August 2005 Archives

I see that some people in the US are describing the effects of Hurricane Katrina as "our tsunami". Now I don't want to minimise what has happened in New Orleans over the last few days in any way, but lets get some bloody proportion here. Look at the numbers. Current estimates of deaths caused by Katrina are running into the hundreds. The best estimate of the number of people killed by the tsunami is 150,000.

I wonder if the Bush family will be changing their opinion on the causes of the hurricane soon?

Based on a conversation in the pub last week, here's a list of the kinds of computer hardware that geeks often own, rent or otherwise have access to. Listed (approximately in descending order of size. I don't have all of these. Which do you own. Have I missed any?

1. External web server - often a colo box shared with friends
2. Domestic file server - large server, usually headless, often under the stairs
3. Domestic media server - the machine where you store all your MP3s, or your MythTV box
4. Desktop workstation
5. Games console
6. Laptop
7. Digital camera
8. PDA
9. Portable media player - iPod, iRiver, etc
10. Mobile phone
11. USB key

In my case, my file server and my desktop workstation are the same thing and I don't (yet!) have a home media server. There seems to be a fashion amongst a lot of people I know to do away with a desktop workstation and to do all of their work on a laptop. Maybe it's just my laptop, but I still find I'm far more productive on a desktop machine.

And perhaps there's another device that fits between the laptop and the PDA - a small laptop like a Libretto that you can use for typing up notes when sitting on the train. Actually, fewer and fewer people I know are using PDAs. They've either got a laptop with them, or they use the organiser functions on their mobile phone.

I just noticed that the number of Gmail invitations that I've got to give away has doubled to 100. If you want an invitation and I know who you are, then just send me an email and I'll fire one off to you.

It's good to see something like this every once in a while. It's easy to sit there in a little geek cocoon and assume that everyone out there on the interweb is using all the same time-saving tools as you are. But as this article from The Register shows, that's often not the case.

It seems that two thirds of blog readers haven't heard of RSS. This will change over the next year as Microsoft are integrating RSS support into the next version of Windows (although they've renamed it as "web feeds") but in the meantime if you want to get a look at what all the cool boys and girls are playing with, take a look at my introduction to RSS article.

To summarise, RSS is a technology that allows you to suck down information from many web sites in one go. If you spend too much time visiting a set list of web sites every day in order to keep up with the new content, then RSS will almost certainly save you time.

Why are American companies so determined to confuse the rest of the world with their illogical way of writing dates?

Yesterday I got an email from register.com reminding me that one of my domains needed to be renewed. They said that the current registration expired on "12/07/2005". "Bloody hell," I thought, "that's over a month ago." Except I was wrong. It's over three months in the future. It's just a confusing American date. Checking with "whois" confirmed that the expiry date is "07-Dec-2005" (which is far less confusing).

For some reason I thought it was worthwhile dropping them an email explaining the problem. I pointed out that as their reminders went to an international audience then it would be a good deal less confusing if they either used ISO standard dates (2005-12-07) or showed the name of the month.

This morning I got a reply. It included this:

We implement this type of format since we provide services to various type of customers that comes to us worldwide

Even ignoring the appalling English (if you can), it still makes no sense. It boils down to me saying "your date format is confusing to an international audience" and them replying "we use that format because we have an international audience."

But I've got my determined head on. I'm going to make them understand this.

My Orange contract expired last week so I was in the market for a new phone. I had my eye on a Nokia 6630 as the Orange web site said that I could get one for £30. But when I called Orange to arrange it thy said that it would actually cost me £150. This is apparently because I'm on such a cheapskate tariff (long time readers may remember the hoops I had to jump through to get on it). I was told that Orange had introduced new pricing policies that would penalise (that's not the word they used) light users like me.

I went back to the web site to check again but the 6630 was showing as out of stock. They still had the (newer and better) 6680 available for £80 but that's more than I wanted to pay for a new phone (did I mention that I was a cheapskate). So I widened my search a bit to look at all of the 3G phones that Orange offered. And I found the Sony-Ericsson K600i which was apparently available as a free upgrade. After doing a bit of investigation it seemed like a pretty good phone so I ordered the upgrade.

