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It's the question that isn't really be asked - at least in the media. But did the Mail on Sunday's scoop last weekend fatally damage England's chances of hosting the World Cup in 2018?

Lord Triesman's words were certainly ill-advised, and, without any proof, completely unfounded. He was foolish to confide such beliefs with anyone - including people who thought were close friends. And now FIFA is carrying out an inquiry into the claims he made.

But should the Mail on Sunday have carried the report, and what long term damage might it do to the bid? We won't really ever know - and certainly not until December.

The front page of The Sun this morning is turned over to attempting to revitalise the bid, carrying David Beckham's belief that it's not all over yet (Well he would say that wouldn't he?).

Hang on Adam!

Surely it's vital that the media and journalists can report anything that happens without care for the consequences? They're just reporting it after all? A free media is one of the tenets of a democracy. And we know what happens to journalists in Russia who step out of line...

That's true, and I'd defend any journalist from reporting anything.

But there is a slightly fishy smell surrounding the Mail on Sunday's story though. The word du jour must surely be "entrapment". However Triesman did say those things and he was very foolish to have voiced them at any time - never mind at quite such a sensitive time as now.

Today's Guardian mentions an unnamed FIFA member who'll be one of those voting to decide who gets the 2018 competition as saying that he believes its fatally damaged England's chances. But as we all know - in the political arena of sport, nothing is ever quite as it appears.

Sports politics surely remains the one area in a western democratic world, where corruption remains. Just look at some previous FIFA and IOC administrations to find things that aren't really very clever, very nice, and in cases, very legal.

But I do wonder how much pressure there currently is on the Mail on Sunday to reveal - or keep hidden - any further revelations that might come from it's tape recorded conversations with Triesman? Are we seeing News International v Associated Newspapers over this?

In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. And if the average football fan begins to believe that the Mail on Sunday cost England the 2018 World Cup, then it could hit the bottom line of Associated Newspapers. And an endless supply of Phil Collins CDs won't fix that.

[UPDATE]

I must admit I wrote most of that without testing the water of fan reaction. And it seems pretty clear that I'm by no means the only person pointing a finger at the Mail on Sunday.

Roy Greenslade is wondering like I am, whether this could lead to Hillsborough style boycott of the paper. Of course Linekar's left the paper, and the reaction in comments on the Mail's site seems to be flowing one way for the most part.

Well not really live. But expect this particular entry to be updated as the night goes on. It'll be in reverse order.

11:40

"Haven't you got a city to run? Well go away and do it. Goodbye!" Paxman to Boris.

11:36

I've just realised that I missed the news that my own local MP who had her expenses issues has been kicked out. It was still a close run thing though.

She can't be surprised, and frankly, there's no need for anyone who lives around here to have a second home in Westminster.

Meanwhile Boris is talking nonsense with Paxman which might make for light relief, but he is still our mayor for God's sake.

11:26

David Steel correcting Jeremy Paxman on what Nick Clegg actually said - which does mean the Tories get first attempt at putting a Parliament together, and not that Nick Clegg will talk to the Tories first. Those are subtly different things.

Jeremy Vine in his CGI parliament which looks like it's been created with the help of those guys in Taiwan who animate the news.

10:54

The more alert may have spotted a large seven hour gap between updates. That's because I went to bed for a bit around 5am.

So the news now is that Nick Clegg has said that he thinks the Tories should get to be first chance to make a government. That doesn't mean that he'll support them however. But one way or another it's a disappointing result for the Lib Dems.

03.54

OK - so I've slowed down these updates quite a bit. Still on Twitter though.

02:58

It seems as though Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard was standing in Witney where amazingly, David Cameron won the seat.

02:46

Paddy Ashdown was interesting on Five Live just now talking about the growing importance of postal votes and noting how the exit poll can't take proper account of those voters.

Paxman asks Opik if he lost because of a Cheeky Girl!

02:26

Lembit Opik loses his seat. I don't think this quite counts as 2010's version of "Were you still up when Portillo lost his seat?"

02:06

Yes - I know that I'm not updating every couple of minutes now. But there's little to add really. Jeremy Vine has a table now as well as his earlier staircase.

And a drunk woman who turns out to be a C4 property porn presenter was interviewed on the BBC boat.

01:34

So where are we now? Labour wants to work with the Lib Dems.

David Blunkett pretty much conceded defeat and then immediately rowed back.

Some BNP "Land is Power" lunatic in Gordon Brown's constituency is wearing sunglasses and seems to be giving a Black Panther salute of some sort.

Gordon Brown's acceptance speech seems to refer to the reports of people unable to vote.

01:08

"Is this the Ashdown money?" ask Paxman

"AshCROFT," says Lord AshDOWN.

01:02

"Well there's very little to see there..."

Dimbleby on Cameron arriving at his count after seeing some dull footage of nothing much happening.

00:54

Over on Sky, Adam Boulton gets his turn with the Electoral Commission's Jenny Watson and opens his interview with, "Are you going to resign?"

00:48

The Dark Lord himself has moved on from the BBC and seems to be in Westminster now where he's talking down the line to Adam Boulton on Sky. No love lost in that interview!

00:45

It turns out that Ian Paisley has a son, and he's comfortably won his seat in North Antrim.

I am beginning to wonder if Fiona Bruce has had a little tipple.

Willing Margaret Hodge on in Barking.

00:28

"An Eton and Oxford educated white man. They said it wouldn't happen in our lifetime!" - Andy Zaltzman on The Sun's likening of Cameron with Obama on their front page yesterday.

00:25

Andy Zaltzman has joined Geoff Lloyd on their election night show. Obviously he still has a few political gags left after recent appearances on The Vote Now Show, The Bugle, 7 Day Sunday and even his sister's podcast, Answer Me This!

00:15

Oh good. Back to Andrew Neil's party - obviously the hot ticket of the evening. David Starkey, Martin Amis and Simon Shama. Oddly Amis didn't use it as an opportunity to plug BBC2's upcoming adaptation of Money.

And is that Joan Collins gurning at the camera in the background? Yes it is. And she has little to no idea what's happening. Richard Wilson wants proportional representation and Tony Parsons doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between Milibands. Finally Armando Ianucci must be wondering what the hell he's doing there.

Collins is a strong believer in the family, something she thinks Labour has forgotten. She's such a fervant believer that she has lots of family via her four different husbands.

00:00

Over on Sky, wherer they made a great deal of the fact their election night is in HD (despite the fact that the vast majority of counts will only be in SD), we've got pictures of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, at the Barking count. Thank god I don't have an HDTV.

The he talks to George Osborne in Tatton. He uses the same line with Adam Boulton that he did with David Dimbleby on BBC1 a few minutes earlier.

22:50

Fiona Bruce has now twice smirked when talking about Nigel Farage's crash earlier. Well I suppose - given that nobody was too seriously hurt - it is a little bit funny.

Now the BBC is taking it a bit more seriously and we're getting a hospital update with both Farage and pilot being stable.

The problems over people failing to be able to vote sounds more serious - particularly in places where they actually ran out of voting slips.

23:40

More stories floating around on Twitter about voters refusing to leave polling stations having not been able to vote. Well there were an awful lot of soaps on this evening meaning you couldn't easily get out of the house before 9.00pm...

23:29

Swings in safe-seats really aren't relevant are they? But nonetheless, with little else to look at, it'll get analysed to within an inch of its life.

23:27

Another less-than-shocking result from the north-east. The BNP guy didn't bother to hang around for the result.

23:19

Looking forward to Jeremy Vine taking over as the new presenter of Five's Domino Day

I seem to have strayed onto an old episode of That's Life on BBC1. Esther Rantzen is a Luton independent.

22:15

A quick swing through radio now.

Geoff Lloyd has started his election night party on Absolute Radio with some old calypso music because the song was about British elections.

On Five Live they seem to have someone called Mike Smith on. But not the ex-Radio 1 and Saturday morning kids TV Mike Smith. Basically they're filling...

(On my muted TV set Emily Maitliss is showing her map of the UK with one small red dot in the top right hand corner.)

Radio 4 is doing a professional job, filling in a similar manner.

LBC is a bit more argumentative, although they're all saying that Clegg "peaked too soon".

Back on TV Andrew Neil has moved indoors and has one of his This Week chums, Michal Portillo (ah, memories. He talked to us as school kids once).

Mariella Frostrup is here not talking about books which makes a change. She does know Gordon Brown seemingly. And Ian Hislop is also there, honing a few lines for tomorrow morning's recording Have I Got News perhaps. He's a not-really-in-the-closet Lib Dem.

Now we're getting into why the exit poll doesn't do percentages but does seats.

David Baddiel's not really made a great effort considering he knew he was going to be on TV (NB I'm sure he'll be terrific on a certain set of podcasts coming soon).

Sadly the signal cut out before we could hear what Fearne Britton had to say.

23:02

Huw Edwards on Sky 972 aka BBC Wales explaining why there'll not be a great deal going on for at least another hour yet.

22:57

DImbleby: "We'll be reporting more than the party leaders and all that."

22:52

No sign of Sunderland. Over on BBC Parliament, they're broadcasting BBC Scotland's election coverage. They'll be in for a long night as many of their more rural constituencies will have polling stations far and wide.

On Fox News it's Glen Beck. Moving on...

France 24 is running live coverage, but I think I'll leave them to it.

Al Jazeera is just covering the news as usual. Not surprising given the financial markets today.

Finally we get Sunderland and there's no surprise. And overall it tells us precisely nothing.

22:45

Over on Sky they've been talking to frustrated would-be voters in Sheffield who were turned away from their polling station because it was too busy and they couldn't vote by the 10pm deadline.

Meanwhile on Sky they "know" that Labour will win 255 seats in their exit poll. That's not actually how it works Sky. We don't really know anything just at the moment.

Fraser Nelson has been "working with his iPhone" and can't find any "blogger" who believes the exit poll. Of course they mightn't, and I don't really either. But then I know no more than anybody else.

Sunderland is being slower than the TV companies had hoped. They've yet to announce.

22:40

Alistair Campbell using the "we" word quite a lot on ITV.

22:35

Brucie thinks he's on some new primetime gameshow. You could see him desperately trying to work one of his old Play Your Cards Right lines into his interview with Andrew Neil.

By the way, with Piers Morgan on the bank of The Thames somewhere, all it would take is a fast boat and a paintball gun. Just saying...

BBC reporting lines in Leeds at 9.30pm and hundreds turned away in Manchester unable to vote.

22:30

Andrew Neil is looking shifty on The Thames somewhere. He's hearing from Piers "Moron" Morgan. So along with Simon Cowell in The Sun the other day, that just leaves Amanda Holden and we've got all the BGT judges.

22:25

A couple of great pieces on exit polls from the FT and the excellent Mark Blumethal on Pollster.com.

22:18

Kirsty Wark is most certain that Nick Clegg is watching BBC1. But she also reports things that others are saying on Twitter, that large crowds at some polling stations have been turned away due to inability to handle the numbers.

Pleased to see that Sith Lord himself is with Paxman.

22:15

Good news, according to ITV News' Romilly Weeks, the Sunderland ballot box counters have been chosen because they're "very good at counting" and "good with their fingers."

22:12

Over on CNN, Richard Quest has been banished to Parliament Green where there's not a lot going on. Quest isn't appearing as a hologram.

22:10

Sky has Adam Boulton in HD which is probably an "H" more than I need. In Sunderland the pictures of the election workers rushing in the ballot boxes make it look like a Saturday teatime gameshow. But even Sky admits it's like "It's A Knockout".

22:05

A good start with no sound from Michael Gove.

The BBC's "big innovation" is an FHM-style projection on Big Ben. Interestingly, I was at a picnic with Gail Porter a couople of weeks ago (friend of a friend).

Harriet Harman makes a good point that a decent turnout seems to have led to queues in a few places. She wants to change the voting system.

22:00

Hmm. Exit Poll predicts a hung pariament, but Dimbleby is already giving it a certain degree of scepticism.

307 Tories
255 Labour
59 Lib Dems
29 Others

21:58

Paxo's on the "naughty step" while Jeremy Vine is following his Yellow/Red/Blue Brick Road. Oh good. Andrew Neil will be interviewing Brucie. I really need to hear his views.

21:55

David Dimbleby tells us this is the most exciting election for a generation. I note that this is going out in HD - much like Sky's coverage - except the BBC would probably admit that 99% of their OBs are in SD since tonight must be one of the most resource hungry for any broadcaster.

21:49

I've been watching C4's alternative election. It's been advertised a lot today, including a wraparound on the Evening Standard.

Seemingly its actually being shot in the next studio along from BBC1's election coverage in Television Centre.

Anyway, it's a bit hit and miss so far, with significantly more miss than hit. I didn't bother with the Come Dine With Me special at all, on the basis that I can't stand Come Dine With Me and will never watch it.

Channel 4's obviously not voting Green.

They were advertising their alternative election special this evening with a helicopter dangling this ad at lunchtime over Soho.

That follows a very expensively produced booklet that fell out of one of my newspapers at the weekend.

The thing is, even though I really like the people involved (Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell etc.), I'll still be watching the "proper" election coverage on BBC1 and maybe a bit of Sky. But I'll record it...

Actually I'll also be listening to the radio - Radio 4, Five Live and Geoff's Election Show and generally blogging and entertaining myself. I suspect that Twitter will be busy too.

I wonder what C4 will do if there needs to be a second election in October?

Up early to vote. It's easier in the morning as there's less queuing.

My local MP is Labour member of Parliament, Joan Ryan.

Not only does she have a second home close to Westminster despite living in a London Borough with tens of thousands of commuters who have journeys of equal of greater distance into work every day, but she also "flipped" her home. The Telegraph piece on her can be found here.

It's not clear who put this poster up on a boarded up pub near Enfield Town market, but I suspect that author will not be alone.

This is the first local election-related communication of any description that I've so far seen locally.

I love Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.

It's simply one of the best things on TV anywhere.

Anyway - this week they covered the ongoing Iraq Inquiry, and in particular coverage of Blair's appearance at the Inquiry.

Except, the programme couldn't show any of the the Inquiry. This is because television programmes can't show clips of Parliamentary procedings and I assume that this Inquiry, which was announced by the Prime Minister last year is considered to fall within that arena (NB A tweet from Matt Wells says that the contract to take pictures eplicitly prohibits satirical television. I'd add that Brooker uses most of his footage without permission - hence the credits throughout).

I talked about this a little last year, in relation to Have I Got News For You. Those rules say:

no extracts of Parliamentary proceedings may be used in any light entertainment programme or in a programme of political satire

It's worth noting that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart did show Blair's appearance at the Inquiry. And in a satirical manner - the segment was entitled "Faulty Powers" (see what they did there?). And that show was then broadcast on More4. The Daily Show took their footage from CSPAN who evidently rebroadcast it in the US.

Indeed, the programme has only just dropped off the 4OD player - otherwise you could watch it right now.

Yes - that was probably an editing oversight on C4/More4's part. But it just shows that we're still ridiculously prevented from showing footage in a free manner.

Anyway - go and watch this week's programme, if only because it has another one of those mini-documentaries from Adam Curtis.

Oh - and if you want to search for Blair featuring in The Daily Show's coverage, it's the Feb 1 2010 edition you need to find on the internet. To be honest, it's not actually that good.

At midday today, I went to Trafalgar Square along with what must have been a couple of thousand of other photographers to protest that "I'm A Photographer, Not A Terrorist!"

This is an event that will surely have hundreds of photos coming out of it. There were no speeches per se, but lots of group photos (something that's quite hard to do with photographers since they all want to be taking the photo).

A few of my photos are here, with the rest over on Flickr. A BBC report of the event is here.

Last night I was out trying to take photos of the Geminid meteor shower. It was a bit cloudy as you can see from the above photo which shows precisely no meteors. But as I set out on foot to a nearby field a bit away from the city lights, wrapped up warm with a hat, with a tripod in a case over my shoulder, I was expecting to be stopped at any moment by the police.

Under Section 44, police can stop you if they think that you're being a bit suspicious - especially in certain areas. And "suspicious" tends to mean taking photographs.

Last week The Independent got an admission from the Association of Chief Police Officers to admit that the powers were being used too much to harrass people innocently taking pictures.

"Officers and community support officers are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is unacceptable."

This follows numerous cases of people being stopped and having their details taken and the police insisting that they see your photos.

Anyway - that note should have put an end to it shouldn't it?

Nope.

In Saturday's Guardian, Paul Lewis has penned a piece: "From snapshot to Special Branch: how my camera made me a terror suspect."

The journalist went out to the Gherkin and took photos and video footage of the building. Security guards called the police who wanted to know who he was and to see his footage. Seemingly, filming the top of the building is fine, but not the lower part where you can see the lobby and its video cameras.

While the journalist stood his ground pretty firmly, the video at The Guardian's site is well worth a watch even though the police involved clearly realise that he's probably a journalist. Nonetheless they bandy around Section 44 as they like.

The I Am A Photographer Not A Terrorist site is calling for a mass gathering to defend street photography as a result of this and other incidents.

The whole culture that this is part of, is getting really concerning.

The Edinburgh TV Festival is all very depressing isn't it. The stories coming out, during a recession that's probably hit TV today to a greater extent than ever before, all seem to be about shutting things down, and leaving well alone.

James Murdoch has come out swinging with his McTaggart lecture and it's depressing stuff. Poor little Sky is being set upon from every side. This is the same Sky, by the way, that recently announced record numbers of subscribers including many who've been shifted over to HD (for which there's an additional monthly cost).

I think that Richard Sambrook (yes - of the BBC) really hits the nail on the head in his blog entry.

Allied with a good piece from David Chance in the FT the other day, it really shows where an embattled Murdoch is really coming from.

The printed media is embattled to put it politely. Rupert Murdoch's answer is to make everything paid-for. If he can just make this happen, then everything will be OK. But that won't work if everybody else doesn't go along with him. As even Murdoch will acknowledge, in a market like London, consumers seem to prefer the "news-lite" Metro to bargain-price 20p copy of The Sun. While clever things with subscription models and access to the web probably could make a difference, micro-payments (also beloved of many others in the TV industry who believe that we'll somehow go through the rigmarole of paying 10p to watch Susan Boyle or whoever sing on our laptops) have yet to really emerge, and quite possibly never will. (Robert Peston talks about an adjunct of this in his very long, but well-worth-reading blog.)

Meanwhile he feels the pressure from two sides in the TV business. None of the Murdochs have ever liked Freeview - ironic as they're a stakeholder in the consortium and continue to supply three free-to-air channels. Ofcom turned down their proposal to switch them over to a sports/movies subscription option, and so the stake sits there as Sky fumes, plots and schemes its next move. In the meantime, the forthcoming Freeview HD is likely to cost Sky subscribers in churn.

Ofcom really became unpopular with Sky the moment it announced proposals to force the broadcaster to wholesale some of its premium programming - sport and films - to other broadcasters. Yes, you can buy those channels on Virgin Media, but other platforms such as Top-Up TV and BT Vision don't have access. BT, for example, would love to sell Sky Sports to consumers in a way that doesn't force them to buy dozens of other channels to access the sports package as Sky effectively forces consumers to do.

Ofcom also talks about rights that Sky is unable to use, yet holds the rights to such as subscription films on demand. You pay a monthly fee for recent releases (a la Sky Movies) and watch them as you want. The main issue is that Sky does not have the bandwidth to offer this kind of service. Indeed, the return path is still largely reliant on phonelines. Cable companies and internet operators can clearly offer these kinds of services.

To say that Sky is furious at Ofcom's intervention here would be putting it lightly. It's livid. It could change the fundamentals of their entire business model.

Is it surprising, then that suddenly David Cameron has talked about limiting Ofcom in the future. Anyone would think that one or more of the Murdoch clan has a word with Mr Cameron...

Historically British broadcasting has been world class, and that includes commercial as well as public sector broadcasting. Yet, as Sambrook says:

What's missing so far is discussion of the public good. Because many commercial operations are struggling, the answer for some is to close or pull down the BBC's activities. A lowest common-denominator approach. Surely part of the justification for public funding and public media is to provide during conditions of market failure?

The argument is always to take down the BBC. But will we be left with programming that is as good? Will we have the information and resource available to all?

We're living in a wonderful age. The internet allows the licence payer to watch, listen and read so much of what we've already paid for. The BBC is just about the only news organisation in the world with a significant number of foreign bureaux beyond the agencies like Reuters, AFP and AP. We laugh when we see what we think are, say, ill-informed Americans not understanding the world view on issues, yet it's only because we get that world view ourselves via news organisations that employ staff in these locations.

James Murdoch talks about "unaccountable institutions" like the BBC Trust, Channel 4 and Ofcom. Yet he works for a very unaccountable company himself. Yes, I can buy shares in the business, but what I say or believe counts for nothing. I can at least have a say so in the next government with my views counting equal to those of the very rich. Sky and News International pretty much do as they wish (and they reportedly don't pay a great deal of tax either).

I find it amusing that Murdoch attacks the EU's attempts to force competition into football rights by forcing them to be sold to at least two companies should be attacked. Of course he's right that prices went up rather than down as consumers had to take out a second subscription, but is that really the EU's fault or Sky's? It still has the dominant share of matches including every single "glamour" tie. Setanta didn't play along and despite trying just about everything, went out of business (they made plenty of mistake to be sure). ESPN is not making those mistakes and has quickly climbed into bed with Sky who now handle everything from subscriptions to production on ESPN's behalf. It's clear that you get along or you die.

Has the BBC gotten too big? Sometimes, yes. I think that the provision of free video to various newspapers hasn't been the smartest thing. I can quite see why commercial providers like ITN, Reuters and PA would be furious. They're having a market removed from them.

Similarly, the Lonely Planet purchase really wasn't smart. Although I think that BBC Worldwide existing as a commercial operator who's job is to plough profits back to the BBC is clearly exactly what the BBC needs.

Murdoch's MacTaggart speech was based around a "creationism" theme which didn't really work I felt. But calling the UK "authoritarian" is misguided at the very least, and obnoxious in the extreme.

Somehow, I found his closing sentence to be fearful rather than fill me with support with his viewpoints. Wall Street's Gordon Gekko sprang to mind:

The only reliable, durable, perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

...or not.

I'd completely forgotten this, but then I saw last week's edition of Have I Got News For You presented this week by Alexander Armstrong.

The MPs' expenses scandal is the gift that keeps on giving as far as satirical programmes go, but when illustrating the resignation of the Speaker, Armstrong pointed out that programmes like this one were explicitly not allowed to use parliamentary footage. (He went on to use an "artist's illustration" to make the point).

