You know, given how poor some hourly rates are for where people live, I’m not surprised that people need benefits to supplement their income.

The sad thing is though that with the exception of the ‘bad examples’ you see in the paper, or occasionally hear about, those on benefits are truly getting persecuted, for simply choosing to live, and from that standpoint it’s absolutely sickening! I did some calculations for my average monthly wage, though admittedly I can’t actually do that properly, but the fact is that what I get paid in a month, for what I’m able to do at present (I’m trying to ease myself into a routine) varies from 30-130 quid short in a month. In this instance, those 2 figures I quoted at either end are literally what I’ll be short for next month (plus, there’s the fact my travel costs have tripled past what I would whilst on benefits).

Lastly, as I’m on a Zero Hour contract, my hours aren’t set, so technically, the average doesn’t exist… I’m just basically extrapolating from 2 months of work (both what I have done this month (and will do) and will do the next. When you really think about it, actually experiencing it from this end of the spectrum, you realise why a lot of people stay on benefits. Sure, you could cut them in order to “make work pay”, but then the issue is, how will it affect those already in jobs… will they get their current rate still, or will they get more or less? Either way, no matter how you look at it, whether you work and don’t earn enough from the job (which stands for ‘Just Over Broke’ btw) or simply claim benefits without working, life will get harder for you, especially when the government is insisting on marking everyone on benefits as scroungers!

I have to wonder though, since when in this country has it been okay to demonise people simply for trying to live? Do people have no heart any more? Are people now that greedy as to think that so long as their needs are sorted out, what happens to everyone else is irrelevant, as long as it doesn’t negatively affect them? People are becoming as short-sighted as this government is, standing idly by while these savage cuts are made, while people simply just trying make a living are being negatively affected, people that are otherwise law abiding citizens; people who have to take pay cuts in order to keep their jobs, people who have lost their jobs due to the current economic climate (which is dire, I might add), people who are clearly unable to work yet are being forced to breaking point by the government; people like you and me.

And in light of these cuts, the MPs don’t sit up and say “let us help our country and take a pay cut, just like other civil servants have had to!” No, instead they consider giving themselved (and maybe have even passed through) a 30% pay increase! How is it that we allow this?

How is it that we allow the government to invest the minimal amount (or even below) needed for this country to get back on its feet, thus stifling growth, and will making people worse off in 2015 than anyone ever was in the 2010 recession! How is that right?

How is it we allow the government to paint everyone on benefits (working or not, deserving or not) as scroungers, and telling them they must get a job, despite there being at least 2.5 million people out of work, and only around 500k jobs available? Better yet, what about those who are becoming unemployed due to redundancies made? It’s not only the high profile ones that make the news that are making them. This adds thousands more to the unemployed list, and also lessens the chances of anyone getting a job. It’s now at the stage where those who have a job (no matter how good or bad it is) are lucky to have one! The problem is though, not all of them pay enough, so we go back to the issue at the start.

The point is, we’re in a very vicious cycle here, and with each full revolution, things get progressively worse. This needs to be stopped, or we’re heading towards this ‘”Lost Decade” the papers have mentioned, which means it’ll take a very long time to recover. We all need to stand together and say to the government that we’re sick and tired of being treated like this, rather than just standing by and letting it all happen. This is what they call the Divide and Conquer approach; the bottom line is, no one is safe from the government cuts, and activities, unless you happen to be rich! I haven’t even mentioned what they’re trying to do to DLA or the NHS, but the point is, they’re trying to make it more difficult to live in this country.

I could go on and on like this in all honesty, but at the end of the day, things are happening that can be stopped, we just need to d something about it, even something as simple as signing and sharing an e-petition can help in a lot of cases, especially the ones that the Number 10 website; those that get enough signatures MUST be debated in Parliament! But, not only those petitions work, some of the ones on other sites work too; educating others about what is going on, and even educating yourself about the situation is important, read blog posts, newspaper articles and anything that discusses the current situation.

You may not do politics, but it is about time you started; politics is what this entire mess is about, and the more you distance yourself from it, the less chance you have to change the situation you are (and everyone else is) in. Look, I know you’re likely fed up with politics (at times, I am too)… but apathy towards politics is partly why we’re in this mess in the first place. If we all genuinely want to make this country better, we need to all be politically aware and make sure we make the right decisions; even a basic understanding of politics will help, because then you know what exactly you’re getting into when you vote, and honestly, you should be voting (at least where it matters).

If you didn’t (or don’t) vote, you have absolutely no right to complain about the situation we are in now. Sorry to break it to you, but it’s true. I voted at the last GE and I’ve been rather… vocal with my opinions as of late. Sure, the party I voted for didn’t win (that’s a discussion for another time), but at least I voted. By voting, you have basically ‘purchased’ a stake in the welfare of this country, and therefore have every right to complain about it going downhill. Now granted, I may not agree with your opinion (how would the world be if we all agreed?), but I accept you have one and strongly believe in it; that’s what tolerance is, that is accepting that people are different, have differnent ideas and different opinions, yet still accepting them as a person. Anyway, the bottom line is that in this day and age, it is possible to do life-changing things, simply by sitting down at your computer.

Now granted, not everything can be done this way, but some of the major things are promoting awareness (blogging or telling others, or sharing posts/articles) putting your signature to something or even funding a cause you believe in… changing the world can be that simple at times. Even still, if you want to gather for a protest or other cause, you can find like-minded souls in order to help facilitate that. We’re only as strong as we think we are, and if we think we are strong, and we come together with other strong people, we can use that combined strength to make things a better place. Admittedly, it is very possible for one person to make a difference, but at the same time, there is strength in numbers. And now, this doesn’t mean gather together to cause a riot… we had enough of that last year, but certainly, we need to come together to make things happen… let’s come together and try to make this country great once again.

