Aquarionics

Power Cycle

As part of Wet Blunket’s Anti-Social Behaviour act, Traffic Wardens and Security Guards are going to be given the right to fine cyclists who ride on the pavement 30.

I have mixed feelings about this. As a pedestrian, I find people who ride bicycles on the pavement to be an irritation, but as an ex-cyclist (Our bicycles were stolen from our back garden a couple of months ago) I would rather people cycled on the pavements than on the roads with no lights.

They should walk their bikes home, but people are morons, and don’t.

In fact, people should not be allowed to ride bikes on the road at all until they’ve passed their cycling proficiency.

Cycling Proficiency is a bit like Driver’s Ed for primary school children. Someone – usually the local community policeman, spare teachers, or Local Council People – comes to most primary schools sometime in years 4 -> 6 (That’s about 9 to 11 years) (depending on school and local council) and teaches anyone with a bike the relevant bits of the highway code (Our school you brought your bike with you one day a week for about a month, and you weren’t allowed to cycle to school until you’d already passed your CP. Guess how many pupils pushed their bike to school?). At the end we got a badge and a certificate.

When I was in Cambridge cyclists in the summer were a menace to the roads. Gangs of tourists with no idea of British road laws or etiquette, but because it was traditional to ride bikes in Cambridge. Apparently they did about 20,000 damage to taxis a year, to the point where, when I left, the local Taxi driver’s union¹ was campaigning to make all cycle hiring places make their clients take out insurance (at something like 50p to 1 per bike) against damage to third parties. This is probably a good idea.

I think the idea of the spot-fines for cycling on the pavements is a good one, although 30 is about 10 too high. I’m less sure about the rest of the content of the bill, since it includes giving councils the right to declare “Anti-Social Hotspots” which the police can turf kids out of. And into, for example, somewhere else they can then define as a hotspot.

It’s a free country?

¹ Are you cycling at me? Then why the hell are you coming in my direction? You cycling at me? Doesn’t look like there’s anyone else on the roads, Where do you think you’re cycling? Oh yeah? Huh? Ok.

Making a hash of it

Cannabis is still illegal, but differanty so

Ah well. Doesn’t really affect me.

Don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, can handle a sword a little.

Magic Trees

There’ve been a lot of Magic Tree stories recently, and it annoys me.

What is a magic tree story?

A little while ago there was a story I read (and put into That Which Is Seen) about a country village vicar who had a 140 year old tree chopped down without even seeking the consultation with the village that would surely have rejected the idea.

The reason he gave for doing it was that there might be a paedophile hiding behind it.

Thus I started to mentally file a large portion of my news intake as Magic Tree stories, wherein authoritorial figures justify incredibly unjust or dangerous or merely imprisoning measures by stating that it was only being done to protect the public from paedophiles. This then was expanded to include invisible terrorists.

The best example is the Huntley case, where Ian Huntly was not convicted of a series of rape and molestation-type cases, and this wasn’t discovered because of the Data Protection Act. Because the convictions were never upheld, they were taken off his record, because he wasn’t guilty of them. Because of this lack of data, he was able to get a job, instead of having unproven allegations held against him for the rest of his natural life.

Apparently, the world would be a better place if every crime you’ve ever been accused of, from taking an extra apple at school lunch though to the graphic rape of underage kiddies, should be held on your national record (An interesting concept in and of itself) until you die, preferably at the hands of a mob wielding torches and pitchforks.

This is an extreme, obviously. Huntley’s convictions (Nine sex-related accusations) were similer in nature, and the fact that he carried on being accused is somewhat suspicious, but the nature of justice is that you cannot lock somebody away just because someone accuses them. Even if they accused them nine times. The fact that he was able to be accused nine times without it going very far is scary, and that may be a failure of communication within the police force, but the opinion that Ian Huntley should never have been able to gain work at a school because he’d been accused of something. In fact, it would mean that you could effectivly destroy the career of any person in the social services field merely by accusing them of being linked to a paedophile. Even more scary that we may already be living in that world.

This world is one in which a large section of the population is now convinced that a paedophile lurks behind every tree in the playground, that they will kidnap, rape and murder your child in the same way that masochists wander though shopping malls in black leather, whipping every person they pass in Boots, The same way gay people screw in every fountain, The way every single immigrant is just here to steal our money and jobs. The way foot-fetishes can’t go into a shoe shop without spontanously jerking off. The way hetrosexuals cannot look at a member of the opposite sex without immediatly losing all their clothes and leaping into the nearest fountain and screwing each other’s brains out.

That, by the way, was a bit of subtle satire. Before you send any *ist comments my way, read the entire paragraph, carefully, and then – and only then – if you can see the actual point, you are allowed to comment.

