The JD Wetherspoon pub chain, under its “charismatic” and “eccentric” (i.e. mad) owner, has recently given space to the No-Euro campaign on its walls and beer mats. However, the arguments put forward are so feeble that, even though I probably know little more about the euro (than they or you), it doesn’t seem disrespectful to counter them with more ignorance.

up to Northumberland last week, I noticed that many placenames end in “heugh”, which one imagines is the sound made by a Geordie after too many Newkie Browns.

We broke our journey in Alnwick, an “historic market town” (aren’t they all? What does the brown sign for Manchester say, “Monstrous shopping mall”?). There is a vegetarian/organic restaurant there, which is apparently something of a novelty in this cattle-rearing country, judging by the amount of celebrity endorsements from tree-hugging luvvies decorating their walls (Joanna Lumley, Terence Stamp, Carol Royale??!). Curiously, they all said something like, “Darlings, simply super to hear about your fabulous venture, best of luck with it, will have to pop in if I’m ever in the area. PS. How far is Alnwick from Hampstead?” Carla Lane noted approvingly that “animals are the only pure thing we have left on this earth” - as opposed to all those rocks and trees that have been buggered up with additives.

Incidentally, the milk came in those little plastic cartons you find in hotel rooms.

After watching “A Lump in my Throat” last night, the portrayal of John Diamond’s final battle against throat cancer, we turned over to the news. Apparently, the government want tobacco manufacturers to reduce the amount of “harmful additives” in cigarettes - like nicotine, perhaps? No, they’re worried that the addition of substances such as arsenic during the manufacturing process may pose a health hazard. Next they’ll be taking action to reduce the harmful amounts of lead in bullets - it could kill someone, y’know.

I don’t understand the fuss over the Amanda Platell video diary and accompanying accusations of “disloyalty” against Portillo. Come to that, I don’t understand why she got so upset about Portillo’s early maneuvering for the aftermath of inevitable, crushing defeat. But then, I don’t understand voting Tory either. Surely the goal of any politician is a long and successful public career? Yet Platell complains about “people” not prepared to put their “careers and reputations on the line”. No one in their right mind was going to go down with Hague’s ship, particularly when it became obvious to everyone except Platell, Coe and Hague that the Tories were going to lose horribly. It would be rather like expecting the passengers on the Titanic to urge the captain on in his headlong rush towards the iceberg (especially as they can see the iceberg rather more clearly that he can).

If anything, Portillo deserves praise for his foresight in preparing for the likely leadership contest. But then, he’s still a Tory so I won’t go that far.

At the 2001 Progressive Rock Summit in Montreux, talks aimed at strategically limiting the length of bass guitar solos broke down after delegates were unable to agree a maximum number of hours. Chris Squire of Yes pushed for an upper bound of six hours, but Geddy Lee of Rush countered that if the limit were reduced to four hours, “that would give me more space for an arpeggio”.

Elsewhere at the summit, the songwriters subcommittee made a controversial call for “shorter, more accessible” album tracks. Keith Emerson launched the initiative with a new piece entitled The Atomic History Of The Universe In D Minor, which clocked in at under 50 minutes. The performance was well received, although critics complained that the hip-hop/polka crossover in part 39, “The Dance Of The Neutrinos”, was unorthodox.

At a special evening ceremony, Radiohead, Mansun and Elbow were indicted into the Progressive Rock Hall Of Fame, despite vigorous protests from representatives of the bands.

The summit continues today and, as is traditional, concludes with a gong crescendo and fireworks when all members of the audience are finally asleep.

the point is missed. In all the fuss over Timothy McVeigh’s execution, complete with vengeful relatives and bleeding heart humanitarians and not least, Dubya’s typically gormless ramblings, the American public appear to have overlooked the fact that their army is staffed with thousands of McVeighs, all ready to shoulder the responsibility of “collateral damage” to women and children. But then I guess they’re only told to bomb other countries.

Dragon attacks Sharon Stone’s husband
When’s it out? Is it certificate 18?

to the people who like to declaim the Bible loudly in the middle of public places: you can yell as loud as you like, but you’ll never drown out … the voices in your head!

I’ve reverted to kernel 2.2.19 on my Red Hat Linux 7.1 installation. Now at least my CD-RW drive works again. 7.1 has not been a seemless upgrade. Truth be told, I was quite happy with 6.2 - deliriously happy in retrospect, or at least I must have been delirious to upgrade. The sorry saga is explained at more length in Red Hat’s bug tracker.

I only upgraded to 7.1 to get a decently packaged version of KDE 2.1. Ah, KDE - there’s another long and regrettable tale. The actual code itself might be reasonably stable (or might not…), but the KDE team’s own RPMs leave something to be desired. The latest build (2.1.1) not only had all the same problems as 2.1 (debugging enabled, XDM config overwritten, etc.), they also managed to build the sound handler without any sound drivers! Silence is golden, but in this case it was broken by loud cursing.

And this is where the oft-aired complaint about the lack of commercial support for free software really comes home. Because even if proprietary vendors are bloody useless at fixing their bugs, at least you have the small satisfaction of ringing up their employees and swearing profusely at their idiocy. It seems a tad churlish and ungrateful to do the same thing to volunteers donating their own time to work on software you downloaded for free. But it is frustrating.

But let’s be fair: at work, I’ve been trying to monitor some proprietary bespoke NT software by making null TCP connections to its network port. Turns out that after a dozen of these connects, it crashes. Is it fixed yet? Ha, will it ever be??

William Hague has called the last government “the most arrogant, aggressive and intimidatory in modern history”. Presumably, he defines “modern” as “since 1997”. Otherwise they’d have some stiff competition from the previous governments.