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The Lappy has had it
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Feb. 12th, 2005 @ 02:22 am
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As Morris once said to Peter Cook: "It's becoming very clear that you're nearing the end of your life".
My Laptop is fucked. I've dreaded this day ever since the CD drive broke down in the first year. Recently the sound facilities stopped working - I cannot get any sound out of the machine inless I lean on it with one arm. It desperatly needs a memory upgrade, runs at a sluggish pace, and now chooses to switch itself off at random. I can't have a computer that does that. Not now.
So, what I want is this: a £100 PC. I can't afford anything more than that. Don't care if it just has 128MB as I could just do what I did in Bristol and run a very, very slimmed down version of Linux, Ubuntu or Slackware, with XFCE and Openoffice.org. Abandoning XP might be a good idea, anyway. As long as I can write my essays, listen to music and update my iPod, I really don't care. Once I get a job I'll save up and buy myself a real computer.
Any ideas? Will I be able to get some computer of worth for that price? |
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Will you marry me?
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Feb. 11th, 2005 @ 07:52 pm
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I'm not backing I'm Backing Blair
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Feb. 11th, 2005 @ 01:07 am
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Tim Ireland's blog has launched a campaign to subvert Labour's election campaign with Orwellian style satire and tactical voting. The aim of the campaign is to put the wind up Labour MPs, and get them to stop backing a certain T.B.
Its a shame then that I feel I will not be able to back it. The problem is that the campaign is asking you to vote for the candidate most likely to get elected who is not a Labour type, regardless of record on voting or helping out the local biddies. The website explicitly states that it does not give a shit about that - as its purpose is to scare Labour MPs.
But for most mortals outside of the West Country, the only other candidate likely to win is a Tory one. A poster to theuktoday.co.uk puts it quite nicely...Did you put in your postcode?
I did, it told me that instead of the anti-war anti-foundation hospitals
labour co-operative local MP I have, I should back a racist freemason. Worse, if this campaign actually worked and the Tories won MPs or votes off the back of it, it could encourage Labour to drift even further to the right, and could be used as an opportunity for the Blairites to freeze out the more free thinking elements of the party. The fact that the new proposals on immigration have coincided with an era of high far-right party support is not a coincidence. An increased vote for the Tories would only be interpreted as an increased vote for the Tories. We're already seeing Labour ape the tories on any special occasion or policy announcement. It could get worse.
To sum up, I agree with this guy. |
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Isoc sue Birmingham University for religious discrimination
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Feb. 10th, 2005 @ 10:25 am
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I never thought it would go this far... From FOSIS:University of Birmingham faces legal action from students over allegations of religious discrimination
Students at the University of Birmingham have instructed solicitors to take legal proceedings against the University after their elections results were annulled BASED ON ALLEGATIONS of election fraud earlier last year.
Elections for the NUS Conference took place on the 25th October 2004 . All of the elected delegates were to be of Muslim origin. However after much pressure, the Students' Union supported by the University, annulled the elections, and on Thursday 2nd December 2004 produced a report that made various allegations and accusations regarding these elections.
The Students' Union rules do not allow a right to appeal in this case. Based on the restraints to a right to appeal, which has been denied to the 14 students, who repeatedly claim they have not broken any rules, as a result they have now instructed solicitors to lodge legal proceedings, if they are not reinstated within 14 days. I can't help thinking none of this mess or the "controversy" that took off last year could have been avoided if the Guild used a secret ballot for elections. Any other organisation would be horrified by the way that the Guild allows people to vote here - you could take your form, walk off, see what other people were voting for, talk to other people about the candidiates as you're filling it in. Its' bloody stupid. (Thankfully, the elections committee recommended that in future secret ballots will be standard).
As to whether there was religious discrimination - the fact that hustings could not be moved to suit the prayer times/festivities of the Muslim candidates is a serious problem. Arafat Ben Hussein (of Elec Eng) claimed at Guild Council on the 9th of December (minutes here) that:The only candidates meeting were arranged in the month of Ramadan where Muslim students are fasting and have to attend to evening prayers. Hustings were again organised at a time where Muslim students were forced to decide whether to attend hustings or Friday prayers. Some candidates were not even given their constitution pack. Here the Guild could easily be accused of insitutitional racism. Even if racist ideas were not behind the decision hold hustings at a time that clashed with prayer, the fact that no step was made to accomodate the candidates leaves the Guild wide open to criticism. The elections comittee report also claimed that it was extraordinary that these candidates did not attend hustings but were still overwhelmingly elected. How many people do you know go to hustings? I've never been in my life yet I've voted (almost) every Guild election since I came here.