And in some cases, all you need to do is spend a few minutes (or more if you can spare it) of your time doing it, fancy that… a few minutes of your time, and you can help improve life for yourself and many others.

Surely that is something worth being a part of?

• The Sciences, Technology, Mental Heath/Disability, Business/Entrepreneurship, Projects and general ramblings: This blog.
• Portfolio: Andrew Kennett (this clears up some space pages wise, and also will provide a timeline of sorts with my projects; it is mainly a dynamic CV of sorts).
• Current Affairs & (some) Politics: A Right State!
• Gaming (computer gaming and other sorts): Gamed Up (personal blog for personal stuff and site for reviews, news, previews, etc)
• Travel (Personal): Stormkeeper @ Xeno Storm.
• Travel (Group Projects): Individual dedicated project blog with links to category of personal blog associated with that project.

And that’s just for starters, to be honest…. or maybe it’s the end, I’m not sure. Either way, I’ll be looking at where stuff goes. I did have a site called Geeked Up planned as a sister site to Gamed Up initially, but I’m realising I’m spreading myself a bit thinly now, so therefore Geeked Up will be put on the back burner for now, plus there was very little I could put there, except for maybe stuff on Warhammer (that can go to Gamed Up anyway, maybe Geeked Up later) and Wrestling (the FB group is kinda dead). Ultimately, I’m gonna be spending this year sorting stuff out more, and also trying to make more posts where possible, though there will be some overlap from a couple of the blogs; the SK travel blog however will be dedicated to travel specifically, although I’m 50-50 on where the projects go; either they stay here or go to their own dedicated blog, suppose it depends on the format I make the projects, but for now I lumped them here…. it may just be I separate the project section into a separate blog and do it day by day. It would certainly make a lot more sense in all honesty, so I’ll do that when I move over to the new system I have planned.

As far as things go, I think I need to completely redo my categories a little bit, as some things are outdated in it now. Either way, I do have a relatively clear path for what I want to achieve (for a change!) with my blogging. Oddly enough, I may end up keeping Xeno Storm and Stormkeeper’s dot Net domains, albeit as addon domains, but having the UK domains be the main ones. The main reason for that is that those 2 domain names have arguably become amongst the strongest in my portfolio and it would be a shame to throw all that publicity away like that. I’m considering a similar system for another few of my domains, but the ones I can safely get rid of will be going; my personal blogs will mainly become me.uk and I’m also thinking of playing around with some new blogging software as an experiment. Granted, it’ll be a long time before I replace the XS blog system (because of the features I need, but that won’t stop me from playing around with this new software, as I do like the look of it. That software is called Habari; admittedly it has some ways to go, bit it never hurts to play with new toys, does it?

As for the importance of the domain name changes, well it will be that I’ll be running 2 instances of this blog for a couple of weeks; one here and one at the new place. This blog will have a pointer post going to the new address for this blog once everything is up and running and stable, and after the couple of weeks have elapsed, I’ll be pointing stormkeeper.net to the  new site space. It is a relatively big job to do (given the organisation on the fly I do), but when I finally do it, it’ll help things out a lot. As for why I haven’t done it sooner, well that’s because honestly, I’m a bit of a procrastinator, and also because I’ve been up to a lot lately. I do hope to start looking at planning my days a little more rigidly than before, though that might take me a bit, though I have managed to see some of my plans through, which is good, especially given the changes that have occurred even recently. That said however, my diaries aren’t yet updated, so that is another thing I need to focus on.

Another thing I want to focus on is basically acquiring a passive income through blogging. While I’m not too sure of how I can do that effectively as of yet, I am looking into it where I can, though from what I see, I can channel what I know into a little bit of income, simply by writing (which is were the dedicated travel and project blogs will come into their own, I think). I have also been looking at this 28 hour day thing as well, and it intrigues me, but the sleeping does need to be pretty well-timed, heh. Also, I plan to intrgrate Disqus with all of my blogs, in addition to this social plugin, though dedicated WP comments will likely be an option too, uunless I find a way to transfer them to Disqus, which is an option too. This will mean then that I’ll have a third party host for the comments (which in itself his good and bad points) meaning I hopefully have a safe place for my comments if my blog ever gets knocked down. Additionally – though this will be more for the likes of ‘Played Up’, the DiggerKrew and other vidcasts and podcasts – I will be making extensive use of YouTube, blip.tv, SoundCloud and a video streaming solution (mainly for streaming games) to host my media. This has the added effect of increasing listens and/or views, because I’ll link the media to the blog and it’ll get views/listens from that avenuse (also with occasional crossposting!) and also links on the host itself, meaning that exposure will be increased.

I do plan to put ads on my videos 1-2 weeks after I upload them in order to monetise them as well, but for the first 1-2 weeks, there will simply be a banner ad on the video. After that point, there will be an ad somewhere in the video in order for me to help build up funds These will help me fund stuff like hosting, and also any equipment/software/props/other stuffI need to operate things like the DiggerFeast or the DiggerCast, such as food, drink, headsets, mixers and all the other stuff to make more professional productions. The blogs too will have some sort of advertising, but I’m basically working on a non-intrusive (or least intrusive) model for the blogs. Additionally, I’ll be splitting up my AdSense to 2 different accounts, one for personal and one for business. The personal one will basically cover Xeno Storm, associated projects and also anything that isn’t business, whereas the business covers the business-related stuff, such as Stormhaven Media (DiggerKrew and A Right State!), Gamed Up, Stormhaven Retech (Retail & Technologies), Sierra Services Europe (a new company) and everything under Stormhaven Nexus. You guys won’t really notice much in the way of changes on the front of it, but under the hood, I’ll be basically be refining stuff.

