False fire alarms – should there be a penalty?

For my sins, I live in sheltered accommodation, and as part of our security package, each flat (or apartment for my transatlantic readers), has a smoke detector. This is placed well away from the kitchen, in the hallway, so burning the toast shouldn’t set it off. In fact, I once had a frying-pan fire that [...]

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Firefox 3 – sorting bookmarks…

My main grievance with FF3 is that Organise Bookmarks is a colossal fuck-up. However, I’ve finally found out how to get bookmarks into A-Z order – the trick is to ignore Organise Bookmarks.

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Surviving on Incapacity Benefit

…is extremely difficult.

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What a gay day…

What is it about the BBC, rampantly gay presenters, and Christmas light entertainment? Radio 2 – consigned to oblivion since the 24th – presented us with Alan Carr for two grimly “festive” hours on Christmas Eve, and bludgeoned us with a huge slab of Paul O’Grady on Christmas day (not to mention another two shows [...]

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ID cards to stop under-age drinking…

Yesterday morning, on the radio, I heard a government spokeswoman – sounded like Jacqui Smith – saying, re teenage drunkenness, “We have to find out why they do it, and what enjoyment they get out of it…” Presumably with a view to putting a stop to them enjoying it. . . 

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Censoring the Web…

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham – apparently inhabiting a different planet to the rest of us – is proposing that the Internet be censored. In a statement, today, he claimed that there is stuff on the Net that should not be viewed by anybody. That’d be South Park, then, I suppose. And if you don’t know [...]

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The season to be merry?

As always happens at this time of year, the po-faced and the utterly cheerless are bitching and whining about drunks needing to be hauled off to hospital by ambulance and being – allegedly, though the claim is fundamentally flawed – a massive drain on the health service.

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Would the ladies kindly withdraw…

It isn’t sexist for the ladies to withdraw (after dinner), says an article in The Times. No? OK, maybe that’s an argument for another day, but it’s sure as hell outmoded. Though, by the way, last I heard, calling women ladies was actually sexist.

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Zavvi – no great loss…

So, Zavvi have gone to the wall – can’t say I’m surprised. I wasn’t aware, until I heard the news of their demise a couple of hours ago, that they were formerly Virgin Megastore – so how did they become so crap so fast, and so massively dependent on Woolies?

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COPD and calcium antagonists – a personal view…

Some years ago, I stumbled across a report, in the US, that calcium antagonists, also called calcium-channel blockers (like Angitil, which I take), have a valuable role to play in the management of COPD – they have the same effect on the smooth muscle of the bronchi as they do on the smooth muscle of [...]

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