Further Congratulations

...This time to M & E (aka Mr & Ms Viking). To their news that in several months a bloody large stork will be landing on their roof (well thats how my parents explained it).

Babies, Camping and Lurkers

IMGP1963
Originally uploaded by SmithersJones.

To those of you from the days of F***** C**** and N***** A****** who have stumbled on to these pages in a drunken haze, welcome. Looking forward to seeing you soon, even if it does involve sleeping in a field.

Congrats as well to G for the birth of her 2nd daughter.

Hopefully every one is fine and healthy.

St Georges Day

Its St Georges day. The day to celebrate the patron saint of England...who was Turkish and died in Palestine....oh and he was a Roman soldier. No dragon then?

So any way it means I should go out and be very English.......nope no idea. So what is it to be English?

According to the Rough Guide England is a nation of "overweight, alcopop-swilling, sex-and-celebrity obsessed television addicts." Not a very appetizing picture of my nation and not one I'd like to celebrate. Also not entirely accurate. I think if push come to shove we would drink anything really. Don't think it has to be alcopops.

On the plus side they do say we are a nation of "animal loving, tea-drinking charity donors who thrive on irony and Radio 4".

This must be a very confusing image for any foreigners. They surely have an image of a fat couple sitting in front of a TV watching some z list celebs doing, oh I don't know doing ballroom dancing, getting slowly drunk on sugared alcohol while drinking tea from dainty little cups having donated all there life savings to a donkey sanctuary. In the advert break this fat couple will obviously be talking about the latest Radio 4 documentary or garderners question time - but in an ironic way you understand.

Lets face it to be English is to have not the faintest clue as to who you are. We are a mix of Celts, Picts, Romans, Anglo Saxons, Danes, Norsemen and Normans (who were just French Norsemen with silly accents). Sprinkled over the top we have some Irish, German, French, Dutch, Too many African Tribes/Nations to mentions, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean, Australians, Kiwis, Canadians. For most of the life of this nation the majority of the people spent all there time trying to get off the island to go around the world and rule others.

We have had great military victories as well as lying and cheating our way around the world. We have done great things and many that perhaps we shouldn't mention. Our national dish is Chicken Tikka Massala. I can't actually think of any nation on the planet we haven't been at war with at some time.

We have a screwed up national identity, we don't know what to do with our future, we don't know if we are barbarians or high culture, we have too many problems for a nation of our size, we don't know if we are Europeans, we don't know if we really should be Americans.

strangely enough though I kinda like the place. Its like a knackered house that has so much potential that you don't know where to start.

Gang shooting doesn't make the news???

Police cordon in the centre of town
Originally uploaded by SmithersJones.

Wandering around town to do some last second shopping before my holidays I discovered that the centre of town was shut down by the police. It seemed to be a large area of the centre but the police were unwilling to say what had happened.

They had shut off the crossroads infront of the Kingsgate shopping centre and large sections of road in either direction.

The fact that the police wouldn't say what had happened made me more interested (when in reality Mr plod was just following standard procedure). I rang a friend to see if there was anything on the net about it - as you would imagine that in this day and age closing the centre of any town would be of interest to the news media.......nothing.

Asked the staff in one of the shops. The security guard was there and they were very cagey about the whole thing. The only thing they were willing to say was that it was a major incident. Rang a journalist friend....still nothing.

CSI Huddersfield
Originally uploaded by SmithersJones.

Carried on shopping and asked the nice young lady behind the counter in Next who informed me that last night there had been a shooting either along the street or in one of the bars. It had involved a gang and that the police had 8 people in custody. The cordon was so that the scene of crime boys and girls could gather evidence.

So it seems a shooting incident involving a large number of people in the centre of a market town, not a city just a town, doesn't rate a mention in the local paper even? For godsakes its not like its a common event.

