Archive for the 'Politics' Category

August 19, 2007

A-Levels: Gah.

A-level results day has come and gone and, as usual, we get the “A-levels suck”, “No they don’t, stop insulting my intelligence” argument. Meanwhile, everybody turns off the telly and moans about the same old crap year after year. I figure that since this isn’t really read by anyone anyway, I can probably get away with a bit of a stab at A-levels.

Here goes: A-levels in Mathematics are getting easier, and if you disagree, you are wrong.

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1:54 am | Posted in Maths, Politics, Ranting | 15 Comments » | Show comments »

May 22, 2007

What is wrong with Labour?

Seriously. They’ve got some pretty damned serious issues. I thought that, since Tony was on his way out, we might just get some decent policy decisions being made. But to my utter delight, this morning the BBC is reporting that Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with pay-as-you-go road pricing schemes, and is putting forward a bill that would make schemes by councils compatible with one another.

Oh, and the Home Office is also suggesting that civil servants should be made to report any potential offenders they come across:

Mr King suggests two new agencies be created - one to collate reports on potential offenders, the other on potential victims.

Here’s an idea - let’s call this lovely agency the Stasi, rename the country and put a massive wall in between us and the rest of the world. Surely something like this can’t have happened before and been bad? …oh wait.

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6:27 pm | Posted in Politics, Ranting | 2 Comments » | Show comments »

November 30, 2006

Referenda at the Students’ Union

So, it’s referendum time at the Student’s Union. I severely dislike our Students’ Union (mainly because of their obscene drinks prices and general “let’s have an AGM about what type of teabags we should all use” attitude), but this year, an interesting motion has come up:

Lack of Confidence in the Students’ Union
The Students’ Union does not have the confidence of its members, and should regain their confidence.

I happily voted for this motion. Take that.

Back to programming then. Sigh.

7:28 pm | Posted in Politics, University, Whining | 2 Comments » | Show comments »

August 30, 2005

Back to England - shit.

As is given away so unimaginatively by the title of this entry, I am now back in the lovely land of England. And I can’t help but feel rather depressed, really.

Coming back on the M5 today into the heart of the Black Country made me realise that Ireland is just such a better place to live. The sight of factory after factory producing utter crap and chavs sporting their latest tracksuit just makes me utterly sick of this entire thing.

Whatever happened to being British? There used to be a time - not so long ago - when this nation respected some of the traditions of old. Now it just seems we’re all interested in is screwing someone before they screw us more.

I like being able to go to a proper English shop, purchase a cup of tea (drunk from a china cup, of course) with some scones and sit back to read the newspaper or simply admire the nice view. What do we have now? Hey, let’s go and get some cafĂ© latte and rush to work in order to work our arses off all day for pittance, and then have the Government screw us up the ass, giving all our money away to the EU and other such worthy causes.

To give you an example of why I’m getting so utterly sick of the people in this country, let us consider the glorious people, mythically known to all as “my next door neighbours”. Personally, I like to call them “the stupid twats”.

My grandad kindly stays over at our house during the holidays doing jobs that we don’t have time for in the general scheme of things. One such task was the re-painting of the garage doors which have looked quite manky as of late. Admittedly, he started the job at the sultry hour of 8am. However, he wasn’t making what is generally classified as unreasonable amounts of noise, and had to go and get the appropriate materials for the job.

Upon his return, he begins the task at hand and all is going quite swimmingly. About five minutes into the job, however, the next door neighbour decides to show her utter contempt for us and to kindly acknowledge the fact that she is indeed a stupid cow by saluting my grandfather with a bugle salute at an obscenely loud level.

Now, my grandad isn’t as they say, getting any younger. I dread to think what this may have done to others of his age, but I’ve known a lot less to cause far more drastic consequences; the issue of a mild heart attack leaps to mind, of course. As he told me upon my return: “I had half a mind to tell her to stick it up her arse.”

Quite.

Now, the issue of my stupendously moronic neighbour aside, I am finding more and more people like this every day of my life. Namely, a bunch of moronic and ignorant twats. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of having to put up with people who find it amusing (for lack of a more appropriate word) to shout at us for having made the mildest of inconveniences in their obviously busy schedule.

Seriously - what kind of people do we have living next to us? It’s not like we sit around the living room plotting how to make their lives the miserable hell that it quite obviously make it out to be. It’s not like I go around randomly pumping out 19,000W of pure noise into their foundations.

This is the kind of thing I’m on about really. You just don’t find this kind of irrational behaviour over in Ireland. For the most part the people are friendly to talk to, and more importantly, I feel safe walking by myself around the town. You only need to venture 6 or 7 miles down the road into Aston to get a shotgun up your arse and a 9mm down the back of your spine. Hey, that sounds like a laugh.

So, you ask yourself, what was the point in this incoherant gibberish? Simply put, this blog (of sorts) is a place where I can vent my frustration without physically going next door and barbequeing the equally annoying dog.

Anyway, besides all of this, it’s good to be in my house, even if the surrounding area is about as nice as a giant turd embedded in a sea of urine. I can at least find some comfort in my room and my various bits of tacky memorabilia. However, we did have some surprises when we got back.

