Ad Infinitum... @darren-saunders - Tumblr Blog

The bitterness of Twitter

Had a realisation today, that as much as I piss and moan about Twitter lynch mobs and the endless sniping and griping on there, I’m every bit as much to blame. This thing with the cereal café; when I first heard about it I was incredulous that someone could dare to open such a trite venture. It didn’t help that the owners fit the bill of your standard hated hipster. This evening I realised that I was being a fucking idiot. What difference does it make to me if someone wants to spend their money eating imported cereals? What difference does it make to anyone if the area they opened is one of the poorest in London. Like most others I watched the Channel 4 news interview with a feeling of schadenfreude as the reporter asked whether they had any qualms about serving £3 bowls of Lucky Charms in an area where most of the residents could barely afford a box of own brand corn flakes. The proprietor dodged the question, because he didn’t like it. And why should he? What’s he supposed to do about the fiscal state of the area? At most he should probably have factored it into his business plan. When all’s said and done, the brothers have opened a niche café for a laugh. It’s not something I’d get involved with, but judging by the pictures I saw, they did a roaring trade on their opening day, and why the fuck should I be annoyed about that? The world’s full of misery, and those boys have brought a little light relief. Instead of laughing along with the joke, I’ve bared my teeth along with the rest of Twitter, and made the world that little bit shittier.

LET ME PAY FOR A DECENT FUCKING GAME

The future is now. The future is mobile gaming, playing games we don't own. The future is only being given the option to download a game from the App Store for free. The future is in-app purchases that kinda sorta equal paying for a game, but don't. Getting hold of games has never been easier; they're right they're on the App Store, hundreds of them, all the same, all free. You want to pay a few quid to download something that'll keep you occupied for half hour, but you can't. Instead you're offered a free game - FREE TO PLAY, DIG IN, PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE, FREE - to make the most of the game you have to buy credits. In app purchases, baby, just £2.99 for 1000 credits. 1000 credits will get you half an hour of more fun. Run out? BUY MORE CREDITS! JUST £19.99 GETS YOU 100k CREDITS, GOOD FOR A FEW DAYS! Fuck that shit. Fuck it. Yeah yeah, rose tinted glasses and that shit, stuck in the past, things were better back in the day. They were. Fuck you. £30, new game for my Gameboy. It took weeks to work through, beat the bosses, win the game. I owned the cartridge, it was mine. Weeks of gameplay, bought and paid for. Same for NES, same for SNES, N64, GameCube, Megadrive, PS One, 2, XBox. Apps don't have weeks of play in them. They're all about grinding, earning credits to carry on playing the fucking game. They're the gaming equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, propping themselves up on unfulfilled promises. Why the fuck should I play a game when I'll just have to pay a couple more quid in a few days? See, I'm not just playing that one game, I'm grinding away at three more, all trying to charge the same. The argument goes that people won't pay £30 for a game any more. I get that. We're one click away from hundreds of games, why waste money on one then not be able to play the rest? But the games available aren't full games; they're shop windows. Super Mario World had 96 levels, no iOS game has that, just a few levels, a hook, and a shop front. I desperately want to get stuck into a game on my phone. I have a controller now and everything. I want to be immersed in something. I've been using iOS since 2010, and have yet to find a game that truly offers that, beyond the odd port of games that I used to play on my old Megadrive. Fuck you, devs, give me that game. Give me something that's worth spending money on, then maybe we can talk. In the meantime, you can get fucked if you think I'm paying for any in-app purchases.

The Men

The men were stunted, caught between two states. Physically, they were grown men, they wore beards, they had sexual appetites. Mentally, however, they were adolescent. They saw the women as another tribe to conquer, treating them the way a fourteen year old boy would treat the women in the porn magazines he found in his father's wardrobe. The men were like peacocks, dressing in the latest fashions, frequenting the gym to build muscles that they would never use. Look at the men askance, and they bristled, "Wot you lookin' at, mush?!", they'd bellow, flexing the useless muscles, calling you "mush" in an attempt to belittle you. They knew that they weren't physically or mentally strong, so they used intimidation. They would never fight though, because it might ruin their clothes, or mess their hair. In a way I felt sorry for these men, life hadn't dealt them a fair hand. They were born between two generations; their fathers working with their hands, part of an industry that no longer existed; their nascent children soon to be born into a world full of technology that the men could never understand. These men were raised to ignore their emotions, men are always strong, men who cry are probably gay. They knew enough of technology to play war games on their consoles, using the headsets to question their opponent's sexuality, as they brandished every bigger virtual weapons, apparently entirely unaware of the irony that they were effectively waving their penises around. The men didn't know enough about the computers surrounding them to do anything new with them. These were career paths for weak men, boys who were singled out for abuse at school; accused of being gay, or a virgin. These men floated in a world that wasn't meant for them, desperate to make their mark somehow. They were frustrated, they were awful.

