Sony Hate Month Continues - BluRay 2 : HDDVD 1, a Scoreline I find hard to believe...

Mikes comment reiterating this 2:1 ratio of BluRay sales hit home a little bit to be honest, as he is an In The Know guy who has also digested that stat as gospel truth. Given the theme of March being Sony Hate Month , so charged for landing its gimped console on our sandy shores ("who the fuck wants to see them"..haha, that movie quote works for 2 things in that statement!) I wanted to delve a little deeper.

The first worrying sign was that research material is proving a little difficult to come by. It seems it is hard to put stats down for unit sales so the consumer can't readily see where the format war is heading. Sony seemed very quick to announce themselves as the winner in January when the release of 2 popular movie exclusives saw a boost in sales (*shock).

Im not the only one struggling to find this data. Apparently, those with more than just a keen interest are using Amazon stats in a frantic effort to see whose winning, so the data is obviously a mixed bag. Of the more Sony suck theming stats, I found the following bites.

Sony officials also revealed that, according to an online survey of approximately 100,000 current PlayStation 3 owners conducted by the company, 90 percent have watched a Blu-ray movie on their console.

To me, thats a worrying statistic when the console is bundled with a "free" BluRay movie, TALLADEGA NIGHTS in the US. So 10% of those that bought a PS3 in the US/Japan don't give a shit about BluRay?! That or the movie was so horrible they couldn't watch it all the way through (which goes to show how much Sony care about you, by bundling a POS movie that no one would buy normally (note. The UK launch sees the film Click featuring Adam Sandler as a freebie!)). These are Sonys own statistics too! Even if they didn't like the bundled disc, I would say they tested it to "see the amazing differences", yet there are 10% of PS3 owners that don't feel BluRay offers enough of a difference to warrant buying a movie they actually want.

Plus, this statistic leads to

But even apart from that, 80 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase further Blu-ray movies, while 72 percent of respondents stated that they plan to rent a Blu-ray movie in the near future.

So let me get this straight... 10% thought BluRay was an unimportant feature on the PS3, then a further 10% watched the steaming pile of turd you provided them with and now have no intention of buying BlueRay movies..

Without getting technical (I like to keep my blog at surface level) I can see the merits of future gen (current gen is actually the correct term, it is 2007 ) but when 1/5th of those buying a console don't give a shit about one of its "key features" (see previous entry) you have definitely got something wrong.

Consumerwise, the first company to really embrace the triple format disc will win hands down, as consumers will be future-proof and be able to use it on current players they actually have at the moment. I would buy a HD DVD drive for my 360 tomorrow if DVD movies were dropped in favor of dual layer DVD and HD DVD discs... that would be awesome, and great value for money! I really don't see the Movie Conglomerates or the MPIAA loving the idea of providing people with discs they wont have to replace unfortunately! :(

Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"

The statistics are largely pumped up by the "free" BluRay disc in the PS3, and as they pump more PS3s into the US and Japan, the amount of BluRay movies shockingly goes up too. I'm not saying that this is the only reason BluRay is "winning" the format wars, I just think the statistics used to draw these conclusions are manipulated to begin with.

Stock levels at Amazon are a little confusing too :



They show a stock level of, on average, 15k of both formats. The HD DVD graph seems consistent with a good throughput of sale and demand, whilst to me, the BluRay stock looks like stagnant stock rotation to me. Maybe I'm slightly jaded this month, but it does!

I also find total number of sales quite interesting:

More interestingly, VideoScan's numbers indicate that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Blu-ray managed to close the gap of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD by over seven percentage points, suggesting that if the current trend continues, the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks.

So, even with 2 million copies of TALLADEGA NIGHTS out there, BluRay is still trailing the total number of sales? Most of the FACTS are still blurred as we approach April, so this "race" is still a Black Box scenario.

Maybe if we had some actual sales figures from both camps, we might be able to see which format people seem to be buying. To me it still seems like nobody really cares, and I'm sure if you compared sales to DVD sales both formats get the finger at the present time.

