“Before the possibility that on the March 26th London demonstration MET police are ordered to kettle us; use their shields as a weapon, or even draw their baton please remember that we are your teachers, your nurses and doctors, your neighbours, your checkout assistant, your child’s best friend’s parent, the disabled, the elderly, the students and the children. We are all here to stand against cuts that affect us all, you included.

We are all marching to say we oppose EVERY cut. Many of us are marching to try to protect our children’s future; knowing that without changes our children can never afford to go into further education; could you afford for your child to go to university on your wages? These cuts in public spending are going to affect everyone who is not either a banker or politician, or has a similar wage packet as either. And to make matters worse, this all comes at a time when the cost of food, fuel, and gas, and electric are rising, when youth unemployment is higher than it has ever been; when thousands face losing their jobs and homes as a result of these cuts.

This government uses the word ‘fair’ to describe what they are doing to our society, yet is it fair that this government indulges in “legitimate” criminal activities? Stealing tax payers money and giving it to corporations to run our services and makes the poor and hard-working pay? Is it fair that huge companies get away without paying their taxes; the tax that Boots alone evade could stop the cuts on the NHS, the £7 billion tax Vodaphone evades could help thousands of families get out of the poverty trap. The tax that banks such as Barclays evades could be spent on police funding and so much more. Billions more is avoided by Tesco and Amazon on their offshore tax havens. All of this money could be used to pay of this country’s debt, while not making one single cut to public spending.

The government is saying these cuts are necessary, but they are not. We are told that we ‘are all in this together’ but so far the widely supported Robin Hood tax is not being implemented. The legal loopholes that allow individuals and companies to evade millions even billions in tax have not yet been closed. We are told that it is spending on welfare, the NHS, the police force, local councils that are to blame for the financial position our country finds itself in; but it is the tax avoiders, the corporations and the banks who are REALLY responsible for this debt; as they suck out money from the system into tax havens and hidden accounts and avoid tax. They remain unchallenged by government, who are working to give them even more control over the things in our communities that matter.

How can we afford to lose the tax payers’ public sector; the things that protect us, that we pay for; the NHS, the schools, the libraries, the nurseries, elderly care services, the police on our streets, the rape crisis centres, the voluntary and community organisations; just so that already greed-driven corporations can get their claws into our tax-payer state, then be paid by us to run vital services badly. Once these changes are made it is very unlikely we will be ever able to go back to the things that mattered. The corporations, the banks and stock-market racketeers continue to get fatter salaries, bigger bonuses, larger investments while the poor and weak struggle to survive. . That is why we are fighting these cuts and we are asking YOU to join us, we are at a crucial, historical moment.

We all understand that you have to uphold the law; that is your job. What we are all asking is for you to allow us to march, not kettle and beat us. We are peaceful protesters in the main; many of us are mothers who are bringing our children with us as these cuts affect them too. We are marching to tell our politicians that we are NOT going to pay for their mistakes any longer. It would be amazing if you joined us like the police in Wisconsin did when faced with a similar situation.

We are marching to protect your jobs too!

Please, join the people. The people who care about this country!

With love and solidarity, the concerned, peaceful, law-abiding citizens of Britain”

And this short video is called Bringing the Cuts Home . . .

4 THINGS YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW YOUR MOBILE PHONE COULD DO

It then lists four emergencies, which, it claims, can be solved with a mobile phone and a little knowledge.

FIRST: The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialled even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

Well, first of all, don’t try it out. You will be connected to an emergency number and you will be wasting the time of valuable professional help. But do remember it. It will work in most countries of the world.

SECOND: Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.

Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other ‘remote’ for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

I tried this and it works fine. I just unlocked my car and locked it again with a mobile phone.

THIRD: Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.

This is absolute nonsense. The code *3370# is concerned with the sound quality of the phone. There is no way around a flat battery.

FOURTH: How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

Your mobile network will be able to do this as long as you can give them the 15 digit serial number of the handset.

The email I received also had this snippet of nonsense attached:

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse. For example, if your pin number is 1234, then you would put in 4321. The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to the location. This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers however it is seldom used because people just don’t know about it. Please pass this along to everyone.

Actually, please don’t pass this info along to anyone. If you enter your pin number in reverse the machine will register it is the wrong PIN. It will not notify the police. You have to telephone an emergency number to do that.

The state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday, alleging that the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”

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The Guardian reports on the Palinistas and their chameleon. Headed by a striking photograph of the vice presidential candidate behind an ugly-looking automatic weapon, Ian Cobain reports from Anchorage, Alaska, where Sarah Palin seems to be scaring the hell out of everybody.:

The churches are places where many of the faithful see signs that judgement day cannot be far away and where the infallibility of the Bible is rarely, if ever, questioned. The gun stores are places where you can pick up the new Ruger 10/22 carbine, the one that comes in bright pink with a 10-round magazine – “perfect for your wife or daughter”.

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Forty two of the UK’s most celebrated writers each published a short story, essay or poem on the 13th October attacking the government’s determination to proceed with legislation to hold terrorist suspects without charge for 42 days.

