My reason in writing today is to commence a series of posts telling you a bit about what I do, and what makes it so good, and today we’re going to start with music.

This evening, I was driving back across Wales with some friends. Usually, I don’t make a resounded effort to dictate the music. When I do have something I want to play, I usually put it on, see peoples reactions, and then let it play a few tracks before letting someone else DJ. But not tonight. With thoughts of ABBA rolling around in my head after playing Rockband there was nothing for it, but to lay the law down and take command of the iPod.

Fortunately I wasn’t alone. I observe that many of my American friends also have a similarly varied and delightful taste of music to myself, and one such friend was in the car tonight. And so we sailed along the 40 minute journey with only the occasional quip coming from those in the back.

My critics usually argue that my music is ‘not cool’, that it’s the stuff that our parents listen too, and therefore must be rubbish, but that’s just not true.

A companion on my mission once said that ‘about 80% of the best music in the world has already been written’, and he’s right. You’ll notice the paths that popular music has taken over the years. Back in the 1930′s you had Cab Calloway and Frank Sinatra, singing to very traditional musical instrumentals. By the 1960′s, blues was coming our way. The Beetles helped rock music was emerge, which developed through in to the 70′s, giving us Pink Floyd, Queen, Meatloaf, Billy Idol and so forth. The 80′s introduced to us the idea of computer synthesized music, the Phil Collins, The Human League and MC Hammer.

But these days, the music that’s popular, I think I could only like if I was taking drugs. Which is probably why so many people do so when they go out partying. The music feels dark and heavy, with every track resembling the last. This drum and base, this dub-step, the party music of today is just boring. When I listen to music, I listen to it because I want to be happy. I want to enjoy the picture that it’s painting in my mind. I love music that has a feel-good factor to it. I like variety, I want something new with every track. And the golden oldies do that for me. They let my mind sail away, they remind me of happy memories, they make happy memories, they feel warm and joyful. Put simply: they make life a fun.

So that’s the reason why I do mostly listen to music that was likely first released on vinyl record. Because I don’t need to be doped up to enjoy it.

You could fit 4 buses through there if you wanted!

I’m sure plenty of you have noticed that today that for pretty much the first time, Wikipedia has gone on strike. What better way to raise awareness over a matter than taking one of the worlds most visited websites, and replacing it with a political message.

And that political message is this: stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). These a bills currently being debated over and voted on in the United States parliament right now. They are measures to try to counter piracy through restricting connection to websites, even those outside the United States, who are violating copyright laws. This would mean that service providers, advertising agencies and so forth would not legally be allowed to be advertising on such websites.

On the surface, we might all look at it and say ‘fine, yes, we need to stop people stealing copyrighted material, it might be nice to be able to watch tv on the internet, but at the end of the day, that does reduce the funding available to make more media.’ Yet here, we lie at the doorstep of a bigger concern.

I live in Britain, a land of red tape and regulation. Where I live in Leeds, it was once possibly to quickly drive to the city centre, however as the years have gone on, more and more restrictions have been applied, in the name of all sorts of ‘good causes’, such as the environment, safety, promoting bus use and so forth, that now it is the traffic laughing stock of the world. A perfectly good 4 car wide road, has now become single track road, with speed limits, speed cameras, traffic islands and bus lanes. Furthermore, alternative routes to the city centre have had similar capacity shrinkage, and with every change, the condition of the road has become lumpier and more broken up. The result is that you will find better maintained highways in the third world.

Now, at one point, roads were key to the economy, making connections between places allowed business and commerce to thrive, which is the foundation for a vibrant economy. And really, they still are the foundation of successful business. No surprise then that business is struggling these days, and with that, especially small businesses.

Now imagine if the same happened not just to the highway, but to the information super-highway.

Nobody intended to ruin Kirkstall Road! The planning office didn’t sit down one morning and say “I know, let’s half the capacity and cut some speed limits and see now much traffic congestion we can make!” But sustained lobbying from organisations (because remember who pays for election campaigns) causes both government leaders and corporations to look after themselves first.

