It's not dead. It's just resting.

There is an old saying about 'speaking too soon' or as I once heard an American put it, "You just had to open your mouth, didn't ya!"

Well, I lost my broadband connection a few days after making that last post.

Annoying but not earth shattering. Losing the connection is not a particularly rare event as it is a BT line and with no competing services at my local exchange I'm stuck with whatever they choose to provide.

To make matters worse, if their equipment can hold what they interpret as a 'stable' connection at any speed above 0.6mpbs they won't even look at it as this is what they call the "Minimum Fault Threshold".

However all this pales in comparison to the absolute disgrace which is BT Internet's customer/technical support who claimed he couldn't see anything wrong and suggested.

"It's probably just a bit slow due to network congestion."

Even Eric Idle sounded more convincing than that in the now infamous Parrot Sketch.

In the end, it took nearly fifteen minutes for this idiot to satisfy himself that there was a fault and a further week for BT to 'fix' it.

Sort of...

The only real different is now they're claiming that because of something they had to do at the exchange - no explanation of what - they can't escalate the fault until fourteen days have passed.

It took them another three days on top to fix whatever they’d ‘fixed’ the first time round. So in total, I was without a usable internet connection for nearly a month.


And yes. I do have access to the internet at another location but I'd be a right bloody fool to post entries to this blog from there, wouldn't I?

Oh No! Not More Queer Science!

I'm constantly amazed by the extremes that Americans will go to in their desperation to prove that Homosexuality is a disease.

Everything from psychobabble about Faulty Parenting, Unsuitable Home Environment, Unisex Schooling, Masturbation...

To more 'medically' inclined explanations such as Mental Illness and Genetic Disorders have been cited as possible 'causes'.

Now a paper circulating within the medical community claims to have evidence that Homosexuality is linked to reduced Serotonin levels within the brain.

Apparently this particular paper is still undergoing 'peer-review' but it can't be a coincidence that another paper claiming similar findings in mice surfaced briefly in Nature magazine before 'disappearing' again.

One thing is certain. If there were any truth at all in this nonsense then there would be few, if any, Homosexuals of either gender using drugs such as Ecstacy which stimulate the release of Serotonin within the brain.

Downfall (ACS Law remix)

Some of you may have seen the Gordon Brown parodies based on the bunker scene from the film Downfall featuring Adolf Hitler as Gordon Brown.

I found most of them quite amusing but the real Gordon Brown’s reaction to them was much, much better. To paraphrase Queen Victoria, he was not amused. After viewing one in particular he then ‘parodied the parody’ so to speak, by have a temper tantrum much like that depicted.

Which led me to wonder - after I had stopped laughing of course - what Andrew Crossley’s reaction would be to the following video I was sent a couple of days ago.



From what I’ve read in his emails I suspect it may be somewhat similar to that of Gordon Brown.

Poetic Justice

My techie friend has been having a whale of a time after some idiot at ACS Law made an unencrypted backup containing a substantial quantity of their emails available on their website last week.

As some people may already know,‭ ‬ACS Law is the London based law firm run by Andrew Crossley which has become notorious for it's abuse of the legal system to extort money from people accused - wrongly in many cases - of copyright infringement.

An abuse which has been condemned by members of the House of Lords‭ ‬and the BPI. Although I suspect that in the case of the latter they foresaw what would eventually happen and were simply trying to avoid being hit by flying excrement when it finally hit the fan.

Below is a list of links - provided by the aforementioned techno-rabbi - to articles covering the contents of the emails in far greater detail than I could manage. The file contains nearly 7000 documents and even with the best will in the world, it would quite impossible to do more than skim the surface in the limited time I could scrounge from my many other commitments.

However there was a couple of things which caught my attention.

One of Andrew Crossley’s ‘copyright’ clients is none other than Anna Span, a.k.a. Anna Arrowsmith. Pornographer and the very well publicised Lib-Dem PPC for Gravesham in the general election.

I suspect that their leadership may be regretting that particular piece of‭ '‬open mindedness‭' ‬given their very public opposition to Andrew Crossley and his ilk. After all, it was a Lib-Dem Peer who compared Andrew Crossley and ACS Law to “rogue wheel-clampers”.


And how about this for sheer bloody cheek.

How about a complaint to the sra that this lady - who is a solicitor - is bringing the profession into disrepute? She is issuing misleading information that is slanted and innaccurate and it leads people she does not act for to disregard a matter that could end up in court. She is a total disgrace.

