New Year Resolutions

Today has been spent away from work because of our four-day weeks. They really are nice once you get used to them! The day was spent either shopping, in front of my computer or down the library reading computer magazines. Exciting life that I lead (!). This evening I was at the church for a youth group that I help run for young teens. Tonight was the first meeting after the new year and we were rather unimaginatively doing it on New Year Resolutions. Last year at this time we wrote out a list of resolutions and tonight the envelopes were dug out and read. Mine was interesting. Among the resolutions many related to the youth work, (that's me trying to be spiritual!), others were more down-to-earth. Here they are:

Do more walking
Get a girlfriend!!
Move out of my parents
Get a good career-progressing job

Well let's see how I did over the year. The first one I must say I did succeed in fulfilling; I spent a week in the Lake District at Easter, walked the West Highland Way in July, spent a number of weekends walking in Snowdonia over the summer, and walked around the Yorkshire Dales and the North Pennines in September. That's success with number one, okay how about the rest? Girlfriend? Well there was this girl in Sheffield, we went out a couple of times and we're still friends, but I can't really say we were ever a couple. Unfortunately that resolution doesn't work out; still two more to go. Moving out of my parents? Well, I'm still here, more determined to get out but still stuck here. And finally, a new job. No, I'm still making biscuits.

So for the non-spiritual resolutions I have not done very well. As for the rest the youth group has progressed well over the last year. Last year I resolved to help to double the numbers to Encounter (that's the name of the group) and I believe that may have happened, with or without my help. We usually get around ten young people and at the beginning of last year it may have been about five, maybe. The youthwork which is only eighteen months old has gone through some ups and downs during the last year but I do believe it's stronger now than last year. Certainly we now have a lot more experience of running a youth group than we did last year. Other aspects of the youthwork still need more work and commitment from myself; that is a resolution for this year.

Other resolutions of a spiritual nature relate to my personal spiritual development which is patchy at best. Still more work required there as well. We are none of us perfect, me just as much as anyone else. Well, I have a whole year to improve (actually 11½ months, but I don't want to start getting pedantic), let's see how the year develops.

"Harry the Nazi"

Well, I have finished my week at work. There are some advantages to working in the biscuit factory after all, pity they don't off-set the many disadvantages, but let's not get into that again. The promised extra work hasn't arrived yet; we have got to wait a couple of weeks for the packaging materials to arrive, but once they do it'll be back at work on a Friday, and on Saturday. At least it will be extra money, which I am going to need soon for my car. It has an expensive repair due sometime soon, which I have been putting it off, but I can't do that for too long; it won't pass the MOT if I don't get the work done!

I wasn't sure what to talk about about tonight; there are many things I could talk about but I don't really feel like it. Someone in the canteen at work, today, was talking about Speed Cameras. I could talk about that, but I want to go to bed at some point tonight (!). Instead I will talk briefly about Prince Harry's misjudgement at a recent fancy dress party. Sixty years on and people still can't forget about the Nazi's. Why is that? Is it because there are still people alive who remember first hand the atrocities that the Nazi's perpetrated or is it something much deeper? My first thought was that with hindsight Harry had clearly made a mistake, but what was the big deal? I suppose I wouldn't think like that if I had suffered at the hand of the Nazi's, and there I think is the difference. Harry is only twenty years old and the Second World War, for his generation, is something that happened a very long time ago when even his Grandmother was younger than Harry is now. I guess the events of sixty years ago would seem like an eternity ago to someone like Harry. I am a little older than Harry but even for me the tyranny of the Nazi's is merely something I've read about or seen on film's like "Schindler's List". The Nazi Swastika has no immediate connotations of hatred for me. I don't think any of this excuses what Harry did, but I think it does explain it. He was at a private party and I suppose he didn't feel it necessary to consider what people outside of the party would think about his choice of costume. It is indeed unfortunate that he didn't use what my Mother described, "His common sense." I believe this incident will teach him that he must always consider his actions in terms of how other people will react to it. I think this incident also shows us how important it is to keep on reminding each other what took place during the Second World War so that we never forget the hard lessons that were learnt. We must never let those events happen again.

