Of all the realistic and possible ways of governing a country, it is clear that a capitalist democracy is the best, and many would agree.
However democracy in the UK has it’s limitations, and I intend to make my thoughts clear here. You may remember that in early May, we had a general election. People voted in their millions, all picking MP’s from their constituencies to help govern the country. It worked, turns out the Tories got the most votes, but whilst doing so, lacked a majority, and instead took the Lib Dems in with them forming a coalition.
And now they are demanding five years of this. Great, an election with 29,691,780 votes, and not one of these actually voting for the coalition we got. Not to mention it was Nick Clegg who chose to join the Tories in coalition, shaping the future of the country – a decision so massive for the future, and was conducted by a man who’s party shares only 8.8% of the seats in the House of Commons.
Some people think that Proportional Representation (PR) is a good alternative to the current first-past-the-post system. And whilst it may deliver more proportional results for the winning party, PR increasingly opens up more opportunities for smaller political parties (such as UKIP, Green Party, BNP, Independents, etc.) who will gain more MP seats, reducing the number of the main political parties – meaning it will be even less likely for the main two parties, Labour and the Conservatives to get their crucial majorities.
The other reason for my dislike of PR is that voting in a general election will require you to indicate in a rank order who would like to see as your next governing party. This may be ok for some, but my idea of voting is to vote for the ONE person I would like to see in power, simple as that. In constituencies where political parties, such as the BNP, which you may highly disagree with – you will be forced to vote for them somehow in that rank order.
Not even to mention that given the votes in the 2010 election, the BNP gained twice as many votes (563,743) in the popular vote than the Green Party (285,616) did, so who would you expect gets the elected MPs? The Greens got 1, but the BNP got none. If these results were under proportional representation, the BNP could have ultimately got 2 or even 3 MP’s into the Commons for this government. Think of it like that.
Aside from PR, I think the coalition is doing well. It is about time that we had a strong government trying to structure a decent economic recovery.
However Monday’s news was the “Big Society” plans being announced by David Cameron. I admit that I am more a Conservative supporter than any other party, but this Big Society bullshit is really rubbing things in. I, as a citizen on this country, do not need to be told how to live my life – let alone being part of a voluntary group that takes control of certain public services – which I personally feel is an insult to those hardworking people that do this already as their paid job.
And then it raises the question about who is right for what job in the cabinet, and it doesn’t take long to see that what we see in some positions is clueless people making huge decisions about sectors they know nothing about. Take for example, Andrew Lansley, the current Health Secretary – who has never been a doctor, nor has ever studied medicine. The closest he gets is his father, formerly a pathologist. Therefore how are we meant to believe for a second that he knows what’s best for doctors and nurses in the NHS? Surely a better person to ask would be Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary… He was a GP before becoming an MP, and he read Medicine at university, but no, Fox now has a job controlling the armed forces – something he knows nothing today.
The same goes for Micheal Gove, the Education Secretary. Never a teacher, nor head teacher, examiner, schools governor, etc. The closest he gets is an arts collection and a wife whose a journalist – surely he’d be better suited as an advisor to the Culture and Media Secretary?
I could go on, and turns out Labour was even worse. Over the past 13 years they had charge, cabinet ministers dotted between jobs all over the place in different sectors, as if they were teenagers looking for work experience in different industries.
So this is it. Democracy, where the cabinet contains people that can only presume what’s best for the sectors the instruct. Great.
Today I stumbled across this blog post, by a guy named Gary Hayes, and he has put together this fantastic flash embed widget that shows how more dependent social media is becoming around the world. Check it out:
We all know the real musts that you must never do while drunk (eg. drink and drive), but in this post I would like to share some things (from my personal, and others experiences) that you should not do while drunk, except the obvious. This is absolutely not a post to persuade people away from drinking – that’s just mad and a huge kill joy – just advice for what NOT to do when you get hammered. Enjoy.
Take a mental note of these things as what NEVER to do once you’ve been drinking!