Radio 1, and the death of anything worth thinking about.

When did Radio 1 give up trying to make the most of its listeners? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that I’m too old to be a Radio 1 listener, and have been for about 15 years, despite only being 33, but they just don’t seem to be trying any more. Sure, they cater to what the audience wants, but why not give them what they need? Let me explain. 4Extra have just started repeating Chris Morris’ programme from ’97, Blue Jam. Blue Jam was an esoteric trip through garbled soundscapes, half-formed jokes, ambient music and weird monologues, and it was incredible. It is, in many ways, the youth equivalent to Morris’ previous work, On The Hour, broadcast on Radio 4, but stripped of any veneer of recognisable comedy. Maybe it was too esoteric for R1, but that didn’t stop its commission, and production of two series. Fast forward to now, where the landscape is massively different. We have the iPlayer, serving up any show we want to listen to from the last week. We can dip in and effectively curate our own station from what the BBC offers us, and that’s fantastic if you know what to look for. However, I still see the core stations as being similar to their televisual counterparts. BBC1 and 2 still have to cater for their demographic, and so to do radios 1 to 5. Taken as such, how will your average Radio 1 listener know to look for Blue Jam on 4 Extra? A programme made for the 18 year olds of 1999 is now almost completely ignored by the 18 year olds of today in favour of yet another guest mix by whichever collection of vowels is this week’s flavoursome DJ. One’s lineup now consists of celebrity presenters, DJs you’ve never heard of and little else of note. It’s all lowest common denominator shit that furthers nothing but the careers of people who are careful to never take any risks. It’s telling that Gemma Cairney - a presenter with the charisma of a spoon - is given a weekend breakfast slot. Moyles was the last dangerous presenter they had, and even he got evermore safe the longer he was there. By the time he left, he was nothing more than another celebrity yes man, patting the backs of whichever of his showbiz chums deigned to visit him that day. He now stands accused of tax avoidance. Quite the role model. I’m not for one minute suggesting that Radio 1 of 1999 was in any way dangerous - Zoe Ball was presenting the breakfast show while people who knew what they were doing did all the work in the background - but at there was at least some notion that they should be doing something to further the minds of their young wards. Peel was still doing his best in the evening, despite the efforts of the management to put him in ever less agreeable slots, Mark & Lard were presenting the last truly great programme the network had, and the top brass were commissioning the odd show like Blue Jam; something different, something quirky. I suppose with the landscape change came a change in focus: Radio 7 (later to become 4Extra) launched in 2002, and with it a place to store all of the quirky comedies that the BBC is duty-bound to create. With the iPlayer becoming a smorgasbord of different programmes, Radio 1 could truly relax in its mission to offer nothing but undemanding content, helped immeasurably by the death of Peel who for too long had made part of their output in some way educational. Now we have Nick Grimshaw throwing together easy links on the breakfast show, Fearne bloody Cotton on after him (incidentally, this week being replaced by Gemma sodding Cairney, thus adding fuel to my belief that she’s got candid photos of Ben Cooper in uncompromising positions), with Scott Mills in the afternoon, no doubt still doing pre-recorded, not-all-at-scripted-no-way, ‘prank’ calls. Where will today’s youth go to have their thoughts challenged, because it sure as fuckery ain’t Radio 1.

The trials of Jesus, Son of an all-powerful, immortal deity.

