Elliott Rodgers

I already have the simply brilliant book Is It Just Me or is Everything S**t? The Encyclopaedia of Modern Life by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur (and I have Volume 2 as well!)

Given my intense enjoyment of previous books by the same authors; a history of participating in protest marches; taking part in various political campaigns both internet and IRL; and a distinct dislike of the current government I was fairly confident I would like Sorry, But Has There Been a Coup by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur.

Out of the three books, I would definitely say Sorry, But Has There Been a Coup is my favourite, how can you not enjoy a book which addresses such questions as So remind me, how many people voted Tory again? “10,703,654 people voted Tory. The total population of the country is nearly 62 million. So that’s no-one, basically.” while still addressing such other delightful questions as How hard is David Cameron?.

What I found really clever and interesting about this book, was the way in which the authors carefully kept the readers entertained by amusing language, political satire and “fun” questions while sneaking in highly relevant questions which would (hopefully) make a few readers think about issues they might not have been aware of. A good example of this was the question What percentage of the UK are millionaires? (0.46%) followed by the question What percentage of the Cabinet are millionaires (75% with the comment Although admittedly, some of them only got that rich by fiddling their expenses). You laugh and then realise that the Cabinet are supposed to represent the people.

Those who want to learn a few things about modern politics and the current government while being made to laugh so much you may just wet yourself a little bit should definitely give it read. I thoroughly recommend this book to everybody.. well almost everybody there’s swear words which may not be suitable for all readers AND Tories probably wouldn’t like it much, those who think that David Cameron is the best thing to happen to this country since Maggie definitely wont like it…

You can buy Sorry, But Has There Been a Coup from Amazon.

Regular readers may remember that I put some effort into promoting the e-petition convicted London rioters should lose all benefits back in August 2011. I felt strongly about this, friends including some I had worked with before, spent time away from their families working at the riots trying to save life, property and bring some sanity and order to the streets.

Anyway there’s another petition that has been started by Ken Sharpe, a Yorkshire resident e-petition: asking the government to Return VAT on Air Ambulance fuel payments.

Why should you sign this e-peition? The next take off an air ambulance makes could be for you or someone you love, returning the VAT will help this happen…

If you want a more detailed reason why read on.

London's Air Ambulance and crew

Read more »

I’ve been fiddling around with my camera, experimenting with different shutter speeds, white balance and so on trying to get a photograph of St Mary’s Church in Chesham, a beautiful old church which just gives off a real classic old fashioned England feel. I know Rev Simon Cansdale and his family from dog walking (they have a lovely enthusiastic chocolate Labrador called Conker “Conks” for short) and I offer any good shots of St Mary’s Church I take for their use free of charge.

Anyway recently at long last the sky was right, the light was right, the clouds were right, there were no annoying planes to spoil the effect… Here’s the results. I think it was worth the wait.

St Mary’s Church is just off Lowndes Park, so Sheppie doesn’t mind me nipping along to check on whether I had a suitable photo opportunity. He’s a bit peeved I didn’t keep going to the river – but he forgets there’s no water in it at the moment!

I’ve been reading Raymond E Feist’s epic series about Midkemia for just shy of twenty five years, I was fourteen when Veronica, a Residential Social Worker at the Children’s Home I was living in, gave me a well worn copy of Magician and I was hooked. I’ve reread all of the books (there’s now a total of 28 books IIRC) several times over. None of the books disappointed me, I’ve felt pleased for characters, I’ve cried when characters have died, celebrated with them, felt angry at the way they’d been treated (by other characters)…

Having waited patiently for months I bought A Crown Imperilled on Kindle and it proved an exception – I expected a LOT better than I got. There were glaring grammatical errors throughout the book, spelling mistakes and several continuity errors – one of which was major; mixing up two of the major characters so they swap places between the start of the book and the middle!). I read a lot of first books on Kindle, including quite a few that are independently published and understand that authors make mistakes – I really didn’t expect that from REF and a multi national publisher. I quickly got the impression that the version that had gone to Kindle wasn’t the proofread version. What was a fantastic story was in part spoilt by all the mistakes.

The whole story to me seemed rushed and not as polished and well thought out as the previous books. REF has said himself that he is drawing the saga to a close in the next book (the title has been announced – worryingly it’s to be called Magician’s End), without giving away any spoilers and plot hints the penultimate book in the series seemed for me to have created more questions than it answered. When I got to the end of the book, the story didn’t seem to have a proper conclusion – it just seemed to stop abruptly (being a Kindle I couldn’t “feel” how much of the book was left).

Unless you are really desperate to find out what’s going to happen after reading A Kingdom Besieged (and not many of the questions will be answered) I strongly recommend waiting before ordering the Kindle version or the print version; reviews on Amazon would tend to show that problems with the Kindle version are in the printed version as well. Hopefully between HarperCollins and Amazon they’ll sort out the problems. If you want to go ahead and order it you can order either the Hardback version or The Kindle Version at Amazon.

If and when HarperCollins and Amazon release an updated version I will review the book again.

This is some amazing use of laptops/netbooks… don’t know how this video was done but it’s so clever. I may even forgive them for spelling theatre wrong