John Walker's Electronic House

Right – I’m removing this because the editor of Wired.co.uk sincerely explains that they didn’t mean to insult the man’s looks, and agrees that it looks as though they were, and has changed it accordingly. So all is well.

Although I doubt they’ll be offering me work any time soon : )

It sort of feels pretend.

BBC News is reviewing tomorrow’s newspaper front pages, with three Tories sat around a table, crowing. They’re using phrases like, “these lefties… have got [their] comeuppance.” The presenter chuckles along. The BBC has already sunk comfortably into absolute unquestioned bias, having spent the last few days telling outright lies on the news about how our government works, attacking any Lib-Lab coalition suggestions, and endorsing a Tory government without question.

These three people sneer, laughing out loud at how left wing writers are upset with the result. The presenter doesn’t even look awkward, while his guests describe Cameron as having shown “remarkable vision”.

“I suspect we won’t be hearing the phrase ‘Broken Britain’ any more, as I rather suspect it’s just been fixed.”

Approving murmurs all round.

This is BBC News.

Literally three Conservatives mocking Labour, the left wing, sneering at the non-right newspapers, and all completely unchallenged. This is how things shall be for a long, long time.

The Liberal Democrats are currently emerging from their meeting in which they unanimously voted through the deal, stating that this is the best thing that could happen to our country. Their glee includes agreeing to a cap on immigration, and agreeing to a referendum on “giving more power to Europe,” whatever the bloody hell that means. They’ve abandoned their absolute core principles, and they’re telling us what a wonderful day this is for Britain.

Can I wake up now?

Nick Clegg’s got one heck of a decision to make.

He’s not just deciding which party gets to be in power in the UK. He’s deciding the fate of the Liberal Democrat party.

He’s got three choices, which I couldn’t outline better than Stu Campbell has here: side with Cameron, side with Brown, or side with no one and allow a Conservative minority government.

It’s the first of these three decisions that’s currently being scrutinised by Clegg and his advisors, weighing up whatever Cameron may have offered him in their private talks. Should he align his party with the Conservatives, guaranteeing a clear majority, and most likely securing some powerful positions in government for Lib Dem members? It must be tempting for anyone in politics, to be that close to power. But Clegg’s got a Liberal Democrat membership to convince – 75% of them – before he could make that commitment. Oh, and the small matter of giving up proportional representation (PR). Oh again, and giving up the future of the Lib Dem party forever.

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This weekend, over Easter, leader of the BNP Nick Griffin put out a statement explaining that the BNP is the only party fighting for traditional Christian values. It is part of the BNP’s attempt to redraw its battle lines, recognising that the exposed hatred of other races is not winning them votes, but instead tapping into the increasing fear that our country (whatever that phrase may mean) is being changed, subverted, made not what it once was. And it seems that part of this is to reclaim Britain for the “traditional” Christian. This needs to be unpacked.

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Here is a handy guide to understanding the future of the BBC under the Conservatives. A schools pack is available.

Stuart X: It’s like that thing they had to cancel with local-news websites or video or something last year, because it was so good that commercial operations couldn’t compete.
Stuart X: WHY THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT THAT?
Stuart X: We’re forced by law to pay for something that’s made deliberately worse.
John X: Don’t worry, not for much longer!
Stuart X: They’re going to stop charging?!??!!???!!?
John X: Entirely!
Stuart X: And it won’t turn out to be just another shitty ITV??!?!?!!?!?!
John X: No no, you misunderstand.
John X: Imagine it like this:
John X: Imagine I’m a bread shop.
John X: And I sell bread for 80p a loaf.
John X: Okay?
Stuart X: Following you so far.
John X: So if you want some bread, currently you have to pay me 80p.
John X: Well, what’s going to happen under the nice Mr Cameron is my bread shop is going to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
John X: So you won’t have to pay 80p for bread ever again!
Stuart X: But where will I get bread?
John X: There’s no bread.
Stuart X: I don’t understand! I LIKE BREAD!
John X: Be quiet.
Stuart X: The only other stuff I can put marmalade on is made by Ian’s Tasty Vittles down the road, and it’s made of dogshit.
John X: I said be quiet.
Stuart X: And I have to stop eating every three bites so I can throw up.
John X: Can somebody call the police?

Family Guy enjoys being offensive. It does it with glee. As creator Seth McFarlane likes to say, they’re an “equal opportunity offender”. I’m struggling to think of a subject they haven’t made wildly inappropriate jokes about. Racial stereotypes, paedophilia, infanticide, rape, degenerative disorders, disabilities, the Holocaust… A large part of the point of watching the programme is gasping in shock with your hands clasped to your mouth, unsure if you’re stifling a cry of horror or a laugh.

There have been other programmes that have taken this “no taboos” rule to more effective and more shocking places, such as the astonishing Wonder Showzen, and Drawn Together. But these were on cable. Family Guy is on at primetime on Sunday nights on Fox. Having been cancelled twice by the network, it’s proven itself fairly invincible, and with McFarlane’s new contract breaking all records they know they’re not going anywhere. And to embrace this the most recent episodes having been pushing things further and further, including as many digs at Fox as they can cram in. Last Sunday’s was particularly shocking. At least, I thought so at first.