On the first day He created light and dark. On the second day He created an expanse to separate the waters, and called it sky. On the third day He created land, and pooled the water into seas. On the fourth day He created the sun, moon and stars to light the Earth. On the fifth day He created the fish in the sea and the winged creatures in the sky. On the sixth day he created the animals that would walk the land, including Adam and Eve, who he made in His image, and who would live in peace with their fellow creatures. He rested on the seventh day as he looked upon his works and saw that they were good. On the eight day He did a little bit of tinkering; Norway didn't look quite right. On the ninth day He opened up a new universe and began work on another place, because it was quite good fun, and as good a way to spend his time than any. Besides, what's the point of being an omnipresent, all-powerful God if you're just going to sit around causing Big Bangs all the time. On the one million, three hundred and fifty thousand, two hundred and fifty-third day He popped back to the first Earth to see how they were getting on, saw that it really wasn't very good at all, even with the cleansing floods and such. So he impregnated a young lady with His son. True, he didn't really think the plan through and if he had he'd have probably tried to be a bit flashier, sending Jesus down in a flash of light, with a booming voice in the sky or something. On the one million, three hundred and sixty second, five hundred and forty-fifth day, they nailed Jesus to a cross, and he hasn't stopped going on about it since. "Dad, they're insane! I spent thirty-odd years telling them to be good, and that they'll get good things, and they hammered me to a bloody cross" God rolled his eyes, "I never said it would be easy, son. Seems I gave them more intelligence than they deserved. You need to stick with it, they'll listen eventually." "Well I'm not wasting thirty years on it next time" "Then just turn up every now and then, see if they're any more enlightened. I'd give it a few hundred years though" So, over the last couple of thousand years, Jesus had periodically turned up, proclaimed that he was Jesus, here to enlighten people and make their lives better, and true to form, they'd have him killed or locked up.

A little fanboy'ing over Frank Turner

“This is fucking mental!” Frank Turner - in his own words a skinny half-arsed country singer - stands alone at the front of the O2’s stage, looking out over the 20,000 people who have come to see him and exclaims with disbelief. As someone who has followed Frank’s career since a friend gave me a copy of his Campfire Punkrock EP back in 2006, I’m inclined to agree. The first time I saw Frank was at a sweaty little pub in Nottingham. I got the feeling that there were at least a hundred too many people in the room, but that didn’t dent the atmosphere one bit. I can’t remember whether the Sleeping Souls were his backing group at this point, but Frank’s enthusiasm was infectious. Touring the damn near perfect Love, Ire & Song, playing arsehole little pubs up and down the country and accepting interviews from whoever wanted one (including me, in a thankfully unused toilet in the aforementioned pub). Several years later I managed to blag tickets to the Larmer Tree festival out near Salisbury. Looking back at the 1000 or so people behind me as I stood at the barrier waiting for Frank to start, I considered that he’d truly made good, that playing to this many people meant that I was right to champion his music. So here I was with 20,000 others, a tingle running down my spine, and still quite unable to believe that he was playing to such a huge crowd - a fact with which he seemed just as surprised. He made the point of saying that he was only playing such big venues now because people wanted to hear him play, at which the crowd erupted in a deafening roar. My smile was huge. I felt in some way like a favourite family member had got the success he deserved. I’ve been banging on about Frank for years. Love, Ire & Song soundtracked my first year of uni, hearing it now reminds me of the going out and getting drunk, of staying in, desperately trying to get an assignment finished, of sitting frozen in Nottingham coach station waiting for the first National Express of the day to whisk me home to Southampton. England Keep My Bones is an album that I’m afraid to listen to, simply because once I dip my toes in, I’ll be lost to it for days. Frank’s skill at penning infectious music is supernatural, leaving me frustrated because I never feel like I can do his music justice when introducing it to people. Live, it doesn’t seem to phase him whether he’s playing to 200 or 20,000 people. The crowd is treated as if they’re all friends who’ve popped down to the local to hear him play a few tunes. It's a skill he shares with the late John Peel, who was able to make every individual listener feel at once as if they were both the only person out there, and yet part of a larger family of listeners. At no point are we ever made to feel like he’s going through the motions, just cranking out the old favourites to earn the money. There was a wonderful moment towards the end, alone on the stage, playing The Ballad Of Me And My Friends, Frank sings “none of this is going anywhere” with a wry smile on his face as the enormous crowd sings along. The best ‘fuck you’ he had. Last night’s gig was a kind of catharsis for me, a justification of the hours I’ve spent listening to his music, of singing along and trying to unpick the meaning of the lyrics. We all seek validation for our choices, be it art we like or experiences we undertake; seeing the better part of 20,000 people singing along with me was the ultimate validation. It was proof that I was right all along.

Fast Fiction : The Wooden Horse

Challenger - @fourfoot Word - "Apocryphal" --- The wooden horse bobbed along with the current. If he could think, which, given that he was a wooden horse, meant he couldn't, he probably would have been half alarmed, half surprised, and half excited about this turn of events. It wasn't every day that a wooden horse found himself adrift among the flotsam and jetsam of ocean life. Recently, had he been an actual, living horse, he may have been aware of his life as a ship's figurehead. He may also have been aware of the sailors apocryphal tales of mermaids, although it would be pushing it to suggest that a horse - even a real one - would have much of an understanding of life beyond eating and galloping. As a wooden horse, his eyes didn't do much, so he couldn't warn the sailors that the pretty lady they were sailing towards was sitting on a rock. Not that he could've anyway, what with being a wooden horse. So the wooden horse did what he did best, which is to say, not much. His sailors, however, did quite a bit of screaming. Life as a wooden horse was far simpler, he may have thought if he wasn't made of wood. Word count - 200

