Longrider

According to the Guardian the signs and portents predict a hard, cold winter much like the one of 1963. I am just about old enough to remember that winter. The slushy iced up snow seemed to hang about for months and everything was so cold. Central heating for us ordinary (poor) folk was the stuff of dreams. We put our heating on overnight this week when we had a hard frost. In 1963, we had to put up with ice on the inside of the windows while we put an extra blanket on the bed.

So, here we are, despite warnings of global warming, facing a bitter cold winter. At least, if you believe that the arrival of waxwings and the wealth of berries on the rowan trees signifies such an event. On the other hand, if you believe the Met office, it’s going to be average or warmer than average. Take your pick.

I, on the other hand will be longing for the first signs of spring, whatever the outcome.

The entry below prompted me to dig out that old book I was talking about. I’ve scanned in one of the pictures - Brachiosaurus in a swamp. To give you an indication of how old this book is, the price tag says 12/6d - that’s around 65p in new money.

I’ve been waiting for the Telegraph’s response to its humiliating defeat in the libel case brought by George Galloway. In their leader today they reassert the claims made immediately outside the court that this is a black day for journalism and freedom of the press.

No, it isn’t. Whatever you may think of Galloway, and I found his sycophancy to the deposed Iraqi leader sickening, there was no evidence that he was in Saddam’s pay apart from the documents found following the fall of Baghdad. On their own, they may have seemed damning. They certainly seemed to make the basis of a good story, but, on their own they were worthless.

The journalist, David Blair may well have been acting with the best of intentions - as, indeed, may the Telegraph - but freedom of the press comes with a responsibility. That responsibility is to ensure that the facts of the story are true before going to press. The Telegraph failed to do that. That is why they lost in the courts and quite rightly too.

Over at Confessions of a Libertine Blog, the discussion of men with long hair has cropped (sic) up. I discuss this in some length (groan) at my website. I’ve had long hair for much of my life. I grew up in the nineteen seventies when men were starting to let their hair grow longer again after the repressive militarist short back and sides that had dominated for most of the twentieth century.

I knew from an early age that short hair just wasn’t me. Every few weeks I was either taken or despatched to the local barber shop and endured the humiliating shearing of my scalp leaving my hair painfully (to me) short. Then came the seventies. . Like most teenagers of the day, I let my hair grow to what is generally known these days as the "awkward stage" - that period where hair is too long to control and too short to tie back or even tuck behind your ears.

As an adult, I settled on a shaped style that hung around my shoulders and I was happy enough. Then a Human Resources manager told me to cut it. This had the undesired (for her) effect of stopping all haircuts from that point onward. It is now down to my mid back and I’m loving it. That HR manager did me a favour and she didn’t even appreciate it.

According to Merriam-Webster, “blog” is the top word of 2004. It seems blogging is becoming increasingly popular.

Well, there’s a newsflash.
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It looks like Lycos bit off more than it could chew. I can’t say I’m over surprised that the anti-SPAM screensaver that Lycos was distributing earlier this week in an attempt to fight back at the SPAMmers went all pear shaped.

On the one hand, part of me was secretly pleased that the scumbags who send out this junk were going to be getting their own back. Trouble is, others may well suffer in the process when servers fail through bombardments that amount to a distributed denial of service attack. And, although not necessarily illegal, it certainly is immoral.

I’ll be sticking to the more traditional methods….

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I grew up in a sidecar - at least that’s how it seemed at the time. While my parents were hardy well off, that they had transport even as rudimentary as a sidecar outfit, made us a mobile family. That, in the nineteen sixties was more than most.

All of this was brought back to me when a member of the UK Bike Forum related her experience of riding one for the first time. Ah, yes it brings back all sorts of memories. I learned much about the peculiarities of sidecars during my formulative years from my father. So all that quaint sorcery involved in setting them up, such as toe in and lean out, meant something to me long before I ever rode a motorcycle myself. Even so, despite the dire warnings about how difficult they can be to ride, my first time was a shock indeed.

Before I get to my own ignominious adventure, let’s talk about Uncle Bob. At about the time my father was riding sidecars, Uncle Bob had one too - an AJS, it was, I think. Like all budding sidecarists, he got the thing all set up and like all budding sidecarists, made exactly the same mistake - he thought he was riding a motorcycle. Wrong! Sidecars look like motorcycles, but with a big lump hanging off one side, they do not behave like one. Bob approached his first right-hand junction with every intention of turning right. The outfit, on the other hand, had other ideas - it carried straight on ahead, across the pavement (sidewalk to our US friends) and up the steps of a police station where Bob had to explain his sudden appearance to the somewhat bemused police constables inside.

My father wasn’t much better. Having persuaded his new combination through the first couple of junctions, he opened the throttle only to execute an unintentional left turn straight into someone’s drive. The bike ended up on one side of a gatepost and the sidecar on the other.

So, armed with these tales of caution, I set off. Now, intellectually, I knew that the lump on the left-hand side of the bike would pull it left, particularly under acceleration, and right under braking. Made sense. What I forgot about was the camber. As I accelerated, the bike kept pulling left, not to mention the handlebars shaking uncontrollably as I tried to keep the whole plot going in a straight line at about 30mph. Ah, I thought, all I need to do is brake, the sidecar will swing right and then I can accelerate again. So I braked. The outfit lurched left, down a ditch up an embankment and into a hedge where the engine stalled. I was sitting there wondering just how I was going to extract myself, preferably before anyone I knew saw me, when a women stopped her car and asked if I was supposed to be there. Well, that wasn’t exactly the plan and I did try to explain, but gave up and meekly accepted her offer of a tow back onto the road.

Riding sidecars, as one wag once put it is doing the impossible with the unrideable. I guess that’s why they are so much fun. I haven’t ridden one for over twenty years now, but I still look at them with some affection. I guess because it takes a degree of bloody-mindedness to ride them well and that’s a quality I admire.

Today the Financial Times wades into the ID card debate. It is nothing new to those of us who have been following it since Big Blunkett first announced his intentions shortly after September 11^th 2001. Yet, using the government’s own tactics of repeating the points often enough until they take root, here goes.

The FT repeats the exposure of the government’s lies about protection from terrorism by pointing out that both Blair and Blunkett have at various times been forced to admit that it won’t make us safer from terrorism:

“ID cards, as the prime minister and home secretary both say, are no guarantee of security. The terrorists who attacked the US on September 11 2001 travelled under their own identities. The Madrid bombers were not deterred by Spain’s ID cards.”

They also point out that even without cards, emergency cases will still be afforded access to NHS services as will people visiting - who may or may not be about to perpetrate a terrorist offence.

“As for welfare fraud, sick people are unlikely to be refused medical treatment because they cannot produce a card - and nor will the penniless be left to starve. And since false passports and false driving licences are readily available, ID cards will be no guarantee against forged identity.”

Significantly they give lie to Blunkett’s assertion that it will make us more safe from identity theft when the reality is that the opposite is the case.

“Indeed, identity theft could become easier if ID cards are accepted as sole proof of identity. And criminals will quickly get access to the national identity register - as they already do to other government databases.”

In summary they point out that the government could pay dearly at the polls. Like, perhaps, the Australia Card in the late eighties, where the threat of massive rejection and civil disobedience forced a humiliating climb-down and fall of the government. My only concern would be what replaces it.
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