I feel sorry for Prince Harry, having made a mistake he has very quickly apologised for his mistake and I am sure utterly regrets ever choosing that costume. What is astonishing is all the international attention that it has raised. It just shows the power that, even almost sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the Swastika still holds over people throughout the world. It was a horrible period that we must not, can not forget.

The Rise of Legitimate Music Downloads

For years people have been downloading music off the internet for free and then a year or two ago the music industry said it was finally going to let you do it legally for less than a pound. Yes but we were getting for free before. For people who had been downloading music off the internet suddenly having to pay for it was going to take a lot of getting used to. I had always thought I had joined the mp3 revolution late having not started till early 2002 but compared with the many people now downloading legally I am a veteran. I was never a peer-2-peer junkie, the idea of giving unknown people access to my computer just didn't seem right to me, but I was still able to find many sites that let me download mp3s straight off the Internet. Downloading music became a game that was played with the web servers as you tried to download the song before it was taken off the server. To prolong an mp3s life on a server it would often be renamed as something innocuous like a Word document or a class file. Sometimes they were downloaded as compressed files and I would have to find the right program to decompress it and that often led to finding the compressed file was password protected. But this was no problem since the web site I'd downloaded the file from would have the password or at least a list of a hundred passwords to choose from!

I downloaded hundreds of mp3s in this way before I started finding that my favourite download sites were disappearing before my eyes or were being rebranded as music discussion sites with no downloads in sight! One by one the best sites fell under the axe. Even the legitimate ones seemed to fall by the wayside. Many of my early downloads were garnered from mp3.com until it was sold to CNET Networks who stopped the free streaming and downloading and turned it into a site about music downloads but without any actual downloads. I'm sure there are other sites out there that do what mp3.com used to do but I'm sure none are as widespread in their appeal. Many artists including Linkin Park and Madonna released songs on this site for either streaming or downloading, but now you usually have to pay to do either of these. How things have changed.

There are still one or two sites out there that offer free downloads but they are very rare and I'm sure still struggle against the authorities. I shan't be giving their addresses out since that would just be inviting their closure and I want to be able to still use them. I have no qualms about downloading music off the internet for free and intend to carry on doing so for as long as I can. I see downloading mp3s as a sort of song review to let me decide whether an album is worth buying. I will often download some or even all the songs off an album in order to decide whether to buy it. I buy a lot more albums now than I used to before I was downloading music. In my eyes I am paying for those downloads with my increased album buying. Of course, the Music Industry may not see it like that.

Meanwhile the legitimate download sites continue to increase in popularity. I recently noticed that the number of legal downloads exceeded physical sales for the last week of 2004, which was the first time it has ever happened. Undoubtedly there are many reasons for that: Most shops were closed over the long holiday weekend while the web sites weren't; also I'm sure another big factor was the large number of iPod's and other music players received over Christmas by people new to downloading music off the internet. But it does set the scene for a momentous year of legal downloads. Later in the year the download chart will merge with the singles chart and perhaps we will once again have a singles chart we can be proud off. (I'd better stop there before I start off on a tirade about the poor quality of the music on the singles chart!)

Legal music downloads are definitely here to stay despite what a few die-hards such as myself may say. If the choice available from these sites increases and the price continues to fall (now down to 69p from some sites) you never know, I may even pay to download a track myself.

The travesties at Guantanamo Bay

The big news story in Britain today is that the four remaining Britons held by the United States in Guantanamo Bay are going to be released. Great news and I'm happy for their families, but this situation should never have been allowed to happen. The United States has for a long time called itself the land of the free and the defender of democracy but their actions in Guantanamo Bay strike me as being worse than those of many dictatorships around the world. The men held at Guantanamo Bay have been held against their will without trial or access to a lawyer for almost three years. Their civil rights have been totally ignored; they have been treated as if they had no rights whatsoever. The United States have been acting with total disregard for what anyone else may think. Their country was attacked and so they attacked Afganistan and arrested anyone they could get their hands on. They claimed these people were a threat to their national security and gave them an excuse to do whatever they liked with them.