I’ll likely be retaining the “Xeno Storm Network” (XSN) name as well, because it’s noth catchy and again, it’s got a strong association now. Even despite the fact that the Xeno part (my friend Scott) of Xeno Storm is not active right now, I consider it important to keep the name going for various reasons, especially when it comes to him returning – whenever that might be – to a well established and organised site network, which I feel is important. In the meantime however, I’ve been trawling the web as you do, putting my mouth (and in some cases money) to a few causes, of which I hope to do more of in the future; this is basically my attempt to be more socially responsible. Now admittedly, I still have a few kinks to iron out, but I’m beginning to form a picture of how I want the XSN to work, though the move over is crucial to this working. I have a relatively established presence on Twitter, and I’m going to also be making changes to my Facebook, in order to allow me to have followers on there too. I have already incorporated a bi-directional link between Twitter and Facebook which will save me time and convenience later on, especially given the fact Twitter can link to a Facebook post which exceeds the 140 character limit, which is quite frankly hard to express yourself in at times! I also will set up a Xeno Storm Facebook Page which I’ll tack a ‘Like Box’ on to every XSN-related page in order for it to be a central hub for everything. I’ll also be having a semi-automated Twitter account (possibly a dedicated travel one too) which basically will allow the posting of notifications as to when a new blog post is up. Additionally, there will also be a dedicated XSN News Blog in order to make global announcements regarding the XSN; things will very much become a lot more streamlined in the future!

Admittedly however, I’m loathe to put a completion date on all of this, so I’ll simply say it’ll be done when it’s done. I’ll post up an announcrment as to where you can Follow me on Facebook, but I’m very delayed with adding people right now. Either way, I am hoping that in the near future I can actually, properly start having a go at doing things; of course, so far my greatest achievement related to my websites has been maintaining my Twitter account and also this blog, in addition to getting hosting at all! Anyway, once everything is in place, I’ll be able to start putting some consideration to slghtly more professional blogging, although here will have a more personal bent (while still remaining informative hopefully), compared to the specialist blogs (with exception to the personal travel and personal gaming blogs which will be more like here). Anyway, it’ll take time to implement all of this, so if you have any questions, suggestions or comments with whatI’m doing or have done, please feel free to let me know.

Lastly (at least on webby stuff), just to reiterate, my portfolio blog will basically now have details of all the things I was involved in in the past, what I’m presently involved in and also what I will be involved in. Additionally, I will likely be allowing comments for testimonials on past projects, if not having a separate pahe for them, whichever reduces spam and also seems more professional. And speaking of spam, I have been getting a lot of spam relating to my ‘e-games’ post lately which interests me, given before it was on the disclaimer, heh. Anyway, I plan to at some point look into this 28 hour day thing people talk about, and possibly blog about a book if I’m chosen to do so. I’ll mention the title later either way. I’ll also be giving my impressions on a few things that I have learnt from reading about other stuff, and I think I may look into blogging about the Wealth Dragons seminar that I have coming up in April as well. Coincidentally, I’m going to eventually attempt to attend another Wilson Luna event, and also Sidra Jafri’s The Awakening, whenever I get the chance. I can certainly recommend the former two for networking and ideas for businesses, marketing, etc (although the Wealth Dragons leans more towards property).

I will also start having an affiliates page on here and on the AK site, both in order to help make me a bit of money, but also so I can offer some good deals. These deals do involve me getting something, but in most cases, you might gain something from it too! I’ll explain a little about the links on the page, so you know what you are getting yourself into. I use these services myself, so I can vouch for their authenticity at least. I might have other plans too or making money, but ultimately I want them to minimise disruption of the browsing experience on my sites, which can occasionally be a challenging thing to do, but I will manage somehow. In the meantime however, watch this space, or even my Twitter for developments. Glancing through my categories, I’m realising that I need to look at my 50 Things again, because I’ve been a little lazy with it the past while, although I may have also unknowingly achieved some of the goals, or will do as a result of my efforts. Lastly, I will start refining my categories and tags to make things cleaner, both for me and for you, the reader. It may happen here, or it may happen on the new blog. Either way though, time will tell.

Subject: Let’s talk more my bunny!

Hello! My name is Tanya , I am lonely russian woman from Ulyanovsk. I hope you will interested in
my letter or in my structure in agency. I have decided to write to you really liked to me. Some more
about me…. I am 25, I have finished medical university in our city and now I work as the
children’s doctor. My free time I spend on a hippodrome, as I 7 years am engaged in equestrian sport.
I think more about my appearance will tell you my photos. If you want to learn more about me you may
write me to RandomEmail@yandex.ru Also if you want to ask me some questoins (if interested in me),
please write me and I promise answer you and also I will send you more of my photos. Bye for now.
I hope it’s letter will not without your reply.

So yeah, I got two of those emails over the past couple of days. You want to know the kicker though? They came from Myspace! I think Myspace likely has some issues with being compromised, which concerns me as I have an account there (albeit semi-inactive), but I do wonder if the security of the site is compromised. Still, it amuses me Igot called a bunny… that’s the last animal that I’d ever consider myself to be; those of you that know me (especially those who were with the old Xeno Storm Forums) have a better idea, plus I’m sure I still have it as an avatar in some places. Anyway, really amusing.

I will soon update to the new domain and alias this one to the new site but for now, I’m staying here until I am able to move. As always, watch this space for developments. You can contact me or get updates during the outage via Twitter (@Stormkeeper_, though I may not actually have many site updates. Either way, I’ll be glad to move over to a new setup, given it’s much cheaper and more efficient!