So long as HD DVD doesn't slowdown its output of films, and catches up with a few killer releases, we hopefully won't be drowning in a Sony proprietary format in the future, one that thanks to DRM (that we all know Sony love so much), will mean we are enslaved to buying exclusively what they tell us, subjected to the advertising they make money from, watch it how they tell us (no skipping those trailers), on a machine they made/licensed, and led into a future of even more formats because Sony is now so "brilliant".

Comical Ali Vs Phil Harrison - The Showdown

Is it just me or does every word that spews out of Phil Harrisons mouth just remind you of the now dead Iraqi minister "Comical" Ali? Its every fucking word that comes out of his mouth, it just reeks of bullshit...

After my last rant about Sony and their choices with the PS3, the 2007 Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco and Phil Harrison was there to give a key note speech about PS3 Home (which admittedly does look pretty cool..if only for a few days until I get bored of it like Second Life) and again in his speech, surrounding interviews and general media that comes from his camp is just so reminiscent of the early days of Iraq II : This Time Its Personal (This Ones for you Daddy).


I've compiled a few of my favorite quotes by Phil, with what I think about them, and a comparable quote from the Comical genius himself.

Do you accept that Sony has had a bit of an image problem with PlayStation 3 in recent months? Phil Harrison: No, I don't accept it. I've been doing my best to make sure that the world sees PlayStation 3 for what it is. I can't deny that we've had some challenges, but I think those are all behind us.

What – an overpriced POS?! No you've actually bee overhyping the PS3 and relaying bullshit information about its Super Computer Capabilities. Really Sony, the challenges are NOT behind you yet - you have a million of this monolith coming to the UK and they really aren't all preordered!!

Comical Ali says - "We are in control. They are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards."

It's all about software now, it's not about hardware. It's all about services, it's all about the way that the industry is changing and the way that we hope to be taking a leadership position in that change.

Since when has Sony been pushing the issue of Software over Hardware? If he truly believed this, the BluRay wouldve been scrapped in favor of, oh.. I dont know, maybe an easy produce DVD drive that developers can actually use! Services too... hmm, I forgot with M$ having IPTV, Media Center etc etc that Sony had BETTER services to offer...

Comical Ali says - "We have shot down 2 Apache helicopters. Have the Americans said yet that they were shot down by their - what do they call it - friendly fire? No? Well... [dramatic pause, then smiles] ...not yet!"

We've been hearing lots of positive things from lots of people, and the response on the blogs and the websites and the forum seems to be almost universally fantastic - so I'm delighted.

So you've only been reading the positive Fanboy sites then, because what I know online the PS3 has been welcomed like a shitstorm!

"The situation is excellent, they are going to try to approach Baghdad...and I believe their grave will be there."

There's still criticism of the PS3's high price point. How long is it going to be before the price comes down? But it's not about price, it's about value, and it's about putting into the PS3, offering the value that is going to make consumers satisfied - and I think we've done that.

My sentiments exactly Phil... its not about price one bit.. I forgot that everyone has a spare £425+ in their pockets to buy a gimped PS3. Value is speculative and relative.. so for a CEO I guess this isn't a massive issue but £425 is a lot of money to me!

Comical Ali Says : "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq"

The backwards compatibility issue has been talked about a lot in Europe recently. You made comments some months ago saying that backwards compatibility was important, something that you wanted to give consumers and that they wanted... Why has that strategy changed? The strategy has not changed. We have made a technical change to the machine which moves us from being a hardware-embedded backwards compatibility solution to one which is a combination of hardware and software.

This is Comical Ali all over! “The strategy has not changed”!! That could actually be a direct quote! The strategy has changed, changed in the favor of Sony, not the consumer. I read a recent article testing 12 PAL PS2 games on the PS3, all games I would say are worthy of playing (Guitar Heroes 2, GTA amongst them) and only 1 of them worked?! Jeez... what a great stance!

Comical Ali says "They are not in Najaf. They are nowhere. They are on the moon. They are snakes in the desert..."

In America, where PS3 disc is already out, Blu-ray disc is surging ahead as the next-generation movie format of choice. It's absolutely trouncing any other formats, and I think we'll see the same in Europe and the UK.

