Terrorism and a Critical Threat Level

Pretty much everyone will remember the events on Monday 22nd May 2017 at the Manchester Arena at the end of an Ariana Grande concert. A suicide bomber setting off an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), killing himself and at least 22 innocent victims, many of whom were children, and that's not including the many injured.

These kind of attacks seem to be a theme over the last few years, mainly thanks to radicalised extremists from groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. It's hard to get away from the fact that these groups claim to be Muslim and follow the teachings of the Quran. I'll openly admit, I don't know too much about Islam or the Quran, as an Atheist, I've never been interested in becoming a Muslim or joining any other religion. But from what I've been told by Muslims who I have worked with in the past, these people can never be considered true Muslim's despite their claims, explaining about how killing others and themselves is against what the Quran text says. I think I'm correct in saying that the same could be said about any other religion.

I spent the whole of yesterday pretty numb to what happened. These terrorist attacks are so regular, they are almost becoming a way of life, something that should be expected and not shocked or surprised about. This morning I genuinely felt angry with myself for feeling like that. But I'm not the only person I'm angry at, I'm angry at the attackers for committing these atrocities, I'm angry that they are using religion to justify what they are doing, and I'm angry at people who are getting drawn into those justifications and having a go at all Muslims because a small minority people are using their religion to justify attacking and killing innocent people.

Another admission that I want to make is that I hate organised religion, whether it be Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other religion, something which has led me to being an Atheist. But despite my hatred of religion I choose not to hate individuals who are religious, because many of them are genuinely nice people, or at least most of the ones I've met are. I'll also respect other people's beliefs as everyone has the right to choose to believe whatever they want to believe.

What I won't respect though, is people who believe an entire religion or group of people are to blame for the actions of a small group of people claiming to be members of that religion or group of people, because whatever these people claim, they do NOT belong to that religion or group of people! I've seen loads of people on Facebook yesterday having a go about Muslims as a whole, when true Muslims openly condemn the terrorist attacks done in their religion's name. On Monday night there were Muslims (among people with other religious beliefs) who helped the victims out, from by-standers to paramedics, and from taxi drivers offering free rides away from the scene to doctors and nurses at local hospitals. With this in mind I am angry at people who condemn everyone from one religion because of the acts of terrorists, who don't truly belong to any religion could come from any walk of life.

This has happened, but it's how we react that defines us as a people. The UK government has decided to upgrade the terror threat to it's highest level - CRITICAL. Critical basically means that a terror threat is imminent, and it's hard to argue with the government's reasoning behind putting the terror threat to this level, with all the terrorist attacks that have happened over the last few years, not only in the UK, but across the globe. It means that the Army will be helping the UK's police forces and more armed police will be visible on the streets until the terror threat level is downgraded again.

Even as an ordinary civilian be more vigilant, be aware when you're in public, don't panic if you seen the Army or armed police on the streets. If you see anything suspicious, that you think might be to do with a terrorist threat, then don't hesitate, please contact the police straight away on 0800 789 321. 

RIP to all those who have lost their lives on Monday and every other terrorist attack, my sincere condolences to your families. Hope for a speedy recovery to all injured people.

Open Letter to Mobile Phone Operators and Shopping Centre Owners

I want to write a blog or an open letter directed at mobile phone operators and shopping centre owners with regards to mobile phone reception in shopping centres. This blog or open letter isn't directed at any one particular company or mobile phone operator, but relates to a common problem in regards to lack of mobile phone reception within the buildings and what could be done to remedy the situation.

These days, I live near Coventry, so quite often go into Coventry City Centre and go into their West Orchards Shopping Centre. While inside the shopping centre my mobile phone reception isn't very good and quite often non-existent, having to rely on WiFi within the centre to gain Internet access is the least of my worries sometimes. I've never needed to make or receive a phone call or important text message while in there, it's a concern of mine if in an emergency, I needed to.

My latest annoyance with the lack of reception in West Orchards was on Saturday afternoon when my girlfriend and I were attempting to pay for some food we were buying from the Jacket Potato & Pie outlet in the Food Court. This annoyance wasn't with my lack of reception, but with the lack of reception encountered by the vendor, who was using a Chip n Pin terminal which connected to the bank via a mobile phone connection. You could argue, "why weren't they using a wired Chip n Pin terminal?" I would assume it was because of their IT set up wasn't advanced enough to do so, I would guess the vendor of the unit isn't part of a chain or big company, so rely on getting equipment as financially efficient as they can.

Ordinarily, having a wireless Chip n Pin terminal wouldn't be a problem, as the outlet would be located somewhere that had a reliable mobile phone signal, so could connect every time someone pays by card. I don't know what mobile phone network the terminals use, maybe it's a different operator depending on who the shop/restaurant/food outlet goes to.

On Saturday, I Tweeted all of the main mobile phone operators in the UK, Vodafone, O2, EE and Three, to see if I could get some sort of explanation as to why, in this day and age, we still have problems with mobile phone reception in shopping centres. I didn't tweet any of the others, as they piggyback on the aforementioned networks, so should get as good (or bad) reception as the network they piggyback on. West Orchards isn't the only shopping centre to have issues, Lakeside in Thurrock is also bad for the issue too.

From my understanding on how mobile phones work, they use forms of radio signal between masts and the mobile devices. Masts are generally outdoors, either on top of buildings or at the top of pylon style stands. Using this method, steel used in structures can interfere with radio signals getting into the structure. I would imagine that most shopping centres being multi-storey (West Orchards, being 4 or 5 storeys to allow access to its shops and multi-story car park and Lakeside being 3 storey) would use a lot of steel to support the building. That would probably pretty much explain why the issue exists in most shopping centres.

However, I am also aware of technology that exists that could provide better signal within shopping centres. Internal antennas. Vodafone uses them at the building where I work and they are wall mounted and not much bigger than two full size tower PC units. So why don't mobile phone operators deploy these in shopping centres? Yes, I know it would cost them money, but they get enough money from their customers to cover this and I'm pretty sure they could get agreement from the shopping centre owners if it temps a higher footfall into the shopping centre, more people using their shops and keeping the shops in business and therefore continued rent payments and shops not closing because they don't get enough custom to warrant staying open.

So come on people, please get it sorted! Would help a lot of people, and vendors using mobile Chip n Pin terminals.

2016: A Year In Review, The Year To Forget?

So 2016? That was a year, wasn't it? A year that the powers that be decided it was a good idea to add extra time to, with an extra day at the end of February, and an extra second at the end of New Years Eve, but is it a year that anyone wanted more time on?

Many people probably experienced ups and downs in their personal lives, but sadly the Grim Reaper had a bit of a bonanza in 2016, taking away a lot of beloved celebrities and people from our personal lives too, but we'll get to that later. First we'll get onto the positives.

