Some of my best friends are socialist

Take one Conservative politician and a statement of affairs (for want of a better word) on more than one subject. The first deals with accusations of an improper relationship, the ‘evidence’ for which is staying overnight with his special advisor in a twin-bed hotel room. The second deals with rumours of marital problems; my wife has had a number of miscarriages, is the response, and this has put a strain on our marriage but we are working through it.

Now sit back and watch the ensuing confusion on the Labour left. They can question what qualifications his special advisor has for the job but, as has been pointed out elsewhere, such a role has no specific qualification and anyway, why have his critics waited until now to raise this?

They can hardly criticise someone for staying in a room with another of the same sex; why, some of their best friends are gay. This non-story is therefore problematic but the target so tempting that they have entered into an unintentional and some might say unholy alliance with of all newspapers, The Daily Mail.

We have left-wing wannabe politicos determined to destroy a Tory politician, a right wing newspaper out to destroy any politician, and a common straw man line of attack; that an attempt to start a family is no proof of heterosexuality. Well ‘duh’, you don’t say? Whoever said it was - certainly not the politician being examined.

I can understand though despise the antics of some newspapers in playing to their readership’s homophobia. Perhaps more despicable though are the antics of those on the left who lack the moral courage to see the wider issue and denounce out of hand as irrelevant the issue of any person’s sexuality, or indeed the state of their marriage. Instead they take an opportunist swipe at the old enemy, never mind the consequences.

In the middle

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

Such is the importance of his role in the creation of the National Health Service that the idea of criticising Aneurin Bevan is equivalent in my psyche to that of criticising Winston Churchill. Shamefully I know little about this lifelong adversary of Churchill except for a few choice quotes, including the one above though it’s not a comment I care for. Voltaire said “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too”, but I find it difficult to square this message of tolerance with Bevan’s warning on indecision. I read it as more of a threat; get out of the way (or else) whilst we give battle to the Tory “vermin”.

Many years ago I saw an interview with a young member of an anti-fascist group; he use to be a fascist, he explained, but now he hated them. Commendable perhaps, but at the time I wondered whether it was hatred that continued to fuel his day, and the behaviour of numerous direct action groups since has done little to dispel this suspicion. They were different times and I suppose it’s not so much Bevan’s comment that concerns me; it’s the decision of others to revere it today. I much prefer “The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away”, it sounds almost Thatcherite.

…and on the way home I saw the sun

After a week at work most Fridays end with me slumped in the sofa late evening and falling asleep in front of the television. This week was a short family holiday that ended with me slumped in the sofa late evening and falling asleep in front of the television. I have fallen out of love, if it ever was love, with CenterParcs. Aside from a hint of blue sky on the Tuesday afternoon it wasn’t until I drove home that I finally got to see the sun. The rest of the time it rained… and rained... and rained.

Of course this is hardly the fault of my hosts, but just as good weather can excuse, the poor weather exposed the faults. Because when things are a bit shit you kind of want to make up for it at the end of the day with, for example, a half-decent meal. Alternatively you could try eating at Hucks, an American themed diner offering a ‘Juniors buffet’ for £5.50; or as my daughter found out, five empty hot plates. I tell myself, so long as my daughter enjoys herself then nothing else really matters, and lack of food notwithstanding she did. But I didn’t.

Terminator versus work colleague

It says much about my day that when I described someone as “like the Terminator” and then added “a psychopathic killing machine”, I subsequently spent several minutes analysing why that was the wrong thing to say.

Then I realised it’s because the Terminator isn’t a psychopath. A psychopath has an abnormal lack of empathy whereas a lack of understanding is de rigueur for your average T-800. Besides being more impressed than I should be for writing ‘de rigueur’ in a discourse on the true nature of cybernetic organisms, it got me to thinking again about the nature of evil itself. Which is worse – doing a bad thing and knowing it’s wrong or doing an evil thing and not knowing? Or is evil defined by an understanding that what is being done is wrong and not caring? Or are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hollow constructs we place on what is an essentially meaningless world?

I started this train of thought whilst watching Terminator Salvation, starring the very angry Christian Bale. I liked the acknowledgement to its predecessors – “come with me if you want to live” and even the traditional “I’ll be back” – though I groaned at the old “if we act like them then we’re no better than machines” chestnut. It was probably about that time my mind wandered to the other films and how I’d never really rated Judgement Day, also known as “Cool, my own terminator”, and how Rise of the Machines was so much better (I really mean that) and Nick Stahl, who played John Conner in that film, also played the boy in The Man Without a Face and that must mean that Mel Gibson is really old now and maybe that’s why he’s so angry. It’s a fear of death.

Everybody in the house say

I am recovered from reminiscing about home computer games of the past, an exercise in nostalgia and depression, and I’m over the short-lived relevance (Google fixed the widget shortly afterwards) of my one and only technical blog. It wasn’t long before I found something to distract me.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that when the electorate doesn't make up its mind, it might actually *want* a second election?
5:12 AM Aug 13th

Tom Harris is a Labour MP from north of the border and a Doctor Who fan – so he’s not all bad, and he is at least in ‘good’ company for such a nonsense comment. The BBC have a track record for meaningless generalisations, “black Americans” and “white Americans” is one that still rankles - though that was more insulting than silly.

The electorate didn’t vote for a hung parliament, that was the result. The majority of people who voted Conservative or Labour did so in the hope that their choice would win the election outright. Those who voted Liberal Democratic wanted a hung parliament not out of some altruistic let’s-all-pull-together notion but the realisation that this was their only chance of Government.

Some might argue this is semantics but for me it’s more than that. To me the notion of a collective consciousness also allows for the idea that those who choose to think differently are in some way an anomaly that can be ignored, or maybe even a problem that must be addressed, and that makes me a little uncomfortable.

To search, or not to search

If there’s one function you expect Blogger to nail it’s 'search'. Blogger after all is owned by Google whose raison d'être is the search engine. So in addition to the long standing query over whether blog searches reliably return all they should, I’m bemused that for the last few days the search widget they provide has failed to load. It’s a “known problem” apparently and Google are “working on a fix”, though I got fed up waiting and had to search for one myself. Thanks to Vagabundia the problem with the search widget was solved by signing up for an AJAX search API key then adding the following script into the head of my blog:

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=API_KEY" type="text/javascript"></script>

An alternative to the widget, and something that works like the search function in the Blogger Navbar, would be to add an HTML/JavaScript gadget and write a little code of your own:

<form id="search-this" action="BLOG_URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<input id="search-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="19" type="text" />
<input id="search-btn" value="Search" type="submit" />
</form>

Should I feel inclined it’s an option that allows me to style the display to my own ‘taste’ but personally I prefer the output from the widget - when it works.

Game over

I miss Arcadians, or Galaxians if you will; life was simple. A collection of blue, yellow or red pixels would swoop down in a jagged pattern whilst you timed your highly advanced one-shot cannon to take the little bastard out; miss and you were in a world of pain. You knew exactly what to expect, each level getting quicker until finally you were overwhelmed. Today the game offers an illusion of movement in all directions, tantalising players with a hope of victory. Back then it was more honest, day after day, more and more of the same and the sure knowledge that you would never ever win.