Andrew J. Crossley
Principal
ACS Law Solicitors


My overall impression of Andrew Crossley from his emails is that of a ‘Del-Boy‭' ‬of the legal profession.‭ ‬A shady‭ '‬wheeler and dealer‭' ‬who's not above bending,‭ ‬perhaps even breaking,‭ ‬the law to earn a little money.

However there is one very,‭ ‬very significant difference.

Del-Boy as portrayed by actor David Jason was basically a decent person trying to do his best for a younger brother and an elderly relative in a run-down area of south London full of con-artists,‭ ‬crooks and corrupt coppers.

Andrew Crossley is not.


Following the revelations detailed in the articles linked below, it should come as no surprise that most of the ISPs targeted by Andrew Crossley have now 'suspended cooperation’ citing security concerns. The single exception to this is Entanet which is continuing to ‘cooperate’ at this time.

BT have also said that it would resist efforts to share more customer details until it could be sure that “alleged copyright infringements have some basis and customers are treated fairly"

It’s a pity they didn’t think that way before but with their own balls in the wringer over having sent the data unencrypted they, like most of the ISPs involved, are now bending over backwards in a futile attempt to distance themselves from ACS Law.


And finally, to add insult to a well deserved injury, a group calling themselves “Wankers” - apparently in reference to Andrew Crossley’s childish threat to sue Slyck.com over a forum post calling him a wanker - has put together a ‘megapack’ containing all of the music which Andrew Crossley is using as a pretext to send his threatening letters and made it available on a range of filesharing platforms.


New 4chan DDoS Targets Hated Anti-Piracy Law Firm
Piracy threats lawyer mocks 4chan DDoS attack
ACS:Law Anti-Piracy Law Firm Torn Apart By Leaked Emails
ACS:Law (Gay) Porn Letters Target Pensioners, Married Men
Leaked Emails Reveal Profits of Anti-Piracy Cash Scheme
High-Profile, High Damages File-Sharing ‘Conviction’ Was a Farce
Anti-piracy lawyers' email database leaked after hack
ACS:Law's mocking of 4chan could cost it £500k
The "legal blackmail" business: inside a P2P settlement factory
P2P settlement factory expects £10 million from... mailing letters
Pirates release ACS:Law 'megapack' of music

May I have your attention please...

I popped into Smiths on my way past yesterday afternoon to pick a newspaper and was just in time to catch the accounts clerk ‘remonstrating’ with her colleagues over their somewhat strange obsession with her private life.

From what I can gather it started with their ‘persistent’ questions as to why she was there in the afternoon instead of the morning and deteriorated from there until it reached the point where she demanded they stop what they were doing and listen.

Whereupon she gave them the information they were so persistently seeking - right between the eyes!

To say they seemed suitably embarrassed might be something of an understatement.

Yes, I know. Some people might consider it highly unprofessional of her to do that in front of customers and in a manager or supervisor it most certainly would be.

However as someone who has had to hang about waiting to be served on far too many occasions while staff gossiped I can only applaud her not-so-subtle way of reminding them that they’re being paid to serve customers, not pry into her private life.

I expect the area manager will have an opinion on this but given her own history of unprofessional behaviour towards this young woman - which almost cost her her job last year – it would probably be a very good idea if she kept it to herself.

One is certain, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to upset that young lady!

Recycle, Request, Refused...

It seems that not all of Dover District Council's staff have got the message about it's alleged commitment to recycling.

A certain nameless DDC official recently told a local school that they could not have the materials they wanted for a school project as they were to be incinerated. When the school attempted to clarify what it naturally assumed to be a health and safety issue they were told.

"Oh no, there's nothing wrong with them. They're just marked for incineration that's all."

Turn left at next junction...

I see from the Times that the idiot who slavishly followed his sat-nav's instructions right to the very edge of a cliff in West Yorkshire has been convicted of driving without due care and attention.

He was fined £370, had 6 penalty points added to his license and was ordered to pay £500 costs. With the recovery bill for his car this piece of stupidity has cost him nearly £1900.

Yet despite this he is still insisting he did nothing wrong and is quoted as being "extremely disappointed" with the verdict. He also insists that he was using the sat-nav properly and that it was at fault, not him.

This is complete nonsense of course. Had he been paying proper attention to the footpath he was following he would have realised that something was seriously wrong before he hit the fence at the edge of the cliff.

Patently Ridiculous

Trevor Baylis - the man credited with having 'invented' the wind-up radio despite having done nothing more than patented the idea of adding a clockwork mechanism to the old schoolboy physics experiment involving a dynamo and a transistor radio - has jumped on the "Nick em all and let the courts sort them out" bandwagon by writing to our Peter urging him to make intellectual property theft a criminal offence.

