The complete newbie Ubuntu Linux review.

Inspired by a WordPress blog today, I decided that it was high time for me to have a look at Linux.

First, I’ll tell you a little about myself, so you know where I’m coming from in this review:

I’ve been a computer user since I was about three, starting on the ZX Spectrum 48K, then the Commodore VIC-20, through more consoles than I can count (I genuinly do believe that I owned every console ever released up until the PS3, including the Atari Jaguar and the NeoGeo), the Amiga 500 and then the Amiga 1200, through probably dozens of PCs. Once upon a way-back-when, I could just about manage to code in Pascal and C++ (but I haven’t so much as looked at that kind of code in about a decade) and I can still code simple XHTML when I need to (though I prefer to cheat and use Dreamweaver). I’ve always (not suprisingly, considering Microsoft’s global dominance) been a Windows user, however I did pride myself back in the days of DOS 6.0 that I could use it to more than just launch windows 3.1! I’ve never had any difficulty using Windows; in fact, I’m considered the office “go-to guy” when my colleagues are struggling with their XP installs and getting no answers from the Fujitsu Siemens helpdesk. I’m so used to Windows, in fact, that it only took me two or three days to find work-arounds for the infinite variety of bugs in Vista (which I’ve been running since launch).

So, that’s me: a home PC user, but a pretty tech-savvy one.

What I do not know how to use is Linux. Up until this morning, I’d never even seen it. I don’t know how the console works, I don’t know any of the commands to use it, I don’t even know what format they should be in. That said, I think that lack of Linux experience puts me in the ideal position to write this review: If Linux is going to take over the home PC market in significant numbers, its coders need feedback from people like me – actually, what it really needs is feedback from people who are much more PC noobish than I’ve ever been, but people like that are unlikely to try Linux in its current forms, so I’ll have to do!

Let’s start at the begining, then. My first tax was to decide on which of the many versions of Linux I wanted to use (these are called “distributions” or “distros”). Linux, being Open Source, comes in a variety of forms. A lot of them are designed for running servers, but there are a few out there which are designed for desktop PCs. I’m not going to list them; Google it yourself if you want to know! What I’ve settled on is reputed to be the easiest, most intuitive of the desktop distros, Ubuntu Linux (specifically build 8.04, Hardy Herron).

The download was easy to find, and I was pleased to note that it would let me run a Linux Kernel from the disk (note: the download is an ISO file, a CD image which you have to burn onto a disk – there are dozens of free programs which do this for you, in fact my PC came pre-installed with Roxio Creator which did it for me). The importance of this was obvious: I could play with Linux without installing it or playing with my PC too much – Brilliant! This I duly did. Except… It just felt half-arsed. There were things I couldn’t do that I wanted to do, and it annoyed me, so I bit the bullet and…. As it turned out, made mistake number 1!

I assumed (correctly) that Linux was going to need its own partition on my Hard Disk Drive (HDD), and (incorrectly) that I would have to put it on there myself. I dutifully downloaded EASEUS Partition Manager, and set about slotting a 60Gb partition on the ample free space on my HDD (in fact, Ubuntu only needs 4Gb, but I figured what the hell, it’s not like I’m short of space). I then popped my newly burned Ubuntu CD into the drive and restarted the machine to boot from the CD (note to noobs: Most machines will look at the CD drive first and boot from there if there’s a disk in it – if yours doesn’t, you’ll need to go into your BIOS and change the boot order. It’s not difficult, so Google it, it would take too long to explain here).

Ubuntu promptly fired itself up and asked if I wanted to run from the CD, install Linux, or boot from the other drive (i.e. Windows). I clicked install. And here’s where I discovered my error: The very first thing which Ubuntu did was guide me through setting up a new partition on which to install Linux. At this point, I quit, fired up Windows, deleted the partition I had already created and started again!