It’s come to my attention that the link for The Mental Health Struggle has been updated and moved to Indiegogo. I’ll be changing the link on my last entry too (read that towards the end if you want to know what I said about it first), but if you get to it before I do, but after reading this, the new link is here. I also tweeted the new link when I made my pledge, so use that link as well. I’ll also be tweeting a new link to be retweeted after I finish this post, using the hashtag #TMHS and also/or #TheMentalHealthStruggle (for tracking purposes; don’t be surprised to see one or the other, or both). The reasons for this change of link are threefold; first of all, the £8,000 goal wasn’t going to be reached in the time given, so the organiser asked for the deadline and goal to be increased and decreased to £5,000 respectively. Secondly, it seems that Kickstarter doesn’t allow causes or charities to be funded, which seems a bit bizarre. It does mean though that I’m gonna have to pester those I told again and remove links to the old address, so if you see this, and then see a Kickstarter link to this project in my blog, don’t click on it!

Lastly, they have a website as well which is here. I do hope to remove all the Kickstarter references by this weekend, but this post is partly in case I’ve either missed some or I’m still working on it when you read this. Unfortunately, they’ve had to start from scratch, so be sure to make a new pledge! There are also some new goodies, so check it out before pledging your original amount, or your original level. I should mention that there’s a possibility that you’ll be paying instantly via the Indiegogo link (through Paypal), so this is unlike Kickstarter where you pay after the goal is met. This is just a heads up, just to make you aware of the difference. I can luckily take the hit, so it won’t be too bad, but still, it’s something you need to know.

Anyway, if you have contributed via this blog post, or even if I directly mentioned it to you, please leave a comment below. Additionally, please do tell your friends if you think they’ll be interested in this project… you know I will be!

P.S.: I’m sorry for harassing people again, but you’d rather be kept informed, right? Especially those of you who made a pledge.

P.P.S.: I’ll soon be making another blog entry, only it will be about my experiences with podcasting. Additionally, I don’t expect my website to move now till at least the middle to the end of February, because I’m a terrible procrastinator, and also need to see what I need to move over, as well as set up the stuff on the new host to be ready to transfer over. In the meantime, please check out this project if you haven’t already, it means a lot to me.

Edit: It appears that I had a lot less links made than I actually thought… I think they’re on Facebook more though probably.

Well, it looks like we’re back to once a month posting again. On the plus side, at least I’m updating, and on that subject I have many updates, which is where the “going forward” comes in. As for the first part, it’s relating to the fact that I’m looking at getting 2 new hard external drives to back some important stuff up I realised just now that there’s certain rare, irreplaceable things I cannot afford to lose so I thought it best to get a 2TB HDD, mostly for software… but then I realised that given I’m getting more into multimedia, such as podcasting and recording videos, in addition to my regular photography, I need a safe place to store my media stuff too (especially the stuff that will either have a delayed release or never released). Thing is though, I’ve realised that the hard drive would fill up quite fast, given the volume of my downloads lately, and with the move to HD video (and also pending a few other videos I want to do that’ll take up a lot of space), I need to get 2 hard drives. In addition to that, I need to keep copies of the original video, and also copies of the edited and/or converted videos. So, I decided that 2 hard drives are best.

Granted, I may not fill them up right away, but it’s best to have all the extra space there just in case. With this in mind, I expect to be a little more prolific with recording, both with the DiggerFeast and other projects I have yet to organised, such as my Let’s Play series which I’ll discuss another time. Ultimately, I have a lot of ideas I’m considering at the moment, although I’m holding off on them for now as I need to flesh them out first. One thing that really struck me though (and why I’m even looking seriously now at backing up) is how easily data can be lost. Most notably, I’m thinking of older versions of games, such as development/pre-release versions of games, although I do also mean when developers EOL their products and make them available for free download, a lot of which can just disappear after a while. My own experiences in trying to get a copy of X-Com: Alliance have been mixed. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but the bottom line is I have a dud copy of one of the 2 files I download (also the biggest ones), and now it’s a pain to find! This makes it important to keep priceless files backed up in a very safe place, or rather in 3 diferent places!

On the subject of charging forward, I have a lot of updates to give. First of all, Twitter pushing is now back on my site! Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed the lack of blog entries anyway, so in some ways it’s not going to affect anyone. I’ve also made sure that every bit of software is up to date, but it is nearly redundant in a way, given I’ll be moving this blog to a new multi-blog system on a new Xeno Storm site soon, as I’ve finally got hosting sorted for my personal stuff and cheaply too, which is always good. Coincidentally, the new iterations of Xeno Storm will not be going under “dot Net” any more. This is because it’s bloody expensive maintaining US domains, as evidenced by the fact that I can get a UK domain for 2 years for practically the same price as a .net for 1 year, madness! I should also mention that you now are able to use your Twitter account to leave comments, if you so wish. Additionally, the new site will be using Disqus in otder to leave comments, so it’ll become a lot more interactive!

Anyway, this means that from February, I’ll be using xenostorm.org.uk and stormkeeper.me.uk for replacement domains. In order to reflect a few things with Xeno Storm and the fact that it is still a network of sorts, being the parent site for my sites and also home to the forums (yes, they’re returning), the new name (or is it actually bringing it back?) “Xeno Storm Network” will now be used, meaning the shorthand for it will be “XSN”… not really a huge change but you know. As for this site, it kind of already had the title “Stormkeeper’s Blog”, so I guess not a lot will change there either? Okay,asides from the fact I won’t be referring to it as “Stormkeeper dot Net” or “SKdN”, though that was rare anyway.  I originally got the idea from Wil Wheaton, as he used “WIL WHEATON dot NET” (or WWdN), though I changed the styling slightly with mine. Still, was a good idea while it lasted. Coincidentally WWdN is on 2.0, but I imagine it’s been that for a while. It is time for a change at my end too.

