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.

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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.

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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).

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I’ve been fairly quiet this week as I’ve been stalking notebooks on eBay. It was mainly Katharine’s idea; a coffee table laptop for when you want to look something up quickly (on Wikipedia, say) without trooping off to the study. It effectively takes the place of any reference books you might have sitting on your shelves.

While it needn’t be particularly powerful, it does need to have all the latest wireless gubbins and be small and good looking. Sadly, small and good looking means expensive. So I quickly gave up on buying something new and turned to eBay where I’ve been chasing Sony Vaio TXs.

These auctions are very competitive, but on Tuesday night I opened the bidding on this little beauty. It’s not a TX, but a Vaio 505DP. About fifteen months old, but with barely a scratch, it’s had a memory upgrade to 1GB and came with a spare battery. To my surprise (nay, consternation) nobody else put in a bid and I found myself in Asda Hulme’s car park the next day, looking like a drug dealer with a wad of cash in my pocket.

It was a right bargain (although extending my wireless network, has required a router that doesn’t want to play ball). So why no rival bids? England V Sweden is the obvious answer. And the lesson of the week is that if you’re looking for bargains, get on eBay when England are playing.

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Today we marked the tenth anniversary of our moving to Chorlton-cum-Hardy by exploring the art galleries of Beech Road. The expedition climaxed with the purchase of an image from Chorlton Weave, part of Jack Lloyd’s Exhausted Environment series, which shows at the Creative Recycling Gallery on Beech Road from August 12 to September 15 2006.

It’s what you might call a contemporary urban piece. The canvass – a collage – is dominated by a washing line that weaves its way through images of Manchester’s most exciting and interesting suburb. It captures the character of a place that may appear a little worn – there’s graffiti and litter – but also offers much more than most cities (let alone suburbs).

I don’t big-up Chorlton because I live here. I live here because it is the best place in the world. It really is. While I guess I could be tempted by the USA, there’s no other country in world I’d choose to live. And within the UK, other than Manchester, I’d only consider (if pushed) London, Brighton, Newcastle or Glasgow (for Katharine only the last two). And within Manchester only Chorlton or the city centre, both of which have progressed at an incredible pace (ten years ago we considered Didsbury, but that village has lost its way).

Anyway. Fortified by a late breakfast at Diamond Dogs we embarked on a mini-pub crawl including a venture into what’s becoming known as Manchester’s ethical quarter. Anchored by Unicorn, here you’ll find an increasing number of shops offering organic and fair trade items. We bought a couple of trendy jute shopping bags (including a beer bag for my visits to the Belgian Belly), which we filled at the surprisingly upmarket Somerfield Market Fresh.

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We used to be regular Asda shoppers, but this trip to the Hulme car park, where I’m sat with the recycle bins waiting to complete a significant cash transaction, is the first visit in a while.

And boy has the former Wal-Mart star performer lost its way.

Asda has always been cheap, but it wasn’t always so chaotic or so scruffy. I only wanted a sandwich. The choice was abysmal. This is a world where egg mayonnaise is extra special.
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).

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I’ve been stocking up on beer and chocolate at one of the best stops on Chorlton’s ever expanding deli circuit: the Belgian Belly.

It’s a modest place with just four tables (two outside). But I suspect there’s a lot of business going on online. People really do travel considerable distances to get here, because the Belgian Belly sells beers you simply won’t find anywhere else. Many come from microbrewers who don’t have the capacity to brew in bulk and use varieties of ingredient that aren’t available in large quantities. So you really aren’t likely to find this stuff anywhere else. And it’s almost all bottle conditioned.

You won’t find shelves heavy with hundreds of different beers, but you will find a well representative sample.

Family run, there’s always someone on hand to guide you to a beer — or chocolate — to suit.
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).

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I suspect I’m in a small minority when I mourn the retreat of the Indian call centre, even though it’ll create 450 jobs in this country.

To be fair, I’ve no experience of the Powergen call centre that’s closing, but I doubt very much that the move will reduce the number of consumer complaints. As it happens one of the only call centres that’s not left me frustrated is in India and belongs to Belkin. Their people are superb masters of complex technical gubbins. But that’s not the main point.

Exporting work may not sound like a good idea, but it actually brings many benefits. Our economy is dependent on trade, but you can’t trade much with paupers. Helping India, a friendly democratic nation, get strong makes sense and wealthy nations tend to be more stable and less likely to harbour extremists. So it makes us safer and doesn’t cost as much as we think because we get a lot back.

Not only that, the UK already has a shortage of labour for less desirable jobs, but we don’t much like importing workers (and, truth be told, most foreigners would rather live and work in their own countries).

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I do enjoy my visits to Starbucks, but there are times when only a plate of double egg and chips will do. And that means a proper greasy spoon cafe, still frequented by chain-smoking builders and serving up large portions of real food, real cheap.

That means the Abergeldie Cafe on the edge of the Northern Quarter. (A favourite of Terry Wogan, so they say.)
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).

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