A catch up on some political stuff

I haven't really blogged about the election campaign since it started in earnest. That's not because I haven't been thinking about it, but rather because I've been talking about it and watching it on the television and tweeting about it to such an extent that it was all starting to get a bit much for me. Even I, who am more interested in politics than most and try to be well-informed, have been flagging at times in the face of the relentless onslaught of the campaign, and the conflict it creates when you discuss it with people.

But anyway, we are now just one week away from election day, so I thought I'd catch up a little bit on the stuff I've been thinking about and where I think my vote will be going (at the moment) when I reach the polling booth.

The debates

I have watched the two leaders' debates with interest, and will be watching the third one tonight. I'm so pleased that they have held them, because it has really changed some of the feel of this election campaign for me, and it seems to have sparked some additional political interest amongst people who normally wouldn't care.

I feel that the format is rather dry, which is unfortunate, and I blame this mostly on the fact that the audience aren't allowed to clap or respond in any way to what they say. What's the point of having a mute audience? It just means it's the three of them talking to camera for long periods, like a party political. It gets much more interesting once they start debating properly and responding to each other, instead of just rattling off pre-prepared answers.

I felt that Nick Clegg was the clear winner of the first debate, based partly on what he said and partly on the way it changed public opinion of the Liberal Democrats. I felt he was always going to have the most to gain from it, as he was suddenly depicted on an equal footing with the other two leaders and people had to actually listen to what he has to say. And what happened in the polls once the three candidates were giving an equal platform? Suddenly it's a three-horse race, with all the parties polling around the 30% mark. That came as no surprise to me at all.

The second debate had no clear winner for me; not because Nick Clegg did much worse, but because David Cameron and Gordon Brown did much better and seemed to settle into the format much more. It was a little bit samey towards the end when they starting talking about similar issues to the previous week, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Stupid party political broadcasts

One of the things I really hate during any political campaign is scaremongering and negative campaigning. I realise that they're always going to do it, but it annoys me intensely because it detracts from the real issues and is insulting to the intelligence of the electorate.

There have been a couple of party politicals in the last two weeks that have riled me up in particular though.

The first was an appalling Labour advert featuring Eddie Izzard, that made me think much much less of him. In it, he talked about the Conservatives (why bother talking about Labour policies, eh?) and said "These are Thatcher's children! Be afraid, be very afraid!"

Fuck. Right. Off.

Seriously, how long are Labour planning on flogging Thatcher's corpse (interesting image) as a reason to vote for them? She was in power THIRTY years ago. It's fucking ridiculous! And contrary to the opinion of most uninformed socialists, she wasn't the worse thing ever to happen to this country anyway. A modernised economy and inflation reduced from 18% to 4% during her time in office? Yes, DISASTROUS. Such a terrible effect on the country that she was re-elected TWICE with whopping majorities and therefore had a clear mandate for what she was doing? Yes, that really shows how the people hated her. Hated her so much in fact that even after the Tories deposed her, they STILL got re-elected the next time around. It's not like everyone went running straight to Labour, desperate to be free from Maggie's claws, is it?

So anyway, I found that advert patronising, childish and irrelevant.

The second party political that's pissed me off is a recent one from the Conservatives, styled as a fictional advert from the Hung Parliament Party. Seriously, it looked like crap, like a GCSE Media Studies project, where it had been so hastily thrown together once the Conservatives realised a hung parliament was a distinct possibility. And it had a stupid noose logo everywhere, despite the fact that a noose would imply a HANGED parliament, not a hung one.

But leaving aside the generally shitty aesthetic aspects of it, the content was what really annoyed me.

A hung parliament would be undemocratic and would mean the country was governed via deals done behind closed doors, they said. It won't be the utopia of cooperation some people would have you believe, they said.

So they're saying that the present system is MORE democratic are they? A system where only 60% of the electorate vote, and then a party is installed as a majority government having received only 35% of that? That's 21% of the electorate backing the party that gains power, who then get to pick whoever they like to fill the cabinet and can spend five years legislating pretty much with impunity, even in the face of large-scale public opposition to any particular plan. How democratic is that?

