Birmingham Freecycle now has 11,000 plus people in it!

Birmingham Freecycle now has over eleven thousand people in it! That's just incredible!!

I heard about Freecycle back in October '04 and thought it was such a great idea; when I came to check if there was a Birmingham UK one I couldn't beleive that no one had already launched a group! - so I immediately did so and it's just gone from there.

It started slowly, but for the past year has been gaining a huge amount of momentum. I still moderate the group every Friday - so watch out if you try and join on that day, or if you come and try and scam us... my patience for idiots gets less every year....

What I am trying to do now is to get the City Council to help us out; publicise us on their website and newspaper that is sent to every house in the City. The reason is that we are saving them cold hard cash from purely green motives and without making money ourselves; because they get taxed for every ton they put into landfill and there is nothing better for stopping stuff going into landfill than Freecycle.

Anyone out there know how to get the Council to actually do something?!

I wrote to my MP and she has started to badger their head of recycling - but so far - nothing!

Birmingham is starting the fight against climate change

I attended the Birmingham Strategic Partnership consultation event last night at Think Tank on the Birmingham Climate Change Action Plan.

Whilst I was there I hooked up with Birmingham Friends of the Earth and volunteered and also shamelessly plugged Birmingham Freecycle to anyone who would stand still for long enough - and a few of those that wouldn't....

The event itself was OK; the council thought seem to be still working under the assumption that they can reduce emissions by less than 90% and still carry on much the same.... this is a bit shocking for anyone else who has read any of the excellent George Monbiot's work. Go there and read it now and prepare to be seriously scared; he shows how we need to URGENTLY cut emmissions by 90% or we will face a tipping point at which climate change enters a cycle of positive feedback and becomes self-reinforcing and runaway.

But what I have to rail against is crimes against usability again. The external moderator was from a company called BMG; she seemed to be seeing the presentation for the first time as she had no idea where each section finished and the next started and EVERY SINGLE TIME she overshot and had to fiddle with the PC on the podium to sort it out. Also it was glaringly obvious that she had never done the presentation in front of a real audience; it was "interactive" to the point where we could vote using a traffic lights metaphor - and each question was put on screen with the text and JUST the text in the appropriate colour on a strong blue background.

No thought was given to colour blind people; this probably violated the Disability Discrimination Act, and even people like me without colour blindness and with my glasses on found it almost impossible to read. No one had thought "you know - if we used huge blobs of colour on this we could make it easy to read". It had clearly been slapped together by one of this power-suited busy executives minions without any thought to the final audience or any oversight by the person doing the presentation.

And it's not as if it was a trivial message - you know the kind of stuff these market researchers usually do - "do you prefer cat food tin label A or B?" - no, this was about how we in Birmingham cope with and reduce the effects of climate change, probably the most important issue for the entire next century, and far too important to be left to losers like those last night. If anyone from the City Council ever reads this - you really should sack these people and emply someone who knows what they are doing; this issue is too important to be mishandled so badly.

DAMN but it's fun cycling in Birmingham the snow!!

So as usual, when it snows in England everyone predicts doom and apocalypse.. but you just know that they would also be the first to complain about the cost if we paid enough to get blanket coverage from snow ploughs and gritters. As it is we get such little snow that there's no way we can afford enough of them... but hey, try telling that to the People Of Restricted Cognition....

Anyway; I now cycle to work as it is probably the only exercise I can get nowadays and also because if you don't live your beliefs then you're just a pathetic wimp in my opinion. And I have to say that cycling in when it was snowing was just IMMENSE fun! - the old saying is so right: "there's no such thing as bad weather: there's only the wrong clothes."

Also, I am lucky enough that my route runs along a disused railway line, and this morning it was Christmas card perfect!

The argument for vegetarian's might have just become irrefutable; it's killing our planet

I have always been ambivalent about vegetarianism; on one hand if it is a moral, ethical decision by someone who just cannot face the thought of eating another living beings body I have been supportive.

On the other hand, I have always been profoundly suspicious of it's supposed inherent health benefits: I mean - we are omnivores! - our bodies and teeth and lifestyle predicasted us to eat everything; roots, berries, cereal, nuts, eggs, meat, fish, fruit, veg - the lot.