Just like a playground bully they cry, "They started it!" And everyone is powerless to do anything about it. There is no country in the world with the courage to stand up to the United States and stop them doing it because the United States is just too powerful. It is out of control and there is no one who can stop it. Well, maybe 250 million people could have stopped it but they voted the madman responsible for this travesty back into office. George Bush is guilty of many War Crimes but I bet he never has to answer for any of them, assuming we all survive the next four years with someone like him in power.

But George Bush isn't the only dangerous person out there we need to careful of. Tony Blair hasn't kept himself clean through the last couple of years. His unwavering support of George Bush has lost him serious credibility in this country and let's not forget that we have our own version of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. There are twelve people being held in this country without trial in clear contravention of their human rights. Last month the Law Lords from the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament, ruled that the detention was unlawful but they still haven't been released.

I despair at all the breaches in civil liberties that have happened since 2001. Many of them in this country had been instigated by the former Home Sectretary, David Blunkett, a man I grew to despise, mainly because of his cavalier attitude to human rights. In the weeks leading up to his eventual resignation I was crying for his blood, but once he had gone I was sorry that he'd had to resign in the way that he did. In the end his resignation has done nothing to improve the situation. The twelve detainees are still being held and the ridiculous Identity Cards are still being brought in.

We live in troubled times that make me fearful for the future. God save us from this madness.

First day back at work after the weekend

Today I have been back at work for another four-day week. At this time of the year production is so slow that we are on four-day weeks until Easter. Which is nice. However over the weekend the city of Carlisle in the North of England was hit by flash flooding where, apparently, UB have a factory. The upshot is that there were rumours going around work today that we were going to be hit with a lot more work for the next couple of months as we take on some of the Carlisle factory's production. Who'd have thought we'd see the day? McVitie's biscuits being made in a Jacob's factory? Nothing definite just yet but we're bracing ourselves for the deluge. I've already been asked if I'd work 12 hour shifts for the next 4 to 6 weeks. I said I wouldn't. Curiously, no one else said they would either. Looks like it's going to be an interesting time at work over the next couple of weeks.

During my breaks at work I usually read a book, being the unsociable sort that I am. At the moment I am reading a P D James novel called "Innocent Blood". I am about two thirds through it and I'm still waiting for something to happen. I must say I am not really enjoying this book. I started it ages ago before abandoning it to read something else and now I just want to get it finished. I picked it up in a charity shop, which is something I've done a lot during the last year and I'm not sure if it's really such a good idea because it usually results in me reading a rather poor book. Charity shops have such a small selection of books that there is rarely much of a choice and you feel as if you should buy a book if only to support the charity. I have a small interest in crime novels (really just Agatha Christie's) and most of the novels that I've bought have been from that genre. Currently sitting on my shelf waiting to be read is a Colin Dexter, a Ruth Rendell and another P D James novel. All picked up during the last year from charity shops. I really ought to stop buying so many especially since I'm not really an avid reader of crime novels. My real interest lies in Science Fiction but I have very little of that to read; in fact a quick look at my bookshelf reveals an Isaac Asimov and a Vonda McIntyre nestling amongst uncounted thrillers and crime novels. Maybe I should choose my books with more care.

While reading in the canteen this evening I couldn't help hearing a programme on the TV about the police dealing with late night drunks. I couldn't help hearing it because the volume was so loud I couldn't hear anything else even though I was at the other end of a large canteen. Some people have very poor hearing! The programme brought to mind one of my pet hates: drunks. I have no patience for these people because they have drunk too much simply out of their own stupidity and then start taking their stupidity out on other people. Now I know I am acting very self-righteous here, I accept that. I have no problem with anyone drinking, I drink myself on occasions. But there is really no excuse for drinking so much that you lose all control of your actions and start taking it out of everybody else. I suppose it is just a completely different culture to that which I am used to having been brought up in a church environment and I guess I am still heavily influenced by that. I just don't see the need to go out every weekend and drink yourself to oblivion. My problem is that I don't understand why anyone would do it. And I guess I am also afraid of it as well. This is all something I have very little experience of and certainly nothing first hand. I have never got so drunk that I have lost control of my senses; I guess I'm afraid of what I would do if I ever did. The most drunk I have ever got was merely a little tipsy from rather too much Christmas sherry.