What?! Next gen wise this is speculative at best as the reports on the Next Gen format of choice are largely false, but saying its trouncing any other format is utter lies. Using the words "any other format" makes it sound like hes encompassing DVD into it, yet DVD is still the media of choice by far... incorporate DVD figures and its easy to see that no one currently cares about HD discs

Comical Ali says "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq" : Falsifying facts, just like Phil!

So there we have it... one interview diluted into Comical Alis styling! This really could be part one of a million, as I took all those quote from ONE INTERVIEW!! There are a lot of better and more "Comical" ones but this will do for now! I said previously to not get me started on Phil Harrison but I just cant help myself... the guy is just a fucking douche!

UK PS3 at launch?!? I'd rather lick my own arsehole...

For those of you who don't know me all that well, you might say I know a little bit about video games... and not in the way that most people say "I know about X", I genuinely can be referred to as an expert in this genre. Why? Well, I live and breathe them, and have done all my life, and not many people can say that.

I dig a little deeper than that, and tell you that as part of my degree in Software Engineering I coded a Physics API that served as the basis for any video game from scratch, rendering such in OpenGL. I code a little for the PSP amongst other things, and have worked in the games industry (briefly appreciated, but thats another story). I grew up in front of a C64 and proceeded through every generation of video game console to date, devouring game after game to progress my own understanding and expertise so that one day I could develop the best game of all time. I know more about the history of video gaming than I care to recall and am an all round gamer geek.

I generally get that "chill" around the launch of a new console; its my crack.. I just love that new console smell. Gaming has revolutionised the way we think about home entertainment and I love that too, and he thought of a brand spanking new piece of kit under my TV fills me with anticipation for any developer to unleash its potential at any moment.

I've paid for my own consoles since the age of 13, starting with my own PSX, saving paperboy wages and mixing birthday and xmas money to eventually afford a new machine. I took time off college on Dreamcast launch day, telling my Physics tutor, much to her dismay, that a new console mattered more to me than her lectures. I'm now approaching 25 and I can generally afford a new piece of hardware out of my monthly disposable income at a push, but not on March 23rd 2007 I can't!

Sony have upped the ante with the PS3 to "considered purchase" with a pricepoint in the UK that is cringe worthy at best. Ripping out one of the more appealing features (by replacing the Emotion Engine with Software Emulation.. I mean wtf is that!) Sony force us to keep our PS2s out as not all games will definitely be supported in the European Launch, unlike the US and Japanese counterparts. Anyone who knows anything about emulation will tell you that 99% of the time emulated support is no match for hardware compatibility. Cheers for that Sony, its bad enough we've had to wait another 5 months for a PS3, then get ripped off with our pricepoint to begin with, but you're making our PS3 WORSE than the NTSC counterparts... thats a pretty bold statement of Fuck You in my book!

..and it seems that this is the Sony brand theme these days. They force standard after standard on us (I don't recall a Sony proprietary format that has genuinely succeeded in the mainstream, although I am open to suggestion) and they attempt to do it again with BluRay. My forecast is due to Sonys iron grip on the DRM for BluRay, HD DVD will be the choice of the average Joe, with BluRay just being used exclusively for PS3 games, until, like every other Sony proprietary format (Betamax, DAT, miniDisc, MemoryStick, UMD... need I go on!), it eventually gets laughed off as another Sony mistake. I know why they keep plugging away (to control a media market and make billions in licensing), but I just wish they wouldn't!

But Blu-Ray is a major factor in the pricing of the PS3, so how can I not be against this format from the get go. The infamous blue diode fiasco they seem to be having in manufacturing their drives was the suggested blame for the low production numbers from day one (and Europe got the major shaft with Sony deciding to allocate their stock to NTSC regions first), so it brunts most of my grudge for PS3 pricing.

Which brings me to my beloved past love, Lik-Sang, and the Iron Fist it used to smash them into oblivion. I can't, thanks to Sony, choose to purchase a Japanese PS3 and import it to the UK as that would break some (made up) international law. I can go to Japan, purchase a PS3 there and simply bring it home with me, but I will struggle to buy one from a reputable online retailer. I would much rather have a NTSC-J console, like my Xbox360 is, not just to save about half the price on Original titles (you know, so I don't have to resort to piracy/second hand buying for shitter games I would never pay and support at full price), but to have access to all the lovely games that never get released in the UK, or we get the shaft and have to wait whilst they are converted to PAL regions (which sucks balls might I add).

