Longrider

It’s interesting to watch in detached amusement when the righteous show signs of being rattled. One such is the reaction to the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU. Something that I await with interest as the Czech president is an outspoken man who cares little if he upsets the EU hierarchy. The Righteous don’t like Václav Klaus one little bit and it is beginning to show as the Guardianista, bastion of the righteous observes today. This from Leo Hickman:

Try to imagine Jeremy Clarkson being put in charge of the nation’s traffic cops for six months and the carnage that would likely ensue.

Would it? Would it indeed? And what evidence does Hickman provide to flesh out this trite little allegory? Oh, that’s right, none at all. Prejudice is all. I would suggest that Clarkson might make a better fist of it than the present incumbents. Still, back to the EU and climate scepticism, because that is the thrust of Hickman’s shrill little diatribe.

“Colourful” and “maverick” are words used to describe Václav Klaus. Others prefer words such as “dangerous” and “misguided”. But while there’s little doubt that Klaus’s style of politics has been popular with many in his home country – he revels in refusing to fly the European flag over his office in Prague – it’s going to be fascinating seeing how his crowd-pleasing contrarianism and undiplomatic outbursts go down with a wider audience now that the international spotlight has been thrust upon him.

My thoughts are that this could be a breath of fresh air. Being contrarian is not a bad thing; it is a good thing, it makes people think about their position – that is, if they are capable of observing from a different perspective, if they have open minds and their heads are not stuck so far up their arses that they observe the world from between their own molars.

The no-doubt nervous Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, has even tried to pre-emptively defuse any looming clangers from Klaus describing the role of the Czech president as largely “ceremonial”.

Ah, see what he did there? Dissent from the righteous party line will be translated as “clangers”. Mustn’t rock the boat, nor dissent from the consensus, must we? And, God forbid, that we should have people daring to publicly challenge the global warming (unelected and unaccountable) fascists of Brussels.

Klaus’s fans view him as a popular hero speaking out for the oppressed common man. Predictably, he has something of a following online, too, and some bloggers and commentators are now rejoicing at his golden chance to unsettle the political status quo.

Not before time. That, surely, is part of the democratic process. Let’s have more status quo unsettling. Ah, but, second rate hacks like Hickman don’t want the status quo unsettled, they are right and that is all right and we must all go along with it and if we don’t, we are dropping clangers. The arrogant self-righteousness fair exudes from every syllable.

Outside the world of Czech and European politics, Klaus is perhaps best known as one of the world’s most outspoken climate change sceptics.

And the righteous really, really hate anyone who publicly ridicules their nice new shiny religion, don’t they?

You’ve got quotes from Michael Crichton and Richard Lindzen, environmentalists billed as “Malthusian pessimists” who are the “biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity”, talk of natural climatic cycles and the politicisation of science, utter contempt for Al Gore, and there’s even the familiar call for us all to have faith in the “advances in technology” thrown in for good measure. It’s enough to warm the cockles of rightwing libertarians the world over.

Jesus, what an arsehole. The reason we have utter contempt for Al Gore is because he is a great big fat liar – that and a great big fat hypocrite. The rest is the usual righteous twaddle – and always the “right wing” label is added for good measure. The righteous love to use the term right wing as if it applies to anyone who expresses libertarian views or who rubbishes their, well, rubbish… Rightwing these days is equivalent to extremism (even the TPA according to Al Beeb). So, Hickson confirms to the reader that he is, indeed, a member of the righteous and therefore not someone who may be taken seriously as a correspondent.

But I don’t join those who fear Klaus’s spell in the hot seat. In contrast, I’m looking forward to his pronouncements, especially if they deal with climate change. Another popular refrain from the sceptics is that the world’s political class has “bought this climate change puppy hook, line and sinker”. It will be interesting to see how the sceptics react now that they have a staunch champion in high office, albeit on a short-term tenancy. Bright light is rarely flattering.

I, too, will be watching with interest. That bright light is shining on the EU elite in Brussels and their reaction to Klaus. Hickman is right in that the light is not flattering – it’s just that he is looking in the wrong place. The man is an idiot.

Via Anticant, this wonderful piece by Willem Buiter writing in the Financial Times:

The state is a necessary evil.  It is necessary for the reasons outlined by Hobbes, Locke and many other worldly philosophers.  It is evil because I know of no example of a state that has not abused its power over its citizens. 

Indeed. The state is merely a means by which individuals engage in collective action that they cannot manage alone – defence of the realm, for example, justice and policing would be another. It is not up to the state to encroach on private matters – what we eat, for instance, who we telephone would be another. It is not up to the state to gather the minutiae of our lives, because, frankly, that is not its remit and those matters are none of its business.