Weirdest thing is that it isn't normal for Huddersfield, trust me the natives arn't angels far from it but gun play is rare. As my hairdresser so sweetly put it, "a man in the centre of town with a gun? well it aint normal is it?" I wanted to question her further to see if she thought a man with a gun out side of town was normal but i think she would have thought i was taking the piss, and never take the piss out of some one with sharp implements.

It was also strange how accepting and non worried people were about it. Most people walked up to the cordon, politly asked the poice what was going on, were politely told, "can't tell you," and then wandered off. I'm still trying to work out if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

More photos as usual can be found on my Flickr pages, plus some additional from fellow Flickrite Blueme.

EDIT: Alright its made the BBC Local News I just couldn't find it and thought it would be a bigger story somehow.

Upcoming Elections

In many parts of the country there are local elections in May. No really there are elctions coming up. So far though i have only seen one elction leaflet (Liberal Democrats), two elction posters (one Labour and one Conservative) and one Party Political Broadcast (Labour).

I'm rare in that i take an interest in politics, most do not. I can happily predict that the turn out for this elcetion is going to be abysmal as no one seems to want to take part. Also these are local elections and so far i havent seen anything about local politics. The only Party Broadcast that i have seen has very high production values etc but is a straightforward negative attack on the new Tory leader - meanwhile i still have too many bins, local council workers have the pensions threatened, and local taxes are increasing.

The major stories in the headlines at the moment are some woman called Elizibeth makes it to 80 (not suprising given that she has had the most pampered life possible) and that the wife of the Prime Minister has invoiced the Labour Party £7,500 for hairdressing during the last national election. So much for the Labour Party being the party of the trade unions and working people. (The Tory party released the information that Sandra Howard the wife of the then Tory leader invoiced her party for £65).

Many people are on the TV claiming that she is damned if she doesnt do her hair becuase the press will rip her appart for looking rough and damned if she does becuase that is a symptom of style over content. What a load of bollocks. Yes it is unfortunate that the press will focus on her image so she needs to have a hairdresser. However, just as many activists give up their time and slog around streets all year round knocking on doors out of conviction not becuase they are paid she should pay for her own bloody hair.

Despite the fact that i would have left the Labour party at least 100 times since T. Blair came to power this is another time in which i wish io was still a member so that i could rip up my card and send it back.

This vacum and drift in British politics is only going to have bad effects. Many will/have stopped voting and many people who still vote are incresingly looking at the more extreme parties. Britian is sleepwalking into its own Wiemar Republic period.

So let me get this right

Charles Clarke (our ever so wise Home Secretary) wants to abolish any compensation given to those who have been wrongly imprisoned by the state. He also wants to raise the barrier at which evidence is acceptable to overturn a conviction making it harder to appeal against the conviction in the first place.

Now surely only a paranoid person would think that was anything worrying about this?

Plus in a little know change to practice the police now routinely take a DNA sample of anyone who "helps them with their enquires." Note this isn't every one who is charged but everyone who they question. Ok you might think I guess that when the individual is cleared they will destroy the sample, no. They currently have 4-5 million samples on a permant database.

So surely only some one who has something to hide would think this is a problem?

In a spirit of compromise the government backdown when the House of Lords objected to their plans for a national identity card and database(containing BioMetric data). The government claimed it was voluntary but compulsory when applying for a passport - oh and the card costs the user 100 of their English Pounds. The Lords said that wasn't voluntary. The government said, ok we will collect the data and add it to the database but not issue a card. The Lords said, oh ok then.

Now only the churlish would think that the objection should be to the database not the card?

Now I don't think i'm either paranoid, have anything to hide or churlish. But I do think my government is taking the piss.

Stuart: A Life Backwards

There are books you read and then put on the books shelf, occasional there are books you want to shout about and make people read. Alexander Masters "Stuart: A Life Backwards" most definitely falls in to the last category. If you see it read it.

