Shut Up You Whining Git Jesus H. Christ on a friggin' bike.
Time to get rid of the lot of them.
Now.  ¶ Sunday, February 27, 2005 0 Comments

  Founder of Amnesty dies aged 83 I've always meant to join Amnesty

This has kicked me up the arse.
Amnesty International are probably our last hope. TheOHCHR are seeming a bit limp.
I'm joining. You can too

Just incase you are wondering, why?

Start here and work your way back to here.

  ¶ Saturday, February 26, 2005 0 Comments

  Backing Blair - funding update We have our first truck - this is just the start.

Get involved and the request for those interested in a West Midlands Backing Blair group is still open and live.  ¶ Saturday, February 26, 2005 2 Comments

  PM's Press Conference - 25 February 2005 "Tony Blair announced an increase in the national minimum wage in his monthly press conference.
The Prime Minister also replied to questions on the Irish peace process, MRSA statistics, and the response to Syria following the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister."

He also gets a grilling about the house arrest extension of the POTA but they don't mention that in the summary. Odd that, considering it was the subject of the first question....

And could I humbly suggest someone tracks down an audio version of the following snippet (it's a follow up question regarding teen pregnancy rates where Blair says
"When I was young, if you got into trouble at school you got into trouble at home, and that in my view is the way it should be - somewhat old fashioned, but there it is."

Question:
What was the most trouble that you got in at school that led you to be getting in trouble at home?

Prime Minister:
That is a very good question. No, we are not answering that one, but you know what I mean John.

I'm thinking it would be a lovely sound clip to play on the Backing Blair Truck (oh yeah - forgot to blog about that - see here)
i.e.
Man with the megaphone : Why did you lead us into an illegal war Mr Blair?
Soundclip : That is a very good question. No, we are not answering that one, but you know what I mean John.

All we need to do is talk John Major into getting behind the campaign.....
Or maybe whoever it was who asked the question. My money is on Jon Snow.  ¶ Saturday, February 26, 2005 0 Comments

  7 Reasons Not To Vote Labour In 2005 Link from Tim

The content is fairly self-explanatory.  ¶ Saturday, February 26, 2005 0 Comments

  BlogTelevision Evening All. Welcome to the weekend.

This is a nice little aggregator that indexes video clips, so bloggage may well be light apart from a list of videos I've been watching.

Then I have a weekend of packing stuff up and decorating my new gaff, huzzah.

Update: This is in the same vein. Link courtesy of my new homie ADB  ¶ Friday, February 25, 2005 0 Comments

  I'm off to Scotland I've said it many times before.

I WILL NOT CARRY AN ID CARD EVER

Link from The Honourable Fiend  ¶ Friday, February 25, 2005 3 Comments

  Moazzam Begg tells C4 news what he saw Picked this up from Snownews but sadly missed the interview.

There is a follow up on the left of this article, hopefully C4 news will release the full transcript.  ¶ Thursday, February 24, 2005 0 Comments

  Chocolate teapot anyone? This is just begging for someone to take the piss out of it.

And I'm guessing this may appear on b3ta at some point  ¶ Thursday, February 24, 2005 0 Comments

  A Blog is Born Any references to Victor Meldrew are entirely coincidental.....

Nice one DS. Welcome to the Blogosphere  ¶ Thursday, February 24, 2005 0 Comments

  www.returningofficer.com Just go an read it.  ¶ Wednesday, February 23, 2005 0 Comments

  The Government Says Found at Richard Allan's blog this provides far more information than a mere mortal can possibly comprehend.

I'm yet to look into the e-mail notifications etc. Film at 11.  ¶ Wednesday, February 23, 2005 0 Comments

  Getting trucks on the street Read this.

Give money.
  ¶ Tuesday, February 22, 2005 0 Comments

  The Law West of Ealing Broadway Well that's my reading sorted for tonight then!
  ¶ Tuesday, February 22, 2005 0 Comments

  Whilst Tidying up I found this What? Click the link up there ^  ¶ Tuesday, February 22, 2005 0 Comments

  Excuse me..... I must leave before I pee myself laughing.

Although, the next time I'm in Gloucester I may pop into Fasthosts for a cuppa.

  ¶ Tuesday, February 22, 2005 0 Comments

  The Quotations Page Whilst playing around with quotes searching that brought the Tom Stoppard gem in the previous post I found this wonderful page, that I will be flogging to death in the next few weeks, if only because the quotes will generally be far wittier and more profound that most of the stuff I spew.

For now a few favourites regarding Democracy

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Maynard Hutchins

And finally

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Robert Byrne   ¶ Monday, February 21, 2005 0 Comments

  Why democracy starts with an 'e' 'There has been a huge revolution in the world outside Westminster in the ways that people communicate with each other,' said Victoria Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Hansard Society, which campaigns for a more inclusive democracy.
'Although Westminster has changed a lot,' she said, 'when compared to the change in the wider world, it really has not changed much.'
Westminster is only just catching up with communication changes
Equally, she said central and local government had before now put almost all their of efforts into getting services online.
Now, she said, they need to think more realistically about the web can help broaden debate and bring in fresh voices, insight and expertise.
'The technology shouldn't be used for direct democracy,' warned Ms Gibbons, 'that's not the way a parliamentary democracy works.'

I take issue with this last statement, and to some degree it flies in the face of the Hansard Society's own report on blogging, which hails the political blog as what it quite rightly is, a very useful way of both elected individuals and candidates keeping in touch with their constituents, and in the case of sites such as Backing Blair and the other similar vote direction sites ramping up to GE2005, a possibility to inflict a bloody nose on a seemingly uncaring standing Government.