And have Kirkstall Road’s restrictions had any positive impacts? The benefits to lobbying organisations are but a token in comparison to the tens of thousands of litres of fuel wasted sitting in traffic, the lost business and personal/social hours. The frustration and tension built sitting in car after car of traffic. And even so, while taking the green approach and cycling on it, my dad still got run down on it by a van (he was OK).

Back when cars were rickety and unsafe, 30 was deemed an appropriate speed to drive in neighbourhood's.

Can you imagine an internet, where people daren’t upload certain content, for fear that their services might be cut off. The money needed to be spent seeking advice to be sure that content is permitted. The reduced margins that would be made by service providers and advertising agencies. Costs will rise, productivity would fall. Websites, a phenominally practical way for individuals to have as much power as corporations to present information would fail just as small businesses do due to poor infrastructure.

And where could it go from there? What other types of information might then be restricted. Which countries or organisations would want to limit access, speed or number of permitted users to support their own self interests?

Restrictions are a nice idea, but they will never stop the issue, those keen to spread copyrighted media will continue to do so, and will continue to find ways around the system. It begins an expensive game of cat and mouse that the law makers will never win. In the mean time, the only people who will loose out are the law abiding people, to whom the service of the internet is intended for.

Yes, some information is copyrighted, and the profitable use without permission is theft. But they’re not loosing that much really are they? Pirate VHS casettes were going around long before the internet was used for piracy. And that didn’t put the stars out of business. This might be the most liberal thing I’ll ever say, but maybe Ghandi is right on this one. It would be theraputic for them and the rest of us, for many artists to take a pay cut. A glance at the cover of any womens magazine will tell you why.

So that’s it really. Let us save the information super-highway from the squeeky wheel-lobbying evoked red tape that has harmed our highways and other infrastructure. Let us keep it as a 6 lane freeway, not a 20 mph passage with speed bumps.

More information:

Track SOPA http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261

Track PIPA http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-968

Wikipedia’s view on the matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

The Three Red Rings... OF DEATH!

Here is a story, of a young man who had an Xbox 360, which came ill with the so called three red rings of death. He looked on the internet, and all he could find was James Dean’s famous $29.95 repair guide, which was highly optimized among internet search engines. Then, one day, many months later he wen’t on ebay, and found a much cheaper kit, with instructions, which worked perfectly, and they all lived happily ever after.

Yes Mr Dean, oh yes they did! Despite that every search of the internet seems to display phantom blogs singing praises to your name. If I were a socialist I’d say look who’s been a naughty boy, trying to convince all those people that you are doing them a favor, but I’m not one of those. Instead, my purpose here is to tell the world what worked for me, for a fiver.

I just had a look on ebay, and found a handful of different kits to replace the oh so terrible X-clamps. The one I bought had nylon washers included, which are protected from the heat emitted from the GPU and CPU. It cost £5.50, came within three days, and included a step by step photo and video guide with very good detail. Everything James Dean would gladly have your $30 for.

And the best bit is, it worked! After a relatively simple process of removing the old X-clamps, and bolting the CPU and GPU back down, and the so called ‘over heat reflow’ process, and now I have a working Xbox again.

So if you need a repair for the three red rings, this is what worked for me. And I see absolutely no reason to spend much more than a fiver on getting this problem fixed. Get yourself on ebay, find a honorable, decent looking seller, and get closely aquainted with the inside of your Xbox.

And that’s my contribution to the free market economy.

But actually, I enjoyed my holiday, and I want to tell you why…

Our Noble Castle

On a Monday evening, a few weeks ago, I got in my car, and drove down to Pembrokeshire in South Wales, to join my family, on their Caravanning holiday. As I drove, the sky’s darkened, and I arrived to driving rain, coming in from the coast. At 4am the next morning, we were awoken by my younger sister reporting that her bedroom was now full of water.

