British Telecom and BBC iplayer

For those of you unacquainted with the BBC iplayer it streams TV programs to your computer screen and is by default a pretty high bandwidth application, it also allows you to download programs from "other" iplayer users torrent style, so when you download a program to watch it, it sits on your hard drive and as long as iplayer is active shares your bandwidth with other people who want the same tv program.....

BT are making noises that the BBC should pay them for this "extra" load on their network, I'm sure the BBC pay handsomely through their nose for the current connection they have to the internet to open up their archives to the paying public, and BT wholesale charge their customers and other ISP's handsomely for the use of their bandwidth and infrastructure... but now BT are asking the BBC to pay twice for the same transfer of the same data.... that's a bit like demanding that car manufacturers pay for the wear and tear their vehicles cause on our roads on top of road tax the motoring public pay....

This smacks of BT running out of bandwidth to share amongst its users and the 21CN upgrade they have in the pipeline for all of the exchanges simply being too little too late, BT already use packet shaping and throttling in the evenings which can turn what should be a swift transfer of data into a long drawn out process with lots of Doohickeys thrown into the mix, and the powers to be have probably prohibited an increase in broadband charges because their customer base would vote with their feet and simply swap to an ISP that was cheaper...... so BT are in a lose-lose situation of their own making.....

Which brings me neatly around to our broadband connection which quite frankly is not as advertised "a blistering headlong rollercoaster ride on the information superhighway....." it's more a sedate stumble with the help of a zimmer frame through a vat of cold molasses.....

Although I have it on good authority that BT will fix this problem, like they have been attempting to do for several weeks now with the urgency of a dope smoking quadriplegic rastarfarian sheep herder..... needless to say if I had held my breath I would have been dead and buried months ago........

This is funny

Dear Mr. Darling,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain ' s economy. Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:


There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. - Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings - Unemployment fixed .

2) They MUST buy a new British CAR. Twenty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed .

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed .

4) They must send their kids to school / college /university - Crime rate fixed

5) Buy £50 of alcohol / tobacco a week there ' s your money back in duty / tax etc

It can ' t get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed , have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

It's not looking good is it ?

What with General Motors going into some sort of bankruptcy coupled with a large swathe of our trustworthy politicians suddenly admitting "accounting errors" or "genuine mistakes" when they have been caught with their hands in the till and on the make.... even our brilliant Chancellor of the exchequer has unreservedly apologised and said he had made an "inadvertent administrative error"......He's a bean counter for God's sake if he can't keep his own house in order what hope does he have of balancing the UK's books !!!

These are the people running our country !!! not only do they want the power but also as much money as they can scrape out of the trough.... politicians have sunken to an all time low.... but you can't help wondering if all this isn't interconnected with big business ie/ the banks ..... they were hauled over the hot coals so lets haul the squeaky clean politicians over those very same hot coals and see who gets burned.....

if somebody had been fiddling their expenses in a normal company the very least they could expect is to be sacked and/or be investigated for fraud by the police...... this has obviously been going on for a VERY long time...... I wonder how many other retired politicians feathered their nests whilst in public service ????

it's all a house of cards I have a feeling lots of things will start toppling down I don't think we've heard the last of this by a long shot......


The only other thing that deeply saddened me today was the story about a couple and their 5 year old child who jumped off Beachy head, well they did the child didn't ....the really sad thing is the child was found inside a rucksack and there was another rucksack with his toys in it.... obviously the child didn't want to jump off the cliff so by the looks of it they made a game out of it..... that's the only explanation I can think of regarding the rucksack filled with the child's toys.....it beggars belief what they said to that child before doing the deed......selfish bastards .....

These kinds of stories make me really angry.... I've got no problem if somebody wants to "off" themselves...... its your life do what you want with it...... but don't drag innocent kids with you to your death....kids who trust you and love you, and have a right to live their own life, with or without you..... but to take them with you.......that is just pure selfishness and it's undiluted evil.... but who knows what goes through the mind of somebody who is so disturbed that they see death as their only way out of a situation.

Oh the weather has been nice.........


Addendum :- it seems the boy had died of meningitis a few days before and they couldn't come to terms with his death ...... I suppose with that level of grief you could be driven to do strange things, but putting your dead child in a rucksack then throwing them off a cliff top and then yourself does seem a little bizarre... but I suppose you assume anybody that is found at the bottom of a cliff must have either jumped been pushed or slipped and was very much alive when it happened.....