Andy Ramblings

So our Tony is buggering of to the land of the unber-rich in 47 days... Could it not be sooner? or is he happy with that? I mean, he loves about 26% of the electorate who voted him in last time. SO, when he leaves, what could he be thinking?....

Click image to see

That's all there is to say.. Fireworks over the London Eye where simply brilliant. as they say, Twas a Jolly good show, pity about a certain Kerplunkski!... Off to bed I goes....

Pity all the Gales wanted to be party poopers... never call your kids Gail... to many jokes for them tonight. So no show for the Scots.
Glasgow Hogmanay cancelled but we are all happy that Kylie gears up for gig and is back in town.

Night all.. Sleep well and take care!

As quite a few of you may know, the education system in the UK isn't the best in the world. You can basically get through all the way till your 16 and get your GCSC, and not have the ability to Read, Write or do your Arithmetic (yep that's the 3 R's!). This is becoming rather worrisome for the people responsible for educating the country. What do they do instead, they go and do some research on where the problem could show it's self up. Yep, they found that it can show it's self up in the karaoke bars!

So, if you're one of those souls who goes to the Karaoke bars and can't read the prompts, it could be that you can't read?!

The lyrics of the 10 most popular karaoke songs have been assessed and rated by government literacy experts.

Those tackling Robbie Williams' Angels needed the reading skills required to pass five good GCSEs (Level 2).

Experts from the Get On literacy campaign said 17.8 million adults would not be able to follow the song.

Ok, Angels (Lyrics here) is a hard song to get right, I don't mean in the lyrics area, but in getting it to sound right. Most folk who do tend to 'try' and sing it tend to have had a few pints to many? Or did these experts test the folks make sure they didn't have a drop to drink or a splif to smoke?
Some other notable songs that suffer the same fate are:

• Gloria Gaynor: I will survive
• Queen: Don't Stop Me Now
• The Commitments: Mustang Sally
• Grease: Summer nights
• Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds
• Abba: Dancing Queen (not only is that hard, but like Angels, hard to get right!)

So, as the report says, get yer readin' up ta scratch before ya embarrass yerself on the Karaoke!
I'm not saying that you would ever, ever find me on a Karaoke Stage, Drunk or Sober! This was just a comment on that BBC news report...

More info on English GSCS here.

Well well weelll, Yesterday in my area of London, near the MI5/6 building, Ok, I'm about a 20min walk from it. All power just went! Now, I know my PC has a habit of just going wooops, lets reboot while I'm on Skype. This was a tad different as I didn't see that familiar, your using the DVI connector message pop up on my flat screen. Then I saw all my other electric devices just going wooops no power, off I go. Now that's not too much of a problem, what does one do when there is No power.

This got me thinking a bit, I was thinking of ways to find out what happened, I though, Oh I'll google it, easy, Duh Andy, there is NO power, your 'puter is no use... use your imagination... so I turned on my radio, But hey, that works on mains, so I was stuck there. Luckily, I had radio in my mobile. So on that went to listen to BBC London. No news on there, I had obviously missed the update.. I also hazard the guess that it had to be Local, as the radio was on air, but then they would be, it's the BBC! But it also had to be local, if it was affecting a wider area, the BBC would be having more important things to say about how not to panic, and that everything is being done to fix the problem as soon as possible,

What I did hear though, was on the traffic news, All traffic lights in the area around the MI5/6 building, OK , ok, they said Vauxhall.were out. kaput, not working, so there were huge traffic jams. nothing else, no further news.
So, I went for a walk around the block, it was a big walk as I never quiet got around a block when another one diverted me. But I did manged to ask a local Police man as to what all the commotion was about, he gave me the answer.
There was a power failure at the local Vauxhall sub-station and the local electric guys were doing their very best to fix the problem as soon a possible. I thanked him for his time and continued to get a bit lost...
Finally got home, Still no power, what can I do, I listen to more radio that bored me silly... then important things like, how am I going to feed myself this evening? I only have an electric cooker and combo-microwave. I though about cutting branches of the trees, to make a campfire... I now how to light them, after all I do have Ray Mears book on how to survive on a desert island.

Blip, PC kicks back into action.... Power failure over,  Ray Mear's  tips on how to have a campfire in your kitchen, and not burn the house down, will have to wait for another power outage.

