Thursday, July 21, 2005

Description of the suspect

Brilliant, the description of the bombing suspect includes:

a blue jacket with wires hanging from it

not sure why I find that amusing, but I do.

More bombs

More bombs in London. Tube and bus again, but no details. The TV doesn't seem to be getting very excited, so I assume it is not too bad...

How Ridiculous!!!

This is an article about Wolverhampton banning the use of the song Land of Hope and Glory from its rememberance day service. Apparently it has political connotations. What??? Sorry but the very rememberance of those lost in war has political connotations. And Land of Hope and Glory doesn't say anything offensive, does it? A quick search reveals these are the lyrics:

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

Truth and Right and Freedom, each a holy gem,
Stars of solemn brightness, weave thy diadem.
Tho' thy way be darkened, still in splendour drest,
As the star that trembles o'er the liquid West.

Throned amid the billows, throned inviolate,
Thou hast reigned victorious, thou has smiled at fate.
Land of Hope and Glory, fortress of the Free,
How may we extol thee, praise thee, honour thee?

Hark, a mighty nation maketh glad reply;
Lo, our lips are thankful, lo, our hearts are high!
Hearts in hope uplifted, loyal lips that sing;
Strong in faith and freedom, we have crowned our King!

OK, I understand that sometimes patriotism can be misplaced, and perhaps offensive when it involves slagging off other countries, but this song hardly does that. Is there something wrong with celebrating that we are Truth, Right and Freedom. As far as I can see the only thing wrong with that is that it sounds a bit Americanian.

Oh Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix
Oh save us all
.

I particularly like the bit about knavish tricks.

Ooooh I am going to get to say the most excellent phrase......it's political correctness gone mad!

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Yoghurt becomes professional!

No way! I've got a job! I can hardly believe it!!!!!

Great news as far as I am concerned, but it is outside the city, so that is that for London I suppose. We will see how I cope with the commute for a while, and move soon enough I expect. There is a relocation package so we would be crazy not to take it. D still has a few months to go, so we will stick around till then.

Trust me, too late I have come across a rather hilarious site of comic strips about the thrills of a PhD. Very apt.

mood is: upsidedown over the moon!

Friday, July 15, 2005

health matters

Man have I been ill this week! Flu-belly-chest-infection-tastic. I have been stuck in bed for the whole week. My immune system appears to be triumphing though.

The worst thing is that Burns phoned me up on my mobile phone on Tuesday and scared the life right out of me. That has never ever happened to me before. He appeared to have absolutely nothing at all to say, so it gave me the willies.

Hoax Emails

WOW I have received my first hoax email with regard to the bombings in London. That took a long time! I honestly thought I'd be getting stacks of them by now! Apparently there is going to be an attack on the tube in the next week. Yeah right, whatever. D got an email today saying there would be an attack at Bluewater this weekend.

Who starts this rubbish?? Come on people. The whole point of terrorists is that they can attack ANYWHERE at ANY TIME. There is no point in being scared. Also, it is very difficult to protect yourself against terrorists as the whole idea is that they get you where you don't expect it. If we set up security on the tube they will just go elsewhere.

Let's just all go about out lives shall we? England has been a terrorist target since before I was born, so we all have lived with this for years. How many bomb scares have we all been stuck in over the years. Did we get all scared about it? No we did not.

Rather amusingly, one thing this old bombing lark has done is show how little people outside London know about it. People contacted me dispite knowing I was at home asking if I was OK, which is very nice but they obviously thought central London is a very small place. One of my friends lives just outside Croydon and was phoned up by people asking if she was safe as she "lives in London" dispite the fact that she is 40 miles away!!! London is a big place, and the part that is affected is tiny. Even the public transport system is mostly fine. I was going to travel right across London and up to Oxford today, and there is absolutely no disruption on that route.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Who did it???

The Friday Thing are offering these odds on who is repsonsible for Londoners getting to work late on Thursday:

EVENS: THE FRENCH. Chirac hates us. We know that. He hates our food, he hates our cattle, and he is hopping mad that we got the Olympics. Also, in footage of Blair and the rest of the G8
delegates at around 1 o'clock, Chirac was standing to the left of
Blair and we swear, he was biting his cheeks so hard to keep himself from smiling, that blood was starting to seep out of his eyes.

10/1: G8. Things were getting just a little out of hand. People's
voices were being heard, climate change and poverty were
beginning to overshadow international terrorism as the world's
number one issue. Something had to be done to allow George Bush
to say this: 'The War on Terror goes on.' It was. He did.


50/1: RANDOM TERRORISTS. Jealous of the press coverage generated
by Edinburgh-based anarchists, random terrorists decide to win
back some coverage for the capital.


100/1: POVERTY. Depressed at the possibility of being made
history, poverty strikes back and attempts to make London
history.


1000/1: POWER SURGES. Right.


My bro has drawn my attention to this hilarious site, it is perhaps slightly more mature than my old favourite popbitch, I shall certainly be visiting in the future, it is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Shame you have to pay for the email updates...

This weeks Haiknews:

London Olympics
Transport regeneration
Off to rocky start


Today's mood is: relaxed relaxed

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Trapped Underground



Adam Stacey trapped underground near Kings Cross on the Northern Line. He is out now, suffering from smoke inhalation, but otherwise fine.

London Hit by Terrorists

Well the expected has finally happened, London has been hit in what reports suggest is up to 7 bomb blasts, although at this stage only 4 are confirmed. They were centered on the tube, with up to 3 on buses. I think the bus hits are the most shocking, as that is pretty unexpected, particularly since it looks like they hit the tube and then waiting for people to get on the bus and then hit the bus.

Pictures of the bus:











All respect to the emergency services who seem to have responded in excellent time, and dealt with the incidents very effectively. Also the good old London public have kept panic to a minimum. There was no warning, so it doesn't look like old style Irish terrorism, people have speculated that it is Al Qaeda, but that's not surprising really is it.

I was at home of course being an unemployed bum, but D works right where the bus blast was, so he is stuck in work right now, like millions of other people. There is no transport in the centre, so it looks like a lot of people will be walking home!

Obviously thoughts are with those that are injured or the families of those that have died.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

London 2012!!!

We got the Olympics! whoop whoop!


Good news as far as I am concerned. Currently optimistic that we will do a good job and sort out transport etc. Let's hope we learned from the Dome debacle.

The only bad thing is that the anthem we seem to have picked is by M People....


Just seen on the news that it started raining in gay Paris at the very moment the result was announced! In your eye Frenchies!


Friday, July 01, 2005

Reader, my life is uninteresting

Being unemployed is rubbish. I don't even read the paper these days so have very little to muse on. Today I bring you this: wierd lady bounces off cats

One thing that I have managed to do is get some reading done. I'm reading "The Bourne Identity" which is fantastic. It's long enough now that I don't remember the film that well, so actually the book is still holding a lot of suspense. I will definately read the sequels after this. Well as soon as I can find them in a charity shop I will!! Talking of which, this book was actually a bargain for once. I have noticed a worrying trend in charity shop for over-pricing second hand books. Personally I feel that these books should cost less than a quid, so I tend to be picky! Most charity shops seem to be selling them for 2 or 3 quid these days. Now that I have said that I am having a moral dillema about being tight where charity is concerned...