Musings of a Muppet

And once again I have been tempted to try out Joomla! And once again I have realised why I didn’t bother with it before!

There is no blog extension that I feel is good enough although their template system is nice. There are extensions that people charge for, which I can understand but having used osCommerce, I am used to having modules for free.

I will continue to try and make it work for me – there is a Wordpress extension for Joomla! but I think you have to pay for it.

So Thursday June 25th became the day that Michael Jackson died. I started seeing the reports on Twitter and took it with a pinch of salt after all the rumours of Patrick Swayze’s death. Today has been full of people spouting on about how great he was – he hasn’t released any decent music since Bad and that was 20 odd years ago…how can he STILL be regarded the King of Pop?

Poor Farrah Fawcet also died yesterday, but you wouldn’t know it as all coverage has been about MJ. In fact, as one twitter put it, it’s a good job he didn’t die on the 26th December 2004 – 59 minutes of MJ…and in other news a large wave was reported in the Indian Ocean. A bit of perspective from the media would be good. Yes it’s sad, but that’s it. It’s sad when anyone dies.

And why has everyone seemed to have forgotten about the ‘other’ side of him…the side that, ahem, liked kids. The only difference between him and Gary Glitter is that MJ was never convicted – he had enough money to pay his accusers off.

In summary, in his day he was a good entertainer, but his day was really 30 years ago, and he has been tainted by the other stuff in his life and everything maketh the man – you can’t choose to celebrate one side and ignore the other. What message does that send out to the world?

The hippocracy of the do-gooders really pisses me off. Fair trade for african farmers, south american farmers but they ignore the plight of british farmers.

Dairy farmers are being screwed by the supermarkets who refuse to pay a fair price. The figures I have seen are that it costs 17p per litre for a farmer to ‘produce’ milk but the supermarkets pay around 15p per litre. You do the maths. It’s no wonder dairy farms are going under.

What people don’t get pointed out to them is that british farmers have increased costs because of the need to be humane – because we all want to make sure that no animals suffer in the course of their lives, but we are not prepared to pay for that humanity. It stands to reason that there are increased costs when ensuring animals have happy lives, but we would rather spend less and buy non-british food.

I would rather pay another 5p a litre on my milk and get the dairy industry a profit for the hard work they do.

And my message to the dairy farmers – help to increase awareness that you are not paid a fair price by supermarkets.

The price of petrol is hovering around the one pound a litre mark and in some places is around Essex it is rising 1p every few days.

Why is this so? The price of oil is falling and the government have not added any further tax onto fuel, so why are there no mass protests?

Are people getting so apathetic now that corporate companies will be able to charge what they like regardless of their costs?

Let’s start twittering about the cost of fuel, let’s start blogging about the needless petrol price increases, and let’s make it known that we have noticed and we are not happy.

I have not heard a peep from the surfers on the internet or from the media, so let’s make some noise!

Another reason that proves the everyday person doesn’t fully understand the workings of a website is how many pro and amateur sites use Joomla! – nothing wrong with that. I think Joomla! is a good product, but so many sites don’t change the Joomla! favicon and it’s REEAALLLY annoying.

Back in the days when I had a working car and had control over the preset radio stations, I had settings such as Heart, Invicta, EssexFM, Radio1, Virgin and XFM.

When my car eventually gets fixed I am gonna have a problem – Heart has gone down the pan with the music it plays and has taken over every other local radio station on the planet it would seem. So much for choice.

It was bad enough when commercial stations seemed to have the exact same playlists as each other, but this is going to be a nightmare.

Anyone fancy setting up a radio station that plays proper diverse music? I do not want to keep hearing the same songs every 2 hours. I want to hear a mix of current decent music (no X-Factor crap and no manufactured bands), classic toons, and random stuff through all the decades from the 60’s. You can’t beat a bit of nostalgic music!

Heart – stop monopolising the airwaves with your dire playlists!

And another directory site has been launched…www.ukdevon.co.uk.

I now have county directories for Essex, Kent, London and Devon! Just the rest of the UK to go!