Every restriction on our liberties - our right to speak, write, criticize and offend as we please, to act and organize in opposition to the government of the day, to embarrass it and to show it up by forcing it to look into the mirror of its own leaked secrets - must be resisted. 

Quite so. However, Britons appear to have lost that ability. Indeed, there are idiots who think we should not be allowed to offend and would restrict freedom of speech accordingly.

We cannot afford to believe any government’s protestations that it is acting in good faith and will safeguard the confidentiality of any information it extracts from us.  Public safety and national security are never sufficient reasons for restricting the freedom of the citizens.  The primary duty of the state is to safeguard our freedom against internal and external threats.  The primary duty of an informed citizenry is to limit the domain of the state - to keep the government under control and to prevent it from becoming a threat to our liberties.

Again, I cannot argue with any of that – it is so spot on. Eternal vigilance against the state is the only guarantor of liberty. Unfortunately we now have a situation where a government has eroded those safeguards.

The better-intentioned a government professes to be, and the better-intentioned it truly is when it first gains office, the more it is to be distrusted.

Was there ever a better example of this than New Labour? Willem goes on to point this out:

After even the most liberal-minded, open-government-committed party takes hold of the reins of government, it takes never more than a single term of office, four years - five at the most - before paranoia takes over.   Disagreement becomes dissent, dissent becomes disloyalty, disloyalty becomes betrayal and betrayal becomes treason.  The public interest merges seamlessly with the private interest of the incumbents.  The state bureaucracy, where it has not been taken over by government loyalists on day one of the new administration, is gradually transformed into an arm of the government.  Some formal checks and balances often remain, parliament and the courts among them, but they too are often feeble to begin with and weaken further as the term office of the incumbent government lengthens.

I have watched this process at work in the UK since I returned here in 1994.  It was breath-taking and depressing to observe the transformation of New Labour after 1997, from the party of open government, human rights and civil liberties into an increasingly paranoid group of power-hogging and repressive political control freaks, who have done more damage to fundamental human rights in the past 11 years than any other (sequence of)  government(s)  in any comparable-length stretch of time since the Glorious Revolution.  Fortunately, despite their worst intentions, they have not been very competent - a more competent government could have done much more damage to our freedom and civil liberties.

There you have it; a decade of New Labour rule summed up accurately in a couple of paragraphs.

Anticant draws our attention to one of the comments by someone called Blissex:

New Labour’s major fault is that they are too poll driven (following rather than leading public opinion), and therefore they have been unwilling to resist the strong demand by a majority of the voters for more repression, less civil liberties, more state interference in private lives.

If you notice, the Tories have been campaigning for the same, but even further to the right, as it were.

The big driver is the growing number of elderly rentiers among voters, people who much prefer (the illusion of) safety to liberty, people who are just a little less authoritarian than the usual flog-n-hang them class.

ASBOs, CCTV, detention without trial, … are all wildly popular with voters, and every time the government or the opposition want to pander to buy themselves some votes without spending they propose new nasty attacks on liberty, especially the liberty of nasty young people to misbehave and irritate their elders.

The greatest threat to liberty is not the parties, which only do what the polls tell them, but voters, whose demand for practical fascism has driven a lot of politics in the USA and the UK (and several other countries, as in many the baby boom generation has reached middle and old age) over the past 2-3 decades.

These voters are sitting pretty, vested in careers, pensions, properties, and their main feeling is fear; they see all change as a threat, not an opportunity, a threat to their enjoyment of all they are vested in.

While I think that Blissex has it right on the matter of polls; it has become fashionable to blame the baby boomers for everything. I am a baby boomer (just). Most of my fellow older generation who are now in their fifties and sixties deplore what has happened. They deplore the erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law; the spying and prying, the meddling, hectoring, lecturing, nannying and patronising, the rampant bansturbation, and the pandering to the feckless and workshy and special interest groups. I suggest that Blissex looks a little closer to New Labour’s home turf for the answer to that one; their client vote; the burgeoning public sector, the welfare society and the ghettoised “minorities”.

The people who clamour for security over liberty are likely to be those too young to recall the consequences. The baby boomers lived through the cold war and those of us who did not support the Soviet Union understand all too well what we are losing and what we stood for. They (we) may once have loved New Labour for what it claimed to represent; you’ll find that many of us now despise it from the very depths of our souls.

I’ve been following the recent spat between Tim Worstall, Devil’s Kitchen and Richard Murphy with detached amusement – in part because Worstall and DK are more than capable of holding their own against a buffoon such as Murphy. While it provided some light entertainment, it seems that Murphy has now called it a day, but not without finally underlining the point that he is insufferably pompous in the process.