Fast Fiction : Waiting For The Last Bus

Challenger - @Nickipedia101 Word - "Phantasm" --- Hrang-Na hides. She has one chance to escape. She misses this carrier, she’s as good as dead. They are closing in, devouring all in their path, leaving dead emptiness behind them, and she doesn’t plan to be dinner. She checks her phasekeeper. Twenty cycles since she last looked. “Where the krang is he!” she curses almost silently. The planet scorches under the heat of its three suns. Nothing of value grows on Barontius IV. Little of value walks its dusty plains. Even less once They are finished. Including Hrang-Na, unless Kurg-Ji hurries up. He hasn’t been late before, and she hoped to the Creator that he wouldn’t be now. Looking to the horizon, she sees the movement she has dreaded. They, moving silently like a dreaded phantasm turning very little into nothing at all. They, who were a mistake. They, who would be the undoing. A glint catches her eye. “The carrier!” her shout disturbing only the small bugs feasting on her glistening sweat. She catches her breath. They have shifted direction. They heard her. “Krang!” Her pulse quickens as the glint becomes a shape. They move closer, relentlessly demolishing the little that Life gave Barontius IV. Word count - 200

Fast Fiction : The Final Moments Of Cyril

Challenger - @joetele Word - "Fortitude" ------ “You’ll just feel a sharp scratch” Nurse Stanwick was a bloody liar, and a bad one at that, thought Cyril, as she roughly jabbed the cannula into his hand. “You’re a bloody liar, and a bad one at that!”, he said out loud. She smiled in an altogether far too menacing way that Cyril didn’t much appreciate. You couldn’t really trust a nurse who enjoyed the hurting people part of their job as much as that. Still, it was sort of his fault. There had been that night, and… well, a gentleman tells no tales. The smell of surgical spirit flooded his nose as another nurse wheeled in the trolley with the doctor’s shining, sterile gear on it. He was the best, or so the Boss said, but even so, Cyril found himself somewhat lacking in fortitude; not something he was used to. The procedure usually went without a hitch, but it felt like it was getting harder to recover from every time. Nurse Stanwick plugged a huge needle into the cannula and asked him to count down from ten. He made it to seven. Seven. The amount of people Cyril had cleaned. Would his next identity be as successful? word count - 200

terriblerealestateagentphotos

Yes, this is real. It’s a photograph of what I can only describe as a domestic horse.

Submitted (with source) by Jonthelutheran, whom I can’t thank enough.

Food as a drug.

