Category: Internet

Houston, We Have a Problem

Whore’s Drawers

The unreliability of our ADSL is becoming a major irritant. It’s been up and down like whore’s drawers of late and even when it’s up it’s like a slow foxtrot. TTNET blamed it on the quality of our telephone line. They have a point. All we get is lots of crackling. It’s astonishing just how completely reliant we now are on the internet not just for my irrelevant irreverent dispatches but more importantly for banking and fund watching to dodge insolvency. Not to mention keeping in touch with loved ones in Blighty via email and Skype. It’s our small but vital window on the World. We ordered in a swarthy Turk with ample tools to fiddle with our wires in exchange for cash. He sorted us out. For now.

Pounds and Porn

Up and Up it Goes!

I was casually surfing the net and stumbled across a web page published in 2008 that promoted Turkey as the low cost destination of choice for those wishing to live out their dotage in the sun. In between the usual flannel and hype I found a couple of blasé declarations that leapt from the page and beat me viciously about the face. The first stated that electricity costs “should be no more than £10 per month” and the second is that “Turkey will remain a low cost alternative for years to come”. Even if this was true at the time it certainly isn’t true now. Our last electricity bill was over 80 quid and the cost of our daily essentials seem to rise month on month. I don’t know how the locals manage and, with plummeting interest rates, I’m not surprised some of my fellow compatriots are struggling to make ends meet. I hear talk that, like the stateless nomadic tribes of yesteryear, emigreys are migrating en-masse to greener, cheaper pastures in the land of the Bulgars. We won’t be joining the camel train any time soon but if it carries on like this Liam and I will have to give up the sauce. Never!

Talking of web surfing, I was amused by the “gay hairy Turkish men” search that led someone to click on Perking the Pansies. I hope he (and assume it was a he) didn’t get too hot under the collar by the absence of hard core images of swarthy, hirsute men laying bare their assets and doing what Ottoman men have done for centuries. Now I’m getting hot under the collar.

Much Ado About Nothing

My nightly tribulations anticipating a cross knock at the door by a scandalised conscript in latex gloves conducting an internal investigation has mercifully abated. All the fuss started when a distressed Digiturk obtained a court order to shut down a couple of insignificant blogs illegally broadcasting highlights from the Turkish Süper Lig. In response, the inscrutable authorities banned hundreds of thousands of websites that share the same Google ‘address’ as the obsessive soccer bores with their wobbly handicams. Imagine the sheer farce of Calvin Klein forcing every market across the land to close because a few stalls flog phony CK knickers.

Yesterday I was off blog in a vain attempt to forget the whole sorry story and return to a near normal life of degenerate leisure. We had a late liquid lunch followed by a reinstatement of Liam’s conjugal rights hurriedly withdrawn when I was branded a petty felon. We topped off our perfect day with an evening of ‘Strictly’ courtesy of the BBC iPlayer. It was delectable to behold that unreconstructed old bigot and professional virgin with two left feet, Miss Widdecombe, finally expelled from the show. National institution? She should be in one.

I retired to my pit pissed and paranoid thinking our phone might be tapped.

Clapped in Irons

The screens have gone blank in Turkey and I hear there is much speculation about whether I should expect a knock at the door. I must confess, I have been slightly worried; have I unintentionally transgressed some Turkish Law or other? The explanation is both more prosaic and more ominous. It seems my blog has been caught in a blanket ban on hundreds of thousands of websites hosted by Google. When I first set up my site, Google assigned what’s called an ‘IP Address’ which I share with tens of thousands of others. At least one of these other sites has fallen foul of the authorities so the IP address itself has been blocked. So it’s one out, all out. I’ve looked at some of the other sites affected; they include many Turkish businesses and a lady in Istanbul promoting her pretty sketches. How sad.

As Churchill famously said “We’ll fight them on the beaches”. That’s the wartime prime minister by the way, not the nodding dog in the car insurance adverts.

The Wicked Web

I see the ban on You Tube has been reimposed for some reason. Honestly, all this web censorship is so regressive and only makes Turkey look daft.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

gaydarI hear the Turkish authorities have finally lifted the bar on You Tube now that the offending article about Atatürk has been removed. Good. I’m not generally in favour of banning things as it tends to drive activities underground. In any case, website bans are a blunt tool and easy to circumvent. At the same time, I hear that Gaydar, the social networking and contact site for gay people, has been added to the list of prohibited sites, presumably on spurious moral grounds. Gaydar is one of those rare British success stories, a social networking site with a global reach. The ban doesn’t affect us personally, but I am saddened by it. It will only add to the sense of loneliness, isolation and alienation that young gay people here must feel.

Corridors of Power

Our first encounter with Turkish bureaucracy was a salutary lesson for people like us living in the internet age where everything can be arranged from the comfort of an armchair. Alahan guided us through various corridors of power to collect the nod from an assortment of petty officials in cheap suits sitting behind excessively large desks framed by the flags of all nations. Alahan was a marvel, dispensing charm liberally to get us to the front of various queues. However, I suspect he’s burdened us with the most expensive Turkcell tariff imaginable judging by the number of units we’re using for even the shortest calls.