What I have noticed is that like some of his fellow travellers, he engages in sneaky smear tactics but would prefer them not to come winging back. Take this particularly unpleasant little dig, for example:

He tries to engage as a reasonable person on this blog, and then goes back to his own blog, hurls abuse and waits for his sycophants to come back with ad hominem, crude and sometimes blatantly inappropriate comments, all of which, I am sure, fuel his ego, but more sinisterly, fit into a pattern of political behaviour most commonly associated with the far right. The BNP work in this way, for example. I’m not suggesting Tim has anything to do with them, or their racist opinion, but Nick Griffin also seeks to appear reasonable in public debate, but relies upon working his audience of thugs behind-the-scenes and in his own domain to secure his support.

Oh, dear… He’s not suggesting that Tim has anything to do with the BNP, oh, no, not at all. So why raise them then? Why engage in the very tactics he claims to abhor? Oh, and had he bothered with the most basic of research, he would realise that the BNP are not of the far right, they are of the authoritarian left.

Murphy is labouring under a confusion (I’m being generous here, so bear with me); that of the difference between what a web-master may allow on his site and freedom of speech per se. As a web-master, Murphy can edit, delete or censor as he pleases. It’s his place and he may apply his rules. However, when he claims that he does so in the name of free speech, he is being disingenuous – indeed, he is factually wrong.

Freedom of speech is messy, it can be nasty and people will say things that those of us who consider ourselves in the mainstream find deeply repugnant. If we seek to stifle it, then we engage in censorship – we do not support free speech. As a young child, I was taught by my father that freedom of speech means allowing people to say things we don’t like, no matter how unpleasant. A free society allows the communists and the Nazis a platform to promulgate their ideologies freely and uncensored. In so doing, we keep them in the light, we are able to tear them down with reason and logic and we can see them for what they are.

This means that I support Richard Murphy’s right to spout his nonsense as we can see it for what it is; the histrionics of a pompous fool who knows not what he says.

In closing, he makes the point so much better than I could:

I have allowed more comments on the four comments that proceed this on, not because I think them appropriate, for I do not: they are, without exception, offensive

I suggest that you read them. They were all without exception making perfectly reasonable points. If Richard Murphy is offended, then he has a remarkably thin skin.

I have allowed them to be posted because they show the complete contempt of the far right for others.

Ah, yes, like Neil Harding, Murphy accuses those who disagree with him of coming from the “far right”. Any credibility (okay, it wasn’t much to start with) he might have had up until this point evaporates.

In this case John Christensen wrote based on his family’s experience of being abused; of how the language of abuse led in turn to thuggery, and in this case to genocide

That experience has been trivialised here

Indeed it was; by John Christensen.

Not one of those who has commented here has condemned Rory Meakin for saying abuse was of little consequence

Yeah… well… This is what Rory actually said:

There will always be someone who will claim “offence” at pretty much anything anyone might say. Which is why it is of little consequence.

Either Murphy has difficulty following plain English or he is being deliberately disingenuous. Let’s get something straight here – there is no right not to be offended; which is pretty much the essence of Rory’s point.

Instead I note the delight all take in the freedom to abuse, for that is what is being promoted by those who comment.

No, it is not. What people have pointed out – repeatedly – is what I have said here, that you either value freedom of speech or you do not. Murphy does not.

I am appalled, but the eviudence [sic] has been laid clear. The dividing line is apparent.

On this we can agree. On the one side; is the light, on the other; the forces of darkness that we thought defeated with the collapse of the Berlin wall.

On the matter of fruity language, it has a long history in politics. Get used to it and grow up.

Mark Perryman writes in the Groan’s comment is free on Che Guevara:

Tonight in cinemas across the country Steven Soderbergh’s immense biopic Che is showing in New Year’s Day advance screenings.

Slapped on to T-shirts, morphed into Christ and Richard Branson to promote everything from church-going to venture capitalism, the image of Che Guevara is reckoned to be amongst the most reproduced images in the world. Che represents a unique mix of revolutionary ideals and popstar celebrity. Icons of rebellion have a nasty habit of degenerating into cults of personality. But in this regard Che is more Banksy than Bolshevik. Corporations commodify it with do-it-yourself politics, others turn his face to whatever ideal they think worth fighting for.

Would that be evil murdering bastard Che? And comparing him to Banksy, for God’s sake. I might not rate Banksy, but so far as I am aware, he hasn’t murdered anyone.

It is when I read such apologist drivel, I realise just what it is that the Groan represents. When they talk of revolutionary ideals, they mean communism and the repression that goes with it:

Of course what gives Che substance is that together with Fidel Castro and their ragbag army they turned their ideals into a victory that has endured. It’s no accident the film is being launched tonight, on the 50th anniversary of the day that the US-backed Batista regime was toppled from power in Havana.

Those “ideals” persist today. Tell the political prisoners locked up by this ragbag army’s leaders for expressing differing points of view about those “ideals” not us.

Che however remains the single most important key to Cuba becoming a symbol of global inspiration.

