Swine Flu

The world, or at least the tabloid press and the and the ingrates contributing to the BBC HYS section, worried about swine flu, I thought I had better put things down in black and white for the assistance of the stupid. Here are the actions required:

• Shooting down of all aircraft to stop the spread of infection.


• Nuclear strikes on all airports to kill any infection that's already been brought in.


• Turn over the airwaves from normal programming to special "We're going to die" shows.


• Banning of sombrero hats.


• And Mexican waves.


• Quarantining Speedy Gonzales even though he's a cartoon.


• As Scotland has a couple of slightly ill people, rebuild Hadrians wall.


• Cessation of the use of pork in all sausages, the meat to be replaced with estate agents.


• Serving a traditional British Breakfast to be made illegal unless the aforementioned suasages are used.


• Burning all smoky bacon crisps on a huge funeral pyre.

Simple huh ?

Downloading music

Tom Reynolds blog reported on the Pirate Bay court case and one of the commenter's suggested that Utopian notion, that all music downloads should be free. To pay for this, the prices on MP3 players and other music devices would be raised to provide funds to replace that earned from record sales.

This sounded a bit mad to me so I've done some maths. As an example, the last CD I bought was Imelda May, Love Tattoo which sells for £12.99 at full retail. Now according to PostAudio, out of this Ms May receives £1.83. This is a percentage and drops to 51p at Amazon prices. Let's call that 50p for nice round numbers or 4p per track.

Now my iPod (other MP3 player are available and probably don't discharge the battery when you aren't using them too) will hold roughly 2000 tracks. Therefore if I want to pay for all my music up front, as suggested by a "download tax", the price would need to go up by £83.

That £83 would need to go to some central authority who would then dish out the cash. We can assume that they would want a percentage for their effort, say 10%, or to keep the round numbers the cost now goes up by a total of £90. That takes an 8GB iPod Touch for over £250 or higher than the 32GB version costs now. Of course that version will also go up and considerably more due to it's higher storage capacity and would now cost just over £600.

Now think of a laptop computer. You could use this as a music device - the record companies will argue that you do and so you'll need to pay the download tax on this too. That's likely to push the price up by over £1000.

If you are still happy to pay this then there are further considerations. How does a group get on the "official" downloads list ? Not by putting a track on their website, that's for sure. Downloads would only qualify if there were from an approved and centralised source. Who will be in charge of this ? If I am being paid by the download then I'll be encouraging fans to pick up tracks as often as possible too. Don't get it once, download the same track loads of time ! Better still, set up an automated downloader which will do the job hundreds of times a minute...

Of course this all assumes you believe artists should get paid for their music. I think they should in the same way a baker gets paid for bread. If you don't pay musicians then other than for the love of it, why should they bother ? Can you really survive as a small, start up group on this ? OK if you are a big well-established name then you are OK but how do you get the momentum to survive ?

Personally I buy CD's. I have a physical item and don't need to back up my music as it can always be re-ripped from the discs. In fact I wonder how many download fans bother to do this. Or do they have infallible computers ?

Tell it like it is.

12 people have been arrested for possible terrorism offences. In the information vacuum the BBC and other news outlets are desperately speculating to try and fill up the otherwise empty air. At the same time they are making the people arrested seem as important as possible and making scaring the viewer as much as they can.

First up the people arrested are described as "members of al-Qaeda". I don't think they can be can they ? It's not like the Famous Five club of yore - I don't think you get a badge with a picture of Ozzsie Bin-laden on it do you ? Al-Qaeda isn't something you join, that's the main problem the Western World has with it. No formal structure. No branch offices. That's what makes it much harder to break up. Even Smersh in the James Bond films has administrators and filing cabinets. Here we are dealing with an ideology which is pretty hard to nail down.

Another great quote is "It may have involved an improvised explosive device, security expert Peter Taylor added." or not. You are just guessing. Mind you "improvised explosive device" is a pretty broad description meaning "a bomb not made by a proper arms manufacturer" so he's not stupid as there's a good chance of being right. Even if all this is is a group of idiots talking big you can be pretty certain they will be chuffed if people think they can manage to make something that could go bang.

My favorite though is that one of the people who has been arrested is described by his landlord as "a good boy who goes to the mosque five times a day.". What ?! 5 times a day ?! Wouldn't a better description of this guy be a "jobless loser who has nothing much to do all day." Anyone who goes to any religious service five times a day when he/she isn't being paid to do so should come under suspicion and probably be arrested and made to do something useful.

The thing is with this amount of religious fervour is that the person doing the praying has taken their God given life and decided to waste it, preferring to spend all their time getting ready for an afterlife. Never mind looking after their fellow man, they are saying "Stuff you, I want to book a cloud.".

Now I'm pretty certain that any celestial being had something rather more involved in mind when creating the human race. We weren't meant to spend all day praying, especially when this would mean being supported by a community who we than despise as sinners. OK, so this has happened throughout history from monasteries being supported by starving peasants to today's job seekers allowance being handed to out 5 times a day friend. The thing is, would you want to go to heaven if that meant spending all the time telling God how great he (religious nuts all call God, He) is ? That doesn't sound very nice to me and God is supposed to be nice I thought.

No, the way to defeat terrorists is to point out what they really are - losers with no friends other than other nut cases. The whole movement is appealing to the sort of idiot who has no power or future and sees a loony tunes sect as a way of feeling like a big man rather than being a werdo who people laugh at. By hyping up potential terrorists we give them power and turn them into modern day bogey men who children should hide under the bedclothes from.

Ridicule is a weapon and we should use it more often rather than pointing it at people who aren't doing anyone any harm.