This means that as soon as is feasible, I’ll also be bringing andrewkennett.me.uk (or Andrew Kennett’s Portfolio) in, and using that to show what I’ve done, in effect it becomes my personal site more. It’ll give updates on what I’m up to, what I’ve done and what I will do, so in other words, it will be taking over the functions of the pages of Current & Future Proj(ects) and Past Proj(ects) and bssically splitting them into different pages. I will probbly also add a “Featured In” page as well, for anything I have been featured in, because honestly, it is important to remind yourself what you’ve been in to realise how far you have progressed. This site will likely remain the same as it is now for the most part, though maybe I may change the layout, although that said… that would probably be a pain to do, seeing as this was the only one so far that fits what my site is. I will at least update it to make sure that any breaks are hoing to be minmised. As for the portfolio site, I’m gonna try a more professional approach, possibly brighter colours as it’s designed for more simpler reading; this blog really was just basically a way for me to express my thoughts on things (as pointless as they may seem at times, at least I’m updating), though when I get things sorted out, there will probably be a bit more generalised stuff here.

The reasons for this are the fact I’ll be moving most of my gaming and current/global affairs stuff to other specialised blogs. That said though, there will be plenty for me to blog about, such as about mental health issues, ideas for projects I am planning to do, progress on said projects (though if they’re finished, they’ll be on the portfolio too), advancements in the world of science and tech (although there may be a game-related post for that too if I see its value in gaming too) and other stuff I’m sure I can cover. As I said before, it’s likely I’ll be cross-posting important specialised posts to here too, for wider exposure, as well as amongst other blogs, but more on that in another post.

The last thing I want to bring to everyone’s attention, if you haven’t read it on my Facebook, is a Kickstarter project being done by a friend of mine called “The mental health struggle – From agoraphobe to CEO“. First of all, I’d like to say this is naturally a topic close to my head (and of course my heart), so I want to see this do as well as possible, as it needs to be out there. Secondly, I’ve gone and helped fund this, so as to put my money where my mouth is, as I need to be consistent in my approaches, right? Admittedly, if I didn’t have the money to fund it at the time, I’d have at least funded it via a token gesture in any case till I could fund it. Thirdly, I’ve been asked to write a story for the book! I’m actually not 100% sure of what I’ll be writing exactly as of yet; I know the who, what, where, when and why I’m writing, but how I’m going to write about it presently eludes me.

You think given the fact I write a lot about my thoughts on stuff, it’d be easy to talk about stuff, but honestly… it isn’t. Maybe because it’s because I’m not used to talking about myself in that much detail, maybe it’s something else. All I do know is that I’ll be writing something down soon, when I’ve got my thoughts together some more. In the meantime, I’ll be promoting this as best as I can, on here, on Facebook and now on Twitter. I’ve also been directly telling my friends about it too, so even if I’ve not started my story, I’m still contributing something at least. I’ll likely be posting about the book on Twitter a few times over the next few weeks, so apologies if it gets a bit tiring, I do want to see this book get funded, and at the time of writing, it’s £437 out of £8000, and there’s 23 days to go… which means I need to go harass a lot of people

Anyway, it’s time I put this post up, as it is over a day late… hopefully you’ll appriciate the new direction the site is going, and also will consider supporting this cause, as let’s face it, it’s very rare for me to do it, mainly because I’m never asked, although admmittedly if I believe in something that strongly, I’ll go ahead and do it anyway.

See you lot later.

For those of you aware of the issues with the West Coast train franchise here in the UK, a toy train company submitted a bid for the franchise below:

http://blog.bigjigstoys.co.uk/our-wcml-bid-has-been-accepted-almost/

Proof that not everything on my blog is dull or depressing, nor is every civil servant/government official lacking a sense of humour

Anyway, after this course, I should be able to catch up a little with things, but do expect some changes, most notably with this site, as this will no longer be Stormkeeper dot Net! Instead, I’ll be switching to stormkeeper.me,uk, meaning I’ve gotta change the name of the site too. Secondly, my portfolio will now be moving to another blog, andrewkennett.me.uk, although I will be keeping my blogging here, as the AK site will be for everything I do and when I do it (in some cases), meaning that this blog will be a few pages less. Also, given I have dedicated blogs for gaming and current affairs/politics in the pipeline, I’ll be posting less about those sibjects here, though I will be posting extracts from those posts here for a bit of exposure. As for Xeno Storm’s domain, that too will have a change to xenostorm.org.uk, although I’m debating keeping that domain and sk.net too, seeing as they’ve been in my possession a very long time.

Lastly, other domains of mine will be at the very least converted into UK domains, maybe even changed completely in some cases. The reason for all of this is simple,it’s because it wotks out cheaper for me! On that note too, I have shunted my IRC server to a cheaper host and also changed its name, but more on that later. My next changes will be to split off my personal and business sites from each other, and also sort out an Adsense for business too, as my current one is personal.

This will help keep my personal affairs separate from my business, but will also take time, so expect things under my control to fluctuate in terms of uptime till things settle. As for why all my sites got knocked offline for a few days some time ago? Well, the simple fact of the matter is that my VPS ran out of space, due to misconfiguration. which is prompting the move now… I don’t want to spend ages configuring a VPS as I have to manage everything! With my moving, I can spend time on what is important, which is naturally business and to an extent here as well.

I’ll explain more about this later too, but I may not be able to post more for another couple of weeks. Either way, I hope this will explain a few things. As for me in the immediate future, I need to rest myself up as I’ve got a cold and have an exam tomorrow morning, joy of joys. Oh, two final things… the DiggerFeast will eventually be relaunching, and also I gope to get something done with A Right State! soon, even if in either or both cases I have to do it solo!

I’ll keep you all posted as best as I can.

The stats for spam catching are interesting too:

Akismet has protected your site from 33,646 spam comments already.
There are 2 comments in your spam queue right now.

WP-SpamFree has blocked 3,692 spam comments.

