I’m sure spending Christmas in prison is not much fun at all and walking naked across the UK must be hard on the feet:
The former Royal Marine made the 900-mile journey to question society’s attitude towards the human body [Naked rambler completes his trek]
I appreciate the fact that he’s trying to get us to lighten up but, really, in this weather?
2005: Hitch Hikers Guide Is Coming
2004: Shop ‘Til You Drop
2003: Lost In La Macha
2003: The Digital Music Debate
Since Christmas British retailers have been telling us what a bad year it was. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The Times today tells us about Tesco and this rampant success. Apparently, in the year to February 2003, ‘Out of every £8 spent with British retailers, one went to Tesco’. [Tesco: The profits of doom?, Times Online]. And it would seem that this is not enough – they are going for more. Seems that the rise of the mighty retailers will not be stopped, while the little ones who try to compete are blocked with threats of legal action. I don’t really see how the case of BPI vs CD WOW is that much different from me popping to Hong Kong and buying the CDs myself. They’re legal copies. Ah well, I imagine the legal people were also taking a good chunk out of every pound I spent on CDs last year. It all makes me sound so anti-big business when, really, I am not.
2005: Hitch Hikers Guide Is Coming
2004: Naked Across Britain
2003: Lost In La Macha
2003: The Digital Music Debate
Many people are linking to Brisingamen’s post, You see, the trouble is, I’m not actually American, which pretty much sums up a great deal of the reaction to the current state of security paranoia in the United States.
Consequently, if I’m to be fingerprinted, photographed, iris-scanned, weighed, poked, prodded, stripped naked, denied access to sanitation, handcuffed if I so much as raise my voice to complain, and generally humiliated because of your government’s Patriot Act, I do not anticipate that I will be comforting myself with the thought that, hey, it’s okay because I’m doing my bit to ensure the security of the American people. [Source]
Many people, quite rightly, point out that many countries have been living with terrorism for years and have learned to live with it in ways that to not lead to a situation where people no longer want to visit. It seem to me the principal of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is being lost and that is a worrying trend.
Knowing American immigration and security, I am fairly certain that Samantha Marson was stupid and should have know better, and security officials were right to detain her. But a potential prison sentence of 15 years?
2003: New Year New Mirror
I am not a star gazer by any stretch of the imagination but I am fascinated by the pictures of Mars coming from the Express Probe, there really are some interesting images. It’s amazing to think that not very long ago we believed there were little green men on Mars. It’s a great achievement for the scientists involved. On a sadder note for those interested in life beyond the stars, it has been announced that one of the most successful space projects is to be allowed to gradually die as no more servicing missions will be made to the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble also had some great pictures of Mars – although I really do think it should be known as the orange planet.
I’ve just updated my computer’s wallpaper to use a picture from Hubble, although I have chosen something from Jupiter as my background image. I really should try and learn a little more about the planets and what is happening there. Maybe I should have made something like that a New Year’s resolution. Ah well, there’s always next year.
2004: London Buses
2003: 8 Mile
The familiar red London bus with an open platform (no door) at the rear, a conductor and a charming little bell to signal the driver to go or stop is the Routemaster. Introduced to an post-war 1950s London they were the hight of modernity (automatic gears and hydraulic brakes) and, apparently, designed to be in service for only seventeen years. In 2004 they’ll have been in service for fifty years and there will be a party in Finsbury Park in July.
This picture was taken at Piccadilly Circus in London at around 13:35 today. It’s a mobile-phone picture so it isn’t great but, for some reason, even this blurry shot of a Routemaster bus makes me smile. The route listed down the side (Oxford Street, Selfridges, Marble Arch) evokes a warm and fuzzy feeling about this great city, the kind you had as a child when imaging what London was like to live in. I wonder if there were advertisements on the sides of the original buses and what they were.
2004: Hubble Bubble
2003: 8 Mile
I am not sure if it was the recent New Year’s message from Tony Blair telling us how great everything is (despite the tough choices) or Michael Howard’s ‘too much control from the centre’ message that got me to thinking about British Prime Minister’s in my lifetime and, one evening, the question came up, ‘can you name all the PMs since you were born’?