The installation process was fast and seemless – anybody who’s ever restored their Windows Vista loadout will tell you that it takes hours, so I was pleasantly suprised at the five or ten minutes it took. I was presented with a desktop in the familiar “Windows, Icons, Mouse Pointer” (or WIMP) theme that is by now familiar to the entire Western world. So far so good. My next task was to get the drivers for my graphics card installed – this was the part I was dreading! I had no idea how to do this, so it was time to find out how intuitive this interface really is! Hmmm, there’s a button on the task-bar called “System”, that’s promising… Aha, a little picture of a gear with “Administration” next to it, okay, let’s go there… A button labelled “Hardware Drivers” – surely it can’t be this easy? Well, it is! A click on that button showed a list pane in which sat my nVidea 8400GT, without a tick in the “enabled” box. I ticked the box, and Ubuntu promptly downloaded and installed that drivers, before restarting my rig and bringing me smoothly back to where I was, only with graphics acceleration. Kudos!

A short side note on rebooting: Without the CD in the drive, the first thing my PC now does when I fire it up is to ask me which partition I’d like to boot from. Turn on, choose Windows or Linux, carry on. That really is a very handy feature, so full marks there.

Now; after a little experimentation, I found that Linux doesn’t run .EXE files (in my view a major failing if it’s trying to attract home users). A little bit of Google love, however, led me to Wine for Linux, a nice little program that – guess what? – runs .EXE files in Linux. Happy day! Putting Wine on the machine was not a task I’d ask my parents to complete, though. It does involve using the console (the Linux equivalent of the DOS or Command prompt), but thankfully the Wine website gives complete instructions, including lines of code which can be copied and pasted into your console window. At this point, I have to say to the makers of Ubuntu: For the love of God, bind the CTRL+C, CTRL+V and CTRL+X as well as the right-click functions the same way that Windows does! It’s the standard which the whole planet is used to, it’s simple, it’s practical, and I for one do not like having to look to find the copy and paste buttons! Also, put Wine in your OS as standard! Anybody who doesn’t want to use .EXE files is going to be savvy enough to know how to remove it, but a lot of people who do want to use them aren’t going to be confident in their ability to add it!

Anyway, that done, I decided to run a .EXE file. Through the “Places” menu, I found the folder containing X3:Reunion on my Vista partition, and ran the .EXE using Wine. And it worked! Not flawlessly, it was missing some sounds, but there can be no doubt that it did work – Considering I was running it from the wrong partition, I was impressed. I decided to go one better: I had the CD backed up as an ISO – could I re-install it to the Linux partition and see if it was better here? No, is the short answer. While I’ve found virtual drive mapping programs for Linux (like Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120 for Windows) through Google, what I have not found is a newbies guide to installing them.

This, I have to say, is a major criticism I have of the Linux community: If you’re going to publish your binary and you want people to use it, please assume that some of those people are, like me, going to be complete and total newbies to Linux! It’s the first rule of selling a product (okay, they’re giving it away, but the point stands): If you want to sell something, make it as easy as possible to buy. So tell us how to download the code and what we need to type in the console to make it do stuff!

A short test soon revealed that most of the games on my PC won’t run in Linux, even when I have the disk. That’s dissapointing, and it’s a point I’ll come back to later.

Features wise, Linux comes with Pidgin, a simple IM program that can interact with pretty much any other IM program (such as Windows Live or AIM). It has Firefox, which should be intuitive to anybody who’s used any tabbed browser before, and it comes with OpenOffice – which I’ve always used because I’m buggered if I’m paying the prices Microsoft charges for the MS Office suite when I can get a better one for free that will work in the same file formats if you ask it to. Firefox prompts you to download plugins as you need them, as do the inbuilt media players. All in all, I have to say I’m liking it. Ubuntu is not bad at all.

Except… I have a Linux partition now, which I intend to keep and to use – but I still can’t get rid of my windows partition. There are too many programs and games which just won’t run in Linux. This is a massive advantage for Microsoft: Got Windows? Then you don’t need Linux. Got Linux? Well tough, you still need a Windows partition.

