Happy New Year

May I wish everyone a very happy 2010 ....

Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament

Why on earth (well not quite given that there is a space ship there as well) has Google got the symbol of the CND on its logo today?











Happy Christmas

Harvesting potatoes

Lets have some late harvest potatoes, she said a few months ago. Planted some seed potatoes in a number of potato bags and let them grow.

Now the idea was that we would have lovely new potatoes for Christmas dinner; however there was one slight hitch when I came to harvest them this morning ... the bags and the compost were frozen solid!

Anyone harvested potatoes with a sledgehammer before?

0101 days to go ...

My nerdish son has a Christmas countdown ... In binary ....


Sad

Anarchy in the UK ...

So the great British public said "we will not go quietly into the X-Factor night" and have done a huge V sign to the mass-produced sterile "music" that emanates from the Cowell factory - he who considers that he has a God given right to monopolise the Christmas charts. I downloaded a copy, not because I especially like "Killing In The Name" but because I wanted to register my views. One thing though - I thought that it was the young who railed against the world - not old farts like me ....

Carter-Ruck on the good guys side?

Had to take a large drink having read this here "

Carter-Ruck, defending Thomsen on a no-win, no-fee basis, says the action should be struck out because the words complained of in the writ are clearly not defamatory.

GE Healthcare is also suing over an article that appeared under Thomsen’s name in Imaging Management, a medical journal, published in Belgium, which referred to rumours that the company had been warned about possible problems with its product."

I feel ill ......

How to lose the propaganda war

Unless the public are convinced by the need to modify their behaviour in response to the (overwhelming in my view) evidence concerning man-made global warming then all the climate change conferences in the world will be a complete waste of time. At the moment the sceptics (ranging from the the outright deniers through to those who question whether it is man's activities that are responsible for climate change) are - certainly in the UK and the US - are winning the propaganda battle.

Influential articles from journalists (ranging from the obsessional Christopher Booker in the Telegraph to articles like this in the Mail on Sunday) have sown huge doubt in the non-scientific public (and possibly amongst those scientists who are not climate specialists). Similar articles have occurred in the right-wing press in the States (just google Climategate and you will see what I mean) encouraged, I suspect, by some very powerful lobby groups have, along with what appears on the surface to be dreadful behaviour by those scientists at UEA, will make the task of carrying the public forwards that much harder.

(As an aside: please don't expect scientists to behave as if they are not as vain as the rest of us! Just read James Watson's Double Helix and you will see my point)

Priorities right?

On the day that Brown has promised over a billion pounds to the poorer, third world countries to help combat global warming ( I bet the Swiss bankers were rubbing their hands in glee) the news has broken that massive defence cuts are imminent is astonishing.

Irrespective of the politics of global warming (and yes I am a believer not a sceptic) the first comment that came to mind is where the hell is this money that Brown has promised for global warming coming from? And secondly the first priority of any government is to protect its citizens. For Brown to promise billions of pounds at the same time as slashing the defence budget is just ludicrous.

As for the fact that our soldiers are fighting a war in Afghanistan ... well .....

Memory time

My father was a keen railway enthusiast - cadging trips on footplates back in the days when engines were steam powered . As a doctor he knew many of the railwaymen especially since he ran their first aid training courses in and around Oswestry. So I was surprised and moved to find this series of photographs in and around the town.

http://www.cambrianrailways.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46

Weird petrol stations behaviour

Why when there are signs saying "fill up either side" with hoses long enough to reach both sides of a car do people still queue up so that they can use a pump on the same side as the fuel inlet into their car?

Will they ban viagra?

Bit tongue in cheek really but it masks a nasty truth. One of the issues that is fueling the spate between Alan Johnson and, the slightly unfortunately named, Professor Nutt is the effect of cannabis on mental health. Professor Nutt in the paper which sparked off the row which presented to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has rationised the argument trotted out by politicians of all hues (although Alan Johnson has been particularly stupid) that there is a link between schizophrenia and taking cannabis and the incident of schizophrenia is far far less of a risk when compared with smoking.

So why mention viagra? Well there is a clear and unassailable link between the age of a father when siring a child and the risk of schizophrenia in that child.

From www.schizophrenia.com

"Recent studies have indicated that children who are born to older fathers have a higher risk of schizophrenia. Researchers have suggested that the problem of damaged sperm could be the cause of approximately 15% to 25% of all cases of schizophrenia. This is believed to be due to the higher levels of DNA damage in the sperm of older men. Researchers estimate that compared to a male fathering a child in his early 20's - there is double the chance of the child getting schizophrenia when the father is age 40, and triple the risk of schizophrenia when the father is age 50. (though, for most people this means the risk goes from approximately 1 in 121 when a man is 29, to to 1 in 47 when a man is age 50 to 54)."

For obvious reasons one effect of viagra is to increase the chances of older men becoming fathers . So I would expect that in a few years time there would be a surge of unfortunates with that horrible disease.

So if one of the major reasons to ban cannabis is because of the potential risk of schizophrenia then viagra ought to be banned because of the much much stronger chance of harm ....

Will they? Like hell!

I'm back ....

Long break from blogging; been too knackered from all the driving

And there is no one left to march

Following the death of Harry Patch, there is now just one British serviceman left alive who served in WW1 - Claude Choules - who stayed in Australia following WW1. He was born a few miles away from where I now live- the gloriously name Wyre Piddle - and joined the RN in 1916. He witnessed the internment of the Hochseeflotte in November 1918 when the remnants of the German fleet was forced to sail between lines of the greatest concentration of Dreadnoughts ever seen. The whole of the RN's Grand Fleet together with 9 US Dreadnoughts formed two parallel columns between which the Germans had to sail before their internement and final scuttling in Scapa Flow.

When he goes, that is it. No one left to march. My own Grandfather, who served throughout the First War (he arrived in France in Sept 1914 with the 6th Division) and, upon his death bed in the 1970s was transported back to those days, and millions and millions others have all gone.

It is now history.

Slight lack of posts

New job ...

Shattered

The Gutter Press

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God! the British journalist But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to” Humbert Wolfe

The MoD had an embargo on the releasing of the details of the death of Lt Col Thorneloe and of Trooper Joshua Hammond until 22:00 yesterday at the request of the family.

Guess what? The Sun broke the embargo - and other news organisations followed. (The BBC at least kept the embargo)

I hope that relatives of the dead men didn't hear of their deaths through the media.

Now you know why they are called the "Gutter Press"

(Source: Arrse here where they are not too happy)

The Ghosts

I first published this exactly a year ago. It still is a heart-rending episode in our history


__________________________________________________


It is a glorious day here - it promises to be one of the hottest days of the year, Wimbledon is in full swing ("Well Done Andy") and the kids schools are winding down for the summer - trips away - now that the exam season is now over. But July 1st for my Grandfather meant reminders of a day of unimaginable horror - the First Day on the Somme. There are no survivors left now - Harry Patch ("The Last Fighting Tommy") served at 3rd Ypres in 1917 - from either side and so the Somme has passed from living memory and all that are left are grainy black and white photographs, sound recordings from later years and literary records.

It was the first time in action for Kitchener's army, that product of the extraordinary rush to enlist that occured in the late summer and autumn of 1914, something that is alien to us now in a vastly more cynical - or realistic - age. The Pals Battalions, that poignant reminder of civic pride where whole communities joined en-masse ("The Liverpool Pals, "The Tyneside Commercials" and, famously, "The Accrington Pals") and served together and who were to die together and bring heart-ache to the close communities from which they came.

The plans was simple:a week long bombardment to attempt to break the dense thickets of wire between the two sides and to bury the Germans in their dugouts, followed by a simple occupation of the German defences by the infantry. The tactics were simple too: the British staff considered that it would be too difficult to teach the New Army "fire and movement" and so they dictated that the troops would attack in lines - each soldier being about 3 yards apart.

The bombardment failed - the shrapnel shells failed to cut the wire and the bigger, high-explosive shells were too few in number and too inadequate to destroy the Germans deep in their bunkers.

