Swings & Roundabouts

Gordon Brown’s government has been blundering about since his first day at the office. The Northern Rock crisis hit them long and hard and they have barely got past that. But with the latest ‘offering’, they have taken incompetence to levels barely scaled before.

They have only gone and lost our child benefit records. All of it. All 25 million of it. Gone. Child benefit records, that contain everything from the names, national insurance numbers, addresses, date of births, bank accounts. Know what the funniest bit about this whole thing is? The Chancellor Alistair Darling stressing “there was no evidence of misuse of the data.”

Really? That’s okay then – I can heave a big sigh of relief and go back to surfing the Web.

What really happened?

Apparently, on October 18, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service) sent the child benefits data to the National Audit Office, in two CDs, by unrecorded and unregistered post! The CDs, containing the details of 25 million individuals, failed to turn up at the NAO and when NAO complained, a second set was sent to them.

What a bunch of imbeciles! Who are these idiots who run the government? They send vital information, in CDs, by unregistered post and when that fails to turn up, instead of kicking shit, calmly send another copy over! And now, they expect everyone to be relaxed because they assure us that “there is no evidence the data has gone to criminals”. Well, we won’t know that, will we, until huge sums of cash go missing from our accounts?

The blame game has started already – the Chancelleor blamed junior officials at HMRC for the fiasco; HMRC Chairman Paul Gray has resigned already. The Tories are baying for the Chancellor’s blood, asking him to resign too.

How serious is this?

Very. The general public is really worried as to what is going to happen. The data in the lost discs contain real juicy details and any crook would give an arm and a leg to get his grubby mitts on them. Even though the discs are supposed to be ‘password protected’ and the data is in an ‘encrypted form’, how much time would it take for a determined fraudster to break it?

Banks are trying their best to assure the public that the information contained on the discs are not enough for anyone to access their bank accounts. But there are other ways of perpetrating fraud. Identity theft is a big deal now and for those in the game, this is manna from heaven, Using someone’s name, address and date of birth, a crook can take out credit cards, loans, mobile phones etc, for starters. David Hill, senior security consultant at red24 says to the Times, “having a national insurance number is as good as having a passport.”

Worryingly, our children’s data is in there too – including their dates of birth. What is there to prevent sickos from targetting the children?

While Darling has glibly said people ought to check their bank accounts for “irregular activity”, what protection does Joe Public have against the identity theft? From identity theft, organized crime is just a step away. Immigration, driving licences, id cards, NI numbers – anything and everything could come under attack.

So what can one do?

There are organizations like CIFAS that can help one fight identity fraud. CIFAS is the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service and will be able to advise on protection of identity and what to do in case of identity theft. Email them at protective.registrationuk@equifax.com. You can also register with a credit reference agency like MyCallCredit, who will, for a fee, monitor your credit and would alert you periodically. Any changes or irregular activity, you would be contacted immediately by the agency and you can react proactively.

The UK Payments Association has released a leaflet for those concerned about the HMRC data theft. The leaflet, according to the APACS website, contains “questions and answers, as well as top tips on spotting and stopping ID theft”.

A special hotline has also been set up and the number for that is 0845 302 1444.

or Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada has become super-easy now, thanks to the Google Indic Transliteration tool. This is a no-mess, no-fuss device and all you need to start typing in any of these Indian languages are the Ctrl and g keys – and knowledge of the language, of course!

I dearly love to write in my mother tongue but installing the font everytime I changed my machine proved to be a headache. I work from my laptop (Windows) and desktop (Mac) and the font is not Mac friendly. Plus, every time I want to write something from uni, I run into problems if I have to download fonts.

This nifty tool solves all those problems very easily. After all, all you need to do is type the URL and voila, you can get cracking straightaway. It has got some neat add ons, word suggestions that comes up when you are half-way through your typing, to lend a helpful hand by coming up with alternatives. 

If you click on the ‘Edit..’ link, you’d get a window like this:

need I say more? If you are a nitpicker, you could choose to have the whole keyboard displayed as it were, and you could tap tap away.

This tool is supported by both IE and Firefox, thereby making it easy for you to use from a Windows, Mac or Linux based machine.

So what are you waiting for?

Immigration has reared its head again in the UK and the past few days have seen a flurry of news articles on the impact immigrants are going to have on everything from population to house prices to job oppurtunities. While some flee to Britian, escaping from the hell their own country has become, others come here in search of better jobs. Latest population figures stating that by 2031, the country would boast 71 million people, is prompting people to ask the question: how can the UK cope?

