Musings

So, I've not blogged in a while, and I saw one of those silly quiz things over at Rach's blog, and figured that'd be alright for a quick post. Here goes...

Q1 How many people have you been romantically in love with?

2, I think.

Q2 How many people have you had sex with?

Just the one.

Q3 Capital Punishment is proven not to work, however, which 3 people in the world do you think we should make absolutely sure with?

What, like throughout all of time, or just present day? If you're talking the whole of time then people like Hitler and Stalin obviously come at the top of the lists. If you want right now... well, I don't know I could think of three. To be honest, I think Saddam deserves it. I don't really approve of the death penalty, but really - when someone has killed that many people, what else can you do with them? Can you punish them enough? Torture? Vivisection? I'm not really up for that side of things, so I think in these cases death is about the only option you have left. It's difficult, because their crimes are so far off the map that it's just about impossible to judge in any sensible fashion.

Q4 How would you kill them?

Lethal injection, but not the way they do it in the US, as it's not as painless as some people think. Just give them a huge whack of barbiturates and let them go that way.

Q5 Who do you think of most when masturbating?

I think about loaded questions and the fifth amendment of the US constitution!

Q6 What has been your most harrowing experience?

Leaving school because I was being bullied, I think. That was quite a long time ago now though.

Q7 How often have you been unfaithful?

Never, though I have been the person someone else was unfaithful with, which was a drunken teenage mistake. Well, I think I was a teenager anyway. If not, I was probably making up for lost time on account of my extremely inactive teenage years.

Q8 What is the most valuable item you have stolen?

This looks like another case for the fifth amendment! Nothing, really, unless you count taking things that were being thrown out and would end up in landfill. Apparently that's stealing from the council or waste management services... Whatever...

Q9 What would be the lowest wage you could accept to do your dream job?

I'll be very content with the salary I get when I qualify from my training for this job. Although by then I'm sure outgoings will be on the up as Beth gets bigger and so on.

Q10 Have you been 100% truthful in answering the above questions?

Yes, I have.

Right. I'll make a more useful post later, probably with pictures of baby Beth as I've not put up any of her for a while. I'll bet you all want to see pictures of her trying to eat and getting food all over the place!

Right then. I'm back in London for another week of training... I'm quite amazed how quickly the three weeks in the office have gone really. It's good though, because I've been kept very busy and had lots of interesting stuff to do in the office, so the tempus has certainly fugited. I'm getting to know how things work and I've been getting quite a variety of work, so I'm getting a taste of lots of things. The people are nice and friendly, and there's a good atmosphere for getting on with some work. It's all quite a far cry from my last unmotivated job, which was one of my reasons for moving on, so that's all good. It's good to be back on training now and learning some more stuff, even if I am getting a reputation for asking awkward questions in class! It's good to see everyone on the course too.

I met up with my good friend Sophie last night, whose wedding I went to a couple of months ago. It was really good to see her again and catch up on what she's up to and chat about life and marriage and jobs and stuff. She's good fun, and we had a good laught together. Rocking. I have to say, that while being in London away from my family is pretty rubbish, it is great to see all my friends who live down here. Clouds and silver linings and all that. I'd never have the time or money to visit people down here, so coming down once a month has it's upsides.

I'm very happy with things at the moment. I'm getting into family life and being married and being a dad, which is cool. The house is great, and we've found a fantastic church, which is really helping me to get settled in the area. And of course, as I've said, jobwise things are brilliant. I think I'm probably happier than I've been in recent memory. While different times of my life have had their good points, I think this is the first time in ages that I can honestly say things are really going well. I'm really happy with how things are, and it's a huge blessing to be honest.

I have this weird thing going on where I feel a lot like my dad at the moment... kinda. Maybe it's just to do with feeling grown up. It just seems strange to be getting up and going to work in the city in a suit and tie and doing my thing in the office, then coming home to my house to my wife and child. It all seems so grown up! I think I am, in the words of the surely venerable Chantelle Houghton, living the dream. It might be a very middle class dream, but it's pretty good all told, so I can't really complain. Score.

