Now we have this:

Schoolgirls to get ‘cancer jab’

HPV causes most cases of cervical cancer

Schoolgirls in Britain will be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer from September 2008, ministers have announced. This goes further than recommended by experts, with all aged 12-13 eligible, and a catch-up campaign up to 18.

It is thought that vaccinating against human papilloma virus (HPV) could save hundreds of lives in the UK each year.

The vaccine is given in three injections over six months at a cost of around £300 a course.

Note the syntax, that schoolgirls WILL BE VACCINATED. Not, ‘parents will be offered vaccination for their children’. And all that this difference implies.

Note also that ‘Boys will not be vaccinated under today’s announcement, after the JCVI said it was not cost-effective.’ Not cost-effective. There you go, the ultimate deciding factor is cost. Not health. Which is bizarre, as this will cost 100-200 million of your GB pounds per annum to save around 300-700 lives, depending on who is giving the figures. Cost-effective?

Note finally that the vaccine to be used has not been chosen. Imagine the lobbying going on! This is multi-multi-millions over many years… Do you trust our politicians not to be ‘influenced’ in any way, and to come to the best decision for spending your taxes? Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?

We would say this is a piece of Public Heath Theatre. Are you clapping along in the audience?

——

Below are excerpts from emails relating to the previous En Gardasil post. They are a lesson in trust. Trusting your source, or not, and remembering that ‘good’ lies are no better than ‘evil’ ones. An open, curious mind is a very sharp weapon.

……..

May I burn down that straw man?

Aspirin is safe; that is the difference between it and Guadakill. Aspirin was initially prepared from the bark of trees. It is a naturally occurring medicine, unlike Guardakill which is a man made poison.

There is *no straw man here*. Aspirin and STW are used, in my context, to denounce your point on alum, i.e. that just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted. One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random. According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo.
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/#science
And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

St Johns Wort is also a naturally occurring plant, and is therefore much safer and preferable as a medicine. It also has a long history of safe use.

Now, HERE is a straw man. I would guess there are many more deaths from digitalis than Gardasil will ever manage, despite also being a plant with a long history of safe use. Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently. Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context.

Alum has been used for /just/ 60 years and has recently been ‘proven’ safe on paper, when anyone who has used it has known it is safe in vivo. And yes, I’ve used it and taken it.
http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=49797-alum-given-clean

Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

Mankind is much better off living inside and with his environment. Guardakill is an unnatural medicine; the need for it is artificial, the lust behind its making is the lust for money, and while the medicine itself is not evil, the people who make it most certainly are.

I would agree with this. What I wouldn’t agree with is throwing petrol and matches on non-existant straw men. There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.

No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.

The rules of peer review do not extend into the coroners office, and those recorded deaths and the numbers of people damaged are *not* opinion. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is not going to falsely attribute death to a vaccine (I would imagine) which is where those numbers come from.

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a
single one attributes death to Gardasil.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

They merely report adverse effects in anything from minutes to weeks following Gardasil vaccination. Many of the patients had other injections at the same time. Many had so long between jab and death that mentioning Gardasil seems nothing more than thoroughness.

Now, you KNOW what I think of these ‘medicines’, and you know what I will do for my daughter. If drugs like Gardasil and chickenpox vaccineare to exposed for the fraudulent, greed-soaked tripe that they are then it must be done through strong, coherent argument and not by setting flame to reality.

—————————————–

just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted.

It shouldn’t be distrusted by itself, but when people are compelling you to take it, common sense says (at least to me) it has to be 100% understood before compulsion. There shouldn’t be any doubt over the mechanism or the elements, otherwise, it should be 100% voluntary.

Gardasil is so new and novel WITHOUT teh accelerant it should absolutely not be mandatory, or anywhere near mandatory. Also no one has pointed out that HPV is not like chickenpox or the flu – it spreads only in a very particular way, by sex. Vaccinations should be used where disease is spread non consensually, i.e. through sneezing – where the public health is at risk, and even that is a near bogus rationale.

