Not the best of times for UKIP. With two members elected to the Worcestershire County Council within the Wyre Forest district one resigns due to comments they made on Facebook and the other dies. That means two new elections and while anyone's death is not a pleasant occurrence it's possible to learn from this experience regarding cost and blame for the by-elections.
Still popping up in the news are the tales of the big UK companies who barely pay any of the 20% corporation tax on their profits; nothing new their. What did catch my eye were those trying to justify it.
Microsoft have revealed their future console the boring titled "XBox One" which is only slightly more original than Sony's revealed (or more like hinted at) Playstation 4. What both platforms have in common (besides using Blu-ray, rechargeable and vibrational controllers etc.) is their lack of backwards compatibility. So what? The current Xbox360 will only play some old Xbox games and the backwards functionality was totally removed from the PS3 - what's the difference here? Architecture.
Ministers just can't help themselves can they? They talk about a radical overhaul of the GCSE grading system and all they mean is converting 2 or 3 levels of grade into 4. What a pointless exercise in futility.
They can't even work it out for themselves:
so that rather than having A*, A and B, you achieve 1, 2, 3, 4, and it might be the case that 1, 2, 3, 4 cover the band of achievement that is currently A* and A.So a 4 grade is a B wait no a 4 is an A-? Which makes a B a... B? The idea seems to be that greater differentiation at the top will allow better comparability between the 'high achievers' and between different exams. No it won't. It's simply adding two more grades into the system.
I've finally got around to playing the remastered version of ICO; does it hold up after all this time... yes. Emphatically yes; sure some of the wall textures are a little blurry at times and the controls are reminiscent of Resident Evil, but the core of the game remains pure - that of an escort mission.
Don't run away I know what you're thinking "But the escort mission in games is the part that sucks the most; a whole game that's an escort mission - no way!" Let me explain why escort missions suck and why oddly enough Ico doesn't.
A friend is looking to buy a new laptop and as the guru I was asked my opinion; I'm always happy to help but dealing with laptops can now end up a lot like dealing with questions along the lines of "Exactly why does my beef lasagne contain horsemeat?"
The order that I notice people evaluate laptops by is Brand, Spec, Physical Appearance, but in reality it should be the opposite and here's why.
The continued hagiography on the news channels of Margaret Thatcher while covering the preparations for her funeral this morning led me to more channel flipping.
BBC, ITV and Sky - Margaret Thatcher, and the bombing in Boston that killed 3 people.
Al Jazeera and RT - The bombing in Boston that killed 3 people, the bombing in Pakistan that killed 17, the 7.8 earthquake in Iran that killed "dozens"; the riots in Venezuela that have left at least 7 dead.
Always good to see how our news media assesses priority.
In the wake of Baroness Thatcher's death the song "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" is topping the UK download charts. As a service to its listeners the BBC plays the songs currently in the chart. The Daily Mail is foaming at the mouth over this.
Between the extremes of paens from ft.com and the purile "Ding Dong the witch is dead"'s; is it possible to examine the policies enacted during Baroness Thatcher's term of office?
A quick blip from the news this morning that Greater Manchester Police will now include attacks on goths, emos etc. as "hate crimes". Cue the a Torygraph blog entry "Isn't 'hate crime' against goths and punks just old-fashioned yobbery?" Playing the card hand of the "where do we stop?" and "how will [those it was originally] designed to protect, feel".
Should beating up a random person be treated as the same as beating someone up because they appear to be a member of a particular subculture? Oh and no I'm not using his term of "youth subculture" as this has the implications that the adherents will 'grow out of it'.
If someone targets goths in particular how is that any different from targeting Asians? The argument he presents is that goths etc. can change whereas you can't change your skin colour. Is that how hate crime should be defined - targeting a person due to a trait intrinsic to that person?
If that's the case how is telling goths to change their appearance so they won't be beaten up any different from telling homosexuals not to 'act gay' in public to avoid the same repercussions? Should we be instructing Polish immigrants that they should stop speaking Polish in public otherwise it's their own fault for being attacked?