In other news, I really want a Nintendo DS. Time to get saving...

I'm at home on a Monday night... It seems awfully strange after the past month of training away in London and Cambridge. It's over at last! I'm very glad to be home and able to spend some time with Ali and Beth. Good stuff. I'm finally in the office this week, and will actually be getting down to work on Wednesday when my inductions get finished. I'll let you know how it goes...

The second week in Cambridge was pretty good. The workload was slightly lower and the days slightly shorter which was a mercy. We were learning all about capital allowances, which I can't imagine you will want to read about, but which I have linked you to anyway. It's been pretty interesting, and certainly worth the time being as it's something we'll actually be doing in the office. The week was also helped along by the addition of "compulsary fun" which was an afternoon off work to do something a bit more exciting. I chose to go punting, which was good fun, but is a lot harder than it looks. We also had the usual assortment of evenings in the bar and playing pool and the like, though I did catch a bit of flak for putting on Leave by R.E.M. on the jukebox, in all it's seven minutes of siren blaring glory. Rock on. The stay in Cambridge also gave me a chance to see my cousin and her husband, who are expecting a baby pretty much any second now, which is pretty exciting.

I've been doing my best to make some new friends while I've been away in London and Cambridge. I'm not always very good at making friends. I certainly failed to make much a terribly concerted effort at uni, as the few uni lurkers reading this will likely attest, and as such didn't make a vast number of friends there, which was kinda unfortunate. I had something of an epiphany, silly though it is, after writing my recent post about how nice it is to have old friends, when I realised that - duh - it's hard to get any old friends unless at some point you make some new ones. Put in the context of the lyric I used at the time, I can't very well attain the precious few friends to whom I should hold on, unless I'm prepared to have some who come and go. So, I've been making more of an effort and trying to get to know people and have fun with them and so on. It's been going pretty well really, which is good. I've been getting to know lots of people from the tax course, in particular the people who I was staying in a hotel with in London. We're from all over the place, so it's kinda weird to be back in my office in Manchester and not be seeing my friends from Southampton or Leeds. It'll be good to see everyone again in 3 weeks when we're next down in London for training. So, I'm making some new friends... which is nice.

In related news, I've managed to get along to the church that Ali has found for it. It's called Christ Church Pennington and it's in one of the adjacent villages. They describe themselves as an evangelical Anglican church, which is pretty much exactly what we're after. We had a pretty good example of that crossover just this Sunday gone - the very Anglican baptising of two babies, coupled with a very spirited sermon from Matthew 25:31-46 about the sheep and the goats, complete with discussion of heaven and hell and so forth. Quite a departure from the usual Church of England baby dunking. So, there we go. Alison has got stuck in to taking Beth along to Mums And Tots and to a thing they put on called Tiny Church. It's good that she's getting to meet some other mums and so on. We definitely need that.

Beth is not well at the moment I came back from Cambridge with a cold last week and apparently gave it to her. She's all bunged up and full of catarrh which is not much fun for her. It makes feeding something of a nightmare, and she spends a lot of her time screaming which gets old pretty fast. She's had a bit of a temperature as well. Ali has got some Karvol, which smells like being ill in my memory, and some stuff which is like Vicks, but gentler. Hopefully Beth will get better soon.

And now... I need to go and feed her. I'll write more another day... always so much more to write! Bye for now.

I met up with an old friend on Wednesday night, while in London. She lives and works there, so it made sense to meet up on the rare occasion that I was down there. I don't think I've seen her since my wedding, which was two years ago, which is quite a while. Sure, I keep up with her blog, but that's not quite the same. We sat in 'Spoons while it poured down outside on Marble Arch, and had a good catch up for about 3 hours. It was really good to see her and find out what's going on and see how she's doing.

There's some people, friends, who I've known well enough and for long enough, that meeting up with them and catching up is easy. We've got enough common history and we know each other well enough that its simple to just sit down and get on with talking and having a good time. I don't fully understand how it can be that easy, when you haven't seen someone for a long time, but nevertheless, it's certainly a good thing. I find it quite reassuring to meet people who know me that well, and who I know well, and there is just some kind of understanding there.

