After attempting to evade the questioning of the judge and lawyers, Rupert Murdoch announced to the Leveson Inquiry the following.

"I am not a technologist. I can't write computer code or anything like that".

No shit, Rupert.

This was then followed by a rather embarrassing and rambling rant about "the internet", "smart telephones", "stealing" and "enormous disruptive technologies". In a nutshell, he wants "the internet" regulated. This is after lobbying extensively for a vastly unregulated free market for... well, I was going to say newspapers, but pretty much everything.

Except the internet. I wonder why?

I'm taking a bit of a punt here, but I'm guessing because it gives a free democratic voice to pretty much anyone who would like to self-publish or be creative in their own right. In other words, the polar opposite of the business model that Murdoch operates on.

Anyway, here's the Murdoch internet rant in two lukewarm episodes that I've uploaded. Sorry, actually, in Murdoch terminology, that should read "here's the Murdoch internet rant in two lukewarm episodes that I've stolen". Enjoy.

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It was a fairly quiet Sunday until this tweet appeared.

Suddenly, I realised that my life could change dramatically. My mates down the pub all say I've got awesome banter. Imagine... just imagine. I could be paid for putting pen to paper my innermost banterous thoughts and even become famous. However, I noticed competition for these enviable writer vacancies has already become fierce, as both Chris Coltrane and Stavvers have sent in applications. How was I ever going to beat such talented writers to the hallowed Unilad Magazine writer's job? Then I worked out how to do it. I'm confident that this is the "killer blow" letter that will destroy all the competition, particularly from Chris and Stavvers.

Here's my application letter to Unilad Magazine. I think the job's in the bag, frankly.

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Just in - a statement from Rupert Murdoch: "Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable. I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively cooperate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks' leadership. We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again."

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This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, as well as a convenient reminder of my blog entry that embedded Peter Oborne's documentary last year on News International's routine use of phone hacking. These are clips of Channel 4 News incisive probing of all the issues that have cropped up in the last 48 hours over the phone hacking revelations.

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In 2008, the BBC held an enlightening quick-fire five minute interview with former Conservative MP Michael Portillo. "I do think the right-wing press is evil", answered Portillo to one question, after a ponderous pause. I remember sitting up bolt upright and cocking an ear in surprise at that. Unlike a lot of people, the word "evil" is not something I like to hear bandied about. It's used with alarming regularity about people and organisations. Often the word "evil" can be safely substiituted with a word that has less value-laden connotations. "Crass", "sadistic", "maladaptive", "misunderstood", "vengeful" and "ignorant" are a few words that are often a better description for many of the things that people in life are quick to label "evil". However, after this piece of news broke today on Milly Dowler's mobile phone being hacked (in the ongoing investigation into the News International Hackgate scandal), Portillo's words on the right-wing press now seem weirdly measured.

The Hackgate story has only really been covered with any detail in a small pocket of publications. Leaving aside the BBC, who appear to only reluctantly cover the story, the main organisations that appear to be devoting any coverage to the investigation are The Guardian, the New Statesman and Private Eye. A frequent criticism from other sections of the Wapping press is that it's only of interest to media wonks. The same critics also point that it's celebrities or public figures that are being hacked and that they gave up their right to privacy. This is obfuscation, as Peter Oborne's "Dispatches" documentary from 2010 was quick to point out, since many ordinary members of the public have had their phones hacked too (normally as collateral damage in another "public figure" story). The Milly Dowler phone hack is the nadir of the phone hacking investigation, if true. Did no-one in the News Of The World offices (from the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who initiated the hacking, right up to the editors who ordered the hacking) pause to think "This might be wrong?". It's alleged that the distressed parents' messages were listened to and that there was also a deletion of messages, so that the voicemail service didn't run out of space. If this is true, then David Allen Green is right to point out that this is a straightforward perversion of justice, since evidence in an ongoing murder investigation was effectively being removed.

I guess it's an aggregate of those behaviours that makes me stop to think. It's the complete absence of morality. It's the premeditated nature of deleting the messages. It's the two-faced complicit nature of NoTW journalists talking to the Dowler family. It's the obvious belief that they are above the law. It's all those factors that make me think the NoTW organisation, out of all news outlets, could be rightly labelled "evil". If the Milly Dowler allegations are true, Michael Portillo's hyperbole was shockingly correct.

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QL-jwC7aXGb.pdf Download this file

After Atos is a website that attempts to help disabled people, after
they've received an erroneous work capability assessment. They've just
received this letter, however, which is a cease-and-desist order. As a
result, the After Atos website has had to shut down (hopefully
temporarily). This is the reason I haven't provided a link, but the
work that After Atos do is a brilliant service to vulnerable people.
Hopefully they'll be back. In the meantime, here's the letter in PDF
form.

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The first thing to note about the Twitter Joke Trial comedy gig was that it was almost the background music to the mother of all "tweet-ups", which had occurred beforehand at the Northumberland Arms pub. This is exactly as it should've been. Up and down the country, people organise these on a regular basis and meet up in pubs and restaurants, to literally find likeminded new friends that they never knew were around the corner if it hadn't been for Twitter. This "tweet-up" was probably bigger than the usual "tweet-up", for two reasons. Firstly, the focus was on the service itself, that many use as a form of free expression which helps them find similar souls in similar tweets. Secondly, Paul Chambers and his girlfriend, Sarah (am I allowed to say her name, it feels like I should keep calling her @crazycolours?) were both to be present. They could drink with their virtual friends and supporters in real life. Paul Chambers, of course, is the man that paid the price of free expression on Twitter, when the police arrested him for his humorous tweet about Robin Hood airport. It was for him, in the first instance, that the comedy gig had been organised. After this pub foray, the crowd moved to the Bloomsbury Theatre, for the comedy gig itself.