Positives For Me

On New Years Eve, I celebrate having officially been with my girlfriend for 5 (yes five) whole years. Quite an impressive achievement for me as my previous relationship only lasted for 4 years (well just over, but who's counting?) and that was more an achievement of not wanting to be alone than anything else. My relationship with Fliss may have had it's ups and downs as any relationship would, but way more ups and we go into 2017 stronger than ever. Great thing with my relationship with Fliss is that we actually want to be with each other and I love her more than I could ever tell her.

Our George has had a good year, generally, and has now been doing Kuk Sool Won for just over a year and got his deputy blue belt, which Fliss & I are epically proud of. He focuses on that more than a lot of other things and has become a really good martial artist, so big thanks to his teacher Dave & everyone at his classes.

Fliss & I went to ComicCon in March, which was a great experience and would definitely go again (it was our first time). We got to meet Danny John Jules, Robert Llewellyn, the cast and director of Pandorica and Paul Amos (whom Fliss went all fan girl on, lol) Got my pictures taken in the Delorean from Back to the Future, and Bumblebee & Barricade from Transformers. We'll definitely be taking George at some point, possibly even Cosplay too.

I took Fliss and George to their first music festival in June. We went to Download in Donington and while it was rather wet & muddy for the majority of the weekend, we still had a great time. George did suffer a little on the Friday night thanks to a couple of panic attacks, which may have been lack of festival experience and the fact he had a couple of mosh pits open up around him, unfortunately as I'd got separated from George & Fliss, so I wasn't on hand to help, but Fliss and a kind guy from Malta managed to calm him down and get him out of harms way. On the whole we all enjoyed the weekend, we made a few friends with the people who were camped around us and a handful of other people, and we met up with our mate Kerry and bumped into her mate Luke, which was good too.

With my dad and brothers, I went to the World War 1 memorial in Thiepval, France. My Great-Grandad was killed during the Battle of the Somme, and that's where he's been remembered. It was a great experience to go there to see the memorial and remember my great-grandad's sacrifice. It turned into a good day out with the male members of my family to mark 100 years since his death to remember the others who lost their lives along side my great-grandad.

Can't talk about 2016 without talking about Slimming World. Fliss, George and I started Slimming World back in January and doing the plan, I managed to get to my target by October, having lost a total of 7 stone 3 pounds. I did have a few gains, mainly thanks to people baking cakes, biscuits and things, but I don't feel in any way guilty as there was no time frame on when I got to target. Fliss and George have lost a good amount of weight too. We've all put on weight in December, as we've been over indulging left, right and centre, but we're all lighter than what we were this time last year, so a big win for all of us.

We all had a good Christmas, getting pressies that we wanted and some we didn't ask for but equally appreciative of. Kerry did ask me yesterday (30th December) if I had a favourite and at the time I wasn't sure when she asked, but I think it's got to be the goth coat that Fliss got for me, it was something I didn't ask for, so it was unexpected, but I really like it and when I tried it on, it really suits me (well I think it does), it makes me feel a bit like David Draiman (from Disturbed).

My brother Matt proposed to his girlfriend Lucy. She said yes, not sure if she knows what she's let herself in for, but it was a yes, nevertheless. Date & location have been booked for 2018 and I've been asked to be an Usher, which should be interesting, but kinda fun at the same time.

I'm sure Fliss will remind me of other positives, and I'll add them as she reminds me, so watch this space for updates.

Negatives

For me, personally there's not been too many negatives, the positives outweigh the negatives, which is never a bad thing. The main negatives for me are a few celebrity deaths and the death of a friend and former colleague.

I don't normally get too bothered about celebrity deaths but this year, there have been quite a few, more than I've ever really noticed before and some people who I've looked up to over the years, which include the following people:
David Bowie
Alan Rickman
Terry Wogan
George Kennedy
Frank Kelly
Paul Daniels
Ronnie Corbett
Erik Bauersfeld
Victoria Wood
Muhammad Ali
Anton Yelchin
Caroline Aherne
Kenny Baker
Gene Wilder
Robert Vaughn
Andrew Sachs
Peter Vaughan
Rick Parfitt
George Michael
Carrie Fisher
Debbie Reynolds

May you all rest in peace.

The death that affected me more than I thought it would was the death of my friend Nikki Willis, who sadly unexpectedly lost her life at the beginning of December. I worked with her while I worked at M&S in Chelmsford, we always got on really well, better than a lot of the staff who worked there. Always remember Nikki being really indecisive when it came to her choosing what food to have on her break and asking for my advice, quite often, Nikki would have a cheeky smile on face and generally in a really cheerful mood. She was also the first person to comfort me on the day my nan passed away, as I was at work when I found out, even offering to ger her mum, Michelle, to let me go home, but she kept quiet about it when I asked her not to mention anything. Nikki made sure I was alright until the end of my shift. While I might not have seen her since I left M&S, she'll be sorely missed.

Rest in peace Shorty!

Let's all hope 2017 is a good year with lots more positives and hope everyone has a good year.

The Threat of Nuclear War - The Cold War Is Far From Over

As everyone knows the world as we know it isn't quite right in the head, is it? Ever since nuclear weapons were created during World War II and used by the American's against the Japanese which ended the war, countries have stock piled nuclear weapons as a deterrent to other countries in an attempt to make sure that nuclear strikes don't happen against them. Bring on the Cold War between the former USSR and Allied Countries with both sides not striking against each other through fear of a retaliation strike, no one wants their country to be irradiated, do they? Or so you'd think.

At the end of 1991, when the USSR collapsed, the Cold War was brought to an end and seemingly the threat of nuclear strikes was over. America was left as the worlds only "Super Power" and Russia along with the countries it used to rule were no longer considered to be a Super Power as each country begun to rule itself.

Everyone has seen what nuclear radiation both at the time of the explosion and fallout after the event can do to geographical areas, human life and wildlife, just look at the only two cities nuclear weapons have been used against, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and you can also look at nuclear power station meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The effects of nuclear radiation can be catastrophic, the area around Chernobyl and Pripyat cannot be inhabited for several thousand years, people are dying from radiation related cancer and children have been born with radiation related defects from people who were affected by the radiation.

Even though the Cold War is (apparently) long over, no one has got rid of their nuclear weapons. The following countries have got them:

USA: 6,970 in total / 1,750 active

Russia: 7,300 / 1,790

UK: 215 / 150

France: 300 / 290

China: 260 / N.A.

India: 110-120 / N.A.

Pakistan: 120-130 / N.A.

North Korea: less than 10 / N.A.

Israel: estimated 60-400 / N.A. (undeclared)

It strikes me that with all of these nuclear weapons, especially with over 3,000 active and that's just counting the active weapons that America & Russia have got, so you can understand why I personally believe the Cold War never actually ended.