And yet - and yet... I have been increasingly worried about the impact that eating meat has on the environment - and that we do not eat meat in the fashion that we evolved to. If you look at our evolutionary lifespan we have spent something like 99.98% of our time as modern humans eating meat only when we could track down the damn animal and club the beggar to death - so about once or twice a week. That's what we have evolved to do and our bodies are not good at handling meat 10 or 12 times a week; we get heart disease and obesity; we are simply not designed to handle that much rich protein.

Then you look at the environmental costs of eating meat:
- it takes 10 times as much energy to grow meat as it does to grow vegetables; in other words, 10 people could live off the protein that it takes to grow one cow or pig to feed one person. On a small and increasingly over-crowded planet that is just getting unsustainable.
- the carbon costs of eating meat are rising all the time; we have to spend carbon to grow the food to feed the cow or pig, to transport the animal to slaughter, to refrigerate its dead body until we can eat it and then to dispose of it's bones afterwards.
- the waste products are increasingly overwhelming; cows and pigs produce methane and nitrous oxide which are 23 and 296 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide is; and then there is the 5 million tons of manure produced every day by American farms.

In short it is just time to quit eating meat; or at the very least to revert to the pattern of meat consumption we were designed for; once or twice a week at most. It's not just better for you - it's what we need to do to save the planet.

See the excellent article on Alternet for more.

Great reasons on "why not to wear a suit"

Check out this blog on why not to wear a suit; one point I really love is where he says that certain people probably need a suit to get confidence and stature in their company - and he states: "Well let me be the first to tell you that if you feel like you need a suit to gain that confidence, you got problems." Genius!!

Then there is the flip side; if you stopped requiring everyone in your business to wear a suit then it is the equivalent of giving them a tax free pay raise. Let's all do this!! - it is now the Official Policy of the Peoples Democratic Republic of Birmingham to ban all suits in business! Wear what the hell you want! - and judge people on their competence, not what they wear....

If you find the blatant racism on Celebrity Big Brother revolting then the solution is simple; STOP WATCHING IT!

If like me you have found the blatant racism on Celebrity Big Brother to be nauseating and revolting to watch then the solution is simple; stop watching it!

I gave up on this show some years ago when I came to the conclusion that to watch it was to consume it - and also therefore to endorse it. Even worse; watching it meant that they got ratings which meant that they made more money from their advertisers and that the show would continue.

Just stop watching it! They deliberately create controversy in order to boost ratings - and unlike other artificially created controversies real people get hurt in this one!

Then after the show, demonstrate your disapproval for racist twats like Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd by refusing to consume anything they produce and wreaking their fucking careers; these people depend on us the viewing public for their livelihood! Show them that we stand against racism in ALL forms by not watching them and not listening to them. Make them do real work out of the public eye; they do not deserve our attention if they do not subscribe to the basic decencies that the rest of us insist on.

The single good thing to come out of this has been (as far as I can tell without wathcing it) - the quiet dignity of Shilpa Shetty - and the fact that she might now be a household name in Britain! - Yay! Go Bollywood!!

You could not make this up; creationists in the US refuse to allow their kids to see "An Inconvenient Truth"...

This is just unbeleiveable; some religious, creationist bigot in the US is refusing to allow his kids to watch "An Inconvenient Trust" at school because - get this - he insists that an opposing view be presented as well.

THE CLUE IS IN THE FREAKING TITLE OF THE MOVIE!!! - It is called "An Inconvenient TRUTH" - these are facts! - they are evidence that has been taken from measuring reality; they are not open to debate or argument! Scientists have gone out, looked at a thermometer and written down these numbers! - photos taken ten years apart of the same glacier retreating 500 meters are not made up!

I can see why oil company executives insist on trying to deny climate change; their careers, companies and self esteem are bound up in doing so... but what possible reason does a religious idiot have for doing so?

Can anyone give me one, sound reason why we allow cars on the road with a top speed that is a multiple of the maximum legal speed?

This is yet another example of the failings of capitalism; immature men with insecurity complexes will always demand fast cars to make up for their many physical and scial failings... and if they are demanded then they will be built.

But where is it in the interests of society to allow cars on the road that can do double or triple the legal speed limit? Just what is the point?

Maybe there is an argument for increasing the speed limit on motorways to 80 mph; maybe we should allow cars to go slightly faster than that to allow for overtaking... but why the hell should anyone be allowed to drice a car that goes faster than 85 miles per hour?

And YES this is state intervention!! - because I simply do not trust the competence of these drivers! There is no need for such powerful cars to be allowed!

And of course, the side issue of greater fuel efficiency is just an added bonus!