I've just been looking around, and that's completely true:

no extracts of Parliamentary proceedings may be used in any light entertainment programme or in a programme of political satire;

I really hadn't thought about this for years. But it's in the Rules of Coverage.

So while over on More4 we can nightly watch Jon Stewart mercilessly taking apart C-Span coverage of US politicians, we're simply not allowed to the same here.

Interestingly, this doesn't prevent magazines such as Private Eye, taking stills from the video feed and putting them on the front cover with words coming out of the speakers' mouths.

Meanwhile Sky News is running a promo for itself which uses an extract of the (soon to be retired) Speaker saying nice things about it. Curious in itself, but seemingly not against the rules:

no extracts of Parliamentary proceedings may be used in any form of advertising, promotion or other form of publicity, except in the form of trailers for programmes which use extracts within the requirement of these guidelines and where the trailers also comply with those requirements;

As Sky News obviously can run extracts, it can use extracts to promote itself.

Here's The Daily Show's take on it:

(Not at its best to be honest) But they didn't use clips from Parliament - probably more by luck than judgement.

It's worth noting that More4 will make the odd edit - there's a rant about that over here.

The Home Office has been having a hard time recently - and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, especially so.

Yesterday, they came out all guns a blazing, with a list of people "named and shamed" who are to be excluded from entering Britain.

Obviously this is by no means a list of the only people we don't want to have in the country, but it's a list that shouts loudly that Britain doesn't want undesirables visiting these shores.

What could be wrong with that?

Well for the most part, these people aren't actually rabble rousers who are likely to cause injury or harm. They're largely full of stupid ideas, but by officially blocking them from entering the country, and making a big song and dance about it, you can be sure that they now all have a 'pulpit' to shout from.

It really does no good by not letting these people come. If they're criminals under UK law, then fair enough. And if they commit crimes when they get here, then arrest and charge them. But the idiots who feature in Louise Theroux programmes are suddenly legitimised by this behavious when really we should let them come over and have a good laugh at them.

The strangest person to be named in Michael Savage - a right-wing American talk show host - who may well say objectionable things, but no more so than any number of other right-wing American talk show hosts. In the US, they have freedom of speech (although incitement to hatred is still a crime). Quite why this man has been blocked is beyond me.

The growth of right-wing talk radio in the US is an interesting aspect of the medium - something that's not happened in the UK (let's face it, that kind of radio wouldn't be legal under our laws).

An interesting book I read last year was Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio which included a chapter on Michael Savage. He's not a pleasant person, and I wouldn't want to listen to his show. But I don't think I'd bar him from entering the country. Not unless he actually had done something illegal when he'd been here.

Instead he gets the oxygen of publicity, and can take quite a high-minded view - with talk of "suing Britain."

I'd recommend reading "Shock Jocks" for an insight into this phenomena. There is a lot of partisan commercial speech radio in the US, and while much of it's ugly, their constitution allows it. Would I want that "freedom" over here? I'm not sure I would. But that doesn't mean I'd block their presenters from visiting the UK. We're bigger than that. Who knows: maybe if Savage visited the country (he's not been here for something like 25 years, and had no plans to do so), he might actually have his views altered. He's unlikely to now.

Inspired by the ridiculously popular WWII poster, and The IT Crowd.

Personally I think another poster in the series - Freedom Is In Peril - is equally as relevant.

On Saturday I attended what I genuinely believe was an important event - The Convention on Modern Liberty in London. Satellite events were taking place all over the country, with the plenary sessions and keynote addresses.

It was a great day with a vast array of speakers. We had to pick and choose which sessions we went to over the course of the day, with the main sessions taking place in a room nearly large enough for everyone to squeeze in.

I suppose that if I'm going to highlight a few speeches, I must mention the keynotes from Philip Pullman and David Davis.

As soon as videos for both of these become available I'll embed them here.

Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, opened procedings with the day's first keynote, followed by the first plenary as The Guardian's Georgina Henry struggled to keep a very angry Helena Kennedy QC under control. When the long list of things that we're no longer allowed to do starts to get expressed, you begin to realise exactly what we're missing.

Phil Booth of NO2ID spoke to us to ensure that we write to our MPs immediately about Clause 152 of the Criminal and Justice Bill.

This little clause essentially allows the Government to pass any information about you to whoever it wants to.

There are full details here (PDF).

I then attended the Press Freedom session chaired by Joanne Cash QC (and prospective Conservative Party candidate).

The first panellist was Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, who pointed out that libel in the UK costs roughly 140x more than anywhere else in Europe. He spoke about the recent case The Guardian had had with Tesco, where they did make some mistakes but tried to right them as quickly as possibly. Because it was in the elaborate area of company tax law, the end result was an £800,000 bill which included £350,000 for Tesco's accountants to explain to Tesco's lawyers what it was they were doing.

The concern is that we no longer investigate these kinds of things, because it's simply to expensive. Rusbridger went on to say that their recent week long series of reports on company tax had cost £100,000 "to legal." Most media organisations simply won't bother investigating in the first place. Tax avoidance schemes will simply go unreported.

Fatima Bhutto came from Pakistan to explain what media censorship laws meant there including details behind the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act there.

Andrew Gilligan is best known for his report on "the September Dossier" on The Today Programme in 2003. He now writes for the Evening Standard. He said that there were three areas that were of massive concern to journalists at the moment: the state's laws, the decisions of judges and the economic climate that media outlets are now finding themselves in.

He said that confidential sources would find it near to impossible to provide journalists with information with their cars followed via licence plates, and their phone and email records retained. He said that the Government was really cracking down on whistleblowers.

Some of the antics in the past of the red-top tabloids means that worrying about the freedom of the press is not a large concern amongst the public.

Nick Cohen writes himself about what he said at the session. He talked about libel tourism including the cases of Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz and Roman Polanski. It's clear that libel needs reform. Otherwise all over the world we must worry about Schillings, Carter-Ruck and Justice Eady.

And he though that the blogosphere couldn't fight this: the first sight of a legal letter will mean that either the blogger (or perhaps more likely, their host) will fold and take the offending item down.

There was then an ongoing discussion in the packed room about what needed to be done. We were told (well I didn't know about it anyway) the Reynolds defence, and the differences between paper publishing and internet publishing (1 year from printing for paper, 1 year from the date that the article is removed from the internet for libel cases!). The case of Indian artist M F Hussain was spoken about - an exhibition was cancelled following complaints from a small pressure group.

The next session I attended was The Database State. Guy Herbert from NO2ID chaired this and explained in some detail what was happening.

Sam Talbot Rice from the Centre for Policy Studies talked about the cost, and the data loss. I'll read their publication "Who Do They Think We Are" published last year.

He referred to Jack Straw, who has most recently been explaining to us that we don't live in a police state. He regularly puts forward the case that in the instance when someone dies, you have to inform various parts of government. But of course we can give explicit permission for that. We don't want to tell the government everything.

Tony Bunyan from Statewatch spoke from a European perspective. Discussions have to take place at a European level first. He talked about the worrying rise of hard right and even fascist elements across Europe.

He said that the forms of terrorism we've experienced in recent times will never destroy our way of life and liberty, but some of these new laws will! These would never have been introduced during the Cold War - because they're too similar to what took place behind the Iron Curtain (earlier, a Polish attendee drew excellent light on this comparison).

Simon Davies from Privacy International was furious and talked about naming names. He feels that there are specific individuals within the Civil Service who's power is too great as we slide into the Database State.

Finally Christina Zaba of the NUJ showed us her father's old post-WWII ID card and said that too many people thought that this was what we were talking about when we spoke of ID cards. It's not the card - it's the database. Airside workers will be the first to need ID cards later this year as part of their jobs: the river is starting to flow.

I noticed on my way out of the Database State session that Neil Tennant had been sitting behind me. He wasn't alone - there were lots of members of the great and the good. Brian Eno was on the final panel, and Billy Bragg spoke in a session I didn't attend. David Elstein and Peter Bazalgette were there as was Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing. There were lots of writers around too, and I'm sure that there were many more in amongst the everyday members of the public like myself.

After the final panel session, we heard from David Davis who did give an excellent speech. He does believe in this stuff.

All in all a worthwhile day. I could probably have done without the poor England performance in the rugby afterwards, but that wasn't the convention's fault. Although there was the suspicion that it was just a large group of Guardian readers convening, in fact all of the major political parties were represented and not everyone's ideas were the same. What was and is clear is that we're slipping into something we really don't want, and we need to act now, because as Davis said, by the time we're actually in a police state, it's too late.

[More links and embeds to follow]

Great news! The vote called last week by the government to exclude MPs' expenses from falling into the Freedom of Information act, which was to take place tomorrow, has been cancelled.

This superb news almost certainly follows the vast amount of emails that MPs have been receiving, the Tweets and the Facebook group. All inside 48 hours.

Much kudos must go to everyone at MySociety who were able to turn this whole process around in 48 hours.

I even got a response from my MP's researcher acknowledging my email and promising to get back in contact.

Seriously - MPs care about their constituents, especially as we approach a general election.

The government is trying to renege on publishing details of MPs expenses. They introduced some new legislation last week to remove their obligation under the Freedom of Information Act.

This comes after over £1m had been spent collecting the information. And let's not forget that they're public servants.

So write to your MP today. Get them to do something about it.

It's very - just click here and you can electronically send your message.

There's the inevitable Facebook group too!

The vote is this Thursday, so do it today - do it now.

One of the most interesting documents likely to be published in the UK in the next few months is Lord Stephen Carter's Digital Britain report. The draft report is due to be published by the end of this month, and it's likely to cover things like public service, broadband and digital radio. The recent DRWG report has been passed to Lord Carter's team.

But the leaks are starting now. Today's FT has a report that details what is likely to be the highest profile element of his report: universal broadband access.

Currently 40% of households don't have broadband access, and after years of growth, the increase has slowed.

The Digital Britain report proposes that every household in the UK should have access to at least 2 megabits per second download speed. This would be either via fixed wires, or via wireless 3G technology in rural areas.

What isn't clear from the FT's reports is how this would be funded, and how much it would cost householders. If 40% of homes have yet to subscribe to broadband, many are obviously in areas that can receive broadband currently. So are they not subscribing because it's too expensive? Or do they not have PCs? There's not really a "pay as you go" broadband offering - you're generally tied into 12 month contracts which some find either unaffordable or otherwise unviable. And of course, not everyone owns a PC or other device that would make use of the internet.

Without universal access to the internet, we are already becoming a two-tiered society. So giving access to all is important.

More on Digital Britain once the draft report is published, including much about radio...

In just four days, we could begin to see the first of Cliff Richard's singles re-released without Richard himself either profiting or having any say over what's released.

That could happen, although as I write, I can't see any forthcoming releases at Amazon. Indeed he's recently released a celebratory 50 years anthology, and gave away an album with the Mail on Sunday recently covering much the same.

His first two singles came out in 1958 and were Move It and High Class Baby.

Because copyright on current performers extends over 50 years, those songs drop out of copyright from Jan 1 2009.

Richard's problem is that he performed, but did not write most of his hits. Move It, Wikipedia tells me, was written by Ian Samwell (Aaron Schroeder wrote the B-Side - Schoolboy Crush). Samwell died in 2003, but his estate continues to profit from the song he wrote, and will do so until 2073 under current UK copyright legislation.

But Richards isn't happy, and he's not alone. In 2012 early Beatles songs will also go out of copyright, and thousands of other songs are going out of copyright every year.

There's a massive push amongst the UK music industry to get this period increased from 50 years to 95 years.

The reason is simple. These songs currently earn money, and with recorded sales declining, the industry is trying to recoup every penny it possibly can from wherever it can.

Is this a problem? Doesn't Cliff et al deserve a few quid for their work? Well in fact, Cliff's profited quite nicely. The major problem the industry has is that all the people who stand up for them seem to be well-known multi-millionaires. I can look at my own work in 50 years time and know that it won't be earning me any cash. But then I know that because I went in knowing it. If I perform a song today and it's in some way successful (I know this is a stretch, but stay with me), then I know that I have but 50 years to recoup some cash. A struggle I know.

Andy Burnham recently stood up in front of the music industry and gave a speech which suggested that the UK government was backing down from the conclusions of its own report.

Gowers, the author of the report, has a fantastic riposte in the FT:

Copyright is an economic instrument, not a moral one, and if you consider the economic arguments - as I did two years ago at the request of Gordon Brown - you will find that they do not stack up. All the respectable research shows that copyright extension has high costs to the public and negligible benefits for the creative community.

Consumers find themselves paying more for old works or unable to access "orphan works" where copyright ownership is unclear. Small businesses that play recorded music such as hairdressing salons and local radio stations face a hidden extra "tax" in the form of higher music-licence fees. Do they really need this at this time?

Gowers goes on to point out that no musician has ever decided not to record a song because it'll be out of copyright in 50 years.

The orphan works argument is also important. Most recorded music is not available today. It was largely disposable at the time, and even if it wasn't, unless it was recorded by a big enough star, it has long gone out of print. It's worth nobody's time putting it back in print if there are unnecessary copyright payments making the project unworkable.

And if you can't even trace the copyright owners, then you can expect the works to remain out of print until that copyright period is up completely. Currently that's 50 years from then, but it could reach 70 or even 95 if we mimic the States where Walt Disney has had such a sway.

As ever, it's the Open Rights Group that looks out for this kind of thing, because the music industry sings from one voice.

As it points out: the record industry will roll out some needy musicians - and there undoubtedly are many. But they won't be the real beneficiaries of increasing the term: many of those performance rights are owned by the large labels. I don't doubt that they're suffering. Look at EMI after all. But that's not reason to tax the public.

[Regular readers may know that I've written a lot on this subject before. Here, here and here for example. These views, are of course my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.]

A simple one first of all. It seems that the names of the people allegedly responsible for the death of Baby P are being passed around quite freely via electronic media. But for legal reasons, they've not been named publicly in the mainstream media.

It can obviously lead to a lynch-mob mentality that says that we should all go around their houses and... well... probably nothing, since they've been found guilty and will be sentenced accordingly. That's a fairly cut and dried case. At this point, the law of the land will take its course.

But then there's the case of the BNP membership list. As everyone knows, a version of it has been leaked, and the details contained are pretty full with names, complete addresses with postcodes, phone numbers, email addresses and even additional notes accompanying these details. The fallout has begun with a stand-in talkSPORT DJ no longer being employed by the station and at least one policeman facing possible sanctions (the police force made it illegal to be a member of the BNP because it's at odds with their race relations) [UPDATE - The DJ concerned says he joined for research purposes]. Others are likely to suffer repercussions following this publication.

The leak is clearly a breach of data protection, and although our otherwise dreadful Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is fair in asking "I wonder why it is that BNP members are rather more ashamed of their membership [than I am]?" those individuals are entitled to their privacy while the BNP remains a legal political party.

At this point I should probably make clear that I find the BNP utterly abhorent and their beliefs are completely at odds with my own. But we live in a democracy, so the BNP is allowed to exist.

Yet I still feel uncomfortable about it all. Various mashup Google maps have appeared (and disappeared) plotting the data so that you too can see if there's a racist in your street, and I'll freely admit that I've checked out my neighbourhood, but that doesn't mean it's right.

In the US there are sex-offenders' registers, and that's been mooted over here - a parent wants to know if a convicted paedophile lives near them or their child's school. The argument against it is that once News of the World readers have been around to smash all their windows and set fire to their house, they go "off the radar" and nobody is able to keep track of them - least of all the authorities.

Perhaps there's something to be said for all political party affiliations to be made public? But I'm not so sure. It feels at odds with the civil liberties we've been handed down since Magna Carta (More on this soon in another entry).

So while it all seems a fun game to 'out the local racists,' does it really help in the long term?

And would I be happy if someone published a similar list of gay, Jewish or disabled people? (I'm in no way likening them to BNP members, but they're lists that, if they existed, could easily be misused).

So no, I wouldn't be happy. And frankly, I don't want the Government doing it either with their ID card (or big database as it really is).

CNN's Election Night "hologram" was truly the most pointless graphical mechanism I've ever seen on any type of broadcast.

I say get Max Headroom as a pundit for 2012.

You'll get better, more accurate, and more timely information in a thousand other places online tonight, but I'm still blogging the election.

10:21 GMT

So after I watched Obama speak, I did finally go to bed.

But here's the map as it now stands with two states still to be added.

4:57 GMT

Still awaiting Obama.

The Minnesota race with Al Franken standing is terribly close. The Fox TV coverage is now - quite frankly - morose.

Alvin Hall is quite emotional. But I flipped over when Gore Vidal was being interviewed. We also heard from Tracey Chapman - what happened to her?

The BBC has a lovely interview with some Obama supporters in Culpepper, Virginia.

4:31 GMT

I've got to say that McCain's concession speech was very respectful and very gracious.

Looking forward to Obama's now...

04:15 GMT

With a handful of states yet to be added in, here's a near-final map:

The celebrations in Chicago really are wild. And there's are a few celebrations going on in Kenya where Obama's father came from.

Fed up with Fox: "don't forget, he's not just black, he's mixed race..." and then lots of stuff about whether he can bring the country together.

04:05 GMT

Jubilant scenes in Chicago!

Still plenty to add to the map. But America has a black president!

(Fox News still calling it a "right of centre nation.")

04:01 GMT

Obama wins! (Assuming all the results called so far are actually correct)

03:53 GMT

The Beeb's talking about making it final after 4am when the next big states come in. I still want to find out how Virginia's gone.

Jacob's Creek Three Vines Semillon Sauvignon Blanc going down very nicely thank you very much.

03:46 GMT

I love it when Dimbleby gets bored of something. In this instance, Nancy Pelosi was giving a speech which he cut off with, "yah yah yah yah yah yah."

Now we're getting details of how and when McCain will make his concession speech which, traditionally has to come before Obama makes his acceptance speech.

Somehow I feel a little anti-climactic as 4am approaches. We know Obama's going to win. We're waiting for California's polls to shut very shortly, and once those votes are added in, the concession may come.

03:35 GMT

Current discussion: what did McCain do wrong?

Bring back Christopher Hitchens!

Nebraska is one of two states where they break out the votes in a less straightforward manner. The Beeb is giving McCain three of the five votes. Updated map below:

03:30 GMT

Earlier on we heard that Oprah's been "pulsating all day" and is now in "full vibrational mode."

03:22 GMT

Actually - CNN's touchscreen display is also pretty good.

Why is CNN so far behind everyone else projecting states? They've only just projected Texas as going to McCain. I think I could have told you that about two months ago. The BBC had it quite a while ago.

It sounds truly depressing in the hotel in Arizona where McCain's camp are based.

03:10 GMT

You've got to love James Carville on CNN. I always wondered what happened to Pierluigi Collina, but I never realised he had a southern accent.

CNN are projecting Arkansas to McCain which isn't the biggest surprise of the night (Indeed - so unsurprising is it, that I already coloured it in below and added in the votes. CNN, overall, is much more conservative than BBC/ABC).

03:06 GMT

I actually quite like Fox's interactive screen. It works pretty neatly. Sadly their online version of the map isn't nearly as good. They're pumping a truly ridiculous quantity of numbers on screen however.

Updated map:

Eddie Izzard, of all people, is in Times Square on the BBC. I think he trumps Jon Culshaw (who seems to have disappeared from ITV - although to be honest, I haven't been checking).

02:55 GMT

Florida is "very close." I've heard those words somewhere before...

Oh dear - Jeremy Vine is "morphing" his map of the US again. It doesn't add much.

02:40 GMT

Simon Schama calls Dimbelby a "wuss" for refusing to yet call the election for Obama. Dimbleby's response is that Scham is a "very curious historian."

Texas goes red, New Mexico goes blue.

02:36 GMT

Oprah's been "pulsating all day" and is now in "full vibrational mode."

"If you believe in the tooth fairy he [McCain] can win California."

Seemingly Arizona is tied - McCain's home state!

The debate on the BBC is - how shall we say - robust. Simon Schama is giving as good as he gets over whether or not the US is fundamentally centre-right.

02:29 GMT

A few technical difficulties for the BBC's news round up - the sound is all over the place. But sometime after Fox called Ohio for Obama, the BBC (for which I think we must read ABC) are now also calling it.

So here's the updated map:

02:15 GMT

Long chat with my sister in New York about the election on TV. She noted the long faces on Fox News.

I fear that my "interactive" is now way behind. I think I was too dazzled by Jeremy Vine's touchscreen technology.

01:38 GMT

01:30 GMT

Fox News: "We're now calling Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. This is a very hard one for.... the McCain camp to swallow tonight." I'm sure you weren't going to say "us" were you Fox?

01:28 GMT

Ooh. Fox really don't want to call Pennsylvania for Obama despite other networks doing so. They claim it's because they don't have full data yet to compare exit poll data with actual voting numbers. It might be worth at this point highlighting Pollster.com where Mark Blumenthal has some fascinating stuff about the intricacies of exit polling. An American research company we use at work, Edison Media Research is one of the two providers of the exit poll data that all the networks in the US use for their election coverage. The networks do, however, retain their own analysts to interpret that data themselves. About 3000 people across the US are doing the exit polls today.

Doing a bit more channel surfing and strangely a channel I've never watched NDTV is showing an MSNBC feed which is different to the MSNBC feed that CNBC is offering. Strange.

France 24 (due to close at the end of the year?) is live at the US Embassy in Paris, but seems to have a CBS deal for footage. Al Jazeera's numbers match the BBC's. They seem to have a reasonable number of people on the ground. But the driest coverage surely comes from Russia Today who are reasonably indifferent to it all, although CCTV are ignoring it completely.

01:20 GMT

Over on CNN - Wolf Blitzer is still excited by all the technology they have at their disposal. This time around he's liking the microphones they have. In particular those over the ear and round to the mouth jobs. He obviously doesn't do a lot of online gaming...

At "Camp McCain" the Phoenix Boys' Choir are singing relatively sombre songs.

Overall CNN is a lot more conservative than the BBC only giving Obama 77 votes compared with the BBC's 134 at the moment.

Fox is giving Obama 81 but they've also got a few more votes for McCain that nobody else has given them yet.

01:10 GMT

Results are coming thick and fast. I've updated my "interactive" map:

David Dimbleby is worried that Democrats in Chicago are getting "early voting figures" from Florida that he's not seeing.

01:01 GMT

Ooh. Pennsylvania to Obama. We've just seen some balloons with 21 written on them in the Republican camp. Someone get a pin.

00:58 GMT

Another state's been called (by the BBC, at least), so I've updated my map... The previous one has had at least 11 views up until now!

