The Trouble with Jacqui

Okay lets start by saying I'm not entirely happy about sitting here in my room, gone midnight, and blogging about Jacqui Smith (and I am going against my blogging principles and resisting putting a picture up) but I promised myself I would write a post before I went to bed and distressingly she was the topic I picked.

So Jacqui Smith is in the news again, I must say I, usually, am not someone to get caught up in the public outrage over expenses. MPs are coming from a time when their expenses were designed to top up their earnings and could be relied on for things such as the slight extravangance (I don't include porn under that but we'll come on to that), we are moving on from that now and just as bankers shouldn't be expecting their bonuses anymore MPs shouldn't be abusing their expenses. To keep it general for a little longer, the thing I really hate about the arguments politicians use in the whole expenses debate is the whole "I broke no rules", like no breaking the rules is enough; we're talking about our leaders here they should be held to a higher standard than simply not breaking the rules but I'm possibly being a little naive on that.

Okay so paying for porn on expenses... lets get it clear here the problem is with the public paying for your porn, there is absolutely no issue with watching porn and if everyone has to start apologising for watching porn youtube is going to become a very boring place. A big cheer for Richard Timney though for taking some of the heat for the Home Secretary on this one.

While I am happy to clamber onto the band wagon of a Jacqui Smith slagging match... this topic is really not what we need to shout at her about. What we should be shouting about is what she has come to represent in our government, a government that is so eager to look tough on drugs that it upgrades cannabis without any qualified person (either in the medical profession or drugs enforcement) agreeing that it's a good idea and worst of all a government so eager to look tough on terrorism that she is willing to lock people up for 42days without being charged.

Picture from Liberty's Charge or Release campaign against extending the pre-charge detention limit

Today the Prime Minister today announced that the second home allowance should be scrapped. So I hope people will be able to stop complaining about expenses and really start looking at the things that actually matter and making their voice heard about the issues and policies that actually effect the country we are living in.

Advertising!

So a little recent history of me; I graduated a couple of years ago with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (yuck!) which didn't really do it for me so I've spent the past couple of years working in central and local government getting a hang of how things work with the powers that be but now I think I significantly 'knowledged up' as much as I really need to be about government and I want to move into advertising (cue lots of people, including my hero Charlie Brooker, wanting to punch me in the face). I find the creative process fascinating and in terms of what I want to go into, which is planning, I find the whole psychology side of why people buy things? fascinating.

Anyway that was just a short preface to let you know that you will probably be seeing quite a few ads that I like being posted on here. Most of which will be viral and social media campaigns, after all isn't that what blogs are for? One such ad that I recently found via Creativity Magazine's site (they do a great weekly top 5 ads) was this one for the Swedish Post Office... check it out...

Stefan the Swopper from Stefan Byte on Vimeo.

As someone wanting to be a planner/strategist I am pretty in awe of this, to not have to spend any money on media is incredible and really shows the exciting time the advertising industry is in.

Anyway I'll stop being an ad geek now. Oh I'm applying for the graduate planner scheme at DraftFCB at the moment so if anyone has any tips please let me know as it would be my dream job with an amazing company.

Dris Cooks [not so] Red Velvet Cup Cakes

Lets be clear from the start, this is not going to be a cooking blog! If that's what your after my good friend hannah does a great cooking blog called CookEatDream it's taking a brief hiatus at the moment but will be back in a couple of weeks. Anyway enough about Hannah's blog...

So I've been trying out various diets lately just for health reasons I felt I should crack down on the amount of rubbish I eat and drink. I am currently on a strict water and tea only diet on the drinks front (I feel a lot better for it you should try it) and I'm not great on the food side of things but I decided today that I am only allowed to eat sweet things if I have made them myself (not a great plan for health or anything but quite fun).

I was recently talking to someone about cooking and mentioned that I was rubbish at it (although I, honestly, haven't tried to all that much), he seemed surprised by this and made what I thought was quite a good point. The point was that people like scientists and engineers (I studied engineering by the way) should really be quite good at cooking since it's basically just following formula and instructions. Seems fair enough, I wouldn't try to get arty with my food I would measure everything out as exactly as my tools would allow (my scales are rather crappy you see). So yeah I though "maybe I am good at this after all".

However, this also reminded me of another story and that is that newly qualified pilots when flying through thick cloud will often start to distrust their instruments and believe they are flying upside down even though their instruments say otherwise. I think scientists and engineers may suffer from this type of arrogance so it could really go either way.

I was going to give step by step pictures but I made a little too much of a mess so here's the final product that as you can see are not red (I am clearly veering towards the pilot story side of the argument... I doubt anyone would be surprised) so I am dubbing them "Fake Velvet Cupcakes wit Cream Cheese Frosting" they taste pretty good though, my presentation could do with a bit of work though...