Stephen Fry began proceedings in a reflective manner. It set the rest of the night up, because he was keen to point out that it was in everyone's interest to support this campaign for allowing freedom of speech in the digital medium. He got several cheers, particularly when he made his (now widely reported) statement about going to jail for it. This bitterly humourous, languid and sombre start threw Al Murray's entrance into even sharper relief, as he was not just the next act, but the compere for the entire night. It's difficult not to hand Al Murray the entire night on a plate, but as well as his Barman being the blustering engine underneath the entire night and being the connecting force between each act, his own comedy routine was rousing and got a real feeling of audience participation going. This was perhaps the most important thing. Being as Twitter's main appeal is all about everyone being in the mix and anyone getting a chance to shine in the light, Al Murray ended up being an important anchor to the whole show. Al Murray introduced Susan Calman, who kicked off the event in context by mentioning her own legal training. Her icily Glaswegian demeanour foreshadowed David Allen Green’s speech; namely, that lawyers and the legal profession just don’t know what they’re talking about sometimes and get it dreadfully wrong.

For the rest of the night, we then got punched several times in the laughter bones, with no letting up. I make no secret of the fact I was retching with laughter at times. My own personal King of the night was easily Gary Delaney. He went about delivering a series of one-liner puns, laced with cyanide, like a dark Tim Vine or a hyperactive Steve Wright. Jack Whitehall came across at his best in this environment too. By that, I mean he came across as the sullen posh kid who discovered he’s funny and decided to leave the public school dormitory and entertain a wider audience with ascerbic and uncensored observations. Stephen Grant, like his colourful shirt and bright white suit, projected his sunny demeanour into the Bloomsbury Theatre and elevated life into a hazily amusing and warm memory. In sharp contrast, Katy Brand practically assaulted the stage, as she emerged from the audience in army camouflage fatigues and with bomb sirens whirring around her. She then played the role of a genuinely unsettling army soldier who harangued the audience and unwittingly showed what would’ve happened if Lynndie England had branched out into comedy (and had been funny).

With more playful japes to go, Rufus Hound provided one of the first genuine highlights of the night. A slightly bogged-down routine about men liking their cocks sucked was kick-started into hyperdrive as he played his radio show rant at Edwina Currie. Hound's audio clip boiled down the arguments of cynical Twitter Joke Trial campaign commentators, by pointing out the inaccuracies, ignorances and misperceptions of observers like Currie. It was also howlingly hilarious to hear Rufus Hound repeatedly (and correctly) telling her that she was wrong. Most people who are aware of Currie's contributions to discussion shows knows she talks frequently in a misinformed and rude manner anyway.

Robert Popper popped up (sorry, he's probably had that before) and his gentle comic musings were another way of reminding us that free expression involves funny stuff beyond the stage and traditional media outlets. He played a video clip of a phone-in show, where his alter ego Robin Cooper called up and bizarrely complimented a man's singing, before attempting to sing his own self-written ridiculous melody and lyrics. I wasn't certain how the audience were going to react to Popper's routine, as I knew it'd be 'oddball' compared to the more traditional stand-up that had occurred. However, the laughter was loud, particularly at the reactions of the hosts of the radio show (i.e. totally baffled and non-plussed). David Schneider's performance disgraced all of us who have hit a certain age by being disgustingly full of energy and left us with two highlights of the evening. Firstly, he gave his demonstration of premature ejaculation with an audience member (@krunchie_frog, who also very nearly upstaged him). Secondly, he followed this up with his multiple-dance-routines-morphed-into-one. It really needed to be seen to be believed, but it astounded and amused the crowd in equal measures.

The night closed with Graham Linehan, the man who can be credited with organising a fair chunk of the evening. He guides us through a pile of rubbish. By that, I mean his routine is literally about rubbish. It's about the delightful detritus, debris and random odds-and-sods that litter the web. It's the comedy and stream-of-consciousness funniness that can't fit into a television sitcom, sketch show or stand-up comedy and it's no poorer for being the oddball in the room. The D.I.Y. approach of these little internet demigods also underlines what Graham was excited about, namely that the comedy is generated from people sitting at home and they are not necessarily from the pens of professional comedy writers like him (one of my favourites was the "ugly furniture" advert, that someone threw together by gleefully re-editing a real commercial). It was a fitting end and tribute to what the gig was all about, which is the creative freedom to mix, match and marvel within the magnificent digital revolution that social networking is all about.

