Sorry – I can’t let this one go past without sticking my oar in. You see, the difference between this and the run of the mill government whitewashes of yesteryear is that we saw the inquiry and had full access to the evidence. Like with an Agatha Christy novel we could all play detective and try to work out whodunnit. However in this case the evidence was so stark that you wouldn’t need the uncanny skills of Mrs Marple or Hercule Poirot to work out that of course the government lied. Every pundit, journalist and bystander was waiting patiently for Blair to get a right pasting and, surprise surprise, Hutton paints a halo on him and attacks the BBC ? Even ITV sounded shocked about the outcome. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only person on the news who seems to share my anger about the whole shabang is Boris fucking Johnson.
So Gred Dyke resigns, and his employees come out in protest. If my boss were to resign I don’t think we could muster a demonstration against it, and that’s not because no-likes this person, but you’d have to feel pretty strongly about it to consider standing out in the cold waving banners. And it is really, bloody cold today.
There’s a protest tomorrow outside Downing street.
For the record, here’s what I think went on…call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, that just demonstrates you don’t like questionning what you are told.
Hutton starts writing his report. As a government patsy he makes the government out to be not as tarnished as they should be. Meanwhile No 10, MI5 and MI6 are terrified that they are going to be revealed as even slightly questionable at a time when public confidence is already dangerously low. So, a couple of very senior intelligence officers approach Hutton in some posh London club, and gently “encourage” him to change tack…in the name of the Queen…for the defence of the realm…to protect the constiturion…for ENGLAND…etc etc..you know…that sort of MI5 bollocks they always say. So he tears up his original attempt and writes a long love letter to those bastards in No 10 and follows up by sticking pins into tiny dolls of Greg Dyke and John Humphries. You couldn’t make it up.

[the ‘d’ on the keyboard is dodgy this time. Please excuse typos]
A day after the last blog about Eltham, a news item appeared on the local news which illustrated why the presence of the Eltham Grill, Booers and a nice church wouldn’t be enough encouragement for me to move back there. At 5pm a woman, walking along Court Road, was repeatedly stabbed in the face with an 18 inch screwdriver, weilded by a bloke she didn’t know, who had just leapt out of a car. Amazingly she was fine and managed to grapple the screwdriver out of his hands. Eltham means “place of swans”.

One problem with the Atkins diet that is neither mentionned on the website or in the book is that it can seriously limit the number of sandwich reviews you can write. So, dear reader, I’d like to urge you to consider reviewing a sandwich or two. The next time you buy a sandwich, no matter how pedestrian the filling, keep the sticky label that has the name, price and title on it, so when you are near a computer you can run off a quick review. It really doesn’t take long, and it could save a life. I’m sure.

This week has gone past extremely quickly for me. I don’t know whether it’s down to endorphins released by the high-fat diet, the lack of alcohol or being really busy but it was quite an enjoyable week. One thing, now I’m thinking about it, is that I managed to solve a long running, diabolical problem with an LDAP server that was causing lack of sleep on my part, terror on the part of a colleage, and self-righteous anger on the part of several hundred students. This little success shone a much brighter light on the working week.

Still no letter from Satan’s lawyers. Hmm.

Thank GOD I don’t live in Texas. One of Channel 4’s new freakshows is all about Texas and the supposedly mad things that go on there. You can forget the actual subject matter of each show, just look at the scenery and the “normal” people there. They all look the same sarge; big blokes in shorts and baseball caps or big women in ugly dresses. They go on about God all the time in the most surreal, nonsensical way and then lock themselves in their houses where they can spend the rest of their evening spamming loads of Internet news groups and bulletin boards with how great it is to be free and to have found Jesus.
There was one about Texan muslims. Mad as arseholes of course but not as mad as the majority of the others who claim to be Christian. One voice over accidentally summed up the whole of the American way of life describing a born again Muslim:
“…she changed her name to Jasmin and swapped her business suit for muslims clothes.”
Beautiful. Switching one religious belief (capitalism, family, christianity) for another. A different uniform, a different lexicon, but still just another religion. Another attempt to find the answers to life by following people who claim to know.

Tonight the news is full of people wringing their hands at how dangerous the Internet is and how the new “3G” revolution is going to make it easier for paedophiles.
Chat rooms – BURN THEM!
Web cams – BURN BURN BURN!
Anarchist sites – BURN THE WITCHES!
Mobile phones – BURN!
The Internet – BURN!
You’ll never stop evil thoughs while these vile things exist. Take a leaf out of Iran’s book – restrict all access to the Internet except for good, wholesome sites that preach the correct things. And it’s not just the Internet either. Another, even bigger, threat is already with us, right under our noses. Books. Books can be used by terrorists, paedophiles, communists, anarchists and vegetarians to propagate evil thoughts. Unlike the Internet they need no power and their storage doesn’t degrade for thousands of years. It’s time to take action against this scurge: Burn your books and your neightbours books. Burn all bookshops and libraries. After this we need to remove the evil words from our language and form a new, clean, pure language that doesn’t allow people to articulate these vile concepts, until they can no longer exist even as thoughts. Only then will we be truly free.

