Rank of InfamySport on TV can be very boring. Yesterday saw the umpteenth
London Marathon and the commentators got very excited by the fact that records were set, a Brit or two ended up in the top 100 and it rained; this apparently cooled down the fastest runners but maybe caused hypothermia amongst the slowest who were probably dressed as dustbins in aid of charity.
How the common folk were dressed wasn't shown by the cameras of Eurosport, though I'm sure that mums, dads and the
hoi polloi out on the streets were happy to cheer on the masses.
I think Our Kid showed some interest too as I commented on the start of the race, which was my old stomping ground of Blackheath. The route went up Shooter's Hill Road, past Old Dover Road and a few side streets which I knew intimately as a teenager because that was my newspaper round and route to
The Valley, past the Baptist Church which my sister and I were shunted off to on a Sunday morning ~ possibly because our parents wanted to enjoy their conjugal rights ~ and then, fleetingly, past no. 204 where we spent our school years.
Oh look, I told Our Kid, there's the end wall of the parade of shops which was the view from my bedroom window. (I wonder if anyone has discovered my first grammar school report which I hid in a crack of the bay window.)
Yesterday proved to be a better sports day for those of us who like long-distance running, golf and curling, because the one TV broadcaster monopolising the English Premier League (EPL) have been taken off the air for a number of "administrative violations". These include its unpaid (since 2005!) frequency fees of Rp.191 million ($20,000). Interestingly, the company say that in not providing service to its 140,000 subscribers, it's losing $100,000 a day.
So it looks as if Astro/Direct Vision managed to mislay its petty cash box for three years or so. Being a generous hearted soul, wishing to think only the best of others, I would like to suggest that this is a matter of incompetence and not pure greed and that Astro, a Malaysian company, has the monopoly of broadcasting rights for the EPL makes good business sense.
As I said, I would like to say that but .....
I would also like to praise Telkom, the main telecommunications provider in Indonesia. I would like to praise them for providing sufficient bandwidth for adding informational links to this post, but I can't. I would also like to thank them for being discriminative when it comes to following the government guidelines and preventing access to sites which are provocative.
However, given that access to Jakartass and all blogs hosted by Blogspot, a Google company, was unilaterally denied by Telkom yesterday I can only condemn them wholeheartedly.
I'll let
The Rev speak for me.
Enemy actionThis morning, Sunday 12 April, Blogspot sites are inaccessible via my ISP (Telkom). They are, however, accessible via my Anonymizer account.
Specific blogs that I tried to visit include Jakartass (
thanks, Rev)
, Green Stump, Indonesia Now, Jenny Q and Friskodude. (
See my blogroll. J)
All were bounced by Telkom. When I switched on the Anonymizer service, they were all accessible. The only conclusion I can come to is that the whole of Blogspot is under interdiction by Telkom's ISP this morning.*
This is a national disgrace, and must be doing immense harm to Indonesia's international reputation. Denying people the right to freely visit established and respected web sites puts the government here in the same rank of infamy as China.
*This lasted most of the day. I used Indosat, others Linknet etc.
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