Well, what a chuckle I had when I read the following on, especially as I had just blogged about Skype, word in your shell-like Scottish Parliament bods…

Thief runs up £46,000 bill on parliamentary mobile phone
The Times, November 25, 2006

Just when politicians thought that public anger was waning over the multimillion-pound overspend at the Scottish Parliament, the case of the stolen mobile phone surfaced.
The phone went missing in 2004 when the Parliament moved from its temporary headquarters in Edinburgh to its £431 million home at Holyrood. But no one bothered to report the disappearance, and as a result the thief managed to run up £46,200 worth of calls before a stop was eventually put on the phone. Add VAT, and the bill is far higher.

Taxpayers will be left to foot what is left of the bill, £27,200, after Vodaphone said that it was prepared to waive about half of the cost.

Parliament officials did not realise that the phone was missing it seems until Vodaphone alerted them to the rapidly mounting bill.

The phone was apparently one of several used by Parliament officials and normally kept in an office desk at the Parliament’s former home.

The revelation came in a report published yesterday by the Parliament’s financial watchdog, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB). The report states: “This includes an SPCB mobile phone which was stolen in 2004 at the time of the move from the interim accommodation at George IV Bridge to the Parliament’s new facilities and which was sub- sequently used to fraudulently accumulate call charges of £43,200 plus Vat.”

The phone is the latest costly theft of Parliament property to come to light. Since the move, four computer monitors, a digital camera and a BlackBerry, costing nearly £5,000 in total, have been stolen.

A spokesman for the Parliament said last night that the phone was a pooled resource and was used infrequently. “The excessive use did not occur until the first quarter of 2006 and was due to the fraudulent user repeatedly calling premium rate competition lines, which cost at least £1 a time,” he said.

“This was an isolated incident. However, the Parliament, along with its service provider, has now strengthened guidance and procedures for mobile phone ownership and use to ensure this cannot happen again.”

He said that Vodaphone was testing an alert system that would notify officials if bills for any of the Parliament mobiles appear suspect. “Vodafone has agreed, as a goodwill gesture, to write off 50 per cent of the total, reducing the actual loss to the Parliament to £21,600.”

He said that officials would check quarterly bills against the phones’ users, clarify phone policy and ask users to identify and pay for non-business calls.

The Parliament has also asked office heads to confirm that all phones in their charge are still required.

Margo Macdonald, an independent MSP and arch-critic of the Holyrood building, said: “A child with a mobile phone who had it nicked would know to notify the supplier immediately. It’s not just the cost, it’s the sheer incompetence. Am I surprised? No.”

Lothian and Borders Police said that they were looking into the theft.

The Parliament building has been beset by problems since its inception. The original architect died a year into the project as did Donald Dewar, the First Minister who was the main driving force for a building at Holyrood.

The building cost ten times the original estimate, although a public inquiry found that no one person was to blame for the overspending.

Keeping in touch

*The first mobile battery lasted only 20 minutes before it conked out

*The first mobile phone cost £2,000 and was the size of a briefcase

*The comedian Ernie Wise made the first call on a UK network on January 1, 1985

*The first text message was sent in 1993

*140 million texts were sent on July 1, 2006, when England was knocked out of the World Cup

*1,700 mobile phones are thrown away every hour

*A phone is stolen in Britain every 12 seconds

*90 million unused phones are lurking in drawers and cupboards — together they would weigh 11,250 tonnes

*Days after Callie Rogers, 16, won £2 million on the lottery, her boyfriend, Gary Fidler, was caught texting another girl, kissing goodbye to a fortune

Interesting that it was both the Scots and the Italians who were busy trying to invent very useful items at the same time; the telephone, the electric light bulb, television… OK, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, I guess TV’s are good for holding vases and goldfish bowls?!

So anyway, a few years ago I, like a lot of people discovered Skype and played around with it but I got bored with bad sound quality (this was in the days of dial-up!) and messy microphones and speakers/headphones. Anyway, I recently rediscovered Skype only because I was planning on chatting to someone from Myspace who is in Japan. I then realised how much money I’d save if a few of my overseas contacts used Skype, not only that… I’d probably be more inclined to talk more!

So, do I know you? No matter what the answer is just ask yourself this, “Do you want to talk to me?” now if the answer to that is yes then why don’t you add me on Skype and we can do just that!