That’s a lot of spam I’ve been protected from!

I just thought I should also mention that I’m soon changing my site address, as it’ll be cheaper to maintain. As always, it’ll be stormkeeper, but instead it’ll be me.uk. That said though, I may need to keep this one now as it’s built up a bit of a reputation now.. I’ll have to see what happens over time. Just to let you guys know, part 3 of my 3 part series will be blogged sometime this week. I did part 2 directly after part 1 because I wanted to get it out of the way, and if I didn’t blog then (even though upon reflection it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was), I may have copped out. That said though, I did at least highlight an excellent article that shows the dangers of the internet for kids (and even adults). There are also dangers in real life too, as we know, but awareness of these things is over half the battle. I’m not saying these things happen all the time, indeed they thankfully are rare relatively speaking… but it still happens a bit too often. At least some of these cases were relatively easy to prevent, which makes them all the more tragic. While I am going by 2 cases, namely April and Madeline, statistically over the past 10 years, there has to be instances like that where the parents weren’t watching (though were close by) because they thought they’d be safe, which is an understandable, if rather naive assumption to make.

In many of these cases, the parents blame themselves or get blamed by others… in fact, I recall Madeline’s parents being blamed for negligence. And reading up on the case, I can see that people were actually checking on her and the two other kids, so it really does go to show that in some cases, it can only take a little time for something tragic to happen, even with precautions in place. It shows that you don’t always know what people are like until something comes out, especially in the case of Jimmy Saville, which the final part will be about. If you’ve seen the stories being published about him, you’d see also why the controversial word will apply to the 3rd post; the 2nd post may have indirectly covered it (even though it was more associated with the psychology of accusation), though I was constantly reminded of all the terrible things I’ve read in the past which likely made it initially seem harder for me to write than I thought. Either way, I’m just glad to get the topic mostly out of the way, because honestly I was a bit out of my depth even covering it… I’m not a  parent, and while I plan to be one eventually, I haven’t a lot of experience with kids though I guess that could generally apply to most guys.

Not to seem sexist or anything, but stereotypically, it’s females who are generally seen as the more nurturing ones; exceptions are for every rule but you do find that kids are generally the last thought on a guy’s mind. Yes, they do fall into the role eventually, but I am of the opinion that men generally don’t fully take aboard the implications of being a father till they either reach a certain age, or basically when it’s staring them in the face as an inevitability. Some women are like that too, that said. Of course, members of both sexes sometimes decide they aren’t wanting to be parents, but that’s okay. Going back to my former statement though, the reason why kids are the last thought on someone’s mind is usually because they have other things they want to accomplish first, again which is okay. I certainly have aims I want to achieve, though admittedly, they may be a little more complex than most. I’ll explain why in another post however. One of my main goals however is to eventually set up a business, which takes time. Being a parent is very much a lifelong commitment too, which i why for me personally it’s one of the things I’ll do later on. I am noticing though that this is turning into the bit on parenting I was talking about, although the parenting was more of a central theme for the past 2 posts; politics was certainly more direct and the last word started off indirect, and moving a little more direct now with the next part.

Ironically, despite the directness in dealing with it, this one doesn’t make me feel as uneasy, though I’m still pretty damn disgusted it even happens in the first place. The last one may have had a lot to do with the fact that the abducted children were still in single figures. Of course, moving into double figures below the age of consent doesn’t make it any less wrong; in all circumstances a child still loses their innocence and/or their lives. And in many ways, the loss of a child’s innocence is a fate worse than death. If that child survives, then they have to live with that trauma for the rest of their lives, and though it gets easier to deal with in time, it never goes away, even worse when the person that did that to them is well known, such as a celebrity. We will see that in more detail in the next part but it must be awful for that person (grown up or not) to hear about the person who abused them being seen as someone “good”, yet if they said anything they’d be branded a liar. Society is a funny thing at times really. Even worse is that because of the circumstances involved, in many cases it can’t come out till the person dies, though then you have people saying that you can’t speak ill of the dead, and also people saying that they’re not there to defend themselves.

It’s cases like this that really show some of the darker sides of being human… and I’m not talking about the act perpetrated by a particular individual, I’m talking more about the way humans go into a blind rage over certain things, or the lack of willingness to believe something. There’s also the rampant hypocracy that goes on too. I’ve been told by a friend that I’ll eventually have the opportunity to see the darker side of humanity with the future career choices I make. I used to think that it’d make me become more of a misanthrope, but then I realised that between what I have read/heard about in the past and will likely hear about in the future will likely prime me for those things anyway. Not all “dark” things are necessarily bad, but it’s the intent that is most important. Either way, I’m realising that I’m likely used to enough that I am no longer likely to be shocked (in the sense that I become uncontrollably outraged) by most things, but equally, I still have the capacity to be disgusted by things. It’s genuinely hard not to see the world in a more cynical light when these stories come up so frequently globally. The internet in some ways has made it easier for these people to communicate, and in some ways, the proliferation of computers has made it easier to catch thise individuals.

Of course, equally, it has become easy to plant stuff on people; new developments in technology can be used for good, but can also used for bad. In the case of Jimmy Saville (allegedly) and others like him, radio and to a degree television to further their nefarious goals.

This wasn’t supposed to become an extension of sorts of the PP&P series, but it ended up just happening that way. Admuttedly, it did allow me to include a little elaboration on certain things that I may not have been able to address within the series of posts. As I said before, I’m not a parent as of yet, but I have noticed that a common thing for almost everyone (including parents) is to basically be ignorant of things going on, like what I mentioned in part 2 and will in part 3. On the one hand, you can’t blame them for that line of thinking, it’s a rare enough occurence on the whole, but as I have just recently read, the subject of child abuse is such a taboo one, people willingly go out of their way to avoid it. I myself can be accused of doing it, which is why I even decided to write about it in the first place because stuff like this is happening too frequently; for every single one that gets or has been reported, there are many more that haven’t been. This therefore means that it could be a more widespread problem than it initially looks like. Child abusers tend to rely on people’s unwillingness to talk about the subject as a form of cover so it rarely ever gets detected, which allows people to get away with it.

