Sympathy For The Devil's Relatives

I loathe all that Thatcher stood for. I loathe all that she did from fucking over the Unions to dismantling the NHS. I'm old enough to have lived through her entire time in office from barely being politically aware when she first gained power to finding myself steeped in the very British cynicism with which we tend to view those we elect to govern over us.

Because of Thatcher I have an innate, unthinking distrust of the Conservative Party. This is not a good thing. A political choice should be a cerebral, logical, thinking process not a knee-jerk reaction whose root is in negative gut instinct. But it's there. I cannot, will not ever vote Tory.

Because of Thatcher.

She left an indelible stain on British society. Her legacies are still insinuating themselves within the contemporary political process and the very fabric of our society. None of it, in my opinion, in a good way.

But I am genuinely offended by the furore surrounding the "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" track which is - quite naturally perhaps - storming up the music chart.

I am disappointed that the BBC hasn't made a definite clear decision regarding the idea of playing it on its own chart show.

Either play it or completely ban it. But don't go all wishy-washy and say you'll "only play 5 seconds within a journalistic context". That's a cop out. That's not even an attempt to please everybody. It's an attempt not to offend anyone too much.

Show some balls for god's sake.

Don't get me wrong. I get the humour behind the record (is it even a record?). I get the desire to cock-a-snoop at the ludicrously patriotic outpouring of verbal laurels that various public figures are heaping onto Thatcher's memory. I get - feel part of - the sense of satisfaction that someone who was so largely reviled is no longer among us.

But to me that reaction should be a relatively private thing. It is my own private response. Great if other people feel the same but should it really be ramped up into some kind of public movement?

Because the simple fact is - regardless of how we feel about them - someone has died. They're not here anymore. All these outpourings of admiration and revulsion are not going to make a blind bit of difference to them.

But it is something that is going to deeply affect the relatives who are left behind and those who had a personal relationship with Thatcher. Are they to be held accountable for her actions? Do they deserve to have to wade through and deal with this public outpouring of hate when they are mourning someone close to them? When they are about as vulnerable as it is possible for a human being to be?

It seems to me to be a very un-British thing to spite someone who is grieving. It is not decent. It is not admirable. It is, I am sure, not something we want attributed to the traditional idea of what it means to be British. It does not sit well: stiff upper lip, nice cup of tea, head down and soldier on, make the best of a bad thing, oh and sneer and heap misery on those that are grieving.

Thatcher, in her political lifetime, dismantled much of what was great about being British. Let us not sell our souls on top of this just to revel in a victory that, when you think about it, is not even really ours.

There is much still to be angry about. Thatcher's / The Tory Party's on-going socio-political legacy. The stupidly lavish funeral arrangements and the inevitable cost to the Great British tax payer at a time of stringent national austerity. But the death itself?

There is no place for anger or prideful victory in death.

Let us make our snide jokes quietly amongst ourselves. Let's play the stupid "Ding Dong" record in private.

But for God's sake let us let those who have a genuine right to grieve, grieve in peace.

Their shoulders should not have to carry the weight of a modern democracy that is kicking itself in anger for making a bad choice three decades ago.

Too Little And Too Much

I am out of love with technology this morning.

This morning the internet isn’t doing it for me and, if I’m honest, it’s been getting on my tits for the last week or so.

First up is Disqus. This is the technology that is working “too little”.

I’m Disqusted with it. I know some of you use it. I know some of you praise it to high heaven. Some of you are even honest and say that it’s just OK. Whenever I encounter it I have worked out that I have a mere 1 in 4 chance of it (a) letting me actually letting log into it and (b) after that actually letting me leave a comment. On some blogs it handshakes with me without a problem. On others it seems intent on giving me the two fingered salute and spitting all over whatever words of wisdom I am trying to impart. Those of you who haven’t heard from me for a post or two (Nota Bene and Wanderlust), I am afraid Disqus says my name is not on the list and I cannot come in. I’m not wearing the right jacket or shoes and I’m not wearing a tie. I have tried. Honestly. I’ve tried signing in via different applications and tried leaving it to work its magic for hours. I get a nice graphic of three cogs spinning around but it just hangs endlessly like a highwayman at Tyburn. I have tried banging my head against my computer screen but that just warps my vision.

