on halloween

Halloween, originally uploaded by fabbio.

Tonight is Halloween.

Now you can call me an old-crank spoilsport if you please, but I just don’t get why we’ve bought into this American holiday (although, yeah, I can totally understand why retailers have embraced it). I know kids love sweets, horror and creepy crawlies, but usually, at least in our town, they’re older kids after cold hard Stirling.

“Sweets?

What? Haven’t you got any money?”

You see what I’m getting at? In many cases, Trick or Treat’rs are gangs of bloody teenagers crawling the streets hoping to get enough for a few cans of Old Wife-Beater - or Stella, as it’s more frequently known. It’s not about the spirit of festival or even a cheeky nod to our historical dalliance with witchcraft, it’s about fleecing people out of cash.

I’m sure when my kids are a few years older (or maybe even next year for the boy) I’ll be dressing them up and taking them down our street. But I’ll be conscious of so many occupants who dread the doorbell. Will it be a hand-full of *supervised* cutiepies dressed as skeletons, or half-a-dozen dickheads with a £1 plastic mask and their hoodies drawn up.

I know I sound terribly Daily Mail, but I’m just not looking forward to tonight. Maybe I’ll camp out on the roof with an air-rifle - that’ll really put the heebie jeebies up the little shits.

Happy Halloween.

rudy’s rightward lunge

The New Republic examines Rudy Giulaini’s economic ideology.

From the horse’s mouth: -

I don’t like mandating health care. I don’t like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country–the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We’ve got to let people make choices. We’ve got to let them take the risk–do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because, ultimately, if they don’t, well, then, they may not be taken care of.

Rudy is a hard-nosed politician (and something of self-aggrandising wanker, but that’s one for another day), but I wonder if his desperate Milton Friedman-style economic reinvention will end up alienating the centre if he makes it past the nomination stage - after all, then, the smarmy-faced Republican will have to take his mandate to the country. Many millions of Americans simply cannot afford cover for escalating healthcare costs; they have been priced out of an incredibly expensive system.

American politicians must do something to help the vast swathes of the country without cover. A good start would be to open up a closed market to cheaper, foreign-sourced drugs (powerful Big-Pharma co’s have lobbied to ensure the market is closed, leading to an industry in drugs being smuggled over the US border). Remember, a free-market only works if it’s actually free.

More: rudy giuliani: foreign policy guru or international bullshitter?

meanwhile, elsewhere

Mike Power points out that the moronatrons at ConservativeHome have too much time on their hands.

digital hermits

An excellent – if quite fantastical – piece in yesterday’s Observer advises people on how to disappear from the nation’s growing network of computer databases, CCTVs and electronic registers.

Nick Rosen, editor of the “Off Grid” website, argues that “thousands” of Britons are choosing a life without utility companies, credit cards, supermarkets, and cars in order to be invisible to an institutionalised web of data-collection points that track almost every facet of our lives.

Personally, while I have no desire to scream, “stop this digital world I’m getting off,” I do worry about my digital footprint. I have various online accounts with companies such as facebook, PayPal, MSN, and flickr that could - and in all likelihood will - enable them to create a profitable profile they could use or sell for marketing purposes (or, IMO much more insidious, pass onto government agencies). A good friend, Political Penguin, argues that this readiness to pass on my information to private companies is hypocritical in light of my opposition to the proposed UK ID Cards. He has a point, but then, to the best of my knowledge at least, flickr hasn’t been accused of flying its customers to Syria for “electric-aided interrogation” (with regard to MSN, I couldn’t be so sure).

Also, I actually trust certain web-based companies more than I trust public institutions. Many governmental departments are riddled with people happy to pass on your info for a nice backhander. As Rosen points-out, 300,000 people could be authorised to view your centrally-stored medical information (what would insurance and pharma companies pay for such info?). Yes, such economic realities apply to private employees too, but I have a little more confidence in data security based on corporate profit and customer confidence, as government rarely cares about such confidence in the civil service.

