Struggling to avoid drinking too much last night, as one does when one has what is politely referred to as a "drink problem", I remembered that I had seen a list somewhere of how much the Queen Mother used to drink.

Was the Queen Mother slurring her speech, or did she have a German accent? Almost certainly both...

I've been busy Googling for it, and found it in a Guardian feature by Emine Saner, about the book "Behind Palace Doors", by her equerry, Major Colin Burgess, from which I have taken the following quotes...

She would start her drinking day at noon with her favourite tipple, gin and Dubonnet: two parts Dubonnet - a pink vermouth - to one part gin.

Lunch with red wine followed, finished off with port.

At 6pm every day, according to Burgess, she would ask, "Colin, are we at the magic hour?" "I would then rather flamboyantly look at my watch, raise an eyebrow and say to her, 'Yes, ma'am, I think it's just about time,' before popping off to mix her a martini."

At dinner, she would down two glasses of Veuve Cliquot pink champagne, leaving her staff to finish the bottle...

He doesn't say what she drank after dinner, but it is known that spirits were involved, probably more gin. She is conservatively estimated to have necked 70 units of alcohol a week, 14 being the nanny-state's recommended maximum for women.

I am impressed, humbled even. I thought I was bad, but I don't see how she could walk in the evening, and she must never have actually had blood alcohol low enough to drive. She lived to 101.

Here is a Spanish newspaper's picture of the Spanish basketball team, before they set off to China.

For those who don't get it...

In 1986 while visiting China, he [the Dork of Edinburgh] told a group of Scottish students in the city of Xian that Beijing was "ghastly" and said that if one of the students stayed in China too long, he would return to Scotland with "slitty eyes."

The heir to the throne has been pontificating again. He has been informed by God that we must not carry out genetic modifications to plants, apparently. I had a quick look at what he said, and would have commented, only I also needed to do some ironing. Besides, I'm not an expert in these matters, just quite sensible.

Fortunately, the job has been done for me. The Science Editor of the Times has written an article that explains why the prince is wrong.

An analysis of the Prince’s claims, however, indicates that few of them are founded on data from the real world. While some of the agricultural and environmental problems he highlights are clearly genuine, his explanations for them are long on bombast and short on evidence.

It's well worth reading the article, as it knocks down every single one of the Charlie's claims. He really ought to shut up.

Did you notice the Home Office "publishing" proposals yesterday? Well, The Guardian has the story.

Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.

The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store "a billion incidents of data exchange a day". As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.

The government are pretending this is a part of the "War" on terrorism.

The Home Office confirmed yesterday that access to personal internet and text data will also be available to all public bodies licensed under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

This means that hundreds of public bodies including local councils, health authorities, the Food Standards Agency, the Health and Safety Commission and even the education standards watchdog, Ofsted, will be able to require telecommunications companies to hand over the personal data.

The Liberal Democrats oppose this, and surprisingly, so do the Conservatives. So should you. Otherwise, we might as well be living in China.

I really like Skype, but I have a problem with it.

Using a Windows XP machine, with Realtek AC97 sound system on the motherboard, and a stereo headset, I get lovely stereo sound from Windows Media Player. I get sound in both ears in Skype, right up to the point where a call connects. During the call, only one earpiece has sound in it. End the call, and the call-end sound is heard in both ears. The music is back in both ears.

Now I know from Googling for it, that this problem has been affecting Linux users, and they have a fix for it. Skype's support people are unfortunately using the tactic where the first line support person just waits three days, and then sends a standard reply asking you to check all the settings on the PC.

I did all the checks, just to be certain I wasn't missing something obvious, but nothing changed. So, if you happen to know the Windows fix for this one, please let me know!

He's in Scotland, making stupid speeches again.

Speaking at the opening of the Edinburgh International Book - Festival, the Prime Minister said:

"But just like we made guns unacceptable, we should make knives unacceptable. Not just young people but parents and other people must say that knives, like guns, like bullying, like racism, are unacceptable.

He insisted: "It's not a thing only the Government can do. People in the community have to rise up and say this is unacceptable behaviour."

Guns were already illegal. They never were acceptable. Nothing Brown did made them unacceptable. And people are still using them in spite of him claiming they are unacceptable. Bullying and racism are still around as well...

I think people (and are there any who are not in the community?) need to rise up and demand this oaf spend our taxes on police on the streets. He's out soon anyway, but not before he throws even more money at anything other than the thing that works.

I just found out that since June 26th, when I paid to renew my Amenworld service, it has not been working. They have stopped the DNS servers of the world recognising my domain name, doctor-dark.co.uk and have not bothered to forward any email to me. Since those two things are what I pay them for, I'm angry.