As for the technology that is doing “too much”. That is hotmail.

When I log into hotmail I just want to nip in quickly, check for any new messages and then log straight back out again. I don’t want a hug or a snog. I don’t want to indulge in frottage or dry humping. I don’t want a date or a full on marriage with kids, a dog and an affair with the butcher’s wife down the road.

So why the hell do you insist on continuously asking me for my telephone number?

This is a piece of deeply personal information. Surely the whole point of a hotmail account is some level of anonymity? A hotmail email address if perfect for shopping at sites you don’t trust 100% and for on-line surveys where you want to leave information but nothing that MI5 can trace back to your front door. I can’t fathom why an email account provider would need my personal telephone number. Oh I know it’s supposed to be about security and password / account protection. But really! If you can’t vouchsafe the security and integrity of my email account why the hell should I trust you with my telephone number?!

Unfortunately there seems to be no way to switch off or bypass the request (except, I suspect, by acquiescing which I am not about to do). Every second log in I get taken to the “can we have your phone number” screen. I merely retype “hotmail” into the address bar of my browser and finally get taken to my account. But it is becoming annoying. Take a hint Hotmail: I am not giving you my telephone number. Not now and not ever. How dare you even ask? Next you’ll be asking me for my home address, bank account and inside leg measurement and a biometric photograph of the skin whorls on my left testicle.

The only thing I’m happy to give you is a biometric photograph of the skin whorls on my middle finger.

Swivel!

As for Disqus... hold the line, sir, I’ll be with you in just a sec...

Super Junk

There’s a lot of talk in the papers and on the TV at the moment about super injunctions. I have to say that I haven’t read any of it nor listened to any of it – apart from a few gags about it on Have I Got News For You. Gags being the operative word, of course.

There’s a reason for my lack of interest which will become clear later.

Now, it strikes me that the whole situation is like finding a knot that someone has tied in a length of poo and then spending an unfathomable amount of time trying to unravel it.

Why bother? Why does anyone want to get their hands dirty with it?

Because, on the whole, there is very little moral high ground to be seen no matter which angle you approach the subject from.

I’ve heard lots of guff about freedom of the press and freedom of the individual to a private life. Which do you discern as being of greater value? We are all of us – celebs and Royals included – entitled to privacy. It is a basic human need. A basic human right.

But if some celebrity moral arbiter is then caught doing as he does rather than as he says, don’t we have a right to know about it?

We do. But that rather implies a moral imperative behind the exposé – and, let’s be honest, the only imperative behind most news stories these days (especially those that feature celebrities) is to sell more copy and make more money. There is nothing moral or edifying about that.

So then we have injunctions and super injunctions. Small, insidious cogs inserted into the gross machinery of the law to enable individuals to protect their interests / privacy from the rapacious, undiscerning appetites of the press.

I think I’d be more inclined to see these as a tool for individual human rights if they were freely available to everyone. They don’t appear to be. They seem only to be available to the super rich or the super influential. The superfluous man on the street can go and take a running jump.

At least, that’s how it appears. I don’t know. I haven’t read much into it or researched it.

Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think much to the press and I don’t think much of the politicians and the celebs they orbit. All of them have too much money – money that they all screw out of us one way or another – and too much say on things that matter to us more than it does to them.

I’d quite happily hang the lot of them.

Hence, I am exercising a super injunction of my own and am avoiding all news stories and articles about super injunctions. I don’t want to think, critique or in any way talk about them. They are off limits. Verboten. And if you feel the same way I will understand why you have bailed out of this post before this point.

Because even just talking about them is a waste of time, energy and money.

Super injunctions are the thief of time; the media wait for a court order from no man...

Jessica Alba, Leona Lewis And Me

It seems that some people just can’t take no for an answer.

It seems that some people who have everything – fame, riches, pneumatic boobs and easy access to a plastic surgeon – just can’t accept that a little person like me can say no to them and mean it.

But I’m really not interested. I’ve been blanking their emails for months and months but still they keep coming.

But now they’re getting devious. Now they’re offering me weird deals on meds and pharmaceuticals. Things to improve my performance in bed.

