THE VERY LAST OLD MAN’S RANT – NOVEMBER 2017
Forward:
An explanation is now required. This is the magazine article which got me banned. I no longer write for said magazine. In the news, is the blatant obsession America currently has with sexual nuance and overtones. Plainly obvious is the relished embellishment which the media who carry the stories and the teller of, appear to almost get some sort sexual pleasure out of being the apparent victim as they reveal details, many decades after the so-called incident occurred. To top that, the credibility of an ego drenched actress is to say the least suspect. Before brandishing a poker in soaked Political Correct anger at the writer, try and drop the martyrdom first and look through the haze. A crime is a crime and sexually related crimes should see some sort of clinical retribution if proven. Rape (though often hard to prove) invariably entails violence thus the perpetrator breaks two laws – the death penalty is too good for them. Sexual harassment is a sickness no matter which way it manifests itself. Cultural backwardness, sociopathic or just vanity and desire, no matter, it must be severely dealt with. However, circumstances cannot be hearsay, those facts the affected bleat must indeed be factual and here lies the rub. Did anyone die, was violence used? Money and fame is a very coercive force, it is not criminal.
Despite the likes of the main-stream media propagating obsessive homosexuality and now working very hard to promote paedophilia and normalize it, as they indoctrinate their Millennial sheep; it is deemed thoroughly inappropriate to make say a paedophile joke. This is utter hypocrisy to protect the shady. ‘Thus duth protestuth too muchuth’. Victims are victims, it is a very sad fact of life, but the entire world is not to blame. Empathy, sympathy, compassion where it is due, but life goes on creating more victims no matter how offended some might be. The dark side of all this is that victims are being victimized by this ‘Common Purpose’ – Fabian cult who manipulate and indoctrinate and thus are perpetrators by their actions. The truth is, their manifesto champions perpetrators while diminishing all rights to the true victim. To combat critique and smoother this abominable doctrine, they create ‘the offended’. It is so hard to see through it if one grew up in it.
Having been asked to make ‘Harvey’ the subject of the month, the writing is tongue in cheek as they are all supposed to be, however it was deemed offensive by one Millennial daughter, who spoke up for ‘all those poor actresses’ who ostensibly suffered so greatly at the hand or hands of Harvey Weinstein. This is the power of Political Correctness gone absolutely mad. One deluded voice can frighten a nation if it pulls the race or offense card.
The article:
The pathetically frustrated media fruitlessly trying to destroy The Donald obviously needed a new news-worthy stool pigeon; ‘Oh hello Harvey! What a nice bathroom you have, that’s an odd-looking loofah you’re holding’, said the actress. What a filthy Shrek he turned out to be.
Call we rare, cynical reality gems old fashioned and merely sceptical, but how strange is it that all these women now coming forward are or were wanna-be famous actresses? Ostensibly in the name of ‘art’ those same moaning thespians whose distended egos are so desperately prepared to nakedly simulate a good rogering with more suspiciously accurate moaning, in full HD on our screens hourly. With obscene hypocrisy they now come out in their droves, to garner even more ego drenched publicity, by hammering Weinstein, the very man they courted to get the part. Fame without shame. Darling, how far were you prepared to go, casually flaunting your bottom cheeks with a such a tight-fitting G-string so far up the Khyber as cruelly painful as a carthorse’s mouth bit’?
Society is very sick. We now have the stalwart 1950’s BBC “RADIO” play ‘The Archers’, depicting homosexuals french kissing with gross slurpy mouth made sound effects. We have explicit language and sexual connotation in everything from the ‘Shopping Channel’ to the ‘Muppets’. We have every single twerking and writhing pop video displaying teenage debauchery. We have schools in the UK and the USA building toilets for trans and so-called latest craze ‘liquid’ gender kids, plus homosexuality utterly romanticized in the school classrooms for 5-year olds with never a mention of the unnatural messy enema. Top that with adolescent boys allowed to wear dresses in class and undecided 8-year-old girls lovingly donning strap-ons so as not to be discriminated against. And you thought smoking in the toilets at school was bad.
