated having to pick cockles, they were frightened of the bay with its tides and gullies, they knew their bosses didn’t care about their wellbeing, and they feared for their lives when picking cockles having had close shaves before, the thing that struck you was how young they were, teenagers, (kids!) traveling round the world and having to do any work offered; for any money; with no choice in the matter!

And now? There is still as much lethally dangerous cockle harvesting going on out in the bay as there ever was, according to the local fishermen/people who know the bay and it’s tides and dangerous ways (It drowned my only son in 2003) it’s only a matter of time before there’s another tragedy.

It’s a sad reflection on us as a society and community that this can have happened right under our noses without us realizing what was going on; and doing something about it, doing the right thing isn’t abut waiting for government legislation to put things right, it’s about seeing what’s wrong and saying/doing something.

Do you think if they were English/Caucasians there would have been more done about it?

2006-03-27T11:13:00.000+01:00

Mobile phones, ID Cards through the back door?

26/03/06

I used to be a keen mobile phone user and carried one for 2 or 3 years ending up with one which I thought I liked (internet access etc) until the day came when I managed to lose it in a boozer one night.

Once the initial annoyance had worn off, I found that I was suddenly free from the (previously unrealized) stress of being permanently accessible and ‘on call’ as it were; ‘24/7’ to anyone who wanted to call and had my number.

I hadn’t realized just how intrusive and annoying I had found this until I was ‘Off the radar’ and inaccessible, I now revel in my newfound anonymity and freedom, I know it’s a nuisance not being able to phone whenever and whoever you want to but I’ve got a landline and answering machine so I won’t miss anything really important.

I suppose it’s pretty antisocial; but I value my space, I live alone (out of choice I like to think) and I love to have visitors, but I need to spend at least some part of everyday on my own.

Realizing that the phone can also act as a rather efficient tracking device; pinpointing my position at anytime, was also another reason for being happier without it.

And then learning about this made me start thinking seriously about the potential of mobile devices; and all the things that they could be capable of doing, which we wouldn’t necessarily know about!

with the computing power of these handheld devices increasing all the time, it means that they could easily be capable of storing all kinds of information about us (information that is easily gleaned now that “Convergence” means that we surf the web, access our banks and do all our e-mail and phone business with them) ‘Google’s battle with the US government over information gathered from customers searches online demonstrates clearly that they are thinking this way. Also don’t forget the story which ‘Microsoft’ furiously denies, that the British government are asking Microsoft to install a backdoor into their new ‘Vista’ operating system, to enable them to access encrypted data etc.

Why would the government need to issue us all with the unpopular ID cards, when we could all be easily identified and tracked by the ‘Spy in our pockets’?

of course when you link this to the literarly thousands of CCTV's watching our every move