I ask you – is there anything less attractive than someone trying to get you into bed by selling you 5000 blister packs of Viagra? I mean, come on? If I need that many why you trying to get me into bed in the first place?

But it seems people like Jessica Alba and Leona Lewis think that normal rules don’t apply to them. They think that volume will blind me to context and I’ll go along with it.

Not so. I’m not interested.

I’ve tried emailing them back. Tried saying I don’t want to hear from them ever again. But all that happens is that I get even more emails – all from different email addresses but all plainly from Jessica and Leona and other famous starlets ‘cos it clearly says so in the subject line. How many email addresses to these girls have? Do they spend all their time creating them? How do they find time to do all their singing and acting and shit like that when they’re emailing me every day trying to sell me condoms and sex toys and drugs with names I’ve never even heard off? If it was Charlie Sheen I could understand it – but Paris Hilton? Britney Spears?

It’s like they’re all spamming me.

Spamming me for sex.

And that just ain’t right. Its skanky and nasty and not in a good way either.

I confess I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve tried writing firm but polite letters to the agents of these famous people but all I get back is abuse and loads of legal bullshit from Greenberg Glusker. The gist of it is, Jessica Alba and Leona Lewis are all denying having anything to do with it.

They’re denying all knowledge.

Well, that’s plainly just a lame cop out.

They just don’t want the world to know that I’m rejecting their advances.

Well, screw you, Jessica [or rather, not]. I’m telling the world right here right now.

I do not want to have sex with you! Stop hassling me with your weird sex-drug emails! Get a life, girlfriend!

You ain’t all that. Talk to the hand.

P.S. But we could still do a deal on the Viagra if you were prepared to ship it in smaller amounts. Purely for experimental use, you understand? Ciao.

Anti Social Networking

I’ll be honest. Despite being a denizen of the internet for the last 15 years I am not up on the whole social networking scene.

I dragged my heels with Facebook (and still grit my teeth when I use it).

I tried MySpace and loathed it so dumped it. I now have NoSpace and am much happier.

Skype I’ve heard about but can’t bring myself to install.

Messenger I have permanently disabled because I hated the way it would launch itself on me as soon as I turned on my PC (like being hounded by a happy-clappy stalker).

Twitter I use infrequently and cynically, i.e. only when I have a blog post to sell.

I admit I tried ICQ (remember that?) in the early days but found it bothersome and frustrating – I’d be at my computer trying to do stuff and people would bug me for inane conversations overloaded with smilies and emoticons.

Emoticons. Urgh. I hate both the word and the concept. Let’s break it down: emotions / cons. You get my drift? :-P

But some Social Networking facilities have made it through my taste firewall. LinkedIn is one of them. It seemed a good idea at the time and helped me to reconnect with an old friend but since then I hardly use it. I’m Connected with a handful of people – some old school friends, some blogging pals and, er, that’s it.

Nobody – and I mean nobody – has used the site to contact me in the manner recommended by the site’s administrators, i.e. nobody has offered me work / money / commissions / contracts. It has done absolutely zilch for my career prospects.

But nevertheless I’m on there. Pimping myself. Or rather, pimping my online persona. Links to my web site and this blog. The kind of unthinking self promotion that we all do from time to time.

Suddenly, within the space of 2 weeks, I have had Connection requests from 2 people who work in the same Local Government corporation as me. People who I see once in a blue moon and only ever in a professional capacity. One of them is very, very high up in the corporation hierarchy. Very high up.

I confess it has put me in a spin.

You see, I don’t want these people getting too close to my online persona. I don’t want them reading my blog and the comments upon it and realizing what a cynical, back-stabbing little turncoat I am. I want them to continue thinking I’m a good boy who keeps his head down and deserves the money that they keep paying me every month.

This Connection thing is too close for comfort.

And utterly pointless.

I mean, what’s the good of them Connecting to me on LinkedIn? Are they going to offer me a job?

Hello? I’m already here.

So the barricades have gone up. And by barricades I mean I have ignored the email from LinkedIn – including the reminder email that tells me these people are still waiting for me to confirm a Connection with them.