Its the innocence that hits one now: the playing of a football accross the lines by Captain Nevill of the East Surreys (he died) as did a North Country player from the Newcastle Commercials, the officers dressing up, making them conspicuous - few officers wore the Tommy serge as they would later - carrying sticks with which to direct their troops, the cheering of the troops as they looked at the apparent destruction opposite.

And what then? It was literally a race for life. The Germans had to get up from the dugouts and set up their machine guns or they would die before British troops occupied their trenches. For the British, they had to get past the obstacles in no-man's-land or they too would die.

The wire was uncut in many places: the Germans set up their machine guns and poured flanking fire (much more effective that firing directly into a body of troops) and the massacre began. Some of the attacking battalions were destroyed - the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers - part of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) which represented Protestant ascendancy in Northern Ireland in 1914 and which had joined up together to form the 36th Ulster Divison - lost over 500 officers and men, the Tyneside Scottish Brigade lost all 4 of its battalion commanders.

Nearly 60,000 casualties were suffered on that day, including almost 20,000 killed. It was the worst single day in the history of the British Army.

It was the day that the innocent Edwardian time died and the modern cynical era began.

Death of ID cards?

Wouldn't be certain of it at all. Although Alan Johnson has said that they are not to be compulsory, I wouldn't put it past this shabby government to say "of course they are voluntary ... but you will need one if you want any form of government service ... health, passport, welfare etc etc"

Could someone please tell her to shut up?

I am attempting to watch the tennis this afternoon and Victoria Azarenka is playing.

She makes a vile screeching noise like an owl on steroids.


Please Wimbledon ... SHUT HER UP!

Last nights match

I wonder if in future years Wimbledon will schedule a match every evening to start at aroung 8pm and then to play it under the roof? It was patently obvious that the television people (one point not mentioned is that it would have gone out in early prime time on the east coast of the US ) and the crowds there absolutely adored the spectacle - although I gather that Murray found the humidity high.

The BBC basically dumped BBC1 for the evening - in the full knowledge that the match will be completed rather than being paused until the next day - and, given the fact it was Murray playing, I suspect that the audience was very high.

Methinks that the pressure upon Wimbledon to play a late evening match under the roof and lights as a regular fixture will become very high indeed.

I am glad I haven't got Sky Sports

Imagine the family battle: my wife would want Wimbledon... I the Lions.

Probably guess who would win :-(


Tense though. 16:8 to the Lions as I write.

Michael Jackson

Amongst all of the vomit making praise people should remember that he had some very serious child abuse allegations made against him, one of which was settled out of court.

The New Warfare

A couple of years ago I bought Rupert Smith's excellent "Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World" in which he argues - clearly in my view - that the structure of the armed forces at the moment is completely wrong for what he called fighting "asymmetric wars" where the enemy is of almost pre-industrial capability. Examples abound: the Iraq insurgency, present day Afghanistan, the Intefada in Palestine and so on where the enemy is not the forces of some nation state but rather they arise from within the populace.

The old heavy army (tanks, big guns etc) for example is not suitable for either the insurgency type of warfare nor for police actions (a mistake that the Israelis have made on more than one occasion) and so I was not surprised to see in today's Telegraph a long discussion about the forces that Britain actually needs.

The most interesting point is a diagram (not sadly on line although the article is here) which contrasts what we have with what is needed (at least according to the Telegraph) :

What we have:

• 2,700 artillery pieces
• 1,000 snatch Land Rovers
• 575 Warrior APCs
• 386 Challenger Tanks
• 343 Combat Aircraft
• 85 Warships

Now what the Telegraph reckons we need are:

• 600 Armoured Diggers
• 300 All-terrain protective vehicles
• 60 Light reconnaisance aircraft
• 40 Light helicopters
• 36 Super Tucano light attack aircraft
• 30 Hermes drones
• 25 Herc "J"s
• 20 extra Chinooks
• PLUS another 4,000 troops

This would provide a much more balanced force for the sort of warfare we are fighting - but given the entrenched positions of all the services (and also within the services - do you think the Tankies will like losing their reason for existing?) it will have a cat in hells chance of succeeding.

One noteworthy thing: The Telegraph's restructured forces has a vastly diminished role for the RAF : all helicopter operations could as easily be performed by the army or navy where appropriate as indeed could heavy lift operations.

They are not going to like this (esp the ghost of my father - RAF Squadron Leader) but is it time to reconsider having the RAF as a separate service?

Brown's financial reputation is shot to pieces

A couple of weeks ago I was on one of these Radio 5 phone in where there pit two people of diametrically opposing views against each other. The talk was about the mess that Brown has got us into over the last 12 or so years when he was either Chancellor or PM. I mentioned a few - selling of gold, the raid upon the pensions funds and queried where all the money was going to come from in order to fund Labour's spending commitments. I got no satisfactory answer from the other person on the call.


Anyway I found this over at the Times's WebSite "Gordon Brown's 10 worst financial gaffes" which gives in far better detail the catastrophe that was "Prudence" Brown.

It is well worth a read:
___________________________________________________________________

In 2006, an eloquent Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was "ready to make the decisions for people and to work with other people to make this country the great country it is at all times." A year later he became Prime Minister, and the rest is history. Here is a list of Gordon's worst financial blunders, the screw-ups which have cost us all dearly and left economists, accountants and the rest of us scratching our heads in disbelief.

1. Taxing dividend payments

Before 1997, dividends issued by UK companies and paid to pension funds were tax-free - that is, the tax could be claimed back via a system of tax credits. Not any more, decided Brown. Tax relief was scrapped, reducing the amount collected by pension funds by around £5 billion a year. Pension funds holding the cash that you, me and almost everyone else in the country plan to use for our retirement have lost around £100 billion over the last 12 years. That's one hell of a stealth tax.

2. Selling our gold

In May 1999 Gordon Brown had a plan to sell some gold. There were two problems with this, which concerned his economic advisers deeply. The price of gold had slumped after a decade of stagnation, but was likely to increase in the proceeding years. Added to this, the announcement of a major sell-off would drive the price down further. Little of this worried Gordon. Experts believe that the poorly timed decision to flog our national treasure has cost us all around £3 billion. Granted, that doesn't seem much nowadays, but more of that later.

3. Tripartite financial regulation

The system of financial regulation dividing powers between the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority, established by Brown as Chancellor in 2000, missed what amounted to the biggest financial crisis of our lifetime. Whoops. This has led some glass-half-empty commentators to conclude that the system set up by Brown failed and should be replaced. The Commons Treasury Select Committee’s report on the collapse of Northern Rock said that the Financial Services Authority had “systematically failed in its duty” to oversee the troubled bank’s activities. Little did it realise at the time that Northern Rock was the over-leveraged tip of the securitised iceberg.

4. Tax credits

“Gordon Brown claims the tax credits system lifts children out of poverty,” says Simon Blackmore, 38, who was pursued for £6,057 in over-paid tax credits. “Maybe it does, but only to plunge them and their families into debt two years later.” Millions of low-income families have had to pay back the Treasury after receiving too much money in tax credits, putting them under huge financial and emotional strain. Meanwhile, 40 per cent of workers and families who deserved tax credits left billions of pounds unclaimed in the 2008-09 tax year for fear of being chased for the cash later on. Introduced in 1999, reformed in 2000, tax credits have been "a complete disaster zone", according to tax experts.

5. The £10,000 corporation tax threshold

In 2002, Gordon Brown introduced a new tax regime to help small businesses. He announced a new zero per cent rate of corporation tax on profits below £10,000. It was designed to boost the ability of small businesses to grow and prosper. It didn't quite work out this way. It became advantageous for sole traders such as taxi drivers or plumbers to turn themselves into limited companies to take advantage of the new rules. A Treasury Minister later commented that "the Government did not realise how many people would engage in abusive tax avoidance", despite the fact that it was "blindingly obvious" to tax experts "within 5 seconds" of the budget announcement that this would happen. Gordon scrapped the rules a few years later, raising the rate from 0 per cent to 19 per cent when he released how much money was being lost.