Another note: It’s great that Linux lets you choose how to run it, I fully aprove of that mindset – It’s my PC, I paid for it, so Bill Gates can ram it up his hoop if he thinks he can tell me how to run it. Top stuff. BUT. And it’s a capital BUT. Linux needs a simpler method of installing programs other than the console. It won’t attract home users until it has one. Yes, I know about the Add/Remove applications tool, which is very good as far as it goes, but if there’s a way to get it to add an application which isn’t in its pre-determined list, I haven’t yet found it. What I’d ideally like to be able to do is to download an archive or pop a disk in the drive, tell Linux it’s there and let it get on with installing it for me – without me having to learn what is essentially a new programming language! I was hugely frustrated that I couldn’t find a simple instruction set for putting the Linux equivalent of Daemon Tools on to my Linux partition, and gave up on it as a bad job. Okay, so I know that I’ll end up going back to it later and figuring it out, but still…

So that’s me, the Linux noob, starting my Ubuntu adventure today.

Obama’s Birth Certificate FOUND!

Right here: http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate

Just to clarify, that’s a certificate of LIVE BIRTH, not naturalisation, LIVE. BIRTH. Quit your pathetic smears about “vault copies”‘ - He was born in HAWAII, YOU STUPID, RACIST *£$*S! NOW SHUT THE *£$* UP!

Edit: Pay close attention to the BOTTOM of the certificate, by the way: “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of the birth in any court proceedings”. Shove your “vaulted copy” up your… Nose.

Mandatory Voter and Candidate IQ testing.

An idea I had to improve the state of US politics today:

No person with an IQ below 130 should be allowed to stand for public office.

No person with an IQ below 110 should be allowed to vote.

No journalist etc. with an IQ below 150 should be allowed to make political comment.

No person with an IQ higher than an amoeba should miss an opportunity to smash Rush Limbaugh’s brains out with a blunt object.

It’s like this, America: You guys seem to think it’s okay to be stupid, with you’re flag-worship and your (HIGHLY selective) worship of your Constitution, with your incredibly myopic yet utterly unshakable belief that your own (mostly atheist) founding fathers would want everybody to have “good Christian values” even though what you think of as “good Christian values” and what Jesus would have thought of as good values are about a billion miles apart, with your unfaltering way of answering the question “What would Jesus do?” in any given situation with the predictable response “The same thing that I’d do!” without ever considering how stupid an attitude that is, with your people in positions of power who claim to have divine and supernatural visitations and powers (something Europe got out of the way about 600 years ago, by the way), and finally (and this one’s the kicker), with you society that is SO mentally deficient that you’d allow a lying, under-educated, charmless, offensive, bimbo who believes that the world is 4000 years old and that we’re in the last days before “rapture”, to run for Vice President.

America, you are the world’s biggest international joke. The measures which I’ve suggested might, with the help of MENSA and the immediate cessation of your RIDICULOUS military spending in favour of funding education instead (5% of the world’s population, 50% of the world’s military spending, yet also the richest nation on Earth and consistently the worst educated, it’s fucking pathetic) might JUST bring you back into some form of respectability.

The other alternative is a new civil war, where the Democrats kick the republicans back down to Texas and let them get on with their in-breeding where they can’t bother anybody. You choose.

Republicans don’t know how to NOT abuse power…

… And right wingers wear their stupidity with pride.

I’m not going to talk about Obama in this post, because he’s really not that relevant to what I want to say. Frankly, if you put Charles Manson on the Democratic ticket, I’d STILL vote for them over John McSame-Old and Sarah “Lying Bitch” Palin.