Other than that, nothing new to report. Life goes on for the majority of us, quite probably with no deviation from every other day that has gone past but for some, huge earth shattering changes have taken place. Changes that make you question why were are here, what we have done to deserve the misery that fate has served us up. I’m not personally affected by such a change right now but right now 2 friends are suffering and I hate being unable to offer anything more than words.

So, I was sitting today, with a cup of tea in hand and not much planned so thought I’d read the top 5 bulletins, I usually don’t bother as most are from bands or the odd one or two who just send those ’20 things you won’t believe you wasted 90seconds of your life reading about me and my self-obsessed boredom’ questionnaires. Today however was different, today I have time for the usual things that annoy me because TODAY I don’t give a shit

So, I’m skimming through the questionnaire gradually realising that I could never meet the writer in person as she strikes me as a complete whack job, making even me appear 100% sane and I know that’s one thing I ain’t! So, one of the questions was, “What do you think of gay marriage?” to which she replied, “two adults that love each other should be allowed to get divorced the same as everyone else” it seems civil partnerships don’t cut it, people demand equality and choice and if they see someone else have blackcurrant and peach ice cream with banana sauce they want it as well and won’t stop till they get it.

OK, so the gayness of your marriage aside, whether it be gay in ye olde worlde sense of meaning happy or the more modern version of gay which is used to deride everything from a haircut to jazz band, let’s focus on the marriage aspect.

What is marriage and why is it so important?
I tend to think of it as a more quasi-religious union with it’s history steeped in the church and as i don’t believe in any god I feel quite hypocritical to choose to choose to swear my allegiance to my partner in a church, which packs itself out with people who fervently believe in this all knowing god! Not my cuppa char to be sure but I guess if I fall in love with a deeply religious person (I wonder how I’ll meet her?) who practises weekly then I’d be willing to make that sacrifice of principles for love, not quite a cross I know but hey, do I look stupid?

So I figure, if ‘gay’ couples can only enter into a civil partnership but they want to be ‘married’ why don’t they just make everyone enter into a civil partnership and only those who actively practise their religion 3 weeks out of 4 can get ‘married’. Actually if anything it would only be Catholics as they are the main religion to believe in the ‘Sanctity of Marriage’, However, Roman Law permitted prostitution, concubinage, homosexual sex, and sexual access to slaves. The Christian West formally banned these practises – there’s that god character at work again – I wonder why he didn’t outlaw it before? Is it because he didn’t exist until someone thought him up? What if it were all just the result of a game of Chinese Whispers? damn, I’d laugh so fucking hard to see the faces of those whose lives had just be confirmed as useless… But how can you disprove what you can’t prove?! Ahhh… and so the game goes on.

Asexual? Bi-sexual? Heterosexual? Homosexual? What does it really matter to anyone but yourself? Yeah I know, in an ideal world yadda yadda yadda, we don’t live in anything like an ideal world so we’re still expected to pop ourselves into a pigeon hole and then live our lives as defined by that ‘label’ but why do we have to do that? Who decided for homosexuals that civil partnerships weren’t good enough and only marriage would do?? How many heterosexuals would much rather be in a civil partnership than tied by some religious claptrap, it seems that if you’re a Catholic your god isn’t very forgiving if you fall out of love with the person you marry – he demands you stay married like it or not – doesn’t sound that nice a guy to me, if he were at school we’d call him a bully!

So, that’ll teach me to read fucking Myspace bulletins, why do I believe one day i’ll read a bulletin questionnaire that had some interesting questions in it??

Hmmm… I’ve just realised that for once in a long time, I didn’t really think about the blog title, as regular reader(s) will know, I usually get my blog titles from a a line in song. However as Myspace provoked this entry I settled with a bland titles, “A few words on marriage” Reading that again it makes me think of the title to a small booklet that you might get handed at a train station and upon opening you’d find it was the work of a quiet reformist religious order of monks who wanted to share with you their vision of marriage. Actually, having said that, perhaps that’s me? perhaps i am the first in a new order?! Fuck, I better get planning, i have lists to compile, contradictions to face, opinions to form and more importantly, a song to find to add to this entry

OK, after a short break I have decided on a song to finish this entry. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs I give you, Waiting for the Miracle by Leonard Cohen