Here are some of my own efforts. Nothing clever. Just a bit childish.

Here's a brace for for Doctor Who fans and lovers of The Divine Comedy.

I have taken part in so many demos and protests that I can hardly keep count. The highlight was opposing the Iraq war in London on that February day in 2003 with a million others. But that was vanilla. I’ve faced up to police as they’ve beaten their shields with their batons with the sole intent to intimidate. I’ve been filmed and snapped by the rozzers before anti-terror legislation was enacted. I’ve mass-trespassed. I’ve squatted. I’ve been questioned, jostled and jibed by coppers. I’ve seen the underside of a police horse closer than I ever want to see one again.

The demos have been for causes various. I was against apartheid and shutting Brighton’s St Luke’s Pool (aged 9) in the 80s. I passionately opposed the CJB/CJA and French nuclear tests and other things in the 90s. More recently I’ve opposed student tuition fees and the Iraq war. I could mention direct action against fox hunting and car rallies on the South Downs. I even joined my mum to protest about midwife pay once.

But I never hid my face.

Protest is about standing up, being open, speaking out, hopefully raising the profile of the cause or issue, and being counted. For me, a protest doesn’t have to be legal but it must have peaceful intentions. I know how demos turn out. With opposing forces of protester and police, sometimes it gets edgy and ugly. As a protester, sometimes you get arrested. Usually you don’t. But passion doesn’t mean aggression. Violence should never be an aim.

That’s why I can’t support the Smash EDO action and protesters. Not only is the case unproven but they seek to make it anonymously. Any group that goes out and protests behind scarves and balaclavas is hiding something. That’s not how we should do it here. Protest must be proud to be credible. Ask Gandhi, Pankhurst, Mandela and King.

This article from DFID caught my eye today: Killing relief with kindness. Lots of people want to help and send things, but the agencies and charities involved basically just want your cash. It makes sense to me having read the article. That’s where eBay for Charity comes in.

If you feel a bit broke, or have stuff you don’t want, you can sell on eBay and donate the takings directly to the DEC (Disaster Emergency Committee). It may not be immediate, but let’s face it: they’ll still need your money in a week’s time when it’s not the top story on the news anymore.

It’s all above board and you don’t need to worry that someone is trousering your donation. eBay guarantees the cash, covers the admin costs and the listing fees if the item sells and you can donate anything between 10% and 100% of the sale price.

It’s a great way of turning something you’ve got knocking about the house, maybe an unwanted Christmas gift, into a few vital quid. Just choose the DEC as your beneficiary when you’re selling.

And, don’t forget you can also buy. All these items for sale will benefit the DEC. Just be sure to check what percentage of the sale price is going to Haiti.

I’ll certainly be flogging a few things in the next week or so.

(I must say, as an aside: why isn’t eBay promoting DEC Haiti items on the homepage? It’s a small gesture and it would be great to give the items for sale greater profile. The eBay Community has a great history of being generous: let’s unleash that spirit again!)

I paraphrase his reply, but it was unequivocal, slightly venomous and laced with regret. “Never again. John Major and his “classless society” nonsense has seen to that.”

It was exactly the notion of a classless society that meant it could happen again, I argued back. After all, Tony Blair (Labour leader at the time) was a public schoolboy, class politics was on the wane and that meant an Old Etonian (OE) could be Prime Minister. Mischievously, I added that an OE PM need not necessarily be Conservative.

I do remember his withering look and the finality of his response keenly. “Normal public schoolboys perhaps. But not Etonians. Eton is a dirty word. A four letter word. Home was the last.”

It’s probably worth noting that when I had this discussion I was an Eton schoolboy replete with black tailcoat and starched collar. I was (as I indeed remain) a fully paid up member of the Labour party and in a subsequent post I might talk about how a this state comprehensive schoolboy from Brighton ended up at Eton if anyone is particularly interested.

I tittered at Gordon Brown’s recent comment at during Prime Minister’s Question time that David Cameron’s tax policy had been dreamt up “on the playing fields of Eton.” It was funny enough. I wasn’t particularly impressed by Cameron’s response that called it “spiteful”. It was certainly less spiteful a jibe than Tory quips calling former Speaker Martin “Gorbals Mick”. Brown also has the merit of being accurate. Cameron went to Eton. Lord Martin isn’t from the Gorbals.

But what’s surprising is how much coverage Brown’s Eton line generated. For over a week, and even today, it’s still driving comment in the press. A certain rough and tumble is an acceptable aspect of politics. In some senses it’s part of the fun. For Cameron to criticise what he has called “Punch and Judy politics” is like a sewer objecting to shit.

It might be fun, but we don’t learn a lot from it. It was little more than Gordon Brown legitimately pointing out that Tory plans do indeed benefit the rich over the poor. It was also apt in a week when millionaire Old Etonian Zac Goldsmith was criticised for evading tax as a non-dom whilst also seeking election to Parliament.