At this point I was convinced that the web site had out of date prices on it. The email I got confirming my order said:

Your upgrade fee is dependant on the products and services that you subscribe to. If there is any change to the upgrade fee shown above, or any other problems in processing your order we will contact you.

And the phone arrived yesterday. It doesn't seem to be missing much that I would have had with the 6630 (WAP browser instead of HTML browser for example) so I'm happy with it.

I notice, however, that the section on the Orange web site where you can do online updates has vanished and they ask you to call them.

Now, what cool applications do I need for my new phone?

So my stepdaughter was just about to leave the house to go up to college to pick up her A level results when the post arrived. And it included a letter for her from UCAS. It contains confirmation of her university place.

Which rather spoils the surprise of going off to college and picking up the results. Ok, so it didn't actually tell her what her results were. But she knows that she's done well enough to get her first choice of course (Film Studies at Sussex University).

So congratulations all round.

I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yesterday. In general it's a decent version of the story. But let's not forget that it's a children's book so the plot isn't exactly complex :)

However, there was one thing that really annoyed me about it. And that was the blatant Americanisation of the dialogue. The book isn't set anywhere specific, but it feels a lot like the UK. This film also starts by appearing to be set in some unspecified town that looks a lot like some generic industrial British town. The cars drive on the left and all of the major actors (with the obvious exception of Johnny Depp) are British and speak with a British accent.

But there was something niggling at me during the first half an hour or so of the film and I eventually worked out what it was - Charlie and his family talk about buying "candy" from the "store". In the UK we buy sweets from a shop. Then when Charlie finds the golden ticket in the sweetshop, a woman offers him $500 for it. In the book that was £500.

I don't understand why the filmmakers felt the need to make these pointless changes. Do they really think that audiences in the US will be less likely to enjoy a film if the cultural references relate to a different country?

Oh, and one more thing I thought of this morning. In one of the flashbacks to Wonka's childhood we see him out "trick or treating" at Halloween. This must have been at least thirty years in the past. But "trick of treat" is only just starting to catch on in the UK. Even ten years ago you would have never seen it.

I've always thought of Tim Burton as an intelligent director. I'm disappointed to see him supporting this kind of cultural colonialism.

The previous entry about Rojo (and, in particular, Aristole's comment) reminds me of big complaint that I have about pretty much all web sites - which is that they like to make it incredibly difficult to close your account with them.

Oh, I understand completely why that is. If you've registered with a web site then they have valuable information about you. And I can see why they'd be loathe to give that up. But wouldn't it be great if every web site had a "forget about me" button which you could press and then all of your details would be removed from the site's database. I realise that there are probably legal reasons why Amazon, for example, would need to keep records of all of your previous orders. But they have mountains of marketing data on you which isn't at all necessary. I'd love to have the power to nuke all of that data. Wouldn't you?

And it isn't as though I'd want to press that button very often at all. It's just that it would be good to know that you had that power should you want to wield it.

Some companies already do it. I can think of Backpack who not only have a "cancel my account" button, but also the facility to export all of your data before you do it. Of course, that's data that you've originally stored there rather than marketing data that they've been hoarding by monitoring your surfing habits. But it's a start?

How about a campaign to get a "forget about me" button added to web sites? Who's with me?

Rojo is an RSS reader. I tried it out for a week or so last year, but soon decided that I still prefered Bloglines and forgot about Rojo.

That is, I forgot about them until a couple of weeks ago. Then I got an email from them. They had decided that they would start to send a weekly email to all of their users which summarised the last week's exciting news in the world of RSS feeds.

There were a couple of problems with this. Firstly, I had never signed up for this. Whenever I sign up for a user account on a web site I never tick the boxes that say "I'd like you to send me marketing emails whenever you like". I supposed that when I signed up with Rojo, this option didn't exist. So they've now added that option. But they've added it for all users with the "please spam me" option turned on. So I had to go into my user account and specifically turn it off. They should have added it with the option turned off and allowed users to opt in rather than having to opt out.