There is something distinctly warped in the world when a vicious murdering totalitarian despot is deemed to be a “symbol of global inspiration”. And does it come as any surprise that the Guardian should be an apologist for such evil? I shouldn’t be surprised, really, I shouldn’t.

However, this murderous wickedness is glossed over with a rather neat little bit of whitewash:

…but Che’s idealism, Cuba’s survival are ever present however they are worn or depicted. Instead of a leftist purity over the process of commodification we should concern ourselves instead with how to make these connections vivid and pleasurable. How to turn that faraway ideal of Che’s sunny socialismo into something burning bright amongst the grey, drab party politics we have to endure when we come out of that cinema tonight.

“Sunny socialismo” fer chrissakes, give me a break! That would be the sunny socialismo that makes it okay to murder 14 year olds in cold blood would it? Sunny fucking socialismo, indeed; tell that to the families of the people this evil bastard murdered, you shit-head apologist for mass murderers.

And who is Mark Perryman?

Mark Perryman is one of the organisers of the CHElebration New Year Party for the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution on Friday 2 January with Radio Revolucion, Hank Wangford, Luke Wright and Movimentos Sound System.

Jesus, what a nasty little fucktard. I’ll leave the final word to DK:

In short, the man was a total fucking scumbag and anyone who reveres him is competing to be almost as bad. After all, to paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, who is the bigger shit—the shit, or the shit who follows him?

A happy new year to you all. And for your delectation, a seasonal image from somewhere in France:

I note that a number of my esteemed libertarian fellows have picked up on recent plans by the government to clamp down on motoring. Motorists being the new smokers and smokers being the new hunters and so on. The latest two things being medical fitness and yet again an obsession with speed – this time a desire to fit vehicles with speed limiters.

Let’s start with medical fitness. Like the Devil’s Kitchen, I have no objection to the principle of confirmed medical fitness to drive. We already have a fairly crude form of this already. When you attend a driving test, you will be asked to read a number plate at a distance of 67 feet. If you want to be a driving instructor, that rises to 90 feet. That is about it. Hardly a competent eye test, and unless the candidate declares any medical problems then no more is said about it until the licence expires on the driver’s 70th birthday.

So, what is being proposed?

Drivers will have to declare every 10 years whether they are medically able to get behind the wheel, according to proposals to be set out early in the new year.

Okay, not so very different to the current situation…

For the first time, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) will issue a series of minimum physical and mental requirements motorists must fulfil including eyesight performance and reaction times.

Well, as the standards setting body, so they should. A similar requirement exists for pilot’s licenses, so why not for drivers? When you take to the road, it is not only your life you place at risk if you are unfit.

However…

Tests, costing up to £80, will be offered to drivers to check whether they are fit to drive.

Why? Surely the sensible (okay, okay, I know, don’t all shout at once) thing to do is for the standards setting body to set the standard and then let drivers confirm that they meet the standard via their GP for example. GPs already provide such services. It’s also worth bearing in mind that I have to undergo a regular medical to access the railway line and the period varies according to age. The last time, it cost me around £125.

I have no problem with the concept of a test, I do have a problem with the state being involved in the testing.

Anyone who chooses not to take the tests but declares themselves able to take to the roads will be committing a criminal offence if they fail to meet the established standards.

Hmm.. on the face of it, that makes sense. However, either we have standards and apply them fairly or we do not. So, surely the state sets the standard and drivers undergo checks with their supplier of choice (which would probably push that £80 figure down) who then issues a certificate of compliance.

The move is designed to weed out tens of thousands of motorists – many of them elderly – who use their cars while suffering from conditions which could make them a danger to themselves or others.

No too much of a sweeping statement, then…

If I was suffering from a medical condition that affected my ability to drive, I would want to know about it. As I already undergo testing for my profession, then I know that I don’t. Surely that test should double up? That would be pragmatic and sensible, wouldn’t it? Yeah, yeah, I know – this is a Labour government and its incompetent agencies we are talking about. Pragmatic and sensible just don’t apply.

The DVLA is not getting at those drivers who should be letting it know about their medical conditions. We really want people to take responsibility.

Fine. Set the standard and then let the market take over.

I note in the piece that there is some interesting use of statistics. This one caught my eye:

By 2021, there will be an estimated 3 million over-70s driving on the country’s roads.

The Association of British Insurers has found that this age group is three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on the road than those aged 40-65.

See what they did there? People killed on the roads will include drivers, passengers, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians. Still, this will be a gift to insurers, so they will love it. Frankly, anything insurers like is valid cause for suspicion – insurers remind me far too much of vultures circling the dying beast.

On the matter of speed limiters:

Speed-limiting devices should be fitted to cars on a voluntary basis to help save lives and cut carbon emissions, according to a new report.

The government’s transport advisers claim the technology would cut road accidents with injuries by 29%.

