Grombles

Bad Guy Terrorist Insurgent Fundamentalist Guerrilla Bandit Assassin Saboteur Fanatic Zealot Sectarian  Radical Anarchist Militant or Good Guy ? Rebel Freedom Fighter Resistance Partisan Revolutionary Same chap, different country, different label. Someone's hero is someone else's evil-doer. And how easily we allow our fellow countrymen (media and politicians) tell us which one's we support and which ones we need to kill. But how immensely complicated the truth really is, and how dreadful to think that we are all so easily duped to believe what we're told. Remember WMDs? Are we all too lazy in this day and age of global connectivity to really find out WHY these chaps feel compelled to put their own lives at risk? And is killing them breeding more friends or more foes? Is there a better way of defusing murderous sectarian tension without escalating it and driving it deeper under ground? Can you really kill ideas and hate?

I'm sick to death of hearing and watching endless hand-wringing and contrition exhibited by countless minions from the Beeb. Is there no other news? Do the journalists and editors at the BBC really think the British public's interest in Newsnightgate, Levesongate, Savilegate, DGpensiongate and all the other ICan'tBelieveItgates is proportional to the amount of air time the Beeb is forcing us to yawn through? A full half hour of a recent Today programme was Humphreys berating some BBC bigwig or other about stuff we're completely and utterly bored about, but which is clearly of immense importance to... Humphreys and the Bigwig. Period. Yesterday it was wall to wall Charlotte Green retiring. Who the hell is Charlotte Green, I hear you read? Exactly. You'll recognise her voice perhaps, as an announcer on Radio 4 (and for a very long time... remember Listen with Mother in the 1960s?), but does it require a whole day of endless numbers of sycophantic journalists and newsr

This morning, as usual, I plugged my iPhone into my PC. It needs iTunes running to 'sync'. Or in other words, to remain stuck in the iJobs max security prison. Unless, mysteriously during the night, my PC has become 'de-authorised'. Just let me use the damn thing!! If it's on my bloody computer, it IS authorised. So I click 'Authorise'. "You are only allowed 5 computers to be authorised. You've reached your limit. This computer cannot be authorised unless you de-authorise one of the others." In the meantime another message tells me my iPhone will have 130 apps deleted if I proceed with the sync and don't authorise the PC. I can't, you bastards, because when I've long ago had to authorise this same bloody computer 5 times, and when I de-authorise ALL of them, I'll lose my bloody apps. Then I'll have to load every single one of them using my < 1MB internet connection - if it allows me to do so at all and I don't have

I can't believe I decided to sponsor a political party - and particularly one that seems hell-bent on self-destruction. But I'm filled with terror that the Labour shower will get in again, no doubt assisted by their hard-left Liberal chums. Blair/Brown didn't scare me as much. They got the unions to put up and shut up by getting the enterprise/worker balance about right. Miliband/Balls/Clegg probably also understand enterprise has to come before labour (small l), but they need votes from people with short memories. And those people, who need little reminder their wealth is declining day by day, are being goaded by journalists who are relentlessly forcing us to believe that making money ('cos they don't and can't perhaps) is bad. Fat Cats, bonuses, evil millionaires sunning themselves in the Caribbean while wage-slaves work themselves to the bone to line their pockets.... And what about our growing fear of immigrants 'taking our jobs' while costly dole qu

Billions of our taxpayer pounds have been spent on totally useless form filling websites. I am typing this post while waiting for the twentieth time (yes I really mean 20th) for the damn gov website not to time me out. Again. They need an up-to-date photo of me on my drivers license. Fair enough. Years of having to complete endless forms for everything imaginable have savaged the way I look, amongst a myriad other grombles of course. In fact should I ever manage to complete this particular process, I will have aged several more years than the photo I am trying to upload. So it's instantly going to be out of date. But that's not why I'm grombling. What really gets my goat is the dreadful state of our central IT. Why on earth doesn't the government sack every bastard in Cardiff and all the other agencies employing millions of bean-counters, form-stampers and useless IT consultants, and give the whole bloody mess to Google to sort out? They already know far more about each