Generally Sony seems content giving its fan base the shaft, so in return I am giving the PS3 the shaft this generation around. I am not a fan boy of any specific console (I am a Console Fanboy if you must label me) and always plan to own any new hardware I can get my hands on, but this time Sony have pushed too far.

Pricepoint : Wrong - £450+ for a games machine is a big turn off, even with the BluRay Magic, and (now Emulated) Backward compatibility of PSX and PS2 games. Sony wouldn't even pay for the licencing of the rumble feature, with that cretin Phil Harrison (dont get me started on him) claiming rumble was "so last gen" then oh wait, due to popular demand they pay Immersion off and are now planning on putting it back in. I'm sure all the people who've stocked up on PS3 wireless controllers are rejoicing at the thought of having to buy a whole wave of new pads!

Technology : Wrong, wrong and more wrong! They've spend billions on R&D for the Cell processor then they put a measly 256mb RAM in, with a maximum texture size of 1.something mb (not 100% on this fact, I was pretty drunk in the conference I heard this at!) due to other limitations don't really cover themselves for future proofing. Whats the point in being able to load that 50Gb disk with textures, movies and game content if developers can't a) pull them off the disk quick enough (BluRay drives are sloooooow but will get faster Im sure) and b) dont have anywhere to quickly access them?! This, in laymans terms, is like building a theme park with all the best rides in, then only putting one entrance on the main gate with some slow old fuck letting people in, then only allowing a small group of people on the rides at once... it makes no sense!!

Customer Appreciation : Fuck off! Trying to force a movie format mixture on your customer base in a vain attempt to win a proprietary format war battle is not something I care to get into.

Exclusive Titles : All but none existent, with most developers pulling away from PS3 exclusivity, opting for a much wiser multi platform approach

Games Lineup : Most of the titles I want are coming to both 360 and PS3, and given the things I've seen with comparisons, the 360 version is generally better than the PS3, thanks to (better) graphical brute, oh... and have more RAM...something Microsoft didn't skimp on.

Future Proofing : Something Sony seem to like to drum home about their Cell Processor. From what I know in the coding world, unless youre a Mathematician with a meticulous approach to calculations in real time, and know the Cell inside out, squeezing every last drop of power out of the cell is almost impossible. I went to a (secret) PS3 tech discussion last year and the guest speaker suggested they had only seen about 20% peak rates with the PS3, largely due to other bottle necks. Developers currently don't need all that power, and will always struggle to use it due to other limitations, like only having 256MB of RAM to start with!

Development Potential : In fairness, for me personally, this is one of the only selling points for the PS3. I do quite fancy a dabble with PS3 Linux..


So of all those points, only the development side of things tempts me at the minute is having the ability to code on the box, and given I can do that on a number of other platforms.. Im going to give the PS3 a miss! I unsurprisingly already own both a Wii and an Xbox360 and really do love that Wii60 combo. So my message is Fuck You Sony, Fuck You in the eye!

Here's how I set up a business when I was 23.... I'm a fucking douchebag, thats how!

Well I'm looking into sorting my own taxes out with the Inland Revenue and stumbled across this cock stain,with his self glorifying, motivational schpiele on how he set up his own business at 23 and now turns over £500k a year.

Founder of SwapGame.cock, Marc Day is a hero to all aspiring entrepreneurs the country owner... well, not quite. You see, in this rather drab piece of propaganda you may or may not miss the asinine way this fuck weasel founded his company.

Their Reason: Take time for thorough research

Take time for thorough research?! Swapping things... fuck me, thats brilliant... that must've taken him all his years at University to come up with that idea. A way of swapping/renting games online.. a childhood watching Swapshop would suffice.

No, the reason he was able to establish such a company is that his family were already rich.

"Importantly, I also secured a £30,000 bank loan. The bank was apprehensive, but I was able to use my parents' property as security and I made my father chairman of the company, which gave the bank more confidence. My father was experienced in business and I used him as a sounding board anyway."

