Bitch, pleaz… Bradshaw’s homophobia allegation sooo unworthy
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Labour is getting desperate to portray the Conservatives as inherently nasty, deeply worrying and a danger to the UK. This is dangerously out of step with the general public’s thinking on the parties, and is a throwback to the time before the 1997 General Election.
One particularly striking example is the utterly wrongfooted attempt by Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant, two ministers who also happen to be gay. They have been playing a peculiar game, in the run-up to Pride, of making vague and therefore somewhat incontestible assertions about conservative thinking on homosexuality.
Bradshaw stated a “deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”.
He’s probably entirely wrong on that, though there are certainly some old-school tories who might consider themselves homosceptic. In my meetings with Conservative MPs, the overwhelming feeling is that the state, in general, should never seek to legislate on matters between adults; on everything that does need legislation, in general the party is content to be led by the leader.
This is where the Bradshaw and Bryant assault fails miserably. This is the week that David Cameron apologised for Section 28, the piece of legislation which made it unlawful to promote homosexuality in schools. It’s the week that a big part of the lineup for the Conservative Party’s Conference Pride event was announced. It’s the year when David Cameron, famously utterly opposed to discrimination in its myriad forms, made sure the conservatives were diversity-ready and entirely comfortable in the new Britain.
It’s curious that the party unsure and uncomfortable with the UK’s direction today is the one in the scowling red corner; we’re quite comfortable with the rainbow banner where it’s appropriate.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Tags: Allegation, Apologised, Assertions, Ben Bradshaw, Benches, Chris Bryant, conservative party, Conservatives, david cameron, General Election, Homophobia, Homosexuality In Schools, New Britain, Old School, Pride Event, Rainbow Banner, Section 28, Striking Example, Throwback, Tories
Worst relaunch ever for Brown
Posted by admin | Filed under Hoons, politics, stupidity
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/ox7h6w ]
I’ve seen a few companies relaunch, and I’ve been through quite a few in the Conservative Party too, in my long career of membership. But Gordon Brown’s ‘Building Britain’s Future’ is fucking dreadful.
Popularity: 33% [?]
Tags: Blue Skies, conservative party, david cameron, Dreadful, Duncan Smith, gordon brown, John Major, Marvellous, Matter Of Fact, Michael Howard, Mishmash, National Union Of Students, New Direction, Non Disclosure Agreements, Nuns, Oak Trees, Relaunches, Shakeup, William Hague, Window Dressing
The playlist that dare not speak its name, lest it ring the gorgeous Melissa in Geneva
Posted by admin | Filed under gadgets
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/nmcjxa ]
The iPhone 3GS is an improvement over the 3G and a massive improvement over the iPhone 1st generation. I’m filing this article under geek, so please feel free to move on.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Tags: 3g, 3gs, Big Ass, Comparable Price, Cost Of Ownership, Fanboy, Footprint, geek, iphone, Ipod Touch, Massive Improvement, Mismatch, Mms, Nwz, Playlist, Routers, Single Device, Sleep Mode, Sms Messages, Tombstone, Zune
Dublin Pride
Posted by admin | Filed under unstupidity
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As a straight man, I love Dublin Pride as a spectacle above all. A festival of bright colour, an astoundingly optimistic and positive oasis in a year where all news seems to be bad.
Today was great fun, and took place in sweltering, vicious sun. These photos, all taken with the camera on the iPhone 3GS, capture the colour well.
Popularity: 39% [?]
Tags: Bad Today, Bright Colour, Dublin, Fun, iphone, Man Love, Oasis, Photos, Pride, Spectacle, Straight Man, Straight Pride, Sun, Sun Photos
Initial review o iPhone 3GS in Ireland.
Posted by admin | Filed under gadgets
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/llgrq7 ]
So, the wait is over, and I have my hands on the iPhone 3GS. Ireland apparently only has black editions of the phone, but I managed to get a 32GB model.
The staff at the Dublin Henry Street store were exceptionally professional and friendly, and very knowledgeable about the phone, which is something of a rarity these days. The store opened at 8.00am this morning to serve a queue of some thirty hopefuls.
Stock was an issue for the store, as they explained as we entered; in fact they had only five 32GB units in the whole store, which caused consternation… when I was the last person to get one.
The upgrade was simple and pain-free. The insurance premium is increased to €9 per month, an increase of some 50%, which is somewhat steep but not a major issue when pitted against the alternative of having to replace a stolen or broken unit.