Relations between Russia and most of the world have been getting more and more tense lately, most NATO countries have never fully trusted Russia and Russia have never really trusted NATO countries, which is probably why America and Russia have kept so many weapons active. Russia and China have been getting somewhat cosy, and while it's not known how many of their weapons that China have active, you can be assured that Russia will protect their new friends if none of the weapons are actually active. Then take North Korea, while it's known they have a handful of weapons, it's thought that they don't have the capability to launch any and if they can, it's thought they won't get far, but can we actually trust Kim Jong Un? He's a bit crazy, just like his dad, Kim Jong Il, and I believe he'd be willing to use any nuclear weapons he has, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has more than is claimed.

I don't know about other countries, but after the official end of the Cold War, the UK seemingly stopped using their nuclear bunkers and their ROTOR communications network, the bunkers were sold off, including the one that the government would have used at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex. I've been around the bunker at Kelvedon Hatch and a lot of the equipment is rather outdated, even for the 80s and 90s. If I was a government adviser, I wouldn't have decommissioned the bunkers unless the government had other bunkers at the ready with more modern equipment, it would make sense, especially if the enemy had found out where the other bunkers were before the official end of the Cold War, and with so many weapons still active on both sides.

Everyone has been pre-occupied with the latest terrorist incidents being lead by ISIS and previously from Al Queda, people have been shunning my suggesting of a nuclear war, but recently America have moved weapons from their base in Turkey to a base in Romania. It's said to be a move because of increased tensions between America and Turkey, but the base in Romania is 500 miles closer to Moscow and further away from ISIS. With the terrorist threats from them, nobody wants them to get their hands on nuclear weapons, they're even more crazy than Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, and while I've said about people being pre-occupied with ISIS, I don't want to suggest that the threat from ISIS is any less real, they do present a very real threat, so it's easy to just concentrate on that.

With so many active weapons, a nuclear war is a very real threat, the total lack of trust adds to this threat, so please do not dismiss it as me being overly worried, don't tell me that I should wear a tin foil hat, the Cold War isn't over. Nuclear War will annihilate the human race and destroy the Earth as we know it.

Bunkers at the ready everyone.

Download Festival 2016 - Muddy BUT Epic!

LET ME HEAR YOU SCREAM, DONINGTON!!!!

Well, what an epic weekend that was!! Many words could be used to describe how I feel about having been to my first festival for ten years, given the fact that during the ten years up to and including Download 2006, I'd been to 8 festivals: Madstock 96, V98, V99, V2000, V2001, Reading 2003, Download 2005 & Download 2006. Not to mention numerous stand alone gigs.

Thanks to coming into some money just before Christmas, my girlfriend (Fliss) and I decided to book tickets to this year's Download Festival, buying tickets for ourselves and Fliss's son (my step-son) George and announce to him that we've got him a ticket for his main Christmas present. That's when the excitement started, you should have seen George's face when he opened and read the card telling him that he'll be going to go to his (and his mum's) first music festival, I've never seen anyone so excited.

We knew a few of the acts that had been announced at the time, including the three headliners, Rammstein, Black Sabbath & Iron Maiden. It was my first time seeing Rammstein & Iron Maiden, so as an overgrown 36 year old child, I was pretty excited too. I loved every moment of the festival and didn't let the bad weather dampen my spirits at all. I also take full blame for the soggy & muddy weather, if I'd kept my thoughts to myself, it might have stayed dry, but I had to go jinx it on my friend, Kerry's status.

So yeah, my fault, sorry guys! But it didn't stop the fun times.

The bands that I went to see included Baby Metal, Killswitch Engage, Korn and Rammstein on Friday, Megadeth, Skindred & Black Sabbath on Saturday, then Shinedown, Disturbed, Nightwish and Iron Maiden on Sunday. That might not sound like a lot, but when you consider we camped, had the whole festival experience and saw bits of other bands too, it was well worth the money paid. Fliss & George went to see Skillet when I was at Killswitch, which they enjoyed before returning to the Lemmy Stage to see the end of Killswitch's set.

Obviously Motorhead were supposed to be at Download, between Killswitch and Korn, but after the sad passing of their lead singer, bassist and total legend, Lemmy, they pulled out of all booked gigs. In their place, the organisers organised a tribute video to be played on the screens. Stood near the front of the crowd, I'll admit, I had tears in my eyes when I was watching it. Lemmy and Motorhead influenced a lot of the bands that I like and it was sad that I never got to see them. Thankfully, the organisers renamed the Main Stage, the Lemmy Stage in his honour, which I think pleased a lot of the festival goers.

I honestly cannot pick a favourite band, I was too busy having a good time with Fliss & George, we met up with my mate Kerry and her mate Luke and made friends with a lot of people in the Gold Camp, around where we'd pitched up, so big thanks to the Katie's, Dave, Jack, Gemma, Josh, Matt, Georgia, Jessica & Warrior and to Kerry & Luke (hope I've not missed anyone out), you were all part of what made our festival a great one (and to everyone else who we bumped into but didn't get their names).

Was hoping to meet up with my mates, Jason & Nick Nack, but we always seemed to miss each other, but it sounded like they had a good festival too.

I had to buy some wellies on the Saturday as my trainers just weren't hacking the muddy conditions, but I have absolutely zero regrets (other than jinxing the weather). Great music, great company, great food from the various food stalls we went to and the cakes that Fliss baked and handed out. I cannot fault anyone or anything. Feel sorry for anyone who didn't have a good time, for whatever reason that might have been for, but I never had any issues, apart from the possible theft of toiletries and George's drinking horn, which just seems weird as we can't imagine why anyone would steal those but nothing else, but we didn't have them when we came home, sadly, so can't really explain it.

I won't end this blog on a negative note though, on the whole, the festival was epic, I think Fliss & George have got the bug for festivals & gigs now, and we're looking forward to seeing Forever Never later on this year. Hope everyone enjoyed themselves as best as they could. Catch the highlights on Sky Arts at 8pm on Saturday 25th & Sunday 26th June. May go again, so if we do, we'll see you all again, stay safe, enjoy yourselves and have fun!

Film Review: Pandorica

My girlfriend and I went to see new film Pandorica last night. You may or may not have heard of Pandorica, just in case you haven't it's a relatively small budget British film, billed as a post apocalyptic "Future Reset", staring Marc Zammit, Jade-Fenix Hobday, Adam Bond, Luke D'Silva, Laura Marie Howard and Bentley Kalu. The film was directed by Tom Paton, who's experience in directing has been mostly with music videos, but he decided to extend his talent to feature films.