6. Abolition of the 10p tax rate

Mr Brown rarely apologises. In fact, he never apologises. But occasionally he acknowledges "mistakes", albeit begrudgingly. Over the abolition of the 10p tax rate in 2007, Mr Brown told Radio 4's Today programme that "we made two mistakes. We didn't cover as well as we should that group of low-paid workers who don't get the working tax credits and we weren't able to help the 60 to 64-year-olds who didn't get the pensioner's tax allowance." Experts use stronger language to describe the Budget of 2007, which was designed to produce positive headlines for the 2p cut in income tax. Accountants calculated that the scrapping of the 10 per cent tax rate, coupled with the increase in the proportion of tax credits withdrawn from higher earners, would leave 1.8 million workers earning between £6,500 and £15,000 paying an effective tax rate of up to 70 per cent.

7. Failing to spot the housing bubble

Gordon Brown said he ended boom and bust, and in those innocent days before the collapse of the global finance system we believed him. In 1997, he outlined his plans. "Stability is necessary for our future economic success", he wisely informed an audience at the CBI. "The British economy of the future must be built not on the shifting sands of boom and bust, but on the bedrock of prudent and wise economic management." The other components of that bedrock including a trillion-pound debt mountain and a decade of unchecked and unparalleled house price inflation presumably slipped his mind. In 2003 a mild-mannered Liberal Democrat MP by the name of Vince Cable dared to question the mantra of "the end of boom and bust". He asked Gordon Brown: "Is it not true that...the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?" Gordon replied: "The Honourable Gentleman has been writing articles in the newspapers, as reflected in his contribution, that spread alarm, without substance, about the state of the economy..." We all know what happened next.

8. 50 per cent tax rate

Robert Chote, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said the tax hike which heralded the end the new Labour may actually end up losing the Government money. "If you look at what happened when higher rates were last changed in the 1980s, that might lead you to suggest that such a move might actually lose you revenue, rather than gain it, as people actually declare less income for tax," he said.

9. Cutting VAT

"It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious," said a tax accountant when asked about the Brown-Darling brainwave to cut VAT by 2.5 percentage points. As a nation of shoppers, rather than shopkeepers, a chopped down sales tax sounds like a good idea, providing a vital boost to hard-pressed families at a time of financial hardship. There were two problems. It costs £12.5 billion a year and it has made little discernable difference to those hard-pressed families because it is shopkeepers, rather than shoppers, who have pocketed much of the benefit.

10. Public-sector borrowing

If Gordon had only saved a little more in the good times, we might have had a little more to fall back on in the bad, economists sigh. Last month saw public-sector net borrowing hit £19.9 billion, the highest on record, according to the Office for National Statistics. The chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, has forecast that Government borrowing will reach £175 billion this year. It is forecast that total government debt will double to 79 per cent of GDP by 2013, the highest level since World War 2. Mr Chote recently warned that "the scale of the underlying problem that the Treasury’s detailed forecasts identify will require two full parliaments of mounting austerity to repair.”

Even after he leaves office in 2010, as is almost certain, it seems that we will all be paying for Gordon's gaffes for many years to come.

Give Bercow a chance

Speaker Bercow needs a chance. I suspect that he will be better than Gorbal's Mick (not difficult). Comments that Nadine Dorries made this morning are unhelpful and if the Tories were to force him out after the next election it would set a dreadful precedent with Labour returning the honour at the first possible opportunity. Not a good idea

Not Beckett

Labour still don't get it. If, as rumours have it, Nick Brown is whipping Labour in support of Margaret Beckett then Labour is compounding a major mistake.

Beckett is too close to the Labour hierarchy and given her extremely dodgy expenses claims (remember that pergola anyone? or has that been forgotten in the deluge of scandal since?) she is pretty well as tainted as anyone. As her disastrous performance on Question Time showed she will not be the person to improve the image of politicians with the public. My suspicion is that if elected the howls of protest from the press at a blatant whipping operation by the bunker will destroy her speakership before it even starts.

Also a third Labour speaker on the trot? Now I know that the so-called convention on alternating speakers doesn't actually exist but this is ridiculous.

Personnally I want Ann Widdicome - not especially because I like her - but for the simple reason that she has stated that she will be an interim Speaker and hence will buy time to sort out the mess.

The Iranian Supreme Leader

"The most evil of them all is the British Government." ( here via the Guardian)

Funnily enough a lot of Brits might well agree with him!




PS

My wife muttered that his title reminded her of "The Supreme Dalek ....."

The Expenses

After today's pathetic excuse for openness by the Common's authorities I am damn glad that the Telegraph published what they did.

NB The Telegraph are publishing the gories on Saturday .... Link here

The Hypocritical Times

Guido (and Iain Dale and Hopi Sen and ...) has blogged about the Times outing the blogging policeman Night Jack (a disgraceful episode - it was in nobodies interest for the blogger to be exposed).

What is almost as appalling is that the Times has stopped accepting comments on its web site about the issue. (here)

There are precisely two comments. Yes two. One, to be fair hostile, but the other less so. I more than strongly suspect is that the Times has received a deluge of hostile comments from around the world and is frankly just censoring them.

Pure and simple hypocrisy.

Update

Extraordinarily there is more comment about the Times's actions here at the Telegraph following a well reasoned article on blogging than there is on the Times itself.

Update 2

Daniel Finkelstein has attempted to justify the Times's attitude here. At least his comments are not being censored.

The disaster that is DAB

I bought my wife a year or so ago a DAB radio - mainly for Radio 2 (TOG you see) and it has been an unmitigated disaster. Its not as if we live out in the back of beyond; in fact we live about 1Km from a city (not town .. not village but city) centre and the reception is dire. It burbles, warbles and drifts to such an extent that it is frequently impossible to listen to.

The Government has plans to drop AM and FM frequencies and to force everyone to use DAB. The reasons that this is a mad bad idea are legion:

• Every FM/AM only radio (and that includes many mobile phones, MP3 players etc) in the country will be binned. Who is going to pay for the more expensive DAB radios? (one guess guys ....)
• The technology is dreadful. It uses technology from the 1980's - especially the compression methods (mp2) which ensure that we receive poor quality broadcasts. DAB is also becoming obsolete already with the introduction of DAB+ with AAC+ (another, better, compression method)
• The power consumption of DAB sets is far higher that for the old AM/FM ones... Green? Hah!

As always my feeling is that its not digital Britain that the government cares about but rather how much money can be made from flogging off the old AM/FM bands ....

Brussels Sprouts Banned

Wonder if she has gas turbines?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5549951/Brussels-sprouts-banned-from-warship.html

Why we must dump Labour

Over on LabourList is a deeply scary and worrying post that seems to show all that is wrong with the Labour mindset. This government has seriously eroded our civil liberties and has demonstrated that it will continue to do so in order to stay in power.

The post effective says that in order to keep Labour policy in the event of a Conservative victory at the next election, Labour should legally entrench these policies in order that the Conservatives would think twice about repealing them.

Its the fact that a Labour supporter would even think about such a thing worries me. It smacks of authoritarianism on a grand scale. The point about elections is that they allow the voters to dump parties and policies they don't like.

It wasn't me honest...

" Alice Cooper fan 'hit man with false leg'

A rock fan removed his false leg during an Alice Cooper gig and punched a fellow fan in the face 10 times after he was asked to calm down, a court heard."

Full story over at the Telegraph

Iconic

Just had this fly over the house ... spectacular sight!

Heartless

This story must be one of the most heartless imaginable. A disabled man - recovering from spinal surgery - was done for parking because he had placed his disabled badge upside down on the dashboard.

Apart from the lack of commonsense from ‘Civil Enforcement Officer number 15’ (WTF is that in English??!!!) , attitude of Herefordshire council is truly astonishing:

"Alison Cook, of Herefordshire Council, said: “All blue badge holders are requested to display their badge the right way around so that the expiry date is visible.

“Instructions on how to display the badge are clearly laid out in the terms and conditions of use issued with the pass. If it is not displayed properly, this may result in a penalty notice being issued. “Regarding the case under discussion, the badge was displayed the wrong way around, which is why a penalty notice was issued.”!

Hope that the nationals pick this one up ...

Crispy bacon !

How an electric fence can ruin a good day !!





Hat tip CJ

Over the precipice

Apparently Labour MPs banged their desks and clapped Gordon Brown when he entered the committee room earlier.

