Freeview. What is it good for?!

To borrow a phrase from Edwin Starr, Freeview. What is it good for?! Absofuckinlutely Nothing!

Freeview, promotes itself as "free TV land".

Well, I guess that's true, if...

If you like your TV shows' video to stutter and stop several times per minute.

If you like your TV shows' video to be peppered with out of synch picture lines.

If you like your TV shows' audio to lose almost half of the total number of words in a given show.

If you like your TV shows' audio to lose at least a third of sentences/paragraphs per show.

If you like your TV shows to be only those from the BBC.

For it's BBC shows/channels which are almost exclusively unfettered by the above problems. Oh, and shopping channels are also virtually untouched by the problems.

I've had this bloody freeview box for some six months and had the aerial adjusted several times. I can't get a new one because I live in a block of flats and the landlord isn't going to install a new aerial, and I don't blame him.

If this is any indication of what digital TV (now mandated by the government) is going to be like (and I have no reason to believe it won't be, based on the history of cockups by this and other governments) I'll pass. I'll keep my current TV and VCR and just watch the hundreds of VCRs I own.

Freeview my arse.

More power to your pen, sir

Just had the following message in response to my Post Office related posts which I'm posting anonymously for the person for obvious reasons:

>Bruce, I own a Post Office and, really, couldn't put it better myself. Can't
>name names here... the management keep a very close eye on what we
>say I'm afraid....
>More power to your pen Sir!D.

Thank you. It's good to see some postal employes/owners who don't just parrot the party line that "we couldn't survive financially if we didn't sell all that stuff".

Going even postaler (is that a word?)

Those of you who read my rant about the UK's alleged post office system, known as "Post Office Ltd" will know I'm not its greatest fan.

And now more than ever.

As if things with the post office system here aren't bad enough, it's been announced that some 2,500 branches (of 14,000 post offices nationwide) will be closed by the powers that be. And that's in addition to the closure already completed of some 4,600 post offices. The closing of this huge  number of post offices will result in some 45,000 jobs lost.

Which means to users of the post office system much further distances to travel in order to get to a post office, much longer queues, and staff over-worked even more than they currently are, by having to do the work of all those 45,000 workers who lost their jobs.

And the problems are already showing.

But you'd never know it to look at the way Adam Crozier, Royal Mail's chief executive, pay packets. Oops, sorry, Mr Crozier makes more
money than a simple pay packet can hold so he's paid by cheques or more likely by Direct Deposit into one of his bank accounts. You see,
according to "The Telegraph", "Last month, state-owned Royal Mail revealed that directors' annual pay, benefits and bonuses leapt from £4.3 million to £7.3 million." More specifically, it reported that "Mr Crozier received a total package of almost £1.3 million, up 16 per cent." What a lovely reward for what is in reality a dismal failure.

It's also a slap in the face of every post office worker and all the Postman Pats and Pams when you consider that Crozier's pay increase was
almost 10 times the 2.9 per cent awarded to other staff in the year to March 2007.

And it's especially a despicable act when you consider that Crozier's company, the Royal Mail, saw profits fall by a third, despite its effective monopoly over postal services. Now that's not just a newspaper's supposition, In May, the government produced its response to a public consultation on the post office network and said that changes were necessary to counteract losses which had risen from £2m a week in
2005/06 to £4m a week in 2006/07, all under the watchful, but useless eye of its chief executive, the terribly overpaid Mr Crozier.

With profits in the pan and going in an increasingly downward spiral, what does that overfed feline corporate idiot do? Why he authorises a very expensive TV advertising campaign.

According to The Independent, "They've gone full-on with the casting. There's John Henshaw from 'The Royle Family' doing his usual; there's a nice Northern Mum, a perky young Asian assistant in a suit and a shiny-eyed Billy Budd apprentice. The script is tremendously Northern Camp in the Alan Bennett/Victoria Wood/ Coranora manner.

"The manager has called a morning meeting because he's had an epiphany. "Are you all right now, Ken?" "Never better, Amir."

"Then he sees the light – meaning the lovely traditional Post Office light outside, which prompts a very odd exchange in a mix of Blair-speak and marketing-speak: "That's not just a logo – we have more than a brand – we have an institution... we have the trust of the nation because we are the People's Post Office".

"The People's Post Office"?!?!?!!?