As it is, nobody from ‘normality’ has popped up claiming; ‘Harvey made me perform oral sex, threatening me with a blunt dildo held to my throat’. This is society as it is in the 21st Century and as always was in 20th Century Fox. Yet boisterous Harvey still lives in the 70s when ‘free love’ and penicillin came gratis and soap was something one used only for lubrication. Meanwhile Hilary Clinton still blames the Russians for Bill’s endless indiscretions. Oddly, if some guys came out screaming; ‘Harvey buggered me in the barn after promising a gay part in the follow up to “Brokeback Mountain – Homo on the Range”, it would be supressed.
Murder, violence, rape, paedophilia; none of it is remotely funny and this column has no issues permanently terminating the guilty, however, when all is said and done, jokes pertaining to it are often hilarious so lighten up – oh, unless you happen to be the victim of course, but that applies to life’s challenges full stop and no amount of forced PC will ever change cruel human nature.
Next, of the 2 million women Hugh Hefner claims to have wanged, half will claim ‘assault’. His estate must be worth a lie or two. What the hell is the difference between luvvie Hefner and Weinstein other than a red dressing gown and the size of their etchings? A brilliant pun and thoroughly hilarious, was ‘The Onion’s’ headline: ‘Officials investigating Hugh Hefner’s death suspect foreplay’. If English is your mother tongue then you are now rolling on the floor peeing yourself with absolutely no offence taken, despite speaking ill of the dead
‘I was made to watch him shower’ spews Ashley Judd. Um…er.. just how was that achieved Ash? You are the victim here, please show us the dastardly rope burns of the bondage which held you there. Then there’s the Italian actress who we have never heard of, maintaining that she was forced to perform trumpet practice on Weinstein’s chosen instrument, describing it as ‘onanistic’. My God, that’s a big word for a 21 year old, or she can’t spell ‘organ’
Sadly or deluded, we know in full denial the rich and famous and abhorrent politicians know no bounds when it comes to sexual pleasure at any age (one suspects). Sir Jimmy Saville on the other hand didn’t care if his assault victim was breathing or not and the entire hierarchy of the BBC and much of government were well aware, thus indeed complicit, so knighted him. That my friends is worthy of the death penalty, just to rid the earth of such deviance. But then the House of Lords would look a little too empty perhaps.
‘Harvey Weinstein claims it was a mistake to assault a dozen women. That’s not a mistake, that’s a whole season of “Law and Order Special Victims Unit”’ spews a comedian. A funny line, but the boilers come out the woodwork, ooooing and aaahing; with their clichéd offended diatribe as if victims themselves and the media milk it.
There are so many millions who really do suffer horrendous, heinous abuse in this warped world, which is totally appeased by the very same disingenuous lizard activists, depraved politicians and chameleon ego maniacs called showbiz
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – JUNE 2016
It was fixed! It was fixed! As everything about Europe is. Soppy, blatantly political, sentimental appeasing agenda, It’s a good job Vlad was busy with his own ego and dumbbells, cruisin’ on his Shetland pony Harley while the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ (never heard of it) was on or he might have accidently on purpose leaned on the button.
What has the Eurovision Song Contest (never heard of it) got to do with life on earth anyway? God was cruel for what a dank bunch of contestants they were at that. Backstage barking was even heard. Someone tweeted that all the songs sounded like they were written by Cold Play but never mind, cop the ludicrous costumes. The only thing missing for most was a herd of lamas.
Pathetically voting Ukraine the best song when it was anything but, there is a huge petition to have the result annulled. Get a life! Well call it diversity if you want and equality for the less privileged/underdog/afflicted but Reality TV has obviously gone too far as have the oblivious Fabian Reich, Nazi Liberal Europe in general. Constantly kowtowing, appeasing and descending to the lowest common denominator to equalize (except them).
It is official; Australia is now in Europe, not that the song presented by Dami IM (Never heard of her) stood a chance. Only pervs and fur trade votes floated her way due to several tasteless up-skirt shots desperately displayed… um… ostensibly designed to show off the tailoring draped around this Korean singer. Yes, a European Korean from European Australia. We can’t wait for Bangladesh’s entry next year.
More banal than a country and western song where; ‘she ran off with a cowboy and blinded by tears he ran over the kids and the puppy’, the pish Ukraine song might as well have been about the Malaysian 777 that was shot down by Russian separatists – allegedly. Oh – it was? Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize just for breathing and now the Ukraine entry glorified. What a desperate arrogant bunch who rule us.
