"The Eyes Have It! If YOU want them to..."

After the 'Cash For Legislation' allegations that have been hitting the House Of Lords recently, comedian and activist Mark Thomas decided to recruit some help from the denizens of B3ta to help produce some 'calling cards' for the peers, "a little something to grace the phone boxes of our fair and hollow isle."

Cards such as:


And:


You can see - and download - the cards at www.comparethemarquis.com. However, Thomas and a team of like minded folk decided to display these cards in their intended environment, by decorating the phone boxes of Westminster and Soho. Maybe you'd like to do the same yourself.

After all, the peers are there to serve you...

Happy Valentines Day!

The Joy Division / New Order Sandwich

Because no one seems to know what I'm on about with the whole Joy Division/New Order Sandwich, here it is in video form...

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet...

So, Twitter has gone mainstream.

This morning, 'DJ' and professional bollocks talker Chris Moyles rattled on about it for an hour, joined by the man responsible for killing the last mainstream music show on TV, Andi Peters, and then Phillip Schofield - and all of them seemed to completely miss the point of the site. Now, however, their respective accounts have accumulated several thousand new followers as they all rush to their computers to sign up. Nothing to match Stephen Fry's 100,000+ followers, mind, but he is a National Treasure. And, you know, he does actually have interesting things to say.

Like every other social networking site out there in the big wide world, I'm over Twitter. I realise that it can provide a valuable marketing and promotion tool, and it's a completely unique way of communicating with people around the globe, but now it's becoming more and more popular, it's going to be Yet Another Social Networking Site, where all anyone is interested in is following celebrities and looking at pictures of attractive nobodies - and let's face it, that's all anyone does with Facebook.

It'll be the in-thing for celebs now, where they can share the most intimate (and carefully screened) moments of their lives; Heat magazine will become completely irrelevant as more and more people follow Kerry Katona's Tweets rather than go to the newsagents; we'll be able to see Paris Hilton banging on about whatever thoughts occupy her mind at any given moment; we'll finally be able to discover what David Beckham really thinks about Celebrity Big Brother... Until the bubble bursts, and thousands upon thousands of Twitter accounts are left as the interest dies, and people leave it alone, desperate for the next Big Thing to become mainstream.

This post sounds a lot more cynical than I intended it to be, but it's just the way I feel about this. Twitter is unique and I enjoy using it (even though I have nothing to Tweet about); it was a pleasant surprise to see a lot early adopters - especially the news services, such as the BBC and CNN - but now... Well, think of it like a new band that you've discovered. For a precious little time, that band is yours and yours alone; it's your little secret that you try and share with people, but no one will have any of it, until the band goes overground and have big chart hits, and then all the people who wouldn't give them the time of day suddenly like them. That's how I see the current surge in Twitter's popularity. The UK has found it's new toy to keep itself entertained for a few weeks.

Until the novelty wears off.

The Fear...

Last night, I had what I can only describe as a bout of The Fear. I feel I should point out here that I was sitting in the pub, not doing any kind of illegal substances (although after some of the hangovers I've had, there are a few times when I feel alcohol should be made illegal). I just looked around at the people I was sitting with and it just struck me that I couldn't do this any more. I couldn't sit with a bunch of ageing misfits with no direction in life, whose sole purpose seems to be to get drunk in that one pub when they have the money to do so. It just struck me that that could be my life if I'm not careful.

I've put a lot of work in over the last few months, trying to get my life sorted out, and having that reaction last night made me realise that there's no going back now. One slip and I end up as one of them. Maybe it was just some kind of existential crisis, where I realised that there has to be more to life - to MY life - than just sitting around waiting for the next few hours in the pub, but whatever it was, it made me realise one thing: that life is not for me.

I've been accused of running away from things before, but this is something I'm glad I'm running away from.