A few end of year reflections on the state we're in. I know, it will all be on t'internet, where everyone can read and gasp over these comments for years to come.
Except, in general, even privately authored public blogs only get a generally small readership.
When I first started this blog thing, I deliberately kept the name away from my own as a sort of air gap. Actually, various systems are able to rejoin the broken links nowadays, probably by following the IP breadcrumbs as well as the larger cookies. All so they can try to sell me a lawnmower/telescope/wine subscription and confusingly sparkly jewellery,
It leads nicely to the lazy journalism stories of social media being hacked and secrets of all kinds being spilled. Yes, if you are famous and put a selfie of something embarrassing about yourself onto a public forum, it will probably get re-tweeted. And if you are a big corporation, expect people to want to dig into your secrets. Take the Orion project's laser performance at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, for example.
And yes, if you reply to one of those chain mail get rich quick things, you will certainly get more. No surprises there, nor with the Russian bride and other scam letters.
Still internetting, narcissism accelerates with the continued rise of the selfie. I used to take self portraits as a kind of test or to use up the last frame of a roll of film. Nowadays there's a special stick for a cameraphone (it has a rude name sometimes which I won't repeat here) and it's used to take 'better' selfies. It's commonplace to see theses sticks brandished around certain parts of London, like Traf Square.
A similar effect also extends to videos, with the celebrity buckets of ice tipping and a curious lack of information about the amount actually donated to related charities.
Of course, donations to charity by phone and online continue, although the next twist of the Search Engine Optimisation scams create interesting dilemmas. The winner of The Apprentice has a derivative business idea based upon SEO although I assume it won't be the guerrilla format increasingly used. Take the new Dart Charge - the regular 'Dart Charge' search can be disabled and a substitute result applied. The parasitic substitute 0903 phone number site then charges £1.53 per minute to connect to the real call centre site.
Disappointing to me is the lack of political satire now available as we watch destabilisation politics from the main parties as they try to keep us guessing about what is really happening. The Beeb are probably scared because of their charter renewal and the commercial stations have to worry about the advertisers, so we are left to puzzle at daily conflicting information.
I can only watch George Osborne in so many colourful hard hats and high-via jackets and like many (but not - it would appear the deficit avoiding Opposition), I'm wondering about: (a) what happens to all that Quantatitive Easing money we keep printing? (b) why some of the dodgy bankers don't get put in prison? (c) who is getting fat eating all the pies? There's many more questions, but I'll save some for next year.
The Westminster villagers continue to have cosy expenses whilst idling and posturing for the next fixed term election - they find ever imaginative ways to look busy whilst doing little until next May.
I'm of a view that we need somehow to have an operating system upgrade for the U.K. It's hard to know what is possible given the lack of options? It can't include that dangerous cartoon character who has boasted of using his European expenses allowance to fund his 'get out' party.
It's probably a calculated positioning by the other parties to let it run because bizarrely they become the 'least unacceptable' choices instead of a genuinely good choice.
But that's probably enough for the moment.
I usually keep these blog posts to ten minutes and a picture, so this one is already something of an overrun. In the words of that frozen cartoon movie that I only just managed to watch: Let it go, let it go, let it go.
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