I think I like the idea of having some kind of fixed points in life. That's not to say that people don't move about and change and do different things, but that the relationship is quite a fixed thing. It's easy to pick up where you left off with someone like that, because you just know each other that well. Perhaps I find it particularly helpful at the moment when things are moving so fast and my life is changing around me.

I imagine that to those of you who know me even a bit, it should be plainly obvious that - outside of my family - the friends I have who I feel are that close are pretty much all women.

Anyway. I'd best cut this short, as I'm on the train (through the magic of wireless intermaweb access) and not only is my time about to run out, but I'm also about to get to my destination and my battery is dying.

PS I'm off to Cambridge for some more training. Alison and I had a good - if brief - weeked. We saw The Black Dahlia. It was pretty good. I quite like noir stuff. It was quite gruesome though, and while I didn't fully understand the criticism of Scarlett Johannsen as being overly sexualised, I did think Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank were very good. Lastly, Beth giggled for me yesterday, which was a first, and was extremely cute. Bye for now!

Well, in contrast to the instructions above I have elected to keep my old bank statements and throw away my old love letters...

I spent yesterday sorting through our box of important documents, and organised all our bank statements for our joint account. I have 33, and I'm only missing 2 since we opened the account. I spent today digging through loads of old letters and diaries and decided to throw most of them away. It feels kinda weird, because it's a bit like throwing away history, if you can do such a thing. It's like destroying the past, or at least making a concerted effort to forget it.

Throwing away old love letters is fairly easy to justify... I guess most people do that each time they break up with someone. I'd kept most of the letters from each of the 5 relationships I've been in, except for the correspondence from the first one, which I burnt and threw the remnants of into the Dee... Inventive, no? But I digress... The point is, I'd kept quite a lot of old letters up till now, but I can't really figure why. I imagine the point of the quoted lyrics is that some day you might want to look back on a time when someone loved you, or whatever, but that doesn't really seem all that necessary now that I'm married and intending to stay that way until death do us part. So, I'm getting rid of a whole load of old love letters.

Diaries is a bit harder to square in some ways. My mum once told me that one of her biggest regrets was getting rid of her old diaries. (For reference my dad says that one of his biggest regrets was selling his record collection when he was younger, so there you go.) However, my diaries are mostly just miserable semi-emo whinings, which is hardly a great surprise as my teenage years were resoundingly crap. I'm not really in a hurry to read about years of bullying, teenage angst and the all pervading dearth of women. On the other hand, I'm not sure I need to read about all the ups and downs of my relationships once the latter problem was resolved, now that I'm married to someone else. In all truth, reading my old diaries is like reading about the life of someone else. Most of it I just can't connect with. I really was a different person back then, before various women (Tamsin, Rachel, Laura, Alison, mostly in that order) helped to sort me out. So, thanks ladies...

Right. This post was a bit emo in itself, so I'd better cut it short here, especially as I need to go and feed my daughter. Catch you all again soon.

PS. I've fixed it so comments can be posted!

Another bank holiday weekend... and another one just around the corner at the end of this month. Good stuff.

Alison and I went to the cinema on Monday to see Inside Man. It was pretty good really. The plot was pretty clever, and it's quite entertaining to see a crime/heist type film in which they get away with the job, rather than getting caught, especially when it's well done and no one gets seriously hurt. See Ocean's Eleven for further examples. The cast was good - Clive Owen and Denzel Washington are both invariably great and this was no exception. Some of the dialogue felt slightly stilted, especially a couple of bits about race, but that's what you get when Spike Lee directs, so there you go. The most jarring bit of dialogue was the Mayor calling Jodie Foster's character a "magnificent c**t" which seemed wholly unnecessary, out of character and utterly out of place. Maybe it's just me, and I'm getting more sensitive to bad language these days (I am, I've watched the Die Hard trilogy lately and felt somewhat bombarded by the F word) but I didn't think there was any need for it. I'm not saying such words should never be used in films - it's put to good use in American Beauty to highlight the insecurity of Mena Suvari's character - but it did feel very out of place, and it surprised me that it made it's way into a 15. Anyway, there we go.

