My March Jinx

My internet's back after about 36 hours of moderate hell trying to figure out the problem. It's why I resorted to attempting to use my Samsung tablet with an Apple bluetooth keyboard last night. I hate technology. Never works how it should...

The internet always seems to go at the most inconvenient times. Yesterday, I had a really important job to do when it flaked out and it all came down to a frayed cable which, like most bad cables, was in about the most inaccessible place. That's bad at the best of times but I'm being assaulted on two fronts. Firstly, I had work outstanding from last week which I couldn't do because of somebody being deliberately obstructive because they refused to communicate with the company I occasionally work. The company I occasionally work for had landed a contract which this person had previously won, meaning he refused to hand over any of the relevant passwords. I watched it all from afar but it's amazing to see how childish businessmen can behave.

The second assault has come in the form of a last minute gift from Chester. I was in the crowds on Saturday and Monday night I started to feel like I'd caught another cold, which, for me, is typical of this time of year. I read somewhere that you're less likely to get a cold during spring and autumn, but my experience is that I *always* catch a cold as the weather changes from/to bitterly cold to/from moderately mild.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Dumb, the election is beginning to warm up. I watched with mild incredulity the interview that Cameron did for the BBC or (more accurately) his old Eton chum, James Lansdale. I can't remember the last time I've seen such sycophancy trying to pass itself off as real journalism. Yet, five minutes later, the BBC were reporting on some small scam at a company training bodyguards, ending with the guy operating the scam running down the street being perused by reporters wielding hard questions. Obvious, the scam was bad but it impacted so few people that nobody cared how much they chased the grifter. Cameron, on the other hand, seems to get away without any hard questions. I'm pretty disgusted that we're not getting proper leaders debates, especially since Cameron was a beneficiary of them at the last election. I was no fan of Gordon Brown (though I have found myself warming to him since he left office) but at least Brown had the balls to stand in front of the nation, knowing, as he surely did, that it could (and probably did) become his Nixon moment. No Prime Minister had fewer personal skills than Brown but he stood up when it mattered.

I'm not sure what we'll make of the coming election. This far out, I suspect it might be a pretty dull one, with Cameron doing Tony Blair's old trick of only appearing in front of heavily vetted audiences. At the moment, I'm feeling too rough to really rouse my anger or to draw a cartoon. March has been a really bad month and I'm feeling spiritually as well as physically under the weather.