How to stop dogs savaging kids

I cannot believe it; yet another young kid is savaged by the family pet. Even more unbelievable is the fact that the family takes no responsibility for their actions, and allowed a drug dealing thug of a relative to keep a vicious dog in the house. When someone is keeping a dog for it's intimidation value then don't let kids anywhere near it.

And everyone bleats about how legislation is needed, without taking responsibility themselves. This will always fail so long as dangerous dogs are identified by breed. This is total crap; the only dangerous dogs are those that have had their tails docked by petty minded twats who are more interested in how a dog looks than in keeping kids alive.

Let me explain; a dog's tail pretty much serves one function alone; to tell other dogs (and incidentally humans) the dogs mood. I have never heard of a dog with a tail savaging a person! You can tell when those dogs are angry and back off. If it was made illegal to dock a dogs tail for the petty vanity of the owners and breeders then we would all be left with the single best signpost to the dogs mood ....

... and the number of deaths by dog attack would drop like a stone.

A new term for excellence: "arm-shavingly good"

I just saw the trailer for the new movie "300" based on Frank Millers graphic novel....
... and then watched it again, and again...

... and then watched all of the features on the production of the movie....

... and then wateched it again...

... and every single time I watched it I got goose-pimples... - you know the kind that you get when you feel profound awe in the prescence of greatness? - yup: those.

The story itself is just amazing; 300 Spartans defended the pass at Thermopylae and held off an army of an estimated quarter of a million Persians for three days whilst the rest of Greece mobilised.

But this movie rendition just instilled awe in me time and again; I really cannot wait to see this movie! - it's like waiting for Lord of the Rings to come out all over again! Hence the title of this blog entry: the trailer was so good that it raised goose pimples on my arm every single time I saw it - and so in response I need to shave the hairs off my arm to stop them raising every time; so this trailer alone is arm shavingly good!!

Crimes against usability 2; just utter, rank incompetence!

So; I am working away at the dayjob, editing the list of exhibitions we will be at over the coming months. Part of this naturally requires me to link to the exhibitors websites; usually a quick way of doing this is to go to the venue, look at their event listings and then click on the link to the relevant exhibitions website to get the address to place onto our site.

And then ExCel in London (apparently they thought it'd be a really cool idea to name their venue after a spreadsheet... this should tell you all you need to know about them..) decided to open the links to the advertising sites in a new window (oh; JOY UNBOUNDED: a new freaking window to deal with?!) - and after a warning sign telling you that you are leaving their site (no fecking shite Sherlock; that's what usually happens when I click on a freaking link!!!!) and then to just make absolutely, positively sure you eternally hate their company for life - they do it in a window with no controls, no address bar, no menus and no buttons.

How can anyone be so incompetent? Do they have no idea at all that this pisses off people to the point of blogging about it? - and avoiding their site as if it was ten day old medical waste that had been left in the hot sun?!?!

Check it out at their utterly incompetent site - click on the link to the Pro2Pack site and enjoy the rancidness.

Am I the only person that thinks that threats to prostitutes would be vastly reduced if both drugs and prostitution were legalised?

The vile murders in Ipswich have got me thinking. Surely these women don't want to have to walk the streets and sell their bodies.. aren't they forced into it by being addicted to an illegal substance - and it's the very illegality of it that forces them to such extreme measures.

What if the only place they could get a fix was at a doctors... where they got clean needles and works and support and encouragement to give up... what if the drugs were free and all you had to do to get them was to register as an addict... what if prostitutes were tolerated and not persecuted. (and before any loudmouth bigots jump all over this, notice what I am saying and not saying here: we TOLERATE prostitutes; we make their lives easier whilst at the same time removing the reason that over 90% of them became street walkers; the drugs ARE NOT FREELY AVAILABLE AT THE FECKING SCHOOL GATES - in fact whilst making addicts less of a target for prosecution we continue to target the dealers; in fact, drugs become a taxed government monopoly. Overall we make drugs harder to get into and easier to get out of)

So - suddenly we remove the reason for the vast majority of women to solicit on the streets; and those women that still do want to work as prostitutes (as if anyone ever really wants to do that; maybe that should be "those women compelled to work as prostitutes because they have no other way to earn money") can do so in safety in a brothel or massage parlour.