I don’t want a Connection with them. The real life connection is bad enough. I don’t want them following the breadcrumb trail back to this ‘ere blog and the harsh excoriating heart of my lifelong malcontent.

I am simply too anti-social for Social Networking.

Too curmudgeonly. Too grumpy. And that’s the plain honest truth.

I mean, they’ll be wanting me to Poke them next. And that folks is just an interaction too far.

I think I may just have to be permanently AFK.

That’s all, folks. Goodbye.

P.S. Do feel free to RT this post.

It’s Time To Kill Christmas

No, really it is.

She’s had her day. It’s time to move on. Christmas must die. And that goes for all this Happy New Year bollocks too.

You know how I know?

I came into work this morning (well, that’s enough in itself), took one look at the tin of Quality Street that some festively drunk work colleague had donated to the office and I didn’t fancy one at all. The thought of letting another chocolate morsel slip past my ruby red lips made me want to regurgitate my breakfast all over my keyboard.

And don’t get me started on the mince pies. They’re dotted around the office like land mines. Little scalloped crusts of Christmas codswallop. Poisonous pastries baked in the devil’s own arse.

But the real indicator that Christmas needs to be jerked off the nearest scaffold is the reaction engendered in me whenever anyone wishes me Happy New Year or (worse) asks me how my Christmas holiday had gone.

“Aaargh! Don’t ask me about my Christmas holiday! It was precious! Just between me and my family and I don’t want it sullied by having the experience aired in the scabby work environment where it will get cheapened by the buzz of the fax machine or a work colleague sobbing down the phone line to HR. Mind your own business, my Christmas break was mine, do you hear me? Mine! Not yours! Stop trying to finger it with your grubby little paws of perfunctory politeness and yes you may borrow my stapler.”

I have managed to gouge 2 inch deep claw marks in my ergonomically sound desk since my re-emersion into the work environment yesterday.

It does not bode well.

The sooner we can get on with mindlessly pressing our faces hard into the grey grindstone of normality and forget all this talk of goodwill and hope and the painful memories of freedom the better.

Because there is no point fooling ourselves. Christmas is just a holiday romance. It was never going to be forever. Sure she might wiggle her baubled boobies at you in December. Tell you that her Christmas milk shake is better than everybody else’s. She might gyrate her tinselled tush in your direction at the office party and invite you to pull your festive sleigh up to her bumper (baby) but she’s just a big prick tease.

Apart from a few present on the 25th she’s never going to deliver. She’s got no sense of longevity. She’s got commitment issues, Goddamnit. It ain’t you; it’s her. She needs her freedom. She needs to feel the wind beneath her wings or a hundred and one other clichéd excuses.

And I’ve heard them all before. Every sodding year.

Well, enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore, Christine Mas or whatever your real name is. If I can’t have you, then no-one can have you.

This is the end of the line. I’m sorry. I really am.

But it’s time for you to go down and stay down, bitch.

Click click.

It’s time to say goodbye.

I’m sorry. There is no other way.

Ka-blam!

Ahem.

Well, I don’t know about you lot but I feel better already.

Screw You, Google!

Google Earth.

A lot has been written about it.

References made to 1984, Big Brother, The All Seeing Eye, satellite spy networks, burglaries and virtual house-rapes.

Suddenly, with the help of modern photographic technologies, computer aided flight and an online search engine with a god complex, any Tom, Dick or Harriet can take a leisurely stroll across our front lawns, peer up our back passages or peer over our garden fences to see who we’re burying beneath our patios without fear of apprehension, condemnation or even question.

Google Earth has laid bare our castle ramparts and exposed our jakes to the entire universe.

But did they ask our permission to do this? Did they check that it was OK?

No. The hell they did. Don’t make me laugh!

I believe even now you have to jump through several thousand hoops just to win the opportunity to opt out.

Well, enough is enough. It’s time to make a stand. Our privacy has been invaded for the last time. The campaign to end the rule of Google Earth starts here.