Brown is safe... and Labour are doomed. They have blown their only chance of winning the next election.

A warning for the regulators

I notes with wry amusement that the Swedish Pirate Party has - to every one's astonishment - won a seat in the European Parliament. This is going to throw a major spanner in the works of the regulators .

The Pirate Party are the er er political wing of the Pirate Bay website who advocate Internet file sharing (note: they are NOT file sharers themselves but provide tools for searching for such) who were recently convicted by Swedish courts - 1 year in slammer and ordered to pay £2.5m....

It seems that although they are most famous for their file sharing activities, they stood on a platform which contested Swedish surveillance laws which allow the authorities to monitor telephone, Internet and email traffic. They should be at home in the European Parliament then ......

The BNP

If the odious BNP are a far-right party then why have they done well in Labour heartlands?

The ultimate humiliation for Labour ...

"Monster Raving Loony beats Labour"



http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=423173


Hee hee!

Ungoverning Britain

Are we being governed at all? At the moment the Government seems petrified in the lights of the scandal that have overwhelmed Westminster and seems incapable of frankly anything. Jacqui Smith going as Home Secretary (about time - now for the people of Redditch to evict her as their MP) only indicates how bad things have got. Brown must be desperate if he considers that appointing Ed Balls in Darling's place will only make things worse: he is probably loathed by certain parts of Labour as he is by the Tories. he is a truly divisive character - having associated himself with Brown for so long that he is seen as his his henchman - the remaining Blairites really detest him.

The problem now is what to do?

Brown - as his is right (and indeed as John Major did) - will hang on until the last possible moment for an election but the damage that that will impart is massive.

No Labour MP will support a No-Confidence vote (although it would send a massive shot across Brown's bows) and Brown is not the type to just go to the country. The country will not accept a second unelected PM (despite all the constitutional point about electing the party and not the PM) so Labour will know that attempting to usurp Brown will just cause their own downfall.

Juno forgotten

However upset the British are about the lack of invitation of the Queen to the commemorations to the 65th Anniversary of the D-Day landings, this should be nothing as to how the Canadians should feel. They are the forgotten force of D-Day. The Canadian 2nd Infantry Division had been slaughtered at Dieppe just under 2 years before and there was an understandable concern that history would be repeated.

As it happened the attack by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division upon Juno Beach was in its initial stages as bloody as that on Omaha with casualty rates of almost 50% and altogether there were about 1,000 killed and wounded over the day.

They seem to be well and truly forgotten - unrepresented at the commemorations in a way that makes the British seem as if they are shining in the spotlight.


Update

I see Prince Charles has been invited. As heir to the Canadian throne I hope he visits the Canadian beach

Now he really is stiff ....

"US 'Viagra scientist' dies at 92 "

Bad taste I know but ....

The Nation's Favourite Poet

Been looking through the selection given by the BBC here and there are a couple of outstanding omissions. Firstly Shakespeare - his sonnets are immortal. But the one that is missing above all is William McGonagall, widely considered to be the worst poet to "grace" the English language. You see "favourite" is not the same as "best" and I just love reading the dreadful lines of the man from Dundee and I suspect that he has given far far more enjoyment than large number of considerably (not difficult I suppose) more talented poets....

For more on McGonagall see here

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

The Telegraph

I am getting a little tired now of the way that the Telegraph has been dominated for weeks now by the expenses scandal with details being on pages 1 2 3 4 5 ..... I would rather like to get back the paper I like.

I think the time has come to release ALL of the details on the now infamous CD into the public domain.

More scandal

The MP's expenses scandal escalated today when it was discovered that David Blunkett had claimed for a motorcycle, a hang-glider and a pair of binoculars!

Hazel is toast

A number of commentators - including Iain Dale here - have suggested that Hazel Blears is being lined up for being dumped by Gordo especially following her outspoken attack on how Gordo is running the country.

This from the BBC seem to confirm that view.

Martin blows it

Just watched the Speaker make a complete hash of his opportunity to clean up the Commons. he has in fact without a shadow of doubt made things worse by his complete misjudgement of the feeling of not just the House but also of the country at large. He gave no indication of his plans, no indication of when he will go. Absolute disastrous performance.

He must go NOW

Star Trek

Just had a friend on the phone talking about the new (brilliant btw - saw it last Saturday) Star Trek film.

There is a scene where Captain Pike (Kirk's predecessor as Enterprise commanding officer) is being tortured by the Romulans in order to disclose Spock's whereabouts.

Apparently in one cinema someone shouted out at this point "Don't tell him Pike!"

Priceless

BNP shoots itself in the foot

Iain Dale has reported that the BNP has claimed that the VC awarded to Johnson Beharry "was only awarded his Victoria Cross because he is black".

Actually I though that the medal was awarded to Beharry was awarded because he twice performed actions of outstanding heroism, either one of which would have probably won a high award for gallantry.

With luck, comments like those above will make people think twice before voting BNP.


VC citation here

The Speaker

With Douglas Carswell's vote of no confidence in Michael Martin imminent it is worth wondering what the minimum vote that will be needed to cause his resignation. Given the tribal loyalties of Labour I strongly suspect that Carswell will not get an absolute majority but that does not mean that Martin is safe. From a historical point-of-view it is worth remembering that Chamberlain actually won the vote in May 1940 but was forced to go because his majority had been slashed.

Now obviously the circumstances are very different, it does mean that given a sufficient minority Martin is doomed. The question is what size of minority will be needed before Martin gets the hint?

Just a few votes against him and he will survive but I don't think that that will happen. There is just too much feeling against him. I suspect that it will be the number of abstentions that will be crucial. MPs might not feel upto positively voting against him, but they realise that he will have to go. A high level of abstentions will force him out just as much as a positive vote against.

Will Nick Clegg's intervention allow more high profile MPs to come out against him?

I hope so.....

The Crooks or the Fascists

The current situation reminds me somewhat of the 2002 election in France when it was between Chirac and Le Pen .....

A bunch of freeloading (criminal maybe) MPs who are boosting the BNP....

Not nice

Voodoo polls ...

One of my pet hates are what Sir Bob Worcester calls "Voodoo polls". These are classically on-line polls beloved by political web sites.

A beautiful example is the one today on ConservativeHome here. "Two-thirds of Conservative members say Andrew MacKay should cease to be Tory MP"

Er no it doesn't mean that at all. It means that 2/3rd of the people who clicked the buttons said that "Andrew MacKay should cease to be Tory MP". The people who took the poll were self-selecting - they got off their arses and clicked the buttons. How do we know that they were Conservative members? Were their membership numbers checked? Er no. All that happened was that the people said they were Conservative members ... a very very different thing altogether. Next , were the people who were actually Tory party members representative of the party at large? Again we don't know the demographics of the people involved. All we are certain of is that they had access to the Internet. They could have drifted to the website or they all could come from LabourList or LabourHome .

There is nothing to control the poll, nothing to check whether it is being fixed, no attempt to make it a demographic sample. The poll is completely meaningless but it made the Spectator here.

More on Voodoo Polls



Update

It has made Ben Brogan in the Telegraph ...

How do we select MPs

I have always liked and admired Kate Hoey for her constantly being independently bloody minded and not being lobby fodder. Individuals like her are becoming fewer and fewer which is greatly to the detriment of Parliament. I DON'T want MP's who - like the Ruler of the Queen's Navy "I always voted at my Party's call And I never thought of thinking for myself at all".

I am deeply concerned that the route to becoming an MP is more and more via the parties - Special Advisers for example - is now the norm and that the experience of life outside politics is deminishing. There are exceptions of course - Liam Fox & Nadine Dorries are both medically trained - but they are now becoming fewer and fewer much to Parliament's detriment.

When are the pair we are all waiting for coming out?

Balls & Cooper ....

I checked with Guido this morning (yes he DOES answer emails!) and he had heard nothing of the rumoured injunction so I suspect that the Telegraph will be publishing their expenses soon....

This becoming like the Augean Stables - a complete clean out is required.

I must say that Cameron is handling this with far greater skill than Brown, even Mackay's loss was dealt with far more effectively than Labour did with Morley - especially now it has emerged that the Labour chief whip knew about the problem with Morley at least a week ago ....