McCain this week said that he is “fundamentally a deregulator” and that he wants to privatise health insurance and deregulate it so that it works the same way as the banking industry does. He said that this week.A week which has seen more financial institutions fold, be bailed out by tax money, or forced to merge than in any other time in history – including the Great Depression of the 1920s! McCain also ran a TV ad this week criticising Obama for associating with a lobbyist from Fanny May. The truth is, Obama met the man once at a party, spoke to him for a few minutes and then forgot about him – Whereas John McCain’s entire campaign team is composed of Washington lobbyists – many of them who used to work for Fanny May! You couldn’t make this stuff up! What a lying, amoral piece of shit John McSame-Old is!

Then there’s Palin. Oh, dear God, where to start… A fundamentalist Christian gun-nut who thinks that children should NOT be taught about birth-control or “the mechanics of sex” in schools because their parents should be teaching them abstinence DESPITE HER OWN 15 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER BEING PREGNANT!!!! How stupid do you want to be? It’s pretty obvious that Bristol Palin managed to figure out the mechanicsof sex just fine despite her mother doing her best to stop her from finding out – what a pitty that her young life is now essentially over before she’s had a chance to get any experience of the world for herself. And why? Because Mommy would never allow Bristol to know what a condom, or an IUD coil, or the birth control pill, or a diaphragm are for! Stupid, selfish bitch, spoiling her young daughter’s life – along with the lives of millions of other American girls, if she gets her way.

And there’s more! Despite the fact that we have absolute, incontrovertible proofthat the universe is billions of years old, and that evolution is proven beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, this stupid, stupid woman wants to teach creationism in schools! Creationism! What is this, the dark ages?

And, on top of allof that – She fired a man for refusing to help her persue a vendetta against her brother in law. She abused the power given to her as the governer of a wilderness state – What on Earth do you think she’d do as VP or, God forbid, President?

We’ve had 8 years of a stupid, selfish, right-wing, Christian-fundamentalist idiot in the White House. So far it’s directly cost more than 100,000 lives (for which I sincerely hope Bush, Blair, Rice and Cheyney are charged with 100,000 counts of murder), all because one man wanted a war – and don’t be fooled, there was no other reason for it than that. George W Bush wanted a war in Iraq, and made damned sure that he would get one at all costs – including deleting a page from the joint intelligence report which stated that Iraq was not a threat and was never likely to be a threat so long as they were not provoked, inventing reasons to fight which did not really exist and ignoring UN weapons inspectors who said that Iraq was not a threat, did nothave WMDs, was co-operating fully with unplanned, no-notice inspections at all of their facilities, and that they would be able to confirm within two weeksthat Saddam had no capability of producing WMDs – time which they were blocked from being allowed by George W Bush himself.

On top of this, we’re now in the ridiculous, undemocratic, unfair situation that even people like me who don’t invest or buy shares, or even have anything to do with the stock markets, can have our lives blighted by men who we have never met, gambling with our money without our permission, keeping the winnings when they win - and being totally unaccountable when they lose. It’s our pensions that become worthless, not their mansions. And now that they’re in trouble, what’s happened more taxpayer’s money, our money, is used to bail them out!

How on Earth could anybody even consider voting for McSame-Old and Lying Bitch after 8 years of this crap?

Hugh Grant, The Streets and Big Brother can kiss my arse.

Every generation in Britain produces something truly classic in the realms of music, film and television. Except, it seems, my generation. I was born in 1980, so I’d class myself as Generation X; I believe that the creative peak of myself and my peers should be the mid-to-late 1990s to the mid-to-late 2000s.

 

So. Let’s take a look at our achievements!

 

British films produced in the last 15 years which are timeless classics: Um…. Well, Hugh Grant played a lot of floppy-haired posh guys…. And… Um…. Yeah….

Come to think of it… We’ve not actually made anything decent that wasn’t a bond movie, and Generation X can hardly lay claim to the creative credit for that. Where’s Get Carter? Zulu? The Italian Job? Bugsy Malone? A Bridge Too Far? The Great Escape? It seems that we can’t make decent films anymore. I should clarify: Sliding Doors, Four Weddings and A Funeral, Bridget Jones’ Diary and all other such “Brit Rom Coms” are NOT good films, they are the testicle sucking rectal warts of the film world. If you think that they ARE good, then you are wrong. There is not debate here.