The report also highlighted allegations of fraud - and a claim that the Islamic society (or a group related to the society) held a slate. The report highlighted these reasons for the annulment of the election:• Illegal and inappropriate behaviour at ballot boxes whereby some students were filling in ballot papers for others.
• Rumours and admissions from Muslim students of receiving an email outlining who they should vote for. (A Slate)
• Complaint of a candidate ‘door knocking’ in Selly Oak and listing other Jewish candidates who households should vote for. (A Slate)
• None of the elected delegates attended the candidates meeting, hustings, or used any of their budget, yet still were elected by a huge majority. Do rumours and a couple of people claiming they recieved emails (note: there was no evidence or text of the emails produced in the report) consistute a slate? Does door-knocking by a Jewish student who recommends other candidates (who happen to be Jewish) consitute a slate? Whilst the allegations of inappropriate behaviour may hold, it seems that the Guild did not help by allowing the kind of conditions for this to happen.
With the situation of hustings, and the flimsyness of the accusations made, the basis of the annulment of the election seems to look very shaky. |
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Labour's New Campaign Slogan
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Feb. 5th, 2005 @ 04:26 pm
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| » Saddam Hussein's last interview with Al-Jazeera - Ask me about women! Ask me about women! |
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From Hugh Miles' book on Al-Jazeera, via Abu Aardvark:...when the interview came around, Saddam was uncooperative. While Al-Qasim asked questions, the dictator kept behaving erratically, joking around, despite the fact that war was by now staring him in the face. 'Why don't you ask me any questions about women?' Saddam kept demanding, unhelpfully, 'What about women?'
"Al-Qasim did his best to ignore him and keep the interview on an even keel. After all, war was only days away. 'Beautiful women!' roared Saddam again. Then turning to Muhammed Jasim al-Ali, who was standing nearby, Saddam interrupted again. 'Do you smoke?' the tyrant asked him. 'Um, I smoke little cigars,' said al-Ali. 'What about you? You smoke?" the tyrant asked Al-Qasim, forcefully. 'Err, no,' replied Al-Qasim, who by now could feel his agenda slipping away from him. 'You should smoke,' advised the tyrant....
"'If you want to smoke, smoke a hubble-bubble, or a big cigar,' the dictator continued. 'Here, have one of mine,' he said, proferring a box of Cohibas which had been sitting on the table in front of him. 'I've still got that cigar,' Faisal al-Qasim told me. 'One day I'll auction it on the Internet for $10,000!'
Feb. 5th, 2005 @ 04:10 pm
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| » More reasons why not to be a journalist - Telegraph axe jobs |
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And I want to do this... for a living... Eeek. From The Guardian:Journalists at the Daily and Sunday Telegraph are facing drastic cuts, with around 90 jobs to be axed - more than one in six currently on the editorial payroll at the two broadsheets.
The swingeing cutbacks, announced to staff in a letter from the Telegraph group chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, will help to fund a £150m investment in new production facilities.
Mr MacLennan also announced plans today to add eight extra colour pages across the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.
"The £150m investment programme will be funded in part by a major re-shaping exercise across the entire organisation," Mr MacLennan said.
Feb. 4th, 2005 @ 05:57 pm
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| » More Dodgy Doherty #3 |
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From the BBC, Via No Rock and Roll Fun:
Doherty arrested after 'assault'
Singer Pete Doherty is in custody at a north London police station after being arrested on suspicion of theft and assault on Wednesday evening.
The former Libertines frontman was held after an alleged incident at a hotel in Clerkenwell, central London.
Film-maker Max Carlish told the BBC he had been attacked by Doherty, but would not be pressing charges against him.
Carlish said he had sold photographs showing Doherty taking heroin to a Sunday newspaper.
Feb. 4th, 2005 @ 01:18 am
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| » Googlebombing |
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Kilroy Veritas - looks like the old tanned fool has been spoofed already.