Filmed primarily in Billericay in Essex, with additional scenes filmed in the Lake District, British actors, British director and British crew, this film is a truly independent British film. One of the refreshing parts of the film, trying not to give too much away, was the fact there was a very strong female lead character, which is lacking in a lot of high budget Hollywood made films, a female character that doesn't rely on a strong male character or romance in one way or another is a great feature of the film. The fact that the actresses involved in the film aren't experienced in acting, this being their first acting roles, but did a fantastic job portraying their characters.

Set in the future when reliance on technology has ended, remote civilisations survived and returned to simpler ways, in one tribe, three young adults were chosen to take the trial to become the next leader of the tribe, under the supervision of the currently leader, only one will leave the forest as the leader. In a way the film has a Hunger Games meets Vikings feel to it, Tom did a great job in directing the small group of actors on a small budget and on a short time scale. The actors themselves also did a great job, bringing the less advanced future to life. The cinematography of the film was great too, brilliant close action shots, amazing aerial shots and medium distance shots brought the atmosphere of a much bigger budget movie. Interest never waned either, the script (written by director, Tom) kept the viewer interested and always wanting to know what was going to happen next, which can happen on some movies.

Seeing the credits at the end, it was clear that not too many people were involved in the production of the movie. If you bother to stay to the end of the credits, you'll notice on Hollywood produced movies, the list of crew is seemingly never ending, with large groups of people responsible for each part of the movie, whether it be filming, music, special effects, location staff, etc, but with Pandorica, there was probably less people involved in the production of the whole movie than just one aspect of a Hollywood movie, proving you don't need millions of pounds budgets and hundreds (or thousands) of people involved to produce a good quality movie, which keeps you interested from start to finish. So a very big well done to all the cast and crew of the film.

The film is definitely worth the watch and definitely worth the money paid to go to see at the cinema and buy on DVD or Blu-Ray. I will admit it was a slightly surreal experience watching a film with a proportion of the cast and crew in the cinema, watching it with you, who stayed for a Q&A at the end of the movie. If you want to pre-order the DVD or Blu-Ray, go to: https://thefilmlabel.myshopify.com/ watch the film online now at Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.pandoricamovie.com/ and go to Twitter and follow: @PandoricaMovie , @TPAKproductions and @zammit_marc. The film listing is also on IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5131914/

A 10 out of 10 rated must see movie.

Product Review: HP Pavilion x2 10-054na Hybrid Tablet

Hi there, I recently purchased a new HP tablet to replace my old Tesco Hudl. I wanted a new tablet because the Hudl was starting to get annoying, apps were crashing and it was very slow, plus I never really got on with the Android operating system.

So, my new tablet had to have an operating system other than Android, so all or most Samsung and Sony tablets were out of the question and not too expensive either, so iPads were out of the question too, although I could have got a refurbished iPad Mini for £179 from Amazon, but it still seemed a lot of money for a refurbed 7 inch tablet and the iPad version of iOS is too similar to the iPhone I have, despite the compatibility novelty. So what were my options? Windows seemed to be the only operating system to go for, but what brand of tablet should I go for. There were plenty of relatively unknown brands to go for, so I was a bit dubious about those. In the end, I looked for known brands, a lot of which offered Android tablets, which I wanted to avoid, and those which offered Windows were generally £200+, so I looked at refurbs, and decided to buy a refurbished HP Pavilion x2 10-054na.

HP have always been a good brand, I've had HP printers for ages and thought it was a good brand to go for. While refurbished, the 10 inch tablet came with a purpose built detachable keyboard which had a built in track pad, which I'm currently using to write this blog, with the keyboard attached, it effectively turns the tablet into a mini laptop. An Intel Atom quad core processor, 2Gb of RAM, 32Gb storage, Bang & Olufson stereo speakers, a full size USB 2 socket, a USB C socket, HDMI out socket, MicroSD socket for expandable storage and the obligatory audio out socket, so it's really well equipped, all for £129. Pre-installed version of Windows was 8.1, but with the currently free upgrades to Windows 10, I upgraded straight away.

Good thing about Windows is that it's the full Home version of Windows that you get on a normal laptop, so you can use and install all your usual Windows compatible programs and apps, which is great but the down side is that when using the tablet in tablet mode, it can be a bit fiddly when using the touch screen, but it's easy enough when using the track pad. There are apps which are easy to use in tablet mode, but full Windows programs are better used with the keyboard in place and the tablet in laptop mode, but are still usable in tablet mode, using the touch screen rather than the trackpad and using the touch screen keyboard.

You can have the keyboard attached backwards and use it as a stand of tuck it in behind the tablet, but it seems a bit heavy as a tablet with the keyboard attached like this, and in laptop mode, it can be a little uncomfortable on your legs if you're used to using a full sized laptop. But in fairness if that bothers you, spend a bit more money and get a full sized laptop instead. Needless to say, as it's a tablet, it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive built in either, but again, if that's something that bothers you, get a laptop, although, you could, if you wanted to, buy an external CD/DVD drive, as it can plug into the USB socket on the side of the tablet.

The general use of Windows seems very seamless so far, the use of the solid state memory as opposed to a hard disk might have something to do with that, I currently have a 32Gb microSD card in the expansion socket, but I have a 128Gb card on order, which I have been told (by HP themselves) will work, so plenty of storage once that's in, playback of YouTube videos seems very good too and loading of videos on the onboard storage or from the microSD is good and the sound quality is good.

Overall, my opinions of this tablet is very good. I am very pleased with my new purchase and should get plenty of use out of this tablet.

Here's a few pictures of it:

London Midland, Coventry Arena and The Half Arsed Advertising Campaign

Many, many people will be used to me complaining about another Train Operating Company (TOC) namely, Abellio Greater Anglia. But now, it's the turn of London Midland. While London Midland's Class 350 trains (4 carriage electric multiple units (EMUs)) are generally clean and tidy, when I've used them, the Class 350 trains can't use the line I want to complain about, as the line in question hasn't been electrified yet. The train generally used for that line is a Class 153 single carriage diesel multiple unit (DMU), occasionally two of them together at weekends.

The line I'm talking about, if you haven't already guessed is the Coventry to Nuneaton line. With stations on it as follows:

Coventry -- Coventry Arena -- Bedworth -- Bermuda Park -- Nuneaton

Coventry is on one branch of the West Coast Mainline and Nuneaton is on another branch of it, both branches are electrified, but the bit of rail in the middle isn't. But I won't keep banging on about that, the reason I am writing this blog post is the fact that Coventry Arena station and Bermuda Park station have recently been opened and the reason Coventry Arena was opened, right between Ricoh Arena and Arena Park Retail Park was to serve those places. But, alas, London Midland turned around and said they couldn't reasonably serve Coventry City FC and Wasps RFC home matches as the single carriage Class 153 they use on the line could only hold around 75 people and they couldn't get their hands on any other trains that could reasonably accommodate the football or rugby fans, so Coventry Arena station would close before and after matches. Kinda defeating the object of opening the station before they've even started. They're excuse was that they didn't have any spare DMU's and if they swapped DMU's around with other services, they'd have to cancel or short form other services.