This nonsense despite the government’s own figures placing breaking speed limits being a cause at well below that 29%. What fitting limiters will do is take away control from the driver and that, frankly, is dangerous. Driving at a continuous low speed causes the driver to disengage with the traffic and go into a zombie state. Oh, and we all know what “voluntary” means, don’t we?

The device automatically slows a car down to within the limit for the road on which it is being driven.

So, having moved out to pass a slow moving truck on the motorway, you find it moving into your road space. You have a set of choices; brake, move out into the next lane, or accelerate. You can’t brake because there is a tailgater behind you and there is traffic on your offside, so you hit the gas. Then the limiter cuts in and forces you right into that truck’s sideswipe. The only control must be fully with the driver at all times, because the driver is the only one who understands the prevailing risks and can respond accordingly. If my bike had a speed limiter fitted, I would not be typing this now as I had to make that choice and I hit the throttle good and hard, exceeding the speed limit on the M4 by a goodly amount.

The speed-limiting devices will then use satellite positioning to check a vehicle’s location and when its speed exceeds the limit, power will be reduced and the brakes applied if necessary.

Only an utter moron would believe that this is workable, let alone a good idea. Again, consider the brief burst of speed to overtake a slow moving vehicle on a country road, when suddenly there you are on the wrong side of the road unable to go anywhere except into the oncoming vehicle? Shouldn’t be there? Well, possibly. Are you the perfect driver who is always in the right place at the right time and always makes the perfect judgement? And what if – as as happened to me – the overtaken vehicle accelerates? Thanks to your speed limiter with satellite technology, you are fucked. Literally.

This comment form Quentin Wilson:

Remotely policing the roads from satellites in the sky - I would worry about it an awful lot.

That has to be the understatement of the year.

I mentioned in an earlier posting that there is a distinct community spirit in our new home. We were reminded again of this yesterday. This picture accurately illustrates the weather we have been having:

That was Boxing Day – it’s been like this on and off since, although it is raining now. Anyway, yesterday, we tried to go out. Having swapped the vehicles around, we decided that even using the diesel, it just wasn’t worth the effort and went back inside.

A few moments later there was a knock at the door. One of our neighbours having observed us getting ready to go out and then going back inside was concerned. Had we enough food in the house? She enquired. We assured her that we had and that our journey wasn’t necessary enough to warrant going out in the increasingly bad weather. We thanked her for her concern and she went away happy.

We lived in Bristol for twenty one years and barely spoke to our neighbours, much less have one of them knock on the door to make sure we had enough provisions. It’s different here. I think I may just settle in nicely.

One of the casualties of my recent hosting difficulties is Felix Domesticus. I have backed up the database, but for the moment it is off-line while I consider its future. Although it had a following it was a very small one. I may just post my cat pictures here.

Following the move to France, the Felix Domesticus cats are slowly settling in. Just before the snow started falling in earnest, Nefertiti and Bast decided to take a peek at the great outdoors via the bedroom window.

Having gone through the grief of hurriedly re-hosting this blog, now, perhaps, is the time to explain just what happened. Just briefly, I’d like to offer thanks to DK who stepped in and sorted out hosting for this blog – and spent a considerable amount of time sorting out the little matter of importing four year’s worth of archives. In the process we lost the last post – but as that was only a holding notice, it’s a minor loss – although thanks to the two people who left encouraging comments.

I’ve been with Bluehost for nearly three years and during that time it’s been pretty much okay. However, I should have realised that all was not well when the site was hacked last May. I raised a support ticket and was effectively told that it was my problem. I would have thought that any self-respecting host would have been concerned that someone had gained unauthorised access to their servers, but apparently not.

Just prior to our move to France in late November, I received an email from Bluehost advising me that the account had been suspended due to “performance problems”:

Your web hosting account for longrider.co.uk has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.

If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.

When I called them I was advised that SQL queries had caused havoc with the server. Now, I was annoyed that they had summarily suspended the account without advising me first, but I remained cool and asked the reasonable question; what SQL queries? I was not able to obtain a satisfactory reply to that one. Just vague comments that it must be a plugin or some bad scripting.

Anyway, I did as I was advised and optimised the database using PHPMyAdmin.

On the 19^th December as I was driving back home, Mrs L called me to advise me that her email wasn’t working. Then I received an email as before. Again, the site was suspended.

When I arrived home, I called technical support and again went through the charade of trying to get a straight answer to a straight question; what, precisely was going on? What SQL queries were causing the problem? Again, I was told that it must be a plug in or some bad script and that I should optimise the database.

On looking closely at the database, there were some records from Firestats, a plugin that I had removed as a possible offender the first time around. I dropped these entries along with some crud from way back – again, old plugins that were no longer present.