Philip Pullman, the author of the trilogy His Dark Materials, said: ‘We don’t know how lucky we are to live in a nation where police officers have all of six weeks to discover why they’ve locked us up. Ask them after 41 days why a prisoner is still behind bars and they can honestly and innocently say, “No idea, mate.” But give them that extra day, and they’ll crack it.’

The plan was defeated in the House of Lords and the UK government announced that it would be dropped.

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In the latest government move to create a surveillance society, everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under UK government plans to massively extend the powers of state surveillance.

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Ash and Carry. Way to Go. Dan Neil in the LA Times Mag looks at the business of death:

There are other ways to decrease the deceased. A Tulsa, Okla., firm called Compacted Dignity offers a “tasteful and attractive alternative” to cremation. The company uses a 400-ton hydraulic press–formerly a stamping machine at a mining company–to squeeze the remains into a block small enough to put on your mantle. The company calls its process “the clear choice for body compression, reduction and liquifactious-deminution [sic].” Who am I to argue?

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George Orwell please come home.
Caroline Gammell at Telegraph UK, reports on a mother who was prevented from taking her son to school because of criminal- record checks:

Amanda Hodgson, 36, a law-abiding mother-of-three, learned of her “criminal past” when applying for a post as a welfare assistant at her local primary school.
She was told she had a criminal record stretching back 18 years, including three convictions for assaulting police officers, and the only way to clear her name was to get her fingerprints checked against every unsolved crime in the country.

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Jasko Caus at Jasmin’s Heart has an interesting series of articles on James Joyce:

An early inspiration for Dubliners was the work of Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. Joyce, a polyglot, learnt Norwegian in order to read Ibsen. What he received from Ibsen was a very important, if not essential instruction for his writing: …”A measure of dramatic life” that Ibsen talks about is actually Joyce’s radiance. So is the case when he takes seemingly quite ordinary details and situations of Dublin life and makes them radiant.

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It had taken years for the hedges to grow as thick as they had, but it had only been in the last few years that Balzic felt he could loaf in peace without hearing later on from God knew who about how he stood around with his hands in his pockets when he should have been out rounding up the beasties and nasties and things that went bump.
The neighbours, Balzic snorted thoughtfully. He had to ask himsdelf what their names were. He couldn’t think of it. Yurkowski, Yurhoska, something like that. Good solid squares, scared shitless of niggers, dope heads, commies, rabid dogs, girls who went without brassieres, and people who made love with the lights on. His mother told him that about them. They were always complaining to his mother, and every once in a while, when she couldn’t think up something new to put them off, she came to him and complained about them. The last time, a couple of months ago, he’d told his mother. ‘Ma, if I lock up everybody they’re scared of, who’s left? I’d have to lock up the world’ To which his mother had replied impishly, ‘You big man, you no can do that?’
He turned away from the window and was startled to see his mother standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She was in her flannel gown, barefoot, her swollen ankles showing under the hem, her fingers over her mouth. She looked like she’d been standing there for some moments.
‘Hey, kiddo, you still up. You sick?’ Her voice was husky with sleep.
‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘What’re you doing up?’
‘I ask you first.’
‘I said I’m okay. Just didn’t feel like sleeping. What about you?’
‘Aah, same thing. Ankles hurt like crazy. Back, too. I think I sleep on floor from now on. You want light?’
‘Yeah. Go ahead, turn it on.’
She flipped the switch by her shoulder and the overhead flourescent hummed and then slowly filled the room with its bluish light. His mother sat at the kitchen table and rubbed one ankle with the other.

Constantine has been quoted as saying: I hope nobody reads The Blank Page because I screwed up large in that one. Otherwise, I’m proud of the other books I’ve written, even the ones that I haven’t published.
But when a book by KC Constantine comes my way I snap it up, whatever he or anyone else has to say about it. I don’t read many crime fiction novels, but I know what I like and they don’t come much better than from an author of this calibre.
Janet Pisula is found strangled with her brassiere next to her bed, dressed only in her underpants. She has been there for about a week. There is a blank sheet of paper lying on her stomach.
She was painfully shy, apparently, didn’t speak much, and although she has been out of action for seven days or more nobody seems to have missed her.
This is a short novel, only 150 pages, and it’s not the best in the series. But it kept me turning the pages and long after I’d finished, it was dancing around in my mind.

Thanks to The Independent for this news

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American writer and critic Cynthia Ozick has won the $5,000 PEN/Malamud prize for short fiction AND the $20,000 PEN/Nabokov award for “enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship”.
Ozick is known as a “writer’s writer”. Her 2004 novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Booker International prize in 2005.

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No matter what happens in the military there’s always a euphemism for it. But the RAF may have set a semantic record with its description of Prince William’s helicopter landing in a field next to his girlfriend’s house. The mission, it said, “achieved necessary training objectives”.

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The Guardian reports that the actor Wesley Snipes has been sentenced to three years in prison for wilfull tax evasion.
Snipes was cleared of five charges including fraud and conspiracy, but convicted on lesser charges. During the three years he failed to file a tax return, Snipes earned at least $13.8m (£7m), prosecutors alleged, and would be liable for $2.7m in taxes. Snipes claimed he owed only $228,000.