Compare, Contrast and Con

Sorry Mr Jobs, but for all the disproportionate buzz surrounding your new baby; how exactly should it  be defined? New OS? Update? Upgrade?

The Pools Panel (ultimate authority on all matters) have decreed it to be an excellently priced Upgrade.

So, for all the internet buzz (search Digg, look at Twitter) surrounding your new OS X Snow Leopard upgrade, (disproportionate - Apple market share is actually dropping, being overtaken by Toshiba in Q2/09) and excitement of how wonderful it is, I think Mother Nature has the edge on you...

Carrying on my Malus Culture considerations; why are Brit fruit fans still getting screwed? OS X Snow Leopard costs $29 - so why charge fruity computerers this side of the pond £25 not £18?

Many headlines claim Apple has pole position in the high-end market. I think this is lazy journalism too because I doubt it includes high-end PC rigs built from components. Just my two-penn'th though.

Stepping put of the orchard and away from the forbidden fruit, perhaps it's time to grasp a poisoned chalice?

I must briefly interject that I had a very strange experience, having put in an early update, late last night. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had left something undone. Not that this is a chore. It was more like a feeling of playing hookie, a duty avoided. That's the level of work I put in for you guys.

The poisoned chalice I speak of is immigration. I heard a little while ago that Panorama is looking at it next week.

Skimming through the (electronic) Guardian, I alighted on a District 9 (trailer) reference and so clicked along to read it.

Being a Sci-Fi fan I was interested. This is the article.

Reading through that article - knowing my bent for post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world views - I clicked on to a reference in it, which I link to here in case you can't be arsed to read through the Guardian article.

I neither wish a jihad waged upon me, nor be applauded by the right or ultra-right. I haven't quite got my thinking into a form I can commit to type, so I will flesh it out at a later date. However, I think this little island has an immigration problem.

I think that the government has got to get a really urgent, really inclusive handle on it. In a world where food, water and raw resources are going to get increasingly scarce, this island simply will not support the amount of human beings here today, let alone the hundreds arriving daily looking to escape wars, avoid persecution, get away with economic migration or just screw the benefit system.

Reading the two articles linked above, I couldn't help thinking back to the world of Children of Men.

It's funny (in a black humour kinda way) but I hadn't noticed the film was set in 2027. They have cars in the film - as in the oil hasn't run out - but the picture is, to me, suggestive of a post-collapse Dover that Cal McCrystal described nearly a decade ago. I hadn't realised that article was from 2000.

Fuck! That makes it scarier. I wonder what the people of Dover think today. I wonder how many of the shops in the English town are still English. Or how overrun the Port guys and the Customs guys described nearly ten years ago are faring today.

I can't help thinking how I read that France and Germany are now pulling clear of economic recession, while the UK continues to falter. Cleverer minds than my mine attribute to the sizeable bail-out HM Govt provided contrasted to the fore-mentioned European partners.

So, bluntly, we're still fucked, but we are still the No. 1 target for migration.

Just for good measure British Muslims are convicted of wanting to mass murder their countrymen. This is no more relevant than BBC 1 News has just come one.

Welcome to the disappointment.