You never thought it possible but it was worse than Bahrain TV. Whoever directed this Euro garbage needs to learn the art. It ranks Amateur Ville Horror (as does the TV ads for Brussels Air). It was more amateur than CNN’s ludicrous zooms and ridiculous face turns to the camera as they incessantly promote their egomaniac under-par journalism. Not one single zoom-in shot of these ham artists was complementary yet the crowds cheered on and on…. and on. It proves the fodder of this world are firmly in control and now working in media. Martin Österdahl (never heard of him) was the Executive Producer and one can only assume by his name and umlauts that he is not Korean.
Minus the Windsor-knot, but perhaps sporting a jock strap, supposed comedienne (that’s a laugh for a start) and main host Swede Petra Mede Måns Zelmerlöw (never heard of her), oh wait – that’s two people, came out towering over her mousy little friend. Draped in coruscating (never heard of it) painter’s overalls, obviously covering lumpy Kevlar, she looked positively monstrous against her, by comparison wimpy looking co-host. Zelmerlöw apparently won the 2015 epic (never heard of it) with an equally naff attempt to rouse the Y fronts and mummy knickers off us – called ‘Heroes’. “We are the heroes of our time – dancing with demons in our minds”. Roget’s Rhyming dictionary has a lot to answer for.
Mede’s unfunny scripted, cornball, nonsensical, drily lines were read staccato from a crib card she so openly held. Rave revues and the moronic crowd cheered every single syllable and cried along with the Ukrainian winner as she took the stand for the biggest con in television this year.
What a bunch they were; Zaa Sanja Vucic from Serbia actually came on as a Korean dressed as Bat Woman. Bulgaria showed some pleasing looks draped in what appeared to be engine parts from a space ship as she whacked her legs in and out like a good cello player. A jiggy little song too, albeit wholly Turkish – who are NOT in Europe yet!
Jesus from Poland resurrected as Michat Szpak (never heard of him either and don’t try saying his name) literally displayed his tonsils. Choreographed by the Filipino band in the local hotel, he didn’t stand a chance with all that deep and meaningless hand motion obviously learned from the European Highway Code as did most of the other singers, especially ‘Bare’ from Spain. She would have passed her test first time. Mary had a little lamb, she also had a bear, we often saw her lamb, but never saw her bear.
Cyprus’s entry ‘Alter Ego’ by ‘Minus One’ (or was it the other way around) rocked along very nicely, but it was like watching the Muppets mimicking Def Leppard with less hair.
Then Hovi Star of Israel displayed his obsession and leanings as he pointlessly appeared in replica to Adam Lambert. Remember the brilliant Lambert made second place in the 2009 ‘American Idol’ but should have come first. Middle America would not have approved his pillow biting exploits in colour if he had (worse than Paris Hilton), all disclosed a week or two before the final. Fixed – of course! Now if Star had done the same, ‘let’s make everyone gay’ Europe must surely have voted him No.1. What a dilemma for the politics that would have been, so they might just as well ‘stayed home.
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – JUNE 2015
OK, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Of course, old joke; firstly one has to assess if the light bulb wants to be changed. This is just the sort of analogy we need to enhance scientific leaning and career prospects – not!
Just so you know where we are going, let’s assess the nuance of this article. Finding the perfect job is as rare as unicorn sh*t, but life ostensibly begins in our late teens with that sole goal in mind. Amazingly, so called studies show that among the worst university degrees to obtain are within the arts, which according to this research are close on a complete waste of time. Shockingly, criminology is also high up the pile of pointlessness if this list of defeatism is to be believed. Speechless!
Just like media hype for inanity and without being too sesquipedalian about it, most of these long winded surveys are just that, tosh! Wait a minute! Who are you to incinerate that I don’t know big words? But if authentic, then music and graphic design or degrees centred around these subjects are ostensibly as useful as a one armed trapeze artist with an itchy bum and below the status of stuff like marketing or Social Studies which every man and his gold fish seem to have. That and Psychology. Ah, but ask yourself who carries out these studies? Oh! That would be marketing people and psychology students trying to justify and validate their own existence on degree courses. What they fail to remotely intimate is that there are more psychologists working in McDonalds than wannabe actors in Hollywood.