1. Send text messages from your phone.
This is my number one rule – after you get your lift back home, turn your phone OFF, and give it to someone you trust who is not drunk… otherwise, the consequences can be disastrous. I speak from personal experience when one time I texted my dad when I was extremely drunk asking if he had any beer I could drink (incidentally, he was four thousand miles away at the time… on holiday…), and another time when I texted someone that I had previously fancied… with embarrassing consequences. But the point is this; when you are drunk… you can text ANYTHING. There was some bloke in America, and I kid you not – triggered an FBI investigation when he rather drunkenly texted his islamic friend and talking about 9/11.
Taking a break from my normal technology or design related posts, I thought I would share my experience of Swine Flu.
Turns out that I caught the virus on the week of the 16th August, and I suffered from it on the Thursday to Sunday. I have to say – it was nasty. I had a killer headache, a massive fever, frequent chills, muscle pains and a rather upset stomach (mind you, I wasn’t sick, which I was happy about…).
Initially, I dismissed the idea that it was actually Swine Flu since I knew absolutely no one else with the virus, and even bigger give away was that I had suffered no such ‘cold like’ symptoms; such as coughing, sneezing, runny noses, runny eyes, etc.
However, a few days after falling ill, and getting better, it turns out I had passed the illness onto my mother – who, suffered a lot worse (probably because she’s a women and can’t deal with pain as well!). It was then we gave it the thought that we could both have had Swine Flu.
After ringing up the rather unhelpful Swine Flu Pandemic Service (England only), it turns out that there are strains of Swine Flu that are less serious – without the cold symptoms. We didn’t get sent Tamiflu, since we had both got better rather quickly.
To be honest, it wasn’t that bad – for me at least.
The group is called ‘RED FRIDAY‘ and suggests the idea that the British public should wear a red item on them every friday in support of the british troops out there serving for us so we can go to school, go about our jobs and live in a safe country.
Here is a list of 6 of my favourite movies (in no particular order) in which the narrative follows the life of a certain character. All are well worth a watch – and made me feel so much better about my role in life.
Slumdog Millionaire
Ok, so if the number of awards and Oscar’s this one got doesn’t prove to you how much the hype is worth about this movie – well, just believe me when I say it really is. It’s a very powerful story following Jamal, a ’slumdog’ from Mumbai and his life as a child. The movie begins where he is being tortured into admitting whether he cheated in a game of the indian version of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’. As the episode of the programme is played back to us, each question asked has a story relative to Jamal’s life.
The Departed
This movie has probably the most confusing storyline I have ever come across in my lifetime of watching movies. Full of corruption, love, crime, family – the whole thing portrays the life of a police officer as he goes from college into adulthood, and, eventually, death (whoops, just given away a spoiler there – but it’s very predicable anyway!). All the actors have brilliant roles and the whole thing just works well.
Brokeback Mountain
Probably the most controversial movie in recent times, Brokeback Mountain was a fantastic movie. The movie follows the lives of two friends in a gay relationship over a 20 year relationship. Granted, it’s not everyones cup of tea – but the movie comes to an incredibly moving and sad close – definitely worth a watch, whoever you are.
The Shawshank Redemption
Currently the #1 highest rated movie on IMDb, it’s easy to see why. The movie is the life of Andy Dufresne, an innocent man sent to Shawshank prison, for a crime we are led to believe he never committed. He serves 20 years, and on the day he arrives, his soon-to-be best friend, Red (played by Morgan Freeman) completes his first 20 years of prison life. I can’t give to much more away, but the movie uncovers the corruption and life of Shawshank right up until the day he leaves. An amazing film.
Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain)
A french film now, which you’ll have to watch with subtitles, is all about the ‘fabulous life of Amélie Poulain’ as translated from the french title. Starting at the opening credits with her birth, her alone childhood, moving onto her early life, and then onto the young woman she is now. The film is almost in a sense a diary or documentary (for example, the convention of using a narration) of her life in a matter of days where she uncovers the lives of others that relate around her. While sad and moving in places, it’s funny and feel-good in others.