See, I’m fed up of living with the feeling that someone is continually watching me over my shoulder, analyzing my every move digitally. Every time an aircraft passes overhead I feel a cold shudder of paranoia rattle through my bones. Is it photographing me? Pixellating the new and slightly illegal loft conversion that I didn’t run past the planning department of my local town council? Is it perving at my wife sunbathing in the back garden? Is some cyber nerd in the Sudan going to be drooling over my herbaceous borders and planning to steal my succulents? Cos thanks to Google Earth anyone can pinpoint my every garden possession and identify the make of my wife’s car. My garden gnomes no longer feel safe.

At first the paranoia made me hunch my shoulders. Made me want to hide my face. It was then – on the very cusp of turning into a hoodie, faced with a fate worse than death – that something snapped and I made my stand. With the buzz of a light aircraft ricocheting through the stratosphere over my head I could suddenly take no more. I turned to face it. I peered upwards and gave that snarling aircraft the bird long and hard. Finger straight, right up its imaginary jacksy.

“Screw you, Google Earth!” I cried, “Take a photo of this!”

And now I do it every time I hear or see a plane. Even hot air balloons and microlights get it. See, I want Google Earth to photograph me now. I want some criminal mastermind in the Dordognes, searching online for an easy hit on mainland Britain, to search my street, take a virtual walk up my garden path and find me there giving him the finger.

But more than that. I want there to be someone on every street, in every town and city, in every county in this great country – hell, even the world – someone brave enough to face the eye in the sky when it flies over and give it the almighty finger of freedom. To yell “Swivel on this!” at the top of their voices! You like technology, Google? Well, it doesn’t get much more digital than this!

So join me, brothers and sisters. Let the revolution begin. Let us take back what belongs to us. When you hear a plane fly overhead you know what to do. Push away your pens; cast aside your keyboards; welly your Wii’s out of the window. Hit the street with me and offer up your finest bird up to those that would deny us our privacy.

You want to have a finger in all of our pies, Google? Well here’s a finger for you!

Raaaargh!

+++ We interrupt this blog for a special service announcement. The author has been rushed into a psychiatric hospital for immediate assessment. It seems that after reaching his 600th post he is beginning to suffer delusions of grandeur. We hope to restore normal service very soon. +++

Compare & Contrast

Addendum: I've since had it confirmed by my mother that the (older) gentleman in the picture below is my maternal great-grandfather not paternal and has therefore been identified as Henry Hyde and not, as previously stated, Arthur Benjamin Olorenshaw.

I rarely publish photographs of myself on this blog. Not because I think I’m particularly un-photogenic (although I do) but simply because (and I realise this is a paradox) I like to retain an element of privacy even as I lay my soul bare with a series of sumptuously written exposés detailing my sexual and criminal exploits as an MI5 operative in Siberia (including my life and times as a circus based gigolo). Apologies if you have missed those posts but you really should have been paying better attention.

However, the call went out for a photograph of me – donning a flat cap – with which you could all compare and contrast the one of my great-granddad that featured in my previous post. I was simply overwhelmed and inundated with two of you demanding I supply such a unique photograph.

And thus, even though I have a hundred and one other things to write about – including my blog being stalked by someone who fancies themselves as an old school East End villain (I kid you not – just wait for Thursday’s post) – I have decided to acquiesce to this request.

So here for your delectation is once again my great-granddad, Henry Hyde, and for the first time ever, yours truly, full faced, cloth capped and making lurve to the camera:

I leave it up to you to figure out which one is which.

The Fame Game

On Monday afternoon Karen and I decided to make the most of the last day of our holiday staycation by following in the footsteps of many and spending a pleasant few hours in the local park with the kids.

And by “the kids” I, of course, mean our kids specifically rather than “the kids” generally. I’m afraid the days when I’d sit on a park bench necking back a bottle of Diamond White with the local yobbery are far behind me. There are, after all, only so many cars that you can nick, joyride and leave burning by the roadside while you hold up the nearby petrol station before it all becomes a tad boring.

Ennui totally killed crime for me. My low boredom threshold made a straight man of me in the end.

So we’re feeding the ducks and some of it is reaching the birds and 33% of it is going into Tom’s mouth as he can’t bear to part with his share and we pass what looks like Russell Howard on a park bench.