This one looks like a message from Microsoft, advising you to update your Internet Explorer to the latest version. A quick look at the message headers shows it came from...

OrgName: African Network Information Center
OrgID: AFRINIC
Address: 03B3 - 3rd Floor - Ebene Cyber Tower
Address: Cyber City
Address: Ebene
Address: Mauritius
City: Ebene
StateProv:
PostalCode: 0001
Country: MU

That's not where I thought Microsoft lived!

Update:
Another one has arrived. This time it comes from some ISP in Moldova that doesn't even bother to give an address for reporting abuse.

America was created when loads of religious nutcases left Europe because they could not get on with anybody else. Arriving on a new continent, they set about the important process of exterminating the local population. Then they invited all the other loonies they could find to come and join in.

A couple of hundred years later, some twerp (and boy, is he ever a twerp?) from Glasgow accesses loads of computers that the Americans have not bothered to secure properly, if at all, because basically when it comes to computer security, they are as clueless as can be, and the twerp is looking for proof that the Americans have been talking to aliens. Well we all need a hobby.

He accesses a few files, changes some of them, leaves messages telling the owners their computers are not secure, carelessly makes a few computers not work as well as before, which is something anybody who has a machine with Windows on it can do without trying too hard. Come on, we can all screw Windows without trying, I believe? Ahem, Microsoft software, it can fall over without a Glaswegian looking at it,if you know what I am saying.

Next thing you know, the Americans finally track him down. Took them ages, the wankers. I expect our security guys had to help them, as they really haven't a clue. But by now, they have been attacked very nastily indeed by some revolting Saudi Arabians, and so have obviously got to invade errm, Iraq. And that means, as you can easily see by drinking a couple of pints of cough medicine and cutting your brain out, that any hacker must be a terrorist.

So they demand we extradite him to them.

Interesting thing here. America demands extradition from other countries who happen to have extradition treaties with them, but these are all one way. Nobody ever gets to extradite an American, no matter how many Thai children he has screwed, or whatever else he or she may have done. America protects its own, under God. Well, not those Indians but, hey, they were not Christians...

And Gordon Brown? Oh fuck him, nobody cares how useless that tosser is any more, he's more yesterday than the vile hag, and she was a while ago plus a bit, not that the damage has been repaired... But is Gordon Brown going to say -

• No America. You won't extradite anyone at all to us, so we won't extradite this harmless twat to you
• I have my trousers off Georgie and I am face down

Can you tell what it is yet?

Yes, it's the fundamentalists back again to prevent scientific progress. These cretins claim to speak for us all, but if you look at the garbage they have written on the Telegraph's site, you can see they have no real idea of what they are talking about. Some examples...

We don't need GM Food and government must stand firm in it's rejection of a farming method which has not been proved conclusively safe.

Spurious apostrophe. Besides, government (which one he/she doesn't say) hasn't rejected any particular method.

GM food is an abomination and has no place in our country. It is in part responsible for the current food crisis, with third world producers unable to afford the huge amounts of petro-chemical based fertilisers used to produce them. That combined with the inability to collect and re-use seeds, has caused starvation.

Abomination: an action that is vicious or vile; an action that arouses disgust or abhorence. Absurdly over the top misuse of a word the critic doesn't understand. Notice the reference to "terminator genes", which the protestor does not know are not a feature of every GM species. Hardly any of them, in fact, but hey, let's kill the straw man.

This is typical arogant behaviour from this government, they do not take on board the electorate's wishes. That is, we do not want GM food, end of story.

Can't spell arrogant, and the crops are not being grown by the government. Who is this "we" that the cretin is so sure opposes new varieties of food? Now that's arrogance.

However when we examine the ecological impact; BUGS LiFE and the effect it may have there we need to be sure especially for thelong term effect on the human species........ The very thought of systematically polluting ourselves in our food choices which will be increasingly evident in most food products on our supermarket shelves;
Should we choose or be brainwashed or bullied by those who seek to benefit from the agricultural industry changes .

Incoherent ranting, coupled with an inability to punctuate, or even check what he/she has typed isn't going to convince me. Posting it three times didn't make it any more convincing.

Fact! 90 % or so of the British public do not want GM foods.

Fact! You made that statistic up.

it's all the deadly fertiliser that GM foods nees to maintain it is the pronlem. what happens when the water is poisoned. its not just killing insect even the starving people don't want it because ofcourse it would be around in 50 but the people its killing so quickly won't be

I rest my case.