With the widening of the EU umbrella, the influx of immigrants into Britain has multiplied manifold. While the government stresses that immigration has “enabled the country’s economic success”, many are not convinced. A recent Channel 4 Despatches documentary showed the economic fears some have about cheaper manual labour from overseas. [Read More...]

As I have been moaning on and off about my uni course, it won’t come as any surprise to you that I need all the help that I can get. Well, my dearly beloved netizens, I need your assistance to help me develop the prototype for a website. This will be active DURING the London 2012 Olympics. Please click on this link below to fill out the online questionnaire. Please spread the word too!

Also, I am to interview some folks in relation to Immigration in Britain. (‘A Pandora’s Box!’, Dee called it!) Once I upload the link to that, please do follow that one up and submit your questions.

You shall have my undying gratitude as your reward!

Edited to add: Hurray! My piece is finally up on the Yoosk website. Please follow this link and do the deed! Thanks a bunch! *mwah*

A mother’s response when her son’s wedding preparations ends up in a spirited tug-of-war:

“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. If I who have given birth to, raised and loved my son for almost 30 years will not be ready to adjust for his sake, how can I expect some girl who has known him a few months to make things easy for him? Can she love him more than I do? It’s up to me to ensure that he doesn’t get torn between wife and mother. Let him do what she wants. After all any plans we make thinking that we are giving him a grand wedding are actually uncle and my dreams and plans… they give us happiness – not necessarily him – and that is selfish. The truth is that his happiness lies in seeing her happy and not having to fight her out to keep his parents happy. Love flows downwards .. do you love your parents as much as you love your son? So let the girl’s people do what they want. We will go along with anything to see him happy. Whoever loves more, gives more.”

Courtesy, The Mad Momma’s blog.
I have copied this part from her post so I will have it with me always and can recite it to my DIL in the distant future.

What price humanity?

On Bhogi, an aunt of mine lost her life in a road accident. The car in which she was travelling lost control and she was thrown out. As she lay wounded and bleeding, my uncle begging passing vehicles to stop and help them. For forty-five long minutes, he did so, with folded palms but none did. Finally, one kind-hearted gentlemen did but by then it was too late.

A life that could have been saved, has gone. All of those people who travelled on that stretch of road in Thirupathur on the Bhogi morning have blood on their hands. Maybe that comes across as really harsh, I don’t know. But how else could I term it? How could one justify not stopping to help a desperately wounded family? What sort of reasons does one give to assuage their conscience so that things like this don’t stick?

Isn’t this what being human is all about – lending a hand to someone in need? The mere fact that so many people have just shrugged it off and carried on with their lives galls me. I have seen scenes like this in movies, when car after car drives past a broken, bleeding man and have just shrugged it off as over-sentimentalism by the director. I always firmly believed that, when push came to shove, one cannot ignore such an event and turn a blind eye.

Was I mistaken in that surmise or what?

I know what most people think: why would I want to get involved in such a thing, as it will only mean unnecessary hassle from the police? True enough. Who needs it anyway? On the other hand, if you had the power to save a life, would you throw that power away? Had it been your loved one lying there, would you not do anything in your power to make sure they were saved? Or would you shrug it away as needless hassle?

As I think of what is going to happen to that fractured family, of my young cousins devoid of their mother at such an age, I am filled with so much rage. Impotent rage as sitting many miles away, safe in my home, I had carried on with my day as normal whilst my aunt was breathing her last. Chatting away on the phone whilst strangers were driving past her with no concern whatsoever. If it had been me in the car driving past a family needing desperate help, would I have stopped and done so?

If I had said ‘yes’ to that glibly before, I can now say with absolute conviction that never will I ever be able to see things like that in a detached sort of way like those uncaring strangers did. Because I now know, the price you pay for not heeding someone’s plea for help.

And I know that never will I be able to look at Bhogi in the same light again. For it will always be etched in my mind as the day humanity died a violent death.

What do you do when you are bored and are randomly surfing the net? Search for your favourite TV shows, play some games, Stumble upon something? Well, why don’t you log on to <”http://www.freerice.com/”>Free Rice</a>, exercise your brain and donate some desperately needed Third World rice in the bargain?

All you need to do are practice your vocabulary skills. For every question you get right, the organisation behind this effort donates 20 grains of rice. It used to be 10 but just a few days back, the count was doubled to 20 grains per correct answer. As you answer the questions correctly, the level becomes tougher. Every time you chose a wrong answer, you go down a level and get a question in that level. You can play as long as you want. But a piece of warning: it’s addictive!

This site was begun on October 7, 2007 with 830 grains won on the first day. Yesterday a whopping 235,092,740 grains were won, bringing the total upto a mind boggling 5,541,225,910 – and counting!

So how does this work?

The grains you win are donated to the United Nations World Food Programme, the world’s largest food aid agency, who work with thousands of organisations to reach this staple to the starving masses. You could also take it a step further and donate desperately needed cash. other vital items. Won’t these make a better Christmas gift that a party gag?

While on the subject of alternate, humanitarian Christmas gifts, visit the Good Gifts site to learn how you can donate a cycle to poor children in India, donate books and things to open a library in Africa, modernize a hut in Rwanda – or you could even give someone the incomparable gift of sight. Other organisations like Oxfam have a special section named Oxfam Unwrapped, that gives one suggestions like building a bog, donating tools for farming, condoms and even the ultimate Christmas ‘takeaway’ – school dinners for 100 children at a paltry sum of just 6 pounds.

How cool is that? To be able to make a difference in someone’s life at the touch of a button. There’s no bigger high than knowing you have just made some nameless, faceless stranger happy by feeding them; knowing that one hundred poor children will have a full tummy this Christmas because you spared some change. My little boy just gave me the 6 quid from his money box. If he can, you sure can.

Go on, make a difference.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: charity, christmas, gifts

I hate to admit it but I was a teensy-weensy bit scared. The scrawny guy in the corner looked mildly menacing. The blonde at the table looked in control while the Oriental lady a few feet away looked positively territorial.

I was petrified.

I have never seen the inside of a Laundromat before. I have walked past it a million times as it was a few doors down from my workplace but never ventured inside. I was, after all, the smug owner of a working washing machine, with a dryer, I might add. I could do my laundry from the comfort of my own home, at my own sweet time. And I did so for five long years till the day my pipes got blocked with some mysterious substance and the water from my washing machine came flooding into the kitchen.

To say it caused panic in my heart is like saying the tsunami was a wee wave. What if the water seeped through my floorboards and into my neighbour’s ceiling? What if it got soaked right through and fell on their heads? I would never be able to sell this place and make a whopping profit!

S put on his ‘man of the house’ hat and peered down the pipes as if he could unblock it with his laser vision. When that didn’t work, he emptied the steaming contents of the kettle down it. Well, that didn’t help one jot as the water stayed put – only now I had a sink full of water to deal with, as well!

As he went to root out the plunger and Mr Muscle’s magic concoction, I loaded an Ikea blue bag with the dirty clothes and made my way to the laundromat. The minute I opened the door and stepped in, it was like I had gone behind the laundry world’s version of the Iron Curtain. There seemed to be some sort of code to this place and I didn’t have a clue what it was. Wrenching the door open, loading the machine, putting some coins in and getting it started, I found later, were the easy bits.

Not wanting to waste the hour it would take for the machine to chomp the dirt out of our clothes, I headed home to check on the progress being made. (And what a mistake that turned out to be!) By then, hubby dear had discovered that Mr Muscle was no match for our pipes and gone onto another stronger product, which promised to burst through the clog and make the pipe’s insides look like brand-spanking-new.

Leaving him to his cartload of pipe-clearing products, I went back to the Laundromat, only to learn that these machines took a lot less time to do the washing than my one at home. While I was listening to the relative merits of Cillit Bang vs Mr Muscle, my wash cycle had ended and some one had emptied my sodden clothes into a basket and collared my machine.

Worse, two of the four tumble dryers sported ‘Out of Order’ signs. So I had to queue behind either a blonde with four bin bags full of dirty clothes and a dangerous looking individual with a bulging tote bag or a tough looking Chinese lady, who looked like she had a never-ending supply of clothes. I decided to go for the Chinese (fellow continent-woman and all that!) and thereby, made my second error of the day.

What I had assumed to be four bin bags full of dirty clothes, turned out to be four bin bags full of clean clothes. Even as I stood slack jawed, the blonde tipped out bag afte bag onto a table and neatly folded the clothes into her humungous hamper. She varied this routine by opening the dryer every once in a while, taking her family’s smalls out and folding them into a different basket. By this time, the Chinese lady was joined by her husband and son, who went to a machine each, emptied their loads onto baskets and joined Mum. Mum then proceeded to open the door of her dryer, tipped the contents of the two baskets inside and put about half a million quid worth of coins in. As I stood there gaping like a fish, the timer went up and up, finally stopping at 85 minutes.

Eighty-five bloody minutes, on top of the twenty I have already put in! Someone’s having a laugh and it certainly wasn’t me!