And now, on a lighter but more painful note, here's a video of Boris Johnson careering headfirst into a German chaps crotch during a charity football match, in some sort of peculiar rugby tackle attempt.
See you soon.

PS - No, I haven't used a Boyzone lyric for the post title. It's a Bee Gees lyric. Not much more credibility, but a bit at least.

Question: What is it that Christians had, Jews have and Muslims want?
Answer: Special protection under the law.

Recently there's been all kinds of furore over various people insulting Christians, Jews and Muslims in various ways. There's been varying degrees of protest and backlash to the incidents and a lot of ideas have been thrown around. I find myself rather confused by the various arguments, as many of them seem rather contradictory, so I thought I'd write a bit about it and see if anyone else has a view on these things.

Let's start with the Muslims. We've probably all read or heard about the Muslim cartoon controversy. Long story short, a Danish newspaper (and subsequently newspapers all over the world) printed cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad; including some more provocative ones with bombs and such like; and soon after, the Muslim world got quite angry about it. Cue protests, including some fairly ironic ones with threats of bombings, murders and so on. Various leaders said that it was utterly unacceptable for such things to be published, as they were against Islamic law and were offensive. Those responsible for publishing the cartoons argued that they were merely exercising their right to free speech.

So who's right? I'm inclined to say that the newspapers and magazines were well within their rights to publish the cartoons. They were satirical, and some did make valid points about such things as the disparity between peaceful Islam and the wing that blows people up and flies planes into buildings. Yes, they were offensive, but that's not a crime, is it? It's also not an issue of libel, as it's not possible to libel a religion or similar institution. The only point at which it can be seen as an issue of law is that in Islam, it's forbidden to depict the prophet. Yet the Danes and the French and all the rest of them are not bound by Islamic law, so how can they be held culpable under it? Islam can't expect to accuse people of crimes that are not recognised in the state where they took place.

Now, one thing the Islamic leaders complained about which did carry some credence, was that there were double standards at work. After all, Jews are protected by laws prohibiting anti-Semitism and some countries in Europe go as far as to make it illegal to question the severity or occurence of the holocaust during the Second World War. Why should it be OK to publish cartoons criticising or even mocking Islam, when it's forbidden to question war crimes committed against the Jews?

As if to illustrate this, David Irving was promptly sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in Austria for holocaust denial, in this case during a speech he made about 20 years ago. Is that right? Should a man be jailed for questioning a historical event? History is based around the interpretation of sources pertaining to a given incident. It is inevitable that a historian's interpretations will be biased to some degree by their own personal views, and it is pretty obvious that Irving's views are somewhat coloured (pun intended) by his racist beliefs. His historical research does not hold up to much scrutiny, and is not well respected by more credible historians. However, while his work may be fairly crummy, it's surely not actually illegal to be a bad historian. Now of course we know it's not illegal, but in the case of the holocaust it is. You could pick any other event in history and produce any crackpot theory you liked about it, and you would simply be denounced as inept and biased, but you wouldn't face jail for it.

Holocaust denial is a crime in various countries in Europe, and also in Israel. The laws have been instated on the basis that it is important that the terrible events be remembered in the hope that this will prevent such things from happening again. After all, if it is an accepted fact that 6 million Jews died because of a fascist regime in Germany, we will all remember to be wary of similarly totalitarean governments in the future, right? Now, this makes sense, but it irks me that we need it put into law. The holocaust is accepted as fact as it is, without any laws about it. We have plenty of evidence for it, not least testimony admitting to it in war crimes trials after WW2 finished. Historians agree that it occurred and that it was a horrendous crime against the Jews and against humanity. Why should we need the government to make it so? If you'll allow me a bit of hyperbole, it's a bit too close to the historical revisionism that takes place in Orwell's 1984, with unwanted pieces of history disappearing down the memory hole, and only the government's version of history being accepted. It is not the government's place to stipulate what is accepted as historical fact - it is the job of historians.