If it allows me and others like me to group together behind a common belief and have that belief studied, debated and maybe dis-agreed with (perish the thought), then a movement towards a degree of direct democracy can only be a good thing.

The other part of the BBC article that quite frankly beggars belief is this comment regarding Simon Burns, Conservative MP for Chelmsford West :

Since FaxYourMP began totting up response times in April 2002 only 118 faxes have been sent to him via the service - about 3.5 per month. By contrast Mr Burns signs about 20-25 letters or responses every week day.

"I just look at it as another way for them to correspond with me," he said.

He currently does not accept e-mail messages because of all the extra work involved in dealing with them.

What extra work?

More articles on Direct Democracy can be found here.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard
  ¶ Monday, February 21, 2005 0 Comments

  More updates Big intervention link and Humanity V Anarchy project gone

For some reason (Tim - any idea?) H v A is now number one on google for "howlingspoons" :::::grumble::::: whilst #2 is one of my older posts - i dunno.

Blogging Brits also gone as had the virus radar and blogchalk

Finally the bottom bit has been cleaned up

Now to move stuff around and them pick a new colour scheme  ¶ Monday, February 21, 2005 0 Comments

  howlingspoons says It's tidy up time before I get the decorators in.

Have decamped as a part-time sofa surfer which brings me a shiny adsl connection and a bad back.

So first on the agenda is the various detrious and bad links in my blogroll.

Those that have been deleted are listed below. If it's your blog and you have simply moved on to pastures new please e-mail me and I'll re-instate in most cases. Some are being dropped because they are dead in the water whilst others I've simply got bored of (fickle creature that I am).

The *Hit List

Bloggerheads - Yup, time to take him off the blog roll and into the VIP Link lounge.

Buttercup - best wishes on you marriage and all that....

Hanzi Smatter - got bored now

Kathryn Cramer - never read it these days

Yoz - bit too techy and not updated enough

Maggies Underpants - has been retired by the author

Michael Moore - never really got there. Rest of the site is okay then.

Mill Hill East - Retired by the author

October Surprise - was never very surprising really

Resolute Cynic - no link cos the blog has gone - where are you RC - apart from in my comments????

The Six Dwarfs - have gone to pastures new - I've e-mailed so this one may well make a re-entry

The Uk Today - off to the VIP lounge with him

Tomski - can really remember why I blogrolled this. Maybe someone could remind me....

And finally

Wibbler - and another for the VIP lounge

Right that's the blog roll sorted (phase 1. phase 2 will be an attempt to categorise them)



  ¶ Monday, February 21, 2005 1 Comments

  I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone... Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is dead

Mike has some class quotes and a nice piccy.

Saves me having to go and look for some.  ¶ Monday, February 21, 2005 0 Comments

  Nestlé go one step too far Discerning readers will no doubt be aware of an ongoing campaign to boycott Nestlé products due to there over aggresive marketing of Baby Milk (see http://www.babymilkaction.org/pages/boycott.html for more details). But quite frankly this is an outrage. I'm just off to write to my MP...  ¶ Friday, February 18, 2005 0 Comments

  SpongeBob SpongeBob SquarePants is known all over the world. He has his own cartoon show on Nickelodeon and people of all ages seem to have at least one toy or product with his image on it. Having just been on the big screen, he had the spotlight on him long before James Dobson and his group, Focus on the Family, launched their attack on him accusing the sponge of being "pro-homosexual" and tolerant of people of different sexual orientations

Cheer to Rachel for the link

Also from Rachel - is this  ¶ Friday, February 18, 2005 0 Comments

  Dark Or Light Chocolate? And the strange matter of Willy Wonka.

Waiter Rant has long been a favourite read but finding this on St. Valentine's Day (I'm with BlogMonkey on this one) put a few things into perspective whilst making me belly laugh.

The temporary demise of Backing Blair is somewhat perplexing, but that shouldn't stop you linking through (and YES I AM TALKING TO YOU LADY 8-] )

Meanwhile in real life, I've given up trying to best guess when this blog will get back to full steam, or even where I will be living when it does, so have this little ditty (again courtesy of Mr Monkey). He's right, the bunny is cute.  ¶ Monday, February 14, 2005 0 Comments

  Courtesy of Rachel I like this one

More can be found here just scroll down a bit.

Edit: A closing chuckle

Night all

  ¶ Thursday, February 10, 2005 0 Comments

  howlingspoons says Would it be considered churlish to maintain the shiny new Backing Blair banner up above whilst maintaining the less than shiny Blair Must Resign button down below?  ¶ Thursday, February 10, 2005 1 Comments

  Are YOU Backing Blair? Backing Blair

Hi all,

Still not much to see here.

But there is lot's to see at Backing Blair

That's Backing Blair


Go on you know you want to.

Oh and Bob, I'm still gonna be in Worcester, just at a considerably higher altitude!

On the home front I am now moving for sure to somewhere with internet connection so this blog will be re-launched - heck I may even decorate the place in the very near future (yes I know I've been saying that for 2 months now).

Also anyone who is interested in forming a West Midlands Backing Blair
group should e-mail me davehalligan at yahoo dot com or give me a bell on 0773 0775 085.

Cheers
poons  ¶ Thursday, February 10, 2005 0 Comments

  howlingspoons says poons is moving. to somewhere with a broadband connection.
very soon.

no, really this time.



  ¶ Wednesday, February 09, 2005 1 Comments