And on the question of cooperation, other countries seem to manage perfectly well with coalition governments, including Germany: the strongest economy in Europe. The problem actually is that our two main parties are very used to having all or nothing, and they don't normally have to play nicely with the other children. They don't have to negotiate or compromise to get legislation through, they can just force it through on the strength of a questionable public mandate and a large majority in the Commons. A hung parliament doesn't necessarily mean an ineffective one, and the only way the Conservatives can guarantee there would be no cooperation is if they're saying they won't cooperate with any other party.

Anyway, I can feel I'm getting more and more riled up as I write this, so I'm going to leave it there. My final point will be to describe where my voting intentions lie at present, so I can compare that with next week.

At the moment I am voting Liberal Democrat. I would like to see them gain a much larger share of the seats in parliament, perhaps around 100, and for them to exercise that power to bring about political reform.

I really, really wanted the Conservatives to convince me and win my vote, and I gave them ample opportunity. But at this stage, my principal feeling is that I can't trust them. This is based particularly around the issue of gay rights, but has broader implications than that, and relates to the fact that members of the Conservative party don't actually seem to agree with the official line we are fed by David Cameron. There have been too many homophobic views expressed, and it has been enough to put me off. How would these MPs actually vote in the Commons on gay rights issues, if this is how they feel? What value is the official party line if the party's members don't actually support it? And that lack of trust and credibility on gay issues has seeped across and eroded my support for them in other areas, and my whole opinion of them.

My main disagreements with the Liberal Democrats are on issues such as the euro. I don't want us to join the euro, I don't think that we need it or that it presents sufficient benefits to us. However, as the LibDem pledge is to hold a referendum on the issue 'when the conditions are right', I can live with that. If we have a referendum, I'll vote no. And if most people vote yes, I'll just learn to live with it. It's a democracy after all; if that's what the majority of people want, then so be it.

So that's my political update and I'll shut up now. Roll on election day because it's all starting to get rather exhausting.

Birthday shopping success

Having said to everyone that I don't know what I want for my birthday, and I don't need anything, and don't bother wasting your money if I don't want anything, I actually had a highly successful trip to the shops on Saturday and bought myself LOADS of cool stuff.

The coolest acquisition was these fucking excellent shoes:

I'm wearing them right now and I looooooooooove them. They are Onitsuka Tigers, and I've wanted some for ages but always decided they were too expensive. They're not too expensive when I'm not paying though! For some reason I really like the pattern on the side (most Onitsukas have it), and I really like the colours on these too.

I also bought Amelie on DVD, which I have seen quite a few times but which I really like. It'll also be good for my French to watch it again too, I must be getting pretty rusty by now. I haven't read anything in French or Italian for ages and I know I'd be a bit tongue-tied if I tried to speak them now. In fact, some people who are only occasional readers of my blog may not realise that I actually have a degree in French and Italian and am supposedly fluent, because obviously it doesn't really come up very often when you spend your days pottering around doing (English) websites. I'm not fluent any more anyway, certainly not in Italian, although I could probably make an attempt at French and not sound too stupid.

Anyway, as well as Amelie I also bought Little Miss Sunshine, which I LOVE. I watched it the other night, I couldn't wait until my birthday to see it again. The little girl in it is just SO sweet, and the people are all such fuck ups, and the ending is just hilarious.

So yes I'm pleased with my DVD purchases.

AND on top of that, I bought three t-shirts. So not bad really! It's a nice feeling to come home clutching lots of shopping bags and knowing you've got lots of nice new things.

My plans for my actual birthday have been a bit last-minute (because I refused to decide what to do), but on Friday (my actual birthday) I'm now having people over to ours for booze and SingStar, and then we've got some friends coming to stay on Saturday and we're going to go clubbing and be entertained by Boogaloo Stu at Pop Kraft.