After the unbox, the application of a rather lovely iFrogz two-piece case and a brief charge, the iPhone sprung into life, amazingly quickly. From button in to unlock screen was a brief 16 seconds, which isn’t slow when compared to the 3G, which clocked 28 seconds, nearly twice as long.
The new iPhone wall charger for the UK and Ireland (and presumably Cyprus) is a design classic again, a single piece, tiny plug which more resembles a safety cap for a 240V socket than a charger. If it gets any smaller it’ll have to be a sticker.
Backup of old phone and transfer of applications took, all in, around an hour, but it’s an automated process now and works well. Purchased music transferred through the authorisation process and copied to the new phone seemed a little faster, but this could be margin of error and won’t ruin your day either way.
The new coated screen works nicely, and to my mind is nicer to work with than the 3G. The oleophobic coating everybody’s been talking about does make it easier to clean, hence no cloth with this iPhone.
3G signal browsing is faster than the previous model, but your mileage may vary. I tested using some – ahem – specialist video websites and was delighted to see content fairly jumping off the screen.
My WiFi setup has had some issues, so i won’t try to do comparisons, but suffice it to say that after tweaking, it’s very, very acceptable and noticeably faster in straight data haul than the previous model, which was never a slouch,
Graphics performance is improved in real life. Some games which were good in the iPhone 3G get a new lease of life and smoothness with the new hardware. Virtual Pool and X-Plane were always fast, now they’re slick and smooth like you couldn’t believe in a mobile handset.
Voice controls really do work exceptionally well, with the ‘dial’ command taking the numbers accurately as fast as I could say them, and not requiring anything unnatural in intonation or speed. A little surprising that even when listening through headphones, the phone repeats the Voice Commands throught he unit’s speakers.
The compass works.
The camera autofocus is fine, will report on it soon.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Tags: 3g, 3gs, Automated Process, Consternation, Cyprus, Dublin, Henry Street, Hopefuls, Insurance, Insurance Premium, iphone, ireland, Margin Of Error, Mileage, Piece Case, Queue, Rarity, Safety Cap, Unbox, Wall Charger
I can haz iPhone 3GS?
Posted by admin | Filed under gadgets
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So here goes, prepare to hear the sound of the world’s smallest violin playing. I am on the way to Dublin City Centre to queue for an iPhone 3GS.
O2 official policy is ‘no preorders’ but it seems very many stores have taken allocation lists. The rule should be first come first served, according to O2’s website and forum, but we’ll see.
In any case, I’ll of course be boringly tweeting from the queue, if there is one, and either pissed off to have gotten up an hour early or delighted to be one of the first in Ireland. I’m not laying bets either way. In either case, this could be bad PR news for O2, since it seems two constituents (the people who blog and use the O2 website for information and the people who go into stores to show their interest) have been told very different things.
I am very interested in one other possibility: the one where fanboys manage to convince themselves that there are hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously not in contract just on Launch Day for the new phone, who desperately want one. I am sceptical of that, but I have seen incredible hype before, and this appears to be just capable of falling into that category.
The funny thing, of course, is those who just can’t take the pressure of not getting it on launch day.
If I don’t walk out with one, I will find a nice little café and have a good hearty breakfast, realising I’ll get it soon. It is exceptionally unlikely I will die, if we’re honest. Some of the foamers on the forum yesterday, however, typing in all caps, screaming that people are incompetent, threatening to break their contracts and calling for blood, may just pop an eyeball if the manager says ‘you’re not on the list’.
Popularity: 41% [?]
Tags: 3gs, Bets, Caps, Constituents, Contracts, Different Things, Dublin City Centre, Eyeball, Foamers, Funny Thing, Hearty Breakfast, Hundreds Of Thousands, Hype, iphone, ireland, Launch Day, O2 Website, People, Pr News, Queue, Violin, Violin Playing
I’m blaming the wronged woman.
Posted by admin | Filed under Hoons, politics
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/mo6jkv ]
Nadine Dorries, the whingeing, pouting troll from the Derek Draper / Damien McBride smearathon, outlived her usefulness a while ago and may now be usefully dismissed to the backbenches to deal with littering, dog fouling and leisure centre opening times in her charming constituency.
No doubt she will also find the time to give a speech or two in committee or the House, beggaring the belief of the inquisitively minded, spouting some pseudoscientific tosh or other and attempting to restrict the lives of women or promote some cult or other.
Perhaps she will find a flattering new angle from which to have her photograph taken for her audaciously poor blog. One that just shows a bit of womanly flesh, though nothing too likely to give the vicar a heart attack. You know the sort. Wink. Wink.