Just when you thought the worst of the expenses claims were over

This man appeared. Has he no shame? Claiming Remembrance Sunday wreathes on expenses is really the lowest of the low.

The Telegraph must be careful

It is becoming obvious that the tactic being used by MP's in order to defend themselves against the indefensible (apart from the dreadful "its all within the rules") is to pounce on the slightest inaccuracy in their reporting. A good example is Phil Woolas's tampons and women's clothing. I strongly suspect - as does Dizzy - that this was a clerical error and that the Telegraph go this minor point wrong - it doesn't detract from the general thrust of their reporting - but this defence will be used again and again: a minor error by the Telegraph will be used as a smokescreen by the MPs.

I am impressed by Margaret Moran though.... She hasn't actually said in what respect the Telegraph is wrong. Just that it is ...

She is an MP and an honorable member so I must believe her.

Expenses claim

I love Harperson's comment : "I don't think there's any reason for resignations, but there is reason to tighten up the system "

When did she have this Pauline convertion?

Trident

One of the very big decisions that Cameron will have to take when he becomes Prime Minister is whether to build a replacement for Trident in about 10 years time. I am not certain whether he should, even though this might mean the end of the British "independent" nuclear deterrent.

Firstly the sheer cost of £21billion (at present - it will rise it always does) is just too much for the services to carry. I know that Trident is considered to be a national asset and comes out of the MoD budget rather than the Navy's but it still a huge amount, especially given the cost of the two new aircraft carriers.

Secondly, and this refers to the carriers. It is my view that expeditionary warfare will be the norm for the foreseeable future - given the changing patterns of warfare to what Rupert Smith in his book "Utility of Force" called "wars amongst people" and hence the ability to power project is much more important than having the ultimate deterrent. We will not be able to guarantee having use of friendly airfields close by the theatre of operations and having a carrier or two would be of far far more use to operations than a Trident sub. (BTW the same argument also applies to the "heavy army" - the armoured regiments of Charley 2 tanks - resources should be swung to the infantry) . I don't believe that we can afford both the carriers and the subs so given the current nature of warfare the carriers MUST come first.

As for for Trident being the ultimate deterrent, there would be only a few states now that would even contemplate using nukes and these would be rogue states such as Iran or N. Korea. The issue I have - and its a selfish one I agree - is whether they would attack us with nuclear weapons - and frankly I don't believe they would. Trident would be of no use whatsoever against terrorists armed with nuclear weapons (the basic designs of which are openly available) since they wouldn't care about retailaton. Would we take out, say, Teheran, if an Iranian based terrorist group attacked the UK?

On balance I am coming to the conclusion that Trident must go ....

Johnny

Fantastic effort by MPs - of all parties I am pleased to say - to tell this Government that they got their policy on the Gurkhas badly badly wrong. Although its an opposition (well done the LibDems) vote and hence not binding, this Government would be incredidibly stupid (or is it stupider?) to ignore this vote.

The Gurkhas are different (and the rules about the Gurkhas should also be used to all non-British soldiers who serve - there are literally thousands of Fijians in the forces) and frankly anyone who is prepared to die for this country must be allowed to live here

A rare techie post

I got my hands on a Sun 420R last week - it would have ended up the tip otherwise - and have been struggling to install Solaris 10 ever since ...

Downloaded Solaris 10 from Sun here and burnt it on to a DVD.... Anyway for some unknown reason the machine would not boot from the DVD (and it also failed with an original, kosher Sun DVD) so I was a bit stuffed. I later managed to install Solaris 9 but that was missing a lot of the goodies I wanted (ZFS, Dtrace etc etc) as well as MySQL etc etc

So I wondered about using a Linux box as a Jumpstart server : bootp doesn't care what it is copying, neither does bootparamd and a bit of googling showed me that it was possible (esp here which was excellent )

Given the usefulness of such a technique - Linux boxes being a damn sight being cheaper than Suns and would make very good inexpensive servers - I went for it...

Firstly I copied the .iso onto the Linux box (192.168.1.3 - ben) and mounted it using the loop option

# mount -o loop /tmp/SOL_10_1008_SPARC.iso /data/sol

This allowed me inside the iso :-)

According to the web site above a few things needed to be done in order to sort out a few glitches...

# ln -s /bin/tar /bin/bar
# ln -s /bin/sed /usr/bin/sed
# ln -s /usr/bin/gdb /usr/bin/adb

A shell script to mimic the Sun mach (1) is needed as well:

# echo '#!/bin/bash' > /bin/mach
# echo "uname -p" >> /bin/mach
# chmod +x /bin/mach


Once all this is done then the jumpstart area can be created using the standard commands. ( I will use the same directory as in the site: /home/jumpstart/install)

# cd /data/sol/Solaris_10/Tools
#./setup_install_server /home/jumpstart/install

Make certain that all the tools are installed that will be required: tftpd, bootparamd and nfs (both common and kernel)

For instance (on my Ubuntu box):

# apt-get install bootparamd (I much prefer apt-get to rpm!)
# apt-get install tftp
# apt-get install nfs-common
# apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

So once all this done, we can configure the server ...

Check that tftpd is enabled in inetd.conf (or wherever your operating system has it).. I used the default of /tftpboot
tftp dgram udp wait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /tftpboot

Now the fun starts ....

According to Alex's site the following files need to be changes:

• /etc/hosts
  
  Add the remote machine into it - in this case warspite and 192.168.1.70
  
  One major gotcha: ensure that your local host name is not pointed to localhost (127.0.0.1) but rather to the IP address as assigned .....
  
• /etc/ethers
  
  Put into this the client's ethernet address :
  
  # cat /etc/ethers
  08:00:20:fe:4a:fb warspite
  
  On a SPARC box the MAC is displayed upon boot (even if the machine hasn't got an operating system!) - just write it down!
  
• /etc/bootparams
  
  I got the following to work:
  
  # cat /etc/bootparams
  
  warspite root=ben:/home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot \ install=ben:/home/jumpstart/install \
  boottype=:in \
  rootopts=ben:rsize=8192,wsize=8192
  
• /etc/exports
  
  Setup the NFS shares:
  
  /home/jumpstart/install 192.168.1.70(ro,no_root_squash,async,no_subtree_check)
  
  There is a known issue about compatibility between Solaris and Linux versions of NFS so it is necessary to disable NFS v4 on the Linux box ....
  
  # cd /etc/default
  
  vi nfs-kernel-server
  
  Change the first entry to this:
  
  # Number of servers to start up
  RPCNFSDCOUNT='8 --no-nfs-version 4'
  
  bounce nfs in /etc/init.d
  
  That solved a major issue.
  
  Don't forget to run exportfs -a
  
  
• Configuring entry in /tftpboot
  
  This is where it gets fun. The file inetboot needs to be copied into /tftpboot. However which file to copy depends on the platform:
  
  /home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4u/inetboot
  /home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4us/inetboot
  /home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4v/inetboot
  
  The 420R is a sun4u so this is the file to copy :
  
  /home/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/platform/sun4u/inetboot
  
  This file must be tailored to provde the IP address of the client. To do this convert the client's proposed IP address into hex:
  
  192.168.1.70 becomes C0A80146 (ignore the dots)
  
  In /tftpboot I created the following files and symlinks
  
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-26 12:47 C0A80145 -> inetboot.sun4u
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-04-26 12:47 C0A80145.SUN4U -> inetboot.sun4u
  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221280 2009-04-26 12:45 inetboot
  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221280 2009-04-26 12:46 inetboot.sun4u
  
  (The inetboot itself is not strictly necessary but I copied it over for good measure)
  

Now over to the Solaris box ....

Get to the ok prompt and enter:

boot net - text

At which point the machine should boot off the remote Linux box and Solaris 10 be installed ....

A very harsh decision

I am appalled at the striking off of the nurse, Margaret Haywood, by the Nursing and Midwifery Council earlier today. It seems to be a gross over-punishment for the whistle blower. To be honest, if I or one of my relations were in such a hospital I would much prefer that the deficiencies in care - which could possibly cause physical harm to a patient - were exposed even if there were the possibility of some loss of confidentiality.

