You sweat, I laugh.

The summer is finally setting in, and it is at this time of year that people notice that I do not perspire normally, rather I feed off the rays of this yellow sun like some lizard or Kryptonian.

I do sweat, just not at the same pitiful temperatures as the rest of your humans. The summer warmth has reminded me though that we spend a mere 4 or 5 months in this rare weather, the rest of the time we are treated to the bitter British cold, depressing grey skies and excessive electric and heating bills are we stave off the frosty lows.

Under normal circumstances, I would blame the government for this outrageously lopsided approach to the weather, along with the poor air quality, their obsession with turning any patch of grass into more houses and their endless promises to improve health care yet we still have to wait six months to go into hospital for a problems we have today.

This time though I shall blame it on Murphy and his enduring law; the law that states that "what can go wrong, will go wrong", and it seems to be very concentrated in this country.

Now you may think that I am being unnecessarily unfair towards these United Kingdoms, but during my several hundreds years of watch people come and go and times change, I always feel that this nation is, as Top Gear would say, "ambitious but rubbish".

Preventing Piracy Impossible

Today Francis Keeling at Universal Music stated that the music industry will probably never be rid of piracy completely. When considering this against the long, beautiful history of music, the image of a man growing old springs to mind.

Like the music industry, life started off perfectly, no problems, nothing playing on your mind, a care free existence you might say. But as time went by, the worry lines traced their way across your brow and now every time you look in the mirror you are haunted by the every expanding forest of nasal hair.

Like it or not, these hairs are the piracy we will never get rid of. You can snip away at the edges, push everything backwards or rip it out at the root but no matter measures you take it will always come back.

In this case, technology has been its own downfall. Gone are the days of vinyl records where the innocence of music took its last stand. From the advent of the tape recorder things changed forever. These days you don't have to sit there waiting for the tape to finish playing as the other tape in the dual deck recorded every precious piece of magnetic information, today you download, copy and paste or select and burn.

True the industry, in the future, may introduce copying protected hardware or digital rights will prevent you from modifying or transferring files, but when it comes down to the bare basics, anyone with a speaker output, a microphone input and a bit of audio cable can sit in their room making illegal duplicates to pass on to the Blackbeards of sound.

So no, we will probably never be rid of piracy, with all of its legal struggles and artist's loosing money, but is that the price the industry now has to pay for the advancement in technology it has so encouraged and utilized over the years?

Traffic light terror.

Near my house there are a set of pelican crossings, traffic lights with red, green and amber lights and a jolly old green man to let pedestrians cross when the fancy takes them. The purpose of my rant today is not that these lights are near my house, it's more how they seem to hate the pedestrian and worship the car.

Some common sense notions to get things rolling. First off, some crossing have lights that will change to red when a pedestrian presses the green man provided a certain amount of time has passed; other will let people cross after a certain period of time. The latter is what I am faced with nearby. Secondly, the green man is meant to be up with the traffic lights red for a certain period of time to allow people to cross and ensure that the road is clear for the traffic flow to continue. Right, now these facts have been established I can get on with moaning.

Too many time I have been stood at those lights waiting to cross. The road they find themselves placed on is very busy one, connecting a supermarket to the main roads that run through the town. Yet I never expected to find myself wasting 5 - 10 minutes of my life every other day feeling like a chicken in a bad joke. At time I have found myself there long enough to notice that each of the three junctions has been from green to red twice before it lets me have my walking way. On a normal straight road this would mean you would have to wait 6 cycles before being allowed to pass. The car certainly seems to be the favourite of these lights then, with the pedestrian being considered a nuisance that only has to be dealt with now and then.

The second problem I have with these lights is how long the green man stays up for. I am by no means a slow walker, I have given my girlfriend chest pains as she tries to keep up with me, so the other day I timed how long it took for me to cross at one of the sets of lights. Six seconds. Now that may sound like an ok time to get from one pavement to the other but consider this; when I got to the other side of the road the green man had gone and the traffic lights had been green for quite a few seconds. I find myself left at the mercy of the patient drivers who have to wait for me to disembark their turf before pulling off.

There are quite a few elderly people near where I live, so I managed to take the opportunity one afternoon to watch one woman trying to make it across the same section of road. If I am unable to do it in six seconds, I had to wonder what hope she had. Thirty seconds she took, and yes you may think of me as a little evil for watching her rather than helping her across the road like a good boy scout but I have a point to prove! In the time it took her to make her journey, the green man was gone before she was a quarter of the way across, and the traffic lights were screaming go by the time she was half way.

It seems to me then that this system is both biased and dangerous. Why the people who installed these lights favour the car so much is beyond me, it may be some silly method of trying to cut CO2 emissions by having them get to places sooner, it may be to get them into the shops quicker to feed the vampire of a council we have around these parts, or it may be an attempt to keep the people on one side from breeding with the people on the other. Whatever the cause, I may one day be writing to you from a hospital bed with the impression of a radiator grille across my chest and a wing mirror up my bum.

Picking a Political Party Pickle

So the debates wage on, the leaders verbally abuse each other in their own special high-brow manner, and the nation becomes divided over where their loyalties lie.

As the day draws near where we, the people, will have our chance to select who we will be grumpy with for the next few years, I find myself becoming firmer in my decision as to who to vote for. Normally I wouldn't divulge such information until after the election, or if I knew I was in a room of complete political security and tolerance, if there is such a thing, but this time round I feel I shall make an exception.

It was somewhere around 1922 that we last had a Liberal Prime Minister, don't quote me on that but I know it was somewhere around that period. Since then, it has been an eternal tennis match with the power being hit back and forth between Labour and Conservative. With two parties holding such dominance for such a length of time, you can't help but notice an almost undeserved sense of security between them; the knowledge that if their party doesn't get in, the other will and that the Lib. Dems. are never really in the running.

For me, this certainty gives them a backing which has allowed the true drive and passion to serve the nation to wither and rot. Given that they 'know' it's between one party or the other, politics seems to have sunk into a popularity contest where the winner is the one who is hated the least, not the one with the better agenda or ideas for the future. I wouldn't be surprised if Simon Cowell managed to turn it into something new for Saturday night TV.

Over the last few weeks, the Lib. Dems. have come across as a kid in a playground with a great idea for a game, but going unheard because they are shorter than everyone else; and if you haven't guessed yet, I'm going to be voting for Nick Clegg.

Not just because I find myself attracted to some of his policies, but also because it would be the kick up the arse the other two parties need to get them thinking about why Labour and Tory have become words said through gritted teeth.

So far I have lived through four Prime Ministers, Thatcher to Brown, and John Major is the only one I liked, but I think that was more for his looks. I hope the next five years will change that.

Brown Going Down?

That time has come again, and some would say it's been too long in the waiting. Gordon Brown announced at the start of this week that a general election will be held on May 6th 2010 sparking the proclamation of pledges, plans and prosperity by the three main parties scrambling to take the throne for the next few years.

The Labour Party has come under a great deal of fire during their time in power, with the Iraq war continuing to claw at their backs, Tony Blair stepping down after poor election results and with the more recent expense scandal, you have to wonder, is Brown going gentle into that good night?

Honestly, after listening to what people near me have to say about the government, local councils and politicians, I get the distinct impression that whoever takes the reigns of prime minister next will be drowned by the voices of discontent. During the height of any political battle, the news will be inundated with people criticizing a party's plans or performance, and any positives only seem to be presented as a defense case.

One thing is guaranteed, whoever is voted in will have some high expectations to meet and I feel no matter how hard they try, it seems certain they will be struggling to keep up their popularity next time the voting season is upon us.

Michael Manslaughter for Murray

It has been almost a year since Michael Jackson's death and still the circumstances surrounding the events that lead up to his passing are somewhat unclear.

His former doctor, Dr. Conrad Murray, who is currently charged with involuntary manslaughter, has been the centre of attention as the possible cause for the stars demise for some time now, with a piece of evidence recently being criticized for being inconsistent. The evidence in question, given by Mr. Alvarez, Michael Jackson's logistics director, states Dr. Murray halted resuscitation and delayed calling in the paramedics. A lawyer representing Dr. Murray claims that the evidence is inconsistent as it fails to match up to a statement previously given to the police by Mr. Alvaerz.

It was a shock to all when it was revealed the singer had passed away last June, and since then there has been some debate over the circumstances surrounding those events, with some people reporting ghostly sightings of the star, the most prolific of which was recorded by CNN.

April is when the next hearing has been scheduled for Dr. Murray, but many fans have stated that they simply wish for a man who had a troubled life in later years, to have a peaceful death, something that remains illusive almost 10 months on.

Obama-Lama Drama

President Barack Obama met the Dali Lama, and China seem to be very angry about that. The long standing political debate over the relationship between China and Tibet, where the Dali Lama is the president-in-exile, and the apparent dominance China has over the country and the Buddhist religion would have escaped the notice of few in the world, but for a man who advocates peace, leads a religion and has no military might, the Chinese government do appear to be acting like a child who dislikes the game because they are not winning.

The U.S.A. have made it clear that this is not private rather than a political events, though how are we to know what took place behind closed doors. The reaction to the meeting though has raised the question, how long will China continue to hold this somewhat strange stance again the Lama and Tibet itself? Relations between the United States and China have been more publicized of late due to the recent Google row in which China was accused of instigating cyber attacks against the well known search engine but their response to the meeting between these two political figures seems as important as condemning a murderer for stealing a chocolate bar.