Graham's act perfectly bookended the night with Stephen Fry's at the beginning. It also acted as a balancing act with the core of seriousness provided by Paul Chambers' lawyer, David Allen Green. David is best known for his "Jack Of Kent" blog, where he disseminates British law in a rigorous and skeptical fashion. The blog has attracted a big following and it's easy to see why, as David spoke to the Twitter Joke Trial audience. His softly-spoken delivery had the crowd entranced, as he gave the reasons for Paul Chambers predicament and why he disagreed with them vehemently. His quote that the Twitter Joke Trial "does not make me proud to be an officer of the court" spoke volumes. If David Allen Green hadn't left the stage so quickly, the standing ovation that had started rippling out throughout the audience (that had eluded all the other talented comedians) would've been allowed to have hit a deserving crescendo. It is to him and Paul Chambers that this gig was ultimately for. The gig, and its attending "tweet up", was a glorious occasion.

Photographs by @gingernuts at his Flicker stream. Please visit it here.

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 Here's a picture of Gary Busey.

What he could really do with is more cats.

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Well, this is one reason, just for starters. Embedded clip courtesy of the BBC. Check out the making of the show.

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I cleaned up the audio for Johann Hari of "The Independent", when he interviewed former Big Brother contestant (and mystical seller of Size Zero pills), Kenneth Tong.

johann_hari_kenneth_tong_interview_13012011_1.mp3 Listen on Posterous

johann_hari_kenneth_tong_interview_13012011_2.mp3 Listen on Posterous

johann_hari_kenneth_tong_interview_13012011_3.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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One small incident occurred today. It confirmed a suspicion that I've had about the glorious world of television advertising. In the grand scheme of things, it's not likely to impact on anyone's life that seriously. To me, it's just another sign that it'll be crassness and stupidity that will cause the end of the world, rather than a natural disaster. It's one of the reasons I wrote my last blog post about giving up on anyone over the age of about 40 and now look to the smart thinkers in their teens and twenties for inspiration. You can almost bet it was someone above the age of 40 that came up with my current upset.

Anyway, back to the small incident that I'm talking about. It's this bloke.

It was really easy to find a picture of him on Google. All I needed to write was "wonga bloke". In fact, I didn't even have to write that. I started typing "wonga" and "wonga bloke" was one of the first autocomplete suggestions. Why did I need a picture of him to illustrate this? Well, about eight months ago, I made the following observation on social networking. "Is it possible to hate someone on the basis of him saying 'WONGA' on a television advert?". It was one of those throwaway status updates or tweets that I didn't think much about. I was then greeted with a chorus of approval/disapproval/amusement from a lot of my friends. This was clearly something that a lot of other people had thought about. This unfortunately led me to my next thought.

If such a one-second clip can cause so much reflection (mostly of annoyance), what's the betting that this "wonga bloke" isn't made centrepiece of the advertising campaign in future? After all, a one-second clip of a man with a really irritating cockney accent had successfully upstaged the rest of the advertisement cast members. Sure enough, I found out today that "wonga bloke" has been made the mascot of the company, with "WONGA!" being the catchphrase.

We live in a world where much of advertising has given up trying to be creative and attractive. The days of British Telecom's technological sophistication and irreverant humour from last century or the marvellous Boddingtons ads of the late 1990s are no longer with us. Instead, we have the GoCompare, webuyanycar and the Halifax Radio ads. That last one has attracted the most derision, perhaps because it's symbolic of the way that finance company men are so utterly disconnected from the general populous, they don't even understand how humour works. However, after the hatred aimed at the original commercial launches, something interesting has occurred. Rather than just ditch the theme, companies like GoCompare, webuyanycar and Halifax Radio have realised they're reprehensible and have decided to pursue the irritating aspects of the original marketing campaign. If they can't make them attractively memorable, they figure, they can make them irritatingly memorable. It sometimes works. For example, the recent ads from webuyanycar are wilfully shite now, so they're now quite amusing. But Halifax Radio is still an abomination to me.

I tend to channel surf away from commercial breaks anyway, or just mute the sound, so I'm guessing that these adverts aren't supposed to appeal to me anyway. I'm assuming they're aimed at people who are too drunk or too lazy to run away from them, even though it's just a light touch to their remote control that will save them. Plus, I guess the irritating adverts aren't as bad as ones that are plain offensive (e.g. take a look at Tracy King's take on the Pepsi Max "rapey" adverts on the Skepchick website). I guess I also have more respect for the irritating adverts over the bland palatial commercials, such as every single car commercial you can think of. In fact, the only car adverts that stick in my head are the Renault Clio "Papa, Nicole" ones and that's only because they fall into the firm irritant camp again.

Modern day advertising is copying the very worst excesses of cheap throwaway pop music. I remember walking around an HMV on Edinburgh's Princes Street in the mid-1990s. One of the staff had a preview copy of something called "Barbie Girl" by a little-known group called Aqua and they proceeded to put it on the store stereo player. What came out of the loudspeakers was simultaneously the most annoying thing I'd ever heard, as well as the largest earworm in existence. It immediately squirmed itself inside my cerebellum. Maybe it was the helium hamster vocals, or the deep-throated sexual predator speech, but "Barbie Girl" savagely knocked aside the rather pleasant Travis song that had been resident in my brain at that point. It didn't stop me from leaving the store, but "Barbie Girl" never left me after that day. I made a bet that once it was officially released, "Barbie Girl" would race straight to the top of the charts, like an angry screaming baby booting the other toddlers out of the way. I was not wrong.