So tell me; if we made these changes, how could that sick fuck have murdered 5 women? - and how would these changes affect you reading this? Unless you are a drug addict or a prostitute I fail to see how you can stand against a change that would make their lives better,

Every little helps; reduce your PC power consumption with LocalCooling.com

In the battle for energy efficiency every little thing you can do will help; today I cam across a tiny little application that gives you a massive amount of control over your PC and how much power it uses; best of all it estimates how much CO2 you've saved and allows you to aggregate your statistics with everyone else who uses the program.
Go check it out at www.localcooling.com

Say NO to ID cards

I am in the habit of collecting arguments that refute superficial and facile support for large and contentious issues. (the fact that the kind of people who support such issues are typically fat, self interested bigots is entirely besides the point...)

One of my current favourites is when I say that I am against ID cards and the reply comes back - with a certain sick innevitability - "wll, if you ain't got anything to hide, what are you scared about"...

So I reply: "Really? - how much did YOU earn last year?" - and "what websites did you surf to all of last year?"

And then comes the killer; if anyone is stupid enough to actually trust the government and come up with a "we've nothing to fear - they would not use this info against us" REALLY?! ARE YOU MAD?! You could have just as easily stated the exact same thing in Germany in 1930 - or in Rwanda in 1990, or in Bosnia, or in Armenia, or Stalinist Russia ... The State is Not Necessarily Your Friend; if it gets taken over - and they DO get taken over - this ID database will be the most potent tool against the people.

Do you trust every government that will ever come into power? - if you do you are stupid.

Campaign against ID Cards; at the very least sign this petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/IDcards/

Just unbelievable! What do you need to do to get a company to apologise?! Vision Express are officially INCOMPETENT!

So; I went out on Satruday to the rather splendid Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham - home to the now iconic Selfridges building.

Whilst the First Born Son was asleep and the Significant Other was stuck in a queue I thought I would stick my nose into Vision Express and get them to tweak my glasses which had developed a small but annoying twist in the frame.

This proved to be my mistake. Going into a shop as vehemently incompetent as Vision Express that is.

I sat down and the assistant gleefully took my glasses to be adjusted in the "laboratory" (without I might add indicating in any way at all that there was any risk associated with untrained apes jumping up and down on my glasses in a laughable attempt at "adjustment")

So; I am sitting there in a hideous daze of uncorrected short-sightedness, counting my one and only blessing - that First Born Son is blissfully asleep and unware of the horror about to unfold. So; the assistant returns with the glasses in two parts. Seems that the apes had tried to just twist them violently. Now, even I as an untrained, non-expert diletante knows when to stop twisting the glasses so that they do not break!

And at this point you'd have thought wouldn't you that there would be some hint of an apology, some indication of remorse, but no! - in a branch staffed entirely by people below the age of 30 no one dared to admit that they had done anything wrong! No indication that taking my property and damaging it beyond use was in any way at all a bad thing!

The assistant tells me that they will of course replace the glasses; fair play on that point and credit where credit is due. (this apart from the fact that I would have caused utter unadulterated mayhem to that branch if they had not done so....) and then goes on to tell me - with a straight face - that due to the queues I would have to wait an hour and a half until I could see an optician to get my eyes checked so they could work out my prescription and make up a new pair of glasses.

This nearly caused me to go postal on the spot - I mean, they are the ones that broke my property and would stop me driving home that day... so how the hell was I supposed to get my Son home to feed him when he awoke? I proceeded to apprise them of these facts; in detail and at length, and they managed to get me in to see an optician straight away.

Then they told me to sit and wait for an hour and the glasses would be made up in their lab. So I did.

At the end of the hour I was desperate to use the gentlemen's facilities and asked if I could use theirs: the nearest public one was halfway up a flight of stairs and therefore inaccessible to me with the baby in the pushchair. They refused, saying they were not for customer use. Fair enough I reply; give me my glasses and I will leave and find some others somewhere. The minion duly leaves to find out where they were.

Nothing.

An hour and ten minutes later I ask again where they are. Again nothing.

An hour and twenty minutes later - and just about ready to piss in their pot plants - I ask again.
Some underage idiot starts to soft-soap me "please be patient; I will go and check now" etc, etc (but again - no apology) - and he fails to move and do ANYTHING - just stands there mouthing meaningless platitudes. I have to cut across him and say "SHUT UP AND JUST GO AND GET MY PROPERTY THAT YOUR COMPANY HAS BROKEN! RIGHT NOW!!"