This is also a bad decision for another reason; I would have hoped that after the Stafford debacle where concerns were raised but ignored by those in authority, lessons had been learnt about people who expose such dreadful mismanagement. This striking off is a huge retrograde step since it strengthens the position of the management who caused the problem in the first place. Nurses, doctors and others will now have the threat of losing their jobs if they speak to the press about terrible conditions in the NHS.

This travesty must be reversed.

Tom Watson

I gather that Tom Watson has consulted Carter-Ruck. One interesting point made in Guido's comments is that the letter from C-R only mentions that Watson had knowledge of the emails not whether Watson knew anything about the smears - a very different thing altogether for the simple reason that Watson inhabited the same office as the disgraced McBride and could well have been involved in conversations (yes that oldest means of human communication - speech) with the person sitting next to him.

Watson must be extremely careful not to cause even more damage to Labour - and I hope that the Mail responds with "Arkell v Pressdram (1971)"

Been away in Dorset

and have missed all the fun ....

Convoy

In 1917 Britain was on her knees, with the German unrestricted submarine warfare in full flood, with a sinking rate of British, Allied and neutral ships that would leave Britain starving. In April 1917 over 800,000 tonnes of shipping were sunk, neutral ships (understandable) refused to leave port. Later that month, the US Admiral Sims met the First Sea Lord, Sir John Jellicoe, and discussed the issue:

"Is there no solution to this problem?" asked Sims

"Absolutely none that I can see now" replied Jellicoe.

For nearly the first three years of the war, shipping had sailed independently of each other across the Atlantic with ships taking their luck.

The U-Boats were able to find their prey easily since they were scattered across the oceans in a chequerboard fashion, with the chance of ships passing by the submarine being high.

The answer, of course, was convoys - all the ships together and escorted. The oceans emptied and if the U-Boat found a convoy it would only have the chance for a single shot before the convoy swept past it.

Why is this relevant?

I cannot understand why escorted merchantmen are not convoyed past Somalia?

It would only take a single modern escort to keep the pirates at bay - esp with helicopters; the pirates would find it MUCH harder to locate their prey and as an incentive, the merchantmen could be be offered lower insurance rates if they were in convoy....

Been busy

I haven't forgotten this blog but I have been busy at work and am too knackered in the evenings to write.

Having said all that, you really couldn't make the MPs spending row. There was a letter in the Telegraph that summed it up nicely: "It might be within the rules but what would your constituents think about it" as being the touchstone that should be used because frankly they are all at it ...

Anyway Easter soon, off to Dorset for a few days ...

Even given the nature of the videos that were charged to the taxpayer via Jacqui Smith (although she must bear some responsibility since it was her expenses that were used) what puzzled me was that "entertainment" was considered to be an acceptable item for the taxpayer to pick up. Now I can understand news channels - although all of them are free-to-air I believe - but why the hell should the taxpayer pick up entertainment?

Of all kinds.

Heffer talk out of his backside

Simon Heffer in today's Telegraph makes a case for jailing Gordon Brown: "Simply losing the next general election is, frankly, not enough of a punishment for a man who has inflicted such damage on our country that people won't even buy government bonds any more. An example needs to be made of him. I want him behind bars."

Heffer is of course talking out of his backside if he thinks that what Labour has done is criminal. Stupid, crass, idiotic yes … criminal no.

Irrespective of how we feel about the numpties in power, the law of the land is clear. We must not resort to the court of public opinion.

oh hang on … where have I heard that before?

Any man's death diminishes me

I am trying not to be a hypocrite when I write this, but John Donne's words came to mind during the last couple of days, when the news - especially the popular news - has been dominated by the death of Jade Goody.



I didn't like her when she was alive but, apart from the fact that I wouldn't wish a lingering death from cervical cancer upon any woman, I feel that most of her afflictions were not her fault. She was of the media, used the media and finally died with the media.



Her original fame was from being catapulted into Big Brother - no doubt she was cynically chosen by Endemol precisely because of those parts of her character that made her later notorious and, to be honest, a laughing stock - and afterwards she was manipulated, probably willingly (she earned an estimated £8m), by the media (as well as by Max Clifford) and, had she lived, would have probably carried on in the same way.

I am afraid to say that her only benefit to cervical cancer was to make the very salient point that you don't ignore warning letters that are sent to you.

She didn't deserve her fate but Pygmalion she wasn't.

Talking about not speaking ill of the dead

Ouch!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/5031343/Jade-Goody.html

Lovely comment on the rugby:

From the International Herald Tribune: "Gatland had also said that his players "disliked" Ireland more than any other Six Nations foe. Many in the Welsh media had publicly squirmed at the suggestion, which was certainly rather slighting to the English, who have spent 1,000 years working hard to ensure a monopoly of Welsh odium."

That was exciting

At its very best, rugby is one of the most nerve jangling sports in the world. After all of those matches, after all those hours of rugby it came down to the final kick of the match ... Shear sporting perfection.

Oh to be in Dublin tonight ......

Pecunia non olet

Apparently someone in the States is going round setting fire to portable toilets. A reward of $5,000 has been offered for the capture of the arse-onist.




The title? Vespasian imposed a tax on urine collected from the public loos in ancient Rome where it was collected and used for cleaning and dyeing togas. His son, Titus, complained about the source of the money. Vespasian took some money, sniffed it and said "pecunia non olet "

Money does not smell .....

Harman and Harman - Update

John Crippen has discovered that the appalling Sarah Harman is ambulance chasing relatives and victims of the Stafford Hospital catastrophe.

Read here and attempt not to throw up.

This stupidity has to stop

There is an astonishing story over on the Telegraph's website and commented upon by Henry Porter about a student arrested for chalking a protest on a pavement. Apart from querying whether the police have lost all sense of proportion, the greatest irony is that the student was writing a protest about the loss of liberty!

Sean Hodgson

Sean Hodgson has now been freed after serving 27 years for a crime that he didn't commit. A number of issues arise about this case:

• I do hope that forensic samples from other crimes that were commited before the widespread and trusted use of DNA have been kept. I would suggest that ALL appropriate convictions that were obtained before that date are now checked using modern DNA techniques.
• The dreaded parole Catch-22 has kicked in. Depite the Parole Board describing it as a "myth", it seems that the "you won't get parole unless/until you accept your guilt" is actually true. To serve 27 years - even for murder - is exceptional and parole is often given well before then. Michael Naughton of the University of Bristol has long argued that this is a gross injustice and frankly I agree with him. A very interesting article here demolishes theParole Board's "myth" view. Well worth a read.

Crippen savages Harriet's sister

John Crippen has torn a new arsehole in Harriet Harman's sister Sarah here. The same Sarah Harman who was found guilty of contempt of court and ordered to pay £25,000 as a result
of passing confidential information to her sister who at the time of the offence was Solicitor General.

Lovely family.

I despair of Labour

There are times when I really really despair of Labour's attitude at the moment. I came across this posting on the dreadful Labour list saying that "Yesterday was truly the day that the Tories said goodbye to women’s votes"

Why? Alan Duncan took the piss out of Harriet Harman by suggesting that her love of stilettos constitutes "preparation for her becoming Prime Minister".

Now it wasn't probably very funny but to suggest that because of that women won't vote for Tories is risible.

Women might well vote for the Tories for exactly the same reasons why men will vote for the Tories: to get us out of the deep deep shitter that this Government has got us into ....

Me me me me

http://www.edisposals.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Disposals-Public-Site/en_US/-/GBP/ViewProductDetail-Start;pgid=MieqQ4wkQg8000ArvQ_8K1sp0000C25Oen-O;sid=qLr_0uD3VL1ye6lRXBj0w0g3SdtZTwGWDic=?ProductUUID=9CPAqBEL4HUAAAEfgavbqKjZ&JumpTo=BrowseStandardCatalog

Tax chocolate

and the bill for PMT will go through the roof!

On the stupidity of intelligent people

The Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday that all existing copies of Andrew Marr's book "A History Of Modern Britain" that are still for sale are being recalled for pulping "for legal reasons" since someone living has objected to a passage it.

