My trip to the Houses of Parliament today was excellent and it was a very interesting experience to have a look inside and see what the press gets up to there.
Big Ben from the entrance to Westminster tube station.
As was to be expected the security was pretty heavy. There were airport style x-ray scanners and I was frisked immediately after I went through the door. The building itself is as amazing on the inside as it is on the outside. I’d loved to have taken some pictures to post up here but unfortunately photography wasn’t allowed inside and I didn’t feel like incurring the wrath of Black Rod!
Entrance: From here on in no photography allowed.
As you can imagine with all the attention on the goings on there this week the place was buzzing with talk about the security in the building. Whilst I was waiting in the main lobby to be shown in I spoke to a security guard there who was obviously fairly annoyed about the whole situation and didn’t sound at all keen about the prospect of the changes which will undoubtedly occur as a consequence.
Peace protesters
Opposite the main entrance was an encampment of die-hard peace protesters who were obviously there for the duration. Their protest was a lot more calmed compared to that of the hunters earlier in the week though!
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
Having predicted only 5 days ago that the film ‘Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence’ would shortly emerge I was proved right today and now have my hands on a shiny new copy of it. The picture quality is excellent although its only shortcoming is that the subtitles were done by fans in rather a hurry by the looks of it. This somewhat dilutes its meaning and significance but doesn’t take away from its status as a magnificent masterpiece, seamlessly combining philosophical wisdom with beautiful visuals of a caliber never seen before. Having only watched it once so far my brain is still struggling to catch up with what’s just been thrown at it.
Making sense of any of it will take a fair while I imagine. Perhaps once I’ve have a chance to do this I’ll write a proper review, but I’m not sure I could really do it justice. Here’s a little quote to wet your appetite:
“There is something evil about several people holding mirrors. It is not that it exposes evil; rather, it helps create evil. In other words, mirrors are to be glimpsed at, not to be stared at.”
There’s an interesting review on Wired here.
10/10
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
The rah’s were out in force yesterday, defending their right to chase innocent animals around on horseback until they collapse with exhaustion at which point they get ripped to pieces by trained dogs. A nice ’sport’ for such a rarefied section of society don’t you think? Members of the so called ‘Countryside Alliance‘ descended on the Houses of Parliament yesterday to have a strop over their barbaric little past time being banned and started a riot against the police. Some even managed to break into the House of Commons, and all for what?
Pity they didn’t set the dogs on them…
Something their ranks are obviously lacking is intelligence. When the clear majority decide something is wrong it is justly outlawed, hence we no longer have the death penalty or allow slavery etc. Peaceful protest is one thing but the spread of anarchy is another, for once it was good to see the police taking a firm hand in the situation.
Although I believe that it should be the people who control the government and not the government who control the people it is clear in this situation that this practice should have been stopped a long time ago and is one of the last hangovers from our history. This is not to say that tradition is bad but that needless cruelty is wrong.
And people say inner-city yobs are a problem…
One of the reasons I’ve brought this up is that I’m off to the Houses of Parliament tomorrow for work to install a new printer in the ‘Press Gallery’!! I’m pretty excited at getting the chance to have a look inside the place but am secretly a bit sorry that I missed all the fun and games that have been going on there recently! I’ll post a full report either tomorrow or on Saturday (assuming they let me in [and out for that matter]!).
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
If you haven’t heard of Gmail and all the hype around it then you must have been sitting in a hole for the last few months. For the unenlightened it’s basically a new email service from Google which provides a huge 1000MB (1GB) of free storage space (compared to a measly 10MB from Hotmail etc). At the moment the service is limited to beta testers who have been invited by another member so originally getting hold of an account was a much sort after commodity and they were even being traded on the likes of eBay etc! I figured I’d check out what all the fuss was about so yesterday I managed to get hold of an invite from a kind soul and signed up.
From what I’ve seen so far I’m very impressed. It has a nice clean interface to rival any email client and best of all it has a transparent search function which as you would expect is excellent. Another cool feature is that each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation so you can easily keep track of long threads. I’ve got a few invitations going spare so if anyones interested drop me an email!
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
You would have thought that going back to college for the new year would be a simple matter of shoving all your gear in the car and trundling off to wherever you went but oh no St. Chad’s college have to make things difficult by enforcing a rule that you can only return mid-week unless your a fresher. This is causing unnecessary hassle for me as my parents can’t get time off work to give me a lift so I’m trying to formulate another plan. Do I:
-
Go up the previous weekend, dump my stuff in my room (they’ve ‘kindly’ conceded to let me do that) and then either forget to give the key back (hehe), squat in my friends loft for a few days or go home and then come back the following Tuesday.
-
Go up by train on the Tuesday with whatever I can carry and then await my parent to bring the rest up the following weekend.
-
Something else…
Answers on a postcard to “What a waste of time, 10 Stupid Rules, Life’s Too Short, NOP O1NT.” or just comment below!
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
Recent Comments