So after several months and people (mainly me) complaining, London Midland, with the help of Wasps managed to arrange a couple of trial charter services for two Wasps games at the end of February and beginning of March. Great, we thought, sat in wonderment as to how they managed it and where they'd got a train from. Low and behold they got a couple of diesel locos borrowed from a freight train company and a rack of 6 carriages, which looked as though they were Anglia's cast off's, quite possibly the carriages that Abellio Greater Anglia couldn't be bothered with and if Abellio don't want them, you've got to wonder how bad they are.

But not only did they use carriages that might fall apart at any minute, they didn't stop the train at Bedworth or Bermuda Park, so if you were using either of these stations, you had to use train with an inadequate number of seats to get there, or go to Nuneaton or Coventry and get the charter train from there. They also decided to only advertise the charter service on Twitter and on their website, and I'll point out now that not everyone uses Twitter and a lot of people wouldn't have thought to check their website, given this, you'd have thought the boffins at London Midland's head office would have thought to get posters done up to put at stations, telling people about the trial charter services, but no, this idea passed them by. And rather than charging the usual fares, London Midland decided to charge more and offer people a free drink, WHAT!?! Really!?! Do you think people going to and from rugby matches need a free drink?

Combine missing out two of the stations, not advertising the services properly and charging higher fares and giving people free drinks, they didn't get a lot of bums of seats and then decided that carrying on the service wasn't "commercially viable". Yeah, there's a reason for that London Midland, read this blog and you'll find out why. I will grant that Bedworth and Bermuda Park stations can only accommodate 3 or 4 carriages at their platforms, but if they informed passengers, the passengers wanting to use these stations could used which ever carriages were going to be at the platforms, passengers generally aren't stupid, they could figure it out. Guys, if Abellio can figure that one out on their Witham to Braintree line when using 12 carriage trains during rush hour, I'm sure you guys can too (FYI: train station platforms between Witham and Braintree can only accommodate 8 carriages).

And another thing, if you can put ticket machines at Coventry Arena and Bermuda Park, put them in at Bedworth too, not trusting the people of Bedworth to buy tickets before joining the train is mildly insulting. Thanks....

Slimming World: A Lifestyle Not Just A Diet

Hi again, I thought I'd write a blog about Slimming World, something I started at the beginning of the year. I went on a diet in 2008 and managed to lose over 4 stone in weight, starting at 18 stone 3 pounds and ended up getting to 13 stone 7 pounds. Since then after failing to maintain weight and not really knowing how to maintain weight properly, I ended up putting all my weight back on again and more besides.

Back in 2008 I did it by myself, not really having the back up from my ex-girlfriend, who was also trying to lose weight but became very resentful when I was losing weight far more successfully than she was. I won't dwell on her failings as I failed myself as well by putting my weight back on again. Since then I have tried to lose my weight again, but sadly lacked the needed motivation to do so and kept losing some and putting it back on again.

Then at the beginning of 2016, along with my current girlfriend and step son, we started Slimming World. Advertising itself as a lifestyle choice as opposed to a diet, it claimed to work better than other diets. Coming with a whole host of recipe books, they say you can eat as much food as you want as long as it is "Syn Free" and everyone is allowed a certain amount Synned food per day. Women are generally allowed up to 15 Syns per day, men can have upto 20 Syns, Synned food has different amount of Syns depending on how many calories, fat and sugar in them. If you're a Slimming World member, you can download the Slimming World app onto your smartphone and check the Syn value of virtually every item of food to help you work out how much of it you can have, and work out how many Syns you're having each day. You go to a group once a week to get weighed, which costs £4.95 per week, whether you stay for just long enough to get weighed or stay to the group afterwards, so it's worth staying, as the consultant can give you encouragement if you need it and other members help out too. If you stay to the group, the consultant will discuss each member's progress, giving out weekly progress weight loss and total weight loss, but is sensitive enough to never give out your weight to the group (just in case you're embarrassed by it). You'll also get certificates for every half stone you lose, an award for Slimmer of the Week and Slimmer of the Month.

I will admit to being somewhat sceptical to whether or not it would work, but I have been going for 8 weeks, today being the end of the ninth week, so I'll be getting weighed again later. But after last weeks weigh in, I have lost a total of 2 stone 11 pounds, I started off at 20 stone 3 pounds and at my last weigh in, I weighed 17 stone 6 pounds. Which in 8 weeks is amazing, I never expected to lose that much in such a short space of time. I haven't been eating any less than I normally do, the thing is that the recipes for the main meals are balanced in such a way that they taste just as good as their full sugar or full fat versions, but a lot of them are Syn Free, so you can each just as big a portion, or an even bigger portion if you fancy it. Admittedly I have being doing a lot of physical activity at work, but on Slimming World, you don't actually have to, you can eat your Slimming World meals and keep within your Syn limit and still lose weight without exercise.

Thanks to the support I have got from my girlfriend and step son, the Slimming World consultant and other members and all the great friends and family that have given me encouragement on Facebook, I have felt the motivation to continue to do this, the encouragement has really been incredible, just as much as my weight loss to date. So thank you all, so very much.

Before Pictures:

 June 2015

October 2015

Pictures of me now:

See if you can see the difference in me.

Blog All About Me

I don't normally have self indulgent moments, but this blog post is all about me and without trying to induce collective sympathy, this blog serves as a bit of info about me and some of the things I've been through in my 35 years on this Earth.

I was born in 1980 in Guildford, the county city of Surrey and the third of a total of four children my parents had. I was 15 days late, but it meant I was born on the very day Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back was released, a fact, which as a Star Wars fan, I find very cool! Unfortunately, though my entrance into this world wasn't without it's problems, the birth went well, but due to unforeseen issues with the medication my mum was on, resulting in a lack of Folic Acid, I was born with various birth defects, which affected my childhood and meant several doctor and hospital visits throughout.

I'll point out that none of the defects are obvious now as, the only was that was obvious was remedied with three eye operations. Said issue was that I couldn't open my left eye, and finally after the third operation, performed at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London my Mr Collin, I could open and use my left eye. But unfortunately due to the length of time my eye was closed, the sight in my left eye is significantly worse than my right eye.