Microsoft’s lawyers have been trying to get in touch with me. It seems they think my fuckhotmail.com site is an infringement on their trademark. Poor little sods. Either they haven’t realised it is simply a satirical work of art and not commercial in any way, or they are unaware of an interesting legal precident. Either way I’m chuffed to bits. Pissing off Microsoft with something so trivial turns me on you know. I had a long chat with their lawyer today, hell I’m not paying him after all, and it seems they have been trying to send me a “cease and desist” letter for the last month. And they failed. I mean I know our postal system isn’t what it was, but still…Firstly they sent a courier round who attempted to deliver the letter to “Reverend Victor Edgehead”. Someone in the house, the downstairs neighbours probably, told them, quite rightly, that no-one of that name lives here. It’s a joke name you see (although I am genuinely a minister of the Universal Life Church) However, they quickly deduced my real name and address – something that should take a brain-damaged monkey less than a minute do achieve, and still failed to get in touch with me. In a pathetic attempt to get my attention, they decided to try and attack me via my work, a typically sneaky, underhanded, impotent Micrsoft maneuver. If they had really wanted to get in touch they could have tried calling my workplace, or even sent me a letter by post…but no.
Anyway – they’re going to try and send me the letter by post now…if they can sus out how to stick the envelope down and work the postbox. I’m looking forward to receiving it as I’m sure it will look great in a frame.

What irritates me about this sort of thing is the blatant, shameless hypocrisy. Why the fuck should Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world, give a toss about my rinky-dinky little protest site ?
Not only that, but why should the law be in a position to help them ? Despite living in a supposedly free society we can’t actually alter the law. All we can do is choose which self-interested, lying bastard we want to represent us in government and hope they do us a favour. Ultimately, money wins in all things. Money makes and breaks laws all the time

Justice is open to everyone in the same way as the Ritz Hotel.
– Judge Sturgess

“If freedom is outlawed, then only outlaws will be free”
– A.N.Other

Even though it’s only January 4th, I’d like to make a nomination for Freudian slip of the year: Tony Blair, during his cringeworthy speech of lies to 600 of the 10,000 British troops in Iraq, said:
“[the evil baddies] are developing weapons that can cause distraction…destruction on a massive scale”.

Perhaps the Hutton report was playing on his mind? he also said:
“no democratic regime would spend billions of pounds on chemical and biological weapons when its own people were suffering”

Well, according to this report from the New Policy Institute, many people in the UK (a country that over the years has spent billions on developing chemical and nuclear weapons) are suffering from extreme poverty and are more likely to suffer from serious Health related problems. Does that mean Mr Blair no longer regards the UK as a democratic regime ?
Tone, our reprasentative, also told the incredulous troops that not a single person back home did not feel proud of the work they were doing. Well, there’s at least one Tone; me. These poor sods have been sent to fight on the basis of lies, and on behalf of the worlds richest men. They haven’t seen their families for months and have no idea when they might return. I’m surprised none of them took a pot-shot at our glorious leader.

Well, back to work tomorrow and the dread is now in full flow. The new year celebrations were pretty enjoyable for my part – Tony and Zap came round and we wandered to the offy, got 6 cans of wifebeater each and took them up to Alex’s where we drank them. Alex also cracked open the champers and single malt! At about 11:30 we left; Alex was meeting up with his partner and we went over to Toby’s place where he, Petra, Mark, Steffi and her sister were having a quiet night in. Unfortunately the Stella, champagne and whiskey we had imbibed prevented us from maintaining the quiet atmosphere. Loads of choccies, pizza and Mark had brought along a 20 quid firework which was ignighted at midnight. It went bang, very loudly, and fired these coloured balls of light into the air….for about 20 minutes. There was an air of danger in that it looked a lot like it was going to go wrong and start firing at us. This kept us awake. I’ve got a few photos, but they were all taken at about 3 am when everyone was falling asleep and so aren’t very exciting.

New year’s day was spent doing more vegging with Tony – a common, but very enjoyable theme of this holiday. In the afternoon we went down to Lewisham and had a pint each in the Watch House, the White Horse and, after a long walk, the Dacre Arms. I’d arranged to go over for dinner at my parents and so had to shoot off.

One of the ideas I’d had about the New Year, in embryo, was to do the Atkins Diet. Please don’t groan, shake your head or give a derisory laugh unless you’ve either read the book or looked at the website because you almost certainly have the wrong idea about what goes on. The most interesting part of the deal, from my point of view, is that the induction bans drinking. So I haven’t had a drink for a couple of days now and will try to hold out for a fortnight at least. That alone should help me in more ways than one. The ultimate test of will power was last night, saturday night, when I turned down two invitations to the pub. Not bad eh ? Another good thing is that I appear to be eating more healthily than I did before. Funny old world.