Richard’s Blog-o-Shite

MPs need to represent their constituencies. They should therefore live in the areas they represent. To be an MP, they then need to be in the Commons and because of all the chit-chat they tend to work extended hours (when they’re actually there…), so I accept that MPs should also live in London when they need to be in the House.

Now all the hoo-hah has been about what they claim for in terms of mortgage interest, repairs, etc. There is a recession on and that’s affecting the construction industry and also the amount of office space going begging. So bearing in mind the 646 need to be going to the same place from time to time, why not simply build or convert a block into 646 flats plus security near to the Houses of Parliament and give each MP a room whilst they’re MPs. Think Premier Inn stylee. That way the daily travel exes come down. No worries about pisstaking. Security is less of an issue as they’re all within a security cordon. When the MP stands down or is replaced, he gives up the room and his replacement moves in.

In the meantime, he gets a comfortable room with decent bed, TV to keep up to date, desk and power to catch up out of hours, cleaners can come in daily as and when, etc. And the public gets to keep a tight rein on expenses. No frills and not too much like a room in a monastery either. You could also add a ground floor with office space for meeting rooms they could book.

What’s the problem?

1000 miles in 24 hours (plus 400 miles to and from the start!)

I’ve signed up to do this: the Royal British Legion is holding an event under the Iron Butt Association SaddleSore 1000 rules. There are several aims, first to raise money for Royal British Legion. The second is to try and take the record from the Americans. And the third is obviously the personal challenge of trying to ride 1000 miles in 24 hours (plus a 400 mile round trip to and from the starting point!).

The event starts on Friday 19th June at 12:00 with riders briefing, with riders departing between 08:00 and 09:00 on Saturday 20th June, completing the ride by 09:00 on Sunday 21st June.

I have sent off my entry form along with a cheque for £30 but I will also need to raise at least £50 of sponsorship.

As for the ride there are four routes, two north, and two south. I am taking the Route B North Anti Clockwise.

The RBLR website and route details is here.

The easiest way for me to collect sponsorship is the just giving website at http://www.justgiving.com/richardhmorris – they can claim the gift aid on your behalf.

Please sponsor me!

From the same bunch of fuckwits that brought you “People ‘can’t wait for ID cards’” comes news of another twat suggesting that if the road speed limit was cut to 50mph the majority of motorists would support the new restrictions, which would be enforced by average speed cameras.

Well here’s news for you, Jim Fitzpatrick: I would be dead against yet another piece of ill-conceived, knee-jerk legislation from you bunch of arrogant control freaks! Or, put another way, you can fuck right off you power-crazed, arrogant, self-obsessed piece of shit!

Sounds like it’s about time for some well organised campaign of civil disobedience before the nanny state imposes yet more draconian legislation on us. Any takers?

So the BBC’s Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble for calling our glorious leader, Gormless Brown, a “one-eyed, Scottish idiot.”

All sorts of people with their own agendas such as Labour MPs (especially Scottish ones…) and disability activists are hopping onto this latest bandwagon to denounce him and demand that the BBC acts to punish him.

Why?

El Gordo is indeed one-eyed. Fact.

He is Scottish. Fact.

He is an idiot. Opinion.

And?

For what it’s worth, I think Jeremy Clarkson is a twat. That’s my opinion. But frankly the bigger twats are these complete and utter wankers who want political correctness to ruin our society. Fuck the lot of them!

And the award for Most Pointless Text Message today goes to Vodafone:

“We continually invest in our network to provide a reliable service & you’ll be pleased to know we’ve now improved coverage in an area where you use your mobile.”

Excellent! Which area is that? Given that I live in South-East London during the week, work in South London, visit clients in Central London twice a week and travel home to Norfolk each weekend, wouldn’t it have been an idea to tell me which area had been improved?

A little bit of fun and games today thanks to the British Gas web site. I wanted to change my log-in details as a usual security update so I logged in and accessed my account. I chose a new password and submitted it and an error was thrown up: basically the chosen password was too short.

So I went back in again and tried once more with a much longer password. This time, it failed again as the password has to include at least one number.