Now, I did manage to get it correct, although I got the order of those when I was little, slightly wrong. The first PM I remember is James Callaghan (and with it I have memories of power cuts) but of course there were some before him and I managed to name them.
While I was coming up with the list I did, for a moment, forget John Major and was later surprised to learn that he came to the job in 1990 and was defeated by Tony Blair in 1997. He had more-or-less seven years in the top job. That came as a bit of a shock.
When I think back to my time as a student, Margaret Thatcher was in power for a great deal of it. I have mental images of the Iron Lady ruling her over-whelming parliamentary majority with nothing but a handbag to beat her party. What shocked me, as I was checking the list of Prime Ministers I had come up with, with was that Tony Blair’s New Labour has had a bigger majority in The House than either of Mrs Thatcher’s governments.
So, for my own record, British Prime Minister’s since my birth (the year is the year they came to the job):
(Full list of British Prime Ministers since 1721 at Burke’s Peerage)
and those majorities at recent elections:
There seems to be some dispute about the June 2001 majority. Some figures put it at 166. I use the election results pages at Keele for these numbers.
2003: The Good Girl
I am travelling again on business and, yet again, I have found myself in Helsinki. This time it is like a picture postcard – the snowy streets illuminated by the soft glow from a street lamp. It’s lovely but I have to admit that it is cold! We landed with snow on the ground and snow in the air, temperature was already below freezing when we landed at 9pm last night.
I didn’t get much of a say in the hotel for this trip as it appears there were few rooms available. So, I stayed in a good hotel in a decent sized deluxe room. It appears there was a fashionable bar in the hotel and I got use of a separate lounge with, what I imagine, is a great view of the city (when it’s not dark). The downside is no wireless Internet – which is quite unusual for this part of the world.
I really like the people of Finland, especially Helsinki. They are always friendly and welcoming; everything seems so clean and efficient – although I am sure that there are natives that would dispute that. For a city with 560,000 people there does seem to be quite a bit of space – which is great and makes for large areas of clean, unbroken snow. Interestingly, 10 per cent of the country is water (which seems a lot) but I imagine that a great deal of it is ice right now.
The streets were snowy and many of the back roads had compact snow but the driver’s were oblivious to the skidding. The pathways were also, often, ungritted but people just walked along without a care – which made my carefully placed steps look silly.
Finland declared independence in 1917 but became and member of the European Union in 1995 and has adopted the Euro which makes transactions easy for me as I have always have a stock of Euro coins that I need to use up from my various visits. I really must remember that I need to come here for a holiday and explore it a little more. I will, of course, have to save as this is not a cheap country!
2003: To Play Or Not To Play?
And more cuteness (of sorts). Last night I got around to adding the first Man of the Moment for 2004. I decided to pick Phixx cutie Andrew Kinlochan in celebration of another gay pop idol. Phixx will release their second single towards the end of February so, hopefully, there will be some more information to post about them then.
Dermot O’Leary is still proving popular because of this recent appearances on Channel 4 and I am surprised Josh Harnett, Ben Affleck and Colin Farrell get so little attention.
2004: Too Cute
It’s sooo cute. B has posted some pictures of his boyfriend’s visit to NYC. Anybody who has been following Trabaca will know how great those pictures are.
2004: Another Cute One
Do you ever start to write entries for your blog but do not ever get round to publishing them? Today, I have just uncovered an entry I was going to publish when I put the first page up for the Man of the Moment project but for some reason I never got round to it. I have activated it today but left it in the place it was originally intended.
Similarly, I was about to start writing the Man of the Moment FAQ section but had a feeling I had written it already. And it was true but I have never hit ‘publish’ so I have updated it to be a little more reflective of the current situation.
One evening I must get around to digging out other unpublished content.
What this does to the site, I do not know. Should I leave it where it was originally written or should I move it? If you go back to the entries for July 2002 they are now not wholly reflective of the content that was presented to the world then.
2006: links for 2006-01-12
2005: Garden State
2005: links for 2005-01-12
2004: Make Me Write
2003: Entitlement Cards