Now, I had the idea to write about this at the start of the summer, obviously not knowing what the weather actually would be, yet anticipating quite a degree of disappointment. But really, that was the worst of it. Apart from that, I really must be honest, the weather was not at all that terrible.  Yes is was cold, and the sun was only there when it pleased, but the only consequence from the previous nights weather was that the local coastal path turned in to a bog, and even that had fixed itself by the end of that day.

So what is it that made this summer so bad? Was it really so bad?

When I walk through caravan parks, I do wonder what exactly people wanted to get out of their holidays. There’s caravan after caravan, of people, sitting in their deck chairs, with their Sky dish nearby, just being roasted by the sun. Well, there wasn’t this year. But if that is your idea of a holiday, then I’m not surprised that you’re disappointed.

Wading through the frankly not so bad quagmire...

So how did we make the most of the weather? Well on my first day, we walked the coastal path to nearby Tenby, got fish and chips, and came home again. That was it. It took all day, but we had fun doing it, and no amount of cloud and cold was going to stop us, it was foolproof. We had varying degrees of weather throughout the day, sometimes sunny, and sometimes on the verge of raining, but it simply didn’t matter.

Yes, you can actually win prizes for having the best looking cow...

The next day, we went to the Pembroke County Show, which may not sound like the most thrilling concept, yet we had great fun. I should inject at this point that I am not an animal enthusiast. For me, the natural beauty of a cow is when it sits in my frying pan, at the last stage of its journey to my mouth. But it was brilliant watching the dogs doing their little jumps and then getting distracted by spectators eating their lunch. Or looking at the classic car display, or the classic tractors, or the motorbike dare devils. In fact, dispite how frustrating it is seeing horse riders blocking the road, it didn’t even remotely stop me being impressed watching them in their show jumping tournament.

Unfortunately, it was but a short holiday, but for the last day, we visited the Pembertons Chocolate Farm, a local chocolate manufacturer. In the afternoon, we checked out Pembroke Dock, which at one point was a military strong hold; we explored the area around about, seeing the old military buildings and towers.

And that was my summer holiday. It was only three days long, but I’ve spent all summer doing things like that, and have had one of the best summers ever. The simple point I want to make by all this, is that the most filfilling activities do not depend on the weather, that you can have quality, uplifting family fun, in any circumstances. So if you want to have a good holiday, don’t bother going off to Disney Land, or Turkey, or anywhere like that. Go down to some coastal town or other, and go grab from the Tourist Information all the leaflets for those places you’d previously dismissed as boring.

You may still be feeling a little hard done to, that we didn’t get to see Mr Blue sky, but there’s no need to worry. September’s here now, and the sun will be getting back to work along with the rest of us.

[1] Source: The Daily Mail, so yeah, take it as you will.

Ainsley Harriot

Something that I’ve noticed recently, is that an astronomical amount of people are buying Ainsley Harriot branded products. Various soups, and Cous Cous, all with a contemprorary mug shot of the man himself which will make middle class women go weak at the knees. What bothers me is that everybody jumps up for it because looks to be something different, and therefore must be worth more money, and be very classy. After all, Ainsley Harriot is a tv chef, which means he must cook far better than we: the people, right?  And it’s the same with so called “Al fresco” dining. I’m sure somebody in favour of it will tell you that it’s been the standard term for years and years, but I, so far in my life have always known eating outside as exactly that: eating outside. But stick a fancy Italian name on it, and out come the wallets, everybody buys some new fancy wooden patio furnature to be rained on all summer. Boom! Like that…

Despite these reportedly difficult economic times, where money is in short supply, it still doesn’t seem too difficult to seperate people from their money. Which brings me on to petrol. As I see it, what’s been happerning for years now is that the public, (and the government for that matter) have gradually been lead to spend more and more money. Back when I was 8, we replaced our TV, which had been handed down through the family over 20 years. Since it, we’ve had four different televisions. Then there’s all the equipment that breaks after 13 months, and subscriptions to come on top of that. A trip to the cinema costs you a tenner, a satisfactory lengthed Subway sandwitch costs a fiver, and if you’re going to travel anywhere, weather it by in your own car, or by bus, you will also be paying several pounds for the combustion of some type of fuel.