00:48 GMT

Richard Bacon on Five Live talking about the propositions that various states are also voting for: "...and in California they're also voting about gay se... - gay marriage..."

00:42 GMT

I'm wondering whether all the "too close to call" states are really that, or whether the US networks are being very conservative about "calling" states too early on, when in previous years they might have?

McCain was getting all misty eyed about missing the reporters who've been travelling around the country on his plane in the last weeks and months.

Hitchens on Palin again: "...ludicrous contemptible figure..."

00:38 GMT

ITV has Jon Culshaw on its panel. Bring back Bingo Night Live! But they also have Bob Worcester who used to elections for the BBC. But then ITV is anchoring its coverage from London.

"30 Rock" is lit up in red, white and blue. No sing of their map of the US on the ice-rink though.

00:32 GMT

CNN are checking their "math" because their Florida numbers don't add up. Maybe the Nader vote came out?

00:26 GMT

On Palin: "Believes in witches... [and] cannot tell the difference on the phone between President Sarkozy and Inspector Clouseau" - Christopher Hitchens.

Pic. of CNN's "hologram"

00:19 GMT

Fox News has a ridiculous amount of information on the screen.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer is telling us "You're about to see something you've never seen before..."

They've pointlessly (and badly) blue-screened their Chicago correspondent so that she appears in the Atlanta New York studio. What's the point?

The caption reads "via hologram."

Seemingly, the conversation can be more intimate if the correspondent can be "beamed in."

We're told that there are 35 different cameras pointing at her. They love the technology. It's utterly pointless - really pointless.

00:08 GMT

Genuinely interesting news that CBS is projecting Virginia to Obama. That'd be amazing. As seen on Bloomberg of all channels.

00:04 GMT

How exciting! The first results are in, and I've updated my map!

23:58 GMT

How UK TV "called the election" tonight (thanks to Andy in the comments for the idea):

Click on the large version.

23:53 GMT

"You're obviously voting for Obama. It says so on your badge."

23:41 GMT

Hmm. John Simpson's in Chicago. Who does the BBC expect to win then? David Dimbleby obviously wasn't sporty at school and seems to be confused about whether Obama is out playing basketball or baseball. He decided that it couldn't possibly be baseball because of the time of year - obviously oblivious of the World Series ending a week or so ago.

23:34 GMT

Rupert Murdoch on Obama: "I like him personally... but..."

It must annoy Murdoch that his NY Post backed McCain and it's looking v. dodgy for him. He'd never let The Sun back the wrong candidate.

23:28 GMT

Jeremy Vine is "morphing" his US map again complete with OTT "glooping" sound effects.

23:11 GMT

The BBC seems to have chosen the noisiest balcony they could in the whole of Washington. Sky News is on a balcony somewhere in New York. France 24 is, er, in Paris. And Jeremy Vine is in Tron. Well he's surrounded by virtual maps, and even virtual railings, that occasionally block out the numbers on the virtual map.

Fox News is taking apart some of the duller exit poll questions coming up with stats like "38% of voters approve of Sarah Palin" which sounds a little low to me.

CNBC is relaying MSNBC coverage but has cleverly replaced MSNBC's ticker with their own ticker with share prices. Haven't the markets closed yet?

The C4 documentary on Neil Morrissey's new beer was quite fun, especially as I unknowingly tried it last week in a pub in the city.

22:00 GMT

Since everyone else is blogging it, and I'm nursing a foul cold, but have booked tomorrow off to specifically stay up tonight and watch the election, I'll be damned if that's not exactly what I do.

Anyway, every media organisation of note as a funky interactive map. Unfortunately, my Flash skills aren't up to much, but I do have the map below which I almost certainly won't be keeping updated all night:

(I did look for something appropriate to draw with in Hamleys but they didn't seem to have any Etch-A-Sketches in stock).

As America votes, there were a couple of fascinating films on TV recently which had well-timed screenings.

On Friday there was a cracking film on BBC Four which isn't available to watch on the iPlayer, so I can only recommend picking up the DVD instead. CSNY Deja Vu followed Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young on tour across the US in 2006. This documentary which appeared to have pretty full access and was made by an ABC journalist, showed that many people thought that when a band in its sixties tours so many years after it had originally been behind the protest movement, it might have mellowed. Those people were wrong as became clear when they begin a song with the lyrics "Let's impeach the president..." I hold not particular candle for their music, but their beliefs are heartfelt, even if some of the disagreeing crowd had the perfectly valid opinion that if they were paying $200 for a ticket, they shouldn't be preached to. But CSNY always preached, so more fool them.

And speaking of DVDs, if you missed Recount on More4 a month or so ago, and the Channel 4 screening on Saturday night, then you'll have to wait until January to buy the DVD of that excellent film (or import the US edition). I trust that this evening's procedings will be completed somewhat more speedily. If the polls are anything to go by, that's the case.

A heavy cold means that going out to an election party is out the question, so I shall be taking in supplies this evening and settling back in the sofa with a remote switching between the BBC, Sky, CNN, even Fox, and possibly CNBC if they're carrying NBC programming through the night. Sadly there's no way to watch the Daily Show/Colbert Report show until tomorrow when the result will be known.

In his Guardian column today, Charlie Brooker says that he watched the third presidential debate live on CNN because they had a fancy graph along the bottom showing what some undecided voters thought about what the candidates were saying as they said it.

Now I haven't yet seen the third debate. It's still on my PVR, because I heard it was a little dull, and anyway, I watched the next day's Daily Show (it must be said, that there was that fantastic picture that came from that third debate).

But I did watch the second debate with accompanying graph. But after CNN had heard from all fifteen or so of their panel, they cut to their panel of uncommitted voters who we were told had contributed to that graph, and heard some of their comments. Yet, there weren't very many of them. In fact I paused my PVR and counted - there were 25.

Those lines have had a lot of coverage, and people seem to like them. But are they really the product of just 25 people? That wouldn't make them terribly statistically significant (of course we didn't get a scale either - just a general up = good and down = bad thing).

For good statistical analysis of this election, go to Pollster.com.

A nice piece of street art spotted in Soho. It links to www.neoexternalism.co.uk.

There's a widely reported story today about a report examining how alcohol is covered in the media. In particular the perceived glamourisation of excessive drinking by radio DJs such as Chris Moyles.

You can read coverage at the BBC News site, and in all the papers (here are links to the story in The Guardian and the Telegraph).

An interesting and worthwhile story? Undoubtedly. But the critic in me would quite like to see the full report. It's not that I don't trust the reporters the papers and news organisations allocated to the story, but, err, I don't always. For example, Chris Moyles is repeatedly mentioned but there's no mention of, say, Christian O'Connell or Johnny Vaughan. Now that might be because they're exemplary models of restraint who don't glamourise excessive drinking. Or it might be because the report didn't cover them. Yet we read that "Commercial radio stations were worse offenders than the BBC."

In fact, according to the Telegraph's piece:

The study focused on BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra, Kiss 101 broadcasting to the South West and Wales, Key 103 for Greater Manchester, Galaxy Birmingham and Kerrang! Radio for the West Midlands.

But that fact doesn't appear in most of the reports. That's why I wanted to read the full document. I know that what actually has happened is that a press release for the report has been sent out, and most stories are probably generated from that. The report's author Professor Norma Daykin will have been available for interview, and that'll differentiate the reports. Finally, the report itself may have been sent to journalists, but how many do you really think read it all the way through?

That's why I'd like to read it for myself. The BBC site doesn't include it, and neither do stories at the other papers' sites I've looked at. The research was carried out at the University of the West of England, but their website reveals no obvious links. The research was funded by the Department of Health, but again I had no luck finding it online there. It's part of the Know Your Limits campaign conducted in association with the Home Office. No luck there at either or the two websites I found - your guess is as good as mine as to why there are two.

The report is being presented o the British Sociological Association in Brighton, I read, but once again, an online search is fruitless aside from an abstract (P12 of this Word document).

The reason I want to see the report is that it's important to understand how much audio was listened to over what period (e.g. Was it carried out over the Christmas period? Answer: Yes - from December to February according to the Telegraph piece, but then they had a medical reporter rather than a media reporter cover the story). I've mentioned the issue regarding stations monitored and they've obviously concentrated on youth orientated services. But they ignored Scotland and Northern Ireland which might have thrown up different results for example.

The internet allows us to be able to present primary material and given that this research was state-funded, it should be easily available for us all to download and read. It shouldn't just be kept to attendees of academic conferences, and published in expensive journals or online in locked academic databases.

I don't mean to underplay the potentially serious nature of Hurricane Gustav when it hits the US coastline, probably tomorrow. But Bush and Cheney not going to the Republican convention this week, answers a lot of the questions that Carl Hiaasen raises in his column this week.

It's a good get out. Bush gets criticised for over-flying the aftermath of Katrina rather than being down on the ground. So this time he's proactive.

In the meantime, as the media coverage here in the UK escalates, and impending arrival of the hurricane dominates the news, we shouldn't forget that more than eighty people have already died - especially in Haiti. In Cuba, 300,000 people were moved and there are no reports of any casualties. Say what you like about Castro (Raul that is), but the regime does seem to know how to look after its citizens.

And let's not forget that elsewhere in the world, there is plenty of ongoing suffering - especially in Birhir, India, where widespread flooding has left over a million people homeless and a frankly unknown number have died.

While in China, the Sichuan province, still getting over its terrible earthquake earlier this year has suffered a further quake killing yet more people.

For some reason, these natural disasters don't quite merit the on-the-hour coverage from multiple places of events with live satellite two-ways.

In the US it's convention season. That is to say that the Democrats and Republicans are holding their quadrennial events. In the UK we have party conferences, but really the two cannot be compared.

In the UK we have access to all this malarkey on BBC Parliament which nightly shows two hours of live coverage between 2am and 4am each evening (and then repeats it at 4am, 6am, 8am, 10am... 6pm, 8pm, 10pm and 12am - so you should be able to catch it). Happily, that means that the conventions' coverage runs between 9pm and 11pm EST - right in the middle of primetime.

But what a curious affair these conventions are. So far I've watched the first night's coverage and bits of the second where Hillary came on and spoke for Obama.

In the US, all the networks cover these events, but while the word "convention" might suggest some sort of meeting, the outcome of which is possibly not completely known, the reality is that these events are choreographed to within an inch of their lives.

It seems to go something like this:

- Off-stage band plays music while convention goers chat amongst themselves or bop around like they're really enjoying themselves.

- Somebody comes out and reads a speech from the autocue quite badly. The speech basically says that Barack Obama is brilliant.

- Another musical interlude to allow networks to run some ads and then some kind of analysis of what they've just heard. But BBC Parliament is showing the unadulterated CSPAN coverage which is unsullied by punditry.

- Someone quite dull comes on and gives a speech. Nobody's interested and you realise that the networks (all of whom are carrying this live along with the cable news operations) are still in pundit mode and aren't interested. They might have cut from their studio at the edge of the arena to someone 10 or 15m further into the arena for their take. The audience isn't really interested and the mics clearly pick up lots of background chatter.

- Someone vaguely interesting introduced someone slightly more interesting. But first we have to watch a professionally put together five minute video.

- More interesting person - e.g. Edward Kennedy - comes out and is given applause that's carefully timed so that the event runs smoothly. Audience members carefully hold up Placard A from their Placard Packs that all read "Kennedy" just so everyone knows.

- Speech is finished and more applause is received, perhaps with family in tow.

- Muzak begins again as we reach commercial/punditry time and the chatter begins.

- Repeat from the top.

Nobody says anything interesting. The convention - at least this public face of it - is simply there to give an hour of free coverage. Compare and contrast with the annual British party conferences where occasionally a dissenting voice is heard (OK - they're rare) and where speeches are only ever scheduled during the daytime, because you're lucky if BBC2 actually shows it live - let alone BBC1 or ITV1 in the evening.

Ted Koppel gave a cracking report on it all for BBC News America which you can watch here. Well worth your time.

Well - I better get back to last night's coverage as the third night starts in a little over two hours' time.

Or maybe I should just break out my Tanner '88 DVDs again.

This morning saw three more British golds, particularly a pair in the sprints at the Velodrome with Victoria Pendleton and Chris Hoy winning.

But I'm now beginning to get concerned about the logisitics of 2012. No, I'm not thinking about how we can possibly top the Chinese opening ceremony, it's more to do with the timing of the events.

As has been widely pointed out, US network NBC got the IOC to move the swimming finals into mornings local Beijing time, so that they'd be able to broadcast events live in the US primetime (8pm - 11pm eastern time).

But 8pm eastern time is 1am UK time, and 2am for most of Europe.

A short piece in today's Guardian speculates that NBC might put the IOC under similar pressure in the UK to reschedule events into a post midnight slot. The Olympics have been phenominally successful for NBC so far, and all the more important given that they spend $1 billion for the rights to the summer games. But they do things like not broadcasting the mens' 100m final live, but holding off several hours to show it in the much more lucrative post 8pm timeslot.

Could the 100m or swimming finals be scheduled for post midnight or 1am? I just can't see it. It would screw up the athletes' body-clocks for starters. And, as I say, it wouldn't just inconvenience British viewers, but also the rest of Europe and Africa, all of whom have had to do without live evening coverage of the games this time around.

I know that boxing takes place in the UK at incredibly unsociable hours, but the blue riband events of a UK sport in stadia full to capacity in the small hours? It doesn't bear thinking about.

I think atheltics finals are likely to be scheduled for around 9pm local time in 2012, with key events like the 100m and 200m taking place on Saturday or Sundays. That allows US broadcasters to carry them in late afternoon slots when sports viewing is traditionally strong. And if they want to delay coverage for a few hours then so be it. It seems likely that the 2016 games will be in a timezone more suited to the US anyway (and I'm guessing Chicago will get it one way or another), so they'll just have to make do. There'll be an incredible outcry if they do otherwise.

While NBC might be spending $1bn on the 2012 games for coverage the UK government is spending £9.3bn ($18bn) on putting on the games. So let's keep things into perspective.

Now it seems that the EU has decided that artists and performers should get 95 years' copyright on their performances following an enormous amount of lobbying on behalf of the record industry (which also does quite nicely out of this).

This is a massive mistake, and let's hope that the UK government doesn't meekly fall into line and follow the EU's lead.

Currently, artists and performers have 50 years' copyright on their performances, but that means that performances from the likes of Cliff Richard and The Beatles are soon going to be out of copyright (at least their early material will be).

That doesn't actually mean a free for all, since the compositions themselves will remain copyright and royalties will need to be paid. But of course Cliff Richard didn't write many of his own songs - he just performed them. So he's keen to keep get royalties from those performances.

This idea is completely against what the UK government's own Gowers Report found, as I've noted in the past. Indeed the government read that report, agreed with the findings, and rejected them this time last year.

The reality is that these copyrights don't for the most part really belong to the artists. They belong to record companies in many instances because they have contracts requiring them to pass back royalties to their labels.

Copyright has a long and fascinating history dating back to 17th century Britain. When the Statute of Anne was introduced in 1709, it formed the first proper copyright law and gave authors copyright for 21 years if they're previously been published, and fourteen years for new publications. After that period, they left copyright.

Nearly every form of art in modern society is a development of something that has come before, and while new technologies mean that there's still value to be had from materials now leaving copyright, that shouldn't mean that copyright holders should continue to earn forever.

In fact authors have very generous copyright terms of their full lives plus seventy years in the UK. That's the reason why very few 20th century authors' works are available to buy cheaply or freely via websites like Project Gutenberg.

There's an interesting piece of legislation currently working its way through the US legal system regarding orphan works. These are the titles and publications that nobody's really interested in - they're not Cliff Richard or The Beatles. Perhaps they were one-hit wonders of the time, or simply weren't even popular then. The bookworld contains many thousands of titles that nobody is now interested in, yet are still under copyright. As it stands, nobody can do much with them because the authors or copyright holders can no longer be tracked down, yet they remain under copyright. The bill would allow the use of such titles without enormous remedial penalties should the author emerge from out of the woodwork and want to reclaim their ownership. Google, for example, has just published a list of books that it believes are available for use under the somewhat different copyright laws that exist in the US.

It's this kind of tying things up with red tape that mean that works of limited interest will never re-appear because there's simply not enough demand for larger-scale releases and more limited releases are simply not cost efficient.

The UK government needs to stands its ground and reject this EU legislation.

You'd think that this was an incredibly ironic statement on our society, but if it is, it must have passed TFL by.

You can see the original work here - it's part of an exhibition called About 60 Miles of Beautiful Views by Anna Barriball. The phrases in the series come from the back of photos found in an album.

"These ambiguous texts, now divorced from their original context, hint at personal narrative yet are dislocated enough to connect with the millions of private thoughts customers carry with them on their daily journeys."

This particular phrase certainly "connected" with me!

A good piece on the BBC News website regarding the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude that seems to be taken more and more with regard to taking photos in public. (Via Boing Boing)

Austin Mitchell MP is also leading the charge against this nonsense.

And obviously, those CCTV cameras are always on you!

So I thought that I'd head down to see the Olympic Torch Relay - the multi-country tour of the Olympic torch as it wends it way towards Beijing for this summer's Olympic Games.

It was obvious from the outset that following recent increased violence inside Tibet, that this was also going to be used to make a political point with demonstrators making themselves (rightly) heard all along the route. I thought that the nascent photojournalist in me might be able to catch some of the sights and sounds of this.

I must admit that personally I'm not sure that the Olympic Games are the right vehicle for making political protests, at least in as far as I don't think we should be boycotting them. I'm somehow hopeful that some of the concessions that the Chinese government is going to have to make will extend beyond the games this summer.

That said, the Free Tibet campaign has every right to make itself heard. And I'm in no way condoning the Olympic organisation itself which seems to be beset by greed and corruption. Things are probably cleaner than they once were, but until it's a fully democratic organisation itself (giving the UK, for example, the right to pick its own representatives) then it has to remain questionable. I've always said that I think that sporting fiefdoms like the Olympics or FIFA, are the last "acceptable" faces of dictatorship.

But anyway, on to today's events. It was snowy day in London with a few centimetres of snow having fallen across the capital. The streets were clear though, and I decided to head to Chinatown to begin with. As I approached from Covent Garden, it became obvious that there were an awful lot of police on the streets. They were mostly good natured, but as I entered the heart of Chinatown, I had to pass a bag search. On the radio I had heard that a protester had tried to snatch the flame from a Blue Peter presenter who was running with it, and others had tried to put the flame out with a fire extinguisher.

I stood on the corner of Gerrard Street, where the largely Chinese crowd were entertained by dragon dancing and inflatable Fuwa - the five characters who are the official Beijing mascots.

The spectators were largely jovial, and many were carrying dual-language banners and signs wishing all the best for the games in the summer. As I say, this was in the heart of Chinatown, and if anywhere was going to give the games a good reception, it was here.

Finally the police activity notably increased and the torch arrived. Through most of London, there'd been a convoy of vehicles leading the way, including double-decker buses and police vehicles. But in the narrow confines of Chinatown, it was just a police escort and the runners themselves.

I don't know who was carrying the torch as they arrived [UPDATE: I believe that this was actually the Chinese ambassador, who had been scheduled to run with the torch elsewhere but changed at the last minute]. He was flanked by Chinese securitymen in tracksuits, who were themselves flanked by more police in luminous jackets. Finally, there was a further layer of police dressed in black outside them.

Add to that the crowds, and you've got an enormous mass of people surrounding the flame. Seeing the flame itself was not easy and I'm 6'2"!

The runner handed over to the next runner in the relay - seemingly another athlete of Chinese origin, and she ran the length of Gerrard Street. There was not a lot to do now the procession had passed, and I began to drift on with the crowds around me.

Then a middle-aged man started shouting, "China out" quite loudly and repeatedly. This raised the hackles of several Chinese men standing nearby, but he wasn't to be dissuaded. So they had a loud and very confrontational shouting match which very nearly came to blows. The language used wasn't especially suitable for the young children who were also out in the cold to see the torch relay.

Ironically, there were now no police around to wade into the crowd and calm down the passions - they'd all moved on to protect the torch as it continued its journey. Finally common sense prevailed and nobody came to any blows.

I moved on to Trafalgar Square, where the Free Tibet protesters were really out in force. I didn't see the torch pass through as the crowds were too deep but we got an explosion of blue paper alongside a trumpet voluntary. I saw plenty more Tibetan flags, and you might almost think that the police had decided to keep things moving faster than they might otherwise have done.

Next it was down to Embankment. The torch had headed off to Downing Street where it was going to remain for a while. I walked to Waterloo Bridge expecting the torch to arrive by river. If it did arrive that way, I completely missed it. There was plenty of evidence of police out in force on the water, and large crowds had gathered in front of the Royal Festival Hall, but they had other entertainment to keep their minds off the snow that had now begun to come down again.

I waited on the bridge where the convoy of supporting vehicles had gathered. A Chinese camera crew interviewed one of the relay's forthcoming runners - a fencer I believe. Then some people had their photos taken with another sportsman I didn't recognise. I'm not sure they knew who he was either.

Again there were many Free Tibet protesters on top of the bridge, and the whole relay was now becoming a 31 mile rolling "Free Tibet" protest.

When the torch finally arrived, it was hard to make it out with the sheer number of police and security men protecting it. It seems somehow pointless getting people to come out to see something and then surround it by dozens of running men (my mind kept drifting back to that Clint Eastwood film In The Line of Fire, where Clint played a secret service man who's job was to run alongside the Presidential cavalcade). In London, the relay runners were regularly replaced, but I'm not sure that the police had much let-up. Still, it'll have been good practice for anyone running the London Marathon next weekend.

Aside from the quite scary events in Chinatown when it felt as though it might kick off at any minute, the day was interesting - if cold. I suspect that much of the rest of the route is going to see similar protests. I notice that the torch is due to pass through San Francisco, a notably liberal city. That'll be worth looking out for.

(More photos here if you're interested.)

The Beeb has updated the iPlayer to incorporate Flash streaming versions of programmes as well as the Windows XP only downloads previously available. This makes programme watching available to Mac and Linux users which is good news.

It also means that I can link to a programme like last nights Can Gerry Robinson Fix The NHS which was a fantastic watch, and I'm only disappointed in myself for not watching the previous series. Although it's only live for another six days despite being current affairs/documentary fare. It seems unlikely to me that too many Gerry Robinson box sets of DVDs will be sold!

Later in the evening, Robinson came up against David Nicholson, the Chief Executive of the NHS on Newsnight. That's also worth a watch, but you'll have to be quick as I believe that only one day's programming is archived. And Newsnight isn't available via the iPlayer. I assume that's something to do with the rights to agency footage that might be included in reports. That said, I notice that NBC seems able to video podcast its Nightly News.