That's exactly what the "wonga bloke" is. It's marketing companies giving up on accessing the sophisticated frontal lobes, because that would involve proper research and work. Never mind trying to use surveys and careful methodical research to access peoples' multifacetted personalities. We're reaching the primeval aspects of someone's brain, the "fight or flight" parts of infantile development. "Wonga bloke" is the angry screaming baby we tried to run away from when we were in the cot. We were severely annoyed by the irritant, but we never forgot them.

Update 01/09/2011: Staggeringly, the advertisers are doing it again. This time, they've actually gone further and stopped me from buying a product that I used to buy on a fairly semi-regular basis. The Haribo commercial has succeeded in out-arseholing the Wonga advert and putting the GoCompare, webuyanycar and Halifax Radio adverts in the shade. Here's the Drum's take on the Haribo commercial.

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This is a Christmas post. It's all about hope and faith for the future, then. It's about all that soppy stuff, in other words. But, as per usual, there's a bit of polemic chucked in by me, because it's me.

I've been close to abandoning the conservative and liberal values of the baby boomer generation. They go around in circles and ultimately end up just talking about the importance of their house prices anyway and how best to maintain their property. It's reached a point where anyone over the age of 45 has all the rights and privileges unfairly top-ended in their direction. So, I've abandoned looking up to them and am quite happy to throw my weight in with the next generation, rather than constantly demonising them as the 'yoof of today' or "the X Factor generation' or "Lady Gaga louts" or whatever shite the dead-tree press have cooked up this week.

Besides, this lovely lot have influenced me.

Sophie Burge, a 17-year-old student, condemning the Coalition government in betraying a generation with tuition fee rises on Channel 4 News, where she totally wrongfoots Norman Baker MP.

An unnamed 15-year-old school pupil gives an impassioned speech at the Coalition Of Resistance National Conference this year.

Courageous teen Graeme Taylor defending Jay McDowell's teaching career at Howell Public school's board meeting on the 11th August 2010. If you support Graeme Taylor, please join the "We support Graeme Taylor" Facebook page. If you support Jay McDowell, please join the "Support Jay McDowell" Facebook page.

Last, but not least, there's Rhys Morgan. I was completely humbled to see him accept the grassrooms skepticism award at TAM London in October this year. This was due to his rigourous investigation of the bogus Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), as well as his wider campaign against assorted quackery. Please read about Rhys Morgan's achievements, as they are awesome.

Anyway, after a year where the older generation in government and mass media are seeking to bring us back to the Dark Ages, I guess it's far more fitting to look to a potentially sparkly future of serious thinkers in the young. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Decade.

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This is Bradley Manning. He worked for the army and, specifically, military intelligence in the US. His background and biography are described in beautiful detail by the Channel 4 News website. Suffice to say, he ticks most of the boxes for being a prototypical geek. He was bullied at school, he felt like an outsider, he was awkwardly emotional, he worked in software development and he even produced an earlier prototype for social networking websites. As you can see from these logs, in his chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, here was a man painfully aware of how the world worked and how information was suppressed to make it work for an elite minority. It was Lamo, incidentally, that tipped the FBI off to get Manning arrested. This was after Manning admitted to releasing the US embassy cables to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It is said that the US military authorities want to lock him up for fifty-two years, even though they have him detained in appalling conditions with no formal conviction yet.

This is Julian Assange. Unlike Manning, I probably don't need to go into a lot of detail about who he is. If you've even caught a snippet of the news in the papers, on the television or on the web, you'll know exactly who he is. His background, however, is of a loner geek. His earlier background at school was of always standing "up for the underdog,... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people". Rather like Bradley, he worked in software development from aged 16 onward and even became a security hacker. There's two things that these chaps have in common. The first is that the US authorities want them punished, even though no obvious crime has been committed on their shores (but they're hellbent on finding one, believe me, even if that means making a whole new law up). The second is that they're both geeks, albeit of differing personalities. Assange has rather overshadowed Bradley Manning. Perhaps that's the point. Assange himself said he needed to act like a "lightning rod" away from the Wikileaks website, plus there are some potentially nasty sexual crimes in Sweden he's been accused of. Maybe that's just as well. If it hadn't been for Lamo, Manning would've been forgotten about.

Someone who definitely wasn't forgotten about by the US authorities is this man. This is Gary McKinnon. I don't have to carry on the recurring theme here, but, hey, here we go again. He's a computer programmer. He has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, which is a condition that makes him a geek par excellence. He was a security hacker that found unprotected information on military machines, several years before Bradley Manning did the same thing. Since 2001, the US government have done everything but forget about him, while the Bin Laden "issue" has been shunted away into the background. But they've pursued McKinnon relentlessly and, similarly to Assange, they scrabbled around for ages for a law that they could prosecute him for until they retrospectively used the UK 2003 Extradition Act to do it. Gary found a bit of information hidden behind an opened safe door that some meathead had forgotten to lock and that was just the worst embarrassment.