The book tells the real life story of Stuart Shorter, a homeless addict, as well as Alexanders mission to understand how Stuart came to the life. It actually achieves something many writers search for in that out of the chaos of Stuarts life you begin to understand a real person. The kind of person you would normally cross the road to avoid. The kind of person you would, probably not unfairly, judge, pigeon hole and define - before possibly giving them some spare change.

The book describes Stuart as "Thief, hostage-taker, psycho, and street raconteur." It is brutally honest about Stuarts life; The child abuse, the rapes, the drugs and Stuarts eventual death. Despite this and the fact that it ends on his funeral it is a very human uplifting story.

Becuase of the way it describes and unpicks the life of a chaotic homless person its also a very funny book. In a past job I worked with addicts and recognised the personalities. The brutal bland honesty of they have about their world combined with secrecy and suspicion. The fractured reasoning and wildly unrealistic ambitions. If i were honest i would say that this book actually made me laugh and cry at the same time. But i'm not so i'm not going to.

You really should read this book, no really you should read this book. It won't change your life but it might make you think.

Parent & Parent II

Well the Parent meeting thing went ok. Every one seem to get on with every one else. J's mum has started referring to me as son, which is just weird. It turned into a bit of a wander down nostalgia lane. Although to be fair my mother is spending so much time down there at the moment I think she has moved in.

Photos albums were swapped. I have come to the decision that any photos of me in the 70's should be burnt. I think poor J's mum was very confused by the end. Given that we used to move every two years it was very disjointed tour of my early years.

Then we got on to family histories. The strange thing is that on my mothers side the family is Irish (well by the time you get to my mum 3rd generation Irish I think). Now I didn't know this until last year. Although to be fair I should have spotted something was sus when my mother used to talk about being in the London Irish Marching Band (she used to be the drummer and had one of those large round drums) and had Irish dancing lessons.

What I did know was that my, now let me get this right, my great great grandfather was a master rigger for tall ships - apparently quite a job in them days. He was the master rigger for Scotts ship the discovery according to family lore and was by all accounts a bit of a bastard. Given his job his death was ironic in that he died after falling down the stairs the night before his wedding (a few drams too many me thinks). I should add before anyone questions my parentage it was his second wedding.

This unfortunate incident did however keep his wealth in the family which would be great if I was now wealthy too, but I'm not. The family lost the money due that Hitler fella. I knew there was a reason the Germans annoyed me. According to my mother while he wasn't rich he had wealth. But this was primarily in a lot of nice things - the kind of ostentatious wealth that is oh so useful - not. Any way some now long lost relative lived in London at the time of the blitz and kept getting bombed. Personally I would have moved after the first time but she was made of sterner stuff. The problem was that the wealth, for what it was worth, wasn't so durable.

My dad's side is a bit of a mystery. He keeps it very quite. From what I can piece together somewhere in there I think are either some travelers, or possibly some romanies. But definitely a house made from Huntley and Palmers biscuit tins....don't ask because I have never really got down to the bottom of it.

Families are strange. You grow up surrounded by them so much so that you don't notice the ways they have shaped you. Listening to my mother go back in time I couldn't help think that my family was an British version of something that William Faulkner would have written about, and I liked that.

Swans Blood and Cuddly Chickens

So its offical Bird Flu has landed. It has arrived on the shores of the British Isle in the form of a dead swan. The swan was found bobbing around dead in a Scottish habour. The boffins, becuase scientist at the centre of any potential apocolyptic event is by definition a boffin, took it away prodded and poked it. They then took some samples and took the weekend off. On coming back from a nice weekend they read their results and shouted cripes!

It was announced on the news the day after a story about a nationwide simmulation of an out break, which made it very confusing - was this real or was it more simmulation? Any way the media have turned into very conflicted beasts. They are almost screaming the headline, "Don't Panic!!!!" Which is very good advice.

Lets be honest for Bird Flu to be a problem it has to enter a human and then mutate into human transferable virus. Otherwise the only way to get it is to be fairly friendly with a sick bird. In the words of John Humphreys on the Today programme when speaking to a boffin, "So the advice is don't cuddle chickens or drink swans blood?" Advice to live by if you ask me.