The second problem was worse. I've mentioned before how (and why) I don't read HTML email. My email program is configured to show me the plain text version of any mail I am send. Except Rojo sent me an HTML email which was labelled as plain text. So in my mail program I got a dump of raw HTML. For a technical company this is a basic error. It just makes them look completely unprofessional.

I replied to their mail, explaining these problems. Only to find that their email had been sent from an email address that didn't accept email. I know this is becoming more common, but to my mind it's just plain rude. But by rummaging around in the HTML I found a feedback address and sent my complains there. I got a nice reply saying that my mail had been passed on to the technical department.

And that was the situation a week ago. I had changed my account options to ask them not to send me mail and my points about the HTML email problem had been passed on to the technical department.

So imagine my surprise when I got another email from them this morning in exactly the same (broken) format. Their "please don't spam me" account option doesn't work. And they haven't fixed their email.

I really wouldn't consider using them. They obviously have either a total lack of knowledge about basic internet standards or they have chosen to completely ignore them.

Update: I've exchanged a couple of emails with Chris Alden the CEO of Rojo and I'm convinced that these were honest mistakes. They were mistakes that a serious technology company shouldn't make, but they were mistakes none the less. Chris has also blogged on the subject.

Tim Ireland launches the Political Weblog Project where he aims to get as many elected representatives as possible using weblogs to encourage two-way communication with the people they represent.

I think this is a great idea. And not just because he has nice things to say about my own political weblog.

The new Dell computer I recently ordered has been shipped. I predict a weekend of Linux installation.

And remember my complaints about their customer service and how I didn't get the free delivery I thought I was entitled to? Well that's all been sorted out and they're refunding the money.

This could get serious.

A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

I'd think about running away and hiding. But there's nowhere to go.

All the cool kids are talking about Ruby on Rails. It's apparently the next big thing in web development. As Danny O'Brien said at OSCON, Ruby on Rails seems to have gone through the whole "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" process in about three weeks. It would be interesting to investigate why Rails has become so popular when similar Perl-based frameworks like Maypole and Catalyst still languish in relative obscurity. I suspect it says something fundamental about the Perl community's ability to promote its projects.

I've looked at Ruby before. It seems to be a nice language. In many ways it's close to what Perl 6 will be - with, of course, the obvious advantage that Ruby is here now. So I decided I needed to take a closer look and did what any self-respecting geek would do - I've ordered some books. Copies of Programming Ruby and Agile Web Development with Rails will be on their way to me just as soon as Amazon gets them back in stock.

I'll let you know what I think.

George Monbiot on form as ever in today's Guardian.

Out of the bombings a national consensus has emerged: what we need in Britain is a renewed sense of patriotism. The rightwing papers have been making their usual noises about old maids and warm beer, but in the past 10 days they've been joined by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, Tristram Hunt in the New Statesman, the New Statesman itself and just about everyone who has opened his mouth on the subject of terrorism and national identity. Emboldened by this consensus, the Sun now insists that anyone who isn't loyal to this country should leave it. The way things are going, it can't be long before I'm deported.

And then later on

I don't hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don't, and the same goes for everywhere else I've visited. To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind. Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the second world war, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn't exploited the national allegiance of the Germans. The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

I've never understood patriotism. I love the UK, but I can't see what anyone gains from an unquestioning belief that your country is the best at everything.

Actually, thinking about it, I feel like a Londoner and I feel like a European. I don't particularly feel British.

An interesting anecdote about Alastair Campbell from John Humphrys' book Lost for Words. In order to follow the story, you need to know two things about Campbell. Firstly that he was Downing Street's Director of Communication (and could therefore be assumed to know a little about the English language) and secondly that he often accused the British media (in particular the BBC) of being biased against the government.

Apparently, when he left his job at Downing Street he started to offer briefings to organisations who wanted to improve their communications strategies. One of the first of these seminars was called "How to Deal with a Cynical and Disinterested Media".

This is one of those cases where English has two similar sounding words with completely different meanings. "Disinterested" means impartial or objective. And that is, of course, exactly what you want from the media. I suspect the word they actually wanted was "uninterested".

The internet is 10 this week. Well, no, of course it isn't. It's been around in some form or another since 1969. But a leader in today's Guardian says that this week is being celebrated as the tenth anniversary of the internet as a mass phenomenon - and I can't really argue with that.