Of course back in the 70s and so on, it was much more underground as people are gradually starting to be able to discuss it. In the case of Jimmy Saville though, there have been multiple arguments with regards to the alleged victims, namely the timing of them coming out, when Jimmy is unable ro defend himself. I’ll likely address this again in more detail in the next part, but the main reason given as to why it’s only coming out after his death is because if he was still alive, then he would be able to defend himself. I know that people say don’t speak ill of the dead, but the problem in Jimmy’s case is that because of his stature, it’d be very hard to get anything to stick to him. With regards to people denying he did it, it seems rather odd that so many women are coming forward about it; there’s no way that they all have basically banded together to do this. Also, there would be the libel laws in this country which would complicate matters too, as if nothing would stick to him, then the case against him would fall apart. I know on one hand it is unfair he would be unable to defend himself, but equally, is it fair that the victims get pushed aside? This certainly provides a moral issue… were the victims right to come forward after Jimmy’s death when he can’t defend himself, or should they have come forward while he was alive, where it seemed very likely that they’d be dismissed? We’ll discuss that in the next part.

I’m not going to go into that level of detail, as Tommy has already done that and hats off to him, he really drove the point through. I’m going to basically just skim the surface of this massive iceberg, purely because there’s people far more experienced than me able to discuss this in far greater detail. The only reason why it’s even coming up is because it features indirectly in the story I read recently, mainly down to the accusations levelled against the suspect in the case; I’m choosing to focus more on the mindset of people regarding this topic, and also ones that elicit similar reactions. There was another news story that is kind of related to this which will also get mentioned as well. And for the purposes of getting this out of the way, I’m going to make sure I do so as soon as possible… the less time I spend on this topic, the better! As it stands, I’m feeling nauseous at even thinking about what I’ve read in the past, and the funny thing is, I’m not even going to write that much about the articles!

Let’s get this one out of the way as quickly as possible.

Missing children cases are sadly nothing new, according to UK figures at least 500 children go missing each year. As a friend said to me earlier, that is 500 too many; the latest child to go missing that has captured the attention of the country is the dissapearance of 5 year olf April Jones. As of yet, she hasn’t been found, so there’s no way of knowing if she is safe or not, though a lot of people are still involved with the search. She’s been missing now since Monday evening and as of yesterday, a 46 year old man named Mark Bridger has been charged with her murder. He was arrested less than a day after April’s appearance, according to this timeline. Also accoring to the timeline, she went missing about 7pm where she was seen by her friends getting into a vehicle, described in the article. Maybe this is just me thinking this, but isn’t 7pm a bit late for a child to be out? I’m fairly sure that when I was her age, I wasn’t allowed outside past a certain time, and even if Machynlleth is a pretty safe town (not that I’d know, given I’ve never been there), I still would be wary of letting my kids out past a certain time, if they were a certain age. when I eventually become a parent, I’m likely going to be a pretty over-protective parent, given I’m all too aware of what horrors are out there.

It is good that these are thankfully (relatively) rare occurences, but that’s not any reassurance for the parent of the child that gets abducted. The sad thing as well is that these missing children are rarely found. Even as I type this, I believe that Madeline McCann still hasn’t been found (I shan’t link as everyone knows about it by now), at least I haven’t heard anything about it as of yet. As for  Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman (2 girls I recall going missing as well – referred to in the press as “Holly & Jessica”), according to this article, they were found partially burned in a ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk. What strikes me about that particular case is I didn’t realise it happened over 10 years ago; I thought it happened much more recently than that… I wasn’t long out of school when that story hit, and it feels a bit surreal to recall that.

The sad thing is though that for every 1 or 2 kids that go missing that appear on the news, there’s at least hundreds who don’t make national news, in fact those 4 girls are the only ones over 10 years (who were under 13) that I even recall going missing… and given I’ve had 6-7 years of Facebook, that’s a pretty bad recall rate. Either that or only a handful have even made the news. That said however, when I went looking online for missing children articles/lists in order to jog my memory, I recall Tia Sharp going missing… I feel a little ashamed because she was pretty local to me, although I shouldnt scould myself too much, as recalling missing kids (be they found or not) isn’t really something you really want to spend time doing, as it’s depressing in and of itself, let alone how the parents must feel! In her case though, she was found (sadly not alive), so it may actually be why I couldn’t recall at first. It’s starting to come back to me now though.

The sad thing though is that in many of these cases, the child(ren) actually knew the person who abused or murdered them; rarely has it ever been a complete stranger, if at all. In fact, after reading up on the Soham Murders to refresh my memory, I have noticed that the man charged with their murder (Ian Huntley) was a caretaker at their school. As for what happened to them, it just seemed that they were both in the wrong place at the wrong times; after Ian Huntley had an argument with his girlfriend, Maxine Carr (who provided him with a false alibi), he basically went for them in what was described as “a jealous rage”. Even in the other cases, there was no mention of anything sexual going on, well in the case of Madeline and April, there’s currently no way of checking this. However, despite this, at least in the case of April Jones where the Mark Bridger (who has been charged with her murder has been found to know her and was even seen with her just 2 days before) has been accused of being  a paedophile… there, I said it. Unfortunately though, this sets the tone for what I’ll be typing next.

