Pants

I've come to the conclusion that Norton Internet security is pants. I've been running it on my home computer for several months and it's fouled so many things up, it's probably better to have a virus. Anyway, I finally gave up with it yesterday when it started suffering from "serious errors" and shutting itself down. I spoke to someone who recommended Avast, which is free to home users, so I'm giving it a try.

I got fed up with not having a radio in the bathroom and bought a new one yesterday. I can listen to the news as I bathe and clean my teeth now. We had a crappy little shower radio shaped like a shark, or dolphin, I don't know, anyway it was rubbish. The new one is a digital radio and it's very good.

I see that even the Guardian has given up on the Labour party this morning. The paper commissioned a poll and it has put Labour a full 16% behind the Tories. The significant point is the fact that Labour has slipped 2% since the last polls despite going on the offensive to try and make some ground up over the summer.

You may remember that the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs was recently refused parole and then strangely released on compassionate grounds two weeks later. Something didn't smell quite right about that to me at the time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. A couple of weeks later Mr Al Megrahi the Lockerbie bomber was also released on compassionate grounds. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the case of Al Megrahi. How's this for a theory:

Lets assume that the Biggs appeal for parole was unsuccessful and that there was no early release on compassionate grounds either. In that case Al Megrahi couldn't have been released without people comparing the two situations. People would be saying, "how come the Lockerbie bomber was released and Biggs wasn't?" Let's say Biggs appeal for parole was successful and that there was no compassionate element. Then people would be looking at the Locerbie bomber release and saying, "why has he been let out on compassionate grounds and no other prisoner ever has?" Convenient wasn't it, that a high profile prisoner like Biggs just happened to be released on compassionate grounds just before the Lockerbie bomber case came up.

If the British government did release Biggs on compassionate grounds because they wanted to release the Lockerbie bomber with the least amount of backlash, that would be the way to do it. It would also mean that the British government, contrary to what they have been saying, were involved in the decision to release Al Megrahi. This is not all my own work. I have extrapolated an idea put forward by Biggs' son.

OK, file sharing, lets talk about file sharing. Good old Peter Mandleson has decreed that new legislation will mean that people caught sharing copyrighted files on the internet will be cut off by their service providers. There has been some anger about this, from users and from ISPs. There have also been some questions about how this will be enforced. I have a home network for instance, like many people. If one person on that network is downloading stuff illegally, are you going to cut access? What about wireless networks tha can be accessed from the street? And on the radio news this morning one commentator remarked that if the legislation was going to criminalise between 6 and 9 million people overnight, it's probably indicative of a deeper problem. He's right.

Here's my dilemma. I'm interested in Asian cinema and television. It's a perfectly legitimate interest. My wife is Asian and we have a mixed race child. We need Chinese language material. You can't get it in this country. It's simply not available. I can't even buy foreign DVDs on the internet because they don't play on British machines. It's not even very feasible to buy a foreign DVD player because they work on different voltages. If I want to stay within the law I don't have many options

It's not about protecting copyright. It never has been. From the government point of view it's about controlling what people can see. From the entertainment industry point of view, it's about greed and protecting their market share.