So it should be good hopefully. I hope very much to keep my drinking in check and not get carried away like I usually do, so that I don't suffer horribly the next day and end up spending my birthday weekend in bed or with my face in the toilet. That would be rubbish and would annoy me, so I must MUST remember to stop drinking at a sensible hour.

Will post some pictures of the weekend if any of them are stimulating enough.

In your FACE, Sony Ericsson

UPDATED 2 JULY 2015: During 2015 the domain name repairmob.com was purchased by a different company based in the United States. The comments made in this post bear no relation to the new owners of this domain name. This note has been added out of courtesy to the new owners.

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I fixed it!!!

This is an update to my post from yesterday about Chris' shitty broken Sony Ericsson.

I looked at it again last night, as I said, and tried the Phone Repair function that is part of its program on my PC again. It had already failed to repair it several times on Monday, so I thought it was a bit of a long-shot last ditch attempt, but I had suspected that the reason it was failing was that the battery wasn't lasting long enough each time for it to wipe and reload the software before the phone switched off.

It was difficult to charge the phone though, because it seemed to refuse to charge for more than 10 minutes at a time before all its lights went off and it looked suspiciously like it was ignoring the power input. So in the end I kept unplugging and replugging it every time the lights went off until I decided it might have enough power stored up to give it a go.

And it worked! I was SO surprised, as normally these things never do anything. It successfully downloaded the newest version of the software from Sony Ericsson, accessed the phone in some weird Flash drive mode, wiped everything (this is the point where it kept failing and I thought I might have actually made the phone worse than before), and then shoved the software back in before it ran out of power.

And now the phone is up and running again! Yes it has lost all of its previous data and phone numbers, but that ship sailed the minute it packed in on the plane anyway.

AND we won't have to pay anything getting it fixed, or mess about sending it off for repair. And that's probably all the repair person would have done anyway, so it would have been a total rip off.

So yay me!

One thing I forgot to mention before was that I am APPALLED by the new 'repair under warranty' system that Orange seem to be operating. When we went to the Orange shop and the guy agreed it needed to go off for repair, he gave Chris a card for a repair company who he said were now handling all their repairs. But in order to send it off to them for assessment and repair, even under warranty, you have to pay the company a £15 handling fee! How is that even legal? If it's broken and under warranty, it should be fixed at the expense of the retailer or manufacturer, surely? So we weren't very happy about that at all.

But anyway, fuck it, it's fixed now and it didn't cost anything, so repairmob.com and Sony Ericsson and Orange can all suck my balls. They'll have to form an orderly queue though.

FINGERS CROSSED it will remain fixed and not screw itself up again. My C510 lasted without error for a year after it had its software upgraded, so I'm hoping this will be the same.

I shall be basking in my own smugness until such time as it breaks again anyway :-)

Stupid Sony Ericsson AGAIN

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that last year I had some issues with my new Sony Ericsson phone. 'Some issues' is probably an understatement actually, as its software decided to completely fuck itself up and render the phone inoperable.

After some internet searching, it transpired that this was a not uncommon problem with phones using that version of Sony Ericsson's software, and that the only solution was to have Orange send it back to the manufacturer to be wiped and the new version of the software installed. This I did, and I lost all my numbers and it was annoying, but the phone at least worked again until I replaced it last month. Well, I say it worked, but that was only with some bits of paper jammed in next to the battery to stop it from switching off all the time, in another apparently characteristic problem with Sony Ericssons.

Anyway, shortly after my phone woes, Chris decided that he liked the tariff I was on with Orange, and he also wanted a 3G phone like I had, so off we toddled and bought him a nice new Sony Ericsson W595. As I mentioned in my previous post on this subject, that phone also had the randomly-turning-off problem, but as I didn't know about the bit of paper solution at the time we had to take it back and get it replaced immediately after we bought it. After that it was fine.