In an interview with the BBC he said that inventors need more protection against people who attempt to copy or steal their ideas. He went on to say,

"If I was to nick your car, which is worth £10,000, say, I could go to jail. But if I were to nick your patent, which is worth a million pounds, you'd have to sue me."

To which he added,

"And if I was a colossal company, or indeed another country, that had stolen your invention, how could you find a million pounds a day to take me to court?"

On the surface this seems quite reasonable. After all, no one likes having their ideas stolen, particularly if they've put a lot of work into them.

However his true motivation becomes clear when he says the answer is to make stealing a patent a criminal offence. That way the state, and not the individual inventor, would bear the costs of going to court.

In other words what he actually wants is the state - that's us taxpayers - to foot the bill for enforcing his patents.

Apparently people are using his idea of a wind-up mechanism without paying him for it. The fact that wind-up mechanisms were in common use long before he was born is irrelevant of course. Like any patent troll, he still wants people to pay him to use them.

However he's not alone in this. It's estimated that more than half of the world's patents are currently in the hands of 'patent trolls' who use them as a means to extort money from legitimate businesses.

A preview of one consequence of making patent infringement a criminal offence was seen in Germany last year. Major exhibitors at two separate consumer electronics shows in March and August had their stands raided by armed German Customs officers who seized exhibits following a complaint of patent infringement from a well known Italian patent troll. 180 officers took part in the first raid and over 200 in the second.

It's little surprise then that one critic described Baylis' remarks as "Barking Mad".


Inventor urges patent law change
Brit inventor wants prison for patent crims

Be careful dear. That doesn't look very safe.

I was doing some research on the internet earlier today when I came across a 'Grow Your Own' style website / forum.

As always with the internet in general, it contained some very good advice along with the not-so-good, the bad and the downright bloody dangerous!

On this occasion some of the 'members' were advising one visitor to take a pan of boiling water into the garden so that sweet-corn could be put straight into the pan immediately after picking.

This 'advice' apparently came from some idiot woman on TV and - allegedly - prevents the sweet-corn from deteriorating as the sugars - allegedly once again - instantly start turning into starch as soon as it's picked.


There are several things wrong with this of course.

First, the idea that garden produce immediately starts deteriorating the moment it's harvested is complete nonsense. Much of it actually continues to ripen.

Second, no matter how small your garden by the time you get to the plant, remove the cob and strip the leaves off, the one thing you can be sure of is the water won't be boiling anymore.

But far more importantly, carrying a pan of boiling water around a garden is nothing less than sheer bloody lunacy! While covering the pan will probably stop it from slopping over the sides, nothing is going to stop it spilling if you trip over something. If you're lucky you may simply kill a patch of grass or a few plants.


The 'advice' given by other 'members' wasn't quite so deranged suggesting that the sweet-corn should be picked and the leaves stripped while running towards the kitchen where the cob should be plunged into a pan of boiling water.

There was also one member who suggested picking and eating it raw directly from the plant which I suppose might be ok if you haven't used any chemicals such as fertilisers or insecticides etc.

Or the local wildlife hasn't shit on it in passing.

Indeed he did

Earlier today I received a text msg saying "You really have to see this" followed by several grinning smilies and a link to a post on DoverLocals.

Possessing the usual primate curiosity I had a look. Then looked at the link in that post which leads back to a post on here...

And started laughing when I realised all that carefully crafted - and not so carefully crafted - abuse had completely gone to waste. The intended recipient had been away and simply did not know it had ever existed!

Absolutely Priceless.

Did I miss something?

I've only been away a week... (Part 3)

Closer to home, I had my attention drawn to DoverLocals. A local forum which had a post from one member suggesting that the UKIP had an "unrealistic worldview".

Naturally this is a matter of opinion, but on looking at some of the other opinions being expressed there I'd have to say that by their own standards, it's not just the UKIP which have an unrealistic worldview.

Mind you, I was amused by the suggestion that Chris Precious and Vic Matcham should stand on behalf of the Monster Raving Loony Party. A bit unfair on Chris I know, but Vic has always been potential Monster Raving Loony material and as for the thought of those two in Brussels...

What wasn't so amusing was evidence that the anti-monarchy campaign led by the Murdock press is still producing twisted results many years after it dribbled away to nothing with even Murdock himself admitting it had been a dismal failure.