A while back I wrote a blog about being overweight, and how it made me feel. In that blog I wrote that being an overeater is similar to being a drug addict - a claim that was dismissed by someone in the comments. That thought has stuck with me since then, and coloured my view of how I go about my day, so, in a shocking act of narcissism, I wanted to explore it more deeply. Now, I've never been a drug addict - I've never so much as seen anything stronger than a bit of weed - so all of this is based on what I've read over the years, and what I've seen dramatised on TV and in films. If you've been a drug addict, please feel free to comment, anonymously if you'd rather, underneath, because I'd be interested in your views. When I eat outside of normal meal times I know I'm doing wrong. If I do snack then I inevitably beat myself up for it. I keep quiet, hoping that no one will learn what a disgusting, undisciplined mess I am. Snacking on the way home from work half an hour before I eat dinner becomes my guilty secret. I used to have a bike, so my journey to work went by in a ten minute blur. I didn't take my lock to work, because I left it safely in the warehouse, so I had no way of stopping to buy food. Besides, what would be the point? I'd be home in ten minutes. When I had my bike, I had no problems, life was good. Then my bike got stolen, and suddenly I'm walking to work - a half hour journey that takes me past no fewer than six shops that I might potentially pop into to buy snacks. It takes an enormous amount of willpower to focus on the path in front of me and ignore temptation. The mornings aren't so bad. I can cope in the morning. The evenings, however... When I finish work I'm tired. I'm a bit hungry because I've been on Dust all day. For those who don't know, Dust is a colloquial term for meal replacement powders that mix into shakes or soups. They're worth 200 calories each, the idea being that you have three a day which provide you with all the nutrients you need, while putting your body into ketosis in order for it to eat the fat supply that it has. It's a sound plan, and one that I largely stuck to for two months, helping me to lose about 35lbs. Things have been a bit tight since I moved house though, so I've not really been able to afford to buy more dust, leading to me ekeing out what's left until the next pay day. As such, I've been having two shakes/soups a day, followed by a (relatively) sensible meal. Now, in theory this should work. In practice, it does not. Back to when I leave work... So I'm tired and a bit hungry. Not starving, just hungry enough to be looking forward to dinner when I get home, and, like someone who's quit smoking, I need something to do with my hands. I pop into one of three shops along a small parade and buy a pre-packaged samosa and often a bar of chocolate. My brain is telling me I'm a wanker, but I still do it. If I have money in my pocket, I don't feel like I can walk past. Every day I choose a different shop because I don't want to give the shop keeper the chance to recognise me as the guy who comes in every day to buy snacks. I walk out of the shop, I've paid for the snack so I can't waste it. I'm now resigned to having to eat it, because it's there. So I do. I hate every bitter mouthful, but there I am, chewing it, knowing that the meat inside a 90p chicken samosa is going to be pretty much the worst bits of chickens arseholes. But I've bought it, there's no way I'm going to let it go to waste. I have to get my money's worth. A dear friend of mine once told me that it's my choice what I eat, that the only person who decides is me, and that I need to take control of that, but I don't know whether I believe that any more. I don't know how to stop myself. I couldn't just walk past the shop, because I'm not capable of it. In the morning I manage, and I feel kind of smug about myself. I walk past a little Sainsbury's, knowing that in the morning they're likely to have fresh pastries. I manage to resist the lure of the fresh pastries because today is a New Day and a Fresh Start. Every day is a Fresh Start. I've lost count of the amount of times I've drawn a line under the previous week's excesses in order to start again. Today is no exception. Today is another Fresh Start. In fact, it is *the* Fresh Start, because it's a Monday. I've taken to leaving my wallet at home so that I can't buy anything even if I wanted to. I'm 33 years old, and I have to force myself to do this. Even as I'm walking out of the door in the morning, wallet safely on the side in the kitchen, my brain is screaming at me to go back and get it, because I'm going to NEED that shitty samosa, or wrap, or pasty, and god knows what I'll do if I can't buy a chocolate bar... I'm guessing you've read this far and are trying to rationalise my behaviour, but you can't; it's entirely irrational. There's nothing to stop me walking by the shops, head held high. Nothing but my own subconscious which appears hell-bent on killing me. So, I eat a lot of shit, and here's where the parallels with drug addiction come in. I hide the habit from everyone. As far as my girlfriend was concerned I was doing pretty well with the diet. My colleagues at work who are incredibly supportive of my quest to lose weight, they even went as far as to not buy me a cake on my birthday, even though everyone gets a cake. They got me a present instead. They didn't know about my disgusting habit. Eating in the car becomes the norm, because no one can see you doing it. You dispose of the packaging when you get out, so that no one can question you. I recently told my girlfriend what I'd been up to, and felt the relief washing over me that I'd finally put it out in the open. It wasn't my dirty secret anymore! We learnt that the first stage of beating an addiction is to accept it. By telling Hayley, I had surely accepted it? Of course, all it did was legitimise my over eating, because I'd told her so as far as I was concerned she now had lower expectations of me. Last night I was considering the way I used to sneak food as a kid. The way I had routines and plans that allowed me to sneak into the kitchen and grab a few biscuits without my mum knowing. It made me realise just how deep-seated the problem is. I've been doing this for 25 years, how the hell do I change? Genuinely, how do I change? Because I want to, and I'm feeling pretty fucking desperate right now.

#dieting #desperate #food #dust #addiction #food addiction

Who votes Conservative?