 

British music produced in the last fifteen years which is timeless and classic: Errrrrrr…. Jees, that’s a tough one… Except it’s not, really. We don’t make good music anymore, not since Indy died. Oasis were and are mediocre at best (it’s a measure of just how poor British music has become that they receive such plaudits), The Streets are utterly talentless dog-wank (“Shakespeare for the new generation” my fucking arse!) and should actually die, the ENDLESS stream of saccharin plastic wannabe r-n-b churned out by the likes of Simon Cowell actually makes me want to cry… and that’s about it. I suppose there was Joss Stone, but she did one respectable album, went to the States and become shit… Robbie Williams likewise. Blur and Gorillaz? Well, okay, both very good, but hardly timeless classics. We’re nil for two so far.

 

Television produced by Brit Gen X which is timeless and classic: I can name two. Just two shows. “This Life” and “The League of Gentlemen”. And I bet hardly anybody else has even heard of “This Life”. Conversely, we’ve had almost a decade of Big-Horrible-Freakshow-Brother, so much home-makeover porn that it beggars belief, ten thousand “celebrity” chefs (Ainsley Harriot: Die. Just fucking die) and a million zero-budget quiz shows. And soaps. Endless, interminable hours of misery pumped out of our screens along with a LOT of American shite and a LITTLE bit of American genius. Then there’s Ricky FUCKING Gervaise, who (let’s be honest) also needs to fuck off and die. “The Office” was okay, but would have been FAR better without him. So, since “This Life” and “The League of Gentlemen” are so horribly outnumbered, I’m calling this nil for three.

 

Britain’s Generation X (me included): You are a talentless non-creative bunch of washouts! DO BETTER!

Lift etiquette for office denizens

Ten to nine on a Monday morning, the lift-lobby of my office completely deserted, I call a lift, board and push “14” – and THEN twenty other people arrive, all stopping at floors one through thirteen. The claustrophobic at the back (me) takes a deep breath, grits his teeth and closes his eyes. This is all made worse by the lift doors, which are broken and take fully thirty seconds to open and another thirty to close, the sheer density of the crowd, which precludes any idea of escaping to wait for another lift and the weather, which is a balmy 29 centigrade outside and a stifling 38 in the airless, enclosed, crowded lift…

 

Is this a familiar story to you, too? Welcome to my working days.

 

I don’t understand the lack of manners that causes people to cram into lifts when they are already overcrowded.

 

You know the scenario: You’re going down to the lobby to collect a visitor. The lift is stopping at every floor on the way down to be filled with smelly smokers desperate to escape for their next cancer-stick. It gets crowded. Then, you stop on a floor about halfway down, and there it is – The Behemoth.

 

The lift is crammed. You have an anonymous nicotine addict wedged into each armpit, a midget’s elbow crushing your testicles and a sweat-stained back in your face. You look at The Behemoth. You survey the lift. You can see the lazy, chubby, fat-arsed, androgynous blob surveying the lift. You see the light of decision in its eyes. You think “You must be fucking joking!”, then realise you’ve said it out loud. The Behemoth advances like a fleshy snow-plough, crushing helpless passengers even further into the steel walls of the lift as it advance… At this point, it’s not uncommon for claustrophobes like myself to pass out, but to be unable to fall due to the density of the crowd in the lift. Personally, I normally wake up about halfway between standing and prone (heading rapidly for the latter) as the lift empties on the ground floor.

 

I have to wonder: Is it just me who thinks that when the lift is clearly full already you should just smile and wait for the next one? I understand the demands of nicotine, I smoked for fifteen years. I know that sometimes you’re running late and need to get to your desk. I concede that there are all kinds of reasons while you might be in a rush. I don’t, however, see any of them as reasons to completely abandon all manners and niceties and cause a lift full of people to suffer even more than they already are.

