Yesterday, I discovered I was completely addicted to Gravilux. It is nifty. It runs as an applet, and by changing the size and fiddling with the params, I have been making art for my desktop. Must stop. Must stop.
My project leader is away for two weeks (getting married). This means that I have to manage my own time. Hurrah. I have several things to do, but the biggest of which is still my University project.
In the news, the lynch mob is still running round the Paulsgrove housing estate in Portsmouth (UK). They are demonstrating outside the houses of local residents whom they think are paedophiles. Some of them probably are (or even were), while some of them are not, nor ever have been. This whole thing is the fault of the News of The World, a tabloid paper which started (and then, happily, under pressure from the police, aborted) a policy of naming hundreds of ‘known paedophiles’. This was (IMHO) very very wrong.
- The list contained factual errors. Mistakes in names, addresses etc. As a result, innocent people are being hounded.
- Some people have similar names and/or addresses to people on the list. These people are now being persecuted too.
- OK, so some of the people on the list were paedophiles. They were known to the police, who at least know where offenders and ex-offenders are. By driving people of a community, all you do is displace them to someone elses community, where the will not make themselves known the the relevant authorities. They are driven ‘underground’. This can’t be any better.
Anyway, I used to live near Paulsgrove. I’m glad I don’t now. Apart from the crowds creating noise (and car-fires, and rock-throwing, and the heavy police presence brought in to monitor these demonstrations) I would be embarassed to say I lived in this area, now synonomous with intolerance and hatred.
Wow Roo! I’m an ex-Paulsgrove boy, now living in Yorkshire. Paulsgrove always did get a bad press, for the best part unfairly, in my humble opinion (or IMHO for the under-thirties.)
If you’re going to write about Paulsgrove, or anywhere else for that matter, I have some advice for you. Either sack whoever types your opinions, or use spellcheck.
Considering you are the Portfolio Executive for Social Media at BBC Vision I would have thought you’d be able to spell EMBARRASSED and SYNONYMOUS!!
Back to the subject, I’m more than comfortable about spending 22 years of my life in Paulsgrove, it’s so much nicer and a lot safer than certain areas of Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, London, etc……etc……etc.
I now live in a ‘quiet’ village in Yorkshire, in fact I’ve been here for 13 years, but there is plenty of car crime, drugs, break-ins, anti-social behaviour and everything else here. Just like everywhere in the UK.
Leave Paulsgrove alone, it doesn’t deserve this nonsense……just like it doesn’t deserve to have a motorway piercing its’ heart and all its’ pubs closing down.
Hello Andy. Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It sounds like I left Paulsgrove above four years before you did, and I bow to your superior knowledge of the area. I’m quite sure that it’s changed since the riots of 2000 and (like many places) probably doesn’t fully deserve its reputation.
While it’s not really an excuse I feel like I should point out that when I wrote the above post, August 2000, I was still a student (a time in one’s life synonymous with learning and improving). I must say I’m embarrassed to look back at the mistakes above, but especially now that you’ve pointed them out I’m certainly not going to fix them. :-)