Environmental Nukes

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used.
[...]
Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere.
(Strategy Page)

See? They _do_ care for the environment

Identity

This afternoon, I did our weekly shop via Sainsbury’s To You, my personal choice of supermarket. It took less time than it normally takes to cycle there, and it’s not that far. This is because Sainsbury’s have, via my Nectar Card, my shopping preferences on file, and therefore presented me with a list of things I usually buy when I logged in, and this was Good. Selling my personal information to Sainsbury’s for a pot of messages that make my life easier is considered Non Harmful, and if it gives them better information on how an English white male aged 21-25 living in Hertfordshire and working in the IT Industry chooses to buy his groceries, then it’s a damn site better than them phoning me up on a Sunday to ask.

Last month I tried to open a bank account. Since I currently have no passport, don’t drive – and my provisional license is paper rather than photo card – and don’t work for a company that issues ID cards, I couldn’t prove my identity sufficiently to open a new account. Despite already having an account with them. The ID I presented in order to rent a house for a year consisted of my Rail card.

The reason I don’t have a passport or a National Insurance card is because I was so scared of losing them I put them in a safe place. Fortunately I have no legal requirement to carry them.

Linking the above is the new ID card legislation. As can be inferred from the above, I have no objection to being tracked within systems, and would welcome a standard way of proving who I am. My problem with the idea of an ID card is threefold:

1. It’s too dangerous to lose.
2. I don’t want to be tracked across systems
3. I’m a terrorist

Deadly serious about all of those, btw.

It’s too dangerous to lose

I’m the least organised person on the face of the planet. I’d lose my shadow if I wasn’t careful. I currently don’t have a passport or National Insurance card, and I haven’t left the house alone in four days because I’m not sure where my keys are. If someone finds my ID card before I do, they can effectively pretend to be me. All this “Biometric” stuff is all very well, even if it works, but unless you issue everyone who wants to check an ID card with a Biometric scanner, it’s still just a photo card. And if you do, you have to validate it, which would mean hooking up to a centralised database, and…

I don’t want to be tracked across systems

I don’t mind if Sainsbury’s know I order Cottage Cheese every so often, usually when I order Baked Potatoes, or that I tend to buy chocolate in the winter. I don’t even mind if British Airways know that I’m the same person who sat in row C8 last month on this flight, and have therefore seen this movie. I don’t even care if Warner Village Cinema can tell that I will go out of my way to see comic book adaptations and anything by Quentin Tarantino. What I don’t want is for British Airways to know I’ve seen this movie because I saw it on release at a Warner Village Cinema, or for Sainsbury’s to stop selling me Jelly Tots because there’s a history of diabetes in my family, or for my GP to recommend me to a psychiatrist because I bought six boxes of sleeping pills, or because I bought “So you’re considering suicide?” from Amazon. I’m quite capable of looking after myself, and even if I wasn’t, I’ve a right to do so anyway.

You may think this is an overreaction, that commercial entities would never be given this data. You’d be wrong, because the ID card management is being hawked out to private contractors, who are commercial entities.

I’m a terrorist

The last time I looked – and it’s been a little while now – I can currently be arrested for five separate offences under various anti-terrorism acts. All of these were noted when they passed, but each time the public was told “But don’t worry, we won’t prosecute”, unless you’re a “terrorist”, presumably.

These offenses include losing the password to an encrypted file, having a working knowledge of chemistry, not having a bouncers license, and knowing where both Homebase (DIY/Garden centre) and Sainsbury’s are.

Just because they “won’t prosecute” does not mean they can’t if they want to, and a single point of ID enables them to track this.

But, after five years of detailing my life on an internationally accessible web site, I’ve got nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to fear.

Right?

Explains Everything

(A BBC page via IRC)

Sheep defeat cattle grid

.”I’ve seen them doing it and they’re clever,” said an independent district councillor, Dorothy Lindley. “They lie down on their side, or sometimes their back, and roll over the metal grids until they are clear.”

The Guardian

In other news, the democrat rally has finished. They’ve nominated Kerry. I’m slightly suprised.

Trust the computer

From Preparing for emergencies

Page 14:

“To prepare for an emergency, you should take time to find out: [...]

• The emergency procedures for your children at school
• The emergency procedures at your workplace”

Page 16:

“If you hear, see, or come across anything that may be linked with terrorist activity, please tell the police.
[...]
Have you seen anyone pay an unusual amount of attention to security measures at any location?”

So, report anyone you see reading PfE to the police. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

(No, don’t report me, I got this from ForeverDirt)

Stay alert, troubleshooters.

Hunting the hunters

I don’t care about fox hunting.

That is, I can see the benefits of stopping it, but I can see advantages to its continued existence. I am happy upon this fence, I can see my house from here.