Lastly, we come to the Christians. Recently there was a big fuss over the government's proposed laws regarding Incitement To Religious Hatred, as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police bill. Many Christians were against this, on the basis that it would limit free speech and prevent them from criticising other religions. That's all well and good, and the bill was a threat to that, so it's probably a good job that it didn't get through. On the flipside, at about the same time, lots of Christians were making a big fuss about the now infamous Jerry Springer Opera, claiming it was blasphemous, protesting against the BBC, and so on. It appears Christians want to be able to criticise other religions, but don't want someone to produce a silly opera about theirs.

Now, obviously the difference between the two situations is that in one situation a religion is being criticised, whereas in the other it is being mocked and blasphemed. The problem is in discerning quite where this line lies. A Christian promoting their faith is, by implication, criticising all other religions and stating that they are untrue. Now, to say that Allah is not God, and that Mohammed is not his prophet, probably qualifies as blasphemy in Islam, right? Likewise, portraying God and Jesus as anything but perfect in the Opera, is also pretty blasphemous from a Christian point of view, yeah? One is OK, the other is not.

The problem, as far as I can tell, is in the blasphemy law, and the application of it. The law is archaic to say the least, having been part of Canon Law, the law of the church. It has stuck around as common law since the 17th Century, and is still part of our laws today, although it is worth noting that the last time anyone was even arrested for blasphemy was 1925. These days our country is extremely secular, very mixed, thoroughly postmodern and generally not very Christian. However, Christians seem to want to cling on to the blasphemy law, and cling on to times past when the Church was the governing authority. This is no longer the case, and it is somewhat absurd to try to hold Christianity in some sort of privileged position and protect it in this way. Christians can not expect the protection of the law from criticism, mockery or blasphemy. They certainly can't expect such protection and then wish to deny other religions the same thing.

As an aside, I also find it a bit odd that we think it unacceptable that we suffer any form of persecution, even something as comparably minor as a puerile opera with tangential connections to our religion, that was obviously only out to get a knee-jerk reaction. Christianity was born out of persecution. Christ was beaten, whipped, scorned, spat on, and nailed to a cross. Paul and his cohorts were frequently imprisoned, and several were killed. The early church was subject to such horrors as being fed to the lions, and being wrapped in wax and set alight as candles, by certain deranged emperors. These days Christians in the Middle East and China and other far flung places are victims of violence, imprisonment and death. And here we are worrying about the effects of this opera. It leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth to be honest.

As far as I can tell, blasphemy laws simply can not work in anything but a theocracy, which is not something we find ourselves in. It is absurd to try to protect the Gods of umpteen religions, when most of them explicitly denounce all the others. It's also a very difficult area to legislate on, as one man's criticism is another man's blasphemy and so on. Who decides what is and what isn't offensive? The system is also very much open to abuse, as if all are to be protected, then it can't be too difficult to demand protection for patently ludicrous ideas. Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be protected? Will the Pastafarians sue everyone for saying that their God doesn't exist, and that they were in fact not touched by his noodly appendage?

I should probably come to a conclusion on all of this, as it's taken me weeks to write as it is...

As a Christian, I would actually quite like to live in a Christian theocracy. All our laws would be well established, and we would know exactly where we stood on everything. We could all agree that the laws were good, and we could get on with obeying them and living happily. The trouble is, such a thing is not possible when we are all so mixed and varied. My office alone contains people of 3, or arguably even 4 different religions, and there's only 4 of us in the room. The situation is irreconcilable, short of setting in stone what people are to believe. With that in mind, I think it's fair to say that blasphemy laws, and any other laws seeking to write religion into the system are doomed to failure. Abolish them, and move on. I'm a big proponent of the separation of church and state, and I think this is just one more situation that would be helped by it.

It irks me, that we as Christians are seeking the protection of the legal system where no crime besides the defamation of our religion is taking place. Are we saying that our God is unable to defend his own honour? That our conduct will not speak highly enough of our religion to garner respect? I'm inclined to believe that the reason the opera, and similar things, targeted the Christian faith, is that we are seen as irrelevant, or an easy target. What I don't understand, is how our crying to the law is supposed to change that. All it does is make us appear whiny and irrelevant, while all the time providing further publicity for the stupid opera, or whatever, that started it all. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't protest against this sort of thing, or at the very least declare it as defamatory and wrong, but we can't hope to seek legal protection for something that most people in the country don't believe. That's not going to make our religion appear any more credible. I doubt the early church expected to make their case based on their standing with the law. The law was out to get them! They earned respect through their lifestyle and their good deeds. I think the church here could do to remember that.