But I digress.

One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random.

Homeopathy is voluntary, as all medicines should be. If it works, then you keep using it. Gardasil doesn’t work to provide life long immunity, and so it is broken out of the vial. By the time a 12 year old reaches drinking age its efficacy will be gone. It is a total sheep dip vaccine.

According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo.

I don’t believe these studies, in the same way that the anti-homeopathy brigade to not believe the century plus of of trials that homeopathic medicines have been through. These people have an agenda that has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with control of science.
But I digress again.

And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

which is run by the US government, the same organization that mandates vaccines like Guardakil. YEAH, I’m really going to trust *them*.

Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently.

and so, should we now ban aspirin or provide defenses against it that are mandated by law? The numbers are almost the same as those who die from Cervical Cancer…

Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context.

exactly, and Gardasil is the same as anything else; /until it is mandated/ this is the biggest problem with it. Anyone can produce any medicine they like. You are free to take it or not, after you have made a jugement in concert with your doctor. That is your and my right.
Gardasil and the politcs surrounding it break, sour and queer the relationship between patient and doctor. That is probably its most evil effect.

Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

I trust the one that is old and not mandated. I do not trust the one that is new and mandated. That is my rule, and I apply it to all my medicines. I will not be a party to experimentation or the recouping of someone’s R&D.

If someone I trust explains that Alum is safe in a very particular context, then I will trust it, otherwise, I do not trust any medicine without looking into it myself and getting other opinions.

There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

This is about trust. We cannot trust the people who make Gardasil and anyone who promotes it because the whole programme is tainted from the off. People cannot come to that conclusion on their own because it is hard to be a dissenting voice in this matter if you do not have the credentials.

there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”.

So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of
those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a single one attributes death to Gardasil.

then what you are saying is that Judicial Watch are libeling Merc. Both things cannot be true at the same time.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf

??? so the above is a forgery? Help me out here!

That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!

they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were
not absolutely sure would they not?

What have I missed here?

I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you
say no such reports even exist.

The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.

Then add into the mix that Justice Watch had to sue for the information, the case is closed; these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!

————————————————————–

So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?

JudicialWatch’s conclusion that G-causes-D is OPINION based on a misinterpretation of official documents. The reports never link G and D. They are simple, clear reports which state known facts about each case.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?

Not lying per se, but distorting beyond reasonable limits. As I said
previously, this does no good and leaves them looking like rabid haters without the ability to construct a strong enough argument from the available information, without resorting to screeching FEAR! EVIL! DEATH!

That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!

NO!!! Read that pdf!
Lets see…
1st page: ‘Gardasil did not cause the patients death’

P.2 ‘Cause of death was sudden death’. Other factors involved. Does notblame Gardasil.

P.3 All just hearsay! A nurse who heard from a nurse… and anaphylaxis DOES NOT occur 3 days after exposure. It’s a bit quicker than that. Ask anyone with a peanut/bee sting allergy. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.4 Hearsay! Bloodclot 2 weeks after vacc. Could have been any cause! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.5 Death 2 weeks after vacc. No direct link at all. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.6 Another 2 week gap Does not blame Gardasil.

P.7 States ‘manner of death natural’!!!! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.8 History of heart problems, died of heart problem. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.9 Viral sepsis and secondary infection. Symptoms started BEFORE last vaccine. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.10 Hearsay, no cause of death reported. Does not blame Gardasil.

Are you now seeing the difference between the official VAERS reports and the conlusions/opinions in the JudWac piece?

then they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were not absolutely sure would they not?

See above; Gardasil is NEVER listed as cause of death by VAERS.

Why trust one source and not another?
Just because JudWac appear to agree with our stance on BigPharma does not mean they are virtuous truth-givers. They have their agenda, just as Merck does.
We at Blogdial should know better though, and decide for ourselves.

Now, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ((C) Groucho)

What have I missed here?

The blindingly obvious! That Mercks clinical trial, and JudWac’s take on the VAERS reports are all spin to support a position, and somewhere under it all, crushed and splintered, lies the reality.

I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you say no such reports even exist.

VAERS NEVER EVER says death by Gardasil.

The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.

But we can find the reality, when we remember to treat JudWac with the same basic scepticism that we treat Merck. I would like to believe JudWac, but they give me no reason to do so when I look at the reality behind what they are saying.

these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!

And JudWac are misguided, severely biased, narrow-minded, blinkered scaremongers whose stance does not stand up to the most preliminary of scrutinies. But we have found this out, and we can understand the reality. We can take each for what it is and still know that Merck is evil, and that JudWac is at least trying to stand on the right side.

Minister detained at US airport

Mr Malik said he had also been stopped and searched last year

Britain’s first Muslim minister, Shahid Malik, says he is “deeply disappointed” that he was detained by airport security officials in America. The international development minister was stopped and searched at Washington DC’s Dulles airport after a series of meetings on tackling terrorism.

Mr Malik, MP for Dewsbury, West Yorks, had his hand luggage checked for explosives when returning to Heathrow.

He said the same thing happened to him at JFK airport in New York last year.

On that occasion he had been a keynote speaker at an event organised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alongside the FBI and Muslim organisations, to talk about tackling extremism and defeating terrorism.

‘Respect needed’

Mr Malik said he had received numerous apologies and assurances from the US authorities after that incident.

But he was again searched and detained by DHS officials on Sunday.

Mr Malik said two other Muslims were also detained.

“I am deeply disappointed,” he said.

“The abusive attitude I endured last November I forgot about and I forgave, but I really do believe that British ministers and parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity at USA airports that we would bestow upon our colleagues in the Senate and Congress.

“Obviously, there was no malice involved but it has to be said that the USA system does not inspire confidence.”

What an IDIOT.

He is upset because he wasn’t given ‘respect’. He implies that it’s OK if other innocent people are treated this way because they are not diplomats. This man is seriously Out Of Touch.  The wrong person in the wrong job.

Mr Malik has acted like the pompous, elitist snob he obviously wishes to be, corrupted by the impression of petite power he thinks he holds. He is a part of the problem, and will be amongst the first against the wall.

There has been a request for Gardasil to be examined. The main question/accusations from the request being:

According to the numbers given above, they want to spend £100,000,000 to possibly prevent cervical cancer in 700 people each year.

That is the sole justification for this.

What this article doesn’t count out are the numbers of people who will certainly be permanently damaged by this vaccine:

‘We have concerns about the inadequacy of the safety trials that have been conducted on the HPV vaccine.
‘They have been tested on adult women meaning we do not know whether they are safe for boys and young girls.’

So, basically, we need to know whether Gardasil works, and if getting an injection of Gardasil is safe or not. Is there a chance of permanent injury? For this we need the original data of the peer-reviewed article published to support the claims of Gardasil effectiveness and safety. This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a well-respected clinical based journal.

This may seem like a hard read for the lay person, but all we need focus on is this:

By comparing vaccine to placebo, we see no serious significant differences between the groups. Just having a jab gives ‘adverse reactions’. Here’s what Merck says on safety of Gardasil. I would guess most of the adverse reactions are due to the use of alum as an adjuvant. Not something to worry about particularly, and certainly not for inducing ‘permanent damage’.

According to the CDC, four fatalities occurred near the time of the patients’ Gardasil injections. One patient died three hours after receiving the Gardasil vaccination; blood clotting was listed as the cause of death.

I can find no reference for this, either in the quoted article, or in the google. This info cannot be trusted.

There are now 7 reported deaths. Here are a few excerpts from those reports.

19 year old female — Echocardiogram revealed very enlarged right ventricle & small left ventricle as well as large blood clots within both the right atrium & right ventricle.

15 year old female — Consult states had HPV vax at PCP on 3/2 & no other recent vaccines.

11 year old female — She experienced cardiac arrest, required lung bypass (ECMO) and “may not have expired.” It was also reported by the same nurse that the physician from the hospital said that “the death was due to an anaphylactic reaction to Gardasil.”

Unknown — Information has been received from a physician who attended a conference that mentioned two patients who were vaccinated with Gardasil. Subsequently the patients died.

I can’t find any original medical evidence for Gardasil-associated fatalities either on the wider web, or in PubMed. [search ‘gardasil’ and ‘fatal’ or ‘death’]. It would help if those with axes to grind would show us their grindstones.

However, this doesn’t mean Gardsil is a lovely safe thing. I highly recommend reading this very well-written article, also in NEJM. In summary, this article dissects the clinical trial data, and says what YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW; that the trial was devised and designed to maximise any potential benefits of Gardasil, that the measurements used are the most generous available while remaining acceptable to external reviewers, that the study groups do not match the likely patient groups. And so on. To summarize, Gardasil works to some extent, over a relatively short period (5 years protection from 3 jabs is pretty poor, immunologically speaking), but is not apparently dangerous in itself, depite the misgivings of a few unreferenced articles.

So, why make an HPV vaccine? Well, cervical cancer is worth preventing and it is kind of ‘proof of principle’ for other potential cancer vaccines. And prevention is better than cure in this case. But there are public health and parental choice concerns.

If you have access to a print library/doctor/medical school get a copy of the BMJ and read this article.

Seems like there are plenty of clinicians ready to air their scepticism at exactly why this drug is being pushed on such a large population, and with little or no patient choice.

The vaccine is undoubtedly set to be a blockbuster product for Merck. Twenty US states are considering bills that would make the immunisation a requirement for school attendance, which could net Merck billions of dollars

Gardasil now mandatory in Texas for your 10-12 year old daughters…

Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

And what else did you expect? We’ve told you this scenario before, with chickenpox vaccine. A pretty low health risk, but a potential fortune for the drug company that gets in first and persuades YOUR government to LEGISLATE to MAKE YOU TAKE IT UP THE ARSE.

I’ve been thrust into the Blarchive several times recently, for various reasons. You should visit. It’s a blast! I just saw my own wedding photo, which was a bit unexpected.
I remember joining Blogdial, receiving my paper hat along with the instructions: Post Hard. Post Often.

Here is my call, to any lurking Blogdialians, to read a random page from the Blarchive and please post something, anything that comes to mind after your visit. Mary13, Claus, CaptainD, a hymn in g to nann, barrie, alison and all the others out there…

Anyway, I have knots in some muscles the size of golf balls. On asking a wise owl for her best remedy, she suggested the following:

1. Find someone who likes having their hands all oiled up and likes touching you.

2. Find a selection of very smooth river stones, slightly flattened is best and not too large to cup in the oily person’s hand.

3. Boiling water

4. Thirty minutes

poor boiling water in a bowl and slide the stones in. Let sit for three minutes then poor the water off and cover stones with a hot towel. Take off your shirt, pick up the bowl of hot stones and approach your potential masseuse with a beseeching expression and little puppy noises.

The masseuse oils up their hands, oils of your back and shoulders, takes a stone in each hand skates those babies repeatedly over all the sore spots. When  the stones go cold, grab two more hot ones.

This is without a doubt the best and most wonderful massage technique I have ever used.

Even if you don’t have knots, I recommend this whole heartedly.

Decorating yesterday, without a radio, 2 Kate Bush thoughts.

1. The Man With The Child In His Eyes

This song has the most perfect, beautiful ‘ooooh’ of any song, surely. Yes, it does, and i did call you surely. It’s not lascivious, giving come-hither looks or being downright dirty like other oohs I could mention. It’s a luscious, loving, wonderfully rounded, beautiful ‘oooh’, the kind you’d have sung to you by the person who loves you most dearly.