The American authorities have form for this sort of thing, as you can see. It's all about the stunted adolescence they've been stuck in since the American teenage dream. Bin Laden can best be described as the hypothetical Hell's Angel friend that the American football jock drank with at the same college bar. It suited them both to be seen drinking together. Once they'd both knocked others' heads together a few times, the Hell's Angel friend got inebriated one night and ended up beating up some of the jock's friends. For a while, the jock made a pretence at going after the Hells Angel biker, but slowly decided he wasn't worth it. He'd got enough out of the friendship and was quite happy to see the back of him and to forget about him. The hypothetical nerd character is a more difficult thing for this hypothetical football jock to get his head around. This was the kid that the jock picked on at school. It's more world-shattering to be humiliated by the nerd, than to be occasionally pummelled by the Hell's Angel. This geek did something more taxing to the US jock than the Hell's Angel; this geek found the jock's diary carelessly unguarded in his desk. Worse than that, the diary contained all the details about the jock cheating at exams, bullying other children, stealing pocket money off other kids and so on. What's an information-obsessed geek to do?

I'm a software developer. I'm currently building a couple of web projects around something called RESTful architecture. From a purely technological view, it's an architecture that suits the social web (as it currently stands). Such an architecture makes every web address a proper repository of data that can be shared by humans, browsers, devices and mobile phones. Every web address is an information resource and this is the original way I was taught about how the embryo World Wide Web worked as a student. Such an architecture has no sense of ideology behind it. It is there to share information openly and that's it. It's the most efficient solution and my next major (non-political) web projects will be built like this. The only difference between now, and when I was a student, is how easy I can make that information flow, with the sheer amount of reusable open source components available. For many web developers, this is an extremely exciting time, as we like to build and make things that share information.

There were constructive reasons why computer science metamorphosed into software engineering. There were networking reasons why software engineering turned into information technology. There were sociological and economic reasons why information technology became communications technology. In most places on this planet, information and communication are available at the touch of a button on a neutral net that doesn't have a political agenda. Instead of bullying and intimidating geeks, the bar-hogging American ex-jock is going to have to get used to the fact that this isn't his world anymore.

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This is due to this travesty too.

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Please donate to Children In Need, if you enjoyed this trailer.

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Earlier yesterday, Conservative councillor Gareth Compton made a rather unfortunate and bad taste joke about the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. All of us recognised it as an unfortunate and bad taste joke. In fact, superficially, it's rather similar to a joke cracked by Paul Chambers. This is eerily prescient, since Mr Chambers is due to stand in court today for all the problems that his Twitter joke has caused. I've been following the Paul Chambers trial carefully and really think the man shouldn't be being put through this. But I was accused of hypocrisy about this, seeing as I'd given Gareth Compton a bit of a grilling on Twitter for his earlier tweet on Ms Alibhai-Brown, while giving Chambers my support.

Let's get this straight. Whether I'm a liberal, a lefty or occasionally display right-wing opinions on things like welfare dependency, I'm foremost a rationalist, as well as a believer in free speech. If I'd been around when he'd originally wrote it, then Paul Chambers would've got the same querying from me as Mr Compton did with his ill-advised joke ("Um, are you sure you want to tweet that, in these sensitive times?"). However, there are a few clear differences between these cases.

The first difference is that Gareth Compton isn't on trial and hasn't lost two jobs, while Paul has suffered both of those fates. The over-reaction and subsequent mishandling by the CPS is better described by Paul Chambers' lawyer, David Allen Green, in his blog. In future, I certainly don't expect Gareth Compton to be hauled into court for daring to blurt out something on an online social networking tool, as stupid as it was. I'm happy for other people to seriously complain about him though. The reason?

Well, the other difference is that Gareth Compton is a councillor in Birmingham City Council, while Paul Chambers was a lovesick student (and can be validated as such by his Twitter followers). Paul's hyperbole can be compared to a heartaching declaration, while Mr Compton statements in public life can wield considerable power, as he supposedly represents many people in his city, including Muslims. If he'd tweeted, "I hope someone gaffer-tapes Yasmin's mouth shut on Radio 5 live and locks her away, don't call Amnesty", I wouldn't have pulled him up for it (even though the joke and sentiment is still poor). However, his singling out of a Muslim name said on radio and his quick connection with a contentious practice of torture utilised by extremist Muslim regimes calls his judgement into question. Such an association has a murky undercurrent. It has a direct impact on any Birmingham citizen who is seeking his judgement on the treatment of minority groups in his council.

If you still think I'm a liberal in sheeps' clothing, let me bring the rationalist and free speech arguments to bear on something else. There was another councillor called John Dixon, who made a similar joke tweet that offended a minority in his neighbourhood, namely the Church of Scientology. As anyone who knows me, I hold Scientologists with a degree of dislike in the same league as out-of-date lasagne; such a pity and such a waste of creativity. However, in the same case, I support the right of Dixon to crack a stupid joke, but hold him to the same caveat that someone somewhere might find that offensive, particularly considering his position as a city councillor. I support the right of Scientologists to make a complaint about Dixon, as ludicrous as I find Scientology's beliefs, and the Church duly did. As it stood, John Dixon went through the normal channels of having his superiors question him in disciplinary procedures which he happily won. But my initial worry about the case was the anxiety about Scientology's varied use of archaic libel laws to either financially bankrupt someone or silence them with their wealth powerhouse. In all cases, free speech and silly jokes should be allowed and not be bludgeoned by the vast fortunes of vested interests.

I stand by the right to free speech, the right to complain about that free speech, but not the right to silence either.

UPDATE: As of 14.36 today, it turns out that Gareth Compton has been arrested for his (now deleted) tweet. I am not remotely happy about this. Again, this is an over-reaction as to exactly what Twitter is used for. The guy made a (pretty unfunny) joke. He didn't mean it as a threat. Any complaints to the council should lead to an internal investigation about his views of minorities, not a money-wasting exercise in police procedure.