I guess we web-users have to trade a little privacy for access to applications such as facebook, and yes, we must also accept that “free” apps have to be paid for. The outrage at the increasing level of advertising on facebook is mislaid and somewhat idiotic. Social networks have huge amounts of traffic and these commercial enterprises have to generate revenues from somewhere. We all enjoy technological advances thanks to significant shareholder investment, and investors must be rewarded with growth and dividends.

Conversely, we’re also right to be suspicious of companies who hold our data, and this is where watchdogs are necessary - however the nature of the web means that any accountability is perfectly possible through nebulous web-based activism, rather than governmental intervention. Through technology and communication, consumers can hold the companies they use to account. Had a washing machine that survived its warranty by only a few weeks? Tell the world on an independent whistle-blowing site or post a review to a consumer forum. Technology empowers both the customer and the service provider, so it’s in the interest of the customer to embrace it.

if you’ve ever wondered about the british establishment…

…just observe the manner in which Private Eye is read, yet routinely ignored.

Viva La Revolución!!

a penguin goes diggin’

Remember all that bollocks about voting blue, going green?

up since four

More of this. Knackered today. Watching Zombie Hotel. Don’t ask.

btw

I had cause to buy a 15m ethernet cable today. I have about half-a-dozen 5m ones. Grrrr. I went to Currys in Newark - the only place that had one this long.

They wanted £35 for a Belkin one.

Thirty-five fucking quid. For an ethernet cable! That’s a gnat’s knacker over $71 at today’s exchange rate.

I ordered one online for £6.49 +p&p.

the blackberry is no more

I ditched the BlackBerry.

Now before we go any further, BlackBerry’s are fantastic. There is not a cell on the market that comes close with regard to handling email. The BlackBerry/Vodafone push email service, and the excellent keyboard, make writing text and sending email a breeze.

But for £15 per month? £180-per-year? (On top of my cell contract.)

Not bad if you’re on the road a great deal. Usually I am quite mobile, but recent projects have meant working from home or a Wi-Fi hotspot. So I have my Mac for email. I.e. I don’t need a BlackBerry.

I have pulled a Samsung D900 out of retirement. It’s a good phone with a 3mp camera and autofocus (not as good as my old Sony Ericsson K800i, but Mrs. tyger seized that some time ago). I can’t see the point of lugging around a big QWERTY BlackBerry just for texting and calls. Much better to have a half-decent camera and lighter pockets. The Samsung is very smart, too.

(p.s. offers welcome for the BlackBery 8800 )

a sceptic writes

Is this really true?

Giant garbage patch floating in Pacific
An enormous island of trash twice the size of Texas is floating in the Pacific Ocean somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Chris Parry with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has been growing a brisk rate since the 1950s, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.

The trash stew is 80 percent plastic and weighs more than 3.5 million tons.

“At this point, cleaning it up isn’t an option,” Parry said. “It’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues.”

via.

Twice the size of Texas?

(psst! Texas is slightly bigger than France)

steve and the giant apple

John Gruber has an excellent piece on the continuing march of the Apple Mac. Via.

I wonder how many long-time Mac users will get turned off by the popularity of the brand. There has always been something of a “secret club” of Mac users. Personally I’m happy for the platform to go mainstream, as it’ll result in more hardware support and better apps. Microsoft has abused its position for long enough - the *completely* lame Vista was the final straw.

I have no doubt that Leopard will get some criticism too. Mac OS 10.5 is nowhere near as revolutionary as Tiger - at least to the average user. Supposedly the major improvements are under the hood, allowing for much better applications and laying the foundations for future iPod/iPhone enhancements.

Will I upgrade straight away? I have a feeling a more powerful, compact (11.1″?) MacBook Pro is in the offing next year (the vine has been buzzing for over a year). A smaller notebook, with a bit more graphical oomph (than the 13.33″ MacBook), would be perfectly placed for tech-savvy professionals who are on the road more than they’re in the office. Until then, I’ll be sticking with my Tiger-powered iBook.

