John Walker's Electronic House

Here is the letter I wrote to Don Foster tonight, after he voted in favour of tripling tuition fees, cutting arts and humanities funding by 100%, and unashamedly doing the precise opposite of his solemn pre-election promise:

Dear Don Foster,

I have one question for which I would appreciate an answer. If – before the Coalition was formed – you heard of an MP who made a solemn promise, signed a pledge and held this up for cameras, and was widely supported and elected based on this promise, and then voted against it, what would you think of him?

In the face of the clear will of your electorate, and the clear promises you made, that you would vote for the raise in tuition fees – no matter how you may have rationalised this for yourself – is a terrible act of deceit.

I ask that you resign, because your flagrant lying and vulgar contempt for your electorate demonstrates that you are obviously unfit for the role into which you were elected. I am quite certain that the Don Foster of March 2010 would entirely agree with me.

I’m so upset with and ashamed of you.

Yours sincerely,

John Walker
Former Lib Dem voter

In episode 53 of Rum Doings we don’t discuss whether it’s time to give up on the panda.

We begin with an attempt to understand our favourite worst drink, Stroh. Then Nick gets concerned about how very, very old he is, and John is finally recognised Mozart. We discuss John’s meeting Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, whether Derren Brown has got his name wrong, and how John is the cause of all of Rum Doings’ naughtiness.

There’s talk of Enid Blyton, today’s vote about student tuition fees and my battling with Bath MP Don Foster, Lib Dem bingo, and bad documentaries about Calvin & Hobbes. Then via the topic of WikiLeaks, we end up with what will likely be understood to be a particularly controversial conversation about rape. Just so you know.

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Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e53.mp3]

Well, why not. Here’s me on ITV News, looking like an angry garden gnome, saying “Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” for a really long time. Huge thanks to Andrew for helping me with the clip.

I sent this email to Don Foster today. If you want to write to your MP ahead of the vote on Thursday regarding the tripling of student tuition fees, and the horrendous cuts to university education, you can directly email them from here.

Dear Don Foster,

After attending the protests this morning, I am compelled to write to you regarding Thursday’s vote. I wish to appeal to you, to the man for whom I voted.

I voted for you because of your voting record, and your promises. Not only that, but I encouraged many others to vote for you, those who were apolitical or apathetic. I invested my time and energy into convincing them to vote for you, based on whom you had been. And now I feel humiliated.

I don’t want these people to have been lied to. I don’t want you to make me into a liar. I told them that you were different, that you voted so passionately for decency and humane values. I showed them the form response your office sent me that so eloquently and intelligently explained why you would be voting for libel reform, and against the attacks by corporations on people’s rights to internet access with the Digital Economy Bill. I explained that you represented the only party voting to abolish tuition fees.

You say you have yet to make up your mind about Thursday’s vote. I truly hope you were telling the truth, rather than avoiding giving an answer your voters neither voted for nor wanted to hear. If this is the case, I ask you to remember who you were before the Coalition was formed, and how appalled the Don Foster of April 2010 would feel if he were told what the Don Foster of December 2010 was considering doing.

It is so devastating to hear you giving the Conservative line about this matter, knowingly lying about how various clauses will make it fairer for students (while surrounded by the students who already know that it absolutely will not). To hear you saying “compromise”, as if that’s a reason to abandon your principles, to degrade your party’s former beliefs, and to so unashamedly back out of a promise you made only six months ago.

Lies about not knowing the state of the economy are embarrassing to tell, and insulting to hear. We all know that they are lies, and it’s so sad to hear you and your colleagues saying them without shame or remorse.

You are retiring this parliament, and as such this will be your legacy. You have an opportunity to vote for what you clearly believed in, and for what you solemnly swore you would do. Or you have the choice to become a part of the Conservatives, and deny all you have fought for, and all you continue to espouse outside of areas your whips have not instructed you to change your mind about.

I truly do not believe that you do not feel shame about this. To have signed a pledge, and to have been such a decent man for so long, you must know that abandoning all this would be too sad.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long email. I politely ask that if your response to this would be to send out a form reply stating all the lies and excuses and statements of how important it is to be compromised, then please don’t send it to me. It would make me too sad.

Yours sincerely,

John Walker

Nick’s going to kill me.

In Rum Doings Episode 52, where we don’t discuss why oh why the Russians have stolen our football, Nick and John weren’t able to meet up. Due to interventions by the weather, illness, and her royal majesty the Queen, this week’s episode was record in two separate locations, on our own. Because Skype is awful, and everyone should stop suggesting it.

So we begin with Nick’s monologue, in which he discusses colds, Kickstarter, and ideas for revolutionising the distribution of classical music. He postulates on how billionaires should be spending their money for the better good, and what is a word? You can read the essay he mentions here.

Then it’s John’s turn. He discusses Rum Doings fans, Batman, science, outlandish racism, and the coexistence of dinosaurs and man. Learn how dinosaurs were vegetarians, who loves Nick, and which famous people were lucky enough to meet John yesterday. (And sorry to my friends who listen, whom I have remembered since.)