Feb. 3rd, 2005 @ 04:11 pm
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| » The bizarre world of Pete Doherty, #2 |
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Anyone who wandered into a newsagents today may have happened to see this picture on the front cover of either the Mirror or the Sun.
The picture was accompanied with varied sensationalist headlines in both newspapers, both concentrating on their appeal to Moss to ditch the old (or young) junkie. The photo was taken at a charity gig in aid of the victims of the Asian Tsunami. Despite the context, the Mirror and the Sun both laid into the lad."By 11pm when he hit the stage at North London’s Garage venue for a tsunami benefit gig, Pete was out of control on crack cocaine and heroin.
"An onlooker said: “His eyes were all over the place. All you could see were the whites — a frightening image.”" (The Sun)
"HIS life has now become a slow motion car crash to which we are all happy witnesses.
"And the crowds are flocking in their droves to watch the sad, final days of Pete Doherty.
"The audience that watched the heroin-addicted singer and his new group Babyshambles in a small London venue this week were there, in part, to see him perform. They were also there so they could say they saw Pete before he died with a needle in his arm. To the adoring crowds, this adds to the appeal - the strange glamour of watching great potential disintegrate." (The Mirror) The Mirror article is kinder to Doherty than the Sun attempt - which described his pad as 'seedy London haunts' - and tries to offer him some sympathy, if not empathy, for the bizarre side-show that has erupted around his life.
Why should we care about this? I couldn't give a fig about Doherty - his drug use is well documented, and Moss is grown up enough to know what she is in for. I also find his music completly uninspired and dull. Whats really interesting is that NME.com completly fails to notice the photograph at all. Infact, it paints a very different picture of what happened.BABYSHAMBLES singer PETE DOHERTY raced overseas from PARIS last night (January 31) to headline a special benefit concert in LONDON to help children who suffered in the ASIAN tsunami.
The security on the other hand had to contend with several fans trying to hug and kiss their hero as they charged the stage.
Pete even challenged one of them to a race before they both stagedived into the crowd for The Libertines track ‘What Katie Did’.
Babyshambles also performed throttling renditions of ’Black Boy Lane’ and ’In Love With A Feeling’. The NME omit the photo and reports that he was falling about like a drugged up twat. Infact this seems to be part of the appeal of the show. It seems that the Mirror and the Sun have blown things out of proportion to a degree - but for your eyes to go back into your head like that... it aint healthy.
I don't know what the NME gets out of portraying this guy as a hero. Their behaviour seems to perpetuate the neo-rock star excess culture that they've practically restarted on their own. Razorlight, the Killers, The Datsuns and others would all be gone in a flash. To criticise Doherty would, to some degree, kill it off. The worst thing is that he may read stuff like this and think that, despite his critics, he's alright really. Maybe I wouldn't mind if he had something useful to bring to the world, but his largely aimless garage punk has as much to offer civilisation as Robert Kilroy-Silk. I really can't see what is appealing about the guy - is he attractive? Do people just want to see him kill himself?
I can't help feeling that the NME, by treating him like they do, are going to end up with a tragedy in their pages. And it will be all their own fault.
Feb. 2nd, 2005 @ 03:55 pm
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| » Blasphemy. |
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Feb. 1st, 2005 @ 12:42 pm
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| » I'm sorry - that election |
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After watching the shit storm that was Newsnight tonight (by questioning the election 'success,' doesn't that make you an utter bastard? No. Fuck you paxman); this is all i have to say on the matter. From Sue Blackwell:U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and
heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's
presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to
disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million
registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked
reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
( Read more... ) UPDATE: No, actually I'm going to explain why Newsnight was so dreadful. Firstly, the analysis of the elections didn't seem to go much further beyond "oh look, people voted" and didn't see the various campaigns of intimidation in the Sunni areas as indicative of a problem. We were told that more Sunni's came out to vote than was though, but this wasn't quanitifed with any real figures. Furthermore, nothing was made of the fact that a) we don't have any results yet b) no journalist was able to travel to a single polling station which was deemed unsafe and c) there were no election monitors, barring the UN, in the unsafe zones. This is causes a problem, as it leaves a substantial minority of the country disenfrancised for an important part of any future for Iraq under the current system. As a system of democracy it... kind of sucks.