Are you presently unemployed? Then don’t vote Conservative. Do you have less than £5000 in the bank?  Then don’t vote Conservative. Have you ever used the NHS? Then don’t vote Conservative. I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot of the last week or so; I can’t figure out why ‘average’ people vote Tory. I don’t know the ins and outs of their policies, but from where I’m sat it looks like they’re doing what they traditionally do, namely putting things in place to benefit themselves when they retire from politics. Unless you can afford private healthcare, I don’t know why you would vote for a party that is actively trying to sell off the NHS. Despite massive public support for the service, it’s still being sold off because “we live in times of austerity”. I’m no great expert of finance, but I’ve read pieces by people who are, who are all universal in saying that the governments austerity policies aren’t working, and never could work. So we have a government that is selling off the one thing that keeps the vast majority of us healthy, and people who rely on it are still cheering them on. Do you make use of the NHS and still vote Tory? Why? Maybe it’s because of their attitude towards benefit claimants? Perhaps it’s unfair, and a little stereotypical, but in my head I’m picturing a London cabbie. This particular cabbie is basically Cockney Wanker from Viz. He thinks that Enoch Powell maybe had a point, and that if you lose your job then it’s perfectly reasonable to expect you to work for your benefits. My problem with this lies in the fact that that cabbie could well lose his car tomorrow. Maybe he’s in an accident and loses the use of his legs. He very suddenly goes from being a worker to someone claiming disability benefits. Where does he (if you’ll pardon the pun) stand on the issue now? Is he full of self loathing because he now sees himself as part of the problem? Does he have strength in his convictions and find himself a new job that he can do without being able to drive? Does he resign himself to claiming benefits because driving is what he’s always done, so he’s going to keep looking until he can find a suitable job? Whatever he chooses, he’s now a statistic to the Tories. Regardless of context, he’s now a burden to the state. It doesn’t matter to the Tories *why* he’s claiming, only that he is. Given that we’re each of us potentially only a day away from being out of a job, why would anyone vote Conservative? Unless you’re rich, you have no place voting for them. If you’re not rich - and I don’t mean just the very poor, or people on low income, I mean the middle classes as well - then the Tories don’t give a toss about you. If you don’t pay your taxes, then they’ll come after you, but if their very rich friends don’t, then they’ll ignore it. They want to end the “something for nothing culture” that they believe exists, all the while claiming expenses for things like a horse paddock. Do you hate that we have immigrants living here? Maybe that’s the problem, and you think that by being right wing you’re in line with the beliefs of the Tories? Perhaps that’s why you vote. Again, at the risk of stereotyping, if you’re that kind of terrible racist bastard, then you’re probably not exactly flying high in the world of business. You, like the rest of the 99% of us at the bottom, are only two missed pay cheques away from being made homeless. Do you think the Tories are on the right? Do you think they hate immigrants as much as you do? No, the hate you more. They can send the immigrants home to be a drain on their own country, but they’re stuck paying for your tobacco addiction with the JSA or tax credits they’re paying you. This isn’t a lefty socialist rant, I’m genuinely wondering who votes for the Tories, and why.

#Tory #Conservative #blog #politics #horse paddock

An appeal to the Daily Mail

Regarding this blog - http://darren-saunders.tumblr.com/post/62347409623/the-daily-mail-in-being-a-wanker-shocker - I have just sent this email to the Daily Mail. I don't see that it will make a difference, but their refusal to allow further comments on the article left me with no choice; Good evening, I write in reference to this article - http://dailym.ai/1beJDIn - which contains numerous inaccuracies, and serves only as a cause of misery to those that it is about. Among the inaccuracies are the statement that Mrs. Rachel Keys posted to Twitter a photo of a child in accident and emergency. It was insinuated that she did so without the consent of the parents of the child. If your reporter, Miss Emily Davies had bothered to do her job as any kind of credible journalist, she would have known that the child was one of Mrs. Keys', and that the photo was taken in her own home. Furthermore, a photo supposedly depicting the three women in question was posted entirely out of context. For a start, Mrs. Luxford-Noyes was not in that photo, nor has she ever actually met either Miss Dyde or Mrs. Keys. Additionally, the photo was taken on a night out. Regardless of our careers, we are allowed to have a night out enjoying a drink, are we not? The photo of Mrs. Luxford-Noyes apparently presenting her chest in a strategically ripped disposable apron was again taken entirely out of context. The photograph was intended as evidence that the dispenser almost always rips the aprons. But that's far less salacious than a nurse flaunting her curves, isn't it? I realise that emailing you is a fruitless task; I expect to receive no reply, and as I am not directly involved in the article, I have no right to complain. However, Mrs. Luxford-Noyes has been a dear friend of mine for some years now. She is an excellent nurse, and utterly devoted to her chosen career; one which you have taken upon yourselves to rob her of. She is devastated that her professionalism and ability has been brought into question, and that she is now forced to work on the sidelines of her beloved profession. For this reason I am taking the only recourse available to me, and asking you to remove the story. I have written a blog on the subject, which has proved mildly popular with somewhere in the region of 4000 views to date. Since I posted the blog, I have been in contact with all three of the women in question , who have received nothing but unfailing support from both friends and strangers alike. Your article is both wrong-headed and crass. I tried to make a comment under the article itself, but it appears that you are no longer approving any further comments; disappointing to say the least. Disappointing because these women have not been granted a right to reply without fear of being edited to fit your preferred stance. Assuming you have, I thank you for your time in reading this, and am appealing to your better nature. The continued publication of that article serves no useful purpose to anyone. Yours, Darren Saunders.