Interestingly, the leader goes on to emphasise the connections between the internet and the Open Source movement.

Although, contrary to the instincts of its early protagonists, the web has long since been colonised by commerce, it still nurtures its founding community spirit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the startling success of the open source movement which enables enthusiasts and professionals all over the world to work together from remote locations to produce services that are freely available for anyone with a computer linked to the internet. The thousands of products so far released include the Linux operating system (a free alternative to Microsoft's pervasive Windows), OpenOffice (an alternative to Microsoft's Word and Excel) and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, with well over a million entries written entirely by its readers.

Ten years ago you would never have read about Open Source software[1] in the leader column of a national newspaper. Now that's progress.

[1] Or, as it was called back then, "free software".

I'll be speaking at the LinuxExpo Conference in London on October 5th. The subject of my talk is "Enterprise Perl". Here's the blurb.

Perl has always been used by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. In this session we will take a look at what makes Perl so useful to these companies and explore some recent initiatives in the Perl community that will make Perl even more Enterprise-ready.

We will also take a look ahead at what changes are expected with the forthcoming Perl 6 release which is a major rewrite of the language.

If you come along, then please say hello.

I saw Fantastic Four yesterday. Not a bad film, but there were a few things that bothered me about it. The biggest of these was the portrayal of Doctor Doom.

As every comics reader knows, Doom has worn a metal mask ever since we first met him over forty years ago. We've never seen his face[1]. That's part of his mystery. But if you cast someone like Julian McMahon in the part then there's no way that you're going to want him hidden behind a mask for the whole film. He's too expensive for that. So the filmmakers decided the way round this is to completely change Doom's story so that he only wears his full regalia (including mask) for the last twenty minutes of the film. Surely a much better solution would be to not cast an actor whose face is not so famous. Why not give a newcomer a chance?

It's the same problem that people had with Judge Dredd ten years ago. Stallone was good casting for the part, but the fact that he refused to keep the helmet on ruined Dredd's characterisation.

I see that V For Vendetta is due be released in November. V is another character who should never show his face, but I can't see Hugo Weaving agreeing to that.

If you're going to cast a part that needs to wear a mask then cast someone who won't insist on showing their face.

[1] Ok, I admit that the Fantastic Four isn't a comic that I've ever really followed so there's every chance that there has been the occasional glimpse.

The Mail can always be relied on to cover the really important issues of modern life. Today it investigates why modern candles don't fit into older candlesticks. I know it's a problem that had been keeping me awake at night and it seems I am not alone.

According to retailers across the country, they are being besieged by irate shoppers demanding to know why they can't find candles to match their favourite candlesticks.

The answer, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, is a combination of the metric system and a lack of regulation by the Department of Trade and Industry.

It's a national scandal. Something must be done.

Morons.

I understand that English is a changing language. I appreciate and approve of the fact that we no longer speak the same language as Chaucer, Shakespeare or even Dickens.

But some of the "English" used in comments on this site depress me a lot. It seems there is a large and growing subsection of British society that prides itself on speaking and writing the most unintelligible language possible.

However, it seems that it could be a lot worse. My site isn't frequented by too many of these people. Parts of the BBC web site are.

I'm proposing a new law which I'm calling "Dave's First Law of Information". It goes like this:

Information expands to more than fill the amount of time allocated to deal with it

A few years ago I had a small number of web sites that I'd visit regularly in order to keep up to date with what was going on. This would take up a small proportion of my day.

Then I found more and more web sites about subjects I was interested in and keeping up to date with them all started to take up more and more of my time. Then friends of mine started blogging and that added another couple of dozen sites to the list. It was becoming a serious drain on my time.

Enter RSS. Most of the web sites the I was interested in had RSS feeds (and the few that didn't soon fell off the list) so I found an RSS reader that I liked and set up my list of feeds. When I started, I probably had thirty or forty feeds on my list, but because I was reading everything in one place, it suddenly took a lot less time to read them all and I regained a lot of time.

And what did I do with that time. Well, of course, I added more feeds to my list. And that soaked up more and more time again. Currently I'm approaching 200 entries on my Bloglines list and not many days go by when I don't add another. I'm probably spending more time keeping up t odate than I was before I switched to RSS. Oh, I'm incredibly well informed, but I've lost all my spare time again.

So it's probably time to prune my subscription list. There are probably a few feeds that were about events that have finished (the General Election being a good example). Then maybe there are a few feeds that haven't proved to be as interesting as I thought they might be.

But the biggest impact will almost certainly be removing all the feeds that don't include the full text of the entries. Reading RSS is supposed to be saving me time. I don't have time to read a little bit of teaser text and then open up the original site to read the whole article. It's about absorbing as much information as possible in as short a time as possible. And that means having all the information on one page.

So there may well be a bit of a cull of feeds from my subscriptions list over the weekend. Of course, that'll just free up more time for me to add more new feeds.

Not only do Dell have a terrible web site but it seems they're also in the running for the worst customer service that I've seen for some time.

When I ordered my new computer on Tuesday there were four special offers listed for the model I bought. They were double the amount of memory you paid for, a free printer, buy now pay next year and (most importantly) free delivery. I was interested in the memory, the printer and the free delivery charge.

Once I had gone through the configuration process and chosen all the options I wanted I was ready to check out. At that point I was surprised to see that a delivery charge had been added to the invoice. I realise that I should have cancelled the order or got on the phone to them or something like that, but it was late, I was tired, and I'd wasted enough time on the purchase already so I just went ahead and placed the order.

Immediately, I started to regret doing that, so I decided to complain to them and see if I could get the delivery charge back. After a couple of false starts with contact forms that didn't work I found a way to email customer support and explained what had happened. I suggested that either the offer didn't exist (and therefore their web site had incorrect information) or that their ordering process had some kind of bug in it.

The next day I got an email telling me that my order didn't include the free delivery offer.

See, this seems to be becoming a common tactic with customer support. On the first response, just tell the customer something that he already knows in the hope he'll just go away and stop bothering you. I knew that my order didn't include free delivery, but I wanted to know why it didn't include free delivery when the web site clearly says that it should include free delivery.

Oh, actually there was a bit of extra information in their email. It told me that the reason my order didn't include the offer was because the offer "had expired before or was introduced after you placed your order". Which was nonsense as the order was placed on August 2nd and the web site said that the offer finished on the 3rd.

So I wrote another email. Explaining in what I thought was an almost painful level of detail what the problem was. I pointed out that the offer was listed on the web site as I placed the order and that I the invoice gave no indication as to why the offer hadn't been applied to my order. I got an email back pretty quickly saying that my case had been passed on to the "concerned department" who would "have your query looked into and resolved effectively".

And just now I got a phone call. From someone who told me that the special offer had not been applied to my order, but was unable to explain why. I explained again, everything that I had said in the email and she reacted as this was all new information to her. She even asked my if I had a copy of the web page with the offer on it - which, of course, I don't.

So anyway, she's gone off again and has promised to ge back to me with more information as soon as possible. I'm starting to suspect that they'll just deny the offer ever existed.

But if I don't get this £57 back then I'll never buy from Dell again.

To an extent, the problems with the Trainline and Ticketmaster web sites that I've mentioned before could be excused because... well because they're non-technical companies and they don't know any better. Of course, it's easy to argue that they should be employing technical people who do know better, but still...

But over the last couple of weeks, I've been astonished by the incompetance shown by the people running the Dell web site. I've been poking around their site because I want to buy a new computer. But they really don't make it easy. I've had links to non-existant pages, messages telling me that sections of the site were unavailable and just now the section of the site that gives details of their monitors appeared to have been put behind password control. Is there something about their monitors that only a select few are supposed to know.

Now call me stupid, but I persevered and bought a new system. I've always been very happy with the computers I've bought from Dell. But they've really tried my patience this time. Next time I buy a computer (and my laptop is looking past its best) I'll probably shop around a bit.

I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel... but I am, so it comes out that way

I've just finished reading Bill Hicks: Love All The People and that's the quote that has really stuck with me. I'm seriously considering using it as the tagline for this blog. But then Nik would steal my current one.