Let’s see how cross Nick gets.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, you wretched child, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e52.mp3]

The week’s weather at 7.15pm on Monday 29th November:

The week’s weather at 7.55pm on Monday 29th November:

JUST SHUTTING SHUT UP, YOU SHUTS.

Rum Doings Episode 51 (episode 50 is in the same place as episode 40) begins with the subject that we’re not discussing: what has happened to the good old fashioned British bread bin?

But instead John goes through Nick’s DVDs. Which he brought into the studio for some reason. We reminisce about John’s radio days, getting caught for lying, Nick starts lying, and musicals. The film John couldn’t remember the name of was Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench.

We discuss mega-churches, the modern pop music of the young people of today, and Cloud Cult. Then Michael Buerk, and David Starkey.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, you wretched child, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e51.mp3]

Tonight a number of RPS readers have announced that my opinions are no longer worthwhile, and that they shall be ignoring me from now onward. This is because of two crimes in the last week. I wrote about the 1993 adventure “game”, Myst, and Telltale’s new release, Poker Night At The Inventory.

The latter caught me far more by surprise than the former. The game is, beyond a very nice gimmick (four popular game characters playing poker with you), pretty weak. It offers a horrible poker game, made briefly entertaining by some funny comments from the cast. Once they start repeating, which is early on, it becomes about struggling through an awful card game, and clicking through much repeated dialogue, to try to hear a new gag. What really threw me was not that people complained that they enjoyed the game and so I was wrong (a standard response to a negative review), but rather that people were furious – I mean absolutely livid – that I’d reviewed it as a poker game.

Even more so, to do so as someone who knows how to play poker. It’s not for people who know how to play poker, I’ve been repeatedly told. I’m not allowed to play the game because of mistakes I’ve made in the past. That stupid, ignorant mistake of having learned the rules to the game.

This was only compounding my fall, following my piece on Myst written for Eurogamer’s Sunday retrospective slot.

(continue reading…)

Very welcome are you to Episode 49 of Rum Doings, during which we absolutely don’t discuss whether it’s time that PC local councils stopped trying to ban Christmas.

Instead we discuss which bits are best in Private Eye, the cream tea emergency that is the Easy-Boy Armchair, and what shops will be gone in ten years time. Then we lament books. And Star Wars. And SCUBA diving! Nick invents Abuse Therapy, and John is fat. And of course gay videogame characters.

Re Nick’s suggestion, here are the links to Bastard Of The Old Republic, parts one, two, and three.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, you wretched child, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e49.mp3]

Wow, just had the weirdest cold call in a long time. I get a lot of these, normally one or two a day. There’s various ways of dealing with them, depending upon my mood and how busy I am. Often the telltale pause before they’ll speak is enough for me to hang up, and generally start screaming in frustration that I was interrupted in mid-flow for no reason. But when I’m feeling more patient I like to have a little chat.

This morning I received one from someone from “the government” (presumably an outsourced department located somewhere in India) offering me the chance to consolidate all my debt into one loan. I appealed to him, asking him why he would try to scam people. He became very defensive, and then went straight back to trying to sell me his offer. Those are the ones that make me sad.

Then there’s the technique my friend Stu uses, which is to interrupt them apologetically, and say, “Sorry, can you hang on, there’s someone at the door,” and then put the phone receiver down somewhere and get on with my day. They’ll wait an amazing time.

Or sometimes, along with my housemate Craig, we like to see how silly we can make it. When asked our annual income we’ll tell them, “40p” and insist it’s true. Or when asked about our debts offer numbers like £5 million. On one superb occasion, Craig managed to get the caller to tell him all the private information he’d been trying to pry from Craig – his age, car make, annual income.

I always try to remain polite, because blimey it must be a crappy job. But at the same time, they’re cold calling me to attempt to scam me (I spent a good fifteen minutes with someone who was trying to trick me into installing malware on my PC, which was one of my favourites), so it doesn’t seem unfair to have a little fun.

But just now was the strangest, just because of the pure gall of it. I’d planned to keep going with it as long as I could, because I was so entertained by the irony of the whole thing. But then he gave me a feedline that could not be resisted. A feedline that when you read it doesn’t even make sense for him to have said, as if he were scripted by a lazy comedy writer. Oh, and they always ask for Mr Smith, and I never, ever say that I am him, and they always go right ahead and talk to me as if I were.

Him: Hello, can I speak to Mr Smith please?

Me: Who’s calling?

Him: Hello Mr Smith, I’m calling from Do Not Call…

Me: [laugh]

Him: I’m sorry sir?

Me: Did you say “Do Not Call”?

Him: Yes, Do Not Call. I’m calling today to help you to stop receiving cold calls, nuisance calls, marketing calls that you receive to your line.

Me: You mean like this one?

Him: Yes.

Me: You’re going to help stop me getting this call?

Him: How do you stop this call?

Me: I stop it like this. [click]