Last night's Newsnight is worth it for a great piece of investigative journalism into a recent report from thinktank Policy Exchange into "The Hijacking of British Islam."

Researchers for the Policy Exchange went into 100 mosques and claimed to find books and pamphlets available with pretty hateful material. Their report was widely reported, and Newsnight began their own report into what had been uncovered. But when they got hold of some of the receipts that researchers had from the various mosques to prove where the material had been purchased, there was something fishy. Some of the receipts had misspellings on them or subtly wrong addresses. And many also seemed to have been generated by inkjet printers - Newsnight employed a forensic scientist to look at the documents. They also determined that it was likely that the same handwriting was on more than one receipt. Finally, it appeared that one receipt had been written on top of another. When their reporter went around some of the mosques in question, it didn't all stack.

Now this was an incendiary report, getting front page coverage. But if the research on which the report was based was indeed flawed, then that questions the report's overall validity. There seems to have been limited opportunity to actually question the researchers themselves.

Now it does seem that some of this hateful material can be found in some of these places and bookshops. Although I suspect that there's some "radical" thoughts from some Christian sects if you look hard enough in a Christian bookshop. But when the Policy Exchange's director (Dean Godson) appeared on the programme, he was blind in his defence on the report despite it quite evidently being based on some very dodgy research. It probably doesn't completely invalidate his findings, but for whatever reason he was unwilling to accept that his researchers had either misled him or lied to him. Paxman was on the attack and his blustering defence only made him dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole.

Policy Exchange has a press release currently on their homepage which continues to refute their findings and questioning Newsnight's methodology and reporting. They end by saying that they're meeting today to discuss legal proceedings against the BBC.

Surely a far smarter move would be to consider the obviously fabricated evidence that they were provided with, and to look more closely at how their evidence was collected. It seems apparent that incendiary material is available in some places. But a long legal case is only likely to end with them having derision heaped on them.

Newsnight's 17 minute piece is here and the follow up interview is here.

[UPDATE] Newsnight editor Peter Barron responds to Godson's accusations here.

[UPDATE 2] A Telegraph piece from the weekend is rebutted in today's letters by Peter Barron.

On his newsblog, Nick Robinson links to the emails and letters sent between the NAO and HMRC.

As Robinson says:

The key thing we learn comes not from the detail but the tone of all the exchanges. They demonstrate little concern from either the NAO or HMRC about data protection. The NAO wants, it would appear, simply to reduce the size of the files it is sent. The HMRC is worried about the cost of filtering information in order to send the smaller files the NAO request. What about our privacy and our rights? No mention is made of them.

But arguably even more concerning is what's to be seen on page 6 of the PDF - somebody at Benefits and Credits uses Comic Sans as their email font. Shocking.

I must admit that to a certain extent, I'm revelling in the discomfort that Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling are currently experiencing in regard to the appalling loss of personal data that the HMRC has been responsible for.

However, I'm still somewhat disappointed that the press and media in general are concentrating more on the political ramifications and whether Brown should apologise or Darling should go, rather than what that data actually means.

Yes, there's lots of advice about checking your bank account for unusual activity etc, but I think that this, and the practical ramifications, are what's really important here.

I really shouldn't be surprised, but I am. HM Revenue and Customs has lost 25m Child Benefit records. They were sent on CDs by unrecorded delivery. They didn't reach their destination.

This, don't forget, is the government that wants to build a national ID database.

They simply cannot be trusted with our data.

Aside from the all the reasons that building such an ID database wouldn't work (and dishing out ID cards in the process), this incompetence just shows what actually happens when such a centralised database exists.

If you think ID fraud is bad now, it's going to get worse. A lot worse. Data will go astray. Records will be wrongly maintained. There'll be security holes.

Put this next to the ill-fated NHS database (£6.8bn and rising, with no end in sight), and the problems are clear.

[UPDATE]

In fact, the more you think about this, the more scandalously shocking it is. I'm not even remotely interested in the political ramifications, and whether Alistair Darling is going to be out of a job anytime soon - it's not his direct responsibility, although he's just had a week from hell.

The real issue here is the colossal failure to even comprehend what the problems are with a system that lets this happen. Newsnight had Professor Ross Anderson on who put it all in very clear terms. It's no good talking about a failure of procedure - procedures will always fail. The fact is that someone very junior had access to the entire database of UK child benefit claimants and their kin - in effect, every parent and child in the country - and they were able to burn a disk of that data. It's no good saying that they should have had a manager standing over them as they did it (or whatever "procedure" should have been followed), ensuring that the file was encrypted and passed around with the security of a state secret - we all know that sometimes we do things that we shouldn't just because we're able to and it's more convenient. The fact is that someone very junior had access to this data irrespective of "procedure."

Anderson gave the very simple example of your health records. Historically, your medical record was held by your GP, perhaps at the surgery. A dozen people, perhaps, had access to it. Yes, someone who shouldn't, may have been able to access the data, but the worst that could happen is that your local surgery's patients' records were compromised - a few thousand people maybe. In a national NHS database, it's not just the dozen local receptionists and doctors in your surgery that can access your file, but another dozen at every surgery and facility around the country. And it's not just a few thousand records that are at stake, but tens of millions of records across the country representing every man, woman and child. All our information is vulnerable to thousands of access points. There are "bad eggs" to be found in some surgeries up and down the land. I don't know where they are, but that's valuable data that someone, somewhere, is willing to pay for.

And finally, it's worth noting that although this data is "password protected", it's not encrypted. While it may not be an Excel file (or series of files) we're talking Excel levels of security. Let's put it this way. I can get a password cracker for such a file from the internet in a matter of seconds. If those discs fall into the wrong hands, the data will be available to all with no problem whatsoever.

Quite simply, this breach is unprecedented in British history.

There's a longish piece in this morning's Guardian about Usmanov accompanied by a profile and the full text of an email exchange between him and The Guardian.

He is once again denying involvement in some of the allegations he's been accused of.

Make your own mind up...

There was an excellent long piece by Bad Science's Ben Goldacre in yesterday's Guardian about the perils of homeopathy. Not only is there no evidence that it works (mainly because it's founded on nonsensical designs), but homeopathic practitioners have actually suggested using their remedies for such killer diseases as malaria and even AIDS.

Don't forget, this "medicine" which remains unproven, is actually funded by the NHS!

At the same time proper hospitals are being closed down or downgraded - including my own local establishment. There was a march protesting against closure of services at Chase Farm today.

Exactly which part of Cloud Cuckoo Land does Home Office minister Liam Byrne live in?

He's reported today as saying that Blair's pointless, over-priced, Big Brotheresque ID Card scheme will become a "great British institution" on a par with the railways in the 19th Century.

How exactly? The building of the railways brought great positive changes for every citizen as long distance travel was achievable and affordable to great swathes of the population.

ID Cards will cost a fortune and serve little to no good whatsoever. It'll cost billions of pounds - money that can be better spent on, ooh, schools, hospitals, social services. Useful things.

The Tories are against it. The Lib Dems are against it. Blair is for it.

Here's hoping that the sober Mr Brown will realise that it's just going to cost him lots of money for no purpose whatsoever.

Liam Byrne, you are a fool.

I mentioned the other day that MI5 is now offering to send out threat levels via email. What I hadn't realised until helpfully pointed out by Spy Blog, was the terribly unsafe system they were using. The BBC has the full story.

I noted the introduction of the UK's very own threat level last year when MI5 introduced it. Almost immediately, the threat level jumped from "Severe" to "Critical". A few days later it dropped back to "Severe" where it's been ever since.

Well now the BBC is reporting that MI5 is going to allow us to register on a website for email updates when the threat level changes. This is obviously really important, because we all need to know immediately when the threat level changes and what can be better than, er, sending out emails?

Maybe they should have a texting system too. They could charge you £1.50 an update and use the funds to help pay for the ID Card system. Better start saving now for those big IT project cost overruns.

Obviously MI5 hasn't bothered putting - oh - an RSS feed of this up. But then email's probably quite forward thinking. Obviously they really should be working on their widgets. That's what all the cool kids are doing now. And links to all the various IM systems - you just send a message to your "friend" Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller (head of MI5) and "she" IMs you back the threat level. They probably ought to set up a Myspace page too, then we could all subscribe to their blog to keep us up to date. And if they had a Flickr page, I'd could make them a friend and keep on top of the latest wanted photos that are out there.

One way or another, if we're going six months between threat level changes, I suspect that the news media will report it, and I won't be reliant on having a Blackberry about my person.

It's a bit galling to read today that fare increases in train travel are drawing criticism. Yes they are awful, but come on, we've known about them for months. So moaning on the day they go up is pointless.

Still I do have sympathy for tourists in London. Anybody from out of town is getting really stung on the Tube now unless they have a tracking device Oyster Card. A Zone 1 fare has gone up from £3 to £4 if you pay cash. It's only £l;1.50 on a Pay As You Go Oyster Card. But of course tourists and visitors who don't buy a Travelcard are pretty unlikely to go to the hassle of filling out a form and paying the £3.00 "refundable deposit" for the card. And if they do, they'll inevitably leave London with credit still on the card - cash that they're unlikely to get back.

As someone in one of today's papers points out, if there are five of you, and you want to make a single trip across the middle of London, and you don't have Oyster Cards, you're almost certainly better off taking a cab than jumping on the tube, since your fare is most unlikely to be more than £20.

Oh the irony. Earlier this week Henry Porter presented a fine programme on More 4 (should have been on Channel 4) called Suspect Nation, examining not just ID cards, but the rash of CCTV cameras and other monitoring that's going on. In particular, there's the "function creep" where data's captured and used more and more without anyone asking the questions.

So now when you use your Oyster Card on the tube or enter London, your journey details are captured.

Today we hear that the logical next step of CCTV is to add a microphone to the cameras and record the sounds, at the Olympics in particular, but you can bet your bottom dollar, it'll be everywhere else.

The irony comes when the former Home Secretary came onto Five Live this evening to say that this was a step too far and "simply unacceptable". David Blunkett thinks it's fair enough to follow me around on the streets via camera, but it's a step too far to hear what I'm saying.

Actually, it is wrong for "them" to monitor my conversations in the street, but then I don't particularly want to be tracked around as I walk. I don't have an Oyster Card (and if I did, I wouldn't give accurate ownership data for it). I don't have a car, although that's more a lifestyle choice. I know I can be tracked with my phone even when I'm not using it. But I can at least buy an unregistered pay as you go phone, or not carry one at all. Similarly, my local shops might prefer me to use debit or credit cards now (cheques seem to be seriously on the way out now), but cash still works.

Blunkett is the man who introduced ID Card legislation to Parliament, so his concern now about civil liberties is amusing. Or it would be, if it weren't so truly disturbing. Of course, his private life has featured significantly in the press in the past. Imagine how much worse it might have been if additional data was kicking around on databases for journalists or muck-rakers to dig through (they'd get access - they always do) looking for background on a dallying politician's private life?

I'm getting terribly bored with this, but the PM will insist on continuing to push an utterly pointless cause. It's ID Cards - or the really big database - that I'm talking about. He's back on the offensive again with a piece in the Telegraph today. He seems not to have won over those readers though, since the commenters are largely hostile.

Over at the other end of the political spectrum, Henry Porter's written another piece on The Guardian's Comment Is Free site. Again, nearly all the commenters are hostile towards the ID Card scheme.

Now two newspaper sites and two sets of hostile commenters, does not, a good argument make in itself. Except that they are right. It's such a pointlessly expensive system that will remove civil liberties and not help solve crimes, I can't be bothered to go through the arguments again. Read the comments in the above two articles and then visit No2id.net.

Is it me, or does it seem that chipped bins (RFID, I assume) are causing more anxiety in middle England than ID cards?

"You can chip me all you like, but I draw the line at my dustbin," seems to be the unspoken sentiment.

Fascinating piece in this morning's Guardian with a new poll showing the Tories leading Labour by nine points now. Tony's got to be worried. How long's he going to hang on and let the Tories extend their lead?

What I find especially interesting are some of the other questions that were asked at the same time.

When it comes to potential terrorist threats against this country, do you think that the government...

Exaggerates the threat 21%
Tells the truth about the threat 20%
Tells less than it knows about the threat 51%
Don't know 9%

So only 20% of people believe that we're being told the truth about terrorist threats in this country? Well a number of people have now been charged, but it'll be a couple of years before they finally come to trial and we learn the truth.

Oh, and it's great that you can get full details of the poll at their contractor's website, ICMresearch.

Today's Guardian has an impassioned piece by Henry Porter on why ID Cards are such a bad idea and are part of a fundamental change in our relationship with the State. Read it.

The Sunday Times had a big report at the weekend about how internally, nobody at Whitehall believes the system will work. "I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail" says one official. It's a report really worth reading, particularly the emails that have been leaked - they're hilarious (or would be, if the whole thing wasn't so serious).

Support NO2ID.
Read Silicon.com's thoughts on ID Cards - and they're basically the friend of many of the companies that would stand to earn millions or even billions from such a scheme. Yet they know full-well that even without civil liberties issues intervening, the scheme simply won't work.

Today the BBC's reporting that the Home Office is now admitting that the timetable that's been set might be a little optimistic:

"We set a timetable for when ID cards would be introduced and that might change.

"That is dependent on the review that the home secretary is carrying out."

That's basically a way for them to begin graciously backing down. John Reid's enquiry is bound to show fairly quickly that this scheme is bad in so many ways that the government would be mad to proceed with it. Yet the Act is due to become law soon. So who knows?

[Update]

I note that Henry Porter wrote a similar article in The Independent a couple of weeks ago, and as of this moment, it's not behind their paywall.

Oh, and be careful what you say when you're walking through the random metal detectors that are appearing at various stations now. It seems you can be fined just for taking a dislike to them! I'm looking forward to the police spending more time in our playgrounds watching out for swearing.

Very scary.

For a while Turkmenistan has been a country of fun and a source of jokes for writers everywhere.

For example here are a couple of mentions in The West Wing:-

BARTLET: Well the President of Turkmenistan just officially extended the date of adolescence to twenty-five.
(Swiss Diplomacy)

WILL: What about Turkmenistan?
JOSH: It's a nation of Labradors run by Zeppo Marx. Can we please stop talking about Turkmenistan?
(Third Day Story)

However, this article in last Saturday's Guardian makes you realise that Saparmurat Niyazov, the country's president 'for life' is not really a figure of fun if you have the misfortune to live there.

A follow up letter a couple of days later highlighted more of the problems the country's facing following the leader's 'eccentric' behaviour.

It's a real shame that I can't listen again to this programme made by two BBC journalists at the end of last year.

It's suddenly struck me how Bush might be thinking that US can cut its oil imports so significantly by 2025. If Iran becomes the 51st state, then its oil won't count as imported. Simple.

Of course, by 2025 we'll be so short of oil, that imports will be cut by the shear expediency of the cost of it.

Great news.

Yes, while Crow suns himself in Egypt, anyone who has to cross London to get to or from a New Year's Party is out of luck. You might be able to use a train, and there are always buses, but the strike goes on.

I'm pretty reasonable about strikes. If I think the union's have a cause, then, yes, they have the right to strike. But deliberately targeting vast swathes of Londoners on one of our holidays is mean spirited in the extreme. I want to hear Crow's explanation.

Read more on Going Underground, and be sure to read some of the comments which lead to blogs from London Underground employees who are pretty pissed at Crow's actions too.

And I bet Nat West are pretty pleased. It's completely kiboshed their sponsorship of free travel today.

The Heathrow Express is both a good and a bad thing. Bad, simply because it's expensive. Good, because it gets you very rapidly from central London (well Paddington) to Heathrow.

But with security checks in place it's going to take a bit longer to reach Heathrow, and some of the speed advantage of the system over the tube is going to be lost. I assume we won't have to arrive two hours early.

But really, what's the point of this? The transport secretary himself has admitted that full scale checks on the rail network are impossible, with many (most?) stations not even having staff at barriers to check your tickets, never mind go through your baggage.

I'm guessing, and this is just a hunch mind, that any terrorist planning a public transport atrocity, would simply switch plans to another line which didn't have high-profile security checks, and is likelier to be carrying more people than the average Heathrow Express.

The only terrorists we know who've caught trains recently, used a commuter line from Luton, a train which was packed with people going to work, and exactly the kind of line these checks couldn't be enforced on.

[UPDATE]

The Standard had this seriously over the top headline at the tube station on the way home this evening. Commuters are expected to feel really scared and buy a copy.

On Tuesday, The Sun ran a front page showing the picture of a bloodied bomb victim from the July London bombings alongside the headline: "Terror Laws: Tell Tony He's Right".

Except that the man who appeared on that cover, bloody and bandaged is one John Tulloch. And those certainly aren't his words or feelings. Read what he thinks about it here.

And here are the thoughts of another survivor of the explosions who similarly doesn't want to see her civil liberties expunged. Her blog makes exceptionally good reading.

It's being re-edited to be shown as a film at Cannes!

The Sun's backed Blair for this election which is not remotely unexpected. So I was disappointed to hear it given such import on the news this morning.

The Sun only back winners, and in a two horse race, they're not going 50-1 outsider. What would have happened if The Sun had backed Howard and Blair had won? They'd have looked like losers. So they didn't.

In 2005, it seems to me that getting access to party manifestos during an election should be pretty straightforward. Just download them in an accessible and easy to use format that's cross platform.

Adobe's PDF format would seem to be the choice to make. And most party's have used it, with one very notable, and very surprising exception:

The Conservative Manifesto
The Labour Manifesto
The Green Party Manifesto

Plaid Cymru's Manifesto page (it's not there yet, but previous ones are in PDF)
SNP (no sign of their manifesto yet)

Veritas' PDF library (no sign of a manifesto yet, but lots of PDF documents all written by Robert Kilroy-Silk!)
The UK Independence Party (no sign of a 2005 manifesto yet. Previous ones available as PDFs)

So who's missing from this list of the great and the really not-so-good-at-all?

Yes the Lib Dems. Their manifesto is available in an Online DM version. It's easily screen readable, but downloading is a different matter. It's an executable that as far as I'm aware is not Java, but a bespoke PC solution.

If you're a Mac user, or fancy reading a manifesto on your PDA or Smartphone, or Linux machine, you're going to have to read what they describe as the "plain text" version. But it's actually a rich text file which is no bad format. It's just a shame it's not correctly described as such.

Personally, if it were my manifesto, I'd want to make it as available to all as possible. The other parties have done so. The Lib Dems haven't.

It was nice knowing you.

From now on, if you're Muslim, you're going to get stopped and searched much more. Hazel Blears, the minister responsible for counter-terrorism, said so. (I'd say, don't take it personally, but it is personal).

As many have said, we can quite confidentally admit defeat to Osama Bin Ladin. He has us over a barrel without any terrorist incident actually taking place. The fundamental doctrine of our system of law and order is being removed. The burden of proof has gone.

When I read that polls indicate that the public agree with this policy, I truly despair of the nation I live in.

Are we truly so gullable as to swallow all the lies and scaremongering that we're fed?

I know we mostly think of him as the loveable fool who's hosted a couple of Have I Got News For Yous, but sometimes he speaks incredibly good sense for a Tory. His stance on ID cards is one of those times.

We can now only hope that there are members of the upper house who can see sense and send this scare mongering expensive curbing of our civil liberties to the bottom of the Thames (or at the very least into a nice recycling bin).

Help! We're being overrun by illegal immigrants. I know this to be true because both Mr Blair and Mr Howard are saying so.

They're all coming through the tunnel or something. And they're over-running the country like the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

For goodness' sake, don't go downloading the Government's own statistics that show that the number of children being born annually is falling over the long term, leading to a decreasing population without us letting people into the country.

Anyway, people are falling over themselves to become cleaners, and nannies, and crop pickers and the numerous other shitty jobs that we just love doing ourselves.

So let's just get this clear. We only want to import doctors and nurses from countries whose states have already paid for their expensive education - preferably third world nations - and teachers, because our own young don't want a lousy job embroiled in pointless beaurocracy that even requires people to pay to become one.

We don't need anyone else OK?

It's nothing to do with racism you understand, it's just that they're stealing all our free health services, in spite of the fact that at the same time, we're sending people abroad for their health services.

It's neither here nor there if there are low paid jobs that need to be filled, and asylum seekers (OK - they can't actually be "illegal" because at the moment, they're "seeking" asylum. It just hasn't been granted or denied yet) who want to work, must simply not be allowed to do so, and must instead be given handouts from the state to stop them making their own way in the world.

If for one reason or another, we've made your country unliveable, by, oh I don't know, invading it or something. Then tough shit!

Thank goodness that the government have published their advice on what I can and cannot do should I be attacked in my own home! I recommend downloading the PDF and pinning it up somewhere so that you can regularly consult it.

I certainly needed to know what the definition of "reasonable force" is. For example, can I just ward off the blows or can I pulp the interloper's head with a baseball bat?

It also seems that I don't have to wait to be attacked, which is a good thing. But only if I'm in my own home. Hmmm. What about the garden?

There are a few rules and regulations regarding me actually murdering the intruder, but I suspect that they're all just legalese. And I can chase the intruder away, but since it's no longer self-defence I can only use reasonable force. Those who played rugby at school, like myself, will be pleased to learn that a rugby tackle or single blow is fine. It's unclear whether having rugby tackled the attacker to the ground, I can then strike him a single blow. Also, if the blow glances off, say, the side of the head, or the intruder manages to block the blow, it's unclear whether I'm allowed another shot at it. Do we then enter the realms of multiple blows and, therefore, unreasonable force?

One big no-no is that if I get into a squabble with my dealer, I shouldn't then beat him to a bloody mess and then pretend he was trying to burgle me. The police, it seems, are onto that little game.

So, all in all, some useful pointers. However, it does open up more questions. And I feel certain that potential intruders to my home will not now arm themselves to the teeth in case vigilante residents such as myself now decide to take the law into our own hands Tony Martin-style.

The Home Office can spend as many hundreds of thousands on useful leaflets such as this in my opinion, because it all makes this country a safer place!

It seems that Roy Jenkins wasn't a fan of ID Cards.

At the time it was being discussed as a way to combat Irish terrorist atrocities. Just replace "Irish" for "Islamic Fundamentalist" and see what difference it all really makes.

306 MPs voted for it, and 93 against. I don't know who the MPs who voted against are at the moment, but there was an estimate of 18 Labour rebels. The suggestion is that those against the card were asked to make themselves scarce rather than voting against.

I watched a fair amount of the debate live on BBC Parliament, and it scares me that those few hours are seemingly the most detailed examination we're getting of the government's plans.

