Category: old blogging

I’m trying to figure out whether it is worth trying to get to work on Friday and Monday by train whilst the guards are having their stupid, pointless, irrelevant, stuck-in-the-dark-ages strike. According to the announcement I heard on the way home this evening, South Central will be running no services west of Barnham. South West are not involved in the strike and will be running a "very limited" service, but if they run the scheduled 0845 to Brighton, I should be able to get to work just ten minutes late. Guards on Wessex are to be re-balloted, but if they run their normal service, the train that I use to get home will still be running.
But there are rather too many "if" factors in there for my liking.
UPDATE: asked at the station, and it seems that I will be able to travel. by train without too many problems.

British Spin is interesting. I’m not sure that I agree with everything (or even most) of what the author (about whom we are told nothing) writes. Nor am I sure that the chronic lack of proof-reading is not a distraction. But it is worth reading if you’re interested in British politics.

I notice that my posts about Aishwarya Rai have attracted far more comments than my posts about the war (or anything else for that matter). Maybe Kenny has the right approach after all?

Have you noticed that western journalists seem a little two-faced at times? Oh, not just me then.
Over the last few days, I’ve noticed that whenever the Iraqi authorities have claimed something, the BBC/CNN/ABC/whoever journalists are quick to point out that they have no way of verifying the claims. Examples: number of dead in today’s market blast (or even, whether it was a missile or some other cause), or the Iraqi troops said to be active in southern Iraq. Yet, whenever the coalition forces make a claim, the western journalists swallow the whole thing. Examples: Umm Qasr captured (nope, not yet), Iraqi TV stops broadcasting (for about ten minutes), local uprising in Basra (evidence anyone?). In the case of the Basra "uprising", the Daily Telegraph gave the whole of the front page to it today, yet as the day wears on it is becoming increasingly clear that either the uprising was small and quickly quashed by the Iraqi authorities, or it never happened at all.
I appreciate that it is difficult to get objective reports and information. There is a war on after all. But I wish that journalists would be a little more circumspect and remember that information given to them by the coalition military authorities is just as likely to be spun or simply wrong as the information given to them by the Iraqis. Perhaps, if we can not rely on the "independent" media to consider this, it is up to us to be circumspect in our interpretation of what they report.
And, as a reminder: my news sources page may help you get a slightly broader view.

UPDATE: maybe I’ve been a bit harsh. This is a quote from BBC reporter Tim Franks, published on the BBC’s reporters log thingy:

Which suggests that Mr Franks, at least, is not accepting everything he is being told at face value.

Linked everywhere and in incredibly poor taste – but bring it on anyway! The Gulf War Drinking Game.

The BBC seem to have finally got a clue about the whole concept of blogging (in the sense of a web page that is regularly updated and arranged in a chronological order, just to make things clear for the pedants) and created a single bookmarkable address for the war reporters’ log. It can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/reporters, which strikes me as a very simple, blogger-friendly address – deliberately so, I suspect, judging by the unusual phrase that has appeared at the top of the log:

For those of you (and there seem to be plenty) hungry for more pictures of Aishwarya Rai, then I suggest you visit aishwarya-rai.com and get your fill, as it were.

I keep seeing people wearing the same style of jacket as my pimptastic jacket. Does the world need that many pimps?

For Weebl fans, a Chris the Ninja Pirate game.

To prove that Aishwarya Rai has normal lips and teeth, here’s another pretty picture: