An addendum to my article yesterday about 'malware'

In the update to my article yesterday, I mentioned that the source of the 'malware' which had infected this blog (and which has now been eliminated), was a link to a blog from Zimbabwe which had been inactive for some time and which I had not removed. In fact, I think the reason the 'malware' got into my blog was not the link to that blog per se, but its inclusion in a separate part of my blog-lists designed to highlight blogs which had recently been updated, which obviously required each blog included there to be visited ('looked-up') to check whether it had indeed been updated recently; as part of my 'cleansing' process I have therefore eliminated this utility completely and will not be reinstating it. As I had the same 'blogs recently updated' utility installed in my other Spanish blog as well, it has been eliminated there too, even though the offending Zimbabwean blog was not included there, as it seems to me that particular utility is a potential risk.

In addition, apart from probably needlessly replacing my customised blog template with a standard blogger templated (as part of my initial frantic efforts to identify where the 'malware' had hidden itself), one other action I have taken is to remove all my blog entries relating to Zimbabwe, because many of my earlier such articles relied upon articles which had been written in the now inactive offending blog. Over the 11+ years my blog has been in existence there were about 64 such articles - this is a pity, but I felt I had to take this action to eliminate so far as possible any future risk to the operational integrity of the coding of this blog.

My blog has apparently been infected with 'malware' - care!

UPDATE: - (Thursday 29AUG2013 - 22.20 BST) I have now successfully eliminated the 'malware' from this blog, at the cost of losing my customised template, a probably unnecessary 'over-kill' measure, but so be it. Most of the functionality of the blog remains, if differently organised. I will probably over the course of coming days/weeks reinstate a similar customised template. For information, the source of the 'malware' was a link here to a blog from Zimbabwe which had been inactive for some time, but which I had neglected to remove.

I am leaving the rest of this blog entry text in place, but italicised, for the record:
I have just substituted my pre-existing blog template for a standard blogger template as part of my efforts to expunge some 'malware' which has apparently affected my blog; I have just become aware of this infection today, but suspect it may have been in place for the past few days. If I am unable to trace and remove the 'malware' over the next few days, I may feel obliged to take the very hard decision to delete this blog completely, a hard decision because it has been in place for over 11 years - but if this is what I have to do, then so be it.

I am aware of the apparent source of the 'malware' infection, but will not say any more about that just now. Fortunately my other blog and my other websites are unaffected.

If you see a 'malware' warning when you visit this blog, please navigate away from it without delay. Thank you.

Happy New Year folks

This blog entry is really just to indicate that I am still here and that I wish everyone who happens to pass this way a very Happy New Year for 2013.

Of late, however, I have felt no particular impulse to blog regularly so have not done so. Whenever anything that I consider to be of especial interest happens, though, I shall most probably record it in print here.

Meantime - Go in Peace.

Celebrating the big "10 years" of blogging

It was today, 10 years ago, that I began this blog. To be quite honest, I am pretty surprised I made it! The frequency of adding blog articles here has been much less than in earlier years - partly this has been a result of some difficult events in my personal life (for example I mentioned some of these in my article to mark the 9-year anniversary, a year ago), but has also been affected by the other blog I started 4 1/2 years ago to deal with matters "Spanish" as undoubtedly many of the articles I now write there would otherwise have appeared in this blog. In fact, this is the sixth year I have been in Spain over my blogging anniversary, as I now spend about three months here every Spring and a further month or two here in the Autumn as well. On other matters, I decided to put off any thought of moving home in the UK as I had indicated might happen a year ago - basically I like where I am already there (the north of Scotland) too much so I decided to put any idea of moving 'on hold' for the time being, but who knows what will happen next; I have a feeling this story has a little way more to run ..

It is probably true that this blog has become a little less strident and overtly 'political' over the past couple of years, because whilst I still feel strongly about many of the major issues I have always been interested in (politics, current affairs, 'gay' issues, etc) it is also true that there is now a government in power in the UK much more congenial to my general outlook on life; the current Coalition government certainly has its faults, but it is to my way of thinking a much more rationally run outfit that that run by our last two Labour Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; both were political charlatans, but Brown in particular, both during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer and his disastrous and mercifully relatively brief period as Prime Minister, presided over an unprecedented 'trashing' of the British economy, the consequences of which we will as a country be living with for many years and very probably for the remainder of my life. Another factor in my lessened 'stridency' here is that what is still the world's most powerful country, the US, is no longer run by George W Bush; the current President, Barack Obama, has proved pretty disappointing of course, but is immeasurably better than his predecessor; one must hope that if the American people do decide to change horses later this year they opt for the least-bad likely alternative, Mitt Romney, rather than the frankly alarming Rick Santorum!

As well as my other 'Spanish' blog, I have of course for some years made use of Twitter as I find it a very convenient way of giving voice to my thoughts on various issues which before it existed would probably have been fodder for blog articles here; I do use Facebook, too, but this tends to be mainly a repository of feeds from my Twitter account. However, I expect I'll be continuing to blog here for a good while yet whenever there are controversial topics of interest to me to talk about. To those who have been kind enough to visit my little blog over the years I can only repeat how grateful and honoured I am to have you here and I hope you will continue to join me here in the future, too.

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (October 2011 to March 2012) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period October 2011 to March 2012.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (April 2011 to September 2011) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period April 2011 to September 2011.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

Marking 9 years of blogging

Yesterday 3rd April 2011 marked the ninth anniversary of this blog; I can't on this occasion think of this as an occasion for 'celebration', to be very frank, but do want to 'mark' it. It has been a difficult year for me personally and this has been reflected in the [lack of] frequency of new articles posted to this blog:
April 2010 - 18 articles
May 2010 - 6 articles
June 2010 - 10 articles
July 2010 - 11 articles
August 2010 - 7 articles
September 2010 - 12 articles
October 2010 - 9 articles
November 2010 - 4 articles
December 2010 - 4 articles
January 2011 - 9 articles
February 2011 - 7 articles
March 2011 - 4 articles

In the earlier part of the year (March to early June 2010) I was spending my usual extended break in Spain, but in May I had visitors so blogged less. When I returned back to Scotland in mid-June I had many personal matters to deal with, probably the most important being the by then rapidly-declining health of my late mother, who passed away in October. For most of November and December I blogged very little in the aftermath of that emotional trauma, but am probably now beginning to get back on to a more even emotional keel. I have now been back in Spain for about a month and will be here until mid-June and am much enjoying it (except for the hay-fever that I seem to suffer from here, unlike any other place I have ever lived or visited - I can only assume some of the plants here are the cause), although I shall be travelling across to the UK in early May for a few days to continue my tentative planning for a move of my UK home from the north of Scotland to the south of England - I mentioned this in an article in January, just prior to a visit there in early February; my visit again next month is to see the 'target area' again in Spring and assuming that I decide to go ahead with this plan I will probably put the 'wheels in motion' when I return to Scotland in mid-June. So whilst the past year, 'year 9' for this blog, has been a somehwat difficult one the coming year may well see major personal changes for me, which I hope to write about here from time to time admixed with a blend of articles on economics, politics, current and social matters of the kind I have been writing about for the past nine years.

I hope those who take the trouble to visit this blog, or read some of my Tweets or Facebook thoughts find something of interest to enjoy, amuse or infuriate you and that you'll join me from time to time on my journey over the coming year.

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (October 2010 to March 2011) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period October 2010 to March 2011.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

Blogroll updated - at last!

(Please see UPDATES at end)

Since the blog-listing utility 'Blogrolling' closed some months back, I haven't had a proper public blogroll for the blogs I read which I select to list here. I don't like using the standard Blogger blogrolling utility (for various reasons I won't bore you with), so have instead created my own in a format which will be relatively easy to keep updated and which is readily exportable for other purposes (for example to appear in my other [Spanish] blog and in the links page of my main website).

Now I have done the work from A-B, but as this includes blogs which I classify as American, Australian, Belgian, Brazilian and British, that covers probably three-quarters of the blogs I read regularly. I'll get the rest of the blogs that I'm going to add to the list done in the next few days. You can see the blogs so far added in the right-column under the header "Blogs you may like".

As part of this exercise I have taken the opportunity to remove quite a large number of blogs both from my old bloglist and from the rss feeds I monitor, because many of the really brilliant blogs I once followed have, like the parrot in Monty Python, ceased to be, an inevitable result of having been blogging for nigh on nine years. However, I've also had the pleasure of reading a number of much more recently-started blogs and some of these are now in my blogroll, too.

By the way, and as I have written here a number of times before, I do not have a policy of reciprocity for my blogrolls - requests to include a link in my blogroll usually push that blog to the bottom of the list for inclusion, and I NEVER ask for my blog to be included in anyone else's blogroll list, although obviously I am grateful to those who have chosen to. In particular, those who ask me to place a link in my blogroll to their blog with the promise that they will in turn place a link to my blog in their blogroll will be sent away "with a flea in their ear" (to employ a Scottishism); attempting to increase the number of blogs which link to one's own blog by such base means cuts no ice with me (on the few occasions I've made an exception to this rule I have always come to regret it later - I'm far too polite to name names). On the other hand, when I do add a blog to my blogroll I often highlight the fact with a brief article here, specially if it is what I consider to be a particularly interesting blog.

UPDATE (Monday 14FEB2010 19.15 GMT) I've now added the blogroll from C-Z for my main blogroll. I'll be putting the blogroll for Spanish blogs in place shortly.

2nd UPDATE (Monday 14FEB2010 19.50 GMT) As always with this kind of exercise there have been a couple of errors [of omission], for inexplicable reasons. A couple have been corrected; there may be more, unfortunately.

I have lost the urge to write my blog ...

J'ai perdu l'envie d'écrire mon blog ...
He perdido las ganas de escribir mi blog ...
لقد فقدت الرغبة في كتابة بلوق بلدي
Tôi đã mất đi các yêu cầu để viết blog của tôi ...

If this situation changes I will resuscitate this blog ...
Si cette situation change je vais ressusciter ce blog ...
Si esta situación cambia voy a resucitar este blog ...
وسوف يبعث هذا بلوق اذا تغير الوضع
Nếu tình hình này thay đổi tôi sẽ làm hồi sinh blog này ...

Meantime I wish you a Joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year ...
En attendant, je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël et une Bonne Année ...
Mientras tanto les deseo una Navidad alegre y un Feliz Año Nuevo ...
حتى ذلك الحين آمل أن تكونوا قد رأس السنة الميلادية
Trong lúc này tôi muốn cho bạn một Giáng sinh vui vẻ và một năm mới hạnh phúc ...

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (April to September 2010) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period April to September 2010.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

Blogrolls - work in hand

Because of problems with the code used to embed my blogrolls (resulting apparently from problems experienced on some browsers with using links to the blogroll host company) I am having to migrate all my blogrolls to a new host. There is quite a lot of work involved so it will take me some time to complete it. I hope to get my blogrolls up and functioning again within the next couple of weeks - I'll do a follow-up post when the work is done.

Celebrating 8 years of blogging - 2,962 posts and counting ...

(see "Misposted Comment" at the end)





Today marks the eighth anniversary of the launching of this blog. With the recent controversy over the hushing-up of paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (see also developments in Northern Ireland), I thought I would mark this anniversary by reproducing below an article I published in the 'Comment' area of my personal website just a couple of weeks prior to the launch of this blog, followed by a link to a follow-up article there published just two days prior to the launch of this blog. The first article was published on 20th March 2002 and the original article entitled "The Sickness at the Heart of the Catholic Church" may be found here:

The Sickness at the Heart of the Catholic Church (20 March 2002) Over the past year or two there have been regular revelations in the media about misconduct by Roman Catholic personnel, amongst whom priests, bishops and archbishops, involving their sexual misconduct and amounting, in many cases, to straight criminal offences, coupled with administrative neglect on the part of the more senior personnel. Recently, for example, there has been a furore in Boston concerning a Bishop who failed to act when he became aware of paedophile behaviour amongst his priests. In the UK, too, at the time of the recent ordination of the current Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, it was revealed that he had on a number of occasions, whilst a Bishop, moved priests around within his diocese who had committed paedophile offences and that they had subsequently committed further similar offences. I recall listening to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor trying to explain why he had done what he had - this very intelligent gentleman was obviously extremely embarrassed at the revelations and could only give what sounded like a rather weak apology. It makes me very sad when I recall what a good man was his predecessor, Cardinal Archbishop George Basil Hume OSB. Also in the UK, there were persistent stories (difficult for the Church to rebut because there existed too much supporting evidence) relating to the late Cardinal Archbishop of Glasgow, Cardinal Thomas Joseph Winning, who had on a number of occasions moved priests to different parishes in the wake of paedophile offences which they had committed, and allowed them to continue with their ministry. And now, in a television documentary about the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, it is revealed that over a period of almost TWENTY YEARS a priest by the name of Fr Sean Fortune committed serial paedophile offences against youths and young men, if the 66 indictments against him prior to his death by suicide recently are any guide. Furthermore, and perhaps even more shocking, it is revealed that the Bishop of Ferns, Brendan Comiskey, took no action for six years (until he was forced to do so by persistent complaints from victims and their parents) against Fr Fortune. It appears that Fr Fortune exploited the respect normally granted to priests in Ireland to bully and intimidate many of his victims into silence, and even where this was not effective the Church authorities, in the person of Bishop Comiskey, declined to give any [apparent] credence to what he had been told by some of these victims and their parents; when action was eventually taken, Fr Fortune fled (taking a substantial amount of Church funds with him) to Belgium and when extradited back to Ireland, succeeded in committing suicide while released on bail. [One could not make this up - truth is sometimes even more bizarre than fiction). One of the victims, now a man in his twenties (I think), explained very cogently what had happened to him and the effect of the assaults he suffered at the hands of Fr Fortune - he also related how he had been threatened by the 'good' Father that he would pay for it if he ever spoke about it; when he assured Fr Fortune that we would remain silent, provided the Father assured HIM that he would not commit similar acts against other people, the father indicated he had no real intention of stopping. So the young man decided to act and the Police were informed. This young man and a number of others are now suing Bishop Comiskey, the Catholic Church in the form of the Papal Nuncio (Ambassador) in Ireland and His Holiness the Pope - and the response of the Vatican is - what do you think? Well, the Catholic Church is claiming 'diplomatic immunity'. As the young interviewee said, 'it is simply not good enough' and he repeated this phrase three times in a mixture of anger and anguish about the hurt he had been caused. It appears from these cases, and many more I have heard about over the years, that there exists a sickness at the heart of the Catholic Church, and that this sickness is longstanding and spread through the Church in many countries - and the Church tries to claim 'diplomatic immunity'. It disgusts me. (Click here to read about later developments.)

The 'later developments' referred to immediately above related to an article published in the 'Comment' area of my personal website on 1st April 2002, two days before this blog was launched, under the title Brendan Comiskey, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns (Ireland), resigns at last.

Some of the earliest articles in this blog itself continued, as an unfortunate necessity and indeed as one of the topics which spurred me into creating this blog, to document the flagrant abuse of civil authority practised by the Roman Catholic Church in other locations such as the US, although I am aware of cases in the UK and Australia, too:
- THE VATICAN RESPONSE TO PRIESTLY PAEDOPHILIA (29 April 2002)
- Catholic church in US pulls out of agreement on compensation of paedophilia victims (4 May 2002).

Now we have an ill-judged Easter 'fight-back' from a senior Vatican priest comparing worldwide outrage at priestly abuse of children as akin to the persecution of the Jews. The amazement and disgust of the world at this continuing failure to 'own' the crimes committed by Church personnel caused the Vatican to distance itself from the remarks. Nothing must be taken on trust with these people - history shows this, unfortunately. It is clear that whilst the Roman Catholic Church may have gone some way to 'cleaning up its act', it has nonetheless prevaricated in the most disgusting manner and acted only when forced to do so.

Now onto less-contentious matters. Over recent months I have been blogging somewaht less frequently than previously, mainly because I have other areas of interest; it is also true, too, that since I created my Twitter account a while back (one or two years, I think), I tend to content myself often with the brief comments which that medium permits instead of going to the bother of writing a full blog article. I still feel strongly about certain issues, but there are many, many more bloggers around now than there were eight years ago and to some extent my interests have moved on. Nevertheless I plan to continue this blog for a while yet.

Thanks for reading my blog over the years, if you have - it is greatly appreciated. Roll on the next eight years!

PS/ Naturally Andrew Sullivan has a post up about priestly abuse in the Catholic Church, and it's a good one too; in it he provides information directly implicating Pope Benedict (as Cardinal Ratzinger) in the cover-ups.

"Misposted Comment"
This comment was posted by a reular commenter earlier today, but I suspect he added it to the wrong article - which you can see here. I repost it below for clarity:

Congratulations, Bill and may there be many more years. The Church. For decades now, the Church has been infiltrated for, in terms of their own mindset, there is an opposite and not quite equal force attempting to bring it down. One of these dualists gets in and because of the hierarchical nature of a religion which should have no hierarchy beyond a pastor, these people get into positions of power - that characterizes them. They then control the selection process and completely unrealistic scenarios are forced on priests, e.g. celibacy. The aim of the enemies of the religion are to tar by misrepresentation so that people will turn away. The efficacy of the central message is lost in the politicizing of certain aspects. For example, JC hardly mentioned homosexuality but Paul did, in a big way. These priests and the American "Christian" Right have done enormous damage.

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (October 2009 to March 2010) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period October 2009 to March 2010.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

Article heading list for latest 6-month period (April 2009 to September 2009) now up

The archive of 'Article Headings' for the latest 6-month period is now available - click here for the period April 2009 to September 2009.

There are permanent links in the right bar to this and earlier 6-month 'Article Heading' indices, immediately below the standard 'Blogger' monthly archive links.

PS/ I must apologise for the tardiness of this aticle - I normally get it online within one day of the end of the 6-monthly period in question, but on this occasion I'm afraid that 'real life' intervened - that's a euphemism for the fact that for the first half of October I was more pre-occupied with sunning myself on the terrace of my Spanish holiday home than in keeping my online presence updated, quite apart from having other personal matters vying for my attention.

A belated "Happy Second Birthday" to my [Spanish] blog ...

Last Thursday was the second birthday of casabill - the blog. However, I haven't been blogging much of late, largely because I had a guest staying with me here at MCC for a week until Tuesday last and a preoccupation with recent events here at the 'Country Club'. As with the first year of blogging here, it's been another eventful (turbulent?) year for people in Spain and around the world and not least at 'Mazarron Country Club'.

The continuing drought in the south-eastern part of Spain is likely to see further 'adjustments' having to be made in the lives of people in the area and the spheres of economic activity which are practicable here... (For those interested in reading the rest of this article, which covers in some detail the current water situation and the 'politics' of water resources in Spain, please click here.)

Bill's not popular in some quarters locally it seems

My recent article on the release of Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi from his incarceration in Scotland, as a result of his terminal illness, so that he could return to Libya to be with his family has provoked a certain amount of comment. I expressed a view about that which some people share, whereas others do not. Fair enough, it's what debate is about. A number of people have commented here on both sides of the argument, that's as it should be. I do not pre-moderate current comments in my blog and provided they do not violate the Terms of Use here (see the top of the right-hand column for the permanent link) I never delete comments, but I do enforce the Terms of Use rigorously; further down the page from the same link you can see my 'Links Policy'.

Another blogger in Nairn was kind enough to alert his readers to my article with a short article in his own blog and I left a brief comment there to thank him in the comments for that article (scroll down from the last link to see all the comments).

As you will see from the final comment there, Graisg (who runs the A Gurn from Nurn blog) has closed the comments, presumably because of the tone of some of the comments, many of which refer to me in, ahem, 'uncomplimentary' terms. What follows in the box below is the text of a comment I was going to leave there, plus provide myself with a lazy route to another blog article here by re-cycling that comment into this blog. In the event, because Graisg has now closed off the comments, this is the only place where what would have been my comment will now appear, so here it is 'for the record', as they say:

Hi all Thanks for all the frank comments about me - it's interesting to read them. Blogs are personal journals. Every blogger makes his own rules - mine have evolved over the years as a result of some quite unpleasant incidents, a few of which have spilled over into real life (and which I will not discuss here) and I make no apology for them. I have always been pretty open in my blog about who and what I am; sometimes that carries a cost. Many blogs operate by different rules and good luck to them. I do not allow 'anonymous' comments and have no intention of modifying that; it is possible to set up a GoogleID or OpenID without divulging any significant information; that provides a basic minimum of identification. I have an OpenID myself which is necessary to comment on certain blogs I like to visit from time to time. Similarly my policies for linking to other blogs are clearly laid out in my 'terms of use' file; this relates to the remarks that iRight made about me. I don't believe that if I had 'de-linked' The Gurn (as I did indeed inform Graisg by email [* -see below] I would do because of an article iRight had posted [t]here whilst Graisg was away if it was not removed) that it would have caused Graisg much loss of link-visits, but I can only assume, and be grateful, that after reviewing the post in question himself he decided it was preferable to take it down; it had not the remotest connection with me personally or anyone I know, I might add. I do not necessarily reciprocate links to my blog, nor do I ever request a reciprocal link if I happen to link to another blog. I do not regard the number of people who link to me as some kind of competition. As Graisg has stated a number of times in his blog, it is easy to set up a blog - anyone who has a PC can do it, even the homeless can have a blog through a local refuge centre. One of my oldest blog links (which I am proud to say is reciprocal) is with a person who lives in north Florida and has been battling with depression and drug addiction for many years - he was, I understand, formerly an IT specialist who lost his job, wife and home and for several years lived on the streets along the north Gulf coast of Florida and for most of that time he managed to continue to blog and a few grateful folks like me tried to offer him some support, moral and material. Luckily he now has a home and a partner (a lady who escaped from a wife-beating husband), but they battle with debt and the constant risk of eviction. Why do I write all this? Because everyone has his own story and I do too. I like to learn about other people's life experiences - that is why I blog. I've been blogging since April 2002 and in the early period there were very few bloggers in the north of Scotland, or for that matter in the rest of Scotland or the rest of the UK; many have fallen by the wayside over the years, unfortunately, but they are personal journals and no one is obliged to maintain one, or to read them. I am so glad that in recent years there is a growing number of local blogs in and around Nairn so that all tastes may be catered for. Graisg does an excellent job here catering for the particular niche he has created for himself. I would not dream of trying to emulate him :) Brian's is a more recent blog and it is excellent too, in a different way. There are now several other local or fairly local blogs which I visit regularly and enjoy. My blog has never pretended to be solely about Nairn, sorry if that upsets some people, but perhaps someone else can set up another blog to write about it, just as Graisg and a few others do so well already. Now that I've written such a lengthy comment [t]here (and I should, in my defence – lol – point out that I do not pre-moderate comments on current posts as Graisg chooses to do) I now have the material for an article in my own blog - so thanks for that. Being a lazy sort, I'm not too proud to recycle comments I make elsewhere into posts in my little blog. Have a great Sunday!

- as is mentioned above, this comment will not now appear in Graisg's blog, because he has barred further comment in that post. For the record, as Graisg himself points out in the comments, Graisg and I differ in some aspects of our personal 'ideologies' about a number of things, but on other matters we tend to think pretty much along similar lines; I like and respect him. Indeed he and I and another local blogger, Brian at My Nairn, had the only recorded Nairn 'blog meet' (so far as I am aware) some months ago and I think it's true to say we all enjoyed the experience. A few other local bloggers (and regular commenters in Graisg's blog) were invited to participate, but preferred to maintain their strict anonymity apparently; as I mentioned in the box above, all bloggers are different. Wouldn't it be a boring world if we were not?

* - for the record, here is the text of the email I sent to Graisg and which is referred to in the box above:

Hi [Graisg's real name is redacted] I noticed an article entitled "[redacted]" on your blog last night and when I first read it I thought it a rather unpleasant piece of 'gossip' with a nasty tone of 'innuendo' lurking in it; reading the by-line of the author brought no surprises. What I find particuarly unpleasant with this article is the cowardice of the author who permits him/herself to make thinly-veiled allegations, but is of course careful to 'name no names' - probably because he/she knows the [redacted] concerned and might find it embarrassing if he/she encountered the [redacted] in the High Street or at church. It is basically no better than a scurrilous poison-pen type effort. Last evening and still today there have been no comments on this article. I know nothing about the facts of this [redacted] and on reading my copy of this week's Nairnshire [this is the local newspaper in Nairn] am none the wiser. However, if this is the type of article you are going to permit to appear in your blog, then the sooner I get myself out of this nasty, incestuous, inward-looking place the better! Your blog seems to be developing into a sort of village ducking-stool for people with grievances to air their petty prejudices 'anonymously'. Is this really the direction you want to take it in? You were kind enough to take down an article [again, not an article written by Graisg himself and which of course was not remotely connected to me personally either, or to anyone I know] I wrote to you about a couple of weeks ago; what you do, if anything, in this instance is your business entirely, but I have to tell you frankly that if there are more articles of this nature appearing in your blog I shall be removing it from my blogroll as it is verging very close on contravening my personal 'terms of use' for links in my own blog. I apologise for my temerity in writing to you as I do, but rather than simply removing the link to your blog in my blogroll without notice, I felt it only fair to let you know the direction my thoughts are taking. With best personal regards Bill

I'll finish off here, by echoing my final remark in the 'comment' above:

Have a great Sunday!

A clarification about comments in this blog and on video-clips in my YouTube account

Some 'twat' going by the YouTube moniker of 'MegaPeteB' has been making pointlessly insulting comments on a couple of my YouTube videos. Let me be quite clear, I have no intention of allowing my video comments areas to be used by people such as this illustrious gentleman to hone their [so far futile] efforts at wit and have deleted the comments in question and disabled comments in the affected videos. I make no pretence that my video efforts are 'professional' or of high technical or any other quality. I don't tolerate such kinds of comments in my blog and I am not about to start tolerating them in my YouTube videos. For the avoidance of doubt, neither this blog nor my YouTube account is a 'democracy' as I make the rules and if people don't like them, well .... work it out for yourself MegaPeteB; start your own blog or YouTube account with your own material if you feel the need to vent your spleen! Candidly.

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Bill opens up his private 'Bloglines' blogrolls

Until now my blogrolls appearing in this blog have been restricted to those hosted at Blogrolling.com. Now as an experiment I have added my full 'unexpurgated' blog reading list included in one of the RSS feed aggregators I use, Bloglines.com. I haven't yet decided whether I shall leave these new additions here indefinitely, but I suspect they will remain for a few weeks at least.

My Blogrolling blogrolls continue to appear in their usual positions in the right column. The Bloglines blogrolls appear way down the right column in a new section headed: 'Bloglines Blogrolls'.