2. Bloody pigeons

Thanks to her last album, Ariel, I now can’t hear a wood pigeon cooing without thinking ‘A sea of ho-ney, a sky of ho-ney’.

After home taping in all it’s guises, the P2P explosion, the poor music industry has to deal with this – Prince has ‘given away’ his latest album, apparently pocketing at least £250,000 from the deal with the Mail on Sunday. And what do we hear of this groundbreaking deal, where an artist has retained control of his ‘product’ and redefined how the public get to access it? Well, mostly the bleatings of commercial rip-off middlemen like HMV, who’s industry representatives whine…

The Entertainment Retailers Association, described plans to “dump” 3m Prince CDs onto breakfast tables on Sunday as wasteful given his albums do not sell in anywhere near those volumes.

The group has slammed Prince’s giveaway as devaluing music and taking record stores for granted.

Referring to MoS plans to distribute almost 3m copies on Sunday, the group said: “This is nearly twice the number of CDs sold by Prince in the UK over the past 13 years.”

Or they make veiled threats like…

“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores,” said Quirk in reference to the 1990s when the star stopped using his name.

“It’s an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” he said.

An insult to record stores!? The same record stores who make far more per CD than the artist does? I can see why that would be insulting. Prince has decided that, instead of making £80,000 (on less than 80,000 sales of last album 3121) and handing far more to record stores and marketing men, he’ll take £250-500,000 from a newspaper and save his fans a lot of money. All while distributing 2.5 million copies! How insulting!

And the coverage he’s got for this album is astonishing. Reviews everywhere. Meeja luvvies falling over themselves to express an opinion. The Grauniad slighted by the fact that Prince chose a rag capable of selling 2.5m copies rather than go for ‘cool’ by shipping a fifth of that with the Observer.

And then there’s complete tripe like this, from the Scotsman. Headlined ‘a new threat to music’, there’s no need to dissect further. And all the comments on the piece see right through it. Fergus Sheppard, Media Correspondent, you are owned by the industry on which you comment, and irrelevant to the public to whom you correspond.

Prince, good on you.

The prior post takes a phrase coined in an alternate context and uses it in a way which blatantly misrepresents both the original meaning and myself, being the person who used the phrase.

In the original context I wrote ‘I’ve expressed my societal preference’. It referred, using a different phrasing, to a prior comment; ‘I know what society we have all chosen to live in, though we are adults and free to leave should we wish… ‘. In context, this meant a preference for one society over another, i.e. having looked around, we have chosen to live in UK society (and accept a ban on gun ownership, for example) rather than US society (where I would have the right to bear arms).

Irdial has also expressed the same societal preference in choosing to live in the UK. By extension, Irdial has forgone the right to bear arms. That is a societal preference, that is my meaning. Therefore I could imply, out of context, that Irdial obviously thinks the right to bear arms disposable, not as valuable as other aspects or rights within the respective US and UK societies, and therefore any comments supporting that right may be considered hypocritical.
If anyone is unhappy with the society they curently live in, they are free to act to change it or to exert their ‘societal preference’ and choose another.

The implications in the previous post that I meant anything else by ‘societal preference’ are exactly and nothing more than that; implications. The implied personal characteristics associated with the contents of that post, given the repeated referral to ‘societal preference’ and it’s original posting are unjust, unfair and uncalled for.

Home births offered to all pregnant women

All pregnant women in England will be offered the choice of a home birth overseen by a midwife, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, pledged today.

What a generous offer!

Home birth is the right of every women. There are no ‘laws’ or ‘rules’ which say a women must have her child in hospital. However, the NHS has a default setting of We Know Best© , which they clealy do not. Women are currently ‘persuaded’ away from home birth by the culture of paranoia and control-freakery which fills the NHS, and to the greatest extent this happens during pregnancy.