Equally, the public school jibe doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. There are plenty of good Labour comrades who went to public school (Attlee, Tony Benn, Blair) and plenty of Tories who didn’t. Not a few Labour figures were OEs, including notably the very great and dogged Tam Dalyell. Attlee’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer in those great reforming Labour governments of 1945-51, Hugh Dalton, went to Eton. (The other two, Cripps and Gaitskell, went to Winchester.)

But I think the Eton jibe was invoking more than just public schools and speaks to the peculiar place Eton holds in the public imagination. As my old beak said (that’s what they call teachers at Eton), it’s a dirty word. It invokes something visceral and reviled. It’s almost a synonym for the ruling class, privilege and aristocracy. It’s not for nothing that the old joke says that Eton should have a sign above the door: “Cabinetmakers to Her Majesty the Queen.” The Queen has worked with 11 PMs. 3 have been old Etonians. 18 in total since Walpole had the school motta ‘Floreat Etona’.

And that’s why Brown’s comment was powerful and potentially effective. It doesn’t do anything for talking up Labour’s achievements but it does raise questions. Can an Old Etonian with substantial personal wealth like David Cameron understand ordinary folk? And it also encourages scrutiny of the extraordinary number of OEs in the Tory ranks.

In this age of post-aristocratic politics, that there are more Old Etonians than women in the Tory top team does deserve greater examination. There are 15 OE MPs. 13 Conservatives. Labour and LibDems have one apiece. They represent something like 7% of all Member of Parliament. (Incidentally, in the House of Lords there are more than 80 OEs.) It’s not difficult to say that it’s too many and that representation on the Tory frontbench is disproportionate.

But what’s the cause? Is it favouritism, a Nietzschean will to power, elitism, misplaced deference, connections, some sort of conspiracy or what? In any case, it’s bizarre and possibly worrying. In my next post, I‘ll write about how I think the nature of Eton as a meritocracy and aspirational environment, its ethos and schooling influences students and encourages its former pupils to go into politics.

(This is the first of several posts where I'll discuss Eton, politics and my experience there. If there’s anything you might want me to cover, do leave a comment and I’ll see if I can squeeze it in. Subsequent posts haven’t been written yet.)

But after a long time, I’m on the verge of changing my mind and going Mac. But not quite. Not quite.

Key to my loyalty has been a very effective Dell laptop that has never let me down. Never let me down. (Ok. Once. Service Pack 3. Lesson learnt.) Ever since I bought it in January 2006 it has been a reliable, lightweight, versatile and frankly indestructible machine. It’s been punished. Travelled everywhere I’ve been. It does what I want it to do admirably (which is predominantly writing and net use although increasingly I’m meddling with photos, videos and sound files) and it has so far proved to be unbelievable value. It’s the third or fourth (via a few work PCs) in a succession of very reliable machines from Dell that takes me back to 1997 when I first took a laptop for University.

I bought my latest machine in April this year and in terms of sturdiness the new Dell machine isn’t as good. Vista has also been an absolute disaster. I’ve actually gone back to using the immortal XP machine. God I love her.

In the past months, confronted with Vista and the new machine, I’ve thought about making the switch to a Mac. You know me. I do my research. My major concerns relate to the fact that I deal professionally with organisations who uses old Windows machines and I need Word and PowerPoint docs etc to reach people with formatting intact.

I’ve asked Mac users: trust me, I know plenty. Many of whom who have been useful but many have not. I have an iPod. I understand that Apple make beautiful things. But it’s astonishing that so many Macists rely on evangelical statements that even your average fundamentalist Christian would shy away from because they’re so unsubstantial. When I ask why I should swap to a Mac, and whether this or that will work and whether wotsit and the other can be done, I’m not interested in answers that start with: “As Steve Jobs said…” I am as uninterested in the Book of Jobs as I am with the Bill is Right brigade.

The thing is, remember, my PCs have served me well. They’re not the crap ‘Mac Wankers’ keep telling me they are. Of course, I don’t code, or graphic design or game on any serious level. This two or one click mouse thing bothers me not. Taskbars and brushed stainless steel. Meh. Snow Leopard? I have no tangible idea what that practically means. But Macists tell me “it’s amazing”. I kind of accept that Macs are indeed better. But is one Mac, in particular, going to be better for me? That’s the answer I want. It’s certainly not going to be cheaper, after all.

I must have been into Apple Stores a dozen times in London and Brighton looking for the answers I need. On one occasion I wandered in, started meddling with a Macbook and got asked to move along because other people wanted to “experience” it. I’d been there about two minutes.