Apparently only some 20 percent of degree holders actually carry their qualification through to a related vocation with most just wanting the acknowledgement and credence of degree level intelligence when applying for jobs. What jobs….where? Yale degrees in hip-hop and black rap or street talk are commanding high paying positions within corporations, simply because the Curriculum Vitae lists a ‘degree’. Yes, some American universities even offer degrees in what can only be labelled pornography and one suspects a super-graphic memory helps with IQ tests. Indeed, the Proprietor of this ‘ere bastion of literary works wishes to bring to our attention that there is currently a large (using the word very sparingly) shortage (using the word lovingly) of male employees in the Japanese adult movie industry. Lots of openings apparently!
With physics, the ‘s’ and the ‘y’ are in the wrong order so avoid that, but because it begins with ‘psycho’, psychological profiling is way up the must have degree desires. After all the CBS series ‘Criminal Minds’ portrays most of us as chain saw murderers and none too clever because the profilers know exactly how we think and have this uncanny ability to guess which brand of chain saw will be used by all. The profilers go down the hardware store, which miraculously has a list of purchasers and bingo, perp. arrested! By this time, 20 souls minced but hey they know who did it. So the question is; how come these psychologists can’t perform in ‘Minority Report’ mode and go to the store earlier? Or is that too deep?
If psychology is credible and factual, then life as we know it is nothing but organized ideology. Analytical comedians like Emo Phillips tend to test psychology to its inner or outer limits by going against teachings and asking God for a new car or something material, but we know it doesn’t work like that. So just go out and steal the car and then ask God for forgiveness. That apparently does work. Then we have those who somehow look out from the inside and we call that philosophy. Dare we mention the psychotherapist! Apart from the word itself being made up of ‘psycho the rapist’, who the hell is psychoanalysing the assessor?
Don’t despair; jobs are out there. A lot of say highly educated ladies from ex-communist blocks holding doctorates in rocket science are walking around gainfully employed. They could quite possibly land a rover on Mars, but earn far more on a much smaller scale guiding pocket rockets around Juffair in Bahrain.
As a footnote; before the Internet, Plymouth University in Southern England has or had infinitely more wannabe psychologists swarming and swamping the place compared to the number of light bulbs in the entire building. For those on complex mathematical and technical degree courses, seeing this entire abstract curriculum in play exasperated them to the Nth – Y degree. The psychologists had umpteen free periods and no lecture days, so continuously filled the top floor library blocking access to those hard working geeks who got no free periods at all yet were desperate to get a shot at the books but couldn’t. Catching this Bombay like train lift crammed with twittering anal retentive Freudies was a nightmare, so drastic tactics were employed by the geeks. One would force his way into the lift squeezing among the mass, while his colleagues would walk up one flight of stairs. Pressing floor one, once the doors had closed and the lift started moving, said geek would covertly let out an enormous fart (through his mouth we think) which resulted in a rapid mass exodus at the first stop. Needless to say, waiting geeks would quickly jump in, shutting out the psychologists. Who knows, maybe they started to study this methodology as ‘contra-deviance’?
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH (February 2015)
Bahrain This Month – Old Man’s Soap Box Rant:
The old adage goes something like; ‘To cut a long story short – just don’t tell it!’ But senior citizens love to reminisce with the clichéd; ‘When I was a lad’, or; ‘As girls we use to….’ Unfortunately, most things old people come out with now is considered grossly politically incorrect. With communication between us now predominantly in text form, it is a tad difficult for old timers to manipulate all this changing technology, but don’t underestimate us. It is our faculties that let us down, not our brains. Sure we get slower to respond to things physically, but not mentally. Think about it; all that knowledge accumulated over the years is like a million gigabyte disk drive full of data. It just takes a little longer to access it and we only do a working week in our heads, with those in Europe under the impression that there’s no email delivery on Sundays.
Sure, the body processor slows down a bit as well, but we all become lovable until you get on our nerves and the new bloated PC generation can certainly do that, so we rant and as we get older and there is good reason to get grumpy.
