Took Mrs Sane out for a meal last night to our favourite Italian restaurant, Osteria da Paolo in Shrewsbury.

Shrewsbury was a bit manic because the Flower Show is in full swing and the restaurant was busier than usual but the service was great, as was the food (although it did take two attempts to get Mrs Sane a steak that wasn’t still mooing).

After the meal we went and picked up a friend and met the ginger one in a pub.  Which is out of character for him.  Ahem.  Sadly, there was no music and the ladies wanted music so we went on a pub-with-music hunt.

We plumped for Ironbridge in the end which has changed a bit since my binge drinking youth.  I wouldn’t recommend the White Hart – as soon as we’d got our drinks they rang the bell for last orders and wouldn’t serve anybody once the bell was rung.  So not actually last orders, more sort of “surprise, we’re closed”.  Even more bizarrely for the 15-20 people sitting outside finishing their drinks, 10 minutes after calling “surprise we’re closed” orders, they shut the door and switched the outside lights off, leaving everyone in the dark!

We strolled down the road to the Swan which had a live band on, even at 11pm and promised to stay open until 1am.  I never rated the Swan in my binge drinking days but we had a good laugh, even though I appeared to be the only sober person in Ironbridge.  We were standing next to a group of very drunk Londoners on a stag night.  One of them – a little asian guy – started chatting to me, asking me about the night life in Telford.  Then the groom introduced himself and it turns out he grew up in the same town as me and went to the same school (he was 10 years older than me so I didn’t know him).  Not only that, but his sister is about to get married to my old geography teacher.  Small world.

Technorati Tags: Shrewsbury, Ironbridge

Back in May I blogged about the shitty Adobe Acrobat installer that gets in a huff if you don’t allow it to insert its accelerated startup thingy into Windows’ startup items.

It seems that Adobe isn’t alone in writing shit installers that won’t take no for an answer – I’ve just installed an update for Sun Java which wants to insert its Java Update Scheduler into my startup items.  I’ve told it no and it’s been trying now for about 15 minutes …

I’ve killed the jusched process but it looks like it’s insinuated itself into a system process somewhere.  I can’t recommend Spybot Teatimer enough for stopping this kind of crap.

Technorati Tags: Sun, Java, Installer

Just watched the first episode of Spooks: Code 9.

The programme itself was moderately entertaining – not a patch on Spooks – but my god, Freud would have creamed himself over the propaganda and subliminal messages in it.

Whenever one of the bad guys was shown, their face had a British flag superimposed on it.  Every plot change was seperated by a fluttering British flag.  The series is about MI5 after a terrorist attack on London with a  nuclear bomb.  There are child assassins working for the bad guys, checkpoints manned by stern policemen (the only one that spoke was Scottish of course).  Everyone carries an ID card with fingerprint readers at checkpoints linked to a Citizens Identity Database.  One of the bad guys was tracked down because he’d been using someone elses ID card.

Just how much Liebour propaganda do the BBC thing they can get into one episode of a drama without it descending into a farce?  It is not the BBC’s job to try and promote Britishness through subliminal advertising, nor is it the BBC’s job to try and sell ID cards, a national identity register or police checkpoints as a good idea.

For me, the programme was spoiled from about 5 minutes because once I’d noticed the propaganda, I couldn’t stop seeing it and that’s a real shame for me because I’m a big Spooks fan.

Technorati Tags: Spooks, BBC, Propaganda, ID Cards, Britishness

The police have now made over 100 arrests at the eco-terrorist camp outside Kingsnorth Power Station.

The eco-terrorists actually had the nerve to complain last week that the Police were being heavy handed and that there was no need to raid their camp, even though they admitted that it was no secret they intended to take direct action and the Police found several weapons on the camp.

Since then riot police have had to intervene to stop multiple, simultaneous attempts to break into the power station and over 100 people have been arrested.

I think it’s safe to say that the camp is infested with troublemakers and criminals and should be broken up for their own safety before one of them does something stupid and seriously injures or kills themselves or someone else.