Just to make sure, I nipped in and optimised on a daily basis until Christmas morning when there was a present from Bluehost in the form of another email telling me once more that I was suspended. Fortunately, forewarned being forearmed, I had switched Mrs L’s email account over to an unaffected domain – hosted with someone else, I might add. It’s one thing to disable a rogue blog, it’s quite another to lock down the whole account and disrupt all activities including emails.

This being the third time I’d been summarily suspended, I’d had enough. I’ve better things to be doing with my time than calling the USA and trying to make sense of ambiguous “performance problems” from people who clearly understood it no more than I. Time, I decided, to move on. Still, I needed to access my account to get hold of the latest data since the last backup.

I called support but they were closed for the holiday, so I raised a ticket:

I have received yet another notification that my account has been suspended as it is causing “performance problems”. I have done everything you have asked me to do - I last optimised the database yesterday evening. And yet still this is happening. Frankly, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed. If there is a specific problem then it is not unreasonable of me to expect you to tell me specifically what that problem is and how, exactly it may be fixed - preferably before you pull the plug and disable my site and associated email accounts. I’m amazed that a simple Wordpress blog should cause your servers so much difficulty - there is nothing unusual about it and I have removed the plug-in that we presumed was causing a problem. I have also been running optimisation on almost a daily basis since the weekend. What more am I supposed to do?

Please fix this - or tell me how to, and reopen my account so that I can run a back-up and take it elsewhere. I’ve had enough, quite frankly.

Regards

My tone was somewhat tetchy – I had done everything asked of me. I had tried, in vain, to get them to explain what the problem was. Vague responses such as “performance issues” and “slow SQL queries” are not helpful. When calling technical support, I expect expert technical replies to perfectly obvious and reasonable questions. What I got from Bluehost was worse than useless. That the problem persisted was evidence of such.

On the 26^th, I tried the phone again as there was no response to the ticket. What I got was little short of a telling off for causing them problems. Excusefuckingme? I am the customer here. I am paying for a service that I am not receiving. I remained calm and collected and asked for access to the C Panel so that I could see what was going on. Not that I had the slightest intention of doing any such thing. I wanted to get everything off the server and onto my hard drive before they had a chance to lock me out again. The admin was apparently in a good mood despite my “causing them problems” and graciously allowed me access to my own data. Cheeky bastard! This is a fine lesson in how not to do customer relations.

In the meantime, someone called Alex responded to my ticket:

customer’s mysql queries are causing problems on the server. customer needs to fix/optimize their queries and implement caching on their web scripts. If customer has already done those things already then they are simply too big for shared hosting and need to look for VPS or dedicated hosting.

Second, what specifically did you do to optimize your wordpress install? Knowing specifically what you have done already will help us suggest what you haven’t done to help the situation.

Here we go again… I’ve done all of that. And I was the one asking them specific questions. Questions that they had so far not answered. Still, I responded to Alex’s questions:

Hi,

I did exactly as I was asked to do - I used phpadmin to optimise the database - indeed, I did this each day since the last time this problem occurred. While the database has grown in size, I am bemused that it should be such a problem - we are, after all, talking about one blog with a relatively low readership that has grown exactly as one would expect over a period of three years or so. There is nothing special about it and it should not be causing performance problems. Had I used other facilitate that you offer; running a business with shopping carts and such, how would the server have coped then?

I make no secret that I am not an expert in SQL - and have no need to be. That is what I expect support to do - to explain exactly what the problem is and to help me resolve it.

As it is, I am busy backing up prior to migrating - while I am patient, that patience has been stretched by a host that pulls the plug arbitrarily without notice leaving emails not working and no access to the data without calling support.

Not good enough, frankly.

As I point out, had I been running a small business, the servers clearly wouldn’t have coped – and I would be suffering financial loss as a consequence. It is here that the true picture starts to emerge; this is not about my site causing problems, it is about it outgrowing shared hosting. Given my site’s modest size, this surprises me, but if that’s the case, so be it. Now, a reputable company would contact the customer and offer this advice and suggest an upgraded service. Not Bluehost; they pull the plug and treat you like a naughty child.

If you are reading this and think I should have seen this coming from a relatively low cost shared host, you might have a point. However, at the time they were not the cheapest and it was not obvious to me that it has grown so significantly. I cannot see what Bluehost can see and I don’t read minds.

Anyway, Alex gets back to me:

Unfortunately we don’t offer that type of service. We supply the tools, but we don’t teach people how to use them all Especially the ones we didn’t create ourselves. We are not in a position nor is it feasible for us to teach people to trouble shoot problems with scripting, mysql, coding, plugins, etc… If there is something server side that is causing the problem then we will fix it. But when it comes to a 3rd party product that is being used, it is not our responsibility to teach you how to use it, or optimize it. You paid for hosting not an education in running a website.