The Daily Mail in "being a wanker" shocker.

Eight weeks ago I posted this. I posted that some four weeks after my friend was informed that the Mail had plans to run a story on her and her friends. Today they ran the story (Mail link, obv).* Twelve weeks. Twelve weeks they kept three people on edge, wondering if their lives were going to be torn apart even more. Beyond everything else - beyond their probing putting three people out of work - how does anyone sleep at night knowing they’re causing so much misery? As for the article; it’s a hatchet job of the worst order. It puts aside the feelings of three people in order to take a swipe at the NHS. Utterly despicable. Let’s take a look at the details. Here are two pictures of Caroline, my friend. Our intrepid investigative journalist uses them as evidence as the evil nature of Caroline.

See how evil she is, the way she proudly posts photos of her in her crisp, clean, well turned out uniform. ISN’T SHE A SHIT?! Well, no. Then; “The three women joked about being too hungover to work after they had been drinking heavily the night before.” ...because no one in the history of ever has ever turned up to work with a hangover. Hell, at least they turned up! Most people would open their eyes, wince at the brightness of day and call in sick. These three didn’t, they turned up and got on with their work. Like the terrible shits they are. Anyway, here’s a lovely photo of the three of them. Isn’t it lovely?

Well no, it’s not. It’s only two of them, and an innocent friend. Caroline lives almost at the other end of the country, BUT WHY LET THE FACTS STAND IN THE WAY? Furthermore, why bother pointing out that this photo was taken on a night out, where no (well, professional anyway) wrong-doing was occurring? So this photo is entirely inadmissible. BUT WHY LET TH...meh, you get it. Caroline again, being a provocative slutty nurse.

Or, more accurately, Caroline posing proudly in her uniform and Caroline showing off her breasts demonstrating how the disposable aprons repeatedly rip when being pulled from the dispenser. But the truth isn’t as tasty as a nurse flaunting her curves, is it? “Mrs Keys posted a picture of a child being treated for a head injury in A&E. It is not known whether the girl’s parents consented to the image being taken, or being posted online.” Of course, there’s no mention of the fact that the child in question was her own. I don’t know about you, but I’ve NEVER posted a photo of my child’s injuries on Twitter. That’s not true, of course, but WHY LET THE TRUT...oh, I can’t be arsed any more. The long and the short is that Emily Davies is either a terrible journalist, or she’s a junior who’s managed to land a job and is writing hack pieces to order on behalf of the single worst “newspaper” this country has. And this country has The Sun. In a way I can’t hate her; the jobs market in the world of journalism is awful; I imagine she must be happy to do anything just to pay the rent. And yet her work has left three people out of work, with mortgages and rent to pay. Between them they have seven children, whose Christmas is going to be considerably less wonderful than they otherwise would have been. So fuck her, quite frankly. The Daily Mail has an anti-NHS agenda, and has ridden roughshod over the lives of these three women in order to pursue it. It’s a nasty, spiteful rag of a paper that does far more damage than Caroline, Rachel and Julie. It’s hypocritical, reveling in young girls “flaunting their curves” while simultaneously clutching its pearls in an act of faux-shock that would make even Mary Whitehouse blush. I don’t think any of the women would claim that they were utterly blameless here, but that’s not the point. Sure, they posted photos of themselves at work, and that’s in direct contravention of the various Trust’s social media policy. Ultimately they did wrong, and paid the price for it. But it should never have gone that far. The Mail knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they told the Trusts of their plans to run the story. Assuming the employers discovered the ladies’ transgressions, at most they would have had a rap on the knuckles and been put on a final warning. Running the story meant that they had brought the trusts into disrepute, which meant a sacking, making the story better. Utterly despicable behaviour. **EDIT** * For some reason the hyperlink to the Mail article isn't working. Try this - http://dailym.ai/1beJDIn

On the new iPhones...