So he did; FINALLY. I left there with such a bad taste in my mouth it is unbelievable. Not one person got it into their head that I might be annoyed that they had destroyed my property and did NOT APPRECIATE being forced to sit in their shop for 100 minutes of my Saturday. They could not see that even being asked to wait in the queue was not my idea as it was not my fault I was there! And not one of them could conceive of the fact that to just apologise to me - EVEN ONCE - would calm my temper down massively. Not one person owned the problem; no manager came out to say sorry; and HOW THE HELL DOES A SO CALLED PROFESSIONAL OPTICIANS BREAK THE GLASSES WHEN TRYING TO FIX THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

Avoid these idiots at all costs.

Good marketing in person as well as online

I managed to convince my dayjob to send me to an emarketing masterclass run by e-consultancy in London, and the day was almost entirely as I expected it; excellent insights into making your online marketing more effective from a very good emarketing consultancy.

One highlight for me was to meet Bryan Eisenberg whose blog and website I have read for many years and whose book I already own. I emailed the organisers in advance and asked them if he would have copies of his new book - "Waiting for your cat to bark; persuading customers when they ignore marketing" - Waiting for your cat to bark; persuading customers when they ignore marketing".

Then on the day itself I am sitting up front making sure that my company get's their monies worth and I recognise Bryan from his book photo. When the break arrives, I sidle up to him, mumble the usual inanities that you do when you meet an author whose work you like and asked if I could buy the book. He just said "I don't really have enough to sell - but I bought a copy over for you; here it is." He wouldn't take my money saying that because I was the only person to have emailed in advance and talked to him about his book thaen I deserved a review copy.

So - it's obvious that this blokes effectiveness at online marketing also extends into the real world and he knows exactly how to connect with people. I sure as hell ain't gonna forget his thoughtfulness and I am gonna do my best to get the most senior marketing decision maker in my organisation to read his book. (and if at all humanly possible to engage his organisation; how's that for a return on investment!?)

Now all I have to do after that is to convince them to give me the resources to implement the ideas expounded in his book - but that's another day, another battle!

Ever been given a present that is so good it made you cry?

It was my birthday the other week (and no - I am not going to tell you how old I was - suffice to say I am "old enough to know better but young enough to do it again")

I had created the usual list of stuff I would like to get, and on there was an old, old friend: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

This looked just stunning: EVERY single Calvin and Hobbes strip ever printed, on high quality paper, with extra goodies from Mr Bill Watterson himself.

Anyway; the day arrived and I am handed a HUGE present by the Other Half. And then (and this is the priceless part) as I start to unwrap it I refer to it to First Born Son as "loot"! - and for anyone who has never read Calvin and Hobbes (shame on you by the way!) - this is what Calvin himself in the comics also refers to presents as!

Then I get the paper off it and see what it is, and I am not ashamed to say that I was moved to tears. A huge part of it was the profound thoughtfulness of the Other Half at getting me such a great present - and the other part of it is the UTTER unmitigated bellowing-out-loud-delight of owning this thing.

Calvin and Hobbes has through the years given me more unadulterated pleasure than almost anything else. Ever. Amongst so called cartoons it is peerless; it is an eternal delight to read - there are layers upon layers of apt meaning - and it is funny as hell too. The warmth and humanity shines from the pages; the authors deep understanding of the foibles and imperfections of the human condition show through every panel....

... and all of this is acheived in a comic strip!

I cannot begin to tell you how good this comic is; I can only urge you to buy it at your earliest convenience.

And if Mr Bill Watterson ever happens to read this, all I can say is thank you for Calvin and Hobbes... were financial recompense required at an equal rate for enjoyment engendered then I would be in debt to you for the rest of my life...

... and I would not begrudge a penny.

Any company that makes disposable items is making you pay for its cost savings

Why the hell would you ever buy anything disposable anyway?! Such things are always cheap and shoddy by their very nature, but above all they are the most anti-ecological thing you could ever do.

Think about it; who pays for the cost of disposing of the item? - you do ofcourse! This means that the manufacturer has shifted the cost of getting rid of their junk from their pocket to yours.

In my opinion all disposable items should incur a tax rate of 100% - but only if that money was ploughed back into the environment. At the very least you should stop buying disposable stuff and pay that little bit extra for an item that will last a lot longer - and then make sure at the end of it's life you recycle it!