Except that after that it is NOT fine, stupid stupid me for possibly thinking that it would be. Because what has happened? The software has fucked his phone as well! As we boarded our flight to New York and he was checking his texts before switching the phone off, up popped, to my horror, a funny error message: "Insert correct SIM". Erm... OK, it's still got the same SIM in it.

Maybe it's got some dust in it. We'll just take the SIM out and put it back in and it'll be fine. No, no that's not done it. Well we'll just leave it switched off and then charge it up when we get to New York and it'll probably sort itself out.

Plug it in in New York. "Unable to charge. Use only a Sony Ericsson battery." Now WHERE have I seen that message before..?

I can't fucking BELIEVE it. What kind of faulty crap are Sony Ericsson producing?

So I bought my C510, and it broke. I got it back, and it still wasn't right, and I had to jam lime green post-it note pieces inside it just to make it work.

Chris bought a W595, and it had to be replaced straight away. And then the fucker breaks with EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM as mine a few months later.

I'm absolutely APPALLED. When the phones work, they are fine, brilliant in fact, and Chris had actually just said minutes before it broke "I love this phone, I don't think I ever want to change it". Ho ho ho, well thank you sod's law for pissing all over that.

But to have such a catalogue of failures just between the two of us I think is terrible. My previous opinion that Sony Ericsson make the best phones has been replaced by the view that they make shitty, shitty phones that you can't trust. I've never, EVER had a phone that has died due to a manufacturing error and needed to go back for repair before I bought my Sony Ericsson. I've had Nokias, Motorolas, LGs, and even a fucking Lobster (yes that is a real phone make), and they just worked until I replaced them or bashed them and the screen went funny.

And to make it worse, Chris doesn't have his receipt. Why doesn't he? Because when he took his first W595 back THE DAY AFTER BUYING IT BECAUSE IT WAS SHIT, Orange took it and clipped it to something so they could send the faulty one back to Sony Ericsson. So now it won't be covered under warranty.

What a fucking shambles.

There's a Phone Repair function on my Sony Ericsson PC Suite that I'm going to try again tonight which may allow us to fix it at home, but I tried it last night and it failed. I'm hoping that's just because it needed to be plugged in for longer so the battery had more of a charge. If it won't work, it'll have to go off for private repair.

I really don't think I can bring myself to buy a Sony Ericsson again. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

'Now you're in New Yoooooooooooork' (except I'm not because I'm back now)

Hello all.

I had a marvellous time in New York (concrete jungle that dreams are made of), it was really really good. And as a bonus I got back with 36 hours to spare before the whole world went volcano-crazy and had to resort to plebeian land-based forms of transport.

We walked MILES, at least five miles a day, and we did and saw so much, so I shall only share with you the highlights and some of the nicer pictures. It was meant to be a more relaxed trip to New York this time, as we'd already rushed around for four days there before doing all the touristy things, but in the end we did just as much this time. It's that sort of place, you can't really just sit around when you're in the middle of one of the coolest cities you can visit.

Our flight out from Heathrow was fine (good old Virgin Atlantic, they're always so good). We used Purple Parking at the airport, which I had been a bit worried about because I'd read some bad reviews, but in actual fact they were really good and ever so efficient. I guess some people just get unlucky and have a bad experience, but we thought they were really good.

Anyway, the flight was fine as I say, and I watched the film Precious on the way out. It's a harrowing film in many ways, but it's also brilliant and gritty, and kind of uplifting by the end. I also watched half of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which was crap and predictable and as annoying as any of the other JK Rowling drivel (I watched the second half on the flight home; it didn't improve).

The hotel was the same one as we stayed at on our honeymoon, the Chelsea Pines Inn on West 14th Street. It's a really nice gay hotel with very friendly staff, and all the rooms are named after movie stars and have their movie posters on the walls. This time we were in the Mitzi Gaynor room, which was a cheaper bracket of room than we had before, and it did show a bit. It was fine, nice posh furniture and stuff, but not as plush. I'd still recommend it anyway, and you can't fault the location; it's ideally placed so you can walk uptown to Times Square and the touristy bits, and downtown into Greenwich Village where lots of gay bars are.