When it comes to optimizing your site, yes going into phpmyadmin is part of optimizing, but there are other things you can do as well. Such for wordpress there is a plugin called super-cache. It helps with how your site queries your database, and other caching issues. Which could greatly optimize your site and allow it to run for a while longer with us before you site and traffic become such that…yes you have out grown shared hosting.

Shared hosting is by no means a permanent solution to hosting needs. Its more of a stepping stone. Most when they get popular and large enough it requires a move to a server that can throw more resources at the site to accommodate its needs. Like our Admin said… if you haven’t tried any caching type plugins, you might want to look into or research this. If you have then maybe its time to take your site to the next level.

Now I’m getting really annoyed – I was not asking for an education (and I certainly wasn’t asking to be patronised in such a condescending manner). I was asking a straightforward question that a knowledgeable technical support officer should have been able to answer; what, exactly, is causing the problem? Alex is behaving like other so-called experts do; belittling those who ask questions. You see this type of behaviour on Internet forums where someone asks what the experienced users consider a stupid or obvious question. There are no such things as stupid questions – only stupid people who think that flaming a newcomer is acceptable behaviour. In my own field of expertise I have to answer the same questions over and over because to the people asking them, they are new. What I don’t do is try to make them look small – they are paying my wages after all.

As for the “blame the third party” approach, I’m sorry, but if you supply the tools, you should expect to have to provide support in the event of hassles with them. If I went to my garage and the mechanic told me that he didn’t support cars that had third party cam belts fitted, I’d walk and find another garage. Indeed, I expect the mechanic to know what he is talking about… On the other hand, maybe I won’t pursue that analogy…

As for the final comments, well, had they pointed this out at first, I wouldn’t be complaining. In the meantime, a little research told me that I was not alone in my experience. Piss-poor customer service seem to be par for the course with this bunch.

My final response was suitably acid. If there was any wavering on my part, I had long since passed the point where this company was getting any second chances. What they were going to get was this highly negative review.

I have been using supercache.

At no time was I asking for an education on SQL - asking you to tell me what the problem is, is not seeking an education, it is a perfectly reasonable question. I can’t fix anything if you won’t tell me precisely what the problem is in the first instance. You are the ones who can see the problem, I cannot. Telling me that it is a “performance problem” or “something to do with scripting” is about as much use as communicating with me in Mandarin.

You supply hosting with a range of tools. It is reasonable to expect support to be able to cope with issues arising from those tools. If you cannot or will not, then don’t supply them and don’t have them on your servers and at the very least, make it very clear upfront that you will pull the plug if they misbehave - had you done so, I’d have not taken out your hosting service.

My problem is that I have paid for a service that I have been denied on three separate occasions. At no time did you contact me beforehand to advise me that there is a problem - and not being clairvoyant, I cannot know that there is a problem unless you tell me. You didn’t; you simply pulled the plug and disrupted my wife’s email service into the bargain - thank you very much for that. It is this, more than anything else that leaves me furious with your service - I am not receiving a service, yet you have my money.

Yes, you are probably right, it is time to move on, but your willingness to pull the plug without prior notice is the most abysmal, reprehensible behaviour imaginable. This is not, by any definition of the expression “customer service”.

That they have not replied speaks volumes. Not that I am expecting them to. They are, without question, the most unprofessional outfit I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. They are happy to take customers’ money having over sold their resources and then when people actually start to use those resources, pull the plug without so much as a by-your-leave.

That I would not recommend them pretty much goes without saying, but I would go further and actively recommend leaving them well alone and that goes for their sister site, Hostmonster.

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Update: I wrote the original post two days ago – but it became lost during the recovery. Since then, someone called Jonathan has replied:

I’ve spent some time reviewing the Slow MySQL Queries logs and what I’m seeing, up until the 26th when there appears a query should the addition of a Cache plugin, before this point resides thousands of slow queries, each suggesting use of Whos Online plugins, as well as other plugins that are poorly constructed, and have simply been running rampant on the server. Who’s Online plugins make database hits for each request made to the server, this counts for the same visitor refreshing the same page, viewing images, as well as any CSS, Javascript, external php files, pretty much everything loaded in association with your site, so with one page load, the Who’s Online plugin can log up to a thousand database hits easily, if there are lots of assets involved, and when we talk more than one visitor at the same time, the whole mess can get out of hand on an exponential level. With this type of abuse, any Shared Host provider would shut down an offending site immediately to prevent !
 outages for the other customers on the same server, as well as any potential damage caused in the process. Our Term of Service are extremely verbose and clear regarding our right to terminate, suspend, deactivate service without notice. We’ve discussed these problems with your account twice before, on the 24th of November and the 21st of December, so you’ve been notified of problems with your database for sometime now. So, here’s where we sit, you’re going to need to remove those Who’s Online plugins, utilize the cache plugins to their fullest extent and we can reinstate the account. Please understand, we do not enjoy suspending accounts, there are many other things to be done, but so long as there exists performance problems, we must seek and remove those sources at all costs, even if it means deactivating an account responsible.