My earlier dissemination of Charles Clark's piece in today's Times is nothing compared to that to be found on Spy Blog.

Incidentally, in an enlightening Newsnight report (not yet online, but likely to be tomorrow), full of quotes, it was repeated that Clarke has changed his mind, with a fellow Norwich MP saying that this is the case.

It's clear that the real reason for this is to reinforce the idea that the government is actually doing something about terrorism. This is an outrageously expensive way of doing so, at the same time fundamentally changing the state's relationships with its citizens.

It's just as well that my passport expires next year, as I'll be getting a non-biometric one (they can't do it yet).

Well it's due to be debated in the House anytime now - well once everyone's finished talking about Blunkett's rail ticket.

The Guardian's Newsblog has a good summary of what some of the key supporters are saying in putting forward good reasons for the card and databases's introduction (incidentally, I'm hearing far too little about the database).

The Charles Clarke piece is in The Times.

I have long been a strong supporter of the benefits of identity cards.

Not according to this piece that I linked to yesterday. Obviously it was inaccurate.

Still, despite the fact that the in today's press release from the Home Office, Clarke is quoted as saying the reason for the card's introduction will be...

helping protect against terrorism, organised crime, identity theft, illegal immigration and illegal working.

Clarke prefers to push other benefits in The Times piece. He says that it'll help us in

opening a bank account, going abroad on holiday, claiming a benefit, buying goods on credit and renting a video.

Opening a bank account? How many people really can't manage that? Everybody copes claiming benefit, and I find a passport is most useful for getting on holidays. As for things like gaining credit, well that's more down to the credit agencies than anything. Having a card will neither help nor hinder this. And I don't understand how it'll help me rent a video. Does he advocate the 16 year old working part time in my local Blockbuster being able to check my card details via some kind of online terminal? I suggest that Blockbuster will prefer you to present either several pieces of billing information or a credit/debit card as they do at the moment.

Some £50 million a year is claimed illegally from the benefits systems using false identities.

Indeed, I object to so much money being claimed through false identities, although I'd like to see how this was calculated. But isn't a THREE BILLION POUND scheme just a little over the top for solving a fifty million pound problem. Of course that three billion won't include any of the machines or the training, or any of the massive IT overspend that'll undoubtedly accompany a scheme of this size.

Clarke goes on to mention the requirements of the US of us to carry either biometric passports or visas. Well that's fine, although I note that George Bush has somehow stopped short of requiring his own citizens to carry an ID card.

Meanwhile over in the Telegraph, Michael Howard writes his own defence of ID cards.

As the Guardian points out, he talks in terms of terrorism and September 11, a tragedy where identity of the criminals was not, and never has been in doubt.

ID cards wouldn't have stopped 9/11. It wouldn't have made a bit of difference.

On January 1 2005, the Freedom of Information Act comes fully into force. This will give us the right to ask various government departments and public authorities what data they hold on us.

Remarkably, the Cabinet Office has suddenly decided that now would be a good time to delete all emails older than three months! So millions of emails will go - and those which need to be kept will be printed out and filed! That way, when someone makes a Freedom of Information Act claim it'll be a lot harder than running a search engine over the email server. It'll be good old fashioned civil servant filing cabinets.

And never mind the fact that millions of official records will be lost forever.

The fact is that storage of these emails will be a trivial cost in the scheme of things - indeed I'd think that the ground rent on one filing cabinet in Westminster postcode is more than the cost of gigabytes of backup tapes.

Anyone would think that they're trying to hide stuff from us.

In the meantime the Law Lords on Thursday ruled that human rights laws are being broken by holding people without trial. This really is our version of Guantanamo. I don't understand why they can't be charged if we have any proof of any kind of terrorist activities. We're told that we can't be told everything - but since we just went into a war where the primary reason for doing so was found to be false - I'm not really going to accept that. Cases can be heard behind closed doors if need be, but either charge them with conspiracy or release them. If we don't have law to fall back on then we have nothing.

Finally, tomorrow sees the second reading of the ID Card Bill. Yup - already. And this is despite the Home Secretary resigning and the Home Office being is chaos as a result. But they government are just ploughing ahead with this.

Charles Clarke says that he's going to continue with plans to introduce the cards. It seems that the objections he was reported as having in September must have all gone away!

Then there's the Shadown Home Secretary David Davies. This is the same David Davies who spoke at the Mistaken Identity meeting earlier this year, where he was certainly not fully behind the scheme. See my report here, or listen to the meeting's audio here.

Finally there's Mark Oaten of the Lib Dems who have always been ID Cards. Again follow these two links for my report and the Oaten's audio from Mistaken Identity.

So there you have it: three people leading the debate tomorrow in the Commons, all of whom have at the very least, some serious reservations towards this ridiculous bill. A bill which will cost the taxpayer much much more than the widely reported £3 billion, will not make an iota of difference in the fight against terrorism, but will ensure that we become that much less of a free people.

There's an election next year, and I really don't know who I can vote for except the Lib Dems, however unlikely they are to get into my constituency.

Well I can't say I'm sorry he's gone.

The sordid small-minded Countryside Alliance feel that disrupting the visit of International Olympic Committee members to London is the way to go according to a report in The Observer.

Personally, if a million people break the law on February 19, then they should be prosecuted and fined. Should give the rest of us a tax break shouldn't it?

According to The Observer.

While David Blunkett fights for his political career, today's also the day that he introduces the ID Cards bill into the Commons.

In the meantime, Blair is expected to address them in his monthly press conference in a few minutes time... Things I'd like him to address are exactly how he thinks ID cards will prevent terrorism>? Exactly how much the scheme is really going to cost? How much every man, woman and child will be mandated to pay for a card (passports are currently not compulsary)? How he can guarantee that the database will be fully secure, despite the fact that potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of people will have access to it..? Exactly why we need a card when the only time in our history that we previously needed one was when we were at war with Germany who were threatening imminent invasion..? Oh, and why we're losing more and more of our civil liberties? That'll do for starters.

[UPDATE]

Well Blair certainly talked quite a lot about ID Cards and tried to explain why he thought they're incredibly necessary - all those criminals who have aliases and foreigners who are using our free services. He also mentioned that there'll be ten year maximum sentances for people who either put wrong data into the database or misuse the data. Sadly, none of the journlists attending were especially interested in pinning Blair down on this. Understandably, they were more interested in hearing his views on David Blunkett. He's obviously still backing the man. This is his monthly appearance, so people ask lots of questions about lots of different things.

But ten year jail sentences or not, we know that people are going to misuse the data. Human nature says so. People are going to find themselves privvy to data on an enormous scale - and there are going to be lots of people with access to it.

Eleanor Goodman of Channel 4 News asked whether the government was getting too much into peoples private lives with ID cards, stopping us smoking, health warnings and the like. Blair didn't see this as irresponsible.

Someone from The Times questioned Blair over the Government's ability to cope with the IT side of ID Cards. Blair responded talking about it taking time, hence the 2008 start date, and then wandered off talking about the necessity of biometric passports.

A journalist (who's organisation I missed) did highlight the fact that terrorist acts in other countries including Spain, occurred in places where ID Cards were already in place. Blair reiterated that these would be biometric. And ID Cards won't stop everyone, but he then went on to talk about illegal immigration and illegal working. That, it seems is the real reason now. Who'd have thought that people living and working illegally in this country will stop the moment they realise that they can't get a card?

I expect that a full transcript of the press conference will be published at the Downing Street website.

[UPDATE 2]

Well here's that link that I was expecting.

And here are more details of the ID Card Bill that Blunkett is desperate to get through before May. Broadly speaking it seems that we're mainly getting one of these cards because Blair's great mate Bush as well as other countries, are insisting we have biometric passports, so it's not much of a leap to give us ID cards.

Here are some of the things Blunkett says:

The national identity cards scheme will give people confidence, convenience and security in an increasingly vital aspect of modern life – proving and protecting their identity.

Nothing more convenient than being stopped anywhere I may be and being forced to show a card proving that I'm not doing anything wrong - see that Spectator article from the current issue.

It will help tackle the activities of organised criminals and terrorists who depend on the use of multiple identities – identity cards will be a key part of the Government’s wide-ranging programme for tackling organised crime, at the centre of which will be the new Serious Organised Crime Agency

Yup - all those terrorists from 9/11 who weren't known to the government. Er, none of them. Identity is not at issue with terrorists. In any case, what happens when some Saudi Arabian who has a visa comes to the UK supposedly to do a bit of shopping in Knightsbridge, but in fact to carry out a terrorist attack. ID Cards should prevent that shouldn't they?

Identity cards will also help in the fight against illegal working and immigration and ensure public services are only used by those entitled to them

I'm pretty certain that all those employers who are currently illegally employing aliens who don't have National Insurance Numbers will immediately cease their practices.

Safeguards to ensure protection of privacy are a critical part of the identity cards scheme. But our liberties will be strengthened, not weakened, by a universal scheme which ensures that all citizens’ identities are protected from abuse.

Not sure how this will be any different from the case currently. Quite how my liberties are being strengthened by a large database having details about my every movement recorded, is something of a mystery.

Publication of the Bill marks a further step in the careful process of consultation and refinement which we began almost three years ago. This is an ambitious, long-term project and we are taking the time and care, drawing on outside expertise, to ensure we get it right.

That'll be the consultation that saw more respondents oppose the ID Card scheme than report it. The one that resulted in opposition from such people as the president of the Law Society and the Assistant Information Commissioner.

Across the world, the international community is demanding more secure identity in travel documents – including the USA, where visitors will need a biometric passport or visa by October 2005. In a fast-changing world, a national identity cards scheme based on secure biometrics will ensure the UKremains [sic] at the forefront of these developments and our citizens retain the freedom to travel easily.

America wants us to have biometric passports, therefore we will have them.

Unsurpisingly, not one single good reason was made for introducing the most invasive scheme ever proposed by a British government.

This scheme will cost many many times the £3 billion being quoted since vast costs allied to the scheme have simply not been factored in. Gordon Brown must have been most remiss to let these slip through.

Last week I was castagating the Lords over the Hunting Bill. We must now turn to them to hold up and delay this pointless scaremongering legislation that is now the single factor that will never let me vote Labour again.

The more you hear about David Blunkett, the more there is do dislike. I've not really paid any attention up and until now to what he's done in his private life, but the fact is that it's very messy - too messy for a Home Secretary, many would argue.

I don't know if he did or didn't fast track a visa for his lover's nanny, but the fact of the matter is that it's not exactly edifying.

This is the man who wants to turn us into a police state. He can expect much more investigation into his alleged wrongdoings. And that's fair enough in my view, since his ID card scheme and more importantly, the massive database that will underlie it, will make other people lose their privacy in a very similar manner.

So it was the Queen's Speech today in Parliament and we see an upsurge in scaremongering by Labour as reasoning is given for schemes such as the pointless ID Card Bill.

Supposedly this will cost the princely sum of £85 when bought with a passport, with the cards being rolled out from 2008. And the cost is just £3 billion. Yeah, right. It's going to be astronomically more than that. It won't make a blind bit of difference to any of the stuff it supposed to stop. We'll just be living in more of a police state where everything you do ever is monitored and watched. 1984 becomes a step closer to reality.

And then there were the stories handily timed to appear in today's Mail and Express detailing an apparently averted terror attach on Canary Wharf. Really? I look forward to all the details being revealed in what will undoubtedly be some of the highest profile trials this country has ever seen! Well, either that, or we'll never hear anything more about this nonsense again.

I've just been watching President Clinton (rightly, that should be ex-President Clinton, but it's one of those things that you seem to get to keep the title until you die), opening his Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas (via C-Span). It's always seemed a strange thing to me that when you finish your presidency, you head off somewhere and build a monument to your time in office. This facility, cost $165m and it contains millions of documents from Clinton's presidency. It's only with the opening of this library that I learnt this - I'd always wondered what exactly the point of them was.

I guess of course that the whole thing could exist solely on the internet. But another part of me likes the fact that lasting monuments can and do get built. Whenever I walk past the British Museum, I remember that it was built with publicly raised funds. And then you can look at newer facilities like the new British Library. Not enough of these buildings are built in Britain today, even with lottery funding. I'm talking about really major and lasting achievements. The millennium saw some, but not enough.

Mind you, I'm not sure we're ready for a Thatcher, Major or Blair Library. And given the wranglings something as simple as Diana fountain has caused, I don't like to think of hurdles such buildings would have to overcome.

Yesterday's Guardian G2 section was completely black with, in small white letter, the words, "Oh, God." (Can't find a picture of it online).

The other footnote was at some very late point in the night when CNN were explaining once again how they "call" a state, and why they hadn't yet called Ohio. They cut to a shot of their editor in charge of making these decisions who was sat with a collegue in front of a series of computer monitors and was busily scribbling on a legal pad whilst frantically conferring with a colleague. The hand held camera then began to zoom in to show us the complicated jottings on the pad, except that we could read a couple of very clear figures in large letters. Said editor suddenly realised the camera was zooming in on his notes, and he hastily hid them from view. Nothing like being pissed off by your own camera crew.

So it's all over. I watched Kerry give his gracious concession speech earlier this evening. Typically, Blair's been on the phone pretty fast. I really don't get it.

Anyway, I've consoled myself by watching all three episodes of The Power of Nightmares in one go... See the entry above.

Time to stop drinking Coors?

Bugger. You drop off despite your best efforts to stay awake, and it's still undecided, but looking distinctly Bushwards. It's all down to Ohio, and that's a state that doesn't look like declaring any time soon. And what's more, it's not looking good there.

I can't help but keep clicking refresh on this page.

So what happens on NBC with those strange ten minute segments done by another team entirely? Do local stations drop in during those minutes? Or do Americans get a really long commercial break?

Incidentally, NBC's election coverage is SPONSORED. That'd never happen here - well it's illegal for a start. But I'm not sure about news being sponsored, full stop.

Lots of discussion on the net about whether some of the early exit poll results that are floating around online in places like Slate will end up on TV anyway, now the networks are trying to be oh-so-responsible...

It's still looking tight but none of the key states have been called.

I've just been on the phone to my sister in Texas, where she of course isn't watching the election. Then dad called from Norfolk where he is watching like me at gone 2.00am.

So far my biggest question is why Americans seem to make voting so difficult? I live over the road from my local Polling Station, and I can visit it at any time of day during an election, and it'll take me... oooh... a couple of minutes to be in and out having voted.

In Ohio, meanwhile, queues are still being got through way after the polling stations have shut. Earlier we saw helicopter shots of long snaking lines of voters. It all reminds of the first free elections in post-apartheid South Africa, where millions of previously disenfranchised voters were taking part in their first election. In that instance, you could understand the excitement, and early voting meant massive queues. But surely the USA is used to voting by now? So why does it take you up to three hours to practice your constitutional right?

The size of the country shouldn't matter - you have x polling stations (or places) for every y thousand electorate. Simple maths. More voters means more polling stations.

All I can say is, well done to those who gave up so much time to get their votes in.

Well I'm starting my marathon election watch this evening, despite the fact that nothing's likely to happen until around 8.00am tomorrow morning at the earliest.

But I'm not alone. The Guardian's Newsblog is up all night.

In the meantime, there are already reports of broken voting machines (via Boing Boing).

The most credible analysis of Bush's "bulge" appears today in Salon. Up until now I'd thought that people were properly making a fuss about nothing. Now I'm with Gary Trudeau and this week's Doonesbury on this one. He did have some kind wire down his back.

And this week, The Economist has grudgingly backed Kerry.

Because sometimes you get the feeling that Florida is making a real fist of it. Now 58,000 postal votes have "gone missing".

BBC Four had an excellent debate with first class speakers on Sunday night. Even Fox News's Bill O'Reilly wasn't as obnoxious as usual.

Then there was last night's Newsnight featuring a Greg Palast report on dodgy goings on in Florida. Is it just me, or does the US really need consistent rules and regulations across the whole country? And should a private investigator really be allowed to park up outside a polling station and take photos of everyone going in? Palast can be kind of bombastic, but he's opened a can of worms that you can tell nobody really wants to hear about. An African American who was wrongly denied the vote last time around seems only to have got his vote cast this time because he happened to be accompanied by a camera crew. It's tough out in those trenches. Maybe it really is time for international observers at US Elections... (And seeing Gavin Esler attempt to interview The Fall's Mark E Smith about John Peel's death was fascinating viewing too!)

What a wonderful word psephology is! It's defined as "the study of elections and voting, and their statistical analysis in the prediction of results."

Thanks to The Guardian's Newsblog (the comments are hilarious - as a result, I suspect, of Operation Clark County) I today discovered MysteryPollster, a wonderful website put together by Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal. In a completely non-partisan way, he helps decipher what the polls mean, and the factors behind them that mean you can't take everything they say at face value.

He explains, in some detail, how margins of error work (it's not as simple as you think), and raises some interesting questions. It seems that two things could really lead us to be misled by the polls:

1) Are pollsters making the right judgements about who is likely to vote. There are some staggering figures: of 203m voting age people at the last election, only 130m were registered to vote (64%), and 105m actually voted (52%). That seems like a small number to me. However in the UK, the turnout at the last election was 59%, although that's calculated as votes cast as a percentage of registered voters - 44m or so. The difference is that most people are on the electoral roll in the UK. This isn't the case in the States. What this could mean is that if all the initiatives from people ranged from REM and the Dixie Chicks, to Michael Moore, across to P Diddy, have some kind of real effect, then we could see many more new voters than in recent times. If you know you can make the difference, you have an added incentive to vote.

2) Are the Republicans seeing a larger part of its support coming from areas where the votes are already safe. So if Texas is definitely going to go Republican, it makes little difference if everyone in the State votes Republican - it's the battleground states that matter.

It's the Labour Party conference in sunny Brighton, and this morning Gordon Brown was really doing the rounds.

At 7.34am he was live on GMTV.

At 7.45am he was live on Five Live.

At 7.52am he was live on BBC Breakfast News

And although I didn't hear it, he was, of course, the 8.10am interviewee on the Today Programme.

I know that he also did an interview with Sky News.

And they're just the ones I know about. As I say, busy man.

The fox hunting lobby have been up to their tricks, invading the Commons while the bill to ban hunting was being debated.

I suspect that Tony Blair is using this to appease a country who don't see him in a great light just now. Look at his new found environmental slant with a speech yesterday.

But I do want fox hunting banned. And while there are always more important things to be debated, that's not a reason for not passing the bill. The majority of the country wants it banned. The majority of MPs want it banned. So ban it we should. It's legislative animal cruelty. It's not some kind of anti-countryside thing - it's anti animal-cruelty, and just because you used to do it, it's not right to continue to do it now. Many despicable things have been outlawed in this country from cock fighting and dog fighting, to the far more serious capital punishment and even slavery. Many people felt strongly about all of these at the time. But tough.

And of course the lobby have shot themselves in the foot by the invasion of the commons. All the debate will really be about how they got in. Some MP(s) are bound to be embarrassed, since that's surely how they got inside the building. It's unlikely to have just been some random queuing.

A great piece by Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald about the failure to extend the ban on assault weapons in the US.

It's not like they could be used by terrorists or anything is it?

Billionairesforbush.com!

Check out this animation from the States! (Link from Infinite Ideas Machine)

The report of the Home Office Select Committee is published today (PDF), and they report that plans are "badly thought out".

I need to spend a bit of time reading the report this weekend and then see what needs to be done next.

I note that the Democratic Convention is being covered live on BBC Parliament through the night, with the unspun CSPAN coverage. I fell asleep before Clinton came on however!

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism looks very interesting. Read about how it was made here.

With his autobiography due out tomorrow, the PR machine is in full flow. So yesterday there was a big article in The Observer about Clinton's post-Presidential life. Then today, The Guardian had an interview with the man himself, while tomorrow Panorama (who had a great programme last night on the superdollar) sees David Dimbleby get his turn at an interview. The US got a 60 Minutes interview last night.

I must admit that I'm very tempted to get hold of a copy of the book and have a read. He's a genuinely fascinating man.

This sounds very encouraging. Looking forward to seeing the verbatims from the latest session.

Mistaken Identity at the The Old Theatre, London School of Economics - 19 May 2004

So here finally, are my notes from Mistaken Identity, which was described as a public meeting on the proposed national identity card.

Note that I can't do shorthand, and if I've misquoted anyone, or misinterpreted the points that they were making, let me know and I'll correct them. I don't think that this is likely since voices at the meeting did tend towards one direction. Note that within each section, I've tried to reflect what the individual, or consensus was, rather than putting my own thoughts in - they follow at the end. Anything with brackets is to an appropriate link or source that I've tried to find. Oh, and this is a long entry, for which I don't really apologise!

Proceedings were initially delayed a little because, as we all now know, some protestors had taken it upon themselves to throw powder into the House of Commons (Two men have since been charged). A number of the initial speakers were to be parliamentarians and as a result there were delays in them getting to the theatre.

Simon Davies of the London School of Economics (LSE) kicked things off, and then made the point, later re-iterated that no members of the Government, their representatives, or even police authorities had accepted the offer to attend. Those Labour members who were there were not in their capacity of members of the Labour Party.

The result of a YouGov poll were also presented. The summary can be found here. [PDF] Note that I do have issues with the YouGov methodology of polling online with a self-selecting sample, but I believe that their finding remain indicative.

The Register, one of the co-sponsors of the meeting alongside Privacy International, Liberty, Statewatch, Stand.org.uk, The 1990 Trust and The Foundation for Information Policy Research handed out an excellent guide called Everything you never wanted to know about the ID card.

The first panel comprised of David Davis MP, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, David Winnick MP, Labour member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Simon Philips MP, Plaid Cymru, and Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Lib Dem. The format of the packed afternoon was to be brief speeches from each panellist, followed by a short public Q&A. Various prior commitments meant that not everyone would be able to take questions.

David Davis MP, Shadow Home Secretary

David Davis began by speaking about how Australians had been 80%:20% in favour of an ID card system prior to its introduction, but that it had swung to 20%:80% after it had actually been introduced [See here for more details about Australia]. He made the point that the government should lead, and not follow. The illegal immigration argument that the government has put forward was "not worth a penny". There should be four criteria which any scheme should be measured against: Will it work? Can we protect privacy? Is it cost effective? Can the Home Office implement it?

He said that with privacy, it was the database that was real issue. Over the years we've seen the breakdown of many separate databases across government departments into larger cross departmental ones, with little or no primary legislation. Serious legislations should be put in place to protect individuals' privacy.

