It's been a long ole time...

My puter blew up. It has now been buried with full honours, but the new one has four times the memory, twice the disk space and cost less than half the full price of the old one. So, onwards and upwards, dodophobics.

But my, things have been happening! In the United States, Repuglicans have taken control of the House of Representatives because millions of Democrat voters, sick of the timidity of the Obama government, stayed at home rather than voting, and as a result have convinced themselves that everyone loves them. And their plan for power is to do absolutely nothing other than shut down the government of the country they profess to love, purely to try to ensure that Obama is able to get nothing done. They have nothing new to offer, nothing but the old, tried, tested and failed policies of giving as much as possible to the rich while preventing the poor from ever having anything. "Trickledown" has never worked before, but they still promote it as though it were a startling new idea that they've just this minute thought of. Americans will suffer for it. In the end, we all will.

And on the Cameron front, things are also moving on. On the small scale, I am finally rid of TalkTalk, the phone and broadband company which is totally unbeatable if price is the only criterion but which has frighteningly bad customer service. Within a week or so, I will have my broadband with Orange, who also supply my mobile phone service and whose customer service is (almost) beyond reproach; and within a week or two after that, I will also have my landline with them. The phone service will be about three pounds dearer but, as just over a year ago I had got so pissed off with TalkTalk's customer service that I switched my broadband to Sky (at a cost increase of first £10 and more recently £12.50 a month), I will actually save money. I'll also be getting half price Sky TV for the next six months for a total saving of £72. So I'm pretty happy.

Visawise, things have not been as great. I got together all the stuff that had been demanded and sent it off with guaranteed 48 hour delivery. Parcelforce promptly lost the lot. That caused us to miss our deadline and even though they had been told what had happened, the visa bods slapped us with another rejection and told us we will have to go to an appeal hearing in the UK (but no idea exactly where yet). We already have everything they told us we needed to get the visa, so we'll have no problem there, especially when we turn up with a sheaf of letters and affidavits promising support and pointing out that Susan's presence will if anything EARN the British state money. The hearing itself will cost the government quite a few pounds, which they could have saved by waiting a week or so before issuing their hasty decision. And of course, it puts the wedding date in more doubt; we may have to postpone it for a second time. None of this is going to stop us finally being together as husband and wife, but it is very irritating. It has already been almost seven months since we saw one another, and it's hurting.

BUT...

I got a letter from the Inland Revenue recently (if you're American, you won't be remotely surprised to hear that this is the British equivalent of the IRS). It informed me that I had paid the wrong amount of income tax in 2008/09; uh oh. But reading on brings the discovery that in fact I had OVERpaid, because my employer at the time, Hilton International, had put the wrong tax code by my name and taken more than they should have throughout that tax year. In a separate envelope, they therefore also sent me a cheque for £1211.62, which will be put to very good use indeed. Once it clears I will be booking a flight to New York, where for the second year in a row I will be spending Christmas and New Year with Susan, her friends and family. New Year's Eve Susan and I will spend in the Sheraton Hotel at JFK Airport, my birthday celebration will be at an Italian place in Manhattan called Carmine's which I believe is quite famous but in any event sounds wonderful, and who knows WHAT we'll get up to for Valentine's Day, shortly after which I'll fly back to the UK a couple of months older and personally happy and sated. Of course, on 2nd January we will repeat last year's trick (or should that be this year's trick?) of getting up at 6am and taking a cab to The Blue Room to watch the Rangers-Celtic game complete with early morning beer.

We have plans to catch up on some of the things we missed last time. Ground Zero is top of that list, and the Stonewall Inn is not far behind it. We'll also catch the Olympic Diner and the very famous Sylvia's in Harlem, as well as at least one bus tour and at least one Broadway show (suggestions welcome). We'll get to see Susan's sister's new place in upstate New York, at a place called Highland Mills, and most importantly get to spend one hell of a lot of serious quality time together (how's THAT for a euphemism?). And at just over two months, it'll pretty much let us see what married life is going to be like.

Not too shabby, eh?

PS the spellchecker on this thing has just gone mad and highlighted words like "get", "which" and "taking". Most bizarre.

The beliefs of a right wing repuglican.

I believe all life is sacred. So doctors who do things I don't approve of deserve to die. And "life" doesn't include anyone who is a criminal, unless they believe in my god and my holy book and shout it loudly enough, in which case they aren't really criminals but tragic, good people who have been corrupted by Democrats.

I believe absolutely in freedom of choice. Except for pregnant women. And poor people. After all, God will provide, so if they were better Christians they wouldn't be poor. And the women would have penises, because Jesus had a penis.

