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That title isn’t unique, I remember it from a cartoon back in the ’80s – a magazine called “Creative Computing” by David H Ahl. Sadly this was before the age of the Internet so you won’t find much about it.

I’m sitting here in our holiday home in Spain, we bought a little place in Galera in Andalucia and of course we have the Internet so I bought a little Internet radio to sit in the kitchen – from Aldi would you believe – I think it was under £30 and it works a treat. We’ve friends who live in the South of France and so we tend to tune to one of the English-speaking Internet radio stations from down there – “Riviera Radio”. Check it out – quality isn’t special but it’s nice, easy going stuff.

One of the fun things about the above radio station is the advertising – you get ads like “do you need quality staff for your luxury yacht?”. Well, we don’t have a luxury yacht but it’s kind of uplifting to listen to. Most of their ads are aimed at independent successful people.

Which brings me to daytime TV which I rarely watch but as we’re on holiday and it’s not that sunny – and we left our Sky card back in the UK, I’m seeing more BBC and ITV than usual by a mile – and it is terminally depressing.

“I was given the wrong ladder and I fell off and broke my…”

“Have you had an accident recently that wasn’t your fault…”

If you’ve ever watched terrestrial TV in the past couple of years you’ll be well familiar with these depressing phrases. That’s all you seem to hear on daytime UK terrestrial TV. One could be forgiven for thinking the entire nation is in debt and are suing each other.. maybe we are?

The first thing that would occur to me if a ladder failed would be “why didn’t I check the ladder?”

Personally – I’d take every solicitor offering no-win, no-fee accident cases and send them off to the salt mines. I can’t quite think what the charge would be but it seems to me that these messages if repeated often enough will make the entire nation think that there are no such things as accidents any more and that the first course of action is to sue someone if you get hurt – which of course is one reason that medical care in the USA is so frightfully expensive.

If I put myself in a dangerous situation I make damned sure the equipment I’m using is up to the mark and if someone handed me a dodgy ladder I wouldn’t wait until I’d broken my leg to do something about it.

One could get quite worked up about this – but it’s probably easier just to stop watching daytime TV! Between that and sport, I’m dreading the old folk’s home! Thankfully that’s quite a way off.

Once again this government has taken our money – and without asking us decided to turn it into a tool to scrape back votes. A billion pounds is to be given to a select group to help with heating costs. Pensioners and low-income families with children will receive up to 16 pounds a week.

I have no problem with helping pentioners – but which bright spart decided they could spend our money on the second group. Does this mean that low income families WITHOUT children can just get on with it? Meanwhile as fuel costs go up, the rest of us just move further down the chain as we spend more and more on fuel for us AND EVERYONE ELSE. Would not some of that billion pounds have been better spent on developing alternative fuels or subsidising community heating, funding research into better ways to use geothermal heating etc so we can ALL benefit?. Will this help local businesses in the insulation business or will once again the big boys be the only ones to get accreditation and get the business?

It doesn’t matter what I think or you think because this bunch of losers we call government will be spending our money as they they see fit, no consultation, no permission – just take a billion of hard earned taxpayers money, make an arbitrary decision – and go for it. Thankfully, they’ll soon be in the political winlderness where they belong and not before time.

The ongoing saga of Orange…

Around 3 weeks ago, it became that time of year when I could upgrade my phone. Only a few weeks earlier my wife had upgraded her phone to the HTC Tytn II – and so I rang up to upgrade my phone, currently the earlier original HTC Tytn model. No chance – out of date. My options (given a need for Microsoft Mobile Pocket PC version – ie touch-phone) boiled down to the new HTC Touch Diamond or another HTC model both of which I could have for free- given my long-standing use of Orange.

Fine so far, I checked and the other model was far, far too big to fit in the pocket. So I went for the Touch Diamond. Well, the fellow I originally spoke to apologised that the phone was not in stock and I’d get an SMS as soon as it was. That was 3 weeks ago. I rang up last week to see what was happening. This time I spoke to a fellow who was most insistant that the term “smartphone” was so generic as to mean very litte. I’m not sure why he told me that – but he did. “But the Touch Diamond IS in stock” he said. That’ll be £39 please.

I pointed out that I generally don’t pay for such phones and I’d been assured that the phones were both available to me free according to the previous fellow. No, the Touch WAS in stock but would be £39 and the other phone would be £149. He pointed our that Orange, like any other company was free to change it’s prices from day to day. I said I’d leave it and study the options. Clearly I was not going to get anywhere with THIS employee.

The next day I rang back and got another employee – this time a young guy who seemed pretty switched on. He said that the phones were £39 as per the previous guy. I asked whatever happened to the importance of customer loyalty to Orange. This was after all the same price offered to new customers. He pressed a few buttons – and came back to me – how about the phone for FREE and a £5 loyalty bonus (let’s not forget they get a new 18 month contract out of the deal and some suppliers give an ITOUCH away for free). THAT’s better I said happily – “I’ll have one – when can I have it?”. Initially he said they could deliver tomorrow – so I ordered the phone – at which point he told me “I’m sorry, but the phones are out of stock”…. HOWEVER he WILL send me a text when they ARE in stock. Really – and he’ll keep a personal eye on incoming phones and contact me.