And if you haven't seen or heard much Bill Hicks, then Love All The People is a great introduction. It's a little repetitive at times as it transcribes a number of live routines that Hicks performed in his last few years - and comics' routines don't change that much over such a short space of time.

I really regret not seeing Hicks live when he was over here in the early 90s.

This is the kind of thing that makes me think I should stop pretending that I know anything about taking decent photographs.

O'Reilly have launched their new social networking site Connection. I seem to spend a lot of my time recreating my social network on whatever is the current trendy social networking site. In the last couple of years I've been on Ecademy, Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn and probably a few more that I've forgotten.

Anyway, I've signed up to Connection. If you're also there and you know me, then let's link up.

Update: I've just noticed that a number of my contacts on Connection have "speaking" listed as one of their skills. Maybe I should add "breathing" and "walking" to my list.

Another little rant about the usability of web pages.

We're planning a weekend away visiting friends in the West Country (I know, I should make sure my passport is up to date) and we're going to travel by train - leaving on Friday evening and returning on Sunday afternoon. So I decided to book tickets in advance through The Train Line.

We need to travel from Paddington to Exeter so that's what I looked for. Because it was just a tentative enquiry I didn't bother telling the site that there were two of us travelling. It came back with a reasonable looking ticket for £38. At the same time, my wife was looking at the same thing but being more thorough that me she filled in the fact that it there would be two people travelling. And she couldn't find the £38 ticket that I had seen. The site was showing her the same tickets for £76.

You've probably just worked out what was going on, but please bear with me.

I wondered if it was a problem with limited availability - maybe there was only one cheap seat left on this train. So I tried again and this time I said that two people were travelling. And I was given the £76 fare instead of the £38.

And that was about the point at which I realised what was going on. The site was showing us the total price for all tickets. but it really didn't make that clear. How hard would it be for them to display the price as "2 x £38 = £76"? Or to put "All prices shown are for two passengers" on the top of the list.

I don't think I'm particularly stupid - but it had me confused for an hour or so. I wonder how many sales The Train Line have lost because people think they are overpriced?

If you're planning to embark on a phishing attack, here's a little tip - get your text checked by a native English speaker. Here's the text of an email I just got.

IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION

Since 1968 National Westminister Bank is serving its clients with the most reliable service. In Banking the most important part is the security of our clients. NatWest always look forward for the high security of our clients. Due to the recent update of the servers, you are requested to please update your account info at the following link.
[link removed]

*Important*

We have asked few additional informations which is going to be the part of secure login process. These additional informations will be asked during your future login security so, please provide all these info completely and correctly otherwise due to security reasons we may have to suspend your account temporarily.

I particularly like that "Westminister".

Now I'm sure that Nat West staff are participating in the general demise of the English language as much as most of the population so I wouldn't be surprised to see the occasional misplaced apostrophe or confusion between adjectives and adverbs appearing in their email, but I'd be very surprised to see anything as disastrous as this coming from them.

Of course, give it another five years and I may regret saying that...

Strange how your priorities change. Ten years ago I'd never have missed the Cambridge Folk Festival. This year I didn't even register that it was happening.

The BBC review makes it sound like it was a lot of fun. And maybe I did subconsciously realise that it was taking place as I've been listening to a lot of Christy Moore on the iRiver over the weekend.

I have to take issue with a couple of things that the BBC reviewer says about Christy.

His first song - Burning Times (by Charlie Murphy), about the burning of witches, - was a bit of wordy dirge.

Actually, "Burning Times" is a song I like a lot. It's not the jolliest of tunes - well you wouldn't expect that from a song about the church's systematic destruction of a competing religion - but it's a very powerful song. If you think it's a bit of a dirge then maybe you're the wrong person to be reviewing a folk festival. The reviewer then compounds his error by going on to say

It's a problem with a few of his songs that sometimes put a simplistic political message before tune, rhyme and rhythm.

Which is, to be blunt, bollocks. Yes, a lot of Christy's songs are political, but I really can't see how you'd describe something like "La Quinta Brigada" or "Smoke and Strong Whisky" as simplistic.