UPDATE: As of 16.04 today, Paul Chambers has had his appeal rejected. In other words, he's been charged with a terrorist threat for the real-world equivalent of a fit of hyperbole in the pub with his mates. A shocking indictment of how illiberal British society has become.

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For the next 30 days, I will be concentrating on three personal projects and three only. The first will be a Ruby project called The Collective. I'm not revealing any more about it, but I'm hoping it'll be pretty big if I get a sizeable chunk of it done by the end of this month. The second is a little bit of musical amateurism, namely to record some stuff with Cubase and Garageband on my MacBook. This is to keep me sane (if nothing else) and keep my creative brain ticking over. And on the subject of creativity, the third project is writing a novel. That last bit is particularly scary, but I'm giving it a go. It won't be as stressful as it sounds, as the main idea behind it is to just get a first draft out of the door without fear of beating one's self up over it being perfect.

To aid the three projects, I'm stripping back on a lot of things that are cluttering life up a little at the moment. I'll be avoiding alcohol. I'll be shunning social networking, such as Facebook and Twitter - any contact with those social tools will be entirely via this blog. Any personal messages can be sent to me via email or phone (particularly stuff about news items that I might be interested in, as that's the biggest drain on my time using social networking). The television will be turned off; programmes will be stored on hard drive for watching in December. Only the wonder that is BBC Radio 4 will keep me company. This means that stuff like The Collective will be functioning a lot like a skunkworks in November, as I'll be attempting to architect it without the use of overt technology (apart from Ruby itself and GitHub).

Any proper socialising will be done over a bite to eat (arranged by people emailing, texting or calling me) or at gigs (such as seeing The Indelicates play at The 13th Note), which is slightly related to The Collective project I'm working on. I'm hoping that all my friends and colleagues who read this blog article will keep me on the straight and narrow by giving me a bollocking if it looks like I'm procrastinating online, watching telly or drinking wine.

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This year sees the 20th anniversary of David Lynch's masterpiece 'Twin Peaks'. And what better way to celebrate than to bring a little bit of the magic to London! On November 27th 2010, Riverside Studios in Hammersmith will host the first 'Twin Peaks' UK Festival. I love 'Twin Peaks'. In the early 90s, it pretty much shaped my worldview and personality, as the confused and dreamlike world perfectly mirrored my teenage life at that point. It also made me feel bulletproof as my favourite character (and someone who influenced me) was Albert Rosenfield, played by Miguel Ferrer. Here he is in full-flow.

You see? He's a total bastard, but also a pacifist and skeptic - rather like me.

Anyway, for those reasons (and many others), I was genuinely thrilled to find out that a friend of mine was organising the 'Twin Peaks' Festival in Hammersmith. Cherry pie, coffee, owls and red drapes was enough to convince me, along with the entrancing prospect of being surrounded by fellow Peakies. However, I know at this late stage that the 'Twin Peaks' UK Festival organisers are still desperately trying to raise the last funds they need for the festival to be a roaring success. Obviously, they're pulling out all the stops but the word needs spread to as many people as possible, so maybe there's a potentially new (and thoroughly lovely) sponsor that could help out. If people are interested in sponsorship, the festival can offer plenty of advertising (the website has had 300,000 hits in five weeks and Riverside Studios gets 40,000 hits a week) and branding at the festival and tickets. If they are magazine/media sponsors, it's perfectly possible that interviews with the actors can be sorted out as well. In fact, any profit is being split between Cancer Research and the Rowan's Hospice in Portsmouth. Have a little visit here, by clicking on the picture.

Or alternatively, if they can get 1000 people to donate £12 then the fun 'n' games will commence in earnest, plus the charities the festival supports will get money from any profits. People can donate safely through the festival support page. Again, for further reminder (and to save time by talking backwards like a character in the Black Lodge), any profit from the festival is being split between cancer research and the Rowans Hospice, Portsmouth.

I'm away now to get some cherry pie at the Double R Diner, where pies go when they die.

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I'm glad Summer is over. There I've said it. I even started a Facebook group about two years ago about how rubbish Summer is and only ten people joined. I'm disappointed in all of you. More of you should sign up. Why be mindless servants of the sun, I ask you? You can check the reasons there as to why I don't like it. The beginning of this Summer was pretty much the same as every other one. Miserable, alone, dressed in black and feeling witlessly superior to the photosynthesised plants outside. I was sitting indoors, trying to hack together a bunch of code before a deadline and listening to a load of Goth on Spotify. As I hurled abuse at my screen, while trying to get my fingers to jab out clumsy letters, those yelping humans outside got steadily louder, blindly running into the sunlight like the sheep that they always are. They were doubtlessly jumping up and down and yelping, "Summer's here!". "Shut up," I growled, while my collection of deep-throated dark anthems bleared out of the computer speakers. The only consolation was one singular tweet that had been quacked into the Twitter void by noted Guardian columnist Grace Dent, who was going through a similar agony while listening to Bauhaus. Well, misery loves company, as they say and I tweeted back at her, sharing with her my Spotify playlist. Briefly cheered by the dashing Ms Dent's eager subscription to my terror-filled tracklisting, I still couldn't disguise the dread feeling I had of being back at square one, rather like a terrible repetitive dance that I often found myself doing. Yes, a dance.