Now women generally get quieter as they reach their golden years with the rampant, wanton cougar in them diminished or at least diminishing. But there’s not an old man who hasn’t got a good lengthy yarn to spiel, true, false or somewhat embellished. Life’s experiences will do that to you, plus we all tend to get much less shy as we slow down and are quite happy to yap away to anyone who will listen as if the last day might be tomorrow. Alas, with everyone on their mobile phones texting, it is difficult to find an audience. There again, even if we manage, it is most likely another older person, so all this new found desire to communicate is often a fruitless aspiration because your new old friends can no longer hear you anyway . For the wrinkled, ‘let it all hang out’ takes on a whole different meaning verbally, particularly for blokes, but the proverbial mobile phone selfie is definitely not on the menu. Now that’s not sexist in anyway – moi sexist? Gossip is not a story and the reality is that unlike men, few women sit reminiscing and blathering tales of exploits best of times. As the years clock up, the fairer sex tend to more ‘tch tch’ as a disenchanted, ‘mature’ response rather than throw the blarney stone at you. Mind you, most had plenty to say while getting there. The fact is, so many married blokes have had to wait until they are over sixty five to get a word in. So verbal is the order of day because texting pretty much becomes impossible without a couple of glass pebbles over your eyes, LOL.
Older readers might be ROTFL as they scan this missive, thinking how true. Only now, they will respond with ROTFLACGU! (Rolling on the floor laughing and can’t get up). BTW doesn’t mean ‘by the way’, it means; ‘Bring the wheelchair’. LMAO is adapted to become LMDO, or to be more precise; ‘Laughing my dentures out’. It is a whole new language and meaning we have to learn. ‘Talk to you later’ or TTL stays the same, but between old folk it means; ‘Talk to you louder’.
But hey, men get so much more romantic after retirement and more imaginative, which is extremely odd because most marriages go through phases where either party would be quite happy if they could literally get away with murder; so the companionship grows more intense, or is that needy? Old couples see more beauty in each other, even if men still see more beauty in….um.. anything that moves in a skirt or a tight T shirt pair of jeans. As mentioned, they come out of their shell and become bolder, believing they are more loveable, funny and forgivable, sitting there in retirement watching the world go by. Of course, they’ve not only lost the touch and ability but any possibility of getting out the chair fast enough, if in the extremely remote chance that some willing potential conquest happened to walk past the window.
Old age is the déjà vu that you are having a bad attack of déjà vu. You’ve been there, done it, wrote the book and sent the postcard.
So back to the grumpy insinuation and stereotyping an entire generation of anyone with a liver spot; let’s make this perfectly clear and with some glee. Disregard, dismiss or just dis the old codger’s outpourings as just another pathetic rant at your peril, for each is a masterpiece of experience. To do so is actually offensive in its essence, rather than the content of old folk’s outpourings. This hypocrisy is not perceived by the now wide-spread ultra-orthodox Politically Correct, deluded, confused or just oblivious among us, wallowing in their misguided appeasement. Calling us old folk ‘out of touch’ or even worse accusing us of being ‘offensive’ because we tell it like it is, is outrageous. Just back off! Furthermore, I’ll worry about my own health and safety not you!
The best part about it is; being an old git with probably only a few years left on earth, (a debatable, contentious statement in itself) you don’t care what you say anymore, so my next rant will address the pseudo majority Illuminati who these days instantly object to anything and everything.
DINGALING – TIME FOR A REFUND
The following could and should set a serious precedent and affect each and every one of us who pays a mobile phone bill. This post is a bit of a follow on to my last year’s epic; BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS.
How many of you just pay your phone bills without ever checking them thoroughly? Mind you, I have asked that question before without much impact at all. How many of you have paid hundreds of Dinars/Dollars to telecom providers for so called ‘data’ which you had no idea you were using? Some of you have even encountered travel bans because of it (reference Bahrain). I have a very close friend who tells me that his wife is currently paying off a hefty $1,500 (600 Dinars) bill in bits monthly all because she didn’t realize that her mobile was set to ‘DATA’ switched on. I know of another Bahraini lady in absolute despair because she has a BD 3,500 bill ($10,000) for roaming charges which she had no idea about. Silly lady you say? Yes, she is, but she is culturally and naively innocent in many ways. She has no idea how telephones work from country to country, no idea that roaming is what it is and she just carried on sending pix and Whatsapping. Duh!! By default, most Post Paid customers are automatically ‘roaming’ enabled, whereas Pre Paid most have to activate it. Another lady I know has a hefty bill from just visiting Dubai, where like inter Europe, it should be near a local call, but it is in fact beyond premium. She was not knowingly using data, but didn’t have a clue about ‘switching roaming data off’. She didn’t even know she had to, or where or how she could do that with her phone. It’s all as slippery as a Soprano’s plot.