Technorati Tags: Eco-terrorists, Kingsnorth

A group of MPs have told the Demon Headmaster that we should have a British Bill of Rights to give extra protection to children, old people and people with learning disabilities.

Has nobody told these cretins that we’ve already got a Bill of Rights?

The Bill of Rights was passed in 1689 in the English Parliament and gave many and varied fundamental rights to all citizens, including the right to trial by jury and freedom from arbitrary detention.

There is no point, however, in creating a new Bill of Rights if it gives us less rights than we already have and if it will just be ignored like our current Bill of Rights is.  You no longer have the right to trial by jury in complex fraud cases, you no longer have freedom from detention without charge or trial and your money and property can be stolen by the state without a judge even knowing about it, let alone ordering it as the Bill of Rights says it must happen.

If we all have fundamental rights then they should be universal.  I don’t see why pensioners, children or people with learning disabilities should get any extra rights over what I get.  Positive discrimination doesn’t work, it’s been shown to be a fucking stupid idea over and over again yet here we have a group of professional politicians proposing that certain groups should be given more fundamental rights than others.  How much further from the concept of a charter on fundamental rights can you get?

Technorati Tags: Bill of Rights

Georgia has declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrawn its troops from the South Ossetia region after Russia invaded 3 days ago.

South Ossetia has harboured ambitions for independence for a few years now and has been given a great degree of autonomy in the past.  A majority of South Ossetian Georgians have Russian passports, a fact that Russia has used to justify invading Georgia.

Russian-Georgian relations have degraded severely as Georgia has turned away from Russia politically and turned more towards Europe.

The UN won’t be able to do anything about it because Russia has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a veto.  However, Federal Europe will probably say something in the next day or two to which Russia will no doubt reply that Federal Europe supported Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence without a UN mandate so they are doing the same for South Ossetia and when they do it will be yet more proof that Federal Europe has failed miserably in its aim of preventing war in Europe.

Technorati Tags: Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia

We decided to go exotic* for Sunday lunch with Tortilla and Taco’s which leaves me with a burning question:

How the fuck are you supposed to eat a Taco?  You can’t fold them because they snap and they’re so wide the only people who can fit them in their mouth are Cherie Bliar and Janet Street Porter.

* I’m being sarcastic

Technorati Tags: Taco

I’ve just removed my link to George Ashcroft’s website from my sidebar as it’s no longer worthy of a link.

George Ashcroft is a Conswervative councillor in Telford and was the first Conswervative councillor to take a seat in the Stirchley & Brookside parish.  When he set up his blog he was the first councillor in Telford to have a website but after going downhill recently he has rebranded it as “Liberty Talks”.

The one comment I have left on the new website – pointing out that if the British government decided to follow Spain’s lead and reduce the national speed limit, it would only apply to trunk roads outside of England – was deleted so I guess only comments agreeing with what George says will be approved now.

I was interested to know who had created the website for him – the previous one was pretty poor but this one is even worse – so I looked up the office address: BM Liberty Talks, London WC1N 3XX in Google.

BM Network seems to be some sort of umbrella group, mainly for gay and trans-gender support or campaign groups including the militant gay rights group, Stonewall.  It’s also home for an eco-facist network, Earth First Action, and a group for pagans and witches.  Ordo Templi Orientis, a masonic lodge, is also listed there along with the Animal Liberation Front animal rights terrorist organisation.  Interestingly, it’s also home to the British First Party, a neo-Nazi party that makes the BNP look like Guardian readers.

A strange mix of people for a Conswervative councillor to be associating with.

Technorati Tags: George Ashcroft

Iain Dale has had to bring forward the deadline for voting in his annual blogging poll by a week.

The poll now closes tomorrow so if you haven’t already voted, get a move on!

As the Witanagemot Club‘s 3rd most desperate blogger to win an award, I would be letting the side down if I didn’t suggest you vote for me. 😉

Technorati Tags: Polls