Glasshouses and Stones

So I get this flyer in my letter box from the local Labour party, trying to make hay about the fact that some of our local Tory councillors had a free lunch, courtesy of Ian Clement the former Leader of the current council. This is of course the same Labour party whose parliamentary colleagues have spectacularly cocked up the running of the country, who has more unelected people in the Government than any previous administration. This is the same local labour party who put up council tax a whopping 66% during their term in office without producing any discernible improvement in office (I would suggest actually that the opposite was more the case). Is that all they have to campaign on? A few meals? Well lets face it they have no credibility as an Elected Party either at local or national level.

And another thing: All this freedom of Information stuff about expenses is a relatively new concept- and I found myself wondering what might have been unearthed about the previous labour council had this "openness" had been taking place in the early part of the decade. I would speculate that we may have seen similar behaviour from the then incumbent Labour administration.

I also find myself wondering what all the fuss is about. We are talking about a few lunches here, not Duck Houses and dodgy mortgages. A few Hundred quid at the most. For heavens sake, it happens all the time in the real world; I'm aware of situations in my working life were colleagues have had lunch on expenses under some formal pretext or other. "Oh yes," says the "holier than holy labour party, "but in this case its Hard Pressed Council tax payer who is footing the bill." This would be the same hard pressed council tax payer whose bills rocketed under their administration....

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone, somewhere always picks up the tab... in the corporate PLC world, then its the shareholder, which is probably some pension fund-yep that's our money again who foots the bill. Its one of the realities of life- you may not like it, but that is how it is. So, I would much prefer the Labour party to actually state what they would do in office rather than resort to the kind of immature snitching that would be more at home in a primary school playground.

Harry Potter and half hearted adaptation

I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter series... both the books and the movies; and I was really looking forward to the movie adaptation of book six; particularly since it was directed by David Yates- who did such a great job condensing Order of the Phoenix into a viable two hour movie.

Half Blood Prince doesn't quite match the high standard of the predecessor, in fact to a casual movie-goer who hasn't read the book, the whole thing might seem a bit confusing. The book has several sub-plots running in conjunction with the main story arc; and rather than jettison the unimportant ones in favour of focusing on the main A plot, the movie tends to jump from plot to plot and never really delivers a satisfactory realisation of any of them.

Nevertheless there are some lovely moments in the film and the climax is refreshingly downbeat in accordance with the source material. Its just a pity that the film makers chose to put in "new" scenes replacing some events in the book in order to simply the plot they'd actually made it more complex.

However its still a good movie and still a lot better than the Philosopher's stone.

And so it begins

Well with my Looking for Normal project on a Hiatus at the moment I thought I'd start another page to share with the WWW my insights with the world, and what's going on with my other stuff....

Well its 12.30 on a Tuesday morning, and I'm aware I have the bi-weekly joy of visiting the jobcentre tomorrow morning. Its an interesting experience actually; I must confess when I first became unemployed I thought I'd be visiting an open audition for Jeremy Kyle- and my earliest visits seemed to reinforce that view. The first time some bloke was thrown out by security, the next another guy was ranting because they didn't give him any money; he hadn't cottoned on the concept that in order to get Jobseekers you actually have to be looking for work...

But as time has passed the visits have become more mundane, and what I am actually seeing are a lot of people like me: ordinary hard working people that are victims of the Labour Government's economic mismanagement. I'm not going to use this post to rant about Messrs Brown, Darling and co- hell I don't need to because the reality is there for all to see at the Jobcentre.

Its the tedium that is the killer. It is hard to find stuff to fill the day. Yes there is the daily routine of job hunting and talking to recruiters etc, but after that you find yourself trying to kill time. I have fallen into the vegging trap on a few occasions- just sitting in front of the telly, flipping through the channels; but fortunately something has come along to pull me out of it. With Normal prepped, I've turned my attention to a couple of other projections; the on going Lapriniya thing (which is once again in development hell) and the under wraps EA plan for 2011...

Right well its now almost 1.00 so its time to nest...