We had to stand firm against GP, NHS and cultural pressure in order to have our home birth. But the midwife team who assisted on the day were wonderful. They work by the assumption that, all being well, all the midwife should do is make tea and catch the baby. And maybe not even that much!

Under a new plan for maternity services expectant mothers will be offered a “full range of birthing choices,” including home births, by 2009. Setting out the plans, Ms Hewitt said pregnant women would be given minimum guarantees about the level of service they can expect from the NHS.

Let me make it clear. This witch is offering you a gift of nothing, wrapped up in falsehoods. It is your absolute right to demand a homebirth.

She said: “I am making it absolutely clear: if you have a baby at home or indeed in a midwifery-led unit, it is only a professionally qualified midwife who can supervise that birth.”

She lies! A mother, a taxi driver, a husband or a child can supervise a birth. Here we see the hand of control-freakery, and the lieing voice of a dictatorial system who does not want you to realise that YOU have the power. Through these subtle lies they take this power away, making you subservient and dependent upon The State.

“Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. I am here to protect you. You have nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go. “

[…]

“There are clearly far more women out there who would like to have a home birth and could do so safely, but aren’t at the moment getting that option,” she added.

Wrong! They are being told there is no option, but this is a lie! If you demand a home birth, it must be provided for you. It is not an ‘option’, it is a right.

And worst of all, that most heinous of crimes, misinformation through poor reporting:

Asked why the government was keen on promoting home births despite known increased risks for mother and child, she said: “I think the important thing here is to give women choice and give them the information so they can make an informed choice.”

LIES!!!!!!

Home births are safer. Home births have less problems, use less drugs, stand less chance of post partum infection, are less stressful to mother and child, give control back to the mother… need I go on?

These people will tell you the truth. More truth. And yet more.

From the NHS website: “Home birth is becoming increasingly popular. For a healthy woman experiencing a normal pregnancy with no major complications anticipated during the birth, studies have shown that it is equally safe to be attended by midwives in the comfort of your own home as to have your baby in hospital.”

Birth is a natural process, not a disease. Know your rights. Own your body.

If you have 2 decades experience that a product is rubbish, should anyone care that you get frustrated after buying a new version and it turns out to be rubbish? Yet Again.

Dear Bill Gates

First, the apology. Having complained here on 6 February that your new Vista operating system was driving me bonkers, it would have been polite to give you an update before now.

And had I been a little less self-obsessed, I would have commiserated with you for the wobble in your share price a few weeks ago when your chief executive warned that Wall Street’s estimates of revenues from Vista in the coming year were over the top (though analysts still expect Vista to generate comfortably over $15bn of sales in the year from June 2007).

15 billion dollars for a broken, pointless product that doesn’t meet any user expectations. There’s one born every minute, and Bill Gates has persuaded them all to buy Windoze.

But in delaying my progress report, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I assumed that Vista would soon become compatible with the assorted tools of my trade, so I could write you a belated note of congratulation.

In fact my Vista experience has gone from bad to worse. One of your engineers has informed me that my HP iPAQ PocketPC will never be compatible with Vista, even though the software it runs is Microsoft software. Hey ho. That’s an expensive and serviceable bit of kit written off prematurely.

Hey Ho?!! Bleet bleet.

Your engineer has however held out the tantalising prospect that Olympus may produce new drivers such that I would eventually be able to transfer sound files from my digital voice recorder to my new Vista laptop. But so far, those drivers are proving a bit elusive and my digital recorder may also become redundant.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me repeatedly over decades, expose me as a lobotomised sheep with blinkers and an addiction to being fooled.

But as economists say, there’s no point in obsessing over spilt milk. However, here’s what almost sent me over the edge this weekend.

I installed Office XP on my new laptop, and have been puzzled and irked that Outlook will not save sign-on passwords. It means I have to type in my passwords every time I check my e-mail accounts for new mail.