Well, any testy lawyers who might happen to read this, me thinks there is a little gold mine in the making if you wish to pursue the cases of what must be thousands of customers who have been duped, with grossly outrageously inflated prices for data which nobody asked for in the first place.
Which is exactly the crux of the issue; you as a consumer never asked for it, never signed a contract to accept it. In fact, you probably had no idea you were being charged horrendous rates, thus in the eyes of any credible, moral, legitimate law these charges are fraudulent; it is as simple as that. In America now, this issue has just been legally addressed and T-Mobile will be ordered to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars of ill-gotten profit to its subscribers, simply because none of them asked or signed for the service, product or data. It is not a ‘loop-hole’ it is blatant scamming. I for one expect this to snowball and the fallout could be stunning, just as Brazil’s 7-1 defeat (predicted by me exactly) by Germany.
However, big business and no doubt media worried about its advertising revenue have apparently closed ranks and publicity is scarce still.
Déjà vu Last year I wrote (and blogged) of a case where in just one month I had been charged over BD 400 by telecos who had billed me just for apparently ‘receiving’ erroneous premium rate text messages and making weird calls, none of which I asked for or indeed subscribed to. Many were never received in the first place and absolutely no calls made, but listed on the bill. Sadly, not a single person appeared to care or respond to my missives, so like always the corporations get clean away with it in Bahrain and elsewhere, except with me. I fought the issue tooth and nail and Zain kindly refunded over BD350 (just under $1,000) having thoroughly investigated and logging that it was not my IMEI number.
The former Lightspeed very reluctantly refunded about $100 never accepting that it was their fault.
Batelco refused outright to refund BD 9 ($23) which would surely have been BD 900 had I not caught it in time. The so-called investigator even lied to me telling me that they had checked and that it was indeed my IMEI number, yet not a single SMS was actually received on that particular phone, all of it being a scam. In the end, I ordered the Visa gateway to block any transactions from my numbers, so tough on the scammers and even tougher on the mobile phone companies who claim up to 40% of the SMS revenue.
Now out of the blue, last month we received a bill for near $400. Batelco told me it was for ‘data off package’. It was a Samsung S4 that had been switched off for a few weeks (while I was away in the States) and on re-charging, unbeknownst to any of us, automatically switched “data on – wireless off’. Within hours, Batelco sent an SMS warning that our ‘credit limit’ was approaching. Who knows, perhaps the phone did some automatic update for just a few megs. These few megs off package are set at an extortionate rate, which is beyond reality and the Telecoms Regulatory Authority should wake up and smell the roses and get this hideous rip-off sorted.
So what anyway? I really don’t care Data on or off, why should we care, we don’t have a package. For 15 years, or more this number has been a constant $5 a month, (BD 2), nobody making any calls on it ever as it is only a relay phone to receive office callers on the land line. Now suddenly the telco wants BD145 for data which should not have been available on that number in the first place. As I advised the Call Centre agent. He said; ‘But you don’t have a package on this phone”. My response was just that; ‘You are absolutely right and obviously not a lot gets past you does it? We never signed for any data on this number and have ‘never’ asked for any and furthermore, we don’t want any data, so whatever scam you are working at whatever stupendously high rate, it isn’t going to work on me’. In effect the T-Mobile ruling will prevail and set the precedent and hopefully worldwide. If you don’t ask for something, don’t sign for something, don’t want something, how the hell can a telecommunications company charge you for it and get away with it? It cannot be legally justified whichever way one looks at it.
There is no such thing as a ‘free phone’ , free laptop, free TV either. The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority do nothing about it, the government is not interested and there are just no advertising morals, let alone standards, so all this marketing scam goes on unabated. It is all just a ploy to hold you hostage for up to 2 years on jumped up contracts which include the price of the device – trust me. No matter where you are, incompetent and deluded dudes calling themselves ‘Marketing Specialists’ rule the roost and get clean away with it, giggling away at the deceit. Hundreds of thousands go alone with it, because it is an easy way to get hire purchase.
