Please sign the Libel reform campaign petition
I should have blogged about the Libel reform campaign back in December last year when I signed. I have received two replies from my local MP since then, the last letter was a copy of an attached response from the Ministry of Justice regarding possible reforms of the law on libel in England and Wales.
The Libel reform campaign petition can be found at http://www.libelreform.org/sign
Lets hope the current unjust libel laws are scrapped soon
Recuriment agencies and the futile cv
To add something else to my frustration, job pimps … i mean job agencies have a arousal to catapult my inbox with their indeterminate offers of finding employment if i just roll out my CV. This has been fruitless all along.
I am delighted to find out that a head of a labour union in Denmark has spoken out
‘CVs are useless,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that it isn’t the right way to get a job. We should drop the intense focus on them and instead use more resources on job counsellors and guidance from qualified employment experts.’
‘Job centres and HK’s own unemployment fund could spend more time finding jobs for the unemployed if we could just escape this bureaucratic waste of time,’ he added.
I hope a union leader in the UK will notice this and say something similar
Standing motionless
Exhibited in a tattered and worn out leather jacket
Sullen and shameless eyeing a middle aged blonde
Her curls dangle precisely on her face
The smell of fast food strangles the scene
A torn page from a newspaper floats on the pavement
Young youth clad in hoodies roaming unafraid
A pit ball terrier with gold brushed down brown fur
A group of men and woman astutely dressed
Smoking fags and vocalizing loudly
Touching on office gossip
A glint of purple can be observed
In the autumn enveloping sky
A grey stream of smoke curses
Two self-confident pregnant woman
A sweet smell is radiated out of their possession
Posters of the 1989 Velvet Revolution
November and December 1989 saw student protest’s in Prague and other cities that led to the Sametová revoluce ( velvet revolution) that saw the end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Last year the release of a bi-lingual (Czech and English) book with some of the posters that were seen all over the cities accompanied by interviews with the creators of the posters. I received a copy of the book this afternoon and have thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
A interview with the author of the book and those involved can read here. (This interview also convinced me to buy the book 
)
The book can be purchased here
A surprise film
Depression in films could not be more accurately shown than in the French film Un homme qui dort. From the very beginning the narrator utters
Your alarm clock goes off, you do not stir, you remain in your bed,you close your eyes again. It is not a premeditated action, or rather it’s not an action at all, but an absence of action……
I knew I would enjoy this film. There are many other words that I can relate to very well.
the feeling of your existence, the impression of belonging to or being in the world, is starting to slip away from you.
Your past, your present, and your future merge into one: they are now just the heaviness of your limbs…..
As the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months have dragged on without a realistic hope of finding work, the above sinks straight into my being. I have not climbed as anywhere as low into depression as the films single character has which is also why I can recommend this film to anyone regardless of mental state.
The short camera shots where we see a old man with a walking stick sitting on a bench opposite the main character and the tone of the sole actor walking through the Champs-Élysées and other notably places in Paris are executed flawlessly in black and white film.
Waiting in hospitals
Contrary to expectation I have no gripes today while I waited with my mother to be seen by a doctor. Within 10 minutes she was up on her feet and behind closed doors for a ear test. I looked after (overflowing the poor kid with cut up pieces of apple) a child that my mother takes care of, Andy Murray was playing Rafael Nadal in order to get to the Australian Open semi-finals on a conspicuous flat screen with the subtitles taking over a quarter of the screen. Five minutes past and my mum reappeared waiting too see another doctor. After she was seen by the second doctor, we left a small pile of half eaten apple that dribbled out of the kids mouth on the floor while I was keeping my attention somewhere else.
I consider myself very lucky, I was foreseeing moans for my mother incessantly from the small adolescent while I was more than happy just to watch the game.
Tired out fiction
There is nothing more boring than having to read the same characters and similar story lines from a authors 5th book. Its like a 25 year old television soap .
In the guardian Toby Lichtig wrote
I was considering this recently when I picked up the new John Irving novel, Last Night in Twisted River. My first thought was this: I wonder when a bear will appear? This was followed by similar conjectures about severed body parts, young men being seduced/abused by older women, flatulent dogs and riffs on wrestling. Sure enough they all turned up (the bear early on; a severed hand and farting dog much later). And this annoyed me. It is one thing to make a genre out of your own writing and to return to the source of your preoccupations; it is another to litter your oeuvre with the same leitmotifs time and again. Irving’s work is not about bears or wrestling or what it means to be (or be around) a farting dog. So why do these flights of fancy always seem to crop up?
Of course there is a limit to what can actually be written, I in fact enjoy reading novels set during the world war 2, its the authors views that appear fresh that appeal to me.
What could he be filming?
I was walking around Prague on January 6th 2010 at around 13:00 (CET) and noticed someone filming, I was unfortunately in a rush to notice what was being filmed. I am quite intrigued to know if anyone can enlighten me to what happened.
Criticising soldiers in wars
Deciding to be a professional soldier for some may well be an attractive alternative to long term unemployment or continuous low paid brain dead work. Its very hard to blame someone for deciding the former. Is attacking a soldier for fighting in a war (as part of their job) that one does not agree with fair ?
When soldiers come back from Iraq and Afghanistan dead, disrespect for them is considered intolerable. David Rodin wrote a interesting article for the BBC where he asks whether this intolerance is stepping on freedom of speech.
In my humble opinion nobody is exempt from criticism because criticism is a fundamental right that invariable leads to open debates. These soldiers are not conscripts and like anybody else in the UK are free to choose what they do with their lives. I think the government as well as the soldiers involved have every right to be on the receiving end of criticism.
I am not insensitive to the people that became soldiers before this war and therefore as part of their job have to fight in a war. Lance Corporal Joe Glenton decided to refuse to fight in Afghanistan on the grounds that the war was unjust, then why can’t any soldier for that matter decide to refuse fighting? Unfortunately Joe Glenton is committing a crime by refusing to fight therefore making it very unlikely that there will be a mass refusal of British soldiers in the on-going war.
I don’t think chastising soldiers does anything positive to end the war instead encouraging them to think about the war they are fighting in would be of better value.
Strangely quiet
I decided that I needed to get out of the house after watching from the window, the snow falling .
The journey was not as white as the garden that I looked out at, I hope the temperature plunges tonight, snow can turn any ugly place into something quite beautiful .
After going to the renovated Barclay’s bank that confounded me, I went clothes viewing. Where were all the people shopping for christmas? I walked into Burtons and I was one of two people looking . Don’t misunderstand, it was great not having to squeeze past lots of people just to find out the size of a jumper that I like is not available. My mother went last Saturday shopping and observed the same. The majority of shopping must be online or people have less money this year…