“Pro-lifers” in the UK are dicks. Again.

Welcome to the 1968 abortion-law debate. 40 years later. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the Human Embryology Bill next week, which includes a whole raft of laws from allowing parents to artificially create a foetus to produce donor cells for a sick sibling, to using the empty shells of animal eggs to grow human tissue from cell nuclei (avoiding the need to fertilise human eggs with human sperm – bizarrely enough to appease the religious right). The most divisive part of the Bill, however, is a proposal to slash the time limit for a woman to have an abortion from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20 weeks. The basis of the argument for this is that anti-abortionists believe that premature babies can and do now survive from 20 weeks onwards. Let’s examine that belief, shall we?

 

A gentleman by the name of Professor David Field, a consultant neo-natal paediatrician from the neo-natal unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary carried out two studies, the first between 1994 and 1999, and the second between 2000 and 2005. The study was over a huge population with no pre-selection of candidates – all premature births in the study’s catchment were included.

 

What those studies showed was this: only 18% of babies born at 23 weeks survived – in BOTH periods. Survivability of super-premature (pre 24 week) babies has not improved at all. The study went further: of all the babies born at 22 weeks or earlier, none survived. Not a single solitary one, in either study.

 

What’s the counter argument?

 

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP sums it up: “…this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs…. Where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone, then? [the report is] tosh produced by the pro choice lobby”

 

Um…. The money’s gone to trying to improve survivability? Trying takes money – it doesn’t, however, guarantee success. And…. Her opinion is more valid than a ton of evidence? Why? Sorry, but bullshit!

 

What should we believe? Two peer-reviewed, published studies carried out over large populations and several years by a highly qualified doctor in the field? Or a neo-conservative, religious zealot’s unqualified rantings?

 

This is a real no-brainer if you examine it: “pro-lifers” know that they can’t get abortion banned – it has 76% public support in the UK – but that isn’t going to stop them trying to erode it over time: Drop it to 20 weeks…. Now 18…. Now 15…. Now 12…. Now 4 weeks…. Now ban the morning-after pill…

 

It’s regressive and it’s harmful to force women to bear children which they’re incapable of raising, which they do not want, which will be severely disabled by genetic disorders or the mother’s drug or alcohol use, which are the result of a rape, which are incestuous…

 

Religious right-whingers: Your day has been and it has gone in the UK. Your ridiculous beliefs are not relevant to our lives, and people resent your constant interference and attention seeking. Fuck off and grow up, learn to take responsibility for the world yourself instead of blaming the mythical sky-daddy, and stop fucking with everybody else’s lives and freedoms on the basis of your own ignorant beliefs. In short, just fuck off.

Jesus Hillary! Will you go away already?

I make no secret of the fact that I’ve never been a massive fan of Hillary Clinton. I’m not an American, but if I was I’d be a Democrat, and I do like Bill Clinton as a person. I also think that his presidency did a massive amount of good in the US versus the Republican administrations either side of him. He seems like a genuinely warm and intelligent person. I say all of this because I don’t want to be accused of being a neo-con having a rant when I say:

 

Hillary Clinton IS The Terminator. With less natural charm and warmth.

 

She comes across as very insincere and try-hard anyway in the way that she speaks; you just get the impression that she’s desperate to make her mark in history as the first female President of the United States, regardless of what it costs, what she has to do to achieve it, the damage she’s doing to the Democratic party or whether she’s actually the best person for the job. She just doesn’t seem to care at all; it’s all about getting that nomination, and to hell with the consequences – inconvenient little things like her dirty-tricks and slander campaign against Barrack Obama alienating all of his supporters to the extent that, if she does get the Democratic nomination, a majority of his supporters are likely to boycott the polls and hand victory to John McCain anyway.