So I tried again.

Now wouldn’t it be good if they could have told me that the password had to be between x and y characters long and include at least one number and one letter in the same error message? Sloppy coding, boys…

From the “Whose Stupid Idea Was That?” department, comes the debacle surrounding the release of version 3 of Firefox.

It’s summarised quite nicely here:
http://www.thatwebman.com/2008/06/17/public-relations-disaster-for-firefox/

…is of course our political leaders and the unelected civil servants.

How so? Well this bunch of fools regularly lose CDs containing our personal data, lose laptops with defence secrets on them or leave confidential briefing documents on trains through nothing but their fuckwittery.

And now a Cabinet Minister has had a computer with sensitive documents on it stolen. This is, of course, against the rules on handling sensitive information, but then we can’t expect Labour Ministers to actually follow any rules, can we?

And yet they expect us to have confidence in them!

Yes, our glorious leader Gormless Brown has declared that the continuing erosion of our civil liberties helps to ensure my right to live free from crime:

“Gordon Brown has defended the use of CCTV, ID cards and the DNA database – saying they protect civil liberties.

“In a speech to the IPPR think tank, the prime minister said they helped ensure people’s right to live free from crime.”

I see. So by watching me wherever I go, by forcing me to carry an ID card and by taking and keeping samples of my DNA they will guarantee that I will live free from crime? That’s excellent news. I won’t worry about my safety any longer when I’m considering walking around after midnight in the middle of Manchester or South London or wherever thanks to El Gordo and his band of totalitarians.

What utter and complete toss!

Or does he mean that by doing all that I won’t commit any crimes against anyone else? Didn’t the September 11th bombers carry ID cards then?

So with the move to London happening soon, one of the items I had to sort out was my Internet access. Here at home – working for myself from my office on the side of the house – I have a business broadband package from Demon with fixed IP addresses for all the computers and printers. When I’m out and about, I usually use a 3G USB dongle from Vodafone which is more often that not either a regular 38Kbps service or on occasion nothing more than a pretty white plastic thing for decoration only. Where there is good coverage, it’s supposed to deliver 1.8Mbps with the promise of 7.2Mbps in parts of London though annoyingly Rotherhithe doesn’t appear to be in the Promised Land but just outside – I’ll check when I get there.

So anyway, with 5GB/month I thought that might make it easier: no need to get a phone line and a broadband package, just use my allowance for a change.

But Mrs RHM then suggested I should get a webcam for my laptop so I could help the kids with their homework if need be and also keep in touch with her. Fine, I thought, though alarm bells started ringing: she uses our venerable iMac while the rest of the family have PCs.

So what’s the problem with the iMac?

Well the iMac and OSX Leopard has iChat which promotes its video chat features. To use it to its best, you need to have a .Mac account – which is expensive for what you actually get which is why I abandoned my .Mac account after a couple of years – as does your friend and .Mac is pretty much a waste of time for anyone on a PC. “Never fear”, says Apple, “you can always link up with AIM.” What?

“iChat works with AIM, the largest instant messaging community in the U.S. You and your buddies can be either AIM or .Mac users. Text, audio, and video chat whether your buddies use a Mac or a PC. Sign in with your AIM account, and all your buddies appear in your iChat buddy list.”

Great! No-one in the UK – OK, I exaggerate a tad – uses AIM: AOL Instant Messenger. The client software seems to have issues here on this PC, by the way, which comes as no surprise to me having once used AOL software for testing purposes. Go on: ask any of your connected friends what they use for instant messaging and they’ll say “MSN” (or “Windows Live Messenger“, to give it its proper name).

You can, of course, download the Mac Messenger client, but the ‘usual’ home user version does not support video messaging. Not really a surprise as I think Microsoft doesn’t really bother with Mac users as they’re lost causes as far as “the Beast of Redmond” appears to be concerned.

Maybe this is another reason not to get a Mac? Until Apple comes up with an instant messaging client that supports video messaging with Windows Live users, you’d otherwise be partially cutting yourself off from the majority of computer users, at least here in the UK.