To make matters worse, Newsnight insisted for its panel William Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard; a generic guy from the Iraqi administration; Jeremy Greenstock, the former UK UN ambassador during the WMD fiasco; and Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat spokesman for foriegn affairs. Ming the Merciless was on fine anti-war form, if a bit dull, as always, but he was faced off by three guys who all came from a perspective which, in one way or another, favoured the US occupation. One devised it, one owes his job to it and the other professionally lied (they call it diplomacy) for it to happen. As a peice of balanced discussion... well, it wasn't.
In addition, not one person offered the argument that having an election does not necessairly guarantee a stable form of authority - or a democracy. French Algeria had elections. British Iraq had elections. Even bloody Soviet Russia had elections. The fact that the vote could very possibly be based upon ethnic lines could hamper the process. The fact that there will be almost no mandate from the Sunni majority will also remain a headache.
But we are stuck within this paradigm where elections = freedom = prosperity. To see an election is a very powerful symbol in the West - they knew that, back home, the neo-cons could point to this and show that they were not only winning the war, but on the home run. Which is why we must be careful to steer clear from simplistic, reductive rhetoric and take the broader view.
They have a lot of work to do. A heck of a lot.
I'm glad that many Iraqis chose to excercise their suffrage in a way that certainly wouldn't have occured under Saddam, but this certainly is not the end of the road, and it certainly is not as clear cut as some in the media would like us to believe.
Jan. 31st, 2005 @ 11:28 pm
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| » The Office USA: No black cock gags? Its a failure. |
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NBC have released clips of the new American version of the Office (warning: you'll need to be running IE as it seems to dislike firefox for some reason..).
Whilst its amusing in parts, they seem to have entirely missed the point with David Brent character - he was meant to be an unlikeable, unsympathetic bastard who was a social invalid; not an affable oaf who shouts a lot. It doesn't look very convincing. Secondly, the gags played on Gareth don't seem to be very funny (look, they hid his stapler in jelly.... errm).
And they're plain not ugly enough, neither. One of the attractions of The Office was ordinaryness of everybody. Here they seem to be pampered somewhat... And the gareth character is just zany, not disgusting and certainly not a pervert.
Infact, they seem to have missed something more fundamental. The Office experience was seeing ordinary, somewhat exaggerated people being utter cunts towards each other. The comedy lay in its familarity. This just looks like any old TV thats even more fabricated considering its a remake of an already broadcast show.
Do you even think they will have anything like the black cock scene in this version? No, they won't have the balls.
Its going to suck, hard.
Jan. 31st, 2005 @ 02:23 am
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| » Brum University asks society for money to hold protest on campus |
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This isn't good.
Here is the text of an email sent to Maz Mohammed, the dude who is currently running SWSS/The Socialist Society (call it what you will, it is practically SWSS these days) concerning a die-in to be held in Birmingham Uni on Feburary 15th.Dear Mahsoom
Further to your request to hold a demonstration on campus the Day of Civil Disobedience as called by the Stop the War Coalition with an external speaker.
Concerns have been raised about this being an open meeting and the possible disruption it could cause during core teaching hours. You mentioned in passing that the timing of the proposed meeting has been changed to 1.00 pm, could you please confirm that this is correct.
The meeting can only be allowed to go ahead if we have adequate security cover in University Square, this is a cost which would have to met by yourselves. I would anticipate we would require at least 5 officers to be on duty and the cost will be around £200.00 + VAT.
As discussed previously we would be very supportive if the event could be moved indoors.
Please let me know how you wish to proceed.
Conference office (name withheld by Snooo) Two implications here. The university have somehow come to the conclusion that Salma Yacoob (Birmingham STWC) is a) some kind of security threat and that b) the society should meet this cost (for a political meeting...). The conference office may be worried by the nature of 'civil disobedience' - but this the SWSS for gauds sake, not the Animal Liberation Front. Maz makes a point of asking the conference office for permission for almost everything he does - I don't think hes ever put a foot wrong.
They also would like the die-in to be held in doors... which kind of omits the point of a die-in.
I can, in a round about way, understand their concerns, but they haven't half over-reacted? Wouldn't this have implications for any other groups planning anything on campus?
Jan. 29th, 2005 @ 01:21 am
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