Swatting Nick Griffin.

All the fuss over Thursdays appearance by Nick Griffin on Question Time is a bit sad. Lots of very earnest people screamed and shouted outside the BBC. They fought with Police and were seen being dragged out of TV Centre.

What did they hope to achieve ?

Simple - an increase in votes for the BNP.

Nick Griffin always like to present himself and his party as victims of "the system". Everyone is against them and by extension, the Hardworking British People. Had he been banned from QT then it would have been grist to his mill. As it was he came out whining about the way he was treated.

To be fair, he has a bit of a point. A million people voted for him. A million people think he is right (I won't accept protest votes, you vote for the harmless nutter as a protest, not the scheming Nazi) and that every non-white person should be ejected from the country. These people have a right to their opinion as much as anyone else no matter how abhorrent it might appear to be. So demented people being dragged out shouting "Shame on you BBC" are saying these people don't deserve votes.

In my opinion, Griffin deserved to be on QT so he could be shown up for what he is. If Jack Straw hadn't been so hopeless (come on Jack, you knew there would be a question on immigration and a meandering waffle doesn't count as an answer) then he'd have looked even more stupid than he did. His weird laugh was a start though.

Anyway, there is a simple way to defeat him. Not anger. Laughter.

At present, the BNP are taken very seriously. It's what they want. If we wish to defeat them then we need to laugh at them for the idiotic bigots that they are. Even Hitler wouldn't have got so far if people had just pointed and chortled at the sill little man. Griffin met with a chorus of the George Dawes "Shooting Stars" theme would look even stupider. If the crowd screaming at him had sung "He's a Baby. He's a Baby" in unison then the effect would have probably destroyed him.

What do you want, Blood ?

If you visit the national blood service website, you'll see that stocks are low. They always are.

But if you actually want to give blood then you better be prepared for a challenge. As someone with over 40 donations to his name I've always been amazed quite how difficult this is.

At present I'm working in Birmingham. Not a problem you'd thinks as there is a permanent centre in the middle of the city. Except that you can't get in. For a start the receptionist is (IMHO) the rudest I've ever encountered. Trying the door one lunchtime she shouted at me that I had to press the button and wait as there was someone in the reception already.

When you get in (another day) you climb the three flights of stairs and get to the centre to discover that you can't book an appointment there. Oh no, that has to be done via the website or 'phone. And if you ring up the call centre is rubbish. I wouldn't mind but I have a day off allocated to this task and I still can't get an appointment !

Of course the best day would be Friday, so I could go after sloping off early at work. But on this day the centre knocks off at lunchtime.

So perhaps I could come back to Leamington and go to a session there ? Oh no. They close at 7.15pm which doesn't give me enough time to eat and donate. And if you don't eat first, you'll feel faint, or at least I do.

And don't believe the adverts that say it takes 20 minutes either. That's 20 minutes once you get on a bed. They don't mention the 3/4's of an hour messing around and waiting before this. Allow 90 minutes for a donation is my experience.

So why are stocks low - because the NHS doesn't want to invest in a service that relies on the generosity of the public. Because you can't easily work and give blood. Because doing good doesn't pay nowadays.

Bus training

For the last few weeks I've joined that happy band known as "commuters". The experience has made me consider that a new qualification needs to be introduced. Welcome to the world of the "Using the Bus" qualification. Subjects include:

Knowing where you are going, or at least having a vague idea.
Occupying only a single seat when the bus gets busy.
Sitting next to people and why it's a good idea on a crowded bus.
Showering and general cleanliness.
Understanding when it is appropriate to have a long chat with the driver and when it is time to just get off or on quickly.
Packing baby buggies with all your worldly possessions yet still getting then on board.
Letting people get off before you get on.
How to turn your stupid tinny speakered mobile music system off.
Old people can be polite too.

Paying for your ticket:
*Understanding that the driver will be asking you for money.
*Comprehending the meaning of money or at least keeping your mouth from gaping when the concept is obviously introduced to you for the first time.
*Knowing where your purse/wallet is.
*Paying in denominations higher than 2p
*Paying in denominations lower than a £20 note
*Travelcards are your friend
*Why it is not cute to let your four year old buy his or her own ticket

Successful completion of this course will be essential before you are allowed on to any public transport before 10am. Then I stand half a chance of getting to work on time !

How Facebook will change the world.

Social networking: a good idea or just something to play with when you are bored at work ?

For most people I suspect it's the later. They log in for much the same reason they look at the BBC news website or any number of Blogs, the content might have changed from the last time they looked and sometimes that is all you need. Facebook has the advantage that it's a personalised news feed about you and your mates. You can contribute to the "conversation" or simply lurk and enjoy the show. As a storage medium for the greatest number of photos of drunk people it has no equal.

But I think it means more than this. Quite simply, Facebook will alter how people live in the future.

The easiest way to explain this is to examine the workplace. You probably spend more time with the people around you than you do with your friends or even family. Yet you have no control over who they are most of the time. In fact I bet that you would have never met them in your life except that you all ended up working at the same place. Now these people are generally not your friends - you stay together because someone pays you to. OK, so it's pretty common to make friends and even meet your spouse at work, but there is no guarantee of this and it's not really and essential part of the reason you are all there in the first place.

To prove this, simply think how many people you are in regular contact with from your last job. Or the one before that.Bet the numbers pretty quickly get back to zero as you work your way through your career.