He gave the example of the Republic of Ireland who don't have ID cards, and have no plans for them. Yet they are allowed to freely cross borders into the UK. Jack Straw, he said, had spoken of this some time ago and pointed out that high level discussions were needed. Many other people from around the EU and elsewhere are allowed into the country without an ID card for three months. There are also 15 million UK nationals who live abroad.

And then there was the issue that even though it might be compulsory to have a card, it wouldn't be compulsory to carry it.

He said that three billion pounds could surely be better spent as the amount the system is said to be going to cost. The Home Office record to date in introducing such systems is not good - look at the Passport Office problems from a few years ago.

David Winnick MP, Labour, Member of the Home Affairs Committee

As the only Labour politician present, and not speaking in an official party capacity, he was very doubtful about ID cards. He saw the scheme as being solutions to other problems. He said that if ID cards could be shown to be a deterrent to terrorists then he and others would change their minds, but he didn't accept that it'd make any difference in either Istanbul or Madrid. Both countries have ID cards.

He quoted a statistic [from the Privacy International report, Mistaken Identity; Exploring the Relationship Between National
Identity Cards & the Prevention of Terrorism (PDF)] that says "Of the 25 countries that have been most adversely affected by terrorism since 1986, eighty per cent have national identity cards, one third of which incorporate biometrics. This research was unable to uncover any instance where the presence of an identity card system in those countries was seen as a significant deterrent to terrorist activity."

He asked to consider the Morecambe Bay tragedy or the sad case of the Chinese immigrants who suffocated in a lorry - ID cards would have made no difference in those instances.

He said that introducing ID cards would not be taking us halfway to totalitarian state, or some kind of "1984". This is not an underhand thing that's happening. He reminded us that we lost many civil liberties during the Second World War, but that there had been good reasons at the time. We have a different tradition in the UK - we had no Nazi occupation or Franco.

He thought that the carrying of an ID card would inevitably change from being voluntary to compulsory. He said that Health Minister John Hutton was already looking forward to asking people for their cards before they got NHS care.

Finally he said that it was all a case of "Function Creep".

Simon Thomas MP, Plaid Cymru

He began by mentioning again the incident in parliament involving flour and that a six hundred thousand pound security screen [note that it seems to have got cheaper once installed!] had been rather easily circumvented. ID cards are a technological solution to the problem. The three billion could be spent another way. The government is stepping away from the argument.

He said that "Aunt Sallys" had been set up some time ago, and that the Home Secretary had cranked up these ideas. He also suggested that the system would begin as being voluntary, but would slowly become compulsory as it reaches the Home Office and the legislation becomes hidden from Parliament.

He asked us how many of us had driving licences with an old address on? [A lot of hands went up - possibly because we were in a student environment?] He said that the government really wants a big database. Other countries have written constitutions and Bills of Rights. We don't.

He said that Benefit fraud would probably only see the recovery of 190-200 million, but that only 35% of terrorists have more than one identity. ID is not the main issue and maybe the cash should instead be spent with the security services. He also mentioned that we have our own Guantanamo Bay in Belmarsh Prison.

He said that there'd been no debate. He also pointed out that since Wales and Scotland were devolved, they didn't have to ask for ID cards to be shown when people seek NHS treatment there.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury, Liberal Democrat

He began by saying that he didn't view David Blunkett as the devil - just ill advised. He said that the tabloids would be in favour of ID cards, and that we'd commonly hear that "if we have nothing to hide, then we've nothing to fear". He said that this was a touchstone issue for him that he found difficult to explain. He returned to what David Davis had said saying that if one terrorist outrage was circumvented then maybe the card was worthwhile. Not the case in his view. This approach is wrong - we shouldn't be trying to stop terrorist events happening - we should stop them starting in the first place.

A phrase that he said that was commonly heard amongst the Jewish of a certain age, was that they like being in this country "because I'm on no one's list." We're not. He was worried that we're going down a path where the State has files on all of us: bank balances, convictions, fingerprints. "Ha ha!" was his response.

He said that 50,000 sets of fingerprints are stored when they should no longer be, because it's "not in the public interest" to get rid of them from storage.

Once more, he said that he feared that secondary legislation would be where all the really serious things would happen.

Phillips also mentioned the fact that there was now too much law! He said that last year there 12,500 pages of new law, and that it wasn't all properly framed. Therefore such organisations as the Egg Marketing Board and Charity Commission have been listed as having access to some of this information, and the Anti-Terrorism Act had framed all crimes as acts of terrorism so poorly had it been drafted at one stage. He didn't believe that cards would only be held voluntarily for long.

We are swamped with law and building a land fit for lawyers. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is the person who stands between "the rape and pillage" of our private information. And if my information's been misused in some way, he can say absolutely nothing.

In passing, Phillips also mentioned that the Human Rights Act is not as good as you might think.

In the question and answer session that followed, one of the key points made was that the National Insurance number should be able to prevent illegal working - but employers are willing to employ on the grey economy and therefore aren't interested.

David Cameron MP, Shadow Leader of the Commons

Cameron began by explaining that as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee [like David Winnick], it was his duty to "sit on the fence" and listen to evidence presented to him.

However he was against the ID card because:
- it would change the relationship between the citizen and the State. (One thousand pound fines for not informing the State when you move).
- the argument for it kept shifting: first terrorism, then immigration, then crime prevention of health tourism. He implored us to read the Home Office evidence that they gave to the committee [transcript uncorrected at time of writing] describing it as "very flimsy".

- IT issues. The more information you put into the database, the more useful it is, but you're putting all your eggs in one basket.

- the technology and cost

How will it make a difference? It's not compulsory and the police can still not stop me without reason. He said that it's part of an "excuse culture" - a "catch-all solution".

He said that every new Home Secretary for years has had some Home Office officials come up to him and present the ID card idea. Only Blunkett has bitten so far. He said that some of his fellow committee members were openly hostile to the idea, and that others were sceptical.

The NHS "spine" already has many prescriptions and medical records recorded.

He wanted to look at the background of the full underlying registry that holds the data. He wasn't sure that there are real wrong motives. However, the arguments don't stack up. Excuses seem the likeliest reason - it's convenient to parade the ID card as doing something. He said that he didn't feel that it was naivety, but it knowingly plays well with the press.

Khalid Sofi, Muslim Council of Britain

Standing in for Dr Iqbal Sacranie, Sofi spoke of how the Muslim community in Britain feels marginalised in the current climate. He said that the only link between them and terrorists such as those from 9/11 was a shared faith.

With this background, ID cards will provide a further reason for officialdom to harass Muslims - particularly the younger ones. He said that it was an excuse to further question people about anti-terrorism and immigration. "Islamaphobia" is what it led to - with the community no longer feeling part of society.

And it won't stop the terrorism. The Government has introduced a series of legislation that erodes civil liberties - people being held without charge in Belmarsh prison for example.

Mark Oaten MP, Lib-Dem Home Affairs spokesman

He began by reiterating the "nothing to hide" issue, and spoke about the fact that before he got into this legislation, he'd previously thought differently and could see no reason for not having ID cards. He had, however, now changed his mind.

Is it the most effective way to spend three billion pounds? More police and more intelligence services might have greater impact. He also thought that this was a very conservative figure.

Is it an effective way to combat terrorism? It didn't work in New York or Madrid (which he is soon to visit to see what learnings have been made from that tragedy). Certainly there are different forms of ID in those places, but someone determined will not be deterred by a "piece of plastic".

Is it practicable? A voluntary card will surely become compulsory (and he felt that this was a fudge to get the issue through [a reportedly divisive] cabinet). Then of course, you didn't even have to have a card in the first three months.

The benefits issue is not about false ID, but about people over claiming. The "Health Tourism" issue is a non-issue. We're not being flooded with health tourists (quite the reverse!). Will every post office, hospital and pharmacy have the kit to check the card and the biometrics contained on it? This is all cloud cuckoo land. The three billion figure will certainly end up higher.

Illegal working. We already have powers and documentation to combat this, but only two arrests have been made under the existing legislation. How are the police going to know who to ask? Would it be on the basis of the colour of one's skin?

He said that he'd oppose the legislation mainly on the grounds of effectiveness as it's the best way of arguing the case publicly.

The question and answer session that followed highlighted the fact that there's a difference between privacy and secrecy. It was also noted that we expect there to be an election forthcoming.

Finally, a recent Mori poll was mentioned, and I thought that it was worth linking to. It's worth noting that the company that commissioned this research, Detica, do seem to have some specific interests in the field. According to their website, their customers include HM Customs & Excise, the Military Communications Service, "UK Defence Agencies", & "Government Agency". Note that their site also has a fuller version of the Mori report, but you need to complete a free registration to get a copy.

Tony Bunyan, Editor, Statewatch

He began with a potted history of biometric measurements - well the fingerprint anyway. 1902, was the year that the first conviction was made on the basis of the fingerprint.

But he spoke of whole series and sets of data being captured - biometric, movement (mobile phones, trackers in cars), personal lives. And if we don't comply, we could be cut off from some service. He talked about how "President" Bush [sorry - can't get out of that habit] wanted to promote biometric passports, and that Blair was his ally in this, with the UK and US pushing it through the G8.

He doesn't believe that Data Protection works at all in this country, and spoke of a working party that sat from May 1998 to April 2001 before being abolished that looked into protecting rights.

He said that there's a lack of powers and resources, and there isn't the ability to do the job. Data protection doesn't work in the EU.

On a practical level, he spoke of 5 million passports being issued every year, each of which will need people to attend "enrolment centres" to receive. And they change every ten years, and driving licence will be similarly limited. The data collected will be facial and fingerprints.

He noted that the NHS database is in fact an opt-out one, and that BT was running it.

All third country nationals in the EU will also need biometric visas, as well as biometric passports and ID cards. Could all this data end up on one card? And this information is to be shared throughout the EU.

He also gave quoted back from a Czech national who spoke about not knowing what you're losing until you've lived under communism or fascism when you gave away your rights. He ended by saying that he wouldn't trust David Blunkett.

Karen Chouhan, 1990 Trust

Chouhan began by speaking of the criminalisation of black minority communities and the re-emergence of racism. She said that the citizenship debate had changed over to "oaths of allegiance".

She vented her anger at the appeasement of the far right, with Jean Marie Le Pen allowed to speak while Louis Farrakhan isn't.

She also said that in the context of society where asylum seekers must apply at their point of entry, the ID card became very scary.

There was some anger that the Trevor Phillips at the Commission for Racial Equality was not doing as much as he should. [Simon Davies explained that he's spent sometime trying to get either Phillips or someone else along to the meeting to clear up the issue, but had been unsuccessful].

She urged us to read the appendices of the draft bill for a fuller picture of what were likely to be the biggest effects.

She spoke of how blacks are eight times more likely to be stopped by the police, and that this disproportionality will continue. Finally she said that the Race Discrimination effect was supposed to ensure that policy is changed if any legislation is likely to have a disproportionate affect on a minority.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty

She began with an ironic aside about posters that are currently appearing on the side of buses and tube stations - "Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent". This is in relation to unattended baggage.

She said that this was a populist, and therefore dangerous, home affairs agenda. It is time to sit up and worry. This was something that could haunt us for years to come. The Government should be leading the populace away from fear, and not acting tough.

She found the legislation incredibly dangerous and sinister. Politicians are very short-termist, and don't really consider the larger ramifications. They're aware of the financial costs, but not the social costs. This was the death of presumption of innocence. Not in a criminal justice sense, but in a wider democratic society.

She referred to a quotation made by Tony Blair in his conference speech in Bournemouth last year:

And of course the criminal justice system with its rules and procedures was a vital step of progress when poor people were without representation unjustly convicted by corners cut. But today in Britain in the 21st century it is not the innocent being convicted. It's too many of the guilty going free. Too many victims of crime and always the poorest who are on the front line.

She said that there were plans afoot to try to make the whole of the metropolitan area of London a "stop and search" zone. She also spoke of Belmarsh, and those who'd been incarcerated for two and a half years - "just a few anonymous foreign subjects".

Liberty's viewpoint was that there's no such thing as voluntary. Even President Bush doesn't countenance an ID card. [Couldn't find an out and out denial despite searching all over the place. The closest are some of the links here] The card will become compulsory and will signify a major constitutional shift, with no other common law country having them. This would have dire consequences on the 30 years of racial relations building.

The Government are being too casual about the value of personal privacy. It's not secrecy.

The Q&A that followed mentioned interoperability within Europe and the various working parties.

The point was made that DNA is now routinely kept even if the suspect was either cleared completely or found not guilty.

Peter Williamson, President of the Law Society

[I did take copious notes of what Williamson said, but it was so well structured and spoken, that it seems a shame not to link directly to his address]

His essay can be found here (PDF).

Roger Smith, Director, JUSTICE

The legislation will fail or succeed on the basis of acceptability, and most people don't like the fact that they'll have to pay around thirty five pounds for their card.

A Home Office official is said to have said, in a memo, "I can't see that these proposals are a vote winner!"

Smith was full of praise for Privacy International, and said that The Register's piece was very much worth reading. He also urged us to read both the Government's White Paper as well as the Draft Bill.

He highlighted Clause 23 of the bill which is about the "Power to authorise other disclosures without consent" - in other words to let others look at records held without any need to have a good reason.

Smith also talked about secondary legislation as being where the full ramifications would be felt, and noted that it had only been overturned three times. He said that 2013 was a key date, since we know that neither Blair nor Blunkett will still be in power then, but that more draconian measures could go into force.

He said that we should make no bones about the fact that there is some support for the scheme. But are the proposals proportionate? He mentioned a very sober Cabinet Office report from last year on lost or stolen passports. [I think he might have referring to this report (PDF) from July 2002 entitled Identity Fraud - A Study. The key paragraph seems to be this (8.45):

Such a card would carry a huge premium around its secure issue and reissue, and would reinforce the case for the issue of documents used as evidence of identity to be based on checking of "historical footprint" (ie checks of biographical identity) and face to face interviews in hard cases. Processes for issuing cards would have to be made more secure than current processes, as it would otherwise be the single ticket for a fraudster, giving access to a whole range of services.]

Smith continued saying that the costs are disproportionate. IT projects are costly and they over-run.

Finally he related an anecdote about himself that happened to take place on the day of Princess Diana's funeral. He was about to fly to Australia when his visa was refused electronically since it turned out that a drug smuggler shared his name. He eventually spoke to a department specifically set up for such mistakes in Canberra!

Paul Whitehouse, former Chief Constable, Sussex Police

He said he'd been a policeman for thirty years, and was against ID cards. The real costs had been left out of the Bill, with costs going into other departments (training, equipment etc.).

Whitehouse compared this kind of legislation with generals who are preparing the fight the last war.

He said that it was more important that we try to establish why people are driven to terrorism. He then explained that when he's started years earlier, you weren't able to just radio in and get a vehicle licence plate checked. So you had to use your initiative, and if you saw a suspicious car you pulled it over. You'd then ask the occupant to tell you what was in the boot - not because you were interested but because if they could tell you, it was probably their car. The Spanish police pulled over a car involved, but because it checked out when they radioed in, there was no reason to open the boot, and they let the car go.

He also asked how you can be certain you trust the people who write the algorithms that'll be used to encrypt the information. He also said that this would lead to lessening of the trust between members of the public and those in authority. He said that race relations would be hampered (and mentioned that in places like India and Kenya where people may have happily used ID cards, they were members of the ruling classes).

Wrongly arrested people cost money, he said. And then there was the 2013 effect. And he left us with the thought that Hitler came to power by election.

In the Q&A at this point, the fact that ID cards had been renamed from the previous "Entitlement Cards". It was also suggested that this was all a Home Office scheme for getting money to clean up their existing databases.

Professor Ross Anderson, Cambridge University Security Group

Anderson began by telling us how he'd recently been reading Dick Clarke's book [I assume, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror] in which it he talks about how the rationale for invading Iraq was conjured up. The initial response to 9/11 was do double MI5 numbers - fine. But that left nothing for the Home Office to get into.

At this point he related a story about how recently he'd tried to withdraw fifteen hundred pounds in cash, and had been presented with a leaflet explaining how this had to be done in light of new money laundering legislation. He'd known better, and it turned out that the new rules didn't comply with UK law.

He explained that this is a displacement activity - solving an easier neighbouring problem. He said that there was empire building going on, with plum contracts for the boys etc. He also said that he was unconvinced on a technical level, referring us to his website [where we can in turn read his written and oral evidence to the select committee].

He also mentioned 2010, and the GPS devices which should need to be fitted to cars [maybe using the Galileo system?]

He said that at some point, cumulatively, people will say that they've had enough. He referred to the Kroger affair - when a husband and wife were using various methods to change identities and spy for the Soviets. He said that they still could use the same techniques even with ID cards, since all their IDs were legitimately gained.

It was all, he said, about inconveniencing our citizens without as much inconveniencing of our enemies.

Jonathan Bamford, Assistant Information Commissioner

He said that his office was looking at all data protection aspects. He said that the name of legislation (ID cards) did no describe what we're really talking about, which is a register with a National Identity Registration Number. Of course there are already existing numbers including the National Insurance number.

He noted that there was no provision for non ID versions of driving licences or passports. And there were still biometric issues.

What kind of chip would be employed on the card. Some can be "eavesdropped" so safeguards would need to include contact chips, and there is also the question of encryption.

And would someone who buys, say, fertilizer, black bins, and a stop watch be tracked via their ID card?

He said that the information minister would make his response.

Finally he talked about Function Creep. At the time in WWII when ID cards were introduced, there were three reasons for them. By the time ID cards ended, there were 39 (including stopping bigamists!).

To conclude procedings, Simon Davies spoke about how no2id.net had been set-up as a "non-aligned diverse group of people who stand against the attempts to introduce intrusive, expensive and ineffective control of personal identity."
--

So there you go. That's what I took from a very informative afternoon. There's enough there to keep everyone very busy reading up on it all.

The stated reasons for the UK having an identity card, as laid out on the Home Office website are:

- to deter illegal working
- to tackle immigration abuse
- to strengthen security by disrupting the use of false and multiple identities by terrorists and organised crime groups
- to ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them
- to help protect people from identity theft

All worthy aims, and absolutely none of them are going to be properly stifled by the introduction of the one of the most radical assaults on British civil liberties ever made.

You really should read this: The Draft ID Cards Bill (227k PDF)

UPDATE: Stand now have OGG and MP3 audio of all the speakers in full!

Michael Moore's won at Cannes!

A BBC News report from the meeting the other day. When I get a chance, I'll link to other reports, and still plan on putting my own comprehensive notes up.

In the meantime, here's someone else's notes from the meeting. Might I also recommend reading Peter Williamson of The Law Society's address (PDF). He was one of the clearest speakers on the day, and it summarises nearly all the main objections to the ID Card system and ID Register.

The meeting today was exceptional, and I'll try to type up my notes forthwith.

I'm going along to this on Wednesday afternoon - taking time off work to get there in fact.

The government has introduced draft legislation for a national identity card. The card system will cost at least £3 billion and is likely to become an essential part of life for everyone residing in the UK.

Join us at this important meeting to hear from key figures in the fields of law, politics, security, technology and human rights. Decide for yourself whether this is a plan that should be supported.

I shall report back, hopefully in some detail. This is too vital an issue to leave alone.

The reviews of Michael Moore's new film are beginning to trickle out, and I'm looking forward to the forthcoming British release (rubbish site that hasn't been updated for a couple of months - great if you're a film distributor!).

In the meantime, the Americans are still saying that they're going to hand power back to Iraq at the end of next month. This is despite the fact that a bomb killed the leader of the country's governing council today. I just don't see it.

I may have been against the invasion in the first place, but I do believe that once you start a job, you really do have to finish it. And any intentions of "running away" really have to go by the wayside. The country is unstable, and any underlying intentions of pulling troops out should be forgotten right away. It's a terribly thankless task that'll no doubt cost manymore lives, but any person with some kind of salient intelligence should have realised that at the outset. Now it's too late.

I disagreed with the Spanish who have all but removed their troops from the country following a general election. The popular vote was against them going, as was the case in the UK. But now we're there, we have to see the job finished, and that may will almost certainly take years. There's nothing we can do about it.

The clock has got to be ticking on Donald Rumsfeld hasn't it?

I realise that Michael Moore can be a master of the ever-so slight over-exaggeration, but it's still pretty interesting to hear where the pressure is coming from to prevent the distribution of his new film.

Blunkett continues to push for these stupid ID cards, and now has a trial underway with 10,000 volunteers. Exactly what a trial with volunteers is going to prove I don't know? I daresay that there won't be too many terrorists or illegal immigrants rushing to queue up for this.

So what can we expect? Well the cost of passports and driving licences are going to rise rapidly. This page on the Home Office website suggests costs of around £77 for a combined passport/ID card, and £73 for a combined driving licence/ID card.

But it'll combat terrorism. Well ID cards did the trick in Spain didn't they? OK, so Spanish ones don't carry biometric data. Well so what? How would it have stopped them. And there's the small point that we won't be scanning everyone who enters the country, particularly our friends in the EU (very shortly to include lots more people from lots more countries). Or our American cousins from across the water who will most certainly be scanning all of us.

But it's not just terrorism. Oh no. It's to stop health tourism. And in particualr all those illegal workers doing the jobs that no-one with the legal right to work wants to do. Of course, whenever I've started a new job, I've been asked for my National Insurance number, and one would think that this might be the way to go for illegal working. Still, I expect that once all the cards have been introduced, those dodgy employers who are paying below-subsistence levels of wages to illegal workers will immediately clean up their acts.

Incidentally, some seem to think that it's not terrorism that the introduction is mainly being sold on. Just go back and read Blunkett's comments on that Home Office press release. What does it say to you?

This also sounds like it'll be an enormous government IT contracts to be put out to tender. Which IT company will win it? EDS perhaps? You feel certain that the whole thing will be completed on time and under budget.

Keep up to speed at Stand and Liberty.

I suppose it's unfair to criticise a programme that hasn't even been transmitted yet, but I'm with Tony Benn and Alistair Campbell on ITV's new Pop-Idol type programme with politicians.

Obviously there are strict electoral laws about TV or Radio backing one side (I should know, our station was reprimanded very severely when Chris Evans breached them backing Ken Livingstone several years ago), so ITV are only allowing those who are unaffiliated with any political parties to take part. And the show will be over, with a winner chosen, before a general election comes around. ITV won't be able to fund any bid made by the winner to stand in a constituency either.

