Some great news to end the year with: Israeli soldier held over shot Briton. I’ve been following this story ever since Tom Hurndall was first shot whilst working as a peace activist in Gaza in April 2003. One of Louise’s best friends at university, Sophie, is Tom’s brother.
The arrest of an Israeli soldier over Tom’s shooting is fantastic news - news that I was very sceptical I would ever hear. A positive note to end 2003 with.
So, it’s the end of 2003 and a strange year it’s been too. It probably contained both the best and worst times of my life so I’m not sure if I’m glad to be rid of it or not. New Year’s Resolutions?
I hope you have a good time tonight - I’ll be staying in with the sniffles…
First thing this morning (about 9am) I got a call on my mobile from a withheld number. I answered (groggily, given the time of day) and the person immediately hung up. They waited to hear me answer first.
Not too weird I know, but my sixth sense immediately activated. I think I know who it was :/
How long are you allowed to keep text messages for, before it’s classified as creepy that you still have them?
I watched Iris on BBC2 this evening. It’s an intense film and Judi Dench’s performance is magnificence of course, both moving and multi-layered.
It got me thinking about the nature of creativity and how people choose to express themselves. It was clear that Murdoch had such an affinity with words that they seemed to almost bring themselves to life for her. I don’t know whether she felt that her books had personalities, but it came across in the film that words were the way that she chose to explore her own psyche.
I’m not good with words. I find it hard to express myself through them. I’ve never felt that spoken or written communication is the most natural way for me to connect with people. This has caused me problems in the past, both with forming and maintaining relationships. The only serious relationship I’ve had ended, in part, because I couldn’t communicate effectively and say what I really thought, and felt.
Maybe some day I’ll work it all out, and things will be different. I’m not sure if I’m just a naturally quiet person, happy with my own company, keeping my feelings to myself, or whether this is a problem that I need to sort out.
Shit it’s late. I really shouldn’t think so much. It just makes me sad..
From the wonderful world of Meg comes this year’s Mayfly Project. Sum up your year in twenty words or less.
My entry is up there, posted on 20/12/2003 17:24 (to help you find it). Get some permalinks for them, Meg!
Recently, the governmnent has announced plans for all new university students to be charged up to £3,000 per year for their tuition. This money would not be paid up-front, but retrospectively as part of a “graduate repayment scheme” once the graduate is earning above a certain threshold (probably about £15,000pa).
They claim that this is a fair system. Well, I’ll agree it’s certainly fairer than the current system (where students are required to pay annual fees of £1,150 up-front). That system (which I was subject to) has offered no incentive for young people to enter higher education. An A-level student knows that were they to decide they wanted to go to university, they would be required to find £1,150 a year (unless they were lucky enough to fall under the government’s definition of a ‘poorer student’, in which case they would pay less). I fail to see how that can help to increase the number of students - another of the government’s targets.
The Liberal Democrats have proposed that instead of a graduate repayment scheme, higher education should be funded by a 50% top rate of income tax for those earning in excess of £50,000. The government says that students should not be entirely funded through general taxation, as the majority of people in this country did not attend university, and it is unfair to expect them to pay for those who do wish to go.
Excuse me? Is this a Labour government or a Tory one? It certainly sounds like something the Tories would have proposed in the mid-nineties. I believe it is entirely fair for the general public to pay for the increases in higher education funding. It is they who will benefit. Everyone needs a doctor. A doctor is a graduate. Everyone will need a lawyer at some point in their lives. Lawyers are graduates. Everyone wants a television. Televisions are designed by electronic engineers, who are graduates. Everyone wants clean water, which is produced through systems designed by civil and chemical engineers. Again, all graduates.
If the government feels that an increase in the number of graduates is needed in Britain, there must be a reason. Presumably because the general population needs these graduates to fill job vacancies. In that case, it is entirely proper that the general public should pay (through general taxation) for the increased funding required to achieve this.
Of course, Labour won’t do that, because they’re too worried about going into the next election with a reputation of taxing and spending. The possibility of being a modern, progressive, Socialist government, committed to education being free at the point of delivery seems to be eluding them.
Clement Attlee must be turning in his grave…
If so, go here!
I’ve recently started using Spambouncer to filter the increasing amount of junk I get emailed to me. Trouble is, most of the time I’m forced to use Windows (work build environment etc).
My solution has been to use Cygwin, the UNIX environment for Windows. There are Cygwin packages of Mutt, Procmail, and Fetchmail. The only problem is I couldn’t find any documentation about running Spambouncer under Cygwin.
Spambouncer is a set of Procmail rules which filter mail for you (and optionally send complaints emails about spam to abuse@ email addresses). There are problems under Cygwin though, because Spambouncer uses the nslookup utility to query domains. Cygwin doesn’t supply a version of nslookup though, and Spambouncer doesn’t work properly with the version supplied with Windows.
Luckily there are specially-compiled versions of nslookup (and other utilities such as “host” and “dig”) available at the BIND for Cygwin page. You’ll then have to make sure that your Spambouncer setup (in sb.rc) points at the correct version of nslookup (not the Windows one which is probably already in your path). I found the line:
{ NSLOOKUP="/opt/bind/bin/nslookup" }
did the job for me.
Hopefully that will help someone else stem the flow of junk…