Other defects included Spina Bifida, which was a problem with my spine and weak hip muscles, which meant I wasn't able to work for a long time after what is normal and issues with weaker muscles around my mouth and jaw, causing issues with speech development. These issues resulted in visits to physio therapy and speech therapy sessions as a child, which thanks to the help I got and sheer determination, meant that I was finally able to walk and talk properly and unaided, and also meant I could do everything a normal able bodied person was able to do. My parents also showed determination, in the resistance from certain doctors who basically suggested that my lack of walking was because I was lazy, suggesting my mum should put me on the pavement with bare legs and crawling on the pavement would encourage me to get up and walk. If anyone reading my blog knows anything about Spina Bifida, they'd know that in most cases, people who suffer from it are wheelchair bound and no amount of physio therapy would help, but that's because they unfortunately suffer from a more sever version of it than I do. Anyone who wants to read up on it, can do so here: http://www.shinecharity.org.uk/spinabifida

In total, I had three eye operations to correct my left eye, when I was three, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed (I was eating chicken & chips the following day), I had an operation to fix my umbilical hernia (I had an outtie belly button) when I was six and when I was 12, I had two teeth removed. The other inpatient visit to a hospital I had was when I had meningitis when I was seven, which not only scared the hell out of me, but my parents and family as well.

Thanks to various issues, including learning difficulties, my parents struggled to get me into a main stream school. They obviously wanted to get me into the same school my sister and older brother were going to. They struggled to do so, but thanks to their determination, they managed it, but it also meant that teaching assistants who were good with special needs children were bought it to help out and did a very good job. Thanks to their help that I had throughout primary school, I was much more prepared for senior school when I went up in 1991. When I got up to senior school, I decided to stand on my own two feet and didn't ever seek out any help, despite still being on a special educational needs statement. And I was allowed an extra 25% time on my GCSE exams, which I didn't take on most of my exams, but did on one or two. I did my GCSE's in 1996, but because I didn't get enough high enough grades to get into the sixth form, I retook 5 GCSE's in 1997, when I did get enough high enough grades, but had already decided to go to college instead. Despite my issues, I've got 11 GCSE's including an A in IT, B in Maths, 4 C's and 5 D's, which I thought was quite good. And I have a National Diploma in Computer Studies.

Since leaving school, I've had three jobs, various positions at Sainsbury's, Security Officer for Carlisle Security (and subsequently Advance Security/Cordant Security thanks to them winning the Tesco contract I was working on at the time) and most recently I am a Personal Shopper at Ocado. All jobs, which while may not be the best jobs in the world, are all jobs that I couldn't do if it wasn't for the fact I've overcome issues I've had as a child.

On a more personal level, I've lived in Surrey until 1982, then lived in Essex until 2006, which is when I finally moved out of my parents house, aged 26, moving to Derbyshire, then thanks to getting in to debt (partly thanks to not being able to say no to my ex), I moved back to Essex in 2011 and then moved to Warwickshire in May this year, moving in with my current girlfriend after finally clearing my debts.

I might not conform to what a lot of people consider to be normal, I have long hair and a large beard (something which my ex hated). I listen to heavy metal music, and some lighter rock music, as you can probably tell from my previous blog post about the bands I've seen and want to see. I have always wanted to be my own person and haven't always been allowed to. It's not that I'm rebelling, I'm way past that, but if you can't be your own person and be happy in your own skin (and hair) then you'll never really be happy. If people don't accept you the way you want to be, then they might not be worth having in your life. Other interests in my life include Formula 1 and motor racing, Sci-Fi including but certainly not limited to Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who. I used to go live action roleplaying (LARPing) which I really should look into getting back into. I have got into trains recently, and not just moaning about them. I've always liked cars, especially American Muscle Cars, although I do love classic and more modern British luxury cars and hot hatches.

Confidence has never been a thing of mine, especially when it comes to members of the opposite sex, I was a bit like Raj from The Big Bang Theory, although my confidence did start growing when I started regularly going out in 2002/2003 which was thanks, in no small part by my mate Jess, who reached out and invited me out to the pub and it all went from there. I've got a lot more female friends now and a lot more male friends for that matter.

I suppose the moral of the story is that if you work hard enough and show enough determination, you can get over almost anything and you can achieve anything. You can never let anyone else define who you are, you won't be you if you let others dictate who you are. I'd also like to give a very big thank you to my family for always supporting me through all the not so good times and for friends who have come along and helped support me and accepting me for who I am and been there for me.

Gigs, Concerts & Other Such Things

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the various concerts, gigs and festivals that I've been to. It's fair to say I've been to a fair few in my 35 years and have enjoyed every last one of them. In saying that there are still bands I'd love to go to see and haven't yet, and it's fair to say that I'm not getting any younger. While I'm not overly old, I'm not in my youth any more either. So at this mid point in my life, I thought I'd make a list of bands/acts I've seen and bands/acts I would like to see. Lets see if I'm not too old to remember all those who I've seen.

1996 - Madstock @ Finsbury Park, London - main band: Madness, supporting acts included Squeeze and Mike Flowers Pops (yeah, I know what you're thinking)

1998 - V98 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Green Day, Robbie Williams, Texas, The Verve, Lightning Seeds, Iggy Pop, Stereophonics.

1999 - V99 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Manic Street Preachers, James Brown, Kula Shaker, Stereophonics, Supergrass, The Levellers.

2000 - V2000 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - went home early on Saturday night as I had a panic attack. Can't remember what bands I saw and which ones I didn't.

2001 - V2001 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Muse, The Charlatons, Foo Fighters, David Grey, Coldplay, Placebo.

2003 - Reading (Only on the Sunday) - acts included Metallica, System of a Down, Sum 41, Primal Scream, Good Charlotte, All American Rejects, Biffy Clyro

2003 - Metallica @ Earls Court, London, supporting act Godsmack

2005 - System of a Down @ Brixton Academy, supporting act Eighties Matchbox B Line Disaster

2005 - Download Festival @ Donnington Park - acts included System of a Down, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Slayer, Nightwish, Killswitch Engage, Papa Roach, Velvet Revolver, Anthrax, Bowling for Soup, Chimara, Megadeth, Apocolyptica, Lamb of God

2006 - Download Festival @ Donnington Park - acts included Metallica, Tool, Deftones, Coheed and Cambria, Soil, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, Trivium, Lordi, Guns N Roses (or should I say a whiney Axl Rose + a few mates) Lacona Coil, Cradle of Filth, Bullet for my Valentine, Eighteen Visions, Bring Me The Horizon.

2009 - Metallica @ Sheffield Arena, supporting acts included: Machine Head & The Sword

2010 - Disturbed @ Capital FM Arena, Nottingham, supported by Papa Roach, Buck Cherry & Halestorm.

2010 - Bullet for my Valentine @ National Indoor Arena, Birmingham, supported by Atreyu & Bring Me The Horizon. (Free ticket, went with a now former friend as his ex had bought him and herself tickets, but they split up before the gig, so he gave me her ticket as she decided not to go)

Other than that, I've seen local gigs by local bands in Romford, Essex and the surrounding area.

