Well from once a day now I post once a month.
I think it's the fate of many blogs, you start with so much enthusiasm and end up writing twice a year. It's not that there is nothing to say, on the contrary and I cannot say that I've had more to do than usual but I simply do other things to pass my time. At the same time I've had this blog for nearly a year and I feel bad about neglecting it completely. Not that anyone would notice, not that the internet would miss my words it's just that I feel bad with myself for not being able to continue what I've started.

I break my silence with a quote for today

So you've got to do this together and you've got to do it in a way that doesn't end up actually putting people off the green agenda by saying you must not have a good time anymore and can't consume.
Tony Blair

Blair does not want to stop taking his foreign holidays, I think this makes me ask a few questions

1. When the same man at times appears so concerned about the nation's health and families why does he allow us to do what we want in this case? After all it might be a case of having a good time now and pay for it later. OK he doesn't smoke and doesn't eat lots of junk food so his government can tell us that they are bad for us while he does not want to stop his jet-setting therefore he can't tell us what is good for us in this case. It makes sense.

2. Do we always have to go on holidays to exotic places and consume a lot (provided it's not cigarettes and junk food of course) to have a good time? My best holiday ever was when I went camping in Somerset with hardly any money in my pockets, but maybe I'm weird.

3. Blair might decide that he does not want to preach (that would be good) but that still should not stop him from giving a good example. I would not be offended if he decided to spend his holidays at the Isle of Wight.

In these cynical times I find it difficult to be optimistic but as they say hope is the last to die so let's be optimistic.
The thing that always get me every year is that you watch all these fireworks displays from all over the world and you see people celebrating in the same way and hoping for the same things. Yet, we still manage to make it harder than it should be.
What else can I say?

As it's Christmas and if someone feels nostalgic here you can find several old radio versions of the Charles Dickens classic story.

A sad read

The U.S. administration promised Iraqi women a better life with new opportunities, but the reality after three-and-a-half years of occupation is far different. Iraqi women were promised 25 percent of the seats in parliament. As it turned, out, the Iraqi National Assembly has 85 women in a total of 275 members following elections held Dec. 15, 2005. But that has not translated into more rights for women across Iraq.

"We are just a part of the décor arranged by Americans who wanted to convince the world of the 'tremendous' change in Iraq," a female member of the Iraqi parliament said on condition of anonymity. "Our (women's) voice is never heard inside or outside parliament."

Full article

And today the Independent tells us that:

The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

I can't even pretend to be surprised.

Tonight this blog is not working for me, it's extremely slow, my PC seems to be fine with other sites so I assume the problem is here or all in my head.
I've found this simulation which I've decided I'm going to try to play, you have to be a uni student and survive. I don't know how it ends yet, I know I will end up badly as usual.

Something is moving at last. I've been saying a lot in this blog that with faster broadband connections and we've had for a while the technology for watching movies on the net. But there is hardly anything to watch for us poor Europeans. Yes there are lots of full movies that can be streamed in the many video sharing communities that imitate YouTube but I'm talking about legal content at a reasonable price. By reasonable price I mean either a monthly subscription that allows you to watch as many movies as you like or a pay as you go system which has to be considerably cheaper than renting a DVD from a shop.

Channel 4 is launching this new on demand service. And these are my first impressions. I've just downloaded and installed the software that goes with it. Everything works fine but the choice of things to see is still very limited. Plenty of Merchant/Ivory movies, Withnail and I basically all the Channel 4 productions such as Mona Lisa and that's it. TV wise well the usual culprits, Jamie Oliver, Wife Swaps a few fairly interesting documentaries but nothing that makes me go WOW I need to rent that now. There are a few thing that can be downloaded for free while TV programs are 99p each to rent for 48 hours and movies are £1.99.
I suppose I have to patient, there is this problem with rights and soon or later they will wake up and realise they have to provide a legal way to distribute movies and TV programs over the net just like the music industry had to realise a few years back.

I wondered what happened to Hotmail? there was a time when everyone used it not it seems to have faded in the background. I've never really liked it, I just opened a couple that I never really used, but I'm very curious and have to try everything. I was reading this article and I am very curious now about this free email service. So I've opened a free email account which is mf_london@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com
I don't care if I get spam as I don't think I will be using it much somehow, I was just curious.

From the Guardian

The central premise of the government's anti-poverty strategy, that work is the best route out of poverty, is questionable given that half of the 3.4 million children living in poverty have a parent already in paid work, the same proportion as in the late 1990s, the study concludes. A low-paid couple, it says, can only avoid poverty if both are working.

The big fall in poverty among pensioners, especially single pensioners, has been a major success of the anti-poverty policy, the researchers say. The poverty rate for pensioners overall has fallen from 27% in the late 1990s to 17% in 2004-05, and among single pensioners the rate has halved from 33% to 17%. But for working adults, the poverty rate remains unchanged since Labour took office at 19%, reflecting Britain's low wages.

I don't consider myself particularly intelligent but I had the pleasure to work in low paid jobs in London, years ago under the Tories with no minimum wage. In 1991 I was getting paid £1.90 gross per hour in a pub which in London considering that a room at that time was about £45 a week was nothing at all. The minimum wage might have helped to cut down the most extreme cases but to be paid minimum wage in London you are still poor full stop. Now the average bedsit in London is about £100 a week. If you look at job ads in the Jobcentre Plus website you find that lots of jobs are paying just the minimum wage and yet they ask for experience. So that means that if you are a barman or a kitchen porter in a few years your pay will be basically the same. What I am saying is that you cannot escape from poverty by working if your job keeps you poor. Yes, I know there will be those that say that you should improve yourself, study become a kitchen porter plus, a supervisor, a manager etc.
Well firstly there is never the need for that many chiefs. Secondly, OK Alfred is a kitchen porter gets an Open University degree and becomes an accountant, buys a car and does not feel poor anymore (can't afford to buy a house in London anyway). But someone else has to do Alfred's old job. It's always someone's turn to be poor. No, I don't have a quick solution, although I see lots of things that are really unfair and someone should have the political will to do something about it (have you recently seen in what conditions some people in London live? And they are paying good money for it,they spend most of their wages on it, why are some fat rich landlords allowed to make a fortune out of properties they are not prepared to put a penny in to maintain properly?)

Colette Marshall, UK director of Save the Children, said the government's strategy of getting low-income families into work was "clearly failing". "The government needs to address the issue of low pay but also acknowledge that work is not possible for all."

Instead of having me ranting about something for a change.
These are the 46 most useful free softwares, I think there is something for everyone, it's not just the list that is interesting (I actually hate lists but I feel compelled to read them, we are in a list driven world after all) or the links, but the lengthy reviews for each type of software. Since I've had a PC (10 years now, time flies) I must have tried hundred of freeware which I deleted, in most cases, ten minutes later. But I need to try everything, I can't help it.