I P a lot!
Another pathetic revenue scam is; telecos claiming some sort of ‘difference’ between voice traffic and data. In the past this could be somewhat justified but not since the advent of IP routed traffic on data trunk highways. It is ALL DATA now. You’ve all heard of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and most of us use Skype. There is no difference. It is all ONES AND ZEROS. Everything is routed by a matrix and your telephone number is really nothing much different from an IP address. Once the infrastructure is in place, and it is, it costs no more to link to Los Angeles from Bahrain as it does Riffa to Isa Town. This applies to anywhere else in the developed world. Even outside of that, the delivery method might be slightly different, but taking a call at the North Pole for example, the technology and method is EXACTLY the same nowadays. In fact, look up another blog of mine on ‘Bandwidth’ and test for yourself. In general, Skype has clearer calls than over your mobile phone. If your network speed it slow, then sure it might break up whereas it does not, or should never break on a mobile network, but mobile voice is so muffled in general. It does not have to be because these networks have bandwidth coming out their arses, but they just can’t get past the monopoly and 3 khz doctrine, so why should phone manufacturers concern themselves with hi-fidelity microphones and speakers?
Zain and Viva are playing the HD voice card with 4G, when all could have easily done much better with 3G, but they are all too anal and it is endemic across the world, except perhaps America as was. However with the imported British Telecom and Cable & Wireless mentality in more recent years, with the likes of T-Mobile, nothing creative or abstract is ever considered, until a competitor does it first, then they copy. In recent years, competitors have been non telecom schooled geeks who actually force progress on these dinosaurs holding the world to ransom. Across current telephone networks set to operate as they are, there is no such thing as CD quality voice. Whatever HD is supposed to represent it is all big time BS. For a start, the very cheap all singing, all dancing Chinese switches which seem to be growing ever popular outside of Europe run at a piddly 8 bit – 8 khz highly compressed format. This is standard Huawei format. By comparison CD quality , which is NOT high definition, is of course 44.1. khz – 16 bit. The higher the bit rate, the higher the sampling frequency, obviously the higher the quality.
Back to this 145 Dinars and any one else out there who has been burned; sure they will take my number away and hopefully take me to court eventually to try and recover this amount. This is when the fun will begin and we all need to get together to make it perfectly clear that; No signature, no request, no need, then no money honey either! ‘Off’ being the second word!
LIGHT YEARS OF SURPRISES – BUENOS AIRES
QATAR AIRWAYS TO BUENOS AIRES (September 2010)
*Revisited July 2014*
When some Mid U.S. based Facebook friends put out a plea for ‘an unusual, something different – more exciting, honeymoon’ idea, they probably received about 400 suggestions, 401 including mine then. I suggested ‘Kabul’, but few take me seriously anyway. Surprisingly, nobody came up with any place in South America either, not even Brazil’s Rio and the Copacabana. To be honest, I never even thought about it. As for Kabul, well it might shock rather than surprise you to learn that Afghanistan apparently has an active tourist board and according to recent BBC World Service documentaries I have been hearing, a woman whose name I did not catch has been revisiting her ‘beautiful city’, waxing lyrical that Kabul rocks. No bias there then? Afghanistan apart, one only needs to keep a bit of an adventurer’s open mind to assume there are still some very pleasant ‘surprises’ on the horizon where you don’t need a Humvy and a flack jacket. Looking from the Arabian Gulf this horizon can be a very long way away indeed especially if one thinks of South of the Equator and Argentina as a destination – where your bath water is supposed to run out clockwise. (Ask a pilot). Argentina! Someone shouts and your mind probably goes blank for a minute, until you picture the football colours and Maradona. Then you think about Eva Peron, the Catholic religion and continue to rack your brains until you come up with corned beef. All those things are true, but you are in for one of the above-mentioned huge surprises if you have never been to Buenos Aires and decide to risk it. Of course, from a British perspective, if you say you are going to Argentina, the first thing your friends will say is; ‘Don’t mention the Malvinas’. Your next thought might be; ‘How the hell am I going to get there from here’? Read more