Let me tell you about this little-known dance. I know that's a surprise, as you already know me as the man who can't dance and couldn't if his life depended on it. So, it might seem surprising that I'm an expert in a slightly obscure dance move that not many people know about. It's so obscure, the people who regularly participate in this specially-named dance aren't even aware that they themselves are doing it. It's not as low-brow as "The Agadoo Dance" or as depressingly culture-defining as the "Whigfield Saturday Night" dance, nor is it as universal and crowd-pleasing as the "YMCA" move. No, it's the "Goth Hoover Dance". The "Goth Hoover Dance" is deeply symbolic of this entire blog article, as it typifies the sub-culture I was (still am?) a member of. Here's me doing it here, on this video.

As you can see, it consists of a simple three steps forward, three steps backward, gaze aimed firmly at the floor, rather as if one is hoovering the carpet. There's a variation where the said Goth clasps his hands behind his back while performing this move, so if the hypothetical hoover ever existed, the Goth would be moving it around with his nose. The frightening thing about this dance is how closely it parallels the life of the person doing it. It's like a physical and mental cul de sac. You keep thinking you've made the three-point turn to get out, but the stupid steep kerb just refuses to get out of the way.

I was doomed from the outset. The first word I learned as a child was "Dracula". Honestly. Well, to be more accurate, the baby version of me grappled with the syllables and pronounced it phonetically as "Drakla". My brother was buying horror comics at this point and used to regularly alude to Bram Stoker's creation. By the repetition of vampire verse and the power of imprinting, the neurons rewired in my infant brain and made "Drakla" the first word I pronounced. When I hit my teens, the first album that really turned my hormonal head and made an impact on my life was "Peepshow" by Siouxsie and The Banshees. It was lent to me by my mate, Spiderboz. I'd already started listening to punk, from the Pistols to the Dead Kennedys - with a passing sideshow interest in the whacky surrealism of Half Man Half Biscuit. However, the first infant word that had passed my lips had marked my future grave already and "Peepshow" was my first musical love. It helps that the lead singer regularly wore tight black PVC too. Sweet heck, I loved Siouxisie Sioux.

I realised how far this self-flaggelation had advanced, when I was asked a profound and poignant question a few years ago. "Did you ever create something from your own mind that physically manifested in the real world and you thought was genuinely beautiful? Something that you were proud to leave as a legacy once you departed this world, no matter how large or small that legacy was?". To my surprise, there was. I wrote a very perfect love song called "Butterfly" in my early 20s. It was simplicity and it was pure. It wasn't even written about a particular girlfriend or partner; it was just a pitch-perfect paen to unconditional love. However, as I was ruminating my gift to Planet Earth, I got asked the inevitable follow-up. "Is there anything you regret thrusting onto this world in the shape of a perceived creative gift?". Sadly, the answer to this was in plural and also belonged to the category of poetry and songwriting. Loosely. When I declared that the name of this piece of Goth gas was pretentiously entitled "The Scars of Yesterday", I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised at the raucous laugh I was greeted with.

"The Scars Of Yesterday". Fuck's sake. I don't even have to tell you how bad that self-pitying rubbish was, formed as it was on the basis of that title. I'll give you one sample line from it. "If I had a mirror on my shoulder, I'd watch my back every day". I've read that line back and I feel proud and appalled by it, in equal measure. There were other classics from when I stamped around campus with a scowl on my face. "Immaculate In Black" might seem like a parody of a title, but I unironically called a poem that once. "Disposable Friend" explained to a cruel world exactly how I felt, but a colleague felt moved to say that the title made it sound like a chorus about a condom. "I'm Dreaming Of A Black Christmas" doesn't really need an explanation. The only thing that makes me feel slightly less ashamed of this period of my life? Others behaved worse. After one laughably mediocre night in the nearby Goth club and observing a phalanx of darklings doing the hoover dance, I was astonished to see them all suddenly clear off the floor and all retreat to their gloomy corners. Like a black sheep following a load of other black sheep, I said that I "quite liked that song Disintegration" and queried why everyone had buggered off. The Cure had "sold out", came the spat words. I guess that meant Robert Smith was wiping his tears away with diamond-encrusted sequins.

It wasn't all bad. With the benefit of hindsight, the mid-80s to early 90s was a pretty miserable time to be a student, so it wasn't surprising that gangs used to float about like aimless stretch hearses. I'll admit to finding the whole current premise of Emos laughable, although I'm sure some of this superiority is everything to do with just hating youth in general. But, look - in my day, we were properly miserable. We were "4 REAL". Emos look too clean and bourgeois. Emo idols are too shiny and beautiful. They've got clothes from the Hellfire chain, iPhone Evanescence apps and the dude from Twilight. We had bin liners, Christian Death and Peter Murphy having his cock strangled by his trousers.

