Simon Rumble’s blog

I just went and booked £500 worth of travel for the future. We're doing a fair bit of moving about this Summer. Heading to Utrecht to visit Mani and Joachim, Leicester to visit Sam, Stu and Alfie, Glasgow for our murder mystery night in November, and our big ten-day cycling epic in August.

The part that is ridiculous is the train prices. Our return tickets to Leicester cost £36, for a bit over an hour of travel each way. Then our singles to Newcastle is £39 for over three hours of travel. Then the return from Lancaster on Virgin comes in at a whopping £114.20! There just doesn't seem to be any relationship between distance and price. The prices are just totally arbitrary.

Of course, the journeys will be slow, beset with delays and getting our bikes on will, despite reservations, no doubt be a chore with a grumbling guard. Oh what fun!

Problem is, there's no other reasonable way to travel inside the UK with bikes. National Express leave taking the bikes at the discretion of the bus driver, and bus drivers are never the type of people who seem willing to help or satisfied with their lives. So we're stuck with these outrageous prices and unsatisfactory service. Oh well.

Got my bike serviced yesterday (Mend-A-Bike in Fulham, very good) and oh what a joy it is now. All I hear is the wind whistling through my ears, which makes a change from the grind-crunch it's been making the last month or so. Worn out bottom bracket, it seems.

Only complaint this morning was that every piece of sand and grit in London seemed to be making a beeline for my eyes. Very windy day, you see.

Peter Garrett has already sold out on one of his main principles. He now doesn't want to see Pine Gap shut down, which puts him in line with ALP policy but puts him a long way from his own Nuclear Disarment Party's policy.

Now admittedly he's been focussing on environment issues more than peace issues these days, but it is still pretty galling for him to so readily drop such an important issue. He's going to lose a lot of friends if he stays on this path. What next, helping the ALP appease the CFMEU's Forestry Division by dropping objections to woodchipping?

Peter Garrett, WTF are you thinking? I can just see the thought process here: "I'll change them from within". Poor, deluded fool!

The ALP is a single-minded organisation. They have one aim: to get into power. Anything else, morals, policies, personalities, will always be subordinate to the overwhelming will-to-power.

Surely Peter remembers 1984 when the ALP and Liberals did a preference swap to keep Garrett and his Nuclear Disarmament Party out of the Senate? (okay, okay, linking to a bunch of Trots probably isn't ideal, so for balance here's "How the Trots Destroyed the Nuclear Disarmament Party".

I confidently predict that Peter will leave Labor within a year, probably having helped Labor over the line. He may manage to shame them into implementing a few policies, but he won't be able to stand the rough and tumble of a powerful party in power, the inevitable compromises and paybacks of patronage to the rich and powerful.

Peter, I thought you were smarter than this. You could have done a lot better.

My good friend and partner in activist geekery, <predator>, died over the weekend. He had been battling it out with cancer for some months.

The world, and Sydney's activist community in particular, has lost a fine asset. <predator> was that rarest of geeks, a hardware hacker. He could turn a dumpster-dived non-working piece of hardware into an important and reliable component of our core equipment.

More importantly, <pred> possessed a wisdom beyond his years. To those who met him in passing, he could seem gruff, even rude. But scratch the surface and you would unexpectedly find a cheerful, warm and incredibly generous person, the kind of mate you knew would really help you out of a bind, were it necessary

<Pred> mate, we'll miss you.

Sydney Indymedia tribute page.

Our Glastonbury tickets just arrived. Wahoo! So getting up at 5am in Sydney to buy the tickets was worth the effort.

Well it looks like Bush has invoked Godwin's Law in the debate on the fight about terror. Application of Godwin's Law means that he has, of course, lost the argument.

We've moved into our new pad in Barons Court. Very nice place! Lots of sunlight in the lounge room and both rooms are very big.

Now waiting on Ikea and their crap delivery service so we can get the rest of our new furniture.

Wow, apparently my work's stock is worth something, which means my stock options are actually worth something. Well, there's a first time for everything!

Must be time to buy into Bubble Goo again.

Well I'm in Ljubljana again for work. It's been a bit less stressful than last time, and we're making progress on the work.

Tonight I caught up with one of the girls I met with my colleage Jen last time I was here. Unfortunately Nejka, the other girl we met, managed to crash her Mum's car this evening, and couldn't make it.

I've taken some photos with the new camera. Started out all rainy and shitty, but turned into a beautiful evening.