I don’t understand why its such a huge issue, though. I don’t understand why it’s an issue that is worth perverting the course of parliament for it, which is what the Commons say they will do if the Lords decides to try to block it. It’s a party promise, yes, but why do we care enough about it to knock aside the due process? From the outside, it looks like the sole reason for all of this is that the Lords is overriding a law the Commons want, which is their job ffs. The House Of Lords is there – albeit stuffed full of various party’s cronies at the moment – to stop the Commons enacting law after law just to get them reelected.

This is not to say that the people who broke into the Commons aren’t morons, however, but I do find it slightly amusing that when Batman did something similar earlier this week there wasn’t nearly this much vitriol being splashed around.

Bu... Wha... The... *Argh*

Apparently, our Home Office minister has thought of the perfect way to ensure people aren’t fox-hunting when the ban finally comes into effect.

He’s going to put CCTV cameras in the hedgerows.

I’m not kidding.

I’ve no idea what I can say to that.

Absolutly Nothing

Stephen Fry:

Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher and mathematician, got into terrible trouble by writing quite fearsome articles against the first World War when it began. He got all these letters from people who said, My child is prepared to lay down their life for their country. Dont you think that sacrifice demands some respect?
He wrote this extraordinary essay in which he said, Dont you understand? The sacrifice were asking of our young is not that they die for their country, but that they kill for their country. Thats the sacrifice. To ask a child to kill someone else, whom youve never met. Thats a moral choice, pulling a trigger. Having a bullet hit you is not a moral choice. You dont decide to be killed. Its a terrible thing that happens to you. But killing something is something you do and thats a desperate sacrifice. And were seeing that in the Iraq war. Thats what this poor Lynndie England did, this tragic soldier who was shot smugly smiling next to naked Arab prisoners. Thats the chickens coming home to roost. Its not Americans being asked to die by President Bush. Its Americans being asked to kill and to torture. Not necessarily by name. He doesnt say, I want you to kill this or that one. Of course, politics isnt that simple. Essentially that is what society does. It asks its young to kill, and thats what we all have to live with.

Kersplunkett

Singing Bye bye Blunkett, Blunket goodbyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The Election In Blog Form

Mucking around with a link Murky posted to Blogpulse’s “Trends” system, I’ve built this:

A graph of the election

(TinyURL)

(I’ve had to muck around with it a bit, Boris Johnson isn’t actually a candiate for PM - though it might be more fun if he was – but he had to be in there for the colours to work…)

Get better elections, part two

In every place where it matters to me, nothing changed.

No matter

Warbussing

I went Warbussing today.

Warbussing, soon to be the next big event in the weblogging/interweb world, involves, having finished todays episode of CSI (the husband did it) turning on Airport as we swish though the countryside, clicking every so often to see if there were any wireless networks open.

There was one. It was called “Silvar” and is fortunately located just outside a set of traffic lights by the College, allowing me to collect my email quickly while we paused. Everything else required a password.

In other news: George Galloway? Wrong statement.

The world today

Another day, another super-virus. Clever Scientists, in the name of Global Understanding – which has capital letters, so must be both good and true, have recreated the Spanish Flu virus which killed an estimated 50,000,000 people in 1918, in the hopes that it might help folks understand what caused it, and how we can combat it. To further this cause, they’ve uploaded the details to our own internets, in case some backyard biologist can rustle some up and solve it. Hopefully before we catch it from them and it, you know, kills another few million.

Iraq. Still no win yet.

Christmas is coming. I am, apparently, living in a country where I can buy mince pies, advent calendars (I intend to buy three. One so I can count down to November 5th, another to count down to the day Advent starts, and a third to count down to Christmas), but not neither pumpkins nor fireworks. It’s also reminded me that if I intend to start this multipart story for Advent I really should be writing it now. Only 80 days to go…

The Conservative party are entertaining us once again with their autumnal show at the seaside. It never ceases to amaze me how we employ such multi-talented people, to spend their year governing the entire country and still have time to rehearse and perform these exquisite examples of the traditional English farce every autumn. This year, the Tories are once again riffing on the theme of an out-dated and moribund political party desperately searching for a leader to rail against a dangerous and politically dodging and weaving opponent. It’s not an original theme for the troupe – they performed a similar show a little while ago, and again before that – but they’ve spiced it up to pantomime levels this year with a host of overplayed stereotypes each dodging the actual problem. A fine show, though I was beginning to find some of the characters a little two dimensional towards the end, a little more realism would have been nice.
I didn’t see a box-office number, but if you can get tickets I’m told it’s playing all week.

We have a black archbishop, who is advocating gay priests and female ones. America will get him fired shortly.

Which? magazine (UK Consumers Association organ) did a study on computer reliability. Apple won. Film at 11.