For those of you who don’t know Russell Howard is an up-and-coming comedian who appears regularly on the BBC’s Mock The Week programme and is extremely funny – and I apologize to my overseas readers as Russell Howard and Mock The Week will undoubtedly mean absolutely nothing to you but the experience I’m about to recount possibly will so bear with me.

Anyway, Mr H is neither swigging Diamond White nor getting down with the kids but is doing his best to look unobtrusive and unremarkable while he talks to someone rather earnestly on his mobile phone. He is, in effect, blending in.

And indeed he would have got away with it but for an uncanny act of synchronicity... I’d bought Karen Mr H’s comedy DVD for Christmas last year but as we’re working our way through an immense DVD backlog we’d only got round to watching it the day before our visit to the park. The “Extras” package on the DVD features footage of Russell in civilian mode where he looks oddly unrecognizable from the bouncy persona he presents on TV and stage... but having seen it we were able to see through his “blending in” tactics and pick him out immediately.

It was him. On a park bench in Leamington. Him off the telly. A real life famous person. Him. Him there.

It’s funny but I always thought I’d be unfazed by a close encounter with a famous person. That I’d play it cool. Nonchalant. They are, after all, only people. Same as you and me. No big thing. Autograph hunting is for saddoes. Etc.

And yet I cannot deny there was a small part of me wanting to run up to Russell, shake his hand, say hello and act like his best mate in a manner that would have resulted in the rest of my life being spent trying to overcome the subsequent sense of shame and wince-worthy degradation.

The impulse was so strong.

But I was saved by his mobile phone. Fame be damned. There was etiquette to think of! One cannot just interrupt a phone conversation for the sake of self gratification! It’s bad form! It would be un-English Goddamnit!

So we fed the ducks and left Russell Howard in peace and he – no doubt feeling the sniper glare of our distant attention beginning to bear down on his shoulders – soon got up and walked away from us, looking smaller than he does on the telly and disappointingly un-star-like and disappeared into the milling Bank Holiday crowds of Leamington Spa.

When we got home we did a quick Google search... you know, just to see if he was playing any gigs locally which would explain his presence in the park and found this (check out the last question at the bottom of the page).

Yep. Russell it seems lives locally. He’s moved in. He’s become a Leamingtonian.

He and me are practically brothers!

Welcome to Leamington Spa, Russell! Hope you like it here. But next time you’re walking around town, keep your mobile phone handy, eh?

For both our sakes.

Call Social Services!

It has been intimated this week that I am a bad parent. That my adherence to the rule that my eldest son tidies his room once a week is evidence that I do not love him and that I would rather put him through extreme trauma than nurture him as a proper father should.

Maybe I am over simplifying things (Lord knows there is enough of that around)... but I received some comments on my previous post that genuinely upset and offended me.

Now, it is not my intention to start a blogging war but I am upset enough to cast this debate open to my "wider audience". Because, who knows? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am being over sensitive? Maybe I am reading things into the comments that are just not there? But I would genuinely be interested to hear other people's take on things.

If the thought of tidying his room makes my son have tantrums should we persist in such a rule? Does his possible aspergers diagnosis mean that different rules should be applied? Should we avoid all scenarios that he dislikes and completely avoid any possible upset and cause for tantrum?

I'm going to keep this post short as your response to it will very much depend on you reading the last 11 comments or so on the previous post. Now some of you may know the other blogger involved. Some of you may not. Either way I would ask that comments are kept polite and respectful and I apologize if there are any divided loyalties. But, in this case, I feel the issue is of more importance that the individual bloggers.

Thank you.

Playing Hide And Seek With The Neighbours

Our neighbours are many things but they are not nudists or naturists or given over to holding Druidic ceremonies in their back garden.

Which is fortunate as the fence that divides their good green earth from ours is (a) dilapidated and (b) only about 3ft tall even when it is upright.

We can see absolutely everything.

Every barbecue. Every attempt at sunbathing. Every sweaty session with the lawnmower.

And they of course can see us doing the same. With the exception of the barbecue as that’s an activity that Karen and I haven’t yet embraced (we’re quite capable of burning our sausages in the oven, thank you very much).

Now, our garden lives are quite innocent. Neither of us are growing marijuana or opium. Neither of us are burying hated relatives under the patio of even stuffing their decomposing body parts into green wheelie bins for the local council to take away.