Some of the exciting things we did included:

- Walking miles and miles up and down 8th Avenue, 7th Avenue, 6th Avenue, 5th Avenue and Broadway. We saw lots of skyscrapers, and went in loads of shops, but apart from my cool new Skechers I didn't actually buy anything. American clothes were so BORING. If I want checked shirts and chinos I can buy those at home thank you very much.

The shopping was not wasted time however, as several US stores apparently employ hot, semi-clad male and female greeters who entice you in and then stand there letting you drool over them. Principally I'm talking about Abercrombie & Fitch, and Hollisters. Behold the hotness:

And once you've walked around looking at all the hot boys (and girls dancing in stairwells in bikinis) you can swan back out again obviously without buying anything, and they STILL wish you a nice day.

- We went to a couple of museums: the Museum of Modern Art (the MoMa), where we saw lots of famous paintings by famous people. There was also an 'artist' woman who had decided that sitting in a chair in a red dress staring into space for three months counted as art. The museum apparently agreed, but it all seemed rather pointless to me, as she was obviously just sitting there wondering what to have for her tea. I liked this piece though:

And we went to the Museum of Sex, which was good for a giggle. I learnt about female anatomy:

And Chris learnt about sex toys:

- We went to quite a few different bars for drinkies. Some were very good (a bar called Pieces in particular), and some were crap (The Duplex). The Duplex was a pretentious piano bar where the drinks were over-priced, and they kept passing round this stupid fucking plastic top-hat to try to solicit tips for the pianist. Frankly, after paying £10 for two drinks AND having to tip the barmaid on top of that, we weren't prepared to give them any more money. "Has everybody had the hat?" they kept asking expectantly. Yes we had had the hat, and we passed it straight onto the next person thank you very fucking much. We didn't stay there long.

Pieces, on the other hand, had some excellent reasons to stay there, including this:

And I met @plaintruthiness whom I know from Twitter there too. I think that's the first person I know from Twitter that I've met in real life actually.

I had one night where I over-indulged and threw up everywhere when we got back to the hotel, and consequently one day with a shocking SHOCKING hangover, but other than that I coped fairly well given my general wussiness and lightweightedness.

- What else... oo yes, we saw Chicago on Broadway, which was fab! I knew nothing at all about the story, and so it was all new to me and I really really enjoyed it. Plus it had the third not-quite-so-famous one from Destiny's Child in it (not Beyoncé, not Kelly Rowland, the other one. Michelle summink) in one of the lead roles.

And I think that's about it! I'm obviously really pleased that we got back before the volcano erupted, as I'm not sure I'd fancy being stuck abroad indefinitely. Chris' brother and sister-in-law are currently trapped in Fuerteventura, but I think they're OK and the tour operator is looking after them, and so there are worse things.

I've been back at work for half a day now, and it's been alriiiiiiiiight, it could be worse, but it's still pretty crappy compared to swanning about in New York and photographing hot boys.

I have lots of other things I should write about that aren't New York-related, but I shall save those for later.

TTFN.

Silence is not golden, it's fucking boring

My trip home to see Mother for Easter was not too bad, we didn't have any disasters or anything, but it wasn't exactly fun either.

Whenever I speak to her on the phone, she normally complains incessantly about how noisy the neighbours/neighbours' children/railway line/nearby school is, are, or have been being. Any noise basically means that she can't rest, and therefore feels worse than even her usual level, and so she is obliged to spread some of that misery out to adjacent parts of the world. And this happens all the time apparently, it's like a non-stop noisy hell.

So when I got home on Saturday I was expecting there to be at least a pneumatic drill going off in next door's garden and some sort of monster truck derby happening in the street. I was surprised therefore to find no pneumatic drills and instead just complete, uninterrupted silence. Like serious silence too, you could practically hear it. I'm sure at one point my heartbeat was the loudest thing on the street.