The UK doesn't have one of the best transplant systems, the system is primarily and opt in system. This basically means that you have to have your I would sign up to be added to the list, incidentally, you can do that here and if your based in the UK, I urge you to do so. There was one main problem with the system, ok there are many, but you work with what you have. The main problem was that if you, had joined up, but your next of kin or relatives said no, then that was it, you would not donate anything. This happened in 1 in 10 cases.

Chris Rudge, managing director of UK Transplant, said the wishes of approximately one in 10 possible donors were overturned by their families under the current system.

Source

From next week, the system will be changing, if you signed up, yes sign up here, your wishes will be respected.
Ok, I am totally aware that this is an emotive subject, but there are people here in the UK who are waiting for a life changing transplant, and believe me, I know it's life changing, I've had 3 kidney transplants, and believe me, I do think of the donor families and the loss that they have had for me to live on.
All I can say is this, if you do sign up, don't keep it to yourself, tell your family, tell your friends, and most of all tell your loved ones. It makes it so much easier for them, if they know that you wanted to donate.

Oh did I tell you? You can register to the UK transplant list here. They also allow your to amend you details.
As some slogan went, You don't need to go to heaven with all your organs, as they are sure to hell needed down here.
Ok that's it, that's my public announcement over. I don't need to advise you... Read More

 Following on  from here. The London Congestion Charge is a charge, It was brought in to cut both traffic and polution in cental London. If one reads their documentation( Read here ) Nowhere does it claim that it's a TAX, it's a charge that everyone has to pay. I am sure that when UK Diplomats in the US come accross a road that has a toll charge that have to pay.
They should pay like everyone else and stop doing stupid stunts like giving the Journos a copy of their consititution which I have to add is well worthless over here in the UK, but I could be wrong, they may have let loose the idea that we all thought was a joke and that is that the UK IS the 53rd state of the US of A. Well it sure feels that way.

I however think that it is very possible that this could be an Embassy budget cutting exercise, considering that the US economy isn't as all good as that as most of it being wasted on 'other project' that we don't need to go into as they are so well known. Ok, Looking after your own isn't one of them.

Tonights Panorama on the bbc was very interesting. Tonights program was called Blair v Blair, this was about a hypothetical conversations Tony Blair the PM and and Cherie Blair the human rights lawyer.

In a nutshell, after 7/7(2005) (Bombings in London) Blair equates this to New Your 9/11. Sorry, Tony, London has a history of terrorist attacks and attempts of attacks, Guy Fawkes being one of the Attempters.
One of the laws that Tony's Home secertary wants to impliement is the fact that it will be illigal to Glorify a terrorist act. That's Guy Fawkes day up in smoke (bad pun) we will not be able to celebrate that anymore, which mightned be a too bad an idea. As at the moment, Guy fawkes day seems to be any day between 15th of October to 15th November or when all the shops have sold out which ever is the earliest.

Anyway, back to the panorama, Another law that the Police want Charles Clarke enact into law is the right to detain people for upto 90 days without trial, maybe without access to legal help. This look more and more like the failed policy of internment in the early 70's in Northen Ireland, it is widely accepted (well I think it is) that this did nothing to help in stopping the IRA, infact it acted as a great recruiting agent.

Here's the link to the  Blair v Blair Panorama  I don't know if you will be able to see the re-transmission of the program, there is a link on the right to watch the program. I added some comments to the, BBC's your comments  here  My comments are below, incase the BBC doesn't print them.

To those who mention that this is about violence and the incitment of violence, should already be aware that there is already a law against that. The European human rights act is very recent, mid-90's if I'm correct, you may be refering the the UN Human rights act. This program was excellent on several points.

1. It clearly shows that the world is not a safer place since the invasion of Iraq. If it was why would we need these laws.
2. I agree that this is about protecting the UK, however, having a very bad law implace for fighting a tiny minority of the general public that belive me will be used for any excuse to keep any dissenter can be made to keep quiet.
3.  Do not forget, It’s the Police who are asking for these laws... Are the Police accountable to the voters? From what I see, No they are not. Why should we that tax payers put up with a Police force that wants exta powers because they can’t get their evidence right ?

The 3 Jurers in the program witnessed this Police in-effectiveness in action, and decided that they Police had done wrong.

I would prefer to live in a country where justice is done and seen to be done by everyone and not just some sectors of the population.