Why, you may ask, the sudden vitriol poured on La Dorries? What has the woman done to deserve this, the poor wronged darling? Isn’t Nábídána being a little bit harsh?
The fact is that, the day she was smeared by Messrs Draper and McBride, she became somewhat useful to the Tory party. It’s not often that a backbencher becomes useful to the leader, and when one does, it’s a nice time to have the photo taken with the leader, perhaps have a nice cup of tea, and do a round of the TV stations. And, when the leader’s office PR person goes home, that’s what you’re supposed to do as well. Nice long Radox bath, listen to some Rachmaninov. nice night’s sleep.
What one is not supposed to do is seize the opportunity to publicise your most lunatic and deranged policy fantasies, nor play to the masses of fellow morons who by turns visit every comments board in England saying something mawkish, basically nonsensical and ill-conceived.
But the worst thing about this mewling, sputtering klutz is the way in which she drew attention to the annoyance it would cause Tories for Bercow to become speaker. Her blog and her MoS article were object lessons for Labour MPs. ‘Care to really piss off the Opposition? Please vote Bercow.’
She is so arse-sweatingly naive it makes me choke just to think of her putting her head above the parapet, distracting from the hard work being put in by the Leader’s office and the Shadow Cabinet to control the level of odium surrounding Bercow. Until she learns the art of political subterfuge, she needs to keep her head down.
As it happens, I used to count Bercow as one of my political heroes, and, reading of his work for Burma, I feel there’s still much to respect about him. But our path as a party would have been much much easier and calm had we managed to get Sir George Young or Sir Alan Haselhurst into the big green seat. As much as anything else, I blame the wronged woman for the failure to control and command this election.
Popularity: 89% [?]
Tags: Backbencher, Comments Board, Cup Of Tea, Dorries, Draper, Heart Attack, Klutz, Leisure Centre, Messrs, Nice Cup Of Tea, Nice Night, Nice Time, No Doubt, Object Lessons, Oppo, Pr Person, Tory Party, Vicar, Vitriol, Wink Wink
Whither Democracy or ‘Why is Gordon still here?’
Posted by admin | Filed under Hoons, politics
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/muadtz ]
How’s democracy doing? Is it alright? Perhaps it’s just sleeping?
Popularity: 55% [?]
Some subtle website changes
Posted by admin | Filed under this blog
[Tiny alternate link for this article: http://tinyurl.com/nkru3j ]
I’ve pulled the font colouring up a little bit, to help those on older or less bright monitor configurations. Sometimes I just forget that not everybody’s monitor is calibrated.
In addition, I have introduced autocaching when traffic heats up, as it has been since the Damien McBride scandal.
The site performs much better today on the iPhone than it did before.
Finally, something I should have done a long time ago, i have introduced the most comprehensive social bookmarking setup I can find, which should keep everyone happy.
Popularity: 49% [?]
Tags: Colouring, iphone, Little Bit, Long Time, Scandal, Traffic, Website Changes
Total Cost of Ownership for iPhone 3GS in Ireland
Posted by admin | Filed under gadgets, the interwebs
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I’m a geek. As a result, I think I got this right, but I may be off on my maths. Consider the sweet spot, which I reckon is the €65 with unlimited texts.
| Tariff | 8GB | TCC | 16GB | TCC | 32GB | TCC | |
| Fee | Fee | Fee | |||||
| Silver | 45 | €99 | €909 | €199 | €1,009 | €299 | €1,109 |
| Gold | 65 | €49 | €1,219 | €129 | €1,299 | €229 | €1,399 |
| Platinum | 100 | €0 | €1,800 | €79 | €1,879 | €169 | €1,969 |
| Unlimited | 40 | €99 | €819 | €199 | €919 | €299 | €1,019 |
The upshot appears to be that the new iPhone’s TCO is significantly more expensive than the iPhone 3G, but significantly less expensive than the cost of the original iPhone. The value of 16GB of extra storage (32GB vs 16GB) is €100 (except on Platinum where it’s €90) which may make people who thought they should stick with the 16GB option less likely to do so.
All in all, this is a relatively okay package, and, though we wait for the tethering announcement, many people will be pleasantly surprised by the costings.
@Talk202 seems to have done well!
Popularity: 100% [?]
Tags: 12 Months, 3g, 3gs, Cost Of Ownership, Extra, Fee Fee, geek, Gold, iphone, ireland, Maths, Platinum, Storage, Sweet Spot, Tariff, Tcc, Tco, Texts, Total Cost Of Ownership, Upshot
