Google, thanks to its ‘don’t do evil’ policy, may get the most flak for colluding with the Chinese in the oppression of dissidents, but Yahoo! turns out to be the most censorious search engine, while Microsoft doesn’t understand what the fuss is all about.

Fortunately, thanks to Amnesty International and the Observer it’s never been easier to subvert tyrannical governments and those who collude with them. A snippit of code from irrepressible.info is all you need to republish subversive texts in a way that’s almost impossible to stop. They can’t ban us all… or can they.

1 graffito, scrawl more »

I feel rather sheepish, but I watched How to Look Good Naked on Tuesday night and as with all programmes with tempting titles (as in lowest common denominator; Katharine made me watch) it was quite boring and I shan’t be tuning in again.

Yet I feel moved to comment. It’s not just that the presenter, Gok Wan, is a weird looking bloke even for a fashion guru (his glasses look like they’re made of cardboard; see the 3D Specs modelled by this look-alike).

How to Look Good Naked is one of those programmes that prompts newspaper features on how silly women are for trying to loose weight when fat is normal. Anyone can look good with a little help from Gok Wan. (Daily Mail reader, Mick of London, has already cracked Gok Wan’s formula for making fat women look good in photos: ‘Lie down with your head towards the camera so that your face and breasts dominate the picture / Arrange the lighting so that your lower half is in shadow’. He forgets to mention all the beauty treatments used to sweat them down a little.)

Anyway. Making people feel good about themselves is a good thing. But it’s dishonest to pretend that it’s okay to be fat when one-in-five women and a quarter of men are obese and obesity costs the NHS £7 billion a year.

Losing weight is difficult (my own podge shows no intention of withering away). But telling people to love their fat, is akin to telling them to give up on ever being healthy.

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For an update see: Evo Architects’ Mohammed Afaq & anti-social behaviour
Mohammed Afaq is a wealthy man. With Abdulaziz Yakub Mohammed Roker, the managing director of successful architectural practice Evo Concepts, can afford to spend £187,000 on a property only to abandon it.

On 25 April 2005 Mohammed Afaq and Abdulaziz Yakub Mohammed Roker bought 103 Cundiff Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. Mohammed Afaq had plans. Evo Concepts’ planning application had been resolved on 14 April 2005_*. In an act of simple vandalism, a perfectly good (if overgrown) hedge was removed, as were trees from the garden. The lawn was dug up for no obvious reason. An incredibly shoddy fence was erected… it blew down on a windy day (I kid you not).

Empty and unfenced the property began to attract the wrong sort of people, so Mohammed Afaq boarded it up and walked away.

Fortunately for Mohammed Afaq’s neighbours, Manchester has little tolerance for irresponsible and anti-social property owners: we’re Britain’s ASBO capital. Mohammed Afaq hasn’t been given an ASBO (though I think he should be), but he has been slapped for allowing his land to be used…

‘for immoral or indecent purposes or for any purpose causing inconvenience or annoyance to the public’

… specifically for allowing thieves to access neighbouring properties. He’s got until 7 July to put his house is order.

It’s seems incredible that someone can spend £187,000 on a project like this only to abandon it to thieves and vandals. But the chances are that Mohammed Afaq and Evo Concepts have many similar projects on the go and 103 Cundiff Road is out of sight and out of mind. Sadly for Mohammed Afaq and Evo Concepts, property ownership comes with responsibility. Let’s hope Manchester City Council’s action forces Mohammed Afaq, Abdulaziz Yakub Mohammed Roker and Evo Concepts out of Chorlton and back to their home turf (the footballers’ wives stomping ground of Hale) double quick.
Addendum (11 October 2006): My attention has been drawn to a subsequent planning application made in June 2005. This was withdrawn in July 2005 following objections from, amongst others, Greater Manchester Police who argued Evo Concepts’ design would leave the property vulnerable to thieves and create hiding places useful to criminals. Should you be considering the purchase of a property designed by Evo Concepts, you would do well to consider security issues.

Scrawl graffiti over this »

The Trafford Centre has something of the would-be Vegas about it. A wonderfully artificial environment where you can sit outside a plastic pub (or dine on McDonald’s) under an always starry sky any time of year.

But it is what it is. And I like it for what it is.

Today it was even better. Thanks to England Vs Ecuador it was nice and quiet: as the pic shows. The pic also shows a tendency to over promise. The Orient in the Trafford Centre doesn’t look much like the one in this poster.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).