Will normal service ever return?

Good question! I am reading lots of books at the moment and drowning is existential angst? It is also easier for me to post stuff on Facebook and Twitter than it is posting stuff up here.

I hope to come for air on here in a month or so. I have more books to read.

PS ‘If you would be a writer [blogger], first be a reader. Only through the assimilation of ideas can one begin to focus on his own ideas.’ -Allan Eckert

PPS ‘If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time and the tools to write [blog].’ -Stephen King.

Road Map Check Time

Stopping as I’ve got a few potential events in the next couple of months I want to get into order. Also I want to have a book buying splurge, Also how best I can get what I want to say is nagging away.  However, I hope to get back in WordPress land in just over a week.

Warmongers agogo!

Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  & Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu aka The Dangerous Brothers

Has anyone suggested that this pair get into a boxing ring and go hell for leather at each other? It would be lot more fun and a hell of a lot more safer than lobbing missiles in each other’s directions across the Middle East.

Two things I never  understand about the whole situation (i) Iran has loads of oil-why does it need nuclear power? and (ii) it is the biggest open secret in international politics that Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons. If that lot  cannot deter an Iranian nuclear attack what will?

 

 

Media Musings

So it looks like we are going to get The News of the World back   The Sun On Sunday.  There has been talk of it going live on April 29th, but we shall see. As the above graphic hints at (courtesy of Glenn Beck), I think The Sun, if it is sold, will end up being bought by some of Mr. Murdoch’s Chinese Communist Party cronies (quite possibly they will  give it a strapline of ‘The People’s Daily’).

Meanwhile two predictions, one new, the other an oldie. The oldie is that The Guardian and The New York Times will merge in the next few years, making one big North Atlantic Anglosphere Liberal behemoth. The other is that The Observer will become part of  Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev’s Indie/Evening Standard stable, quite possibly at the same time as  the The New York Guardian Times appears. If The Observer’s late great Music, Sport and Women’s Monthly magazines (there is only the Food Monthly left, and that is only really for  people who cannot get enough of celebrity chefs)  were to be brought back, that would be good news indeed…

The Prodigal Returns…

Back blogging. Apols for taking so long to get back ot it. There have been various noises off, but the main reason has been a general lack of inspriation in recent times.

So here goes….

Work in progress…

…the ideas are all there, but knocking it into some sort of blog-friendly shape is another matter.

I now have a new computer (not a Dinky Toy Chromebook but a proper fast PC). I am hoping to start knocking stuff out out again w/c Feb 13th.

Happy Christmas & a quick announcement!

My lust for the Precious drew me to Mordor and all I got was this lousy hat!

2012 I will get back into blogging. I should be getting a new (and hopefully better) computer in the second half of Jan. The one I have now came into a world before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, BBC iPlayer etc really existed. The new one that I am getting will have a memory that can cope with the age we are in. In the meantime I will decide what I want to do with my blog. Blogging-wise I lost my way a fair bit in 2011 (and in hindsight it started to go awry in the summer of 2010) but that was largely as I didn’t really know where I was going. I now have some time to recuperate and decide the direction I want to go. I might even find a back on an envelope to scribble a ‘social media strategy’ on!

Anyway, enough from me for the moment. Have a great Festive Saeaon, best wishes for 2012 and see you again soonish!

 

Blogging since November 2004…

…and I feel like a proper break from it all. I’ve got existential issues to deal with (nothing too heavy though!). I will return. In the meantime, if you can help:

Back From Beyond…

…well, Vancouver anyway. Lots of good weather, lots of decent things to do. If you are from there, or around there, or visiting, I would  suggest you give  both The Vancouver International Fringe Festival (happens in September) and The Terminal City Rollergirls (games all year around) your support as much as possible!

I get back to London and it is sweltering. My brain is slowly starting to clank into gear. One thing I have decided since getting back is to give Ken Livingstone my second vote in next year’s London Mayoral contest (after giving my first preference to Green candidate Jenny Jones) simply because he supports a 5% cut in bus and tube fares. The way prices and the cost of living are going up at the moment, anything that makes a dent in inflationary tendencies should be welcomed.

1981: does anyone else remember a flat fare of 2p on all West Midlands bus journeys 30 years back?

Transport for London are saying reducing fare prices will mean less investment in London’s transport network. However, what does ‘investment’ mean in practice? A load of  corporations getting taxpayers money hand over fist and a lot of the tube system being closed down at weekends to allow ‘essential engineering work’ for ‘improvements’. In my experience, such ‘improvements’ have to be further ‘improved’ before not too long at further expense. (Incidentally, it always makes me smile whenever I see Thames Water signs in a seriously dug-up London street making a big deal about all the ‘Victorian water mains’ they are having to change. The way most big business-owned ‘public’ utilities work this days, they’ll have to change the pipes a fair while before- to use their monarchical references- Charles III/ William V succeeds the current head of state.)

So Ken it is (unless, of course, it is a Green landslide on the first ballot…) He has many faults, but the thought of 4 more years of London having a Mayor who is straight out The Drones Club from PG Wodehouse’s novels is all too much for me!

After The Millennium Triology…

(…which I started Saturday lunchtime and finished on Tuesday morning! I did sacrifice a bit of my life to do so though!)

I’ve seriously neglected this blog again, and am about to do so again very soon. I’m off to Vancouver in  a day or two for a few weeks, then back at work for a few days. So I won’t really back in the blogging fray until late September. I’ve wanted a serious break (mentally) from it all for a while.

This chap has the right idea…

There’s a number of reasons:

(i) information overload;

(ii) a weary seen it all before attitude towards the world (and in my lifetime, apart from nuclear war, revolution in the West and the Earth being attacked by aliens and/or a giant meteorite, I have seen it all);

(iii) increasingly unco-operative and slow computer and internet browsers (the phrases ‘Google Chrome’ and ’Google Chromebook’ increasingly come to mind as solutions) &

(iv) another mediocre summer weatherwise.

So I need a serious break to recharge the proverbial batteries and I can face the world again and get it all sorted out!