Doing things for no reason apart from "it's a labour of love"

As I have mentioned before, I run the official Bryan Talbot fanpage; and I have done so for over ten years and kept it updated once every two weeks through that entire time.

This is a massive labour of love for little or no money and people often ask me why the hell I do it. Then I sat down and worked with Bryan for 18 months of evenings and weekends and created with him the Heart of Empire CD-Rom; from which I estimate to have made less than £1.00 per hour of my time that I spent on it.

Again; why the hell do I do this?!

Well, it's simply really; Bryan's comics - and specifically the Adventures of Luther Arkwright - changed the way I look at the world - and only the very best literature can do that. Reading them was an utterly moving experience and it was almost 5 years before I ever met anyone else in person who had read them! So I took it upon myself to spread the word and tell as many people as possible about them....

At the same time I was working as a software trainer, training people on stuff like Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark - and it being 1995 the web was just breaking and the first graphical website editors were coming out. I learned the software to be able to teach it and I know from personal experience that the only real way to learn something is to do some real work in it.... so I cast around for a subject and realised that the only thing I cared enough about to update regularly forever was Bryan's work.... I think that even at that stage I knew that if you started a site then you should just keep it going forever; or else retire it and delete it.

Hence the Bryan Talbot fanpage was born - and I got to meet my personal hero!

The completion of a long awaited dream; the Adventures of Luther Arkwright webcomic is now online

Today after much work and care and attention I finally completed a really long held dream and made live the webcomic of the Adventures of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot.

To say that this comic changed my life is an understatement... first of all when I was thinking of getting into web design I cast around for a subject that I cared enough about to update a site every two weeks without fail - and the only think I could come up with was the works of Bryan Talbot... so I started work on the official Bryan Talbot fanpage, and I have not stopped work on it over the ten years since then. All I ever learned from making a website usable and compelling I learned on that site, so in some ways it is responsible for my entire career and every penny I have earned since that date.

However, that is the superficial level - the level that everyone else can see....

On the deeper level it affected me profoundly - it rearranged my mental landscape and changed the lens through which I look at the world. Incidentally it also probably ruined almost every other comic, because none of them could ever quite live up to the emotional depths and heights of that novel in graphic format - that masterpiece that is the Adventures of Luther Arkwright. It showed me the unspeakably poignant and soaring crescendos possible in the comics form and touched me on a deep and personal level. It took me to places I did not know existed and showed me things about the human condition that were shocking but true.

And all this from a comic! Say it loud and say it proud - the most compelling work of art - of literature I have ever seen in my entire life is a comic!

After all this how could I not create a website publicising the work and it's author with the stated aim of telling more people about it!

And then, as a result of working on the website I got to meet my own hero - the man who had created this work that affected me so deeply.. the one person on this planet (perhaps alongside Nelson Mandela, and contending only with Bill Watterson and Freddy Mercury) who I would be truly and utterly impressed by ... and then he goes and makes me a mate! - not by any cunning design, but by his genuine human warmth and decency. How amazing is that?! - the person I hero worshipped like a star struck schoolgirl becomes a mate?! YES!!

And then - after many years another fan re-scans the Adventures of Luther Arkwright, and it is finally at a level that Bryan is happy to publish as a webcomic.. and I have another mate who can do all of the programming - and then suddenly there it is; the Adventures of Luther Arkwright is online as a webcomic. The degree of satisfaction that this is online is just overwhelming... and that people are paying money to read it is just stunning... (only five quid by the way!) - and finally that I am able to bung the comic maestro Bryan Talbot honest cash for his work is just amazing. This is just great you know?! It really don't get much better!!

All of these terrorists would have a lot more trouble bombing an airship!

As I said in a previous post, wouldn't you feel safer in an airship than in a plane in these days of terrorist wankers trying to cause maximum fatalities?

For a start an airship does not rely on an utterly smooth, unpunctured fuselage for structural stability. A plane will crash if there is the slightest tear in it's skin - or god forbid - there is an actual hole in the fuselage.

An airship though?! A bomb might kill people in the immediate vicinity - but it would not mean the automatic death of everyone on board - and once these people cannot acheive their spectaculars they do not bother.

The trouble is that all it will take is some investment and forethought as these airships don't yet exist. Personally I would far rather travel from city centre to city centre at a lesiurely 120 mph or so at about 2000 feet up; secure in the knowledge that I was not a target for terrorists and that if we crashed I would have half an hour to finish my meal and get ready to step off the airship in a field instead of at the airport!!