For weeks I’ve been investigating possible fixes to this annoying glitch. But yesterday I came across an explanation from someone called the Microsoft AppCompat Guy, on Microsoft’s discussion forum for “General Windows Vista Development Issues”.

This is what AppCompat Guy says: “This was a difficult deliberate choice. During the development of Vista, it was discovered that the password storage algorithm used by Outlook was too weak to protect your data from future, potential attacks. Both the security and application compatibility teams decided that protecting your data outweighed the inconvenience of having to retype your passwords. As the appcompat representative, I can assure you this was not a decision we took lightly… ”

So just to be clear, Microsoft has created a new operating system that isn’t properly compatible with a best-selling, still perfectly useable version of its own software. Which of course provides quite a powerful incentive for me to spend up to £99.99 on upgrading to Microsoft Outlook 2007 – except that in my current mood, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

“quite a powerful incentive for me to spend up to £99.99 on upgrading to Microsoft Outlook 2007”

WHAT!??!?! After paying for a broken product (for no good reason) which mothballs your perfectly good hardware, you are willing to pay MORE money in the vain hope that it will be OK in the end. Baa!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is “Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor. This blog is my regular take on the business stories and issues that matter.” Would you trust this man to make a single good busines edition, when he repeatedly proves himself to be an imbecile, incapable of rational business thought in his personal spending habits, cannot evaluate product cost vs benefit, and does not appear to have looked at alternatives. And then wants to apologise for having slightly bad thoughts about the product.

Here he goes again:

In a way you’re to be congratulated. Vista should provide a significant boost to Microsoft’s cash flow, from sales of the basic operating system and sales of new versions of other Microsoft software, like Outlook, that are presumably designed to work brilliantly with it. Also there’ll be incremental revenue for the whole computer industry, as customers like me are forced to replace accessories like my HP PDA, which has been Vista’d into obsolescence.

NOBODY has ‘forced’ him to replace his version of XP with Vista. Nobody has forced him to use windows at all. It is only the fault of him (and millions like him) who are M$addicts, too stupified to see the alternatives.

To put it in personal terms, the £650 I spent to replace a dead laptop may lead me to spend a further £400 or so, just so that I can continue to do with my laptop what I expect to be able to do with it.

All of which sounds like good news for you and the IT industry in general.

Except that I’m left with the uneasy feeling that I’ve been ever-so-elegantly mugged. Presumably there’s no connection between your recent sales downgrade and what you might call the negative goodwill generated for customers like me.

Hasta la vista, as they say

That ‘negative goodwill’ has got him spending over 1000 quid on stuff he doesn’t need, and probably won’t work as he requires.

What a business! Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public. Or of BBQ editors, by the look of it.

Jean Baudrillard

York Stories

Local interest… but in the writing of this York resident I find a relaxing, interesting, sensitive persona with a true and deep empathy for the city and what it can mean to live somewhere one finds so special. In particular, the reviews of walks in coutryside around the city have been inspiring. Every time I visit the site, I think this person would be nice to bump into and chat with in a pub, after a nice, relaxing wander by the river.

The build up to “Operation Persian Freedom” (sic) (sick) continues apace. Today, BBQ headline with:

US accuses Iran over Iraq bombs

… by which you would assume the resident Whitehouse demi-Klingon had sent official word to Tehran. Not quite…

US claims the bombs were smuggled from Iran cannot be independently verified.

The US officials, speaking off camera on condition of anonymity,

!!!

More propaganda served up as ‘news’ by our public servants. It’s only going to get worse.

This is absolutely hilarious!

Makes you think that the hip, young advisors at the Home Office are suggesting  these things to Dr Reid just to make him look like the idiotic, out of touch dinosaur we all know and abhor.

The BBQ ‘expert’ speaks…

“He said the government’s move was a step in the right direction and the industry would co-operate – but opportunities would arise for organisations to market “premium” – allegedly untraceable – e-mail accounts.