To Kill A Mockingbird
I would strongly recommend you read the book first, then the movie. What people say about how the story of Scout and Jem being the children of Atticus, the only white lawyer ever to try defending a black man in a fair trail in 40’s deep-south America – is a fantastic setting for the film. The old black and white movie may not be up to specs on effects or quality – the life from the viewpoint of Scout is certainly very interesting.
Well, for those that haven’t been around the past couple of days, or just haven’t generally heard the news stories about Ross/Brand, this is a summary of what happened, and what I think should happen about it.
On the 18th October, Russell Brand with guest presenter Jonathan Ross presented a radio show on BBC Radio 2, which had be pre-recorded two days earlier. A really good timeline of events can be found here. Basically, the two presenters prank called actor Andrew Sachs and left a bunch of obscene messages on his answerphone about his granddaughter, who Brand claimed to have slept with. Since then there has been over 30,000 complaints sent to the BBC and Ofcom about the broadcast, Brand has resigned, Ross has been suspended for 12 weeks, and BBC Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas has quit.
In my opinion, this should never have happened in the first place. The BBC have a job to restrict pre-recorded content, and had 2 days to do so, but they didn’t… there should be stronger restrictions in place I believe. Ok – so they may have thought the show was funny, and a great laugh, but they team at the radio station should remember that their content should cater for all because of being license funded, and this clearly offended some… had this been broadcast on a commercial station such as Fox FM, there problem would be nowhere near as bad.
Although, having said all that, if I were to have listened to the show, I think I would have just laughed and enjoyed the show – thats just who I am. The Radio 2 team made a mistake – it’s over, learn for another time. Ross/Brand have clearly paid a fair price (suspension and resignation) and now things should just move on.
I was also interested to hear that only two complaints were received on the day of broadcast, and only a few more the following day. Infact, 9 days after the broadcast, there was only 1500 or so complaints. Only when the story hit mainstream news media, both print, e-media, and broadcasting, did the number really start to dramatically go up – which if I’m honest is a bit pathetic knowing that people are either reminded to complain, or complaining when the only hear about the news story. Quite honestly, those sort of people can just listen to something else if what they listened to they don’t like.
With 3 days to go until Apple’s Notebook Media event on Tuesday in San Francisco – we are all so hyped up about getting these new laptops, but has nobody thought about their current MacBook’s?
By Wednesday, everybody who asks “Where can I get your laptop from”, you have to reply, “At an Apple Store, friend, though bear in mind that there is a NEW version out, mine is old.”
What a horrible thing to say. Especially when I’ve only had my MacBook Pro since July.
RIP. My MacBook Pro. Loved while you where around.
Ok this thing is going around where I make 10 incredible facts about me that don’t normally relate to other people – so hey, I thought I’d have a go…
1) I have no middle name… just Alastair, then Mogford. Nothing in the middle. Nothing…
2) Despite being a die-hard Apple fan (I have a Mac) – I don’t think I’ll ever buy an iPhone…
3) I have a fear of hot things and fire… sparked ever since Jack burnt me in chemistry with a pair of test tube holders.
4) I have a guitar which I wanted for ages, but I have no idea how to play it properly!
5) When I was a baby (apparently) I ate so many carrots that my skin even went orange… but today I hate the damn things!
6) I live in a home occupied only by girls! Many people would think wow, but don’t get excited… it’s just my sister and my mum…
7) I’m the sort of person that if he can’t do something, he will persist over and over until he does do it, or he runs out of time or gives up because he can’t be bothered.
I hate the guts off so many people… too many to care to mention.. lol.
9) I have a surfboard, but have not yet used it ever because of a series of operations I’ve had on my knee replacing a ligament that some dickwad broke in the first place on the ski trip… [I hope he reads this...]
10) I hate tomato ketchup… makes me want to hurl! YUCK.
Hi there!
My name is Moggy, and I moan. My interests are web design, graphic design, technology, Apple products, politics, media and geography. Plus a few other random things.
I hope you enjoy all my posts. If you do, why not pass the word onto a friend, leave a comment, subscribe to the RSS, or even get in touch with me?
Lots of love all you gorgeous people!
Mogs
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I hate the guts off so many people… too many to care to mention.. lol.
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