Murdock blamed British apathy but I suspect it had rather more to do with the fact that the vast majority of the tabloid readership has the attention span of a four year old and an unhealthy obsession with certain parts of the female anatomy.

It started with Vic suggesting that the Queen should intervene in the current political crisis which one 'member' took as an opportunity to dribble on incoherently about the monarchy, suggesting that abolishing it would allow us to address homelessness and properly equip our troops in Iraq.

This rather twisted viewpoint was supported by other 'members', one of whom stated they did not believe the 'rubbish' about the monarchy attracting tourists to this country. The only person who dared to disagree with this suffered a torrent of abuse which had to be seen to be believed.

I had intended to link to these posts but on returning to the site to get the information needed I discovered that the entire series of exchanges had been heavily edited by the forum moderators with some posts being deleted altogether.

I suppose I should have expected something like this as some of the remarks were really, really nasty. However the editing has changed the entire tone. It now reads like an unwarranted and rather sarcastic attack by a new member instead of a vicious and unprovoked attack on that same new member by a bunch of twenty something Essex Girls.

They'll be trying to dig him up next...

Glaswegians are often stereotyped as drunkards and/or thieves. Something which I've always thought was rather unfair to the many thousands of Glaswegian Puritans who neither drink nor steal, unlike the current batch in parliament, many of whom it now transpires do both with gleeful enthusiasm.

However I may have to reconsider my position on this after learning that Glasgow Council have 'appropriated' what is probably the most famous Welsh character in English literature - Merlin, Wizard and Adviser to King Arthur of Camelot.

A council spokeswoman said that Merlin - created by Welsh clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century - had been added to a list of 'well-known' figures from the city based on a book by Scots advocate and amateur historian Adam Ardrey who spent six years 'researching' the matter.

Mr Ardrey claims to have discovered this while researching his own family name and while he doesn't specifically claim to be descended from Merlin, the implication is plain to see.

"I found that my name Ardrey was connected with the very first reference to Merlin, which had him fighting at the Battle of Arddreyd."

For anyone other than Glasgow Council, this sort of obsession would be taken as a sign of mental illness rather than a historical revelation.

Sadly, this sort of blatant theft is precisely what we are coming to expect from Glaswegian politicians.

Isn't it Mr Speaker...


Merlin magics up Glaswegian link

Unsuspecting eh?

For a long time now it's been generally recognised that the alleged deterrent effect of so-called 'safety cameras' is virtually non-existent. Many have suggested that it is and always has been nothing more than a cover story to hide their real purpose of raising revenue by penalising unsuspecting motorists.

Naturally there appears to be a certain degree of truth in this allegation until you consider the simple fact that these idiots wouldn't have been fined if they hadn't broken the law.

Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the case of Tom Riall, chief executive of Serco Civil Government who was convicted of speeding at Sudbury Magistrates Court. Riall, who pleaded guilty to driving at 102.9mph on a 70mph road, was fined £300, banned for six months and had six penalty points added to his licence.

Quite frankly, with Serco having supplied more than 5000 'safety cameras' within the UK there are many things you might wish to call Tom Riall, but "unsuspecting" is certainly not one of them.

Speed camera boss in 100mph drive

Spoof Proof?

Two American 'researchers' have come up with an alternative to conventional biometric security systems based on iris and fingerprint scans which they claim will provide greater resistance to "spoofing".

X-Ray photographs of the knee.

No, I kid ye not. X-Ray photographs of the knee.

I realise this might seem a bit ridiculous, and somewhat risky considering that the medical profession has spent the past twenty or more years telling us that X-Rays are dangerous. However there are potential benefits in addition to increased 'spoof' resistance.

Passports and other identification documents would contain an embedded dosimeter which would require checking and replacement every year generating an additional revenue stream for the passport office and the nuclear medicine support industries.

It would stimulate the employment market by forcing early retirement for those who had reached their lifetime exposure limit.

The domestic holiday market would benefit by discouraging people from taking holidays abroad and by forcing those who do to remain in this country after they reach their exposure limit.

Border security would be enhanced by making those who regularly travel using falsified documents easily detectable due to residual radiation. The worst offenders could be identified by the fairly obvious signs of radiation sickness or simply by switching off the lights and looking to see who glows in the dark.

The domestic garment industry would experience a resurgence as the demand for protective underwear such as lead-lined y-fronts and corsets increased. Men with certain 'cultural' prejudices would require additional layers of lead foil to protect their precious 'manhood'. This would result in a characteristic nappy-like bulge allowing underage girls and women who prefer their eggs unfertilised to avoid them like the plague.