I decided to put my years of Chennai living to good use (if you have stood outside your house, waiting for the water tank to come and dispense water, you would know what I am talking about!) and join the party. Tugging and shoving in turns, I moved my bag of clothes so it stood directly in front of the dryer. Kin or not, I was not budging for anyone anymore! I casually flipped my book open, lounged against the wall and maintained my position.

While I was deeply engrossed in the antics of Malachi, Gideon and Rebecca, the blonde finished her job and the bachelor with the tote bag dumped his load in, waited around for 20 minutes and cleared the way for the quick-footed brunette who had stood behind him! All the while, I waited like a lemon for my machine to finish drying all the wet clothes in China.

There was mild panic when the machine was still half-way through and Mum pushed my bag rudely out of the way. Even as I was wondering what I would do if she chucked in more clothes, she calmly took some of the dried ones and wandered away, while I breathed out a sigh of relief.

After a mind-numbing, mammoth hour and a half, the machine finally did its job and Mum slowly started emptying its contents into her bags. I stood behind her, hiding the machine and trying to look as menacing as I could armed with a paperback and a sack full of wet clothes. Mum took off, thankfully and I heaved my stuff in, praying the machine won’t give up its ghost now that it was my turn. That would have been really the limit!

I nabbed the chair vacated by Mum, plonked it in front of my dryer and continued with my book. Soon enough, the deed was done and a call to the landline ensured the plumber downed tools and doffed the chauffeur’s hat, carting me and my clean, fresh-smelling clothes home.

I arrived to see the kitchen in chaos – there were bottles of bleach, assorted chemical products and even a bottle of vinegar, some salt and soda bicard on the floor (well, we do watch How Clean Is Your House?) and assorted bits of pipes. S had finally thrown in the towel and started thumbing through the Yellow Pages for a plumber. Of course, no self-respecting plumber would come immediately and the only one whose diary wasn’t booked till the next century offered to come in during the following weekend.

Even as S spluttered down the phone, I went back to my book without a care in the world. After all, I could do my washing at the laundromat down the road. I am not scared; I’m not a virgin anymore – I am a pro!

Last Saturday, when I was well into my weekly marathon yakking sessions with my mum back in Chennai, she gave me a piece of news that jolted me. One of the girls from my old school, a girl 7 years younger than myself, had just committed suicide.

I was like ‘WHAT?’ She also said a friend of hers killed herself the month before. What is happening to our youngsters? What prompts a 21-year-old, one who’s on the threshold of her life, to just end it, when the whole life is out there, just waiting to be lived?

The girls in question were just making their mark as playback singers in the Tamil movie industry and I am sure, had their lives not been so rudely cut off, gone on to make it big. So what would prompt them to just give up on everything and take their own lives?

Is it a rash action of a moment? Is it a pre-meditated act? Or is it just a cry for help?

A few years back, I remember reading about the death of former beauty queen, model and VJ, Nafisa Joseph. I think her fiance jilted her and she killed herself or something. I remember thinking, if a worldly-wise woman, who must have seen a few things in her modelling career cannot hack it, what sort of message does that send to the younger ones. Now it is 20 and 21-year olds that are going down that route.

I hear words like ‘love failure’ too often these days. Maybe it is cynical of me, but I cannot help thinking ‘so what?’ Your own life should be worth more than the so-called love of the person who jilts you, shouldn’t it? Who knows, one might be well off not being with such a person – a few tears now is better than a life sentence, surely.

At times like this, I think the Western concept of casual dating is a good one. You date a couple of guys (or girls) – hang out, go out to dinner, disco and if you aren’t compatible, then break it off and get on with your lives. The desi concept of dating, wherein if you go out with a person, then they are ‘it’ might not be such a great thing, especially if the bloke turns out to be a cad.

The problem with this idea though, is the mentality of certain young men out there. If a girl has a couple of boyfriends, then she is considered ‘loose’, as in, morally (not mental!). I have seen loads of guys who ‘road-test’ by dating a few girls before settling down with a proper girl as chosen by their mums. Aren’t they loose as well? But we all know it is predominantly a man’s world out there, don’t we? So what is the solution then?

I feel that dating shouldn’t be a taboo concept any longer. I know times are a’changing and we see loads of couples hanging out in the metros these days but in Chennai, it isn’t as prevalent as it maybe in other places. No more ‘chup chup ke’ stuff please. Going out with a girl / guy isn’t exactly something to be ashamed of, is it?

More importantly, it isn’t like the end of the world if you are jilted, thought it might feel so at that moment. Finally, here is my plea to the young ‘uns out there – please love yourself a bit more than you love your ‘beloved’. It just might save your life!

Can also be found at Desicritics