I'd love to go see the following bands, but haven't got around to it yet:

Forever Never

InMe

Iron Maiden

Rammstein

Motorhead

Genesis

Pantera (I know this one can't happen :( )

Queen (Another one that won't happen)

AC/DC

Aerosmith

Soundgarden

Audioslave

Fear Factory

The Offspring

Prodigy

Tenacious D

The Who

Weird Al Yankovic

So hopefully soon.....

Cosplayers: Don't Judge Them!

We all have our favourite characters from our favourite TV shows and cartoons, don't we? I know I do. While some of us watch the TV shows or cartoons and sit there imagining, daydreaming if you like, that they are their favourite characters, other people go out and actually dress up as their favourite characters, or even go as far as creating their own non-canon character to dress up as. That's what Cosplayers do, nine times out of ten, these people go to conventions such as Comicon and London Film and Comic Con (LFCC) and meet up with other like minded individuals and there's usually a high proportion of them at these conventions.

Before you go and start judging these people, thinking they're weird, saying they're not normal, etc, just take a minute to think about what you like to enjoy that they might think is weird or not normal. Also take the time to think that the people they are emulating or looking to for inspiration are also dressing up in similar costumes, you never stop to think they're weird, do you? The only major difference between Cosplayers and the actors or actresses they are emulating is that the actors or actresses are getting paid to dress up like that, Cosplayers spend their hard earned cash to purchase costumes, make up, etc that go together to make up the outfit and the look.

It would also be worth noting that a lot of Cosplayers make their own costumes, which are often bespoke to them. Imagine the time and effort it takes to make a bespoke outfit, buying materials and then meticulously cutting each piece to size and either sowing or attaching it to the other pieces. I know one such person, who makes costumes for his wife and himself and it's very talented at what he does. Wait, what's that? A man who's good at sowing? Yes and he's very good at it, he also designs the costumes they wear prior to methodically building and sowing the them to the correct size, making sure they are spot on perfect before they attend conventions and other events they go to. You wouldn't want your wife going out looking like a tramp now, would you?

Cosplayers are no more weird than people who modify their cars, collect china or antiques or model cars or toys, like these other "types" of people, they just like to indulge themselves in what they are interested in. You wouldn't walk past someone walking down the road with an expensive antique and call them a weirdo, would you? Even if you did think their antique was worthless, you wouldn't. Maybe it's because Cosplayers are more obvious and more noticeable, but a lot of them are extremely talented and highly intelligent and imaginative people, just like live action role-players (LARPers) or rein-actors.

Just people someone likes different things to you and doesn't fit in with what is generally considered the 'social norms', it doesn't mean that they are weird, it doesn't mean they are deviant or perverted in any way. Most of them are normal everyday people, who, when they're not in costume, you'd walk past them in the street and not look twice at them. They don't mean any harm to anyone and don't wish any harm to come to others, even those who voice negative comments about them, they just want to go out and have a good time in their own way.

Cosplaying is no different than a football fan going to a football match or out with his/her friends wearing their team's football jersey. Wearing a football jersey or full kit is a kind of Cosplay in itself as you're emulating your favourite player(s), yet it's socially acceptable to do that, so why isn't someone dressed as a Star Wars or Star Trek character, for example, emulating Obi Wan Kenobi or a Klingon?

So please just stop and think before opening your cake hole and casting a potentially highly judgemental and possibly extremely insulting comment on a Cosplayer or Cosplay as a whole.

Thank you for reading.

The Girlfriend's Laptop

Right then, so, I was given the task of speeding up the girlfriend's laptop, which just happens to be a Lenovo G535 with a 1Tb hard drive and preloaded with Windows 8. It had got to the point it was so sluggish it was barely usable.

First port of call was to do a full on system recovery. That failed miserably when I restarted it after the recovery and it didn't boot up at all.

Second port of call was to do a complete re-installation of Windows onto the computer from a disc. And as I needed a Windows 7 disc for my laptop, she had always prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8 and disc from eBay were just as much without a new product key as they were with, I decided to go for that option. Upon receiving the disc through the post, I thought I'd give it a go that night. Big mistake, once it had collected all the preliminary information, it took over an hour to expand just 15% of the installation files. I eventually gave up until tonight. Remember, I had completely formatted the hard drive, I'd even gone to the lengths of wiping the recovery partition and consolidating all the hard drive's partitions.

The third and final port of call. Suspecting that it was possibly a fault with the hard drive, I decided to swap out the laptop's original hard drive with a 250Gb laptop hard drive I had laying around from a previous laptop of mine. (I know what you're thinking, swapping a 1Tb hard drive for one quarter of the size is madness, but remember, at this point, it was just a theory). After performing the transplant, I set to installing Windows 7 again, low and behold, Windows installed without so much of a hiccup, and in much under an hour. In fact, I'm sat here now, typing this blog from the laptop and there is no lag or sluggishness to be seen.

Which kind of proves my theory of a faulty hard drive, or does it? Well while the laptop seems to be working fine at the moment, I'm going to keep booting it up and using it for the next week, before returning it to my girlfriend to make sure of no lag or sluggishness. Not only that, but the laptop's original hard drive, is sat on the side looking all sorry for itself, so tomorrow, I'll put it into my old laptop and see if the laptop's original OS will install on it without any issues, it's Windows XP (most people's favourite version of Windows) what could possibly go wrong? Well, if the hard drive is fried, then it just won't install, or if it does, it'll take a lifetime to install.

Should be fun, watch this space.

The All New Ford Mondeo

The New Mondeo is finally upon us, having been on sale in the US for a while now, it's finally on sale in Europe after some lengthy disputes about moving production from one factory to another.

Today, I went down to my local Ford dealership, who just happened to have a top of the range Mondeo Titanium Diesel estate for me to have a go on. Following on from the Focus's and Fiesta's lead, the new Mondeo has slick lines and that distinctive Ford grille. On the inside it looked very impressive too. Featuring an 8 inch touch screen with Ford's SYNC 2 system, Sat Nav, Bluetooth phone connectivity, voice activation, DAB radio and 2 USB sockets, one of which will charge a large tablet, such as an iPad.

The touch screen shows info about what road you're on, whether your phone is connected, information about the radio station or what music you're listening too and information about the air conditioning (which on the Titanium is dual zone climate controlled air con) by default, but I have been informed this can be changed. A nice touch, although not entirely necessary, you can change the picture on the back ground in a similar way you can on a touch screen phone.

In front of the drivers seat sits a good sized steering wheel with buttons for various commands adorning it, a lot of things can be controlled by these buttons or by voice activation, the model I test drove had cruise control, climate control and a plethora of external sensors to help keep you on the straight and narrow. The dash board was all digital as well, including the speedo and rev counter, and displays all the information the driver needs including next instructions if you have the sat nav on.

