According to the Observer,

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According to the Observer, feelings of pointlessness and inadequacy hit many MPs within three months of being elected. Which has an odd kind of symmetry, because similar feelings hit most voters up to three months before an election. (OK, it's a cheap shot, but not without a grain of truth.)

Stuff we like

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I had a rant about PDAs some time ago, but if I were in the market for a new one at the moment, I would definitely be tempted by the Visorphone. Nobody surely wants a mobile phone that tries to be a PDA pressing heavily against their ear. However, a PDA that can also act as a phone (and wireless Internet browser) is a much more attractive proposition, providing you can ignore the "full ahead, knob factor nine" associations of wearing a headset.

Coupled with a keyboard and some stable Linux sync software, the Visor would be a mightily attractive gizmo. For a total price approaching that of my PC.

In the meantime, and with a smaller budget in mind, the Audioline Petit is too cool for words, but I'm going to try. One of my colleagues bought two of these recently and they are nifty as hell. The picture doesn't indicate quite how small they actually are; I want one near my PC now. Jacked into the modem, I would be able to chat on the phone while typing this garbage (or more likely, repeatedly ask, "Sorry, what did you say?" while typing, "Hi honey, how are you?"). Providing I wasn't online at the time (if I hate dial-up so much, I'm hardly going to buy a dedicated line for it, am I)?

If it was cordless too - for under fifty quid - I could answer the phone while cooking or washing up. Then I'd have to buy one.

This afternoon I read chapter 2 of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing online and enjoyed it immensely. Even if you're not starry-eyed at the thought of making millions off the Internet, have a look because it is an extremely well written and lively screed. Of course, we have never harboured illusions about the profitability of Big Bubbles. Not after we bought that bridge in London. (They now claim delivery will be next Tuesday!)

My own privat(ised) hell

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Rather as "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others" (Winston Churchill), I am currently trying to decide whether public ownership or private enterprise is the worst method of providing goods and services. Much like communism, it might be argued by radical economists that the reason capitalism fails is because it has yet to be properly tried (to which I say: preferably on a charge of fraud).

For strong evidence that competition often goes horribly wrong, one need only look at the UK telecoms market. In theory, if it is regulated at all, then it is strongly in favour of encouraging competition. In practice, British Telecom - it's good to talk, though not to send data - dominates the residential sector. Frustratingly, they are rather good at what they do: the phone service is reliable, well-maintained and insistently discounted (even if this insistence springs more from the regulator than from BT's largesse). BT Internet, much as I hate filling the coffers of a monopoly, is a responsive, reliable service to which my modem successfully connects at any time other than around 7pm, which is more than can be said for any of the "free" ISPs I once tried.

Unfortunately, in the larger scheme, what they do is Not Very Much. If you want to phone your mum in Somerset once a week off-peak, thank BT for a clear, cheap line that connects first time, every time. If, on the other hand, you want some extra services - such as caller ID, ring back or, in a fit of naked greed, high bandwidth Internet access - you will either pay heavily or not pay at all, because you can't have it. When we're talking about caller ID, a useful service that allows you to detect when your cousin is ringing and thus avoid lifting the receiver, the few quid a month they demand for this simple service that can't cost more than buttons to provide is merely annoying. When you're talking about ADSL - your only hope of escaping metered 33.6K hell - it's fucking rude.

Unfortunately, BT have built up a nice little earner in providing ISDN ("turbomodem") in recent years, and are extremely reluctant to gut it by encouraging people to switch to ADSL, even if (or because) it is unmetered and at least four times faster. They are even more reluctant to heed the call for unbundling of the local loop, allowing their competitors to locate equipment in BT exchanges. So they've responded to these twin threats by:

• Charging a net price of £35 a month for ADSL lines (which translates to £40 a month retail to the end user);
• Dragging their heels over opening up the exchanges and claiming that many have no space left - conveniently, the most popular, profitable ones. Because they've already been filled up with BT's own ADSL equipment.

What this means to me - the consumer who is allegedly the whole raison d'etre for the marketplace - is either fork out or stick with my crappy 33.6K modem. And, thanks for offering, but I'm gonna stick with the modem. Forty quid a month is waaay too much for the pleasure of downloading banner ads and the odd MP3 double-quick. If it comes down to twenty quid, let me know and I may jump onboard the ecommerce revolution promised by Mr Blair.

What competition do BT have for high bandwidth net access? Well, NTL are rolling out cable modem in selected areas (though not yet Manchester). The cost? £40 a month...

Competition, it seems, is emphatically not about giving the customer what they want, regardless of the £240 a year they might be willing to pay. Instead, it results in companies that:

• won't sell you what you want because they think you should want what they sell instead;
• won't sell you what you want because less than a million other people want it too;
• would rather charge lots and sell a few than charge a bit and sell lots;
• insist you pay through the nose even though they and you know that the product costs peanuts to produce - and if you won't pay, the other suckers will do nicely;
• would rather pluck out their eyes than sell something that is better than what they've already made a killing on for the past ten years;
• will sell the same thing as all the other companies, with a confusing tariff to hide their own surcharges and prevent any form of meaningful comparison;
• aren't interested in you and your petty, grasping needs because they're doing alright, Jack, so you get jack too.