I suppose I am not painting a very flattering picture of myself here, but that is who I am and I can't really change now. There is a lot of behaviour out there that I just don't understand mostly because I've never been in that situation before. There's a saying that goes "There, but by the grace of God, go I," which basically says that I would be in that situation if God hadn't directed my life into a different direcion. Is that a blessing or a curse? I'll leave you that to ponder.

Jerry Springer, Tony Blair and the IRA

Here I am again ready to dispense my words of wisdom to the waiting millions (I can always dream!). Today has been spent as is usual for Sundays, in church, this week trying to put up with all the vitriol about the Jerry Springer Opera that was on TV last night. I never watched it but I understand that 1.7 million people did; many more than the 1 million one would expect to watch an opera and many of those 1.7 million were the very same young people that the Beeb were deliberately targeting. Success then for the BBC? No. I think the only result of this escapade has been an undermining of the integrity of the BBC and an increased threat to the validity of the TV licence. As the Conservative Deputy Leader, the rather scary looking Michael Ancram, said: “You can choose to go to the theatre, you can decide that you want to pay a sum of money to go to see something. That is where you go to see freedom of expression.” He was speaking on BBC Radio Four’s Any Questions? and added: “Public service television, I believe, has another duty and that is to exercise a degree of caution which is not there for the theatre to exercise. I ask the question about the motives of the BBC in putting this on. They haven’t advertised it as a great cultural event. They have advertised it as an occasion when we are going to have 3,000 of one type of word and 1,000 of another type of word. What they are trying to do is to get people to watch it because they think it is going to shock them. I don’t think it is the duty of the BBC to do that.”

Now in the past I've not been too keen on Michael Ancram, mainly because he looks rather too scarily like my father (!), but he does have a point. All right, he's only jumping onto the political band wagon just like his illustrious leader who does so every moment he opens his mouth, but if people want to watch this sort of thing they should go to the theatre and pay at least £25 for it. The BBC is publicly funded and shouldn't be used to fund something like this. The BBC should have a higher standard for itself than this. With Christian Voice's promised legal action this could run for a long time and I look forward to seeing how it develops. But enough of that for now.

Also in the news at the moment is Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seemingly trying to make sure Labour doesn't win the next election, or at least someone is trying to make it seem like that. For ages now there have been rumours that before becoming Prime Minister, Tony Blair promised to Gordon Brown that he would stand down at some point and let him become Prime Minister. What total hokum. As if someone would do that and of course Tony Blair is vigorously denying it and Gordon Brown is not commenting on it, but why should he? I am sure he would love to be Prime minister but the problem is, on his own he never will be. Like Neal Kinnock he just doesn't have the public appeal to be a Prime Minister which I am sure Tony Blair knows. I am not a Labour supporter (most of the time I don't support any of the idiots in politics) but I do despair when a party who can win an election simply by turning up is trying to make it appear as if it's got more than one leader. Even so I am sure Labour will still win this year's General Election if only because Michael Howard is simply a publicity seeking opportunist. It would be interesting to see what Charles Kennedy made of the job though.

Still in politics, what on earth is happening in Ireland? The IRA was recently officially blamed for the bank robbery last month where £26 million was taken from the Northern Bank in Belfast. Assuming the IRA did take the money most of it will soon be worthless because the Northern Bank are changing their bank notes and even if they were able to use it most of it was new traceable notes. They went to a lot of trouble for nothing, risking everything including the peace process, but if they are innocent the peace process is still going to be seriously derailed. The Police have blamed the IRA, but the IRA are strenuously denying that they had anything to do with it. Is it possible the police just can't believe the IRA could be innocent of anything? This is just going to breed an atmosphere of suspicion that prevent any progress being made in the peace process for years. If the police are mistaken in their belief that the IRA carried out this robbery then I believe all the men responsible for the allegation should be sacked for gross stupidity in potentially wrecking the peace process.

I think I'll leave it at that tonight. When I started writing this today I didn't think I'd be able to find much to talk about but as it turned out I could have gone on for ages! I think it's time I went to bed so I'll leave it at that for today and say goodnight.