So, I'm visiting my parents. I'm back on the Wirral for the weekend, mostly to fix computers at my dad's church and possibly to help my parents unpack, as they have just moved house.

So, last night I drove up from Leicester to Pensby. While driving, I listened to the original radio shows of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy on tape. A thought occurred to me... A thought that is tremendously geeky. Disturbingly, a quick search at Google suggests that while I may not be the first person to ever conceive of such a thing, I am very possibly the first person to write about them on the web. I think this probably makes it doubly geeky.

So, here goes...

Some, all or none of you will know that part of the plot of Hitch-Hikers... centres around a quest to find the ultimate question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. It is necessary to discover the question after a fancy computer spends 7 1/2 million years figuring out the answer, only to come up with 42, which is unsatisfactory to say the least.

Hold up, let's go back a bit. The fancy computer spent 7 1/2 million years coming up with this answer? The thought that occurred to me was this:

What has happened to Moore's Law?

Broadly speaking, Moore's Law states that every 18 months the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles. This is a gross simplification, but it will serve for the purpose of this discussion. If we assume (inaccurately) that doubling the number of transistors in a computer doubles it's power and thereby halves the time needed to solve any given problem, then it should be obvious that to wait 7.5 million years for Deep Thought to arrive at the answer is foolish. It would be simpler to wait 18 months, from which point one would only have to wait 3.75 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for 3 years, and then you only have to wait for just under 2 million years for the answer. Better still, wait for... ah, you get the idea.

So, what is the optimum time to wait until building the computer, such that the time till the answer arrives is minimal? Well, if we let t be the time till the answer is produced and x be the number of iterations of Moore's Law, then we get this equation:

t = 1.5x + (7.5*10^6)/(2^x)

Yes, it would look better if I did it as an image or something, but I can't be bothered.

Differentiating with respect to x will allow us to find the lowest amount of time needed. This a bit hard to differentiate. I did it after midnight last night while very tired and slightly drunk after having a can of cider. As luck would have it my uni maths notes were in my room. Brilliant.

You get something like:

0 = 1.5 + (7.5*10^6)*ln(2^x)*ln2*e^(xln2)
^
EDIT: This is wrong. See Izz' comment below for correct answer.

Now, if anyone can figure out how to solve that without resorting to numerical methods then they're a better mathematician than I.

Anyway. A bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope suggests that the optimal number of iterations is somewhere around 22. In that case, you wait 33 years before building the computer, in which timeframe computing power has increased by a factor of 2^22 (=4194304) so the time taken to solve the problem is only 1.78 years. The total time to get the answer is then 34.78 years, rather than 7.5 million years.

So, they'd have been better off if they'd known about Moore's Law.

How's that for geeky
I commend anyone who has read this far. You are probably as much of a geek as me!

A few weeks ago my friend Greg pointed out the rather unpleasant lyrical content in Busted's modern classic, Air Hostess, in which Charlie alludes to defiling with the hand while admiring a member of the flight crew. Disgusting.

Anyway, with this in mind I will now discuss a glaring logical fallacy present in another recent masterpiece, Love Machine by Girls Aloud. The chorus goes thusly:

I'm just a Love Machine

Feeding my fantasy

Give me a kiss or three & I'm fine

I need a squeeze a day

Instead of this negligee

What will the neighbours say this time?

I find myself somewhat baffled by lines 4 and 5. Why does she need a squeeze instead of a negligee? Does the wearing of a negligee preclude a person from being squeezed? Are the two mutually exclusive in some way? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think it is physically, biologically, ecumenically, grammatically... possible to be squeezed while wearing a negligee, and while I'm certainly not the expert on ladies nightwear, I would venture that you may in fact be altogether more likely to be squeezed while wearing one.