The thing is – there ARE some competent guys in Orange – and they DO have some decent deals – the problem is the total, utter and completely inadequate training they get – as in many areas, I suspect the ones who give good advice spent some time learning off their own bat. If you read one of my earlier blogs (and I’ve had a running battle against Orange incompetence for years), you’ll know that I only found out that Orange offer an excellent unlimited (3g) broadband deal for mobile phones by WORD OF MOUTH from a pal of mine – despite years of using data they’ve never offered this to me and it’s not readily apparent on their totally crap website (which if you try to DO anything with it, usually ends up saying you need to contact an operator, or it’s down for maintainance or it’s just plain BUST).

I’ve now got a good deal on broadband use and I’ve ALMOST got a great phone …. with Orange however it’s always a case of getting from the DREAM to the REALITY, that last step – that sometimes feels impossible. If this is the future, we’re in real trouble.

Update: I received an SMS yesterday to say the phone is in – AND the guy made sure I understood the contract – turns out the £5 is actually a fiver a month OFF.. so if this all pans out I’m well impressed (by the deal, not the training) – as it looks like I’ll be getting all the above for £25 a month. The HTC Touch Diamond turned up today – first impressions… it’s the nearest thing I’ve seen up to now to a miniature i-phone.

Second impressions: The phone is WAY ahead of anything HTC has done in the past, but typically, it’s far from perfect. I managed to confuse it within a day and had to turn it off. What’s amazing about this model compared to previous models is the Opera browser. I’ve never rated Opera but in this case it works a treat. The high-res screen (480*640) handles web page zooming in and out – and like the iphone it has an accelerometer so it knows when you turn it on it’s side – sadly that only works for a few programs. But I have my wifi router software and some net radio streaming stuff all working a treat on it – and it handle YouTube videos virtually perfectly – that’s a MAJOR advance. Last night at the pub I noticed it was very warm – and had flattened the battery – so the case needs looking at – I think I’ll buy something other than the standard cover. Would I pay £450 for it as advertised – hell no, but for a phone on contract, this surely has to be the best on offer?

Well yes and no. The phone is wonderful – but it has bugs – one is battery heating, another is sluggishness or crashing. I checked the ROM numbers and they are dated June 2008. 2 months later HTC brought out upgrades which fix the problems – but if you try to enter your ORANGE serial numbers into HTCs site – you get no-where and so can’t get the updates. You can get them from XDA developers but of course that’s your guarantee up the river.

Users have contacted Orange only to get the usual dense responses… but apparently one dealer contacted Orange sho said that updates will be available in September. I will be following this very closely.Orange are not known for encouraging user fixes to their products.

Day one the battery didn’t last the day!

If the names Paul Potts and Connie Talbot are old hat to you – stop reading. I couldn’t help but share this however…

Well, to cut a long story short, I must’ve been living on an alternative universe for the last year, because despite watching X-Factor occasionally, I’ve missed the “Britain’s got Talent” series which culminated in a variety show performance in front of the Queen.

The winner was a guy called Paul Potts… a mobile phone salesman who’d always wanted to do opera… stumbled on it this morning. When you see the video for the first minute you’ll think I’m barking mad for suggesting it might just reduce you to a knot in your throat– until you hear him and watch him perform. Watch the faces of the audience and the judges – absolutely blew me away. Here’s his first shot at the show…

Well, as happens – once you look at something in YouTube you have to have a look at the rest… and the runner up in 2007 next to this staggeringly talented gentleman – is a 6 year old called Connie Talbot. I didn’t think it was possible to get excited about TWO artists in one day… but amazingly – well, judge for yourself – and remember SIX years old…

For those who prefer studio productions – here’s a montage of Connie Talbot and Whitney Houston doing the same thing – but recorded. I’ll bet Whitney could not sing like that at 6 !!!

Hope this brightens your day. It’s certainly gotten me off to a flying start.

So a group of MPs is “sceptical” of proposed increases to car tax – and so they should be. Clearly this is not about encouraging motorists to use “greener” cars – but is all about raising more money to pay for everything BUT transport.

The mere fact that this tax is retrospective says everything – how can taxing someone who ALREADY has the car encourage them to “go green”? Are they supposed to scrap their car and buy a new one??

Taxing NEW cars BEFORE we buy them – and based purely on efficiency is the only way to go – and that money should either fund research or support UK research into more efficient or alternative fuel engines – but that’s only going to happen in our dreams. Looking at the list – BMWs are to be taxed makes me think this is more about class warfare than transport greening… I don’t know if they’ve changed recently but they used to be fairly efficient compared to say your average Ford. I’ve a Mercedes that easily does 40mph but I’ll bet that gets the hammer too. Tim Yeo says “we don’t want them to stop driving” – sure, Mr Yeo – the party faithful may believe you but no-one else will.

Getting us all out of our cars and onto public transport would suit this controlling government down to the ground. I’m currently returning from a break in Spain and like elsewhere – fuel is STILL cheaper here than the UK – though not by as much as it was. Back home a couple of weeks ago I was paying £1.30 for diesel, over here it’s that or less in EUROS.

The fact is that the government simply wants to take money of anyone who can pay it – and they don’t care how fair or “green” they are. They’ve pretty much exhausted every other way of squeezing money out of taxpayers. We’re paying more for FUEL than elsewhere in Europe and now they want us to pay more for CARS. Anyone who’s been to parts of Spain recently will have been blown away by the quality of the roads – every road you see (even sometimes in rural areas) is brand, spanking new. No cameras, few police and even the speed limits here are slightly faster on motorways. If the UK government gets extra cash does anyone really think they’ll use it to improve our roads? More likely they’ll use it to buy more cameras so they can get even more money out of those of us they deem suitable for squeezing. This has to stop.