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You are viewing the most recent 9 entries September 11th, 200912:45 am: Prime Minister to Alan Turing
(See Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing for some backstory.) 10 Downing Street, Thursday 10 September 2009: Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.
I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.
But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.
So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better. The petition is still open (30,816 signatures so far) and John Graham-Cumming was hoping Turing could get a posthumous knighthood...       Current Mood:  pleased , evil british politics, imagine better
August 18th, 200910:19 pm: Hooray!
I sold another pic on Redbubble! I sold Edinburgh Dinosaur - as two (two!) greetings cards.  *commits autobackpattery*     Current Mood: pleased , photos, redbubble
July 1st, 200911:18 pm: I WIN!
The last time I tried to recredit my Vodafone Pay As You Go account, I was told my card had expired. I checked with my bank, and discovered to my unsurprise that Vodafone had got it wrong; my card was still perfectly valid. So I tried to check with Vodafone what the problem was. I found that Vodafone had no means to let me do that: ( for length )So that was the end of Vodafone for me. Well, at least until next time. I mean, all phone companies are garbage. But oh, the joy of PAYGO: to be able to just decide "screw you!" and go. (I transferred all my contacts across on Sunday in an Orange shop, before I rang Orange to port my number.) And then I had a problem. I got a Nokia 1600 with a Vodafone SIM card last year in the aftermath of the 3 thing. And the Nokia turned out to be locked to Vodafone only: which I found when I inserted my Orange SIM card and got "SIM CARD NOT VALID". But, ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) solo put me on to a site called www.moneysavingexpert.com, and there was a subsection for unlocking mobile phones for free, so I tried a couple of the websites from there ( unlock.nokiafree.org and www.unlockitfree.com) and found the second one had the clearer explanation so I went with the number one code from that website... ...and WHEE. It worked. My phone was unlocked. My Orange SIM card works. I am wizard of my own phone. :-D     Current Mood: pleased , 3 are bastards, cool things people do with software, evil phone company plots, mobile phone blues
May 19th, 200911:26 pm: Yay fruity civil partnership!
I am going to the civil partnership of one of my oldest friends, to his partner of 15 years, next week - and they've organised it up in the Highlands, in Ross-shire, not that far from Skye. In fact, we're going there on a day-trip the day after the partnership ceremony, which is happening on a boat. All of which is very exciting and happy-making and totally wonderful, of course - except for the problem about: What do I do about a gift? Obviously, the pair of them having been living together for years and years and years, housewarming-style presents would be inappropriate. As would any presents which they'd have the problem of shifting back to Edinburgh. So... ...I bought them a fruit basket. A big fruit basket. I actually spent quite a while putting together The Perfect Fruit Basket (easy-eating fruit, oatcakes, cheese, fudge, nuts) only to discover that the company wouldn't deliver that day. Nor would the next company. Which it finally occurred to me was because of the Spring Bank Holiday in England and Wales on the Monday. So I found a company in Scotland, British Bouquets, and they do a spectacular-looking fruit hamper with cheese and oatcakes, to which I added a box of seashell chocolates. Whee. Sorted. (Also, I am still not sufficiently over the change in the law - not just the Civil Partnership Act but the legislation that makes discrimination illegal: it was an extra fillip of satisfaction to e-mail the hotel that I wanted to send a civil partnership gift and could they put it in the couple's room, and to get a nice message back from the hotel manager saying they'd be delighted. (There have been a couple of extremely nasty incidents in the Highlands of gay men being literally turned away from guest houses: and a bunch more reported of hotel and guest house staff just being plain mean and rude, though not actually denying a same-sex couple a room/a double bed.) Obviously my friends wouldn't have picked a hotel to stay in where that would happen - they've stayed in that area before - but I'm still getting oh this is cool grins over it.)       Current Mood: chipper , being queer, friendship, fruity smells
April 30th, 200907:03 am: Tomorrow, and the next week
I am using up last year's unused holiday time next week. (I originally planned to start next Tuesday, but various things that have happened* have actually made it better to begin tomorrow lunchtime, which feels like really the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. Also, I don't go back to work till lunchtime Tuesday 12th May.) I can't go anywhere - indeed, I've got to check my work e-mail once a day without fail because I'm still supervising the development of our new website. (This is so far not very onerous, but does involve me eyeballing stuff and going "yes, that's OK" or "sorry, try again".) But I don't have to go into work! Or do anything else but make sure the new website keeps chuntering along! (Okay, I may meet up with some people from work. If I feel like it. Or I might not. Still.) (Okay, I may go in for the team meeting Tuesday morning. But only if Scottish Gas are all done by the time the meeting's due to start.) (Okay, seriously, this may not sound like much of a holiday but it is, it is, I'm looking forward to it!) *A meeting that got shifted unilaterally from Monday afternoon to the following Tuesday. Which is fine, it gives me more time to prepare for it. That the quarterly newsletter I do is looking good to go to the printers today, when it usually ends up being a terrible last-minute rush. That I got our weekly e-mail newsletter off on time without difficulty. All-in-all. Anyway. I'm going to make a holiday todo list, and will be posting daily with "to do list of the day", which you can safely ignore - but this is your opportunity to tell me to do something. Something fun. Something interesting. Something I might not have thought to do myself. Something out-of-the-way. Something I can do that does not involve more than an overnight anywhere. And when I do it, I can write a post about it! So: write your idea (255 character limit, less onerous than Twitter, and you can always expand on it in a comment) and suggest a day to do it, and if I like it I'll do it and post about it. ...well, it sounds like fun to me, but maybe I need to get out more. ( the poll )Current Mood: bouncy , holidays, polls
March 30th, 200906:00 pm: This afternoon
About 4pm this afternoon I officially finished all of my work for this year. With one day to spare. ...of course I still have reports to write. Current Mood: cheerful , sometimes i love my job, work
February 6th, 200901:10 pm: In honour of Waitangi Day
...I just had my first Tim Tam Slam. (That website claims it's an Aussie thing, but KiwiSamurai assures me it is a New Zealand practice and custom.) You bite off opposite corners of a Tim Tam, put one bitten-off corner in a mug of hot tea (or coffee), and suck. The moment the hot sweet tea is in your mouth, stop sucking, and eat the Tim Tam before it dissolves into a sticky mess. (You can, briefly, see how the hot tea streaming through the biscuit has melted the chocolate in that line, before the biscuit begins to feel a bit soggy in your hand and needs eating now.) Current Mood: chipper , chocolate, sometimes i love my job, tea
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