A horribly distorted parsnip has won the prize as England’s ugliest vegetable. The competition was created to challenge the idea that tasty fruit and veg must look perfect.

The Daily Mirror reports that thousands of local people lined the streets of Axbridge, Somerset (population 2,025), to cheer their new village carnival queen - 15-year-old David Bridge.

‘Schoolboy David beat three girls to the title. He wore a tiara and flowing dress as he took pride of place in the parade. David proudly waved to 2,000 wellwishers who turned out to see him.’

Photos here.

I love funny old Britain sometimes :-)

I love this, not just because it is hot. But also because it is funny in many different ways, such as the guy who walks in but then gives up and walks out.

Here’s a great idea. The top of the rechargeable AA battery flips to reveal a USB plug. You just plug the battery into a spare USB port on your PC and it charges up. Nothing else needed.

I love rechargeable batteries. If you take care of them, they can last for years. I have four NiCad batteries that I bought on Old Compton Street in 1992 (was that electrical shop called Rayners?). I think they cost about £10.

For years I used them in my flash-gun. Now I use them in my digital camera. They must have been recharged hundreds of times and still work perfectly.

Imagine the damage to the environment if I had used standard batteries all this time instead and what would the cost have been? Maybe £500?

There are two types of rechargeable AA battery. The older NiCad type and the more recent NiMH. The secret to getting long life out of Nicads is to make sure you always run them down completely before you recharge. Otherwise they develop a ‘memory’ effect, which means you never get a full charge from them again. Whereas the NiMH type can be ‘topped up’ whenever you like.

In fact, my experience so far has been that, if they are looked after, NiCads seem to survive much longer than their NiMH counterparts.

These USBCell batteries are NiMH and cost £12.99 for two. Which isn’t bad if you get a few years of use out of them.

BBC Panorama reports on a European investigation which suggests that a VAT (sales tax) scam may have cost the UK up to £8.4 billion (£8,400,000,000).

The theft comes from so-called ‘carousel fraud’, where crooks repeatedly import and export high value goods such as mobile phones, failing to pay VAT but then claiming it back from the government.

If this figure is true, it amounts to £140 for every person in Britain.

Excited to see a red squirrel in the garden this morning. It was being chased by more than a dozen sparrows. They have made the overgrown clematis their base and I expect they saw the squirrel as a predator.

From 30th September to 8th October 2006 it’s Red Squirrel Week. This one was nine days early!

Northumberland is one of the last strongholds for the red squirrel, which has been driven out of most of England over the past 100 years by the grey squirrel.

These stills are from some video that will be up on the site in a few days as part of a longer film.

More about red squirrels:

Red Alert

BBC Radio 4

Northumberland National Park

I get tired of newspaper articles that make out that the gay ’scene’ in Manchester used to be so seedy and bad years ago, but now it is so wonderful. It just isn’t true.

Take this article from 2003 which appeared in The Manchester Evening News — a newspaper that can be relied on to regurgitate hype about gay Manchester (just check out contradictory figures in the Evening News for attendance at Pride over the past eight years).

Here the Evening News quotes Iain Scott, owner of Taurus bar and restaurant in Canal Street who says:

“The last 10 years have seen the biggest evolution,” says Scott. “It has gone from three, maybe four, venues to over 30 venues in the Village Business Association.”

There may only have been a handful of venues around Canal Street. But if he is suggesting that there were only three or four in the whole of the city centre, then that is not true at all.

I moved to Manchester in 1982 and in the early to mid-1980’s there were the following gay bars and clubs in Manchester city centre:

Stuffed Olives, High Society, No1 Club, Manhattan, Rembrandt, Dickens, Napoleons, The Union, New York, Heros, Archway, Thompson’s Arms.

A quick look at a couple of issues of Mancunian Gay magazine from the time shows some others that I don’t remember. The November 1983 mag lists: Why Not? on Ashton New Road and the Egerton Arms Hotel on Gore Street. The May 1984 issue lists Shadows on Union Street (later called El Cid). The June 1985 issue includes Paddys Goose on Bloom Street.

I make that 16 pubs and clubs. Not ‘three or four’.

‘Him Monthly’ August 1983 issue lists a leather/denim night every Friday at the Wheatsheaf pub on Camp Street (would you believe?) and there was the Poly gay disco also on Friday nights. And let’s not forget the Bloom Street Cafe and Gaze bookshop and Clone Zone which were also on Bloom Street.

There were two gay bars that we used to go to in nearby Stockport: The Baker’s Vaults and the New Inn.

In those days, gay bars and clubs were almost entirely gay. There were no straight boys looking for a fight and no shrieking hen parties. On the whole, people were not on drugs and it was rare to see anyone drunk and incapable. It was really quite civilised and fun. You could enjoy a night out without worrying that you might have your face punched in or drink spiked.

Yes it’s true you had to knock on the door to get into some places. But that kept out the trouble-makers. These days they are inside the pubs and clubs.

In the 1980’s some of the places were in better parts of town: Stuffed Olives and Heros were on the other side of Deansgate to Kendalls department store. Manhattan was in Spring Gardens and No.1 Club was near the town hall. In fact, far less ’seedy’ than Canal Street is now.

Many venues were gay owned and run (unlike today). There may be double the number of venues that claim to be ‘gay’ now. But I reckon there are fewer gay men and women out on the scene now than there were in Manchester 25 years ago.

This isn’t just because everywhere is now ‘mixed’, but also because older gay people aren’t welcomed anywhere in 2006. Meanwhile, many gay youngsters reject what the scene offers and can socialise perfectly well without it.

Years ago, it really was like a family. You would see senior citizens drinking in The Rembrandt and The Union. Out on the scene we had friends of all ages and some of the older ones were almost like aunt or uncle figures to us.