So what's the point of the programme? Well it could be a good excuse to discuss the various topics that affect us and are important to us. But what can one man really do against the machine? As Campbell says, politics in Britain is a lead by parties. You can't go it alone. I was very supportive of Martin Bell when he ousted the Hamiltons a few years ago, but that was a one off. Here was someone who believed in what they're doing. If I was interested in getting into politics, then surely I'd be a member of either a major. or minor, political party?

I used to think that I couldn't join any one party because I didn't believe in all their policies. But if I didn't join the party, then I didn't have any influence in changing those policies. In many respects the party system is flawed, but without the backing of a party, how can anyone get their messages and policies across to the electorate? And I don't just mean cash - although that's vital. Party workers are vital at election time. Even Martin Bell got a team behind him - a quasi-party.

Somehow I suspect that ITV are looking for a charismatic personality - "of the people" - to stand. All the while earning cash from expensive phone and texting lines. They simply want ratings - nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, and the whole thing can be tallied off against ITV's current affairs public service broadcasting remit. Nope, the whole thing seems wrong to me, with few, if any, redeeming qualities.

Brilliant. It seems that the terrorist attacks in Madrid make it necessary.

Of course we need ID cards now. That's obvious isn't it? I mean with all the potential terrorists being picked up and arrested all over the place, ID cards are the way forward.

Could someone please explain how ID cards would help? Will they have "terrorist" encoded somewhere in the electronic chip so that we can find out who they are more easily. Will we supply them to "illegal immigrants" that everyone is getting in such a fuss over? Especially Romanian ones. Will they stop crime in general, or will they be something else that most of the population already has that's a unique identifier, like National Insurance Numbers or Passports? In which case, why do we need something else. Not enough of a police state Mr Blunkett or Mr Blair?

We were told a while ago that the idea was being dropped, but suddenly it's back on the agenda. Is it still going to cost us 40 quid?

Would you want to live in a country where they could arrest you, lock you up, and never put you on trial for any offense? Or maybe if there was a trial, it'd be before a single judge and held secretly? Welcome to the UK under Blunkett.

Incidentally, would Lord Hutton have been one of those trusted law lords?

The other day I didn't know for certain which way my MP, Joan Ryan, had voted over these fees. Well now I do. She was a teller for this vote. And why does she have this job? Because she's a whip. So there's no danger of my local MP ever going against Tony then is there. That's representative politics for you.

Now I must admit that I had to away and look up what that meant, since for all I know, tellers are randomly appointed MPs. In fact when a division (or vote) is called for, each side has to put up a couple of tellers to count each side's votes. These come from among the ranks of those supporting that side of the bill. Their votes aren't counted, but since both the "ayes" and "noes" have two tellers, this balances out.

There are clerks as well who record who's voted for which side, but it does seem all quite antiquated. But I'll stop there, before I disappear off on a tangent talking about Millionaire style voting buttons and on-screen graphics to liven things up. In any case I suspect that it's a very sociable way of doing things having two lobbies. Members can immediately see who's voting for what - foes and allies.

Somewhere about I have a book that I bought a year or so ago that details many of the intricacies of the British parliamentary system, as I know that I should know more about how this democracy supposedly works.

Whitewash by Jonathan Freedland from Thursday's Guardian.

So Gilligan joins Dyke and Davies on the list. Meanwhile, Campbell aside, everyone in the government hunkers down and stays put.

I just have one question. When are they going to paint the front of number 10 with Whitewash?

Frankly I'm shocked and disappointed in no small way that Greg Dyke has resigned from the DG of the BBC. It really is a tragic day when he feels he has to do this.

I totally support the BBC throughout this "affair" (and I use the term in the loosest possible manner). Frankly, the Hutton report is a shambles. Either he's been "got at" or he simply doesn't understand how things work.

I am utterly staggered at quite how much of the government's case Hutton bought. Does he not really understand how David Kelly's name came to be leaked. It was deliberate in a disgusting manner.

In my opinion, Hoon is DIRECTLY responsible for David Kelly's death. No two ways. It's down here in black and white.

Google will hopefully cache this page, and frankly it'll be so forever more. I believe this to be FACT, and it's going to take a lot to get me to change tacks.

As it stands, I cannot see myself voting Labour anytime soon. Frankly the "Socialist" party have disgusted me in recent months and years. We went to war without foundation (and, hey, if we're in the regular business of toppling dictators, then let's look at Zimbabwe shall we?).

I am appalled by this whole affair, and belive me, more is to come.

Michael Moore's worth reading on the Bush being a "deserter". This election's getting heated. Still, you can go to Amazon and contribute!

So he's scraped through. This can still be defeated though, and I think worse is to come tomorrow. At the time of writing, opinion seems to be in one direction. 71 Labour MPs opposed the vote, somewhat fewer than those listed this morning on the front of The Independent. They had 77 committed, and 20 wavering. Sadly I didn't see my MP on the list.

Two emails in my spam-cluttered inbox this morning raised some interesting problems that I find hard to break down.

First Robert X Cringley's weekly piece for PBS. He's talking in the main about US jobs leaving those shores and heading to places like India or other developing countries, where costs are lower. This is illustrated by the "Brain Drain" from the UK after the second world war.

It comes down to short term corporate greed versus longterm weakening of your local position. But it raises some very difficult questions. If I employ an Indian programmer rather than a British one because they're cheaper is that such a bad thing? It saves me money, but gives work to someone from a country that's desperately poor. A couple of years ago I met an Indian programmer at a party who'd been "imported" into Britain to help build and launch a website. Highly educated, undoubtedly good at what he was able to do. His wife had come over with him, yet at the back of my mind was the fact that he was probably being paid less than someone over here would have been. And if there weren't such infrastructure issues with this company, I expect there wouldn't have been any need for him to come over and he could have saved the company even more money - no flat to upkeep.

I want to learn more about the state of industry in the UK, because as we close down factories (Panasonic in Wales this week), does Britain have much manufacturing capacity left? Can we continue to compete with Third World nations' cheap labour? At first it seemed as though manufacturing jobs were morphing into call centre jobs. But now even they are outsourced to India.

While mulling this over I got an email from Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. They've launched an iniative to highlight the vast subsidies paid over to some of the richest men in the country via the Common Agricultural Policy. Protectionism at its worst?

Farming is certainly a tough business, but a vital one. But there's a fine line between subsidising and blatant protectionsim. It really is worth having a look at the report Oxfam have produced.

Maybe I should get one of these T-Shirts.

On the day that Bush presents his last State of the Union address before the election, The Independent today presented a staggering indictment of his presidency to date. They did it in the form of numbers.

Just read through it (while it's still free!).

Well despite a split cabinet, David Blunkett has published his plans for ID cards, which will carry all sorts of biometric data, and will be in place by 2013.

It's interesting to note that the Cabinet still has to agree to cards becoming compulsory as well as Parliament.

It seems that they would stop terrorism, illegal immigrants, "health tourism" and rabies. Well maybe not rabies. Let's face it, none of the other things are likely to be stopped either. Don't I need a National Insurance Number to get a job.

Just as well there's no-one who'd be prepared to illegally employ someone paying them cash. That sort of thing doesn't go on does it.

More at Stand.

A report in yesterday's Sunday Times seems to indicate that Blunkett's not going to have his way over ID cards. It seems that Jack Straw is particularly against them, as is Gordon Brown.

The problems are enormous, and yes, making people pay forty pounds would be seen as a tax. We already have National Insurance Numbers, and frankly that should be enough for getting services. And you just know that the computer system would takes years to set up, come in way over budget and be flawed.

Strangely, the Sunday Times comes out in favour of the cards. Apparently the little extra security they might offer negates everything else. This despite the 9/11 terrorists, for example, all being known about, when one of the strengths of the cards is supposed to be allowing the authorities to know about people in the first place.

Although he can be a bit smug, the workaholic Mark Lawson has some interesting things to say about The Terminator being elected into office.

When America is next confused as to why the rest of the world sees them as a total joke, look no further than your new Governor of California. Beyond the pale. Thank God he can't become president, and to think that this was the country that gave Clinton a hard time!

Alex Cox's site has now left the BBC, so his first weekly diary on his own site is all about the BBC. He's absolutely spot on about all the BBC bashers and the general distaste that we should all feel for them with their own collection of views and beliefs. Murdoch, Kaufman, Conrad Black, and New Labour. Aside from Murdoch who has a commercial operation to run and for whom the BBC is a competitor (raising the quality threshhold beyond what he can manage), one has to ask why so many people dislike the BBC.

Still, in case anyone ever sympathises with these people sometimes, just read this piece by Maggie Brown about the RTS Cambridge convention. In both speakers mentioned, the key missing point, was that media has a duty to inform as well as entertain its audience. Failure to do so will just lead to dumber country than ever, and I don't want to be part of that.

So David Blunkett spent a lot of this time garnering headlines for his ID scheme. Despite a split in the cabinet over the scheme, he seems keen to press ahead and get ID cards into the Queen's Speech.

The core reason for introducing this big brother regime, is seemingly to keep track of illegal immigrants, and stop them accessing public services. Sorry I don't quite understand how this will work. At the moment, there are many illegal immigrants who don't have National Insurance Numbers, yet can find work - mainly because there are plenty of people willing to pay cash. This isn't going to change with ID cards - unless we become some kind of totalitarian regime in which the police stop us in the street for no reason, demanding to see ID. Blunkett says that this wouldn't be the case.

The BBC report describes Blunkett's move as being seen by analysts (?) as "an effort to grab the initiative after a difficult few weeks for the government." I don't quite understand this. Grab an unpopular initiative? At the moment, supporters say that people are in favour of ID cards, but that's primarily because the real privacy issues have not been discussed.

At least The Guardian understands the real reasons behind the ID Card scheme - it's nothing to do with illegal immigration, that's just something that resonates with the Daily Mail and Sun reading population at large. It's to do with centralising data about the people of this country. It's power.

To see how much of a red herring the illegal immigrant idea is, consider the number to be found in countries like Italy where ID cards are already compulsory. Not much effect there is there?

I was interested to see what other papers made of Blunkett's appearance yesterday, but sadly neither The Times, The Independent nor the Telegraph thought it worth a leader.

Returning to the transcript of the Frost interview, I love the way that Blunkett won't use the word "mandatory".

I also note that Stand have updated their website with some pieces of secondary legislation to do with the RIP act.

The Guardian carries a report this morning about the cabinet being split over the introduction of ID Cards. No need to explain again where I stand on the issue.

I don't know quite what to make of all this. Gordon Brown doesn't want the treasury to pay for it, but the alternative seems to be to get every member of the public pay £40 for the privilege.

The there's the suggestion that in the all new™ Labour government, the cabinet are going to get more say about policy - so not just TB and his mates then? Could this be the first piece of policy to go by the wayside as a result of this new found openness?

Well it seems that the police have been arresting demonstrators at the ExCel centre which is hosting DSEi - Defence Systems & Equipment International. Strangely the ExCel website doesn't seem to mention it, but of course, being Europe's largest exhibition of this nature it does have it's own site (this should not be mistaken for this very similarly named website!).

As I'm not a member of the "bona fide defence and aeronautical press" I probably wouldn't get it, although I could try as a member of the broadcast media.

Obviously demonstrating outside a commercial trade fair is tantamount to planning the next major terrorist act, and anyone who does anything of this sort should be instantly locked away.

Well that's what David Blunkett must think, since he had to authorise this use of the Act.

Police State? Surely not. 79 arrests so far.

UPDATE: It seems that now Blunkett's had something of a change of heart, or maybe he's only just found out about something he should have had to authorise (surely it wasn't just rubber-stamped by someone in the Home Office?). He wants to know why Counter-Terrorism laws were invoked rather than public order ones. Good question. I look forward to the answer.

Is this the most blogged article ever?

David Aaronovitch has his say on it today.

I hadn't realised that there's a new Michael Moore book being published very soon. Dude, Where's My Country comes out on October 7.

So the government have really been shafted by a couple of people in yesterday's Hutton Inquiry.

I'd link to the relevant Guardian stories, but their site's down at the moment. Here are the headlines:

Iraw's weapons capacity was not accurately represented in the dossier
The 45 minute claim was nebulous. Other claims were over-egged
Complaints from experts were ignored after 'the shutters came down'

Those points essentially cover a particularly damaging day in the tribunal yesterday.

In other news, Bush now wants the UN to help out in Iraq. Umm. OK.

So that'd be the same UN that he and Blair ran roughshod over would it? Could this be anything to do with the fact that there is absolutely no end in sight for a heavy troop presence in Iraq, costing an arm and a leg. Not exactly amazing that other countries aren't going to come running, particularly not under the aegis of an unwilling UN.

Well it's come a bit out of the blue, but he's gone. I think it was fairly well expected that he'd be going some time soon, but while the Hutton Inquiry is still ongoing seems very unusual.

Does this take the heat off Geoff Hoon or the rest of the government? These are the questions we must await.

I'm listening to John Pienaar and now John Prescott on Five Live, and it's become obvious that with the Hutton Inquiry running on for more time than expected, it was going to run into party conference season, so that's why he's gone now.

Ah. So that's OK then. Anyone might otherwise think that the swiftest 180 degrees turn ever had just taken place.

A nice piece on Salon interviewing Al Franken about his recent "run-in" with Fox News. It's also interesting to read a little about the progression of the "liberal" talk radio network that's being set up. I assume that this is the same project that Fi Glover left Radio 5 to write a book about.

So where abouts is the small market town where they're going to test ID cards?

I don't suppose that it'll take too long to find out. More civil liberties disappear...

Well how about that? The Tories would close down the BBCi website and BBC Three according to a story on Mediaguardian.

That's the way to make yourself popular with the voters. Shut down the fourth most visited internet site in the world. Why should we get the BBC News free? It seems a crime that the BBC are allowed to make available the wealth of information that we the UK public have already paid for.

I can just see middle England voters being so happy that the one site they can trust their kids to be on is shut down. Good idea Tories. I know that with all this Hutton Enquiry stuff you think that you've a fair chance of getting in, but once Hoon has fallen on his sword, Blair will be back to business as usual I feel.

Nice piece about Oliver Stone's forthcoming film about Fidel Casto, Commandante which has so far not been shown by HBO (yup - the same channel I was praising earlier). Stone was railing against possible media censorship if Americans are allowed in to buy British media concerns.

With any luck the documentary will finally appear with a companion piece detailing some of the appalling Castro clampdowns he "snuck" through during the Iraq war.

Tragically, Fox News lost their case!

Full marks for putting up an official Hutton Inquiry website. Poor marks for making it so rubbish - particularly the frames nonsense with the evidence. Fortunately we now have it reversioned by Matthew Somerville.

Looking down the page at my RSS feed of blogdex, to see what other people are talking about, I see that some Weekly Standard article is having a bit of a go at the BBC about its coverage of the war. I'm kind of loathed to link to it since it just chucks it further up the blogdex chart, but I guess I have to.

This is not an easy time, and the Beeb hasn't always acquitted itself as well as it might, but I have absolutely no problem with their coverage of the war.

Don't forget that we're talking about a news organisation who's reporters came under fire by "friendly" forces, and it's transpiring daily that the government have at best misled the country, and at worst simply lied to us about the danger Iraq posed.

A paragraph about the pronunciation of Paul Wolfowitz's surname gives a pretty good idea of the political leanings of the article's writer. Incidentally, I've always heard his name spoken correctly, but it's the man's actions that worry me.

I don't think we can honestly say that we've "liberated" the country, when it's still an unsafe place. What we've actually done is invade another country without UN backing that hasn't actually invaded or attacked anyone else.

Still if we're taking on monstrous dictators, can we go into Zimbabwe next please?

I'll wait for the conclusion of the Hutton Inquiry before commenting on that, but the Jessica Lynch story is still one of the biggest pieces of nonsense to come out of the war so far. Read John Kampfner's piece on the matter. Of course some papers have had to correct their initial versions of this story.

I like to think that my blog is fair and balanced (via Gia).

When Coldplay were on stage on Saturday at the V Festival, all the TV close-ups clearly showed the phrase "Make Trade Fair" on the side of Chris Martin's piano, and also written on his hands. He's a massive advocate of campaign's such as Oxfam's.

The Guardian has started a new blog today which is solely aimed at removing all agricultural subsidies the world over. An editorial in today's paper launches the site.

The Hutton Inquiry is underway, and it has a website. The evidence so far is interesting. It's difficult to see which way it'll go.

I know that they do it on purpose, but today's Broadcast (no direct link to the story since they're subscription only) has a piece by Mr Kaufman once again banging on about how the BBC have handled the David Kelly mess badly.

His main issue is that the BBC talked about an "intelligence source", and since Dr Kelly didn't work for MI5 or anything, then he couldn't be called that. I'd say that anyone who worked for the MoD was an intelligence source, but what do I know. His main issue is that he doesn't like the way the BBC is governed - he wanted it under Ofcom.

What he doesn't appreciate, or at least want to accept, is that the BBC loses a lot of it independence from Government. It's unique, and at the moment, it has no beholdence to the Governement of the day.

And finally in his last few words he threatens, as is his want:

"Maybe it should be funded by subscription. Maybe, even, it should be privatised."

Brilliant ideas. That should improve the quality of our TV no end. When he was conducting his select committee questioning about films in the UK, the BBC was seen as a possible producer. I don't see a struggling privatised company going into an area that even Channel 4 daren't now tread.

And he has the nerve to accuse the BBC of "ineffable smugness" when it might have been designed to describe himself. I'm not exactly alone in thinking this either. The BBC have only themselves to blame because these questions are on the agenda he says.

No, Mr Kaufman. These questions are on the agenda because you put them there.

The BBC is under attack because your government took exception to a piece of independent reporting that has been shown to be in the large part factually correct, and to which no-one is disputing it.

The BBC is under attack because your government took a reluctant country to war without proving the case.

The BBC is under attack because once that war had been fought, the promised proof to show that the reasons given were well founded, was not brought to life.

The BBC is under attack because your government threw a loyal civil servant to the hungry hounds to throw the pack off the true scent.

Saddam was a nasty piece of works which the world is better off without (although I was still perturbed that the death of Saddam's sons, evil though they no doubt were, was described as "great news" by our Christian PM), but there are many more evil dictators about in the world (one of the ex-ones is dying at the moment). And to a country like Zimbabwe we owe more than most.

But the case for war has not been proved. We've been told it would be, and it hasn't.

Until your government has answered that question Mr Kaufman, do not try to strangle the editorial independence of the BBC.

Well Sunday arrives and now it seems that the blame is being placed on the BBC. The only big defence of the BBC I've seen was a vehement one from Rod Liddle, ex-Today editor until fairly recently.

All this nonsense about sources is pathetic and not worthy of a reply, but it worries me when I hear Gerald Kaufman (who chairs the Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport) suggests that the BBC's future is at stake, I'm outraged. How dare he! Gilligan is still saying that he reported what he heard accurately, and I don't actually doubt that. There were other sources for Gilligan, and he probably included their views in his report. He shouldn't have to tell us his sources.

And we're hearing very little about how it is that David Kelly's name was let into the open. Just saying that it was inevitable is simply not on. Governments can keep secrets if they want to, and they put his name out - or at the very least gave enough clues that anyone could work out the name, which they were then happy to verify. I look forward to hearing the outcome of that.

The whole thing sickens me. And I lay the blame at the door of number 10. Maybe not Blair himself, but certainly Campbell. Everyday, someone reports something somewhere which others disagree with, but this report was not that important - it was a trivial detail.

We still need full and proper reasons for our going to war. I think my thoughts to some extent are reflected in a piece from yesterday's Guardian by Malcolm Rifkind of all people.

I think this excerpt in particular sums it up for me:

The issue is not whether the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Of course it is. It would also be a better place without Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro and a host of other tyrants and despots, but there is no intention of the British government to support wars in order to get rid of them.

Well it looks as though the ridiculous mole-hunting of BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan's source within the MOD or Security Services from which he made "sexed up" report claims, has lead to tragedy.

David Kelly earlier this week was questioned by the Commons foreign affairs select committee, but whether he was actually Gilligan's source remains to be seen.

There is a lot of bad feeling in the air about this, and I think that it's safe to say that Alistair Campbell has got to go now, and a full inquiry held. This whole thing has come from the government squirming about over the reasons we went to war.

This whole Gilligan thing has been a complete facade, and has been there for no other reason than to distract attention from the real reasons we went to war. There have been no WDM's found.

Today's Evening Standard carried a large tribute section to Alexander Walker today.

When I got home this evening, I flicked around looking for something to watch and stumbled upon Alex on the BBC Parliament channel. They were showing coverage of the Culture Media and Sport committee from Tuesday 17 June at which Alexander Walker was one of the three witnesses.

What he spoke about was very eloquent, and his points well made. You couldn't really find fault in anything he said. I don't know how well or not he was at the time, but as all his obituaries have said, he was perfectly turned out, and could speak at length and knowledgably.

The other witnesses were easyJet, and more to the point easyCinema's Stelios Haji-Ioannou. His new cinema in Milton Keynes is trying to work on a yield management system similar to his airline, internet cafés and car hire businesses, but the studios are unwilling to supply him with first run films on that basis.

Finally there was Tessa Jowell who was quite defensive in her answers, as you'd expect her to be.

I thought that for the most part, the committee seemed very knowledgable and asked some good questions. I look forward to their report.

Well the Sunday Times reported last weekend that everyone in the UK is have to carry an ID card and will have to pay 39 pounds for the privilige!

I'm sure that the story is phrased in as rabble-rousing a manner as possible, since I can't see for the life of me that people will all fork out their 39 quid for a piece of plastic. It also seems to be a backdoor route for building a comprehensive figure printing database of the UK.

The story also quotes Blunkett as saying that there is widespread approval for ID cards. Exactly where? The "Entitlement Card" consulation exercise was not a popular move, and was roundly opposed by those who even knew there was a consultation.

Incidentally, there are dozens of consultations happening all the time, and I'm now on a mailing list that informs me of upcoming consultations.

It's really scary that they're considering building this massive computer database - the possibilities for abuse are enormous. I'll be doing everything I can to oppose such measures.

I'm so pleased to see that Lord Puttnam is still keeping up his stand on the Communications Act.

Berlusconi really doesn't mess around does he. Unsurprisingly, he's not all that popular around much of Europe and so didn't get quite the reception he would have wanted at the European Parliament. But causing a major diplomatic incident on day two of his presidency was certainly going it some.

I think we've been fairly quiet in this country about the man until now, but he effectively silences his media by owning it. He has enormous conflicts of interest, that would see any other Western leading either ousted from office, or having to forgo in the first place.

The man is dangerous.

It's this kind of story that really annoys me about spam.

Yes it's terrible.
Yes children should not be seeing it.
Yes ISPs, when asked, should have some kind of spam filtering available.