W is a genius. I mean Hell, I can't even SPELL misunderestimate.

If you said "Hell" like that, it would make you a blasphemer.

I believe every word in the bible is literally true. Now, there are lots of bits I haven't read, like that one that says pi=3 (whatever that means) or the one where God says insects have four legs and bats are birds. And there might be something about slaves having to obey their masters and the rightness of raping female prisoners of war. But my pastor hasn't told me about any of those, so they don't exist.

I believe in freedom of religion: everyone is perfectly free to believe all the things I do.

I believe in freedom of speech. So if I say something it's my right and if you criticise it you are denying me my rights. And when I criticise the stuff YOU say, well obviously it's my right under freedom of speech.

Everyone should speak English. If it's good enough for Jesus it's good enough for everyone else, and I know Jesus spoke English because I've read what he said in my bible.

All men are equal. But women aren't men. So they're not equal to men. And Jesus was white (I've seen the movie) so really it means white men.

Love thy neighbor. All my neighbors believe exactly the same stuff I do, so of course you don't have to love anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same stuff I do, in fact if you do you're a pervert.

You're probably a pervert anyway.

Allowing people who aren't like me to get married to just anyone they want to marry would mean millions more people getting married, and obviously that would destroy marriage.

Getting shot never did anyone any harm.

Sarah Palin and Dr. Laura are honorary men.

THOU shalt not.

The US Healthcare Bill

Well, the House of Representatives eventually passed the bill, and estimates are that over thirty million Americans currently without health insurance will get it and that only 15000, rather than 30000, will die each year because they don't have it.

In all honesty, the bill is still pretty damn weak and is nowhere near the universal coverage enjoyed by people in this country and in fact every other developed country other than the United States. But, considering how horrendously painful its passage has been, as well as the lives it will save (it will also save money, but that isn't enough to persuade the repuglicans that it's an acceptable idea, because insurance companies will make slightly less obscene profits as a result of it), it is a vital first step. Most Americans wanted the bill passed, indeed the majority wanted a better, stronger version, despite repuglican outright lies claiming the opposite-- and more will come around when the apocalyptic consequences disgracefully, disingenuously and dishonestly put forward by opponents don't come to pass and when their friends and neighbours as well as themselves find life just a little bit easier because it has passed. Fewer Americans will lose their homes or their lives as a result of having no health insurance, maybe it will even stop being the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country-- a simply unimaginable fact in the rest of the world, in what I call the civilised world, where countries take care of their citizens.

It's a start. For the American people and for President Obama. It gives his administration, which was born among so much hope and optimism, a chance to come good after more than a year of mostly disappointing events.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009.

Some people are saying Barack Obama has won the Nobel just for being Not George W Bush.

Well, what's wrong with that?

He is not, and has declared himself repeatedly, emphatically and credibly not to be, a religious maniac who rejects scientific truth because it wasn't written about in a 2000 year old book by some primitive middle eastern tribesmen; a racist who despises everyone who is not from his own country and clearly and visibly considers them all beneath himself; a semi-literate silver spooner who has earned nothing he has but rather inherited it all and then lectures everyone else about hard work; a man who betrays all of his loudly declaimed religious principles by lying so that he can bomb some brown foreigners, and also by swearing before his god to uphold the American constitution before waving a bible around and saying "THIS comes before the constitution"; who shouts loudly about democracy and then steals a lost election with the corrupt help of his brother's henchmen (and women), including denying votes to many thousands of people who did or would have voted against him, but nevertheless going on to preach to the rest of the world about his and his country's democratic superiority... and much much more, but I don't want you to get bored and stop reading.

Instead of all that, Barack Obama has begun engaging with the world, showing us all the smiling side of his country's personality, talking to other nationalities with respect and as an equal, made it clear that reality rather than religious prejudice will be his guide, started working to try to undo some of the eight years of further damage wrought by Bush and Cheney's refusal to have anything to do with Kyoto and the fight against climate catastrophe, and again, much much more besides, not least his attempt to bring the United States to civilisation by letting all or most of his fellow citizens have decent healthcare, like most of the rest of the world, which would allow them to stop being so terrified all the time, to stop having to be so self-absorbed out of fear for their medical and financial futures (because most US bankruptcies are at the moment caused by huge medical bills), to relax into a more peaceful and less aggressive frame of mind knowing that they and their families will at least be able to go to a doctor if they're ill, or for that matter change jobs, without having to worry about collapsing into abject poverty due to sickness.

If you ask me, that adds up to a greater contribution to world peace than has been made by any US president during my lifetime. And yet some repuglicans are reacting as though not being hated by foreigners is somehow unamerican; which is surely another reason why this award is justified and welcome.