There’s uproar that energy is going up in price by about 20%, and every few weeks, another penny appears on the prices at the petrol station, yet what are people really loosing out on? Seriously, if you stop buying Ainsley Harriot Cous Cous, you can still afford 175 litres of petrol, should the price go up by one penny a litre. The oil companies are trying to squeeze us just like Ainsley is.

So what’s my gripe here? Simple: I don’t buy Ainsley Harriot’s Cous Cous, I have other goals in life, than to live, fooled into thinking that I eat the diet of a celebrity chef. I’m trying to save money for University, and other events in the future, and every penny Mr Shell adds to the price of his wares is a penny less that I can use for the road ahead. They say that price is determined by what people are prepared to pay, which is absolutely true, and unfortunately right now people are prepared to take the easy road.

If I’m not careful this could turn in to a sensational rant about lazyness, greed and socialism, and for that reason I’m going to stop there. But next time you’re in the Supermarket, and Mr Harriots smile tries to tempt you, just think: thats a quid worth being in your life savings, and not his Range Rover.

Facebook, Source: Unknown

We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve been in the que at the supermarket, and there’s an old person in front of us, trying to use the chip and pin machine to pay for their shopping. They put their card in and they type the pin straight away and then think they’ve done it. Then the cashier has to explain that that they need to wait until it’s ready, then push ‘enter’, then type their pin, and then push enter again. Of course, we, the clued up younger generation can manage it fine, because we’ve grown up in this world where everything has a digital display and understand the principle of following instructions from a computer, but to our senior citizens, it’s a totally different ball game. So from that you would say that we, the younger generation, are better and smarter because we understand how these things all work, but is that really so?

There is a distinct difference between the generation of today, and the older generations. There’s even quite a difference between my generation (I’m 21) and that of my dad. Only 2 days ago he was telling me that as he was growing up, kids would go out with their fishing rods, catch a fish, and eat it for dinner. That just doesn’t happen now-a-days. All of our Grandfathers has noble careers like joinery or seafareing and all had great stories to tell. I am yet to meet anyone who’s Grandfather worked in a call centre, and for that reason, I don’t feel inclined to punish them for my wait at the supermarket.

While the great people of Britain now relax, having spent their lives doing all manor of practical and uplifting things, I feel that we, the younger generation, can’t do quite as much. And for this I blame Facebook.

To help me to explain what I am about to tell you, I’m going to tell you about a good friend of mine, who served with me while I was on my mission in Germany. His name is Davis. Now, Davis is probably the most motivated kid I know. He brings fun and excitement to every party. He loves basketball, in addition to many other pass times that could be summed with the phrase ‘getting out and having a life’. And it reflected not just during his leisure time, but also when it came to doing some work. Off he went, no discouragement, no attempts to waste a bit of time before starting work. And if I ever wanted to have a peek in an electronics store, that was not allowed, and for him, you could just see that he wasn’t withering away due to lack of exposure to the internet.

Now though, back to Facebook. Yes, there has been lots of social networks throughout the last 15 years. There was MSN, bebo, Myspace, and so forth, but none of them have really caught on like Facebook has, and none of them have quite the ability to suck away our lives as Facebook does.

What Facebook does is it sits there, in our second tab, and we all loyally check back to it every few minutes to see if someone has written anything, or uploaded anything, or is available to chat. It makes a very passive passtime, where, if you aren’t careful, you will spend hours looking at it and achieving nothing. Three years ago, they were telling us the average user in the UK spends four hours and twenty-three minutes a month on Facebook (Nielson), and that we should worry about that. Now it’s all over our billboards and cereal boxes, and according to some statistics, which I have no problem believing, people spend an average of 22 minutes a day (11 hours a month) on the site.