But at the risk of sounding like a doom monger lets be honest. It, or something simmilar, will eventually mutate and kick us right in the knackers. Problem is there is not much to be done about it so i'm still not going to panic......or cuddle chickens.

Parent meet Partents

This weekend J's Mum will meet my parents for the first time......hmmm. Now for most people this would simply involve a meal or a night out. Unfortunately for me its going to involve every one staying over at my folks for the weekend.

Oh great. No scope for anything to go wrong there then is there? Not that its worrying me you understand......its just...........i'm sure it will be fine.

I mean Mum, bless her, even rang the other day to see if we wanted to go for Sunday lunch instead of a meal on the Saturday. No problem for me. I checked with the development team if it was okay with them. They agreed it made a change from the usual agenda items such as discussing software deployment strategies and what kind of chocolate biscuits to have at the next meeting.

Mum has agreed not to call me at work again unless another member of the family is involved in a life threatening situation with small rodents and the emergency services are on strike.

As I said what can possibly go wrong....Gulp!

Hosepipes, Gordale Scar and a Broken Camera

Gordale Scar
Originally uploaded by SmithersJones.

Several Water Companies in the south east of England today declared a hosepipe ban. Laugh, I nearly drowned. Living up north for the past couple of days i've been searching the internet for the plans to Noahs Ark.

Saturday out riding it rained, sleeted and peppershot us with hail, even the horses didnt want to be out. It takes talent to go down a hill on a horse walking backwards.

Sunday was even worse.....so we went walking......up a waterfall. Well once your wet your wet. We planned to go to Malham and walk along Janets Foss and then Gordale Scar finally crossing to Malham Cove.

Janets Foss is named after the queen of the Faries who is suppoed to live in a cave behind the fall. Foss its self is old norse word for force applied to a water fall. The last time we were here M was able to clamber up it and go into the cave, not something he was willing to do this time.

Gordale Scar its self is a massive gorge cut out of the limestone simply by the force of water. Its like a yorkshire version of the Grand Canyon. The waterfall is usually climable and that was our plan.

It was, i'm pleased to say, a time when age and wisdom over come youth and stupidity - i knew that age would come in useful sometime. We retreated half a mile and climed over the hill to the top of the gorge by a more sensible route. I'd loved to say that it was a drier route but by this time the rain was turning biblical.


I'd love to show you the photos but at this point my camera came up for the third and final time. So after some 4500 photos my trusty Pentax drowned. The really annoying thing is that 3 of us went walking and one, who shall remain nameless, came with out any waterproofs. I was done up like a condom. He was like SpongeBob SquarePants. His camera was still working at the end.

So do i have any sympathy for the fact that a hosepipe ban has been declared down south? Do i chuff.

P.S. My camera has had a Lazarus resuserection and is working again. Bugger, I was aiming to pursued J that i needed to get a Nikon D50.

As per usual the photos of the day can be found here on my stream on Flickr.

Condi in the 'Pool

DSCN6461
Originally uploaded by bliarwatch.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice is currently visiting Liverpool and Blackburn as a guest of the British Foriegn Secretary Jack Straw (a man who makes Donald Rumsford and George Bush sound comprehensible and intelligent). Needless to say she has not had the warmest of welcomes from the anti war movement.

Blairwatch was in attendance at the demo in Liverpool and took a selection of photos. AsI wasnt I thought I would share these with you. Its important that every chance is taken by those who object to the direction this world is currently going take to show that objection. If you want to see more pictures of the demo just click on the photo and that will take you through to Blairwatch's photo stream.

If you want to see more of Blairwatch then click on the link on the left. I don't agree with him 100% of the time but I do agree with a lot of what he says. It's also good to see some opposition to this shambles of a government that we have. It makes very interesting reading, which is also important.