Oh give me a fuckin' break!

This wouldn't be the same "people's post office" which now has posters all over its walls, starring that same Henshaw touting everything but postal services. To wit, car insurance, telephone service, mobile phone top up cards, currency conversions, travel insurance, life insurance for the over 50s, broad band Internet service and god knows what all else (here's a partial list of what else). And then at the bottom of one of those self-same posters, Ken says, "and oh by the way, we still do stamps."

Nice to know what I've been saying all along is now admitted by the idiots running the "postal service", and that is that postal services (IE taking care of the people's postal needs) is the last thing on their agenda.

Our "postal service" needs a root and branch refit. It needs to focus on serving the postal needs of the nation. I don't care if in rural communities they want to maintain the cosy country general store atmosphere. But in the cities and towns they need to leave the banking to the banks, the insurance coverages to the insurance companies, the phone and Internet products to the communications companies and so on, and just handle our postal needs.

Maybe then people won't go (in those few areas of the country where available) to the alternate companies now providing competition. Which is of course not competition, because these alternate companies provide postal services only (or primarily). It's time the Royal Mail's post offices did the same. And they need do so sooner, rather than later.

1984

England, the UK, Britain, whatever name you use for it, the most appropriate name is Oceania, one of the three countries in the world of
Orwell's "1984".

We have more Surveillance cameras in operation in public spaces, private spaces and any other spaces you can name, than any other country in the world.

We have the world's largest DNA database.

Our government wants every one of us to have a biometric ID-card with all sorts of our personal data on them and even more on the government database that will be the backbone of the system.

And yet:

"25m child benefit records lost"
"The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m
people." That's more than 7 million families.

Hmmm. And they (the government) can't figure out why the public doesn't want those ID cards, that DNA database, nor all those bloody cameras.

Don't Eat! Don't Drink! Don't Smoke! Just sit there and veg out and you too can live forever

Don't Eat! Don't Drink! Don't Smoke! Just sit there and veg out and you too can live forever.

Oh, and don't forget not to breath the air or go outside, or drive a car, or ride in a bus or train.

Yes, afraid the latest word from the medical profession's cancer specialists is that eating (especially red meat) or drinking even small amounts of booze, can cause cancer.

In my 60+ years on this earth I remember warnings about the air we breathe, the water we drink, the smoked/processed lunch meats we eat, the tobacco we smoke and just about everything else we do, because they're all bad for our health which means they  would do the most natural thing to us after being born, IE to die. Heaven forbid, that means we couldn't/wouldn't live forever. Oh my. What a shame.

Speaking for myself, I certainly don't want to live forever. I've lived my life, done my work, raised my family.

Yes, I guess perhaps I have more to offer, but in all honesty, if I die yesterday, I wouldn't be bothered in the least. Would you?

As I keep telling my doctors and nurses, when all the medical-types quit drinking (and smoking) then I'll consider quitting smoking.

Terhune Orchards Farm - What a great day out

As some of you will know, I recently visited my son and family in the States (see here and here). One of the highlights was a day out at
Terhune Orchards Farm. And what a day out it was.

No glitz and glittery plastic and steel theme-park junk. Just plain old-fashioned fun. The play in and on "toys" and the maze and the trip through the history of corn were all done with great creativity, ingenuity and imagination, making them not only fun, but educational.

And then there's the food. Delicious coffee and tea, lovely cookies and wonderful fresh vegetables and herbs were all on offer from friendly and
knowledgeable staff.

Definitely a place to visit when you're in the Princeton N. J. area. Highly recommended.

H L Mencken Got it Right

Once upon a time H.L. Mencken said:

" . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man
who can most easily and adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The
presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office
represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great
and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White
House will be adorned by a downright moron."

As he did, all too often, he got this warning right on target.

Fanny Hill coming to TV? - YEP!

That all-time most popular Hide-Under-The-Bed book of teen-aged boys, John Cleland's Fanny Hill : Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is finally coming to TV. With a screen play by that doyen of classic novels into great TV scripts, Andrew Davies, FH will hit the TV screens on BBC-Four TV with Episode 1 on Monday 22 October from 9pm-10pm and Episode 2 on Monday 29 October 9pm-10pm.

See the BBC's announcement here and see our Fanny Hill Books in the righ-hand column on our website.