Then again, the song does also feature the line "I'll breathe underwater 'cause I like the way it feels" so unless the singer has some peculiar fascination for SCUBA diving, I suspect it may in fact just all be a load of bollocks.

I don't think there'd be too much argument that this country is going downhill pretty fast. The news is full of stories about violence, gun crime, drug use, anti-social behaviour, benefit fraud and all the rest of it. All of these things are on the up and they're all big problems.

Then there's the insane things that government is trying to get enshrined in law... The incitement to religious hatred laws, detention without trial, siezure of property without warrants... It's a bit Orwellian to say the least.

There's one group of people that seems to catch an awful lot of flak for all these things... immigrants. There's a word that will strike fear into the hearts of all Daily Mail readers. If we were to believe the papers, then all immigrants are committing benefit fraud, raising vast amounts of unruly children, planning suicide bombing attacks as well as brutalising the NHS and pushing house prices up. The bastards. They're pouring into the country by land, sea and air and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's their fault that the country is going down the tubes and we're all screwed.

Now, sure, some of them could do to learn the language a bit better, and it would certainly help if the few that are committing crimes didn't, but the same is true of native whites, so it's not quite the crisis that some of us might believe.

Anyway. The part of all this that concerns me, is that as I realised the other day, I am only a second generation immigrant. Sure, I've known all my life that my mum is Finnish and came to this country 30-something years ago, but I'd never thought of it in such precise language. Second generation! I'm the child of an immigrant. I fall into the same group as countless people that are under fire for coming into this country from outside. I'm putting a strain on the NHS, pushing up house prices, costing someone else tax money and all the rest of it. I guess I'd best get back on the boat right now.

The trouble is, most people wouldn't ask for me to leave. I can speak English very well, I contribute to society, I pay my taxes, I'm responsible and useful. Hell, my mum is all of those things and more and she's the original immigrant in this whole picture. The question then is, what is the actual problem? Are people cross with immigrants per se, or with people who cheat the system, laze around, claim all kinds of benefits and do no work, raise bad children and all the rest of it? If so, I think there's plenty of white Brits we should be chucking out long before we get close to the immigrants.

It's double standards at the end of the day. Either people hate immigrants, in which case they should be kicking me out, or they hate freeloaders and they should be kicking Britain's own particular brand of cheats out.

Back when Alison and I were merely "going out", as opposed to the current situation of being "married", we did the whole long distance thing for about 3 years. For the first year of that she was still at uni, and was still good friends with her ex, who I had displaced, so to speak. He observed that I often brought Alison flowers when I came to visit. Furthermore, from this he deduced that while bringing a woman flowers is seen as quite cliche, it certainly makes them happy and as such can't be a bad thing. His conclusion was that the reason things like this become cliche is because they happen frequently, or are successful, and as such are often observed.

With this in mind, I will tell you that a couple of days ago, almost exactly two weeks after our first wedding anniversay, the kettle we were given as a wedding present broke. It started burning through the bottom and smelling of melting electronics, which is not a terribly pleasant or reassuring smell. Argos, of course, won't take it back as it is now outside their year's warranty. Curses.

Is this just the beginning? Is everything going to break now? Will our bedclothes mysteriously turn to threads overnight? Will the legs fall off the ironing board? I ought to start a sweepstake. If you can guess what breaks next you can have it.

Something about this story doesn't seem quite right to me.

Fight breaks out. Youths gather to watch. Lad gets stabbed. Youths film it on their phones.

Now, maybe I'm not down with the word on the street, but I always thought that one of the great things you could do with a phone was to call someone. Perhaps that's not what the most happening phones do these days though. Maybe they really are just dedicated to playing music and taking pictures. Far be it from me to understand the cool kids.

For pity's sake, it's a phone. They could have called the police or an ambulance, or perhaps even the fire brigade or coastguard if they really thought it would help. But no, they stand around filming someone being beaten and murdered in front of them. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with people?