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A few decades back something went horribly wrong in the UK. At a certain point, as a nation, we reversed the order of priority between customer and service provider. And nothing reveals this contempt demonstrated to consumers better than the provision of ketchup.

Now we all know that the way things should work is the volume of ketchup available being inversely proportional to the poshness of the establishment. Cheap and cheerful cafes should have a big bottle of the stuff available on the table. Then as you get more posh the amount drops down. A reasonably nice pub chain will, for instance, give you a ramekin dish filled with red sauce. Go from chain to restaurant and now the ramekin is only leant to you momentarily, for you to teaspoon as much onto your plate as you feel you can get away with. (I’ve declared no shame at this point, and will gladly empty it out – they’ve got more.) Next rung is they maintain complete control of the ketchup distribution, titrating a single millilitre of it onto your plate for you. Then above that requesting ketchup results in your being asked to leave.

That’s all how we expect it to be in the lunatic version of society we should concede to accept. This is not something the UK is capable of adhering to. Because in the UK ketchup is a rare commodity, brought in by vast merchant ships from distant lands, traded for gold and precious jewels. It is an exotic elixir so rare and unusual that it must be reserved as an offering to the gods, or for visiting kings of neighbouring empires. We must preserve our precious ketchup resources, and we must ensure that no customer is able to dip their chips in more than half a teaspoon’s worth, distributed in tiny plastic sachets that can only be opened using teeth.

Which is strange, because when you go into supermarkets they seem to sell enormous containers of it for insignificant amounts of money. This is indeed quite a mystery.

It is with all this in mind that I say: bring your own ketchup to the Hillside Cottage in Cheddar Gorge.

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I’m not the world’s biggest fan of text messaging. To me it’s a tool. It’s a way of arranging to meet, or letting someone know you’ll be late. Or sending a pithy, clever insult. And it’s brilliant for that. Phoning someone to say something that can be taken care of in a maximum of two exchanges of 160 characters isn’t necessary. The text message takes care of it, quickly and efficiently.

However, if your conversation requires more than that, then it’s a bane. Having to try to orchestrate a complicated dialogue in minimal chunks is infuriating, and even more so because to do it you’re holding a device capable of telephoning someone. So telephone someone.

Perhaps an even larger issue with the text message is the apparent requirement to reply instantly. I don’t want to turn into some ghastly confused broadsheet columnist (wait, yes I do, that’s exactly the job I want – well, let’s assume I don’t want the ghastly part) who complains about how modern technology is driving us apart, because is it bollocks. It’s uniting us in incredible ways. But I do take issue with the immediacy of communication it’s engendered. If you need to get hold of me immediately, call me. The loud ringing sound will get my attention, and if I answer you’ll get my responses right away. If I don’t answer, you can assume I’m not able to, or don’t want to. For some reason we accept that an email may take a few hours to be responded to. But a text message, perhaps because of its relative informality, combined with its arriving on a device that follows us around (which of course is increasingly the case for email too), seems to come with a weight of responsibility. And one that arrives unsolicited. I don’t like that. While I find myself unable to remember how existence worked when phones were tied to the walls (despite living the first 20 years of my life in such a state – what did we do when we were going to be late for stuff?), I do remember that we weren’t commanded to instantly reply to everyone.

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BBC News is on fire today!

First of all, a story about pi being calculated to 2.7 trillion digits is accompanied by this caption:

“Pi is an irrational number, meaning its digits go on forever.”

Um, not quite. I think you’ll find an irrational number is one that starts crying because the wallpaper’s the wrong colour, or something.

And then follow the headline, “Archbishop urges population cap” and you get this story about a group of MPs arguing for, I guess, culling, that at no point mentions the Archbishop. It’s a bold headline choice, suggesting the Archbishop wants to shut down our borders to all those Johnny foreigners. He might want to ask them about that, since it’s now their 7th most read story.

Presumably they’re getting a bit confused with a story from last October when the former moron Archbishop George Carey declared his delightful views on immigration. He explained that the reason the BNP were gaining popularity was because of our “open door policy” to immigrants. Never mind that the BNP’s popularity has waned in the last few years (I mean, why let that trouble your ghastly views?), but to suggest that the BNP might be becoming more popular because there’s too many foreigners coming into the country… Um, maybe someone can see the irony here? “If the mainstream parties begin listening to the voters,” he said, “the BNP can be consigned again to the fringes.” That’s right George. If the mainstream parties adopt the policies of the BNP, then we’ll not need the BNP at all!

UPDATE: They’ve now updated the linking headline to read, “Carey in immigrant ‘values’ call”. But haven’t thought to update the article to mention Carey at all. Is everyone at the BBC drunk today?

So in summary, they got absolutely every prediction incorrect, but it did eventually snow.

Yesterday morning the prediction was that Bath would receive an epic dumping of snow. By mid-afternoon this was stepped up to the South West being put on full alert for the most dangerous snow in living memory, with the highest ranking Met Office warning issued (a warning, we were told, they issued before last year’s floods in the Midlands, that rendered thousands homeless). It was going to disrupt power. It was going to close every road. Then about three hours later we had the cough-cough-oh retractions of this, but still with enough grim warnings of snow that we should still worry, and it would all kick off around 8pm. (This was originally 3pm, then 6pm.) At around 8pm we were told the slightly minimized apocalypse would now be occurring at midnight. But it was going to be at least 10cm. At least.

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