Wow... I wish my daddy would let me secure my business loan on his property! Apprehensive my arse.. I remember going to the bank to ask them for a loan once and they looked at me like I'd just shit on the desk and wrote the amount I wanted with it.

So there we go... in a nut shell, if you want to start a business you need to do research.. oh, and have a family thats rich.. got that??? :|

Has the media finally caught up with reality in the UK?!

Caffeine... bringer of so much joy, and as such I enjoy a nice cup of coffee and read my daily dose of Bovine News and yet again I stumble across an arbitrary piece of "shock" journalism that really should be no-news but as its Fox News thats reporting it, I had to laugh.

The article can be here and as far as stating the obvious goes, it does it pretty well. I could've told you years ago that young women were going out and intentionally getting pregnant but I'm not going to say "I told you so" because I think a lot of us knew this.

The thing I want to build on from this article is the very last comment below the advert of "Neal's comments come as figures show England and Wales have the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe — with the biggest growth among girls under 16.". This is quite a worrying statistic...

I mean why is this just Europe.. surely its then true of the developed world too, I mean what other first world countries are there outside of Europe that have a high rate of teenage pregnancy? I would think even the Chinese (questionably second world) and the educated Indians (again, Second World really...) have curtailed their rutting for their teenage years in favour of a better life so why in the UK are we doing so much fucking?

The simple answer is the welfare state. Most girls can see they are infinitely "more independent" with child so why not have one young and continue spitting them out throughout their lives so they never have to work, and constantly get support from the state. Hell, its got to be better than working in McDonalds... just ask the guy who impregnated them!

I had to laugh that the slag wagon got pregnant on the "first try" with her 13 year old boyfriend... pretty good going as far as I'm aware! Better reporting that than she had a gizzfest with 5 of the local chavs with any one of them potentially being the father, I mean we might be having a lot of teenage pregnancies, but don't make us out to be promiscuous to boot.

The sooner this Labour government gets the chop the better; a government that started with so much promise and potential and has consistently failed to delivery year after year, consistently shafted the British public year after year, and in actuality, just been spouting hot air for almost three terms now. Somehow the tabloid buying masses haven't cottoned on to this and this pretentious prick is still the voice of the UK.

The only man who has ever really had my vote ended up being an alcoholic (we smell our own I guess!) and the current wave of ball bags are laughable at best. David Cameron has my vote at the next election, but even he reminds me of that "wannabe cool guy geek" from school that everyone laughed at behind his back because everyone knew he was secretly a douche. The one with all the "radical ideas" that are so painfully middle of the road it makes you cringe. The guy who got drunk a few days before his 18th birthday and was now a "rebel". The Robert Aide of the Conservative party... (if you didn't go to high school with me you won't know who he is but just think David Cameron with Milky Bar kid white hair and you'll be on the right lines).

I died a little more inside today...

The Cock and Balls Project

Well London has now 100% fallen through... what a shit load of fuck! It has been one thing after another really and in some respects Im glad it has. They showed as much compassion as Adolf Hitler with a bus load of Jews holding a firebomb to my sob story of why I couldnt make it for my first day and needed some extra time to you know, relocate to the shithole that is London.

He is my sob story:

Dear Adolf,

Well it really has been a weekend of despair and madness, and of plans changing and changing again. Essentially I have been let down by both my places to stay in the London area and in turn, am not going to be able to start without a little help/after a few days of house hunting.

Having only let me know yesterday that my family can no longer put me up, my friend in Northampton let me know he will be away on business for a week, I have been frantically searching for a viable solution all day.

If I had money to burn I would've quite simply drove down this afternoon and found a short term B&B until I could find a decent place to rent, but knowing i will undoubtedly need every penny I have for a deposit etc I did not feel this was a great solution. Knowing nothing of London I do not know what areas are good, and what are not, and I would really like to get a thumbs up before jumping into something, even in the short term.

So I'm left with a dilemma, no place to stay and am open to suggestions! I really will need to be in the area to look for a flat, but at the same time I can't afford to be traveling back and forth to view properties. I really am drawing blanks when it comes to London now as its so expensive, and although Ill be ok once I have a place sorted in the right area, if Im not able to preview anything before hand, or discuss with people experienced in the area (i.e. people at work!) Im a bit lost!

