denyerec.co.uk

I really don’t think I could have put it better than this chap on BoingBoing. Allowing libraries to shut down is just cretinous. It’s beyond the absurd. Spending billions on building a wall across Mexico, blowing up parts of the desert, spying on old enemies, hunting down bogeymen and paying private contractors Billions of dollars of money to perform tasks that a government run institution could do for less? Go right ahead. Put a little money aside for a library? No chance.

If this is a sign of things to come, librarians in the US better start stocking up on rations and ammo. Disgusting.

Sad thing is, if the resistance to US Government backed healthcare is anything to go by, people are probably cheering the cuts thinking it’ll save a little on their taxes, whilst being so uninformed as to not realise they’re paying more per day in taxes for Iraq Part Deux than they would to run every library in their country. If this absurdity ever comes to pass over here I’m leaving for the moon.

More Damning Anti-Shoe Material, the same old really, but I do find myself wondering if the Chiropodists are in league with the shoe manufacturers.

This very-much-expected UK ID Card Failure needs no real comment, beyond the somewhat smug “I’m surprised it took them that long…”

Wow. April was the last time I made a meaningful contribution to the internet via the medium of blogging, between then and now not a lot has changed, but a lot has changed. Cryptic zen nonsense perhaps, but there’s a shift in my outlook now that is going to promote a flurry of relaxed activity over the coming months. Whether it’s down to the sun coming out, or the magnesium citrate that I’ve taking to examine its effect on depressed mental states I don’t care, but I’m more enthusiastic about things in general than I have been in years. Don’t expect anything overnight, but at least in the coming months the plan is to finally start doing all the things I’ve thought about instead of just thinking about them. Hopefully the change in mood isn’t temporary, as that would be devestating.

In other news, Trier is a really, really nice city to visit in Germany if you like old things (Roman, Medieval, etc) and getting there by Ryanair can cost you as little as £8 each way (ALL IN!) so long as you read the smallprint. Never quite understood why people get so passionately aggressive toward companies like easyJet and Ryanair, as what can one really expect when paying so little?

Finally, it was brought to my attention recently that the Government is subsidising rail transport so heavily that it may as well re-nationalise it and stop the idiot managers creaming off the “profits”, which turn out to be just un-spent subsidy. East Coast Rattletrack is already back with Big Brother, I just wish they’d get a move on and fix the lot, the current situation is a sham of a mockery of a mockery of a sham of a mockery.

A friend of mine linked me to a photo of a particularly Orwellian advertisement earlier today, go take a look for yourselves. It takes a special kind of idiot to swallow that kind of desensitizing, CHEKA inspired propaganda but fortunately the British public is filled with just such special idiots. Honestly, there hasn’t been one incident that I can think of that made the news where a bomb attempt was stopped thanks to CCTV footage (Please correct this assumption if you can find anything), however there is a lot of CCTV footage of bombs going off. What does this tell me? CCTV does absolutely bloody nothing to prevent terrorism (Or indeed street violence), it can only help to identify and chase down the offenders.

What next? Pink hearts and fur on the cameras to make us love them?

We must love the cameras.

We must love Big Brother.

I look forward to even more evidence emerging that I am not, contrary to popular shoe-fetishist belief, insane.

True I need foot-covers during the winter, and when there’s an abundance of TWO INCH LONG ants kicking around the place, but fortunately for my poor feet it’s summer and I’m back in Blighty.

Ahhh, sweet relief.

Looks like the snowball is about to gather speed, so all stand for the entrance of Big Brother! “British” Telecom have block the Pirate Bay, presumably off the back of the lawsuit which found the operators guilty of linking to other people. Whilst I don’t support rampant proliferation of copyright material (As a photographer, that is one thing you become quite sensitive to) I am acutely aware of the ramifications of both the lawsuit and the move on behalf of BT. What we are seeing here is pressure from private enterprise forcing potentially erroneous legal judgements and censorship. BT Blocked the pirate bay because MGM and the music industry leant on them hard enough. Will they block anti-war material if BAE Systems lean hard enough too? Will they surreptitiously silence Pro-Green website should Shell and Exxon pad the brown envelopes with sufficient enthusiasm? I believe they’re calling this move an adoptation of a “voluntary” code, voluntary purely because the capitalist directors of said actions aren’t the ones who can call it law. Yet.

Blocking adult content, whilst altruistic in the vein of preventing exposure (ho ho) of children to such material is at the mercy of whoever gets to define “Adult”. Do we prevent coverage of wars via mobile media beause it’s “Unsuitable for children”? How about police brutality, will that eventually fall under the PG-13 filter? Public opinion and the social conscious is already defined by and large by the powers that control popular media but, for now, the free press and democratic contributors to the public domain pool of knowledge are at least given an even field on which to play. I’m as able to visit fox.com as I am www.medialens.org. Admittedly I choose not to visit Fox, as I don’t want to have to take a shower afterward, but you hopefully see my point. Once private enterprise is allowed to interfere with the neutrality of the internet insofar as to have content that conflicts with their agenda blocked, you open the doors to a dark, dark place.

I wanted to rant about Adobe’s new storefront, which is all flash based. But I’m too angry. I’m actually too worked up to phrase it coherantly. I will return when I’ve calmed down to explain myself. In the meantime, whoever built the thing, please, choke on a rock, die in a fire and then burn in whichever hell you believe.

Actually, thinking about it, that might not even be harsh enough.