The truth is, competition from Apple and Linux distributors (and believe me, Redmond takes the Linux threat very seriously) is healthy for the industry. It’ll force Microsoft to innovate and hopefully drive down the price of Windows. Vista reeks of arrogance and corporate rot, competition will ensure this’ll change.

the irregular photo of the day

, originally uploaded by BabyJD.

going out in style

Surely the only way to commit suicide?

via.

martin kettle: both right & wrong

Martin Kettle has an arresting piece in today’s Guardian. He argues that while the left often cry that the political parties are all now centrist ones, and that every candidate is essentially the same, in reality they are markedly different, offering very different choices. He goes on to explain how this complaint has dogged liberalism throughout history, explaining that the elections of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon were similarly dismissed as no real choice for the electorate.

This grievance is not wholly a liberal trait. Conservatives are also vocal in their frustration as David Cameron rolls out his oxymoronic vision of Liberal Conservatism. Those of the right and the left, who dally at the fringes of radicalism, will obviously find themselves disenfranchised as the political parties battle for the limited political oxygen in the centre.

Kettle is right and he’s wrong.

Each of the political parties is selling the same vision of England. They all claim they will empower you with choice in the Welfare system. They all claim that they’ll put more police on the streets and more teachers in our schools. They all claim that they can reform the civil service and get better results, and they all acknowledge that the NHS is a sacred cow that mustn’t be sacrificed.

However, what we get when we actually elect a party into power, as Kettle rightly points out, can be very different. Who would have believed that Labour would have introduced tuition fees? Who would have thought the “compassionate conservative”, George W. Bush, would have become one of the most rightwing presidents for 70-years?

What would a David Cameron government actually be like? He may come across as a moderniser and a dashing member of the North London liberati; yet his party, including - the Penfold to his Dangermouse - George Gideon Osborne, are still the same Thatcherite rightwingers that lost Major, Hague, and Howard successive elections.

The Tories haven’t changed, they’ve merely rebranded.

Look at the policy reviews that Cameron had key Tories produce. Each one was lauded in gestation, and then quietly shelved when they turned out to be old Tory solutions to a new set of problems. Solutions the country decided a decade ago they weren’t interested in.

Kettle is right. The political parties and the media are guilty of poor communication with regard to the differences between our politicians – or maybe, very good communication in the case of the parties, who sometimes have a vested interest in misrepresenting their policies.

Because if we don’t know what sort of politics we’re voting for, what is the point of democracy?

the irregular quote of the day

From angry mum, Earthpal: -

Spice Girl apologists are coming out with the usual tosh such as them being healthy role models for young girls and great ambassadors of girl-empowerment, blah, blah . . . but Girl Power was nothing but a massive marketing ploy aimed at young girls to get them to spend their hard-earned pocket money (and their parents money) on all the cheesy merchandise and those bloody awful records. And they did nothing for female empowerment except to commercialise thousands and thousands of young girls and give them hollow expectations of what life is about.

I don’t know how much the tickets are going to cost. No doubt the figures will reflect their exploitative greed (and that of their manager). But do you know what? If their reunion was in aid of a respectable charity I don’t think I’d have a problem paying but when it’s just to feed their fading ego’s and their bank balances, they can bloody well whistle for it. They failed abysmally as soloists and their only motive in this reunion is gratuitous greed and a sad effort to reclaim some of their long-lost celebrity status.

For the record, I really fucking loathe Victoria “Posh-spice” Beckham. Never has someone so uniquely talentless, been so successful. I love the fact David screws around with any bit of skirt he can get alone in a room, as Posh appears to me to be the most obnoxious and precious cow on the planet (apologies if this post comes across as somewhat misogynistic, but I guess if I really cared I’d change it).