Well, well, well, a proper reply at last. Although Jonathan has carried on with the “blame the customer” approach. Despite the exhortations that I was told, I believed that we had resolved the problems, so treating this as a deliberate act is outrageous. And, again, piss-poor customer service. The resort to the TOS just doesn’t wash. Every company will have terms of service that give them a get out in the event of things going horribly wrong. They are, however, a tool of last resort, not first. Not if you want to stay in business that is. TOS that are used in this manner on what appears to be a fairly regular basis is no excuse for not speaking to your customers and attempting to resolve problems amicably. Had they done so, they would have kept me as a client. As it is, they’ve lost me as a client. They might not be too bothered by this, but they have also lost potential clients who read this and choose not to use Bluehost as a consequence. Anyone who thinks that there is no such thing as bad publicity is wrong.

My response to Jonathan:

Well, finally - a sensible answer to a straightforward question. I asked right at the beginning what was causing the problem; it should not have taken this long to get a straight answer.

As for abuse; this is not abuse - abuse is deliberate. At no time have I acted deliberately and I object vigorously to the inference that I have. On each occasion that I spoke to your support staff, I followed their instructions to the letter. The problem here is not me - it is your company’s inability to identify the problem accurately in the first instance and advise me accordingly. It would have been a simple matter to switch off the offending plugin. And, it is one thing to disable a misbehaving blog, but to lock up the whole account including emails is wholly unacceptable.

Nor, for that matter am I interested in your terms of service as an excuse - they merely provide wriggle room. What I expect is decent customer service and that involves communicating with the customer, providing accurate information. Switching off without notice is a deplorable practice. Had you simply advised me accurately in the first place what the problem was, this could have been resolved amicably. On the previous occasions I was none the wiser - so expecting me to “do something” is unrealistic. I believed, having followed your instructions, that the problem was solved. So, no, I didn’t know that there was still a problem. Like I said before, I don’t read minds.

As it is, I’ve re-hosted the site elsewhere - I want nothing more to do with your company.

It is worth bearing in mind that a satisfied customer might pass on their experience, a dissatisfied one will, most definitely - on average eight to sixteen people. If I treated my clients as your company has treated me, I would be out of business in pretty short order. You really do need to rethink how you deal with your customers. A quick Google confirms that I am not alone here.

All that remains is for you to cancel the account and refund the period of time that I have paid for and been denied.

We will see, eh?

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Another update:

To his credit, Jonathan has responded:

Dear customer,
 I apologize for the lack of explicit communication regarding the initial issue, had this issue been placed in my view a tad sooner we likely could have resolved this issue with little problem. I am forwarding this to our Billing Department so they can put together your refund. I wish you the best of luck in your future ventures and wish you an exquisite new year.
Thanks,

He is right – it probably would have. Too late now. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Via The Englishman Melanie McDonagh writes in the Times about shopping on Christmas Day (she doesn’t approve):

The internet is at any time of the year a way of not engaging with the people under our noses. To do it at Christmas is a kind of sacrilege.

And if I hear anyone say that it’s a matter of individual choice, that no one is forcing anyone to shop online, I’ll push their heads into a bowl of punch and hold it down for a very long time. If half the world is doing its online bargain chasing when they might be quarrelling with the in-laws, getting drunk, overcooking the turkey or stabbing themselves with scissors in an effort to open packaging, it has an effect on everyone.

But it is a matter of individual choice. Those of us who do not celebrate Christmas are under no obligation to go along with the rest of you and I do not regard it as sacrilege. What I do regard as sacrilege is a self-righteous journalist telling me what I should or should not do. Christmas is just a quasi-Christian festival that has long since become hijacked by the commercial world, bearing no resemblance to its pagan origins. The cosy Dickensian ideal (if it ever existed) is no more and hasn’t been for as long as I can remember. If you want to stay in and celebrate it in your own way, all well and good. If I don’t want to join in, then that’s my business – a matter of personal, individual choice and if I decide to do a little online shopping, then it harms no one and it is, indeed, a matter of individual choice. I am not forcing Melanie McDonagh to do likewise; she can switch off her computer after all.

What is it about politicians, and now hectoring, lecturing journalists, who think that their ideas and beliefs should be forced upon the rest of us?

Now that I’ve arrived in France, a new greenhouse is an early priority – there are cacti everywhere that need a permanent home and we need somewhere to bring the spring seeds on for the summer crop. I was planning to go onto the Internet and buy one this week – I’ve found a site that delivers for free – I’ll wait until the 25^th, I think, and buy it then.