It stifles creativity, when your thoughts are ‘what shall I do after this? I know, I’ll go on Facebook’, our thoughts are then distracted from thinking of something vaulable and real to do. It suddenly becomes no longer the primary thought to get your house cleaned, or go out for a walk, or read a book, because Facebook is there, and has disguised itself as a quick time filler.

With less fulfilling passtimes, it leads to less satisfaction in life and more materialism, more wanting this and that, stuff usually you can’t fully afford. And, in all honesty, having experienced a bit of that myself, I decided that it was time for me and Facebook to end our relationship.

Now, to clarify, I haven’t left Facebook, I still use it. I have friends across the world, and it is a brilliant means for keeping in contact with them. But I have chosen to stop using chat, and not to have it run in my second tab. And what was the result? One of the most productive weeks since my missionary service in Germany.

It’s been easier to get to bed earlier, and therefore it has been easier to wake up. I found that the quality of my study of the scriptures was improved, it was much easier to concentrate. I got started on a project I’ve been needing to do, but haven’t wanted to start, which was to clear up and get rid of the rust developing on my car. I have also been working on tracing out our family history. On those evenings where I didn’t have a lot to do, I pulled out a book and started reading.

Books are great, they don’t have such a strong pull, and they usually really do improve you academically. They fill you with creative thoughts and inspiration, and bring balance which helps you in other aspects of your life. They also allow time to reflect, to ponder over what is important in life.While we don’t realise it, it is these things that the internet can often rob from us.

The point I want to make here is not that we should all drop Facebook and the internet and live in caves. Everything in moderation is good, it balances our lives, but take it out of moderation, which which Facebook it is very easy to do, and it does become a vice. It really is all about self control. Some of us naturally have more of it than others, but we can all do things that will help us reign over our worldly desires. Our older people didn’t have the internet, and so it was naturally easier for them to find more productive things to do. We do live in a different world to where they lived. One where despite the fact they don’t know how to pay for groceries, they have the last laugh.

Links and Sources

UK Facebook stats March 2011

BBC dot.life – Facebook still in fashion (2008)

The Royal Liver Building, Photo: Jonathan Rawle

The LDS Salt Lake Temple, Photo: ldschurchtemples.com

The Royal Liver building, Photo: Philip B Parker

The Salt Lake Temple 1898

When I first saw the building, it made me think that its design had a lot in common with the Salt Lake Temple, a recognised symbol of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Both buildings are of a traditional Victorian Gothic design, with towers at either end.

The Salt Lake Temple was designed during the 19th Century, by the architect Truman O. Angell, under the direction of the Church’s then President and Prophet Brigham Young. Truman Angell was sent to Europe to study the works of the architects and builders over previous centuries. The groundbreaking ceremony of the Salt Lake Temple took place on 14th February 1853, and it was completed on 6th April 1893.

The Royal Liver building was the purpose built home of the Royal Liver Assurance Group, an organisation set up to provide local people with in relation to losing a wage earning relative. Today it still stands proud, “the most potent symbol, that any city in the united kingdom has”[1]. The Royal Liver stands 13 stories tall, whereas the Salt Lake Temple is approximately half of that.

Another similarity between the two buildings is the sculptures that stand at the top of the towers. At the top of the Liver Royal, at either end sculptured are the Liver Birds, an image which has represented the city since the fourteenth century. On the east, and main spire of the Salt Lake Temple stands the statue of Moroni with a trumpet pressed to his lips. Moroni was an ancient prophet, who played a key role in the restoration of the LDS Church during the early 1800′s. The trumpet symbolises the restoration and the preaching to the world of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What I really like here is the similarity between the two buildings, in other words the architectural similarities that are present in both designs. While the Salt Lake Temple was designed first, and while it is every bit possible that it may have been a source of inspiration for the architects of the Royal Liver, I don’t for one minute think it was copied. Both buildings are patterned after a gothic style, and it shows a real ability in the architects to both come up with something new, and keep the tradional, much appreciated and loved styles that bring value and class to all city scapes. It has always been a part of a designers work to seek inspiration for new ideas from the fine masterpieces already present, to develop those designs in to even newer, more spectacular and more impressive constructions.

