Back in the last century the IRA, a small militant republican movement from Northern Ireland undertook a bombing campaign in London. As I say, they were a small organisation with scant resources but even so they managed to carry out a large number of spectacular and disruptive attacks while killing relatively few people. Judging by the very informative timeline of London bombings over at NPR there were 29 attacks between 1971 and 2001, an average of about one a year, causing millions of pounds worth of damage and huge disruption but only murdering 27 people in the process.
In this century we have Al-Qaeda who, we are told, are a global ‘terror network’ with access to unlimited funding, training and equipment. We are shown videos of masked men in secret training camps doing karate chops in balaclava helmets and clambering under barbed wire dressed as Rambo. They aren’t ‘nice’ like the IRA, they don’t give warnings. They have learned to make ‘Improvised Explosive Devices’ in Iraq, they defeated the Russians in Afghanistan but now the three countries they hate the most in the world are Israel, the US and Britain. Surely we are doomed.
They have had their successes: In the US in 2001, in Spain in 2004 and in London in 2005 but their failures have been so useless and embarrassing. The shoe bomber, the castor oil poisoners, the chapati flour and hair dye bombers and now the Camping Gaz and petrol drive-by bombings. It’s like being attacked by ten year olds from a rough estate who’ve got their hands on The Anarchist Cookbook. We shouldn’t raise the threat alert to maximum, we should ignore them, like spam or graffiti. They’re hopeless, ignorant, sexually frustrated losers who think that if they nick an SUV and burn it out in Glasgow airport instead of in some car park somewhere they’ll get more attention and unfortunately they’re right. What they’re not is members of some shadowy international ‘terrorist’ organisation. No way.
Every now and then I hear people saying that they’re scared to cycle in London. There’s no reason to be scared, it’s easy if you follow these simple tips.
- Car drivers may seem to be scum but that’s because you’re thinking of them as people. When a person gets behind a steering wheel they stop being human so don’t act all surprised or angry when they behave like a moron. It’s your job to anticipate and prevent their stupid behaviour. Don’t bother shouting or getting all het up, they will never improve. Just accept them for what they are.
- Wear an iPod. If you’re using the standard ear buds they won’t block out enough road noise to make things any more dangerous but they will discourage other road users from talking/shouting at you because they will think that you can’t hear them. Music will also make your ride a great deal more enjoyable.
- Stop at every red light. As a good middle class man/woman it’s your responsibility to set a good example to those people who may not properly understand the rules of the road. People who jump the lights deserve to be run over.
- Keep at least a metre of space to your left. Force cars to make a positive decision to over-take you otherwise they’ll just try and squeeze past. If a car does get too close to you then ride further out in the road otherwise it will just happen again.
- Try not to let busses get in front of you, they’ll just leave you no room at the next junction.
- Be cool, you’re the winner, you don’t have anything to prove.
Is there a name for this? I’m always leaving my laptop lying around and it seems like someone has ripped a mix CD into my iTunes library without me even noticing. It’s called “Dark Days of Disco” and I’m liking it but even so… I mean… really, it’s a bit much isn’t it? I feel a bit like Belmarsh or whatever his name was, the fuddled old headmaster, and speaking of which, where the hell have all my Peake books gone from the library? It’s a bit bloody much, it really is, I mean…
When I decided to move my sites to a US based web host I felt a little guilty and slightly apprehensive. With so many friends working in new media I wanted to shop locally but there was simply no comparable product available at anything near the same price. Then there was the support issue. People warned me that it might be difficult getting help when I was trying to solve problems with people five thousand miles away on an eight hour time difference.
The web host I chose, I won’t mention their name for reasons I’ll explain later, has been great for the last nine months. Their servers have been up all the time and extremely fast, mail delivery has been virtually instant and the features they offer have remained far in advance of what my local-shopping friends have access to. Today, though, I suddenly faced my moment of truth. A series of interconnected programs I’ve been testing for the last couple of months suddenly stopped working. An hour of checking and I determined that the problem lay with a change made by the web host. I was pretty cross and immediately raised a ticket on their customer service system. Four minutes later I got a reply.
Jon,
This is a configuration issue our developers have been tweaking since Wednesday. A new exploit was discovered and the security had to be tightened.
The issue here is that the content of your upload was rejected. The .mp3 was flagged and as a result the 403 was issued. I must send this to our developers so that they can adjust the rules.
I was extremely impressed, really amazed. Now another email has arrived, just under five hours after I told them about the problem.
Jon,
We have permanently corrected the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you.
And he’s right (although can any problem really be permanently solved?) everything is working fine again. Amazing, and this is on a Saturday, mind you. Admittedly this was their mistake but even so, do you think I would have had this experience with a British company? Please, if I’m being unfair tell me. I’d love to hear about any amazing customer service anyone has had from a British company lately because I’ve got to tell you, it’s starting to depress me.
And why don’t I want to tell you their name? Because I’m worried that if everyone starts using them they might get overburdened, maybe the servers will slow down, maybe you’ll all be demanding customers who can’t track down your own problems. Resources could be wasted, motivation might be reduced, things could still go wrong, so no, I’m not telling. Wild horses and hemp rope won’t drag it out of me.
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