A feature I've not seen on Ford's before is the electronic hand brake system. Rather than having a lever next to or behind the gear stick, it has a button you can press to toggle the hand brake on or off, push down to turn it off, pull it up to turn it back on again, it feels a bit like the electric window switches, which is no bad thing.

The car comes in various trim levels including: Style, Zetec, Titanium and Titanium Hybrid. Five door hatchback and estate body styles and the following engine options: 1.5 litre EcoBoost (160PS) and 2.0 litre EcoBoost (240PS) Petrol or 1.6 litre Duratorq Econetic (115PS), 2.0 litre Duratorq (150PS or 180PS) TDCi engines. Or a 2.0 litre Ti-VCT (177PS) on the Hybrid. Of course there is the choice of having a manual or automatic gearboxes, some automatics have F1 style flappy paddles on the steering wheel.

The feel of the drive and the driving position are both good and once you get behind the wheel, it feels as comfortable to drive as many smaller cars and the handling around bends is good. The damping out of various bumps along the route was excellent and was better than the Focus I also test drove, although the Focus's handling and damping was still superb. Although I have to say, I test drove the Mondeo first and the Focus seemed quite ordinary in comparison, driving it on the exact same route straight afterwards. That's not to say that the Focus is a bad car, because it's still a very good motor, and an improvement on the previous model.

In my opinion, Ford rivals such as Vauxhall, Renault, Peugeot, etc. are up for a fight with the Mondeo, it's been a long wait for it coming, but is it worth the wait? I think it is, it looks nicer and more refined than a lot of its rivals and owners of previous models of Mondeo are definitely in for a treat if they replace theirs with this new model.

Page 3 Girls + The Sun Newspaper = No More

As rubbish as the paper is, The Sun is Britain's favourite newspaper for some bizarre reason. Every day for the last 40 odd years, the newspaper has featured a topless woman on the third page. They've now decided that they don't want to do that any more, bowing to pressure from various groups who don't like seeing a pair of boobs in their daily newspaper, lord forbid if they ever "read" The Daily Sport.

Some people have said that Page 3 is demeaning and has no place in newspapers in the 21st Century, even though, Page 3 Girls became somewhat of a British institution. As an adult, I did wonder how papers got away with printing pictures mostly naked women in them, given that if the woman in question removed the last one or two garments, the picture would have to be printed in a pornographic magazine, only for the eyes of those over the age of 18. But I just gave it up as a bad fight as it is something that has always happened in my lifetime and The Sun without the standard picture of a topless woman in it just wouldn't feel right.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be that the vast majority of people who object to the publishing of nearly naked women in newspapers are women who feel some how violated that Page 3 is just another way to objectify women. So Page 3, along with full blown pornographic magazines and websites are wrong as they depict naked and nearly naked women in various poses to wet the sexual appetite of men who like looking at the pictures. I would like to call you people hypocrites and point out that there are a lot of people with double standards. While pictures like these might 'objectify' women, there are plenty of magazines and publications that 'objectify' men too. There are countless pornographic magazines with men in similar poses to the women in pornographic magazines featuring women, there are also a lot of calendars that are sold every year with scantily clad men in them, just as there are of calendars featuring scantily clad women. So women are just as guilty as men, when it comes to objectifying the opposite sex, so please don't feed that crap to me. You don't see me complaining that pictures of scantily clad men are demeaning, do you? Does anyone remember the Page 7 Fella or the Page 8 Mate?

Another thing I would like to point out is that a lot of people, men and women alike, go into the modelling industry willingly, because it's what they want to do for a living and it's just as a legitimate choice as becoming a shop assistant, PA, lawyer, police officer, journalist or any other job you may care to mention. It's perfectly acceptable for someone to want to get paid for flaunting what they've got to people who want to look, people are always being told, "if you've got it, flaunt it", well why not get paid for it then? So before you turn around and say, "she's someone's daughter, don't you know", if she's chosen to do that for a living, let her, is it hurting you if she willingly poses for pictures, wearing nothing but a pair of knickers? No, it isn't, is the short answer, no one's asking you to do it and no one is forcing her to do it either. Who are you to judge someone's career choice? Just because her career choice entails her taking her clothes off for a living.

I would like to point out, that I don't actually buy newspapers from any source, as these days, the news articles are generally available online the previous day and most news sites don't request that you pay them a fee to read them and because of that I think newspapers are a massive waste of paper and remnants of past pre-internet news telling, but it keeps someone in a job, so crack on.

Creme Eggs, What is Everyone's Problem!?!

Cadbury's Creme Eggs have always been a popular Easter confection in the UK. For the few people who don't know what they are, they consist of an egg shaped milk chocolate shell, filled with yellow and white coloured fondant.

Prior to Cadbury's being purchased by Kraft Foods, now called Mondelez (which itself was rather controversial to British traditionalists), it was generally accepted that the chocolate used in Creme Eggs was made to the exact same recipe as Cadbury's trade mark milk chocolate, Dairy Milk. But this year there was uproar when it was announced that Cadbury's wasn't making Creme Eggs with Dairy Milk any more, but a different cheaper milk chocolate recipe instead. A month or two after Cadbury's announced they'd stop making their chocolate coins at Christmas, to many people, this was just another nail in the coffin and shouts of "Boycott Cadbury's!!!" or "Boycott the Creme Egg!!!" were heard.

I mean really! You're going to stop eating Creme Eggs or Cadbury's chocolate all together because, as a company, they've decided to make their operation less expensive? Put yourself in their position, if you run a company, you'd want it to be as profitable as possible, wouldn't you? So it stands to reason that if they've been making a particular product at a particular price and they've found a way to make it for less money, why wouldn't they change it to the cheaper way of making it?

Many people might be able to notice the difference in taste between the old Dairy Milk recipe and the new non-Dairy Milk recipe, maybe their taste buds are more finely tuned than those who don't notice. But in grand scheme of things, as the Creme Egg has never been advertised as the Dairy Milk Creme Egg, technically, Cadbury's can use literally any recipe of milk chocolate to make them and it's not going to taste THAT much different.

Some people need to get over themselves, buy them or not, that's your decision, but if complaining because a company has changed the recipe of one of your favourite chocolates isn't overly important in the grand scheme of things.

Welcome to my New Blog

Welcome to my new blog. As many people know I frequently moan about Abellio Greater Anglia and Vodafone, this new blog is much more general and about everything else.

Anything that I feel strongly enough about will get blogged about here. It could be idiot drivers, the weather, stupid decisions, anything that makes me facepalm, TV, literally anything! So please read on and enjoy my blog.

Follow me on Twitter - @RealDC80 and read my other blogs about Abellio Greater Anglia here: http://dcabellioga.blogspot.co.uk/ and Vodafone here: http://dcvodafone.blogspot.co.uk/

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Dan.