There is a page on Facebook called Hang Mark Bridger… now there are a few things remarkable about this page (I say that, but I think it’s likely the same for similar pages involving people involved in a child murder case)… firstly there’s currently almost 71,000 Likes for the page (at the time of writing, 70,783) and secondly, people were basically saying he was a paedophile even before he was convicted of her murder. Now, before I continue, this is why I mentioned this word in the title at all… it wasn’t exactly sensationalism but nor is it a detailed mention of it, of say what Tommy Jordan got into, but it’s more of a look into the psychology of people regarding any missing children cases where someone is suspected of abducting them, murdering them or whatever else. Of course these days, once the media gets a hold of the story, even if it just says “suspect” in the article, suddenly mobs of people want that person’s blood. It seems that whenever someone is even suspected of murder, or simply doing anything to a child, even with no evidence, people immediately call him a “filthy paedo”. There’s also a group called “Give mothers five minutes with Mark Bridger, we will tear him apart“; those are just 2 of the groups I spotted… there’s lots more out there to be honest. The biggest one is the Hang Mark Bridger group though.

In that group in particular, skimming what few posts I have, and talking to a friend of mine about the case and the page, there is very much a sense of “us vs them” (remember, this is before he was charged with the murder), that is if you try to even suggest he might be innocent, you’ll basically be accused of supporting him, and therefore you too must be a “filthy paedo”. Things like this evidently defy logic. The really sad thing that all it takes is one accusation of something, and people will never look at you the same way ever again. Let’s say for instance, he’s actually found out to be innocent (at this point, I’m honestly not sure how because it seems all the evidence points in his direction), that man’s life is now ruined, purely because of a witch-hunt. The psychology of people needing someone to blame is so strong at times (especially concerning young children) that they throw out all sense of rationality because they’re whipped up into what I’d call a “severe emotional frenzy”. I noticed this when I was actually commenting on a page about a dog fighting game (called Dog Wars); I was being completely rational about things, saying it’s not real, for over 18s and it wouldn’t teach anyone to mistreat a dog… it’s a game for crying out loud! Anyway, even with my stance, I had people basically attacking me over my comment because of my rational and logical (Aspie) viewpoint. Again, it was an “us vs them” scenario.

Now I’d understand it if it were actual dogs involved in this, but they were computer-generated dogs, basically just pictures that were animated, on a mobile phone screen. For whatever reason though, it seems anything to do with animals or kids where it’s a negative thing, basically puts people into a hulk-like rage. Some of the things I recall being said about that dog fighting game, is that violence should be perpetuated against them simply for making the game… that’s a bit strong, isn’t it? Additionally, people grouped up to attack a Facebook page called “Dog Wars”, which actually had nothing to do with the game itself, but people assumed it did, because if it has the same title, then it must be the same game, right? Wrong. The devs of the FB Dog Wars had to basically tell people outright that they had nothing to do with the Android game, purely because of the attacks, even though the game had different graphics and was done by a different developer. Suffice it to say though, the attacks did eventually stop; the game did eventually get renamed to “KG Dogfighting”, and you don’t see much of the controversey as much any more, though it still is apparant. what does this have to do with the above? Well, as I said before, people seem to Hulkrage whenever anything negative is associated with animals or children. And while I can see the rationalisation for it, and in no way condone actual dog fighting, and of course, as a rationally-minded person, I think anything negatively done against kids is also wrong.

That said of course, I have rarely ever felt the need to want blood straight away in any of those situations, in fact I said to my friend about the April Jones case (again, this is before he was formally charged), “let’s make 100% sure it’s him first, then we can talk about punishment”. I’ll refrain from mentioning anything directly, as I’m sure you, dear reader have a few things in mind. Anyway, as I was saying before, even the simple implication of association with a crime against a child basically means your life will be in tatters. Again, as mentioned previously, all it takes is an accusation, and that’s it…. it doesn’t matter if you were proven to be innocent, you can basically kiss goodbye to working anywhere with kids or vulnurable adults. Herd Mentality affects people strongly, as it’s practically instinctual and indeed tribal; in the case of the “Hang Mark Bridger” group, the guy is basically seen as a threat. Because of this, anyone seen not going against him is also a threat, so we have people gang up on them in order to neutralise the “threat”. In this case it basically means the person saying such things will either leave or join the mass. In some ways, that is actually quite scary when you think about it… Anonymous actually works upon a similar principle, except arguably they are a bit more methodical about things.

Some more learned minds have basically covered the concept of “Herd (Mob) Mentality“, so I don’t really need to cover it much here, as everyone understand what it means; the CSI episode on the plane was a great example of that too. Suffice it to say, a motivated group of people, especially emotionally charged are like a bull in a china shop; all that needs to occur is a similarity to or association with whatever the particular herd see as a threat, and they go for it. Collateral damage will likely happen, and as I’ve illustrated above, does happen quite regularly in anything that elicits a strong emotional reaction. This isn’t something that can be helped however, as it’s a part of human nature, and as we all know, human nature is very much a multi-faceted thing, especially given that people are unique…. just like everyone else.

I did almost fail to mention about one other case in the news that has had a happy resolution, that of Megan Stammers. As people know by now, she ended up running away with her teacher (Jeremy Forrest, who was twice her age – she was 15) to France, though it appears the both of them may be back now; Megan is at least in any case… it may be another couple days before Forrest is returned, as I haven’t seen any info on him past 2 day agos. This story is a far departure from the above though, given the girl was older (but importantly still under the age of consent), nothing untoward seemed to have happened (beyond the child abduction issue anyway), and Megan returned home safety. It also seems this was a mutual thing, between the two of them; certainly, cases of students running away with their teachers have occured in the past, though I can’t recall of any cases offhand. It certainly has been shown on TV however, though only in a fictional sense. Worryingly though, as we find out in the last part, parts of the radio world were a bit more sinister in reality. However, that is a story for another day; I’m just glad to get this one out of the way.