Now sure, you might say that it's great that they filmed it, because now the police have lots of video evidence to trawl through which will make identifying the perpetrators much easier. Well, I'm just certain that was their motivation in filming it. This gang of youths were filming a violent attack with the intent of turning the videos over to the police, assuming anyone ever got round to calling them. Frankly, given teenagers past record with mobile phone cameras and violent attacks, I rather doubt it. Besides, there are CCTV cameras on the walls for a reason.

Perhaps the most glaringly obvious option would have been, you know, for some of them to intervene, perhaps. There were 40 of them, after all. Granted, you would be putting yourself at risk, but if we're going to assume that it's never worth stepping in and putting yourself in danger for the sake of someone else, then we might as well just declare the word help obsolete and remove it from the dictionary.

I despair.

Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary. We've been married for a year now. We went out for a meal at an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant in the evening, which was pretty good. We dispensed with tradition and didn't get each other presents made of paper - I got Alison a pasta spoon and some tongs, and she got me an adjustable spanner. And they said romance was dead!

So... a year of marriage. It's been pretty cool all told. We're settling in OK and things are going well. I think I'm a better person for being married too, so that's definitely a good thing.

While we're on the subject of marriage, my dad sent me the tape of the sermon I gave on marriage the other week. You can download an mp3 of it here if you want. It's not terribly good quality, though that is because it's gone from a radio mic to analogue tape to my PC to a low bitrate mp3, but it should be good enough. Just don't laugh at my voice. I'll cry. Or something. Oh yeah, and the reading for the sermon is Ecclesiastes 4:7-12, which it's probably worth reading if you want to understand some of what I'm going on about. Enjoy.

Remember the Piano Man from a few months ago? Washed up on a beach near Kent and put in hospital for a while? Played the piano? Didn't talk? You know the one.

Well, he's made it back into the news of late. Apparently the health service are considering suing him, as some people think he was faking. Which means that Mikey H may have been right when he wrote this back when it first made the news. His lawyers say he wasn't faking it, and apparently he'd gone through a whole lot of trouble with losing his job, coping with being gay and so on. Is it genuine? I'm sure we'll find out.

It'd kinda suck if it was a hoax. Though I guess I'm only wishing for little romantic film-esque things to happen in real life when I say that. Hmm.

Alison and I have found a new house!

We've been planning to move house for a while now, for various reasons. When we came here last September, we took pretty much the first place we found purely because we were in such a mad rush and were busy sorting out new jobs and getting everything ready for our wedding. Since then I've taken a job on the other side of the city, and Alison will be starting teacher training in September, also on the other side of the city. We're also travelling across the city at least twice a week to go to church and it's various related meetings, which is a bit of a pain. Last, but not least, we're planning a new missionary work on the estate with the church, which will be similar to Andy Hawthorne's Eden Project which rather hinges on us living on that estate.

We'd spent a few weeks looking for a place in the papers and stuff, but there was nothing. It's mostly a council estate, with some houses for private sale and some properties owned by housing associations, but that's about it - hardly anyone lets houses there. We can't afford a mortgage of any kind, so it looked like we were out of luck.

We went and looked at one house on Wednesday but, in technical terms, it kinda sucked. For the amount of work it needed in decorating it really wasn't worth the money. I was feeling pretty rubbish by then, as we're only about 4 weeks off the date when we're due to be out of our present house. Scary stuff. So, we prayed about it at midweek meeting that evening and on Friday our Pastor got in touch to say that the house next door to him is still available for rent. Something of a surprise as it's been vacant for months. It turns out they've been doing it up. Nice.

So, we went and had a look on Saturday and it's amazing. It's a nice big 3 bedroom semi-detached place with a garage and a huge garden and a little conservatory type thing. It's part furnished and they're in the process of refitting the kitchen. It's also going at a very reasonable price. There's little disadvantages like it having no double glazing and no shower, but if it had either of those we'd be looking at least another hundred on the rent so we can't complain. One of the best bits as far as Alison is concerned is that the landlady will let us have a pet cat, which is pretty darn cool.

So, yeah, that's pretty awesome. We'll be moving in at the beginning of August.

A very handy timely answer to prayer from the man upstairs.