If everyone had a single internet identity for life, like a National Insurance number, this would make it far easier to track people, he said.” Mwah hahahahahahaha!!! PMSL.

Looking for a Walter Nurnberg book on ebay… came across this… do these THINGS get everywhere, everytime?

Now you’re going to tell me that’s religious imagery, aren’t you?

Spire on Saturday was extremely good. First some great beer in KoKo bar (Goodramgate), which used to be a fabulous shop selling a myriad of bottled beers and now a lovely, cosy bar run by the same man. From the window we watched images of the East Window of the Minster projected onto the scaffolding that will continue to cover it for years to come.

The concert itself was a mix of classical, religious organ pieces, some accompanied by piano and tape, some vocal pieces, some individual chants, and solo offerings from Fennesz, Jeck and BJ Nilsen. Fennesz played in the Chapterhouse, with transmission into the Nave. It was interesting to wander from one place to the other, feeling the changing acoustics and feel of the rather subdued (for Fennesz) sounds.

For me, Jeck was the surprising highlight. From listening close to his set-up at the front of the Nave,  I wandered to the far end. Here, instead of the intense, personal feel of close quarters, his samples and loops of various organ and church sounds filled the huge space wondrously. It felt like the memories of centuries of ceremonies breathed themselves from the stones to fill the void. Something vaguely familiar, borderline comforting, yet still ethereal and untouchable swirled around, the huge and reverberating space preventing the sounds from coming into anything but the softest of focus.

Nilsen tried his best to send everyone into a coma, and it failed to move me at all. However, a final set of organ and vocal pieces including some Pärt sent me home with a warm glow inside.

Calling all composers – eleven notes in under eleven days
Could you compose a short piece to be performed on York Minster’s chime bells on Saturday 20^th January, as the pre-concert introduction to Spire a striking, magical exploration of sound and space which invites you to think again about the church organ?
This is your opportunity to step into the shoes of one of Britain’s most famous composers – Michael Nyman, who was due to perform a new work, but now has to be at the Sundance Film Festival.
The time slot is from 6.45 to 7.00pm and the promoters – SightSonic, Touch and the University of York – are hoping to feature two or three short works.
“It was a great shame that Michael had an unavoidable conflict, but we see this as an opportunity for other composers”, said Peter Boardman, chair of SightSonic. “The idea came out of a conversation with artists Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie of the OpenEnded Group, whose new work is being projected onto the East End of the Minster until 28 January. They set the challenge of composing for eleven notes in the remaining eleven days available.”
Dr. Tony Myatt, University of York Music department, who will be among the selectors, described the chime bell keyboard as a set of wooded levers – like a carillon, but not chromatic. “It has 11 notes, a diatonic scale spanning a 10th plus a sharp fourth. Considered in C, the keyboard is C to E’ (octave + 2 tones) plus an F#. The notation that I played was written in C, but the bells sound in D. The keyboard is played with the base of the hand (a vertically oriented loose fist, playing almost with the side of the knuckle of the 5th finger), normally using alternate hands. Some limited two part writing is also possible. I would estimate that one of the skilled Minster players could play semiquavers at  crotchet = 90. Because the keyboard is manual, only two notes can be played at any one time.”
The selected work will be performed by one of the members of the York Minster Society of Change Ringers. Entries should be sent to peter.boardman@york.gov.uk.
Spire has been performed at cathedrals and churches in Geneva, Linz, Amsterdam and Brussels in Europe and in Newcastle and Leeds Town Hall in the UK.  This production is a partnership between SightSonic, Touch and the University of York’s Concert Series, by kind permission of the Dean & Chapter of York Minster.

[…]

Any composers amongst us? I know there are…

Spire

Tickets

Minster

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml

The Sky at Night.

For whenever you have a spare 20 minutes, discover a beautiful little part of the universe.