Viewpoint: Tony Blair and the England Riots

I don't agree with Tony Blair on a lot of things, but he made some good points in a column he wrote for the Observer.



Britain is not in a “moral decline”. That phrase has been a favourite of the right wing, since the days of Mary Whitehouse back in the 60s.



The police need the backing of the public at large and politicians. They have a tough enough job to do, without well meaning people undermining them.



But Tony Blair misses one key point, by talking about a social mainstream.



There's an old joke that goes “Now repeat after me, we are all individuals.” But the truth is that we are all individuals. And societies evolve over time.



The Goon Show was revolutionary when it first aired in the 1950s, now it would be considered tame.



We must make sure that we encourage respect in others, by respecting the differences in us all.

Links for Viewpoint: Weekly Edition - Epsidoe 3

CHBN Radio, Truro, Cornwall, UK

Ambitious About Autism

Major Political Upheavals in Britain and Ireland.

It’s been an odd day in the UK and Ireland.  Political turmoil seems to be the order of the day.

First off, all day in Ireland, ministers have been resigning from Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s government left right and centre.  Just before 5pm, Brian Cowen announced that a general election would be held in Ireland on March 11th.  Will be watching the TV3 News at 5.30 and RTE’s Six One news to see how the broadcasters over there will cover these developments.

Secondly, at around the same time, Alan Johnson has resigned from his position as Shadow Chancellor, and is to go back to the back benches.  Ed Balls has been named as his replacement.  Alan Johnson has given no details for the resignation, except for saying it was for “personal reasons”, which to be blunt is political speak that covers a multitude of sins.

This is gonna be an evening of following developments with much interest.

Viewpoint - Coastguard cutbacks

Viewpoint - Mrs Palm & The Christian Right

Viewpoint - The UK Spending Review, BBC & S4C.

NightStalkers 2010

This is an update to an original poem that was originally written by me in 2004.
 
You'll never see us,
but we're always there,
watching,
listening,
waiting.

The cloak of night
cannot hide you from us,
it is our friend and ally.

We know the darkness
that lurks within
the black hearted souls
of the parasites
who feed on humanity

We live in shadows
and move with stealth.
We can be anywhere, anytime,
and you would never know.

To your eyes
we could be anyone,
the man in the sharp suit,
the woman in the black dress,
but you could never tell,
for the day person,
is just the show.

We are NightStalkers,
regular folk one minute,
hunters the next.

Our prey are the criminals,
who feed on the helpless,
who steal from everyone.

Their only goal is chaos,
their only love is money,
they have no care for others.

Our only goal is justice,
and justice will be served,
ice cold, hard and swift.

Don't go looking for us,
you won't know we are there,
until it is too late.

There is no detecting,
there is no escaping
the NightStalkers.

CNN Fan is back

Turns out they were only moving servers, but with their site having been recently hacked and the memory of that still fresh, I did wonder if something similar had happened again.

Never mind, all back up and running now.

Dish Network vs FOX. On the digital battleground.

This one almost passed me by, so it's nice that I actually caught up with this story now. Dish Network is having a contretant with Fox over their sports and entertainment channels, so Fox News and Fox Business are unaffected.

This primarily affects FX, Fox Sports Net and National Geographic Channel. However, in about a month's time, Fox Television Network and My Network TV could well be affected as well.

Obviously, both sides have launched websites detailing their case. But in addition to those, I'd like to remind you of one thing.

Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns DirecTV, the direct opposition in the US Satellite TV market to Dish Network.

Murdoch likes people to think what he tells them to think. In that same area of satellite television, he owns Sky in the UK, Star in Asia and Foxtel in Australia. There are other subsidiary operations linked to those companies.

So Rupert Murdoch is used to getting his own way. The fact that Dish are standing up to him, is interesting. We will see how this story develops.

CNN Fan disappears again

The website cnnfan.org which is linked to the CNN Observations blog has once again disappeared mysteriously.

This time it happened at about 1923 GMT (2023 UK). It talks about the site having moved to a new location and that it may take up to 48 hours for your ISPs DNS servers to catch up. I'm dubious about the validity of this, and am watching CNN Observations for more details.

I will be tracking this story over the next few days.