"It's never normally like this!" says she. "You won't believe us now will you? They're normally screaming at each other next door! And coughing! You can hear them coughing all the time!"

Erm... coughing?

Anyway, it was very, VERY quiet. So that's good for Mum, I suppose. They don't do anything in that silence, they wouldn't want to break its pristine completeness. So instead you just end up sitting there. Reading. Or talking, but only very quietly, otherwise Mum says "You're being very loud Thomas!" (that's my Dad) and he is obliged to apologise.

And it's BORING. I need some damn stimulation! They even have the lights down quite low, so it's like you've wandered into one of those sensory deprivation tanks.

I was only there for 24 hours, but I'd gone pretty stir crazy by the end of it. No doubt the endless noise started up again as soon as I left, or so they'll tell me. Or perhaps no it won't, because it's never actually THAT noisy, but they've got nothing better to do than bang on about it all the time.

On the plus side, I did receive six Cadbury Creme Eggs in memory of the Baby Jesus (or something), so it wasn't all bad.

And I'm off to New Yoooooooooooooooork on Thursday, so it's not all bad.

Also, the General Election has been announced today, so I shall blog about that tomorrow if I get time. It's terribly exciting! Sort of.

Terrible blogger

I have turned into one of those bloggers I don't like who only updates their blog twice a month, making it a bit annoying to try to keep up to date with. It's my own fault really; once I leave it for too long, events either don't seem current enough to write about or they become irrelevant.

But anyway, in case you care here are a few things that have happened in my life recently.

Most excitingly for the geek in me, I have got a new phone to replace my Sony Ericsson C510. Yes I know I've only had my last phone for a year, but it's one of the few things that I treat myself to and spend any actual money on myself on.

So now I have a brand sparkling new HTC Tattoo, and so far I'm really pleased with it. It's my first touchscreen phone, and it has Wi Fi, which are the two things I really wanted. It seems really good, like a proper little computer in your pocket, and it's quite pretty too. The touchscreen is a bit annoying at times, as I knew in advance from the reviews, simply because it's on the small side and so it's easy to jab the wrong thing with your finger. I was texting my sister-in-law this morning and nearly wished her a Harrowing Birthday because of it. I'm getting used to it though, and the general interface and software is really nice.

The only thing that made my Sony Ericsson better was the awesome camera it had, that took some of the best photos I've ever taken. But I only really used the camera once a month or so, so I shall learn to live without it.

I've also been ill with a cold for the last week, which is quite annoying as I'd managed to go almost six months without catching anything. I've been proudly telling everyone that I haven't been ill for ages, so I suppose this is my payback for being smug. I'm hoping it will go away soon, not least because we go to New York in just ONE WEEK!

It's terribly exciting, even though I've been before. I was surprised to see that the temperature is in the high 60s out there at the moment, so it's really quite warm, which would be lovely compared to the horrible greyness we've had here lately. I think it might turn more rainy by next week, but I'm still vaguely hoping we'll get some early summer sun while we're there.

We'll be there for five nights, but I'm actually off work for a whole week and a half for it, which will be lovely. I'm sure I'll come back to a backlog of annoyances upon my return, but I'll worry about that when it happens.

Other than that, things have been more or less normal. My mother has been medium-crazy for the last little while, as opposed to her normal uber-mentalist state, so that's been quite pleasant. I did have her on the phone for 20 minutes today though in a stress because next door is apparently having their roof done, which will undoubtedly cause lots of noise and upset her. It hasn't caused much noise yet of course, she's just speculating and stressing in advance, but she likes doing that. If you haven't got anything proper to stress about, you may as well make something up - that seems to be her philosophy, and it gives her a reason to ring me up anyway. How nice for me.

That's all for now. I shall write more after the Easter weekend, which will involve a trip to see the mentalist mother and so will I'm sure provide lots more blogging material.