Firstly, the house has changed quite a bit. My grandad has also been working on the garage which now looks like it might be actually used for something other than storing every object known to mankind. The veranda area has also been cleaned up quite a lot, and that can only be a good thing.

The second nice thing was the postcard that I received from Sarah who got back from America a few days ago. Was fun to read up on what they’d been doing and all that, so it killed a few minutes.

And that was about it. Bugger.

In terms of my schedule for the next month or so, there’s not an awful lot on the cards.

  • I want to get out more than I’ve been doing for the past two months, and hopefully catch up with some people that have been missing for an awfully long time.
  • Work my arse off to earn money.
  • Lose some weight, since I didn’t exactly eat “heathily” in Ireland. Bastard Guinness people.
  • Attempt some more maths. Possibly.
  • Go up to Warwick on possibly the 21st.
  • Random things that I am yet to think of.

University is possibly the one thing I’m looking forward to at the moment. The holidays seem to be dragging and I’m quite keen to get on with my degree and get it finished. Not because I’m eager to leave, but I think that until I’ve finished I’m not going to know how to go from there. Right now, postgraduate work really sounds appealing, but I’m not entirely sure and the more I think about it, the more I want to beat myself to death with a giant teaspoon in a convoluted and provocative way.

Besides teaspoons, university and general agression towards pretty much everything, there’s a bit of an empty void and rather a lot of mild depression/anxiety - I’d quite like to see people before I slip into utter crapness of doom.

This entry didn’t really turn out as I’d expected it to. And it’s really long. Hmm.

PS: I’ve heard of the trials and tribulations of Coventry. I’ll pop down when I can to visit all and see everyone. Also - nice job on the garden Helen, it’s looking absolutely great.

1:29 am | Posted in Politics, Ranting | 2 Comments » | Show comments »

July 14, 2005

And again I leave the blog astray

Unfortunately I’ve had a rather busy week so it’s been impossible to update this thing. However, I’ll (briefly) fill everyone in.

I saw London bombings on TV. I don’t need to add anything to what’s already been said. We’ll get them.

However, I spent most of my week at work, logging tapes and various other things so there’s not been much time to actually do anything. Hopefully that should all be finished and done by tomorrow or possibly Saturday (maybe even later than that, but I really hope not).

Today, however, was rather good. Got shiny new 8mbit broadband from Bulldog and it is very fast. So a fair proporation of today has been spent doing various bits and pieces in connection with that as well as a goodly amount of programming.

Currently, I’m tidying my computer and performing some much-needed maintainance (which I’ve learned is essential with XP really). Perhaps I’ll take it apart later and clean the damn thing out, since everything is bloody caked in dust. Could also do with a couple fans taking out/being turned down since it’s rather noisy.

For those that care, I shall be down in Plymouth until the end of next week and I will be leaving on Friday. You have been warned - or something…

8:45 pm | Posted in Personal, Politics | No Comments »

October 21, 2004

I like ranting

Hey all, Dave’s back with more wierd and wacky stuff from the world of the penguin fishcakes. Or not.

Today, I want to have a bit of a rant really. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before on here, but I think I’m going to start posting stuff on my opinions on world affairs, just to make myself feel better about the world.

So, a little background writing. I tend to think a lot about the current state of affairs in the world and I make sure I check the news (BBC News, of course) at least 4-5 times a day. Ever since the late 1990’s, I have never been as worried as I am today about what is going on in the world. In the space of 5 years, we’ve seen the biggest change in military warfare and tactics that we’ve possibly ever seen, ever. With the onset of the World Trade Centre attacks and the general “war on terror”, we’ve had to change our idea of warfare quite considerably from what it was 10 years ago.

I will say this now: this little rant is laced with my opinions on a lot of things. I do not like George Bush. I do not like Tony Blair. I am not biased extremely to the left, but I am definately not to the right.

The best place to start is, I suppose, with the election of George W. Bush - that fine, extremely colloquial example of a man. I mean, come on! What was your Average Joe thinking when he ticked the little box saying “Hey! I’m an idiot! Vote for me!” on the ballot poll? If there was ever a worse president to handle the current situation, then they managed to find one. I have never seen a muppet trying to run a country, but as muppets go, he’s a pretty crap choice. The fact that he got elected because he called some favours in really just rubs it in.

I’m not going to rant about what he was supposed to do with the entire WTC thing. I don’t know enough about what went on then, but I do know that another person in his situation would almost certainly have done what he did. I also won’t comment on Afghanistan because I don’t want to and this is my rant, but I will say that I do think that was very much for the better.

However, I think exactly the opposite of the situation in Iraq. Not only was that unprovoked and based on completely untrue accusations about that good old phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, but America comes along and decides who can do what. It just pisses me off.

I was planning on writing more, but I’ve definately decided I can’t be arsed. Rant over.

Other than ranting, I’ve done a lot of maths and gone out a bit to get drinks and whatnot, so it’s all been fun. I’m taking some good modules (Vector Analysis is fun) but others (i.e. Analysis III and Algebra I) are definately unfun. I’m going to have to burn the maths department down, there’s just nothing for it :-)

Will post something later maybe, probably more like tomorrow (or later in the week… or next week… or something. bleh).

Later all.

10:31 pm | Posted in Academia, Maths, Politics, Ranting | No Comments »