To take another example: public ownership gave us British Rail. Private enterprise made it worse.

It was depressing enough to

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It was depressing enough to watch Three Kings on video last night, discovering how America:

• can never fight a war for justifiable reasons;
• can never properly win one;
• always leaves behind a bigger mess than there was before, usually involving the deaths of more innocent people.

But after it finished, we accidentally caught the end of A Life Of Grime on BBC1, one of those identikit docusoaps that invites you to marvel at how awful other people can be (rather than how awful you yourself can be). This one follows environmental health inspectors from Sheffield City Council (what's left? council tax accountants?) as they gratuitously handle dog poo, dead rats and domestic waste. This episode focused on a Mr Springfield, an elderly tenant who had, for reasons known only to himself, chosen to fill his house from floor to ceiling with bags of rubbish. So the men from the council politely asked him to tidy up, for the sake of his neighbours and before the local mice population overdosed on all the cholesterol. They popped round several more times to ask again, but always found him out. So then they broke in to take photographs. And finally, they evicted him - on to the streets - while a smug Jobsworth from the council reiterated over and over for the cameras how it was not "normal" or "healthy" to furnish your house in wall-to-wall litter.

Well, he's right there, even if he hasn't quite figured out the implications. For my part, I don't follow Sheffield City Council logic. If a man is so badly disturbed that he actively prefers to live in a rubbish tip, he's hardly likely to comprehend or entertain a request to tidy up (and indeed, Mr Springfield told them loudly to "fook off"). Nor will he have much truck with legal notices (he claimed they were using a "bent fooking court order" as he walked away along his new residence - the pavement - with three carrier bags). Making him homeless hardly seems likely to address his psychological issues. And they say many homeless people are mentally ill - was that before or after?

Is this the only course of action available to the council? They have the legal power to forcibly enter Mr Springfield's house and evict him, but not to forcibly enter, tidy the place up (which has to be done anyway before the next tenant can move in) and provide some proper help for him?

Oh well, I assume he will be less of a burden now on the council's (likely minimal) homeless shelters than he was on their environmental health department. And home help services are so expensive to provide, as we all know...

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Mr Springfield, with his grey bristles and grizzled jaw, reminded me strongly of our local action hero, Reg Temple. Reg is also a pain in the side of the local council. Every man needs to find a hobby once he retires, and Reg has decided his will involve hounding members of Trafford council to the grave and beyond (most probably, theirs' and his) over every local development issue. That's when he's not proposing to remove Sale, Timperley and Altrincham from the borough altogether. ("I am not a political man," says Reg.)

Reg is a key member of several local action groups, such as the Friends of Brooks Drive, Save the King George Pool and Campaign for a Free Timperley (OK, I made the last one up). One suspects all these groups share a common address, committee and, indeed, member - one "R. Temple of Timperley".

Oddly, the local rag seems to be conducting an obsessive love affair with Reg. Indeed, if he were female and forty years younger, he would be open to the suspicion that he must be sleeping with the editorial team. Reg seems to be the equivalent of a naughty bit on the side for the paper, because normally it is busy rimming the council's arse.

It is rare that a week goes by without at least one article on Reg and his latest campaign. On one memorable occasion, readers were greeted with a front page photo of Reg sitting in a meadow, looking like nothing so much as the grizzled elder of a tribe of chimpanzees. On another, a long letter from Reg described his epic battle to force the council to clear up some illegal flytipping. Ordinary mortals such as the rest of us might timidly ring the Trafford 2000 helpline (if we ever gave a toss about life beyond our garden fences in the first place) but Reg goes straight for the man at the top when it comes to waste disposal - council leader David Acton! But suddenly he is thwarted as "up pops Geoff Marsh", the Head of Environmental Services (them again)! Thrills! Chills! Snores!

Council members have perfected the art of giving interviews to the Messenger regarding Mr Temple's outbursts with a fixed grin on their faces that somehow carries into print. It is quite conceivable that David Acton has a wax doll of Reg on his desk, into which he violently jabs long needles while issuing a steady stream of bland assurances to his victim over the phone (he may also be planning to Ascend into demon form and devour the residents of Trafford).

One issue that particularly occupies Reg's attention is Brooks Drive or, to give it its full designation, "historic Brooks Drive", a bridlepath running from a roundabout on the A560 near Baguley to...nowhere much. Once (in 1860) it was a granite paved, 25 foot wide, tree lined avenue; now it is a muddy track where people only go to dump rubbish.

Lest we sneer at Reg's petty provincial concerns too much, let us remember that Trafford Council's idea of environmental improvement is to encourage Tesco to build a new supermarket three miles away from an existing store and 300 yards from a large branch of Sainsburys. Truly, we get the enemies we deserve.