Longrider

Found this via Queenie’s Blog

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The local membership secretary of the constituency party called round yesterday. My resignation hadn’t reached him, so I told him about it and explained why. He wasn’t too surprised by this. He told me a lot of people have been resigning from the party in protest at the government’s behaviour of late. He would be remaining a member however, in the hope that he could change things from within.

I pointed out that I had tried all of that. Lobbying my MP, I went into great detail about why the authoritarian agenda is so wrong and so dangerous. Indeed, I responded to the consultation on the ID Cards bill clause by clause. Yet my concerns merely elicited a bland reply and a visit to the “aye” lobby come the commons’ vote.

So I told my erstwhile membership secretary that an illegal war and being blatantly lied to about the reasons, the politics of fear and the phony war on terror along with the ID cards Bill, the Civil Contingencies Act and the deliberate removal of habeas corpus meant that I haven’t left the Labour Party; it has left me. I haven’t stopped believing in the caring, compassionate society; they have. He said that he was still a socialist and that he hasn’t changed either.

Now that comment made me think. I’m not sure if I ever was a true socialist. As I’ve grown older my leanings have become more libertarian. While I do not hold with the libertarian ideal of living entirely by common law - that is as much a myth as pure socialism is - and I find the selfishness of the extreme libertarians distasteful, I am equally dismayed by the nanny state poking its nose into my affairs and attempting to exert undue control. Economically, I tend to lean towards the mixed economy; some things should remain in public ownership and free of the vagaries of the free market. I’m thinking here of the health service (an internal market, for crying out loud). I also believe water, gas and electricity; those essentials for daily life; should be owned by the public. Yet other things, the non-essentials, should be allowed to flourish or wither according to market demands. After all, as a self-employed person, that is exactly what I am doing with my career. On the political scale of things, I am well to the left economically of New Labour and well to the libertarian of just about all of the major political parties. I share a space with Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela - left wing libertarians - so I’m keeping good company.

Yesterday was a sad moment for me, because the local Labour Party membership and I still believe in many of the same things. It is after all why I joined. I wanted to help make the world a better place. It’s just that there isn’t a political party that does likewise.

Oh, well, it’s all done now. Looking at the kitchen, it doesn’t appear radically different. That was, after all, my original intention. The house is a country cottage with a country cottage kitchen. I wanted to make it more ergonomic without changing the character.

So the modern sink that replaces the old (rather manky) porcelain item is now an inset stainless one at the standard height yet I retained the old fascia and with it the character of the original. So now it is not necessary to stoop while using it. The two cabinets are now at the same (standard) height alongside the oven, making a useable kitchen with functional work surfaces. A kitchen that doesn’t look much different to when I started a week ago. It just works better.

And the plumbing? Ah, yes. After the panic of Sunday, I bought a blowtorch, some copper piping, solder pastes and joints. Let’s just say that I’m a dab hand with a blowtorch these days…
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Plumbing and I don’t mix. We never have. Electricity, I do. A little joinery, yup, no problems. But plumbing - it’s wet and I have an aversion to working with wet. Water has a knack of leaking no matter what you do to stop it. Plug one gap and another leak appears. Electrics don’t tend to do that. Wire it up, put the top back on the junction box and you’re done. Electricity is neat like that.

So, we’re in France and I need to fit a new kitchen sink. Should be simple enough - not least because the taps are wall mounted, so I don’t need to touch the inlet pipes. There’s only the waste to worry about.

Removing the old sink involved a massive demolition job. It had been built up using a combination of bricks and stonework - an extra job I didn’t anticipate. Still, it’s amazing what a sledge hammer will do.

The cold water inlet pipe looked a little frail to me, so I decided to leave welll alone. It was while fitting the waste outlet that I just happened to touch the inlet pipe. Within seconds it seemed that the whole kitchen was flooding as the joint burst apart.

Now, this is Sunday. In the UK it would mean an emergency trip to the local DIY outlet. This is France. In France on Sunday, DIY outlets are closed, so I had to make do with what was lyng around the house. An old piece of pipe, brute force and plenty of silicone sealant later and we have water. It doesn’t look pretty, but we have water. Tommorrow, it’s a trip to the bricolage…

I usually look after system security in our house. While Frankie is an IT technician at work, she really doesn’t want to bother at home. So usually it is my job to keep software up to date and make sure that anti-virus definitions are current. And, importantly, spyware protection.

We have two firewalls - a hardware one in the router and a software one on each PC. We also run a range of spyware protection programs. It says something about today’s Internet that to be sure of keeping this poison from infecting our machines, I have to run no less than four programs. Ad-Aware, Webroot SpySweeper, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, SpyBot Search & Destroy and Spyware Blaster.

A month or so ago, a hard drive failure meant that Frankie had to carry out a complete system re-install. I took my eye off the ball and forgot to put all the spyware stuff on her machine. Yesterday evening she complained about pop-ups. I was puzzled, she shouldn’t be getting pop-ups. Then I checked. Oops, I’d forgotten to install the protection. So I did. Ad-Aware picked up 105 spyware files and registry entries including browser hijackers, malaware, data miners and tracking cookies. Then I ran the MS program which picked up another 5. SpySweeper picked up a further 5 and SpyBot another 3. Jesus H Christ! That’s after 3 weeks or so browsing on an intermittent basis. I’m still cleaning up at the moment.

These people are scum. They are no different from the house burglar who raids your home. Both enter without permission and both steal from you. Spyware isn’t normally a problem to me because I am so guarded, but let that guard slip and the bastards come in under the radar.

Did I mention how much I hate the bastards?