This is stupidity beyond belief. Apart from the slight fact that the book has been published for about 3 years and that "only" 250,000 copies have been sold (including a copy to me), all that has happened is that attention has been drawn to the offending line in the book (and apparently it is just a single line) so that far far more people are now aware of the alledged libel that were ever before (the Daily Mail has a piece on it here ) and with the growth of the internet that alleged libel has already spread far and wide.

It would have been far far better to have done absolutely nothing: why did it take almost three years for this matter to be raised for instance? HAd anybody actually noticed before? I have read the offending line in my copy and frankly unless I actually was looking for it, it had passed me by.

The Internet makes a mockery of such heavy handed reactions to libels - even if WIkileaks isn't used.

Not a totally independant source

Today's Sunday Times has a report that the Government is considering lowering the national speed limit on most roads to 50 MPH.

In the middle of the report is this gem: "Speed Check Services, the company behind the [speed] cameras, claims the number of deaths or serious injuries at its sites has fallen on average by 60%. "

To alter Mandy Rice-Davies quip "Well, they would, wouldn't they ?"

On yer bike ...

Got the bike out for the first time since the operation today - and rode further in one day than I was able to for the whole of last year.

I went out once last year - and got less than a mile before the sheer pain caused me to stop and get my wife to pick me up. Today, I got the WD40 out and sprayed the chain and gears, squeezed the water out from the saddle (still got a wet bum though!) and of my sons and off we went ...

Didn't ride a huge distance - wasn't certain as to how the muscles in my leg would stand up (I still get pain on occaison) - but loved every minute of it.

Even better, the more exercise I did, the better did the leg feel until was feeling no discomfort at all ...

Do more tomorrow me thinks ...

The forgotten man

We are celebrating this year the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of "Origin of Species". What is frequently forgotten - even by professional biologists - is that there was a second man who came up with almost identical ideas as Darwin - at almost exactly the same time.

Alfred Wallace had worked in in the Malay archipelago especially Borneo, and had come to similar conclusion to Darwin; in fact he had been corresponding with Darwin and was fully aware that Darwin was writing a book on the subject. In 1858 Wallace wrote a paper called "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" which he sent to Charles Lyell (often called "The Father of Geology") who then forwarded it to Darwin.

Darwin - not surprisingly was stunned, saying that if Wallace had seen Darwin's short manuscript of 1846 which laid out his basic ideas, then "he could not have made a better short abstract!"
To Darwin's eternal credit, he credited Wallace and agreed with Lyell (as well as Joseph Hooker a distinguished Botanist who was a close friend of Darwin) that papers from both naturalists would be read to the Linnean Society.

Sadly Darwin himself was unable to attend due to the death of his son from scarlet fever (Wallace was still in Borneo) so the two papers were read in their absence.

Afterwards, Wallace become a staunch defender of Darwin, and in 1889 published a book called "Darwinism" (note the title: Darwin's scientific and social influence was much higher as well as the fact that by publishing the "Origin of the species" Darwin was far far higher in the public view than Wallace ever was).

Wallace is almost forgotten now, although it is nice to note that he was awarded the OM in 1908.

The new booze cruise

Would like to own an off-license in Carlisle or Berwick if this goes through ....

Contrast and compare ...

Jacqui Smith's refusal to acknowledge that she did anything wrong over her outrageous housing expenses claim which were "all cleared by the authorities" and Harriet Harman's comments about Fred Goodwin.

Slightly hypocritical methinks ....

A dangerous precedent

I, like pretty well everybody, am appalled by the size of Sir Fred Goodwin's pension but it was -and is - perfectly legal, agreed by the board and Sir Fred would without any doubt win any court case that the Government tried to take against him.

Now I gather that Harriet Harman is proposing to introduce an Act of Parliament, that would retrospectively change the law concerning the pension. This is incredibly dangerous. Retrospective legislation should be ONLY used in the rarest of cases - the last case I can think of was the War Crimes act, and even then I had my doubts - and there is no question that that issue is infinitely more serious than embarrassing the Government.

Where could this end? Retrospective leglislation to repeal the Highland Clearances? Labour doesn't like something that happened in the past? hey ... just make retrospective legislation ...

Harman - as her interview to the BBC makes abundantly clear - is playing a cynical, populist, vote grabbing card which has nothing to do with Fred Goodwin's pension but absolutely everything to so with saving Labour's arse.

The consequences of any such legislation are so enormous that they don't bear thinking about.

Mad and dangerous ....

Cerrie Burnell

I have been following the discusson about the cBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell who is missing a hand - I gather from birth rather than throungh amputation - and am appalled about the attitude of some parents - apparently 9 have complained that she scares the toddlers

Anyway I feel strongly about this: you see I AM disabled - with an above-knee amputation of my right leg. Now I would be the first to say that a missing leg is much less obvious than an amputated arm but there have been numerous occaisions when I do not wear my prosthesis - for example going swimming.

To be honest I would much much prefer kids looking at me, saying (as kids do when stating the bleeding obvious!) “you have one leg!” or “Mister - what happened to your leg?” (to which the answer “got eaten by a tiger” normally get “really? wow!!”) to parents hissing at the kids - “its rude to stare” or some such rubbish as if the parents will squash the kids curiosity.

I would much prefer children to get used to the fact that disablity exists rather than having it hidden away under a bush.

My own kids - having grown up with me - are not fazed at all about any form of disability.

Worcester and Gaza ...

I always felt that the idea of town twinning was to exchange various ideas - school visits, musical and cultural communications and the rest - in order the find out more about how other parts of the world live.

Now as an idea that is a brilliant idea until it is used in a crass, ludicrous way - which is precisely what happened in Worcester today: "Worcester may twin with war-torn Gaza"

Apart from the crassness of such an idea (the conflict is one that has been going on and off for decades and to sort out the rights and wrongs of that conflict is so complicated that it will go on and on) what bugs me is that it came from Alan Amos - a man who has only represented a Worcester ward since May last year and who has an - how can I say this? - colourful and allegedly scandalous past, who has turncoated from being a right-wing hang 'em flog 'em MP into a local labour councillor - who seems to be using this almost like a cynical publicity stunt.

Mercifully the reaction from the locals has been almost exclusively an embarrassed laughter - and in some cases outrage.

Anyway ... fancy an exchange trip to Gaza?

Reckon that some of the kids from Elgar Technology College could do more damage that the Israelis ....

Ivan Cameron

I remember clearly my family's distress at the death of my niece from cancer at the age of 3.

My deepest sympathy to the Camerons.

Stop these bloody health warnings ...

Enough, enough ... "one drink a week can cause you cancer" For God's sake - we are not immortal, we will die of something sometime - whether we like it or not.

Now I am not advocating taking up smoking again, or shoving junk food into everyone (those a BIG killers) but a lot of these health warnings are marginal (remember the true statistical cliche that "correlation does not necessarily equal causation") and frankly they impact in a political way far far more than they deserve.

I wish that a lot of these health paranoids will basically just bugger off and let us live our lives in a sensible way without having us having some bloody Dr Big Brother criticising us for every action we take.

There is a punch line to a joke that I always liked:

A doctor tells a man to give up drink, television, women etc etc ..

"Will I live longer? No, just will seem like it ...."

And not the the only tits on view

are government ministers ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVjKLeP9xDM

About 1 min 50 sec in ...

Stella Rimington

It really is something when the former head of the Security Services comes forwards and says that the UK is moving into a police state.

She said that the government is using people's fear of terrorism to damage civil liberties.

I suppose that Jackboot Smith will come up with some nonsense but I fear that Dame Stella is right.

Submarine accident

I can't see why the MoD should be too embarrased by HMS Vanguard hitting the French sub Le Triomphant somewhere in the Atlantic as the BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt suggests here.

These boats are designed to be stealthy and basically to hide in a hole in the ocean. The fact that the two subs collided basically indicates that their anti-sonar devices worked - perfectly and did what precisely they were designed to do; mercifully no-one was hurt in the incident and there was no nuclear leak.

I cannot see (unless someone was negligent) how any blame at all can be assigned to the captains of either boats.

That match - and thanks

Well England lost, but after a far far better performance than against Italy -discipline needs urgent looking at (two yellow cards is not good enough) - but it was a cracking match to watch, full of pace and excitement (I suspect that there were some nervous Welsh fans towards the end).

