"The DJ sounded white on the phone"

I'd forgotten all about this story, until doing a quick news search on the BNP today. The BNP are holding a meeting in Swansea tomorrow, so I ran a quick internet search so see what they'd been up to. Whilst if you know me it'll be fairly obvious where my political views lie, and if you don't, I'm not exactly a BNP supporter!

A copy of this story used to be pinned to the wall of the President's office at Goldsmiths SU - where I spent many a day.

In December 2004, the British tabloid the Daily Mirror reported that a BNP member had hired a black DJ by telephone for the BNP Christmas party without knowing that he was black. The Mirror and the BNP versions of this event are to some extent incompatible.The Daily Mirror claimed that "Some members of the far right group were so outraged by the blunder they walked out of the hotel where their party was staged." That a BNP official told them that "there was a bit of a cock-up. The chap who booked him didn't realise. The DJ sounded white on the phone." That another BNP official said that "everyone was a bit alarmed when the DJ turned up. A lot of people weren't happy - I wasn't, really - and one or two walked out. But some younger members thought it was a bit ironic and danced away the night." That the same official said that "traditionally someone stands and says what's happened in the year or in the elections. But it was a bit difficult to say we were even the BNP. We even had to be careful what we said when we did the raffle so we didn't offend this guy..what are you supposed to do? Tell him to clear off? It was very, very embarrassing."

Please, please vote in the May elections. Please.

It's no wonder Britain's middle classes are getting wasted

Now Trish Groves is having a go. Calling for more half bottles of wine to be on sale. The fact of tha matter is, no matter what size container the wine is sold in, we're still going to drink it, and we're still going to get wasted.

Surely the question we should be asking is why do us Brits feel it necessary to get legless every week (or every night in some cases)? Why not address the grass roots problem rather than attempting to impose limits on what we can and cannot buy?

Is it because we fail to get a sense of satisfaction else where? Is it that we don't feel fulfilled by other parts of our lives? I don't know. What I do know is that I enjoy a Pinot Grigio or two, and why shouldn't I?

Would you be David Cameron's friend for £500,000?

No, nor me.

Kids on the mitch

And? Lessons I didn't enjoy I didn't go to.

Why did I mitch you ask? Here's an example - I knew that I was going to pursue an education / career in the arts / media / humanities / social sciences / politics / etc, and therefore didn't need to know about trigometry in Maths. Why would I? I even asked my Maths teacher one day what good it would do me in the future - he failed to come up with a good answer. If we'd been taught relevent things - i.e. the economy, how the stock market works, how to invest, interest rates etc etc, I would've listened, and attended. But there's no way that trig will ever be useful to me. Ever. Of course, if you're pursuing Maths, then you probably need it. But I wasn't. Let's make education relevent people.

Poor Rambo ratings blamed on Odeon!

Of course, it's nothing to do with it being a shite film, with 2.59 killings per minute, it's Odeon's fault the film failed to make the US box office chart.

Despite this, I'm still going to see it on Wednesday!

H.S.B....

....C.

It pained me to say it. Really.

Yes, the saga continues. Yesterday I actually managed to talk to a *real* person, face-to-face in my local branch. *Gasp*.

Considering they told me they deal with fraud cases "all the time" they really weren't very organised about the whole affair. The relevent forms which I needed to sign were not available at the branch, nor could the staff member download them from the HSBC system they use. And surprise, surprise, there *still* wasn't a note on the account explaining the fraudulent activity. I was also told that I'd need a crime reference number for the bank to get on with their investigation. I say again, if the bank deal with this "all the time" surely the people I spoke to on the phone last week would've told me that? Obviously not.

And just to warn you, if you are thinking of banking with HSBC, and your account is used fraudulently, once you've managed to get your paws on the relevent paperwork (it's taken me 10 days and I'm still waiting) it can take up to 8 weeks to resolve the dispute. The word 'outrageous' doesn't even come close.

I heart the Sun...Eeep

So apparently 100,000 Sun readers want the death penalty re-introduced. Sigh.

I intend to drive a 56 tonne Chieftan battle tank through one of HSBC's branches

Ok, so maybe that's a little extreme, but here's the latest.

Due to some fool cloning my card, I obviously need to get a new card and pin etc. HSBC said they'd send it to my branch. Fine, no problem.

I asked, "Is my branch open on a Saturday?"
HSBC, "Yes, all our branches are open until 1pm on Saturdays".
Me, "Are you sure? It's a small branch".
HSBC, "Yes madam".

So off I tootle to my branch on Saturday morning, and guess what? Yup. Closed.

HSBC suck. If I had a tank....

My HSBC account will be closing just as soon as they give me my money back.

What's next?

Well we all shifted from MySpaz to Facebook...looks like we're moving again people...

Communications

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but in order to be a successful, multi-national, billion pound company, surely communications are pretty damn important. Once again, HSBC never ceases to amaze me. As my card was used fraudulently in Greece over the weekend, and as a consequence I'm now overdrawn, I just received a call from HSBC informing me that I'm about to be slammed with bank charges etc because I'm overdrawn. The non-English speaking women who phoned me had no idea about the Greek idiot who's funding his Ouzo addiction on my card....surely the fraud people would've put a note on the account explaining the situation? Apparently not. I then spent 15 minutes explaining what had happened, for me then to be told that I should report the fraudulent activity to the relevent department in HSBC. Because obviously I'm too stupid to have already done that. Seriously.

University of Glamorgan students

I sincerely hope not.