But, along comes Facebook and you start adding some of these people to your list of friends. On-line everyone wants to look popular and your other friends won't know how well you know these people. That means though, that you never loose track of your old colleagues. Or school friends. Or people you met on holiday.

OK, so you still don't see them every day or even every year but you still have a window into their life. Their status will change every so often. You will see photos of what they are up to. You can never escape them or they escape you. To do this you actually have to delete them as a friend and that seems so; final. It's like dumping someone. They will know you did it so you opt for the easy life and just add to the list.

This is of course, weird. These people aren't really your friend except in the very loosest sense. The correct word is probably acquaintance. They are people you might nod to in the street or perhaps stop for a quick catch up chat but nothing longer than a couple of minutes.

Worse, you may feel it better to keep the peace and accept friend invitations from people you don't like. After all you are going to see this person on Monday morning so it's better to take the path of least resistance. Now you can't escape the annoying guy in the office - for the rest of your life.

People are already developing on and off-line persona's. Dealing with this huge slew of people who you once knew will be part of this. But as the boundaries get blurred, something they can't help but do since your real friends will expect to be Facebook friends too, this must affect your life. Maybe it will be a good thing with people realising this is a small world. Humans are, after all, social animals but what happens when you want to escape ? Can we ever be alone ? Can society accept that anyone would ever wish to be alone ?

Sick play ?

Apparently, the NHS needs to cut staff sickness. It's higher than that in most private sector companies according to a group of consultants.

In other words, people who work with ill people, some of whom have contagious diseases, are ill more often then people who sit in an office.

Or, people who have to do manual work, requiring precision and often the cleaning up of bodily fluids don't struggle in as often as someone driving a copy of Excel.

The funniest thing was listening to one of the consultant idiots on the radio saying how he didn't like the idea of being treated by the staff in hospitals he saw struggling in with illnesses. Yet a few seconds earlier he'd been banging on about how 15,000 extra people would work in the organisation every day if sickness was eliminated, forgetting that if sickness was eliminated then we probably wouldn't need an NHS...

Of course the BBC (remember, one newsreader=5 nurses 'cos we won't tell you) has its "Have your say" ranting board full of people advising beating ambulance worker who dare to get ill or baning sick pay like wot they do in Tesco.

Look at it this way. Tesco pay most of their staff minimum wage just. That means many simply can't afford a day of work if they are ill. Swine flu lasts around 3 uncomfortable days in most adults. That means the guy on the delicatessen counter has no choice but to come in if he feels under the weather. And he's handling your cooked meats.

Still think no sick pay is a good idea ?

No longer consulting the Oracle

Teletext is to die ! Noooooo.

OK, so I'm a Ceefax person really but I still think this is really sad news. I refuse to have a digital telly because you can't get viewdata and prefer this to the joys of BBC 3. Teh interweb is a marvelous thing but sometimes blocky text and low-res graphics are all you need to do the job.

The best news is via Ceefax. The stories are in a sensible order, uncontaminated by the need to have good pictures to illustrate them or pointless vox-pops from people who know nothing about anything and are just used as screen time fillers by lazy producers. Best of all the whole story has to be done and dusted in a single page which promotes good, concise writing. And you get as much information as found in any mainstream news bulletin.

Teletext (ne Oracle) was always a down market version of the BBC original, relying as it did on screen space wasting adverts to make money. In fact the comparison between the two was like the comparison between Bath and Blackpool. One is staid and beautiful, the other flashy and a bit cheap. It all depends what you want really.

Oh, and don't tell the BBC that you like Ceefax. I did during a tour of TV centre and the reaction from the guides was similar to that you would expect if boasting about your large collection of Gary Glitter records.

Where do Quango's come from ?

David Cameron, Gordon Brown and every other media tart in Government is promising "a bonfire of the quangos".

There are many of these organisations - I've worked with some of them in the past. They are full of people who once upon a time would have been civil servants, but because politicians like to fob off responsibility find themselves working for "independent" organisations. Of course politicians like power without responsibility so they then expand their departments to cover some of the same ground as a quango - the idea being that if there is a problem, the quango gets the blame, if things go well they say they did the work and take the credit. Essentially they are a way of doing something without increasing the public sector headcount. At least as far as the official figures are concerned.

However, listening to the radio today I could see where these sort of organisations come from. A member of the London Assembly and an architect were being interviewed about a fire in a block of flats. The architect found himself cold shouldered by the interviewer pretty quickly because he offered a considered opinion based on expertise. The Assembly member was much more the media's taste. Having been told that people had stayed in the fire for an hour and a half and that the design of the flats allowed for 3 exits from each dwelling she seriously suggested that people should be trained in how to behave in case of fire.

Yes, there should be teams of people whose job is visiting people in flats explaining that if the room is full of flame, it would be a good idea to leave.

Better still, the flats had been inspected and upgraded in the last 2 years. But according to our Assembly fire "expert", people don't like fire doors because they are heavy so they block them open or even take them off their hinges. Neither seemed to bother her very much.

This is where big government comes from. Wherever you live it is up to you to do your best to keep things safe. Working out how to get out of a building in even of a fire is your problem. I don't care how poor you are, or how bad your English is, you can do this. It's not a cultural thing, fire doesn't discriminate.

And if you disable the fire doors or other safety devices then you can't blame the government when this act comes back to bite you.

But of course the media will. So we will have fire training officers, even more regular inspections of buildings, signs in a hundred languages that won't be read and a whole infrastructure around this one event.

Which would have been forgotten about already if it hadn't happened in London.