Which leads me to ask for some advice in this scenario. I want to get down as soon as possible but Im a little inexperienced when it comes to renting/relocating and am just out of ideas! I need something cheap and short term, and don't mind traveling a bit to get in within reason. I hate to have to bring this on you, but I really don't know what else to do.

I seem to recall you mentioning you are not in tomorrow so I will call to confirm the theme of this email with the number I have, and I'll hope to hear from you soon. I will do my uttermost to minimise the amount of time it takes to find somewhere to stay.

Kind Regards,
David Brown

Not too weak, not too anything other than you've given me a week to relocate to London, plans have changed and are out of my control. This was sent on Sunday night, when I knew there would be no way of me making it.

On Monday I contacted them and spoke to probably the rudest man I have ever had the displeasure of speaking to, their MD.. a supposed Upper Echelon of their team, but he was nothing other than a giant vagina with sand in. Three of the comments that left me with a severely bad taste in my mouth included "We are not a Housing Agent", "I don't see how where you live is in any way our problem" and "We have set up a computer for you, that was a complete waste of time".

To which he left the conversation by telling me Adolf would be in touch and left me know what is going to happen. I immediately contacted my recruiters to let them know what this giant douche had said.

Low and behold, today at about 12pm I got an email off Adolf to let me know the following:

David,

Your unannounced no-show on your first day of employment has sent ripples through the management here at the Cock and Balls Project. This has not only disrupted schedules but also wasted time as various people have been making preparations. This firm has now lost faith in your relationship with us.

Unfortunately, due to the gravity of this situation, we are withdrawing our offer of employment at The Cock and Balls Project. We feel that this is the best route for the both of us.

We wish you all the best for your future.

Best,
Adolf H.

As Paul pointed out, this was a reply to the previous email... doesnt take a genius to realise my no show wasn't in any way shape or form unannounced! His "ripples through management" comment is pure class... it makes my joining their team sound like a world shattering event, and by not doing so I may have caused the Earth to implode!

So I'm back to the drawing board on the job front... not the best news Ive ever shared but its probably (definately) for the best. Which now leaves me with this...

Day off work... £70... Diesel...£35.. M6 Toll Road... £8...Subway in Shithole London...£7... Starbucks Coffee... £2

Getting out of a dickhole company before you start work for them... priceless!

Fuck Yahoo in the Ass

Hi Pop Pickers... I've moved my blog from Yahoo 360 to Blogger for several reasons:

• It allows me greater control over my content, formatting and what I can and can't do with my works
• It's a lot more powerful than Yahoo 360 in terms of content
• MySpace is only used by 13 year old kids, paedos and the internet retarded... their interface is horrid and I don't need a bunch of sycophant faux friends telling me how cool I am, that my work is amazing or asking if I want to buy Viagra.
  
• Yahoo are a bunch of money grabbing bastards... Google are less so!
• Did I mention I hate Yahoo??

It was a simple choice in the end, so I will be moving all my old posts over to Blogger today, as well as continuing the London debacle and the decisions Ive made regarding it. Catch you all laters dudes and dudettes!

ps. I amending the template to make the blog look more me, and if you are using a resolution less than 1024x768 then be prepared to have to use that scroll bar... Im not punishing my visitors because you cant read small text/are blind.. damn 800x600 websites piss me off!

BBC News Bullsh1t spin machine

God Bless the BBC, and their totalitarian control of the TV Licensing market in the UK, ruling with an iron fist and demanding their pay. I know of very few other systems where you can demand a subscription fee for an arguably unasked for service (WoW addiction is somewhat like this!). Not really... eff them in the A, the buch of cocklords!

I was having my usual caffeine break this afternoon when I picked up on the usual spun bullshit that most news networks put out, one that the BBC is usually pretty good a weedling out. I hate the concept of University topup fees at the best of times, and whilst it doesnt immediately affect me, Tony Blair and the Labour government do piss me off. Anyway, I found this article :

Applications to university rise

To which I really had to respond. The Higher Education Minister, Bill Rammell proves himself to be a pompous arsehole, typical of these kind of positions. His comment of :

"These highest ever figures show that tuition fees are not putting students off applying to university, as many predicted. The critics of the new system are being proved emphatically wrong."