What Mr Freeman seems to not understand is that those who hate a group are more likely to look for and try to beat up members of that group rather than get involved in the type of random dust-up he provides as an example. Of course beating someone up just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time shouldn't be treated as somehow 'better' than attacking someone due to their clothing, but it does send a strong message that actions towards the 'different-to-me' won't be tolerated.
Negative Equity seems to be the bête noire of a certain newspaper - anytime house prices start to drop out pops the headline of "millions in negative equity trap" by itself this wouldn't be a problem; except that for some strange reason politicians and a fair chunk of the population seem to believe what they're saying.
So what is negative equity and why is it such a concern?
I read an interesting piece in Sunday's Independent from Tom Hodgkinson entitled "Education needn't be so geared towards jobs" Annoyingly there are some areas I agree with, but talk about missing a big point.
The Ancient Greek word schole, which turned into our word for school, meant leisure, and the art of cultivating one's leisure was of central importance to the culture of Ancient Athensand
In the Middle Ages, the basic liberal education was invented by the Greeks, became known as the trivium and offered the three liberal arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric.Well yes it appears Tom doesn't realise the people at that time kept slaves and/or vassals.
Did you watch the BAFTA's; difficult to miss I suppose - red carpet coverage, award-winner speeches, post-party coverage and then the next day front-page headlines and analysis in all the papers. What do you mean I'm a bit late? Did you think I was talking about the Film awards that happened on the 10th of February? Oh and no I don't have a crystal ball to watch the Television awards that will happen on the 12th of May. I'm talking about the Game awards that occurred last night.
What awards? Well yeah exactly.
As mentioned I'm re-reading the Infinite Book and one topic that came up was with regards to the expansion of the universe. The logic presented in simple fashion goes like this:
The universe initially expanded (accelerated), however with no additional force gravity should 'instantly' start to cause everything to collapse.
In everyday terms if I throw a ball into the air as soon as the initial force of my hand is removed and the ball leaves my hand gravity takes over and 'removes' that force from the ball; until there's none left and the only force remaining is gravity and down comes the ball.
Looking at the universe parts are accelerating. That's like throwing a ball in the air and having its speed increase. Explanations are many and the book seems to settle on dark energy/dark matter etc. which are gravitationally repulsive. Spit-balling I threw some other concepts together and asked what if the acceleration is an illusion?
It's been kicking around for some time, but a story in the Shuttle shows the sheer idiocy of the government's "under-occupancy" benefit reduction commonly referred to as "bedroom tax". A disabled man uses the spare bedroom for his dialysis machine yet may face a cut as it's an unoccupied bedroom and thus lose his home.
How truly screwed-up is this plan? I'll go through it point by point.
And don't the elitists just crawl out of the woodwork; how many seem to be popping up with thinly veiled comments that people who buy the cheap meat pretty much deserve what happened. The most hilarious was a small inside editorial/opinion piece in last week's "i" paper. According to the author we're all really only upset about this because it's horse meat; he then goes down the route of 'if dogs were as big as cows and cows were the size of digs we'd be tucking into dog and walking cows around on leads'.
Watching the BBC Breakfast this morning and discussions on P.E. (which is a whole other topic) and while discussing the issue of untrained teachers and improper equipment someone stated that they "wouldn't have comics to teach literacy" and I thought "Why not?".
The road-works at Dunley Road in Stourport have switched back to three-way traffic lights; however it appears they're being properly manned this time. The joke in this instance is that the fact they're being manned means the redundancy of having three sets of lights. Allow me to explain.
It's good to see an MP introducing a "Welfare Cash Card" system simply to look for the reactions in the House.
The 'right' seem to stumble caught between their own policies of reduced government interference and their vote-grabbing rhetoric of demonising of welfare recipients. The 'left' take the reflexive stance of evil 'right'; while those supposedly in the middle scratch their heads and wait to be told what to think.
What appears to be missing is how exactly it's supposed to work and once again highlights our current masters' lack of technological knowledge or implementation.