A small but profitable sideline would also exist in providing lead-lined boxer shorts for American visitors - no true Englishman would be caught dead wearing such a ridiculous garment.

Naturally Dover would be at the front of such technological innovations and the sight of passport control officers in radiation-proof protective clothing would quickly become common place as would the bluish glow from the vicinity of passport control.

Seriously though, this is not a new idea. Previous studies of similar methodologies concluded that the serious health risks associated with X-Ray radiation were an insurmountable problem and strange as it may seem, one of this pair actually works for the US National Institutes of Health. What precise capacity isn't specified but I sincerely hope it's not a medical one.

Oh and by the way - it doesn't work...

Follow A1 (M) to Junction...

If a spate of recent news reports are to be believed, in car satellite navigation systems are the biggest threat to road safety since the mobile phone.

This is not entirely true of course. It's the idiots who switch their brain into neutral and slavishly follow the machine's instructions regardless of where they lead, be it a narrow footpath leading to a cliff, the track of the main Doncaster to Hull railway line or Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire instead of Chelsea Football Club's ground in West London.

There's a book on display in the window of a local bookshop entitled "GPS for Dummies". I think the title says it all really...

Stiffer Penalties?

Iain Coucher, Chief Executive of Network Rail wants stiffer penalties for the suicidal idiots who 'jump the lights' at level crossings. For some unfathomable reason, he seems to believe that this will help discourage offenders from behaviour which "has the potential for massive damage, disruption and death".

Which is a bit silly really. If the possibility of being hit by a train weighing in excess of 90 tons and travelling at 60mph doesn't act as a deterrent then it's rather unlikely that anything else will.

Of course, actually being killed by a train would stop them from re-offending but a longer ban and/or a few more points on their license certainly won't.

Well what did they expect?

I see from today's Times that Essex Man has once again demonstrated not only a complete disregard for the law but also common decency as well.

This is the case of Simon Cremer who tied up one of his employees and marched him through Witham town centre to the police station, with a hand-lettered sign bearing the word "thief" around his neck.

Mr Cremer and three members of his staff have been charged with false imprisonment.

Do you know who I am?

I saw a truly remarkable piece of ‘Street Theatre' in Canterbury yesterday afternoon.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was doing a ‘walkabout’ in the town centre during which he approached a woman with a small toddler and attempted to ‘lay hands’ on the child. The mother gently drew the child away from him and told him “Don’t you dare touch my child!”

The Archbishop drew himself up and arrogantly demanded “Do you know who I am?” to which the mother replied “Yes I do and don’t you dare touch my child!”

Then in an incredible display of arrogance and insensitivity he completely ignored the mother’s wishes and stepping forward, attempted once again to 'lay hands' on the child. The mother reacted to this by shoving a large travel buggy between him and the child to prevent him doing so, at which two of his bodyguards quickly hustled him away followed by the rest of his entourage.

Absolutely Priceless. His Eminence, the Archbishop of Canterbury behaving like a complete idiot in front of dozens of people. You simply couldn't make this stuff up.

Up Shit Creek

There have been quite a few stories in the media about the loss and/or leaking of confidential information over the past few months. Everything from a relatively innocuous list of customer names through sensitive personal and financial information to highly classified intelligence documents have been stolen, lost or simply left on a train.

However none of these have caused the same degree of panic in some circles, amusement and a certain amount of school-boyish sniggering in others, as the online publication of the British National Party's secret membership list.

The entire list, which contains nearly 13,000 names along with other sensitive information such as addresses and phone numbers, first appeared yesterday and was quickly removed following legal threats from the BNP. But as anyone with an I.Q. larger than their shoe size could have predicted, it soon popped up again on Wikileaks, the Pirate Bay and a multitude of other places.

Naturally this has not stopped the BNP from trying to suppress the leaked information despite the obvious futility of their efforts.

A brief wade through the sewer which passes for a discussion forum amongst these vermin - followed by a stiff drink to calm my nerves - turned up a number of comments suggesting that the leadership of the party might be at risk from some of their own members. However most of them are simply panicking over what will happen now they've been 'Outed', particularly those in 'proscribed' occupations.

I'm reminded of a cartoon which appeared in the Evening Standard many years ago. It showed the Guinness executives of the time in a leaky canoe drifting in the centre of a small river. The caption said "I'm sure we had a paddle here somewhere Ernest."

I suspect many of the BNP's membership may be feeling the same sense of despair this evening.