We ain’t got nuffink to hide, guv’nor.

But a little privacy would be nice. A little privacy would be welcome.

We get along fine but I’ve noticed that whenever they are in their garden, sat around their Ikea table, we have only got to appear around ours for them to immediately disappear inside. Or if we’re in our garden playing with the kids and they suddenly appear we feel strangely inhibited. That entire side of the garden is somehow off limits for us to approach or even look at. Especially when Mr and Mrs Neighbour are stalking around in their very highly cut European shorts (they’re Polish) ‘cos let’s face it, a camel toe on a man is not a great look.

Instead we nod hello politely and one of us relinquishes their claim on the outside world and disappears back inside, no doubt grumbling a little.

It’s a ridiculous situation.

And one Karen and I intend to remedy as soon as possible once the money from my aunt’s will is divvied out.

The plan is to erect a good 6ft fence along that side of the garden. Previous quotes gave us a ball park figure of £1000 – which is why we are currently unable to ring-fence our little compound to our mutual satisfaction.

This will have the benefit of not only allowing nude sunbathing and gratuitous camel toeing without risk of causing offense or traumatizing the children but also prevent a certain rogue rottweiler* from invading both our gardens like a canine blitzkrieg.

We’ll effectively be erecting a Cuprinol enhanced Maginot line only without the watchtowers or the gun emplacements (though I’m hoping that these can be added at a later date).

Happiness, it seems, is a warm high fence and good border control.

Which sounds scarily like some kind of BNP manifesto. Gulp. But honestly, folks, it’s not meant to be. I just don’t want any more glimpses of my Polish neighbour’s man bush...

I just want to be able to enjoy my garden without being reminded of 1970’s editions of Health & Efficiency magazine.

Is that too much to ask?




*Re: the dog. We’re no further forward. The dog warden makes regular visits and the owners pretend to be absent. However, although we’ve heard the dog barking on several occasions we haven’t see it marauding or pillaging for a number of weeks now. But until the fence is commissioned neither us nor the Poles can fully relax our guards.

Theftbook

My relationship with Facebook has always been fraught to say the least.

I find the site annoyingly clunky, slow loading and just too bloated with useless “apps” and fly-by-night user groups who constantly paw at me wanting my cyber attention when in truth I’m rarely in the mood to give it.

The facility I use most on Facebook is the “ignore” button and I do apologize if you have been on the wrong end of it. It’s nothing personal.

Why be on Facebook in the first place then?

Well. I was curious. It was recommended to me by a friend (a real one). And I thought “why not?”

And once you’re on there it’s damned hard to get yourself off.

Facebook, you see, doesn’t like to let go.

Facebook has ownership issues.

Facebook is something of a smug, grasping, bully that doesn’t like to let anyone of anything out of its mucky clutches.

Want evidence?

Facebook has now decided to grant itself rights to users’ photos, wall posts and just about every conceivable bit of information that people are naïve enough to post on its site. Forever.

Even if you manage to delete your account all your photos and information will be archived somewhere and available for use by the Facebook bigwigs for what has been quoted in the Metro as “public performances”

Public performances?

WTF?

Has Facebook not heard of the data protection act or are they somehow exempt?

Here’s another quote for the Metro (only the best sources for me):

“Yesterday, the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg attempted to defuse the row, insisting in his blog, ‘In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.’”

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

In a way I wouldn’t want.

So that’ll be not at all then.

So what’s the point of Facebook hanging onto such information and private (can you read that, Zuckerberg: P – R – I – V – A – T – E ) photos in the first place?

Or is Facebook hoping that at some point in the future I will be quite content to let my personal information be used in some viral advertising campaign or pasted over a Beatles soundtrack to sell an updated version of their shitty little web site to invading Martians? Or even enable Wal-Mart to target me with useless white goods that they think I desperately need and must absolutely buy?

Dream on, Facebook.

Keeping my information without my express permission is theft. Holding my photos – my intellectual property – for a future use that I cannot control or opt out from, no mater how innocuous, is an infringement of my basic human rights.

Facebook, it’s time you were de-faced.

Permanently.