..is cringeworthy at best. These figures in no way prove critics of the new system wrong! How does a system with only one solution that has an increase in popularity instantly justify the new system?! Is this not called Communism?!!??!

Given we are in a "like it or lump it" situation, how are the critics proved wrong? Please, Bill.. just put me straight on this one! I wonder how many students would opt to go to University in other countries given a better choice. All this study goes to show is that University is now easier to get into that Paris Hiltons knickers...

In any case, I had to respond. I have posted my comments just in case the BBC don't publish them...

This study proves nothing about the popularity of tuition fees or the "new system", it is just yet another indication of the slow decline of standards in our secondary schools and colleges. Exams have become easier over the years (thanks to a mixture of dumbing down questions and teaching pupils how to pass the exams rather than educating them) and thus we are left in a predicament where the bovine masses all want to go to University thanks to their 6 AS Levels at grade D.

Giving the false hope that you will be better off by gaining a degree whilst accruing thousands of pounds of debt is ridiculous. I am fortunate enough to be employed on the back of my solid Software Engineering degree; I wonder how many Travel and Tourism Bachelors graduated, only to end up back in a job in something soul destroying?

As ever, I don't have all the answers, but Ill voice my opinion when something retarded like this has been slipped into the general stream of palatable media. Thanks Tony, thanks a lot for stinking up the Universities of this country with the idiots that should be serving me my McDonalds at lunchtime. Ill have to make my own butties soon.... geez!

London Part 2 : Expensive to get to... I mean WTF!?!

London; the city of dreams.. a place of big business, high flying jobs, vibrant city life and brilliant prospects. What a load of bollocks!

Just getting to the place is an absolute joke! Ive been pricing up the train (thinking about the environment and all..) and its an hour journey from Northampton to Londons Euston Road so logic would suggest that a train would be cheaper than owning a car and driving that distance... and you know what, you'd be dead wrong!!

My good friend James lives in Northampton you see, and rather than jump into any old shithole (as Im sure there are many in London) I asked him if I could stay with him until I find Amy and I a nice 1 bedroom apartment that wont involve me having to subsidise my salary by giving handjobs on the subway to afford. I know it will be a ballache but as its short term (and half the time I spent on the road getting to and from Leeds) I know I can cope.

But the sheer expense of the train journey is shocking. I emailed Silverlink yesterday to inquire to the pricing of a pass for the "season" which range from week passes to a full year and here was the response...

Thank you for your enquiry,
Season Tickets between Northampton and London Terminals (for Euston) will cost £92.70 for one week, £356.00 for one month, £1068.00 for three months and £3708.00 for one year. You can purchase your season ticket online, or at any staffed mainline station. To purchase a season ticket, you must have a photocard. These can be obtained from any mainline station, by taking along a passport size photograph.

regards
Barry Cochrane
Season Ticket Helpdesk

£92.70 for a week?!?!?!?!? What in the living piss is that about?!

I knew London was expensive, but I assumed the transport to it would be relatively cheap.. you know, to encourage people to visit the capital! A weeks railpass for the whole of the Japanese rail system is about the same as that, and I can travel the length of Japan on that!!! This is extortion of the highest degree..

So... why is the UK promoting the use of public transport when it is far cheaper for me to own and drive a car that distance (maybe not into London thanks to congestion charging, but Im talking about distance wise)?? Diesel, even by UK standards would be a maximum of £5-7 a day, plus car insurance, the car, maintenance etc so why in the hell is a train that holds hundreds of people going to cost £19.85 a day?!

Not to even mention the overall inconvenience of trains... I mean UK trains are dirty, smelly, full of chavs and terrorists, and the winner of all, always (and I mean always) delayed/cancelled/late. The UK has some of the worst public transport in the world... why oh why is it the most expensive. I have to walk to the train station in the morning (the UK is hardly Spain or Italy where this might actually be pleasant at 7:30am... and its probably 15 minutes) and then from Euston Road I can get the subway for 4 stops (more expense) or walk approximately 20 minutes to Regent Street... fuck the environment, give me my nice, comfortable, cheaper car any day of the week.

I died a little more inside today... this country... i mean jeez!