For the Church especially, it shows how well they have kept in line with fine Eurpoean achitectural principles, and how the construction of a religous building can both be kept symbolic, in-line with the beliefs which that organisation holds, and also a fine masterpiece that people can look at and enjoy being around.

Related Links

BBC News: Liver Building celebrates centenary

Why Mormons build Temples

[1] Historian John Hinchliff, broadcast on BBC News 19/07/11

Images used within this article are property of their respective copyright owners.

In this, the Nanny State of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the kids of today are deprived of valuable experiences that they need to become capable adults. They’re not allowed to jump on a trampoline without paying a professional trainer to ‘oversee’, in case somebody gets hurt, and every school trip is accompanied by a pine tree of paper work, to make sure nobody gets ill from touching a dirty penny on the floor. Any form of practical work is deemed to be too much hassle or too dangerous to do, leaving our youth to do worksheets and watch videos. The problem is that seeing all these things in theory, makes you long to stretch your legs and go out and do something for real.

We’ve all heard the complaint that the youth of today don’t have enough to do, and that all they ever do do is play Grand Theft Auto, so they end up spray-painting their names on benches and mugging people smaller than them. And it’s true, unfortunately. A few months ago, somebody from our local community was doing something he shouldn’t have been in his car, so the Police went and chased him.

The results weren’t pretty, but it doesn’t need to be this way.

While the manufacturers of Playstations would have you believe that the only way to get satisfaction in life is to take a virtual gun, and virtually riddle someone elses face with virtual bullets, I believe that isnt true. No, I think there’s far more satisfaction in going out and doing it with a real gun. Now please don’t be too alarmed at that statement, because you don’t yet know who my enemy will be.

Prepare to be annihilated, Photo: Chris J. Barker

My Weapon, Photo: Chris J. Barker

Even the most devout of our tree hugging brothers will admit that we simply can’t survive without killing plants. If you want to eat carrots or lettucies for example, you have to kill them first, or if you want a nice garden, you’ll have to kill some weeds, or prune a bush. Yes, you can’t be the biggest tree hugger in the world, without killing something.

Weed killing was the name of the game for me this morning, and it was brilliant. I had a little hand gun, and when I encountered a weed, all I had to do was pull the trigger and a little jet of poison would come out and zap it. I soon got quite in to it, discovering that I could either hold down the trigger for automatic fire, or if I just pulled it in short bursts, my ammo would last longer, and I wouldn’t need to reload as much. Better still, I was clearing our territory of all our uninvited visitors, cleaning it all up and making our garden and driveway look more in line with its suburban setting and less like farmer Giles’ dirt tracks. My mum loved it, I loved it, our neigbours loved it. I got to be outside, doing something worthwhile, finding a good use for my time and achieving something to be proud of.

So there we have it, the solution to dealing with rowdy kids with no hobbies is not to teach them all this liberal ‘here’s the facts, you decide for yourself’ nonsense they teach in school. It’s to arm them with a weed killer gun and teach them who the real enemies are, whilst they’re still mould-able enough to learn.

As for me, my patch is clean. My vegetable patch that is!

My vegetable patch that is.

Image: The Daily Express

Albert Einstein once said: ”Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.” I think this is what he meant.

Yesterdays front cover of the Daily Express was sporting the headline that now, even dieting can bring you cancer. We’ve seen in recent years how everything from talking on the phone to playing with your kids could give you cancer, but joking aside, this is just silly. Some survey done across some people found out something, and ‘therefore’ dieters are now at a greater risk of Cancer, all be it not before they’ve bought their Daily Express. Now, I accept, that low fat dieting taken to the extreme is obviously dangerous, but throw in the word ‘cancer’, and heads start turning.