 

This whole lack of integrity annoys the hell out of me; we’ve had 8 years of George W Bush stealing votes to gain power and the massive fallout which that created – now, it seems, Reverend Mother Hillary and her Death Commando Cult of Blind Faith are determined to do the same thing:

 

“Count Florida!” They say – Sorry guys, but there are rules, and Florida broke them.

“Count Michigan!” They say – Hold on, Obama didn’t even run in Michigan because he knew it wouldn’t be counted! If he had run, on current form he might well have won it and have already secured the nomination.

 

What annoys me the most about Hillary is, paradoxically, what would the situation be if the roles were reversed between Clinton and Obama?

 

Obama has so much integrity that you just know he’d bow out gracefully for the good of the party – and if he didn’t, Hillary is such a harridan that you just know she’d be screeching for his blood.

 

Hillary, get a grip. Time to take a Valium, calm the hell down and do what’s right for the US – and that does NOT include continuing your ridiculous campaign.

 

PS – To those of you who think that, as a Brit, this is none of my business: You underestimate the impact which your Presidential election has on the 52nd state (the 51st state being Israel, of course).

A harsh rant about Indonesia and other third-world dictatorships.

Reports in this morning’s papers say that 10,000 have been killed in Indonesia by a cyclone and that it has left 1,000,000 people homeless. In an unprecedented move, the Indonesian government have said that they will accept international aid in this, their time of need.

 

So… Having resisted (read: ignored) international pressure over their corrupt military dictatorship, appalling human rights abuses and their political prisoners, now they want help…

 

Folks, it’s like this: When you give money to corrupt regimes in “aid”, a large chunk of it magically sticks to the hands of the rulers of said corrupt regimes. That part of it which actually goes where it was meant to go keeps the population just well fed enough that they won’t overthrow their government themselves. Zimbabwe, anybody? How do you think Robert Mugabe is a US dollar multi-billionaire in a country with 6000% inflation? And why do you think that a population with 85% unemployment hasn’t overthrown him yet?

 

Easy: “The people are always only three meals from revolution” – that’s true in any society in the world. So, what I want to know is this: Why are we providing the three meals which prevent the people of oppressed third-world regimes from deposing rulers who are morally abhorrent and who we don’t want in power anyway?

 

My take on the Indonesian cyclone is easy: Allow the UN to station troops in Indonesia, arrange for democratic elections, free ALL of their political prisoners, and THEN we’ll help to feed the people. Quid pro quo.

 

Only it never works like that does it? “Why should the people suffer because of their rulers?” – because those same rulers bleed Western aid dry at the same time as making us pariahs and scapegoats for all of their countries’ ills, and the bottom line is that the people are the only people who can change it. We need to remove their motivation for tolerating the status-quo.

A life-changing career change?

Having finally admitted to myself that spending 95% of my time sitting behind a desk is doing nothing but destroying my soul and growing my arse, I have decided to change careers. So far in my working life I have been trained as an investigator, an interviewer, an enforcer, an administrator, a bookkeeper, a risk analyst, a financial analyst and a tax expert. The truth is that I hate all of it. It bores me to the point where I am genuinely worried about losing intellectual capacity through lack of use. I’m not challenged. My employer does not value me. I’m stuck in a deep rut of soullessness and tedium.

 

What really scares me about this is: I’ve probably just described how 90% of office workers in the UK feel! What does that tell us about ourselves as a society? Personally, I think we’re screwed!

 

So… What to do? The answer for me is (hopefully) nursing. I’ve applied to go back to university and do a degree in nursing. I’ve also applied for a severance package from my employer to help fund it.

 

I’m surprised at how normal it feels to have made this decision and taken these actions. I’m not frightened or worried that I might be making a mistake – I’m just relieved to be finally moving forwards with my professional life and giving myself hope for a way out of the rut. It took a long time for me to work up the courage to do this, but now it’s in progress, I feel good about it. There’s no fear left, only anticipation.

 

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Don’t be afraid to admit that you’re not happy with your life, and don’t be afraid to change it!