Apple Stores represent an unusually pointless experience for the uninitiated. I visit them like I visit Churches. I just look at things and admire them and watch people who know what they’re doing, doing what they want to do. As a non-believer, I just amble around respectfully, appreciate, nod, show respect and leave. It’s a pleasing pastime but not necessarily very illuminating. I’ve visited hundreds of Churches and never found faith. It’s rather the same with Apple Stores.

On my two appointments at the genius bar to get the skinny, one was excellent and most informative (and 90% got me there). The other was nonsense and, to continue my Church simile, was like taking confession whilst the priest tried to find the “Fuck Off” App on his iPhone. To the smiley unlistening, uber-euro, seemingly non-gender specific Appleton with trendy specs, an asymmetric, pedantically scruffy fringe and a faraway look suggesting a night before enhanced by hallucinogenic drugs: there’s no such Windows program as Metebelis 3. I made it up (or rather stole the name of a planet in Doctor Who). That’s why I scoffed at your claim that not only will Metebelis 3 work on a Mac, but it will work even better.

My current inclination, mostly because having bought one computer in the past 6 months I’m not inclined towards the expense of buying another, is to get Vista off my new PC and live with it for a few months and spend a bit more time learning about Macs. A few snatched minutes in Apple Store hasn’t been enough for me but now I’m back at Uni, it’s good to note they have Macs for use there. Maybe experience will tip the balance. But as I look at the latest raft of Mac and Windows ads slagging each other, I’ve got to say: if those guys could focus on details and facts, I’d find that a great deal more useful.

A few weeks back I was chatting with my good chum Sue Bailey, AKA blogmum. Regular readers will know that she’s my preferred Wordpress Whisperer. And not for nothing. We had both been thinking for a while that this site was in need of a tart up and so we individually scribbled notes before comparing them.

There were lots of items of a agreement, plenty of individual ideas and a massive list of nitpicks. But in broad strokes we agreed:

Surface more popular content, not just recent content.
My most popular scribblings were not on the homepage whilst some of the least interesting stuff was. And that was silly.

Make more of comments.
There is lively discussion and that’s valuable. We both wanted the conversation to be more visible.

Showcase the written word more effectively.
Text excerpts were previously too short and some of the rendering was skewed towards images rather than text.

General spruce up
There’s nothing wrong with just tarting things up a bit!

I must say I’m thrilled with this new regeneration. It’s very clearly the same site, it's working harder and it looks a lot smarter. What do you reckon?

Her: (Rudely) What wine have you got?

Barman: Red or white, madam?

Her: White. (As if he should have known that) No Chilean. I’m a wine snob. I hate Chilean.

Barman: We have Sauvignon Blanc, and a Chenin Blanc.

Her: Where’s the Sauvignon from?

Barman: South Africa. Would you like a taste? (She assents and swigs a tasting measure of the Sauvignon Blanc.)

Her: Yeah. That’s ok. I’ll have a bottle of the Chenin.

Barman: (with so much patience) Would you like to taste that one too?

Her: No point. Burnt my mouth on a cup of coffee earlier. Can’t really taste anything. It was proper coffee. I normally have it out of a machine and it’s not so hot.

Treasure Hunt in a nutshell (as I remember it). Anneka Rice is in a helicopter with a small TV crew. Kenneth Kendall is in the studio with a reference library and two (usually incompetent) contestants. The hopefuls must solve a series of cryptic puzzles so they can direct Anneka and the chopper to her next destination. Wincey Willis keeps track of progress on the map and looks slightly embarrassed to be involved.

I watched the below clip (and the rest) of Treasure Hunt a few weeks back and it’s astonishingly bad. Boring, slow and incomprehensible. The people in the studio can’t see what the people in the chopper are doing. The puzzles are impossible unless you have intimate knowledge of the locality in question and frankly it’s up to Kendall and Willis to provide the answers. Note to kids: this is a case study of how we’d find things out before the Wikipedia... we looked stuff up in a book.

With Wincey (yes, she also did the weather on morning telly) providing time checks and rolling her eyes throughout at the lack of action, Kendall was supposed to provide hosty gravitas. Instead, he’d would wander around, repeating the clue continuously and sometimes helpfully proffering books like an over familiar librarian in the early stages of dementia.

Not only was Treasure Hunt quite long lived and popular, but it was reasonably influential. Anneka Rice cemented her reputation as an action girl and went to the Beeb to make Challenge Anneka where she’d bully people into giving her stuff so she could rebuild a Romanian Orphanage on a wet afternoon. And all the time Anneka must be resplendent in her trademark jumpsuit. They will have to bury her in a jumpsuit. Poor girl.

Annabel Croft took over as the chopper babe but Treasure Hunt wasn’t really the same without Anneka running along and breathlessly demanding the two moron contestants in the studio where in the second rate tourist attraction she had just landed, she might be able to find the next clue. Chatsworth, the production company, went on to make the hilariously awful Interceptor... but that’s TV nostalgia for another day.