What we’ve seen through recent history, is that if you want to bring about change, writing to your MP and staging a demonstration is probably the least effective way to do it. Look at the strikes of the 70′s. Did the workers all get the higher pay, more holiday and better working conditions they so religously campaigned for? No, they all got fired! Yet if people want to stop the opening of, say, a new factory somewhere, all they have to do is ‘prove’ it could make somebody terminally ill, or that it could kill some one of a kind slug that has nested there for millions of years, or that it might make the landscape look ugly. No, far more effective is to ‘prove’ in some way shape or form, that something, if not acted upon, could cause the PM to loose the next election.

If the teachers really want to keep their pensions in tact, all they have to do is prove that if they have to work till they’re 70, and get less money afterwards, then they’ll have a higher chance of developing cancer later in life.

In my opinion, the problem is, that we have loads of graduate scientists who want to get out and make a name for themselves, and, as with it seems everyone in Britain, find a quick short cut to fame and fortune. But if we’re not careful, we might just find ourselves chasing our tails, in a battle against everything that could be bad for somebody’s health. Science these days isn’t as much about finding out facts, as it is devising sensational theories for other scientists and governments to look through and see which ones will bring the highest revenues in the forthcoming year.

Here’s my solution: the devil makes work for idle scientists, so all we’ve got to do, is give them something to do. I think here, the music industry could teach us a lesson. With Britains 10,000 wannabe celebrities, Simon Cowell came along, put them all against each other, and then financed the winner to have a season of fame, before quietly disappearing from the scene. Let’s do the same with scientists. Let’s take all these freshly graduated scientists, with their theories that they’ll go to any length to publish, and put them against each other in a TV show competition. At the last round, the public can text in their votes, and the revenues from that can be the winnings, and the pay off for the scientist to do mankind a favour and keep his research to himself.

It is said, that it takes consistency in all experiments to corroborate, but not prove, a physical theory. It takes only one valid contrary experiment to disprove a theory. Or at least it did, until last week a scientist in Reading published a report to the contrary.

Jeremy Clarkson Presenting Top Gear, Photo: BBC

And it’s a pattern I go through myself too, as a pretty new blog writer. Sometimes the creative juices just flow, the inspiration comes, and I write an article that I’m genuinely proud of. Other times, I sit, and it feels like nothing comes. I write something, and then look back at it and think ‘Ive just written a right load of rubbish’. I find that when I am writing because I have to, or, in other words, if I am attempting to industrialise the process, the creative juices just dry up. I firmly believe you cannot force humour and witt.

The best ideas that I have had haven’t come while I’ve been sat at a desk, thinking of what to write. They come when I’m out and about, at work, or sitting on the toilet. Such is the nature of these ideas, that you have to seize them while they’re there, scribble as much as possible down on a bit of paper, for compilation later. And I think this is what is happerning to Top Gear.

So what’s the solution? Why am I telling you this? Well it casts understanding on the life of a writer, somneone whos job and career is to use a pen and paper to create material to entertain. We see that those we follow are human too, they’ve not suddenly gone down the pan, but they’ve squeezed the creative orange there and got what it had to give. It also applies in a social context too, we all have ‘off days’, it doesn’t mean that those bubbly amusing personalities are gone for good.

We know that it’s a dog eat dog world out there, and if the quality goes, then so will the ratings, but those writers, those journalists, those authors, deserve their place in history as fine gentlemen who could grab our interest and make us laugh.

Top Gear has been a superb TV show for me, for the last 10 years. I still enjoy it, as do countless others. Right now I may well be speaking against the general audience of BBC 2, (at least at 8pm on a Sunday evening), but I do believe it is no longer on the same plane it once was. Is it because the producers and presenters have lost their touch? Not at all, it’s just that there’s only so many times Hammond can argue with Jeremy and it still be funny.

And you may be looking at me, thinking “that’s all rich coming from you, you with your little WordPress blog of 14 posts”, well, maybe so, but that’s for you to decide.

Related Links:

BBC Top Gear