Is the world crazy or am I?

I don’t know what it is about Apple. Whether it be the smugness of people who swear by its products, or the increasing ubiquity of the brand; I just don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone and iPad are pretty and shiny bits of kit and Steve Jobs is undoubtedly a marketing and computing genius but there is something that alienates me about Apple. Now for one thing, people who worship Jobs get on my nerves. I know the man is infinitely more charismatic and likeable than the likes of Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and as I said before I respect what he’s achieved. Then again, I also equate Jobs to a drug dealer who gets you hooked on his expensive wears. This cartoon explains the matter further. I am not a fan of how restrictive Apple products are. Sure, “there’s an app for everything” and all that, but I dislike the fact that the company keeps trying to make its customers use its own software instead of giving users access to apps and programmes they are familia...

News oligarch Richard Desmond’s Northern and Shell publishing group has left the Press Complaints Commission. Just upped and left it. Not been cast out, not been asked to leave. It has just quit it. In many ways it is a bit like the company has told the PCC that it is taking its proverbial ball and is going home with it as it doesn’t want to play anymore. It’s not like Northern and Shell hasn’t had a scolding from the PCC in the past after all. Cast your mind back a couple of years and you may remember this atrocity , where the Scottish edition of The Express was forced to apologize for chastising the survivors of the Dunblane shootings for basically being teenagers. Also remember the case of OK magazine, who tastelessly published, what can only be described as a pre-posthumous tribute, to then not-yet-dead celeb-felch that was Jade Goody. This development will inevitably leave readers wondering who they should complain to if they dislike or disagree with something in The Daily...

Yes indeed folks, the fleeting period of festivities is over – well, over at least until the shops get their way to start flogging Christmas goods weeks after we take the decorations down, either that or we endure a perpetual Christmas season forced by the shops. Think about it, I’m sure we can use the economy to justify it somewhere. It’s been an odd Christmas this year as it has felt like everyone has been trying to ignore the event so it will go away or have been begrudgingly accepting it at the very least, whilst really not wanting it to be there. Basically Christmas this time around has been a bit like a mangy blind old dog, with bladder problems, that just won’t leave you alone. This year has been a real old-school “hard times” kind of Christmas. I’m quite honestly surprised we didn’t all get assigned regulation fingerless gloves and tatty macs. All the components were there, the snow, the recession, the alcoholism etc. It’s been a real taste of the 1980s. Well, we might...