Violated

So some pesky criminal in Greece has managed to rob nearly a grand out of my account. Eugh. Will I get the money back? Yes. It's just a pain dealing with the admin. I'm suprised HSBC were so slow off the mark though. It took them three days. And I had to phone them first! This type of fraud has happened to a few people I know, and every time they have been contacted almost immediately by their bank. Not HSBC though.

I just hope whoever robbed me spent the money on something nice.

Happy VD

Valentines is here again....yet another excuse to waste hideous sums of money on cheap chocolates, helium heart shaped balloons and petrol station flowers.

I'm just enjoying the fact that I've just discovered that today abbreviated is VD. Someone somewhere is having a laugh aren't they? Happy VD dear...

Bribing for Britain

Bribing for Britain

Book Review by Rachel Thomas, December 2007

Tim Webb, Campaign Against the Arms Trade, £3

Webb's exploration into British government collusion with arms traders is an eye opener. His investigation into the longstanding relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, where he claims that "the Saudi regime has had Britain over a barrel for over 20 years and the barrel contains oil", is a revealing window into the arms trade.

Using a range of media sources and policy papers, this short book details the Al-Yamamah agreements involving an exchange of military hardware for oil, and other such "scams". The text takes the reader on a journey of discovery into the arms trade, which Webb paints as fraudulent, dishonest and rather warped. Tales of Saudi royals receiving flash cars and extortionate skiing holidays in return for keeping the trade relationship advantageous are presented as a stark reminder that Britain's arms sale endeavours are often deceptive, wasteful and ambiguous.
It's important to question authors' sources and evidence bases, and while Webb's substantiation of his claims is grounded in media articles from news sources often perceived to be reliable, newspapers' impartiality can never be underestimated.

That said, Webb is not afraid to confront Britain's history of dirty dealing and corruption involved in the arms trade, and the book is an excellent exposé of the key players involved in major corruption incidents.

Webb's investigation concludes by offering a number of steps the government should take to protect the public interest in Britain's arms sales. He notes that his suggested steps should be part of a broader analysis, which would aim to shrink the existing emphasis on weapons production, and shift the focus towards protecting other fields - most notably the environment. Hear hear!

Published in the Socialist Review.

Valentines

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Valentines is here,
And......(whatever)

A good friend of mine pointed out something very interesting about Valentine's gifts. A huge percentage of men (and women) send flowers on Valentines. But flowers die. Hardly a good metaphor for a relationship is it?

Jeremy Kyle - the future

Hahahahahahahahahaha!! Read the full story here.

Science - easy

Having scraped a GCSE in Science, I'm hardly the next Charles Darwin, however, I've just written a paper entitled "Cate: Analysis of I/O Automata". It begins:

"Homogeneous algorithms and Lamport clocks have garnered great interest from both cyberinformaticians and information theorists in the last several years [1]. In this work, we argue the construction of superpages, which embodies the structured principles of networking. We concentrate our efforts on demonstrating that the much-touted relational algorithm for the understanding of red-black trees by Gupta [10] is optimal".

Read more here.

Yeah ok, it's rubbish - great site though. It's essentially a site which generates academic science papers that look amazing, but are scientifically rubbish.

Better not tell the students....!

Christ

It isn't the headline necessarily it is the secondary story on the front page that they marry it to that concerns me....christ.

Great....

Dry white wine

Bad customer service pisses me off. It's not difficult to get it right, so why do so many places get it oh so wrong? (this is, by the way, why I avoid Wetherspoons like the plague...*shudder*) I was out with some friends last night and the conversation with the bar maid went something like this:

R: Can I have a dry white wine please?
- barmaid scurries away-
Barmaid: Sorry, we only have a sweet wine.
-the bottle in her hand reads 'chenin blanc' and underneath 'dry white wine'
R: I think that's a dry.
Barmaid: No, no, it's sweet.

FFS. Granted, the chenin blanc grape is a versatile one which can be used for all sorts, but when the bottle says DRY WHITE WINE on it....HOW COULD SHE GET IT WRONG?

Answers on the back of a postcard please.

GOD SAVE OUR PUBS

So Charles Church want to demolish the Pantmawr Inn and replace it with flats. The Vulcan's going to be demolished in June 2009. And I heard last night that The Gower is now under threat too. What is wrong with this country? These pubs are our history. Fact.

There is a viscous campaign to save the Pantmawr supported by various politicians, media and key community figures, but the Pantmawr Action Group won't know what's going to happen to the site until the application goes to the planning committee. I sincerely hope that the planning committee see a bit of sense that the proposals are outrageous and throw it out.

When the Vulcan goes I'll be devasted. It is by far one of the best pubs in Cardiff. Steeped in history, it still has sawdust on the floor.

God help us.

FB - Pantmawr and Vulcan.

John Cleese's letter to America

In view of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from next Monday.Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."

3. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation.

4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up "vocabulary"). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

6. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called "Come-Uppance Day."

8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you European cars, you will understand what we mean.

11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables.Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline") - roughly $6/US per gallon. Get used to it.

13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.

14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters.Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ear removed with a cheese grater.

17. You will cease playing American "football." There is only one kind of proper football; you call it "soccer". Those of you brave enough will, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven.

19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due, backdated to 1776.

Thank you for your co-operation.

John Cleese

Smoking is healthier than Fascism

MPs and their limited vocab

I like a good swear as much as the next man, but I'm just not sure that name-calling is a productive tactic whilst debating serious issues. Even if the guy was being an arsehole, why not increase your vocab. Calling him a stinking derriere would have been far more amusing.

And is it me, or is this idiot just out to annoy me at the moment?

Read the story here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7221750.stm

An introduction to systems of government...