London: Expensive and dirty, I expected nothing less!

If you didn't know, I had a job interview in London on Regent Street (yes, very lar di dar) yesterday so I had to travel down for it early doors to make it for my 2:40pm appointment. I set off at 7am and was surprised to only really hit 2 patches of traffic on the way down, taking a total of 4 1/2 hours to get to Edgware.

Edgware is one of the outer regions on the subway into London, and this rather dismal and dirty town was what I expected of an outer London town; a relatively innocuous place with nothing of real interest there. The houses pretown center were rather nice though, and I felt secure leaving the Bora on a street with houses with Porsche 4x4s and 3 Mercs up the drive.

So I got to the Subway and the ripoff began, being charged £6.75 for a 40 minute return subway journey (although I am to believe with an Oyster card its half that, but thats still far too expensive). The tube station was filthy, the seats on board were grimy and in need of repair, and the comfort factor was just non-existent. For the price of the subway I would've expected it to be the best in the world (it must surely be the most expensive) but compared to other big cities I've used (Hong Kong and Seoul being the other 2) this was a big let down. It was functional, but considering both HKs and Seouls subways are younger, and far cheaper (40-80p a journey maximum) London really does need to do something about this.

In any case, I arrived at Oxford Circus at about 12:30, so I had so time to kill. I took a right out of the subway (which proved to be the wrong decision; Regent Street is LEFT out of the subway!!) and walked down Oxford Street in search of the building. After about 10 minutes I decided I'd headed in the wrong direction so grabbed a coffee in Starbucks (for a city it was standard price in fairness, £1.99 for the largest Standard Coffee) and pulled out the Sat. Nav for directions.

It couldn't get a signal at all, so I just used is as a glorified map and found that I had indeed gone the wrong way. No harm, no foul... I still had at least an hour to get to the interview and it was all of about 4 streets away, so I just relaxed in Starbucks to the always chilled grooves, enjoying my coffee and my favorite pastime in cities of people watching.

It always amazes me, the colourful array of people in the city, from the Businessman in his Suit and Tie, to the tramps with crumbs in their beards, they all look like they have a story to tell. I wanted to pull out the D70 and take a few snaps, but felt it was a little inappropriate, plus I didn't want it getting nicked so it stayed in the bag. I spotted this little Eskimo guy holding a billboard that made me think about Ben, and whether he had a decent job in London yet.. lol.. or whether he was still doing something as soul destroying at the little Eskimo dude.

He looked so sad in his parker and big mittens, with his hood firmly up. I wanted to take a long shutter speed photo of him stood there with people walking by him, it would've been a perfect example of workers being exploited for commercialisation in a busy world, but again, I was in a Starbucks and didn't want to be clicking away with my (expensive) camera.

So after finishing my coffee I walked to Regent Street; the place I was being interviewed at was 3 stores down from Hamleys, so I killed the rest of the time I had wandering in there! If I was a spoiled brat its the kind of place I could imagine running riot in, certainly a place where childrens dreams are made from. I had to laugh as there were no sale items at all.. not surprising really, so I didn't bother buying anything.

After that I went to stand outside the place for 10 minutes or so to get some fresh air and prepare myself for the interview. I was approached by a gypsy woman with some fake flowers, which she put in my top pocket of my blazer. She proceeded with some kind of sob story about giving money "for the kiddies" and when I gave her the shrapnel I had (all of 30p) she tried to kiss me. She had warts, boils and a beard, which wasnt the only reason I pushed her, but it was enough to try and prevent myself getting some disease. She said most people are giving about a fiver, which I LOLed at and gave her the flower back. *shudders* ... dirty bitch!

So I went into the interview relatively confident; I'd done my Space Invaders demo for them, which they were very happy with so I had a good grounds to sell myself from... which I did to the best of my abilities. It went well in my opinion, and I left pretty pleased with doing all I could to try and secure the job.

Which they have JUST this second offered me! As I was blogging this, they called to offer me the position. They're emailing me the details now and all I have to do is say yes! My fingers are crossed that the proposed accommodation isnt too scrubby, and that all the details and good, but I could be officially working on Regent Street sometime soon!

London, here we come!