But where do older people go in the wonderful gay village now, Evening News? Do tell… That community has broken down and everyone is poorer now because of it.

The magazines also list a number of gay groups that met and there was the Gay Centre in the heart of things on Bloom Street.

The 1982 and 1984 issues list two clinics in the city centre area where you could get a sexual health check up. Compared to one today. In those days you could actually walk in and see someone immediately without having to wait up to six weeks for an appointment as you have to now.

And as for people not being ‘very proud to be seen’ until the gay village became over-commercialised and full of straight people in the mid 1990’s, with bars like Manto… What a travesty of the truth: tell that to the thousands of men and women who walked around the city centre (not in front of friendly crowds) and then packed Albert Square for the Section 28 rally in 1988, the Liberation ‘91 march, or who took part in the Walk For Life every year.

They were out and proud on the streets. By comparison, how much courage does it take to go to a ‘mixed’ bar where you can pretend to be straight if anyone sees you there?

What is there is to be so proud of now? It’s all about money, youth, alcohol and hairless gym tits. Our (non-political) Pride event excludes people who can’t afford to pay and the binge-drinking, drug-taking, self-destructive culture which it promotes results in many actually ending up with HIV and needing a lifetime of expensive combination therapy.

Above: raising money to help the fight against HIV and AIDS at a jumble sale on Canal Street, Manchester, August Bank Holiday, 1990

Which makes a mockery of the relatively small amount that Manchester Pride raises for charity. Now people with HIV are actually charged to walk in the Manchester Pride parade.

Currently, the gay village is something to be ashamed of, not celebrated. We have let big business and the City Council destroy the community that we once had.

Meanwhile the same people are behind this blatent rewriting of history because it suits them and their parasitic businesses.

FOOTNOTE:

As for Iain Scott’s suggestion that in the 1950’s ‘all’ the buildings in the Canal Street area ‘were derelict’, this is just complete rubbish. In a recent episode of BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, featuring David Dickinson, he revealed that in the 1960’s he worked in a building on Princess Street opposite the New Union. There were lots of businesses operating in the area.

Here’s a photo of the site where Clone Zone now stands on Sackville Street, taken in 1963. That doesn’t look ‘derelict’ to me. There are two neat little shops that are open for business. On the far right of the block is what is now Napoleons (then a restaurant) and beyond it a church which stood where the Bloom Street car-park is now.

Here’s a shot of The Rembrandt from 1962, showing the shoe repair shop that was next door and which was still there thirty years later.

Here’s a picture from 1973 which shows a restaurant in the building that is now Thompson’s Arms.

Here’s a shot of the junction of Sackville Street and Major Street in 1962, which shows a cafe and a couple of other businesses. This is the street that is between the CIS building and Bloom Street car-park now.

In all, a thriving area I would say and probably with a wider variety of different businesses than there are now.

Tonight I received the latest quarterly telephone bill from British Telecom for the house here.

I arrived here on 29 July. So, as you would expect, there are no calls listed on the bill until 29 July …

That is, except for two calls to the premium rate numbers 09066 361152 and 09066 361153, on the afternoon of 10 July. Total cost for the two short calls, more than £11.

This is most interesting, because there was no one here on 10 July. My dad is the only other person who has a key and he hadn’t visited. He lives by himself fifty miles away, hasn’t been driving any long distances recently and has his own ‘phone.

Furthermore, when I arrived on the 29th July, there was a massive pile of junk mail behind the front door, which wouldn’t have been where it was if anyone had entered the house less than three weeks before.

The ‘phone companies and regulator like to make out that calls can only show on the bill if someone in the household has made the calls.

But here is a case where no calls were made from this number at all for a long period before 29 July 2006, except for these two premium rate calls to consecutive numbers in the space of 20 minutes on one afternoon. If this doesn’t clearly show that phantom calls can and do appear on a ‘phone bill when the household hasn’t made them, I don’t know what will.

I await BT’s response and will share it with you. Meanwhile I just found this:

Phantom phone scam hits another village.

And here’s a House of Commons debate about Premium Rate scams, from 2004.

Update (29 Sep 2006): It turns out the two calls were to adult services. BT has refunded the cost of them but says it can find no evidence that my line has been abused.

To be fair, they have handled this quickly and had suggested I pay the bill minus the two calls, until they finished their investigation.

They offer free barring of UK-based premium-rate calls, so I’ve had that restriction put on both my numbers, as I have no real interest in calling these numbers.

The whole incident has been quite alarming. But I have to be thankful that it was just a few Pounds and not several hundreds…

Tonight a chat friend asked if we could talk on Skype, which I hardly use anymore. I started it up, but it told me I ‘must’ upgrade and then shut itself down. I tried again and the same thing happened.

What if I happened to be on dial-up right now and needed to have a quick chat with someone? Who wants to be forced to download a 10Mb file over a dial-up connection and install it before they can make a call?

I really don’t like control-freak companies. This is my PC and I will decide what ‘must’ be upgraded and when.

Furthermore new versions of software aren’t always better. They can be bloated, less stable and even have fewer features in some cases. In fact there are websites that provide old versions precisely for that reason.

I’ll think I’ll be sticking to voice chat on MSN from now on.

You can download the MP4 version here (iPod compatible).

I had an eventful five hour walk this afternoon. This is a short extract from a much longer video that I’ll be making about it.

I’m laughing about this but, with a calf on the track ahead of me, I wasn’t sure whether angry mum and dad and all their friends might be able to get out the field if they reached the corner before me.

There have been a few cases of walkers being trampled to death by cattle. Especially when there are calves: BBC report.

(Peter says: ‘get back to the city centre!’)