But, no, it's not the ISPs fault. I get pissed off with marketing phone calls, but I don't directly blame BT. Someone could just dial random numbers, which in effect is what a lot of spammers are doing.

Spam fighting is essential - I had to take some serious measures. But it's legislation, and the prosecution of offenders that needs to happen. And if the US doesn't take it seriously then we need to do so on it's behalf.

Something pretty radical has to happen pretty fast. In the meantime children need to be educated about not passing out email addresses.

Well this story just goes on and on, and I really don't like it.

I watched the Channel 4 News interview via the net (being otherwise engaged on Friday night).

The story runs and runs, and I really hope that the BBC stay with it. The government should not be dictating the stories that the free media wish to report. And in any case, the whole thing is just a ruse to remove the coverage that the Commons Inquiry would otherwise be showing up.

I can't believe that the government have been so stupid over this bill. Yesterday, the Lords massively defeated the government.

There was a fantastic piece by Steve Barnett in yesterday's Observer talking about the forthcoming Communications Bill, and the various parts of it that the government simply haven't been able to defend so far.

I really do hope that the House of Lords sort the government out over this. This coming week should really sort things out!

Well no sooner do I blog, than things happen (unless our proxy is really misbehaving).

First of all, I note that on Wednesday, in response to a question from "Mr Bailey" asking a question about when the analysis of the consultation on entitlement cards will be complete, Beverley Hughes from the Home Office responded that it would be "before the summer recess."

This was on Wednesday.

Then on Thursday we get another response from Ms Hughes to a question from "Mr Wray" who asked a question about what information such a card will carry, whether it'll be compulsory, and how it might affect civil liberties.

Hansard records her saying that they'd had over 4,000 individual responses, but it does not then break out who was pro- or anti- the idea.

The original BBC article (which has since been revised) said that the question had been from MP Anne McIntosh, so I'm still not reading the correct answer, which I find confusing.

Well so much for Hansard's claim that they update the previous day's contents at 8.00am the following day.

It's nearly quarter to three in the afternoon, and I still can't see any of yesterday's reports!

The governement's admitted that the public response to the ID card scheme was largely anti their introduction.

They've finally decided that the 5,000 emails sent via the Stand website should be counted individually.

But according to the BBC article they're still being reluctant in saying what's going to happen next.

Watch this space.

This seems to be the phrase of the moment. The Independent today gives over its front page to a story detailing the alleged deception; that Tony Blair did deliberately mislead the public over the likelihood that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday Robin Cook and Clare Short spoke out about how the country was exposed to "half truths, exaggerations, [and] reassurences" that weren't the case.

But of course they wouldn't have been privy to the most secret stuff would they? So says Blunkett.

As I type Blair is facing both easy and hostile questionning. Of course IDS seems more interested in the results of the Daily Mail's "referendum" than actual facts.

I really don't read Carl Hiaasen enough!

Another great report this morning on the Today programme, detailing some of the serious doubts being aired over Iraq's having Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The security services are still leaking that they were unhappy with the publicity being given to the so called mobile biological laboratories, and there seem to have been a number of other things that these might have been. It also seems dubious that they'd have housed these in canvas-sided lorries rather than hard-shelled.

It just seems that now we've got rid of Saddam, it doesn't matter too much whether or not there was a good reason for it.

Last Thursday, the Italian newspaper's editor resigned "for personal reasons" in what was seen as a political decision from Berlusconi. Today, the paper doesn't appear on the streets of Italy, but does seem to appear on the web.

The ID Card fiasco continues with the Government claiming that all the responses sent via Stand were considered to be one response.

See here and here.

Here is my own response to my MP.

Dear Ms Joan Ryan,

Adam Bowie

So Geoff and I went to see Tony Benn speak this evening at an event supporting the publication of a http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/082646596X of his.

The talk - well more a discussion - was at the Conway Hall in Holborn, a real old-school political debating centre.

The turn out was reasonable and a very sprightly Benn spoke for about half an hour about a number of issues including both Europe and war in Iraq. Then he opened it up to a wider discussion. This part could have gone better, but he's undoubtedly a fascinating man, and you couldn't really argue with anything that he said.

So not only do we now have Rumsfeld saying that there may not have been any weapons of mass destruction at the start of the war but, unsurprisingly, it turns out that the Iraq document that Blair presented to the Commons, was ever so slightly spun, and the security services are still rather upset that their information has been ever so slightly stretched.

In other words, all the reasons for having this war are tumbling down. OK - we removed a hideous dictator, but there are plenty more of them around.

Would someone please remind me why we went into this war in the first place?

Well I used a tablespoon and a half of it today in my (very successful) first attempt at breadmaking, but I need to ensure that I don't let sugar exceed 10% of my diet according to a new report published jointly by the WHO and the FAO.

This report has incensed the US sugar industry and a report earlier this week in The Guardian suggested that "Big Sugar" (the world's new badboys it seems) were threatening to scupper the WHO by persuading America (lots of electoral money in sugar - particularly in places like Florida) to withdraw its annual $406m funding.

Of course this comes at precisely the time when the WHO is working hard to minimise the effects of SARS which is currently causing the world (and the mayor of Toronto) extreme consternation.

Good to hear that censorship is alive and kicking, as Al-Jazeera are kicked out of the New York Stock Exchange.

It seems as though war will begin within the next few hours. There was something of a sandstorm earlier, but as well as causing problems, it might also be the cover they want.

Not even the prospect of a cheap PDA from Amazon can lighten the mood.

How quickly will the Americans clamp down on satellite communications that they don't want monitored.

Well tomorrow's Daily Mirror has Clare Short on the cover alongside the headline "Revolting". I really don't see that she's done herself any good today.

Meanwhile Blair's won all the votes he was after although it was never likely he'd lose them - particularly with the support of the oppposition.

She's been defending herself about her u-turn, in an interview with Andrew Marr.

Personally I don't think her argument stacks up. I can't say that I particularly liked Robin Cook before all this, while Clare Short seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve. Yet now the tables are reversed, and it's Cook who comes out of this well.

I must admit that first thing this morning (or was it last thing last night?), I set the video to record a large amount of today's Parliament Channel output.

As I type, Charles Kennedy is speaking in the Commons, with the debate having been under way for about 90 minutes. As I said before, last night's viewing was the best drama I've seen for a long time. I say drama, but it's not exactly disposable entertainment like Eastenders.

It's a while since I listened/watched Pariliament for an extended period of time, and BBC R4 LW are carrying the feed as well as the Parliament channel. One forgets what a rambunctious chamber it is, with interruptions, people offending the speaker and then being asked to withdraw it, and general heckling and chatter. You have to really shout sometimes to make yourself heard - at the moment, the Conservatives are really shouting to make themselves heard. And lots of superfluous "points of order".

More later.

She's decided to stay in the government. Surely she's totally lost all her credibility.

Does she think that she can help from within? You can't very publicly threaten to resign and then not do it. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath has quit today, but she stays on.

This piece from BBC News Online speculates as to why she's performed such an enormous U-turn. We've got to remember that in the first place, she threatened her resignation very publicly by phoning the BBC's Westminster Hour programme. The suggestions range from wanting to be able to help in the aftermath of war, being persuaded by Gordon Brown to remain an ally in the cabinet, or just plain naked ambition (not something to ever dismiss lightly when talking about politicians).

And now I see the latest resignation is John Denham, Home Office Minister.

Well the speech was published by Hansard today. Here's the text:

17 Mar 2003 9.44 pm

From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as Leader of the House, on the right of this place to vote on whether Britain should go to war. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that this House no longer occupies a central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for this House to stop the commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support. I intend to join those tomorrow night who will vote against military action now. It is for that reason, and for that reason alone, and with a heavy heart, that I resign from the Government. [Applause.]

I spent this evening mainly watching TV news and current affairs coverage. By far the best part of this was Robin Cook's resignation speech in the commons just before 10.00pm.

It was political dynamite, that received a remarkable standing ovation from some members of the House at the end.

I'm going to find a link to the full statement, just to try and illustrate the power of the speech.

Well Robin Cook has indeed resigned - I look forward to hearing his statement later on this evening.

Will Clare Short follow soon?

The situation gets worse. They've called for the evacuation of all the weapons inspectors, and everyone seems to think that the war will start at 2am (or thereabouts) on Wednesday morning.

Needless to say, there hasn't been a second UN resolution, and there's an emergency cabinet meeting later on today. Will Clare Short and Robin Cook resign at it?

Blair is back from his whistle stop trip to The Azores to meet with Bush and our friends from the Iberian peninsular.

Meanwhile, on the basis that the French, Russians and others would vetoe a second resolution, we're not going to get one.

So where does that leave Blair and his promises of not going in without one?

As I type, I hear that Robin Cook may have walked out of the emergency Cabinet meeting - sparking immediate speculation that he's resigned.

Two great banners seen yesterday in LA:

Wrap This Administration in Duct Tape and Plastic

Somewhere in Texas, a village has lost its idiot

This is fantastic!

Here they are. Click on them for larger versions:

So it was quite a dilemma for me! Arsenal meeting Man Utd at Old Trafford in the FA Cup while in London the big march was taking place today.

I decided to watch the match at work. I didn't reach Oxford Circus until about 11.30, and it was becoming obvious that there were quite a lot of people milling around central London. But you just couldn't tell how many.

The match kicked off at 12.15 and I watched it in the company boardroom. We dominated them - particularly so in the first half, and won 2-0.

Then I ventured out. The march was supposed to start at 12.30 from two different places - Embankment and Gower Street. The merge point was Piccadilly Circus, close to work, so it was there that I went. There were thousands, and I'll have some photos to follow when I've uploaded them.

I walked along Piccadilly, amongst the thousands. There banners everywhere and I wide range of people, including many Asians and Muslims.

The crowd was very happy, and it was remarkable seeing so many in one place. After I while I took a couple of back roads, to leave the march and reach Hyde Park more quickly. There speakers were addressing the masses including Harold Pinter, Bianca Jagger, Ken Livingstone and Jesse Jackson. Finally Ms Dynamite sang a song, and the crowds began to disperse.

I inadvertantly wandered back via the US Embassy, which police had surrounded - and many more in vans which seemed to have riot gear loaded in the back (I guess this is pretty much to be expected). There was the inevitable burning of the Stars and Stripes but most of the crowd were good natured, and frankly cold. The burning of a flag was not going to warm up anyone.

What about numbers? I have absolutely no idea. Half a million were expected, but I couldn't tell you if more or less actually came out. On stage in Hyde Park, and electronic scoreboard of sorts had 1.5 million when I arrived, and this was later revised to 2 million. The BBC are reporting the police as saying that the crowd was "well beyond" the 500,000 expected. I have no doubt about that, but 2 million is an awful lot of people. I always think that it's best to be a bit conservative about numbers.

But then I get this Snowmail from Jon Snow of Channel 4 News:

London sees largest demo in British political history:

The sense too that Blair may have to accept that to go to war without wholehearted UN endorsement could now cost him his leadership and damage the party's hold on power.

The largest demonstration in British political history? Remarkable. Blair made a speech earlier this morning, and it seems he really does believe he's doing the right thing. He's wrong, but it's difficult to tell how much he's really risking. I still don't see IDS getting elected even if Blair takes us into war.

So was it worth going? Well, yes, it most certainly was. Will Blair listen? Probably not - he can't now. But will cabinet colleagues resign as a result?

Fortunately it's not just going to be one other member of the Security Council that blocks another resolution against Iraq. Aside from Spain (and Kuwait), most of the world, and certainly the people, are against another war.

Pictures and videos to follow...

Things are getting serious now.

France, Germany and Russia are dead against the war, and Nato is teetering with France, Germany and Belgium blocking the use of bases in Turkey for attacking Iraq.

Meantime, papers like The Evening Standard, The Sun and the Daily Mail accuse France of betrayal since the US helped free France twice in the last century. Surely the worst and cheapest argument that can be made. We are talking about an unprovoked attack on another country after all; a country which has not attacked either the US or Britain.

The Stop the War March on Saturday now looks like being one of the biggest marches seen in years. I'm just trying to work out how I can go on the march and see the big Man Utd v Arsenal match which kicks off at 12.15. The rally in Hyde Park ends at 5.30, so we should be able to make that.

And should I be cynical about the terrorist threat that is currently causing major disruption on transport in London (several major stations closed for a while this evening) and airports - particularly Heathrow which has tanks around it! Maybe there really was going to some kind of attack, but can such a response really be necessary? I wouldn't wish an attack on anyone, but I feel there's more to it than that.

Some embarrassment for the government in the last 24 hours.

On Monday, the government published another dossier detailing attempts that the Iraqis are said to have made to hide their weapons of mass destruction. Well last night it turns out that this document was something of a cut and paste job based on a graduate student paper published in a journal last September, as well as other sources.

The odd change has been made to make the text a bit more sinister, although no-one denies that the overall content is probably correct.

There are two problems here. Firstly, they should have credited their sources, and secondly, shouldn't the intelligence services have better information than academic publications? I'm sure that as far as background information goes, such sources are unrivalled, but this dossier was published as an up to the minute snapshot of what's happening in Iraq now. Not last summer, or 12 years ago (as some of the content refers to).

Tony Blair was appeared on a Newsnight special lastnight in front of a group of Geordies (his constituents) who were as yet not convinced by his taking us into combat. Jeremy Paxman gave him a really hard time to begin with, and I have to say that I still wasn't convinced at the end. Surely North Korea is far more threat to the world at the moment than Saddam is?

Some embarrassment for the government in the last 24 hours.

On Monday, the government published another dossier detailing attempts that the Iraqis are said to have made to hide their weapons of mass destruction. Well last night it turns out that this document was something of a cut and paste job based on a graduate student paper published in a journal last September, as well as other sources.

The odd change has been made to make the text a bit more sinister, although no-one denies that the overall content is probably correct.

There are two problems here. Firstly, they should have credited their sources, and secondly, shouldn't the intelligence services have better information than academic publications? I'm sure that as far as background information goes, such sources are unrivalled, but this dossier was published as an up to the minute snapshot of what's happening in Iraq now. Not last summer, or 12 years ago (as some of the content refers to).

Tony Blair was appeared on a Newsnight special lastnight in front of a group of Geordies (his constituents) who were as yet not convinced by his taking us into combat. Jeremy Paxman gave him a really hard time to begin with, and I have to say that I still wasn't convinced at the end. Surely North Korea is far more threat to the world at the moment than Saddam is?

Well Colin Powell has been spending time at the UN presenting the US case for why Iraq should be invaded this very second. I want to see some thorough analysis of this presentation - and presentation it was with lots of graphics and audio clips. There were even some mock-ups of what a mobile chemical plant in a truck might look like.

Now this is something I simply don't understand. Tony Blair is reported today to still be insisting that the Iraqi regime is somehow (and this is undefined) linked to Al-Qaeda.

Now maybe I'm missing something enormously obvious here, but despite Saddam eveninig saying himself in yesterday's interview, that he's not linked with them (and if he was he'd happily admit to it), the two doctrines are fundamentally opposed. Yes Saddam's Iraq is Muslim, but he's at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Al-Qaeda. Everything he stands for is against Al-Qaeda's purpose.

Sometimes there can be strange bedfellows, but even a leaked intelligence report shows to link between the two.

The full report is well worth reading. It seems that British Intelligence is deliberately letting information slip out into the public realm so that it can be seen to be behaving in a non-political manner.

These two stories explain my real problem with American society.

Obviously the death penalty is really working in Texas, with 295 executions since 1976, and six already this year to date (excluding this one), yet it still ranks as the 14th most dangerous State in the US.

Interesting piece by Michael Cockerill in advance of a programme to be shown on Saturday looking at the ways the media treats politicians, and in turn the way politicians answer their questions.

Is it any wonder that people are becoming less and less involved in political debate?

Interesting leader in The Guardian today, pointing out that North Korea may rapidly attain more importance than the Iraqi situation, despite that not being the order the Dubya wants to take them in.

I guess the US isn't exactly keen to get into Korea again.

I rushed home this evening to catch the interview. No not yesterday's fascinating Jacko documentary with Martin Bashir, but today's showing of an interview that Tony Benn conducted with Saddam Hussein at the weekend.

I can't pretend it was the most involving interview ever, with sometimes easy questions being lobbed at Saddam, and his ponderous answers not being the sort of thing you expect Jeremy Paxman puts up with.

Nonethless, an extraordinary interview with one of the most important players in the current catastrophe.

There were a couple of fascinating articles in today's Guardian. Firstly, the cover story of G2 looked at the amount of coverage given to the Space Shuttle explosion in comparison with other stories about peoples' deaths.

All the US networks carried lots of live stories about the story on Saturday, pre-empting usual programming. I must admit to ignorance about how UK TV handled it as I was out on Saturday. Yet seven children died on a skiing trip in Canada when they were caught in an avalanche. Not as spectacular, but as important. The space programme's a major part of American life I know, but is the coverage OTT?

The other story also looked at US coverage of the shuttle accident, with Matthew Engle exploring the fact that until the explosion most people didn't even know the shuttle was in space.

Is it really true that Dubya has never visited Houston, even when he was Governor of Texas?

Finally the Stop the War March is allowed to use Hyde Park as a meeting point.

Now this really isn't clever. The planned march in London in February 15, against war in Iraq, has been told that it can't end in Hyde Park where a rally was planned.

Upwards of 500,000 are expected, and so obviously it will need to end somewhere. The reason given is that the park is not suitable at this time of year given the possibility of inclement weather.

Hmm. This isn't the sort of protest that can wait until the Spring, and parks are the only really plausible end locations. We'll have to see.

Thank goodness that at political times like these we have journalists such as Robert Fisk to provide a counter-argument. Today in The Independent he has an article pouring scorn on the feeble parallels that are being made between Saddam Hussein and Hitler. As if this war is nothing to do with oil? Yeah, right.

Yesterday, Fisk wrote an article on the Independent on Sunday, summing up the literature of 9/11 that put the pro-war arguments the most. Particular distain was heaped upon The Threatening Storm.

Despite The Observer backing war in Iraq in a leader last week, Terry Jones writes quite succinctly on what's wrong with Bush's point of view this week.

I got a bog-standard reply from my MP this morning regarding the Stand campaign against ID cards.

Still at least it got registered, so power to the people. There also seems to be some indication that there might be a little backing down on the part of the Home Office, with Lord Falconer not quite as gung-ho as he was.

Tony Blair has been facing the Commons Liaison Committee this morning, and is quoted as saying that it was "inevitable" that Al-Qaeda would attack Britain at some point.

I don't doubt that to be honest. But we can help ourselves by not blithely following Bush into a pointless war that's certain to create more problems than it solves, notwithstanding the inevitable "collateral damage" that'll be done (i.e. innocent women and children being slaughtered).

Too often Iraq and Al-Qaeda are quoted in the same arena. They're seperate issues.

It's the poor asylum seekers that I feel really sorry for at the moment. The recent raids in Manchester (that saw the murder of a policeman) and Wood Green, talked a lot about the fact that they were Algerian asylum seekers. How embattled must Algerian nationals living in Britain feel at the moment?

Resistance to the impending war on Iraq seems to be growing at about the same rate as the British Army is arriving in the Middle East.

Yesterday more troop movements were announced, with one quarter of the British Army now in the process of being sent into the area. This makes it the biggest buildup of land forces since Suez in 1956.

But then today, The Guardian published their latest poll which shows the lowest suppport yet for a war. 47% of the population are outright opposed to war, and 81% of the population believe that there cannot be a war without a fresh United Nations mandate.

Meanwhile The Mirror published this front page:



The idea is that you fill out the form on the front page and send it back to them.

The bottom line is that we still haven't had any convincing evidence to suggest that Saddam is busily building new weapons of mass destruction.

Good to see that the weekend's protests against going to war are beginning to be recognised in the media. The NY Times had this, while I noticed it high on CNN's scope.

In Britain, it seems as though February 15 could still be quite a big deal.

Maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but Blair is sticking to his guns over taking us into war. He told the press conference today that Saddam should disarm, and seems certain the UN Arms Inspectors will find something.

Whether Hans Blix finds anything or not, I don't know, but it seems that something or other will be conjoured up. I'm not at all happy with it all.

Get over to Stand to register your interest in ID Cards. The Home Office seem to think that everyone wants them and their consultation is nearly up. Tell them what you think.

Latin still has so much to offer us. Today the poet laureate, Andrew Motion, published a new poem on the front page of The Guardian. "Causa Belli" translates as "causes, motives or pretexts of war":

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad

So let me just see if I have this straight.

If Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, the US can invade. And if he doesn't, then he's lying and we can invade. Hmm.

Unsurprisingly he says he hasn't.

Robert Fish argues in The Independent, that we're being suckered into going to war. Very persuasive arguement too - look out for the "drubbing" of UN inspectors to determine when we're likely to see the war.

Just got back from The Roundhouse in Camden where I saw Michael Moore Live. I know that I seem to be harping on about Michael Moore quite a lot at the moment, but you just can't escape from the man right now. Bowling for Columbine opened properly this weekend, his book Stupid White Men is number one in the non-fiction paperback charts, and he's doing a month long live gig.

So what's it like? Well very good. First off, the show lasts about two and a half hours, including an interval - which surprised me, since it must be quite draining. The content is presented in a similar vain to the book, with rambling sections that cover a great deal of ground. Some of these are quite loose, and reflect what he's been up to (yesterday he was at the North London derby, and delighted in the constant songs that are sung), while others are obviously run every night. The smart American v average Brit was an interesting exercise. The smart American turned out to have been in George W Bush's class at Yale. The difference was that this is a man who can name ALL the countries that border Iraq.

The most powerful, and disturbing section was when Moore strutted across the stage with a boxcutter similar to that which the terrorists of September the 11th used, as he made the point that middle-class white Americans didn't overpower the terrorists because normally other people do stuff for them. It was a strong point, not made with utter conviction, and it did cause at least one member of the audience to walk out, and others to try to shout out. The show ends on a tirade about the new Nectar card. I am amazed to learn that "loyalty" cards do not exist in the States. Really? Surely they're a marketeer's dream - they know everything about your spending patterns, in return for trivial rewards for points collected. Moore collected in cards from the audience and cut them up on stage. We did notice the woman a couple of rows in front promptly put her card back in her purse when she heard they would be cut up. £500 on BP petrol in return for a McDonald's Happy Meal does seem a little poor value.

Catch it while you can!

Well it looks like the Republicans are going to have an easy ride for the next couple of years, with a reasonably good win in last night's mid-terms. Let's just hope that the Democrats can come up with a credible candidate in time