What made it especially good was watching the match in Wales, following an excellent meal of home-grown (literally) lamb and with great company.

Thanks Rob and Karen for an excellent day .....

Sam ... That stein I owe you .. get up here to the Cardinal's Hat and it would be a pleasure to buy.

Geek update....

1234567887 seconds since the epoch
1234567888 seconds since the epoch
1234567889 seconds since the epoch
1234567890 seconds since the epoch

The big match ....

One of the joys of attending a Welsh University was watching the intensity of the passion for the England-Wales match. I was lucky in that I went to Aberystwyth towards the end of the great Welsh ascendancy during the 1970s when they were all conquering with some of the most gifted players of all time.

The television room was always packed with mainly Welsh supporters, who were generous (not surprising I suppose since they beat England for the 3 years that I was there) and my love of rugby really started then.

Although an English supporter, I always have a soft spot for Welsh rugby and so tomorrow will be a big day for me ...

The whole family are decending upon an ex-colleague who live up the Garw Valley north of Bridgend, where will I be cheering on (a probably doomed) England but there will also be a lot of friendship watching the game we both love.

Unix Time

A rare nerdy post!

At precisely 23:31:30 UTC tomorrow all the Unix internal clocks (assuming they are right!) will be showing 1234567890 :-)


This little piece of perl shows the current number of seconds since the Unix epoch (1 Jan 1970 from which all Unix clocks start their ticks!)

#!/usr/bin/perl
my $clock=scalar time() ;
print "$clock seconds since the epoch \n"

or if you are feeling really really sad ... this bit of C

#include < stdio.h >
#include < time.h >
int main(void) {
time_t currtime;
currtime=time(NULL) ;
printf("%d seconds since the epoch\n",currtime);
return 0 ;
}

(Hat tip - Chris!)

Happy Birthday

Shropshire is probably one of the most rural counties in England and is not known for producing someone who without a doubt has been one of the greatest influences upon human thought in the last 150 years.

So it is justifiable that celebrations about the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth have been held around the world, including at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which by a nice coincidence opened today in Chicago and has as one its themes "Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures" which celebrates the anniversary.

Evolution, and its mechanism, first propounded by Darwin and Wallace, has been constantly upgraded and enhanced especially in the last 30 years when the molecular basis of heredity has been discovered and enhanced. The facts of evolution at all levels are now confirmed at all levels - from fossil records and more recently by the use of molecular taxonomy - the study and comparisons of DNA and proteins between species which allows phylogenetic trees to be created.


Evolution is one of the most profound thoughts to have been found by man and I am proud that Darwin came from the same county as me.

Bob Piper

Bloody hell ! I agree with Bob Piper (whose normally idea of a post is to go into an automatic "bash the Tories" mode which is just boring) but here he has a fair point.

Geert Wilders

I haven't seen the film Fitna - nor do I especially want to - but the banning of its creator Geert Wilders from the UK raises some extremely disturbing concerns.

Firstly there has been the attitude of Lord Ahmed - who will probably be spending some time in the near future as a guest of Her Majesty following a conviction for dangerous driving - who has basically intimidated the House of Lords into cancelling the showing of the film at the HoL by threatening to "personally mobilise 10,000 Muslims to prevent Wilders from entering the Upper House " (Melanie Phillips in the Spectator) which shows a contempt for the freedom of our Parliamentary institutions that is beyond belief.

Secondly, Wilders, for all of his unpleasant far-right politics, is a member of the legislature of another EU state - the Netherlands and leads a legitimate party. It comes to a pretty pass when we ban Dutch MPs from the UK.

Thirdly, this shows appeasement by the Home Office, something which is beginning to become a habit at the moment, probably caused by the worst Home Secretary for years.

Finally, I suspect that the BNP will make their odious hay with this.

Jacqui Smith

It looks as if Jacqui Smith will be exonerated - and rightly so. The issue is not whether she mlked the system - and frankly she did - but she was able to do that because the rules allowed her to do so. Apparently the word of an MP is taken on trust (I suppose that they are all honorable people) which means that the system has none of the financial checks and questioning which would be imposed (especially when dealing with such large amounts of money) elsewhere in the public or private sectors.

The system of the financial rewardng of MPs needs a complete overhaul - I personnally would massively increase MPs pay BUT withdraw most of the "extras" that become so open to abuse.

Christopher Booker and Darwin

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a journalist who knows nothing about science talks absolute bollocks on scientific matters.

Last week it was Charles Moore; today it is Christopher Booker ....

His article on Darwin & evolution - here - shows how little he knows about the subject and how little he wants to learn.

His example of the evolution of the wing and a mouse's forelegs is just plain wrong ....

That travel database ...

Apart from it being a further intolerable intrusion into our liberties, I don't have really too many concerns about it. You see the government's record of running IT projects is so diabolical that I really can't see it being any near completion before the Tories get in to power. The only thing is that God alone knows how much dosh will be wasted on it before the plug is pulled....

Foreign Workers

I have been watching the spreading strikes across the country concerning the use of foreign workers in the construction industry with a wry smile. You see, there is one British industry that has been decimated by the use of off-shore workers and virtually no one has raised an eyebrow.

The use of off-shore IT workers has absolutely savaged the British industry - an industry that is at the cutting edge of the technology and cannot be thought of as obsolete .

The workers are not actually physically present in this country - but with modern telecommunications that doesn't matter and they might as well be. Workers in India and China already login to computers in the UK, developing and testing software which means they directly challenge British workers for jobs.

What educated people should know about science

In a rather shallow article here, Charles Moore pontificates about Darwin and Christianity. Now I am not going to attack the article but just consider his shocking statement near the beginning "I am shockingly ignorant of science".

I find it extraordinary to find that a highly educated Cambridge graduate who went on to become the editor of the Daily Telegraph is showing such ignorance. Surprisingly the reverse isn't true: some of the most cultured, well read people I have met have been scientists and doctors: for instance the surgeon who operated upon my leg was an avid reader of US military history and was surprised to find me reading the same book as he was.

So what is it about science?

There are enough popular books on science that should be accessible for the arts graduates ( Dawkins's "The Ancestor's Tale" is an example or James Watson's "DNA: The Secret of Life" plus anything by Steven Pinker ) but for some reason people like Charles Moore seem unwilling to read them.

The overwhelming majority of the upper echelons of the British political and journalistic world are arts graduates and I suspect that the ignorance of science is endemic throughout that world.

So an idea: we see all over the place lists like "100 places to see before you die" ... so I propose a list of basic science and mathematical facts that all educated people know:

• Proof of Pythagoras (not just a^2+b^2=c^2)
• The names of the 4 bases that make up the DNA ladder
• Basic ideas of the Quantum Theory
  
• Big Bang Theory
  
• Modern Evolutionary theory - nothing too heavy!

I am not talking about deep knowledge - almost a bluffers guide in fact but people should know it ... and not admit that they are "Shockingly ignorant of science"

More ideas please!

Mathematics .....

There is no question of the fact that mathematics teaching is in some form of crisis - although the shortage of specialist maths teachers has been fundamental to this problem - but watching David Cameron and Carol Vorderman frolic in the snow following the announcement of her chairing of a maths task force brings to mind what should be the point of maths teaching? Unlike say, physics, some maths is essential to people's day-to-day lives.

The vast majority of students will never need (or probably want !) to move beyond the basics of arithmetic (or the other disciplines) but some is essential for daily life. But mathematics is also a stunning academic subject in its own right but the teaching of the subject is not designed to feed itself into a more academic A level.

Wondering whether there ought to be a Maths certificate which means that a person has got fundamentals and will not be fazed by the numbers that they will meet in ordinary life - or jobs .

But there should be a chance for people who want to study maths as a subject to go down the more academic path ... feeding into say the binomial theorem, calculus, statistics....

Leningrad - Now and then

Dizzy has a link to a remarkable set of photographs taken during the seige of wartime Leningrad morphed into the same place in modern St Petersburg. Quite remarkable.

Here

A classic letter of complaint

This is rapidly doing the blogosphere rounds ...

A letter about the food on a Virgin flight ......

Priceless...