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 too poor to raise a family 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.

We are approaching the end of yet another year and as usual this is the time when everyone writes those the best 10 lists.
So I found this site that has a few already. Funny how nobody ever agrees.
For people that are really into lists, and they like to tick things they have done, seen and places they have been I suggest to visit this website.

I don't normally talk about personal things, well I only do it occasionally and in passing, but I have to write about something that seems to permeate through every aspect of my life at the moment: disappointment.

I'm disappointed at the way things go generally, just looking at the papers, I'm also disappointed at many other things some not that important but I cannot stop thinking at how much effort I often put into things only to end up disappointed.
I don't like feeling sorry for myself, and I normally don't but I seem to go through a period that has a main theme and that theme is disappointment.

Maybe this is the phase that I have to go through before I turn into a grumpy old man?

Partly because I'm getting softer with my increasing age partly because the quality is so much better here than YouTube (unsurprisingly as the file is 248.4 M, well I've decided to place a link to a video. And then as an amazing coincidence I used to love this when I was 14. Well I still do really. I would never admit though that I don't feel like writing today.

Conservative leader David Cameron has told his party it must back his drive to modernise or face a fourth consecutive general election defeat.

Mr Cameron told the Daily Telegraph it was "tough" if traditional Tories concerned by the direction he is taking the party were annoyed "along the way".

He said the party had to "change to reflect changes to British society".

Full article of someone else. Without mentioning any names of course.