I also realise that in our twilight (not Twilight) Goth years, my group of friends were taking it less seriously anyway. For starters, my colleague Cryotec started doing the "Whigfield Saturday Night" dance to the "Temple Of Love". The hordes in black would stand back appalled at the obvious irreverance until they realised collectively (and with horror) that he was mouthing along with the words and knew all the lyrics. Another evening, Cryotec clapped his hands together during "Bela Legosi's Dead" and announced loudly, "Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the Dashing Black Seargant!". Me and my friend Kat felt like we'd been gassed with nitrous oxide when he said that. The final curtain on those mega-serious years was observing an Uber-Goth, clad head-to-toe in black leather, with a flashing LED crucifix on his crotch. It was upside-down, of course. Presumably, if he'd got lucky later on and ended up in a 69 dry-hump scenario, he would've faced it the "right" way up and ended with one leg in Heaven and a head in Hell. After regarding the Uber Goth flapping around in his variation of a hoover dance, Cryotec announced, "Fuck, we all look like dicks".

And after the carthartic chuckling, our little gang headed back home, laughed at the Tamagothi on the internet, went to bed and woke up the following morning as happy, balanced individuals. Our long mid-20s crisis that had lasted roughly the whole decade was over. Except it hadn't. It was merely the forward-most step of the Hoover dance. Being a Goth is rather like smoking, you think you've kicked the habit. Day-by-day, you sink back into the 'odd' social cigarette at the weekend and think nothing of it, until you're retching your lungs up. Similarly, you know you're back to 'square one' of the dance every now and again, such as the time I was in a club, weeping into a pint of cider and blackcurrant. It wasn't the drink that was the warning bell, it was being practically blinded by the diluted black mascara that had poured into my iris. It was exactly the same at the beginning of this Summer, now mercifully at an end. I realised I was still on the Moebius strip of the dance, sitting furiously in the gloom in front of my computer and glaring out of the side of my eye at the brainless lambs gallivanting outside. In the background, the only non-black item of clothing I've got in my wardobe is a pink and yellow garment that also happens to be a Sisters Of Mercy T-shirt. Forever and forever, first and last and always, three steps forward and then three steps backward and never leaving the Summer of misery. Roll on the Autumn and Halloween.

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On Monday night, an episode of Channel 4's "Dispatches" was screened. It was about the unfolding saga of "News Of The World" journalists and their utilisation of phone tapping. A lot of people are interested in this ongoing story. Some of them are interested in it because they can have a bit of a potshot at the former editor, Andy Coulson, who is now the current Prime Minister's right-hand man and communications manager. This is fair enough, but I'm a lot more worried at the relationship being nurtured between News International and the Metropolitan Police force. So, it seems, is John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister. Not to mention Brian Paddick who was a frickin' member of the fecking Metropolitan Police force. Also, I shed a tear for the poor girl who didn't have the label of a 'celebrity', but had her phone hacked by the "News Of The World" anyway. The police grudgingly sent her an unhelpful reply email three months after she'd made an initial allegation.

Anyway, my political paranoia started causing my neck hairs to prickle, as I realised 4oD and Channel 4's Youtube channel had pulled the documentary from Catch-Up. So, I decided to upload it myself. It'll probably be taken down, but Catch it while you can. By the time I'd uploaded the first part, it'd already got 200 hits within 20 minutes. Admittedly, this was probably aided and abetted by my colleague Graham Linehan tweeting it. Another online acquaintance, Mr Chris Coltrane, has also kindly pointed to a torrent site hosting the documentary - which, as I understand, has leapt up in the number of peers sharing it, thus proving you can't keep a good story down if people want to share it. If you can't torrent a video, you can also watch another streaming copy on Vimeo courtesy of Derfen, particularly since Youtube is rather more vulnerable to contentious material being blocked. But while it's not being blocked, you also have the option of a streaming HD (High Definition) copy embedded in this blog (or follow the link below each embedded video to go direct to Youtube). In fact, just for really good measure, if you suspect this newly-uploaded video will be pulled from Youtube, then use Keepvid to keep a copy of it yourself.

Since writing this blog entry, 4oD have since put the documentary back up, so you could watch it there too (although only for the next month). You might also be thinking that I (and a fair number of other social media chatterers) might have over-reacted. It wasn't pulled by mysterious Powers-That-Be, surely? You may well be right. But we've been here before, many times before. One great illustration was the crude super-injunction that was issued to stop coverage of Trafigura in newspapers, legitimate broadasting outlets and Parliament itself. In that instance, a lot of very alert social media users ended up being the watchdog, when our more traditional protectors and representatives (such as the CPS, journalists, PCC and even our MPs) were circumnavigated by big business. Frankly, it's happened before; it's happened since; and it'll happen again.

A lot of the old media brigade pour scorn on things like bloggers and the new technology. They may well have a point. I guess there'll be some of us that laughably think we're digital revolutionaries or internet anarchists. But if the professionals in Whitehall and Fleet Street are wandering around with black gaffer tape on their gobs, then why not let a few of us shout, tweet, share and upload? I think it's rather heartening that a load of "amateurs" can quickly spread the word of a must-see documentary, when the usual establishment bodies seemed anxious to draw attention away from it.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I also have Peter Oborne's fantastic 2008 "Dispatches" documentary entitled "It Shouldn't Happen To A Muslim" (July 2008, Channel 4), where he expertly skewers the anti-Muslim narratives that the newspapers have been peddling. He also shows how most of the stories are blatant made-up bollocks as well. Yes, a fair number of us knew all this already, but it's great seeing Oborne embarass the national press with such surgical precision. Give me a holler if you want me to upload that too.

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