Cillit Bang are hastily backing down after their marketing campaign hit a virus checker last week. A representative of their advertising company was posting comments in weblogs from the perspective of their (fictional) spokesperson. This is not really a good thing in itself, but when they followed up one of Tom Coates’ heartfelt essays on his search for his father with one of these advertising tricks, they were justifiably shouted at. They are – or employ – morons. Avoid them. (Full disclosure: I met Tom in a bar once. I also met Bobbie Johnson – who wrote the story for the Guardian – at another, different bar once. Both were UK-Bloggers gatherings, so it’s not much of a coincidence, really).

Traces of politics

From the Capitol Steps, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ ‘Kokomo’:

Guantanamo

New Politics

So, it has become obvious that in a small area of the remainder of the British Empire is where the power is held, where once a system was put in place to divide the power so areas ruled – to a large extent – unto themselves, it now appears that residents of one area now get to decide the fate of the rest of the country, without the people of the areas affected being politically able to express their views.

Why is it that political residents of this small area should be able to affect the country without consequences?

I propose that this be referred to as “the West Minster Question”

Politics, Vegetables and Paul and Storm

For some unknown reason, possibly just the random whims and zephers of ideas that float across my mind, I have become more interested in US politics recently. This means my normal daily diet of The Daily Show (and occasionally Colbert Report if I have time) has been joined by occasional episodes of Countdown and other things. I like Countdown, the presentation appeals to me. I haven’t been watching it long enough to know how balanced it is – He’s pretty obviously liberal, but the other side have been doing more stupid things recently – but finding a balanced news source is like looking for a needle in a club whose major clientelle is pins that dress up like needles every night and get stuck in. I do hope Obama wins. John McCain doesn’t appear to be a bad chap, at the end. When he’s actually speaking as himself – instead of reading speeches or working from incomplete information he’s been fed – he appears to have a solid grasp of reality and a fair manner. My worry is that he appears not to be able to see the balance in the information that he’s accepting, which is a bad position for a president to be in. Also, I do not like Palin. I think he should ditch Sarah Palin and swap her for Michael.

New topic. At the pub last night Tristan was demonstrating his Eee’s ability to run Mame games by playing Karateka) on it. But due to pub noise and accent-parsing, I could only hear it as “Carrotica”, your one stop shop for carrot-based erotica. For Carrots, by Carrots. With a Coleslaw department for those who like Carrot bondage. Etc. I just thought I’d share that with you.

Finally, I went to see Jonathan Coulton on Thursday, although in truth I was as much there to see Paul & Storm – two of what used to be Da Vinci’s Notebook, which has kinda-split-up-ish – as the main act. Neither disappointed in the least, especially with “Soft Rock” devolving into Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here” as well as “Welcome to the Machine” and various other songs. And, for a £20 bet supplied by the audience, Paul performing most of “Mein Herr”:

Closing off with an epic ten minute version of The Captain’s Wife’s Lament (NSFW. Also funny):

(A full featured and contentful post today)

Remember

In World War One

• Forty two million people were mobilised for the Allies
• There were twenty two million casualties on the Allied side.
• There are less than ten people alive left who fought.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

In World War Two

• Over 10% of the 1939 population of Germany were killed. 16% of Poland.
• The soviet union suffered 10,700,000 military deaths.
• The UK lost 382,600.
• One of these was John Brunt

The point of Remembrance day is not war. It’s not really peace, either, and anyone using it to push any political agenda is doing the Service a disservice. It’s the unspoken social contract between those who go to fight the powers that would attack our country and those who survive: That if you go and fight, and do not return, we will remember them.

You may disagree with the current war, where the direct threat to our lands is diffuse and not really counterable – and possibly enhanced – by direct action in the lands of others, but this war is not all wars, and these reasons are not all reasons, and those that die of these decisions did not make them.

And so we remember them.

Open Sesame

The Open Rights group founding was interesting.

At a talk just over a couple of years ago, organised by NTK, someone suggested that an organisation to protect the rights of people in the UK would only cost a few hundred people a fiver a month, and that there must be enough that this would be possible.

Having fairly publicly put my money where my mouth was a year or so ago, live on Hashlugradio, I’ve yet to regret doing so. And now it’s three years old, and already getting other people schooled.

It’s been a bumper year for digital rights. From HMRC posting half the nation’s bank details to the Darknet, to the ongoing campaign against Phorm, to three strikes and the rightsholder lobby’s so-far thwarted attempt to take control of your internet connection, this year was the year digital rights went mainstream. (ORG is 3, Nov 08)

So if you give a damn about protecting your rights online and off, I’d recommend throwing a couple of starbucks worth of change at the ORG each month, in return for a warm glowy feeling, a christmas party with no karaoke, and the possibility that the rights you’re guarding are your own.

But the leap from 750 to 1000 fivers received each month is not yet enough to guarantee us long term financial stability. We must reach our target of 1500 fivers before the end of the year. And we can’t do that without you. (ORG is 3, Nov 08)

Go now. Go quickly. We only have a few months to save the world