I’m an Apple user, a fanboy, if you will. I don’t hate Android, I just don’t use it. I do, however, hate Windows, but that’s entirely reasonable, because Windows. So there we go, I’ve got that out of the way. Every time Apple release a new handset - EVERY. TIME - there’s a chorus of dissenting voices proclaiming the death of the company. Those voices will claim that there’s no more innovation, that they’ve left out X feature, or Y addition. Those people are fucking idiots. Occasionally Apple will pull something out of the bag which changes everything. I’m thinking of the iPad. That kind of came out of nowhere. Yes, there were tablet devices before it, but they were running a bastardised version of Windows, and were terrible, heavy devices. The iPad was completely new. The iPod was sort of the same. Yes, there were hard drive MP3 players before iPod, but none so small and easy to sync to. iPod caused everyone to look at their own players and start again from scratch. The likes of Sony never caught up. But by and large, Apple have always been about taking an existing idea and making it work in a way that you don’t really notice it. The 5S announcement, with its headline grabbing fingerprint scanner is a case in point. The usual idiots have been smugly pointing out that their laptops and pocket PCs had fingerprint scanners 10 years ago. And they’re right, they did. But they were fucking shit, and wedged into a device an inch thick. They clearly weren’t that good, because they didn’t end up on everything. Now iPhone has one, all phones will start to copy the technology. But it’s not just that, is it? No, it’s the software integration that goes with it. TouchID will quickly and seamlessly allow access to your device. It’s a service that you’ll use without really noticing it. Take FaceTime for example. When that was announced with the iPhone 4 I was all like “But I had video calling on my Sony V800 YEARS ago”, and I was a fucking idiot. Yes, I had it, and to the best of my knowledge I used it twice. Both times to call my brother, purely because he was the only other person I knew who had a 3G phone. FaceTime, however is something that gets used a lot, because Apple put the money into designing the service that goes with it. The streaming is near faultless and high quality, even over 3G. It integrates into the OS without standing out, and just does what it needs to do without the user ever having to think about it. No, Apple aren’t perfect; the battery life on their phones is utter, utter shit, but for Christ’s sake, take your head out of your arse and stop acting like you know everything. iPhone doesn’t have NFC because no one uses NFC right now. I use my mum as a straw man in these scenarios. I’m not the typical iPhone user, my mum is (even though she recently downgraded to a Galaxy Mini *shudder*), does she use FaceTime? Yes. Does she use the iPod function? Of course. Would she use NFC, or even know what the fuck it is without it being explained to her? No, of course not. It’s not particularly widespread technology yet, so why should Apple use up valuable space inside their devices, and cause another hit to the battery life? So yeah, could you all just shut the fuck up telling Apple how to do their jobs please? Believe it or not, they’ve got their ears to the ground and pay an awful lot of people an awful lot of money to find out what they need to add. You there, writing a comment under a newspaper article, don’t know shit.

#Apple #iphone #5s #5c #NFC #FaceTime #TouchID #fucking idiots #take your head out of your arse

I remember the day I traveled up to Yorkshire to get the frame. I couldn’t drive at the time, so, eBay email printed and in hand, Dad and I loaded up the car and trundled up to where they filmed Last of the Summer Wine. Beautiful countryside made all the more beautiful by the knowledge that I was picking up a 1996 Kona Cinder Cone frame. It was 2007, and I’d wanted one since I first saw it in MBUK magazine. I chose that frame because I was off to uni in September, and figured that the full suspension GT I had was a little bit too much of a target for thieves. The Kona, I figured, would look old enough and shit enough that no one would want it. *I* knew it was special though. To me it was the mountain bike equivalent of a classic MG. I built it on the cheap, because I was skint - ‘twas ever thus - using parts that I had knocking about, and a pair of classic Kona Project II rigid forks with glow in the dark stickers. It was a monster, and I was proud of it. Proud because it was something that I had built. I paid for all of the parts without help from anyone else, proud because I put it together from scratch, knowing that it was literally one of a kind. Tonight, for the first time in six years, I don’t know where my beloved Kona is, because someone broke into the yard by my new home, cut the sturdy lock that shackled it to the steel fence, and rode it out of my life. It wasn’t worth much. At a push I may have got £150 for it if I sold it privately. But it was my transport to work, it was the only exercise I have available to me. I would jump on it, fire up the RunKeeper app and try to beat my best times. Those times weren’t fast, but I was doing them on a bike that was 100% an extension of me. It was a bit fucked, a bit knackered, some of the parts were pretty ugly, and it weighed a bit too much. But it was mine. Now someone will have sold it for the price of another fix, or the cost of a night in the pub. At best, maybe they’ve sold it for the price of this month’s gas bill, so maybe their kids will get to eat a few more cooked meals. But probably not. In an ideal world I could just replace it with a newer bike and just move on, but I can’t because times are tight. I’ve got debts up to my eyeballs that I’m struggling like hell to cover. Besides, a new bike wouldn’t have the soul of that Kona, and I might as well just leave a new one unlocked by the shops for all the good a lock would do me. As stupid as it sounds, I’ll miss that bike. Oh, and it’s my birthday today. Happy fucking birthday.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Ad Infinitum...