There are several reasons why I haven't included certain blogs in my public blogrolls hitherto:

- they are relatively 'new' to me so I haven't got around to 'promoting' them to my public blogrolls; however there are now so many in this category that it has become very unwieldy to update my public blogrolls regularly, so including the 'Bloglines' feed here circumvents that unwieldiness;

- I have not considered them 'suitable' for appearance in my public blogrolls, because they are 'gay' blogs which are pretty explicit in the images and/or words they use, specially for the delicate eyes (lol - Ed) of people who are not 'gay'; I've decided to abandon this pretence - I read many explicit 'gay' blogs and have ceased to care what others may think about this; it just is;

- I have not considered them 'suitable' for appearance in my public blogrolls, because they are 'extreme' in some way, usually in the politics they help to propagate. However, whilst I may dislike intensely the political ideas that some people believe in, quite apart from fearing them, I have come to believe this is a 'cop out' - these ideas exist and need to be confronted, not brushed away under the carpet;

- Many blogs which have gone dormant, or the writer has announced they will no longer be updated, have been removed from my public 'Blogrolling' blogrolls, usually after about three months of dormancy. However I remove dormant/dead blogs from my 'Bloglines' RSS feeds much less often, just in case the writers decide to resurrect them, so some of the links there have not been updated in some time - nevertheless they were blogs I found interesting to read, so don't want to lose track of them entirely

Even with all this effort at 'transparency' however, there are still some blogs that are very well-known that you won't find anywhere in my blogrolls, whether hosted by Blogrolling or Bloglines, as I simply don't read them; in most cases I did read them in the past, but have ceased doing so. I'm not going to name them here because that would potentially give them a little additional publicity; the only time I ever visit these blogs is if some of those websites I do read include links to them in articles.

I don't pretend any or all of this is particularly logical or defensible; like most people I am a mass of contradictions and although my 'strapline' at the top of this blog is 'Striving for Objectivity, Combatting Bigotry' I'm not naive enough to believe, or even to pretend to others, that I have achieved either aim in its entirety. However, if you have managed to get this far, perhaps you'll find a few links in these new additons of interest to you.

Seven year blog anniversary / 2,730+ articles and counting

Seven years already! With a few breaks along the way, it's on the whole been an enjoyable ride. I have tended to cover a few major topics recurrentlly over the years (for example homophobia, the growing 'surveillance state' and in earlier years the Iraq conflict, but not so much recently, to name just a few, even if a few of the topics which flowed from that still get a mention pretty regularly - the growing authoritarianism of many generally democratic countries' governments, specifically those of the UK and the US with their 'war on terror' and the allegations of extra-judicial methods of pursuing this policy including 'extraordinary rendition' and 'torture'), with added topics for variety from time to time. Some topics I haven't covered though, because they bore me - or more precisely because of the hypocrisy I perceive in a lot of the 'waves' of outrage which flow around the media and the 'blogosphere' - for example the recent brouhaha concerning the Home Secretary's husband and his predilection for video-porn. Frankly it's of no interest to me what this couple choose to do in their leisure hours and I'm sure in the 'greater scheme of things' his/their predilections are relatively innocuous and certainly don't contravene any laws in force; the only feature of interest in this affair is that they tried to get we taxpayers to pay for it! That is definitely not on and would undoubtedly never have come to light if the Speaker of the House of Commons had not lost, at significant cost to the tax-payer, a legal case brought to try and prevent details of our legislators' expenses being available to the public under Freedom of Information legislation; this is certainly an aspect of our public life that deserves to have a bright spotlight shone upon it.

As in previous years, I'd like to thank the gentle readers who visit my little blog from time to time and those who take the trouble to comment on what I have written; feedback is always useful and I am grateful for it, yes even the recent commenters about my views on bilingual English-Gaelic roadsigns in the north of Scotland although it is clear that at least one of those has 'form' as a comment spammer and and perpetrator of some pretty shoddy internet activities as has recently become clear to me as a result of certain search engine queries which have alighted on my little blog; although I strive for 'objectivity' here, I don't pretend always to achieve it, but I don't think that includes pandering to nut-jobs and their obsessions and attempts to hi-jack comments here by extremists of whatever kind will be ruthlessly combatted; people are welcome to comment here positively or negatively, provide that there is a certain level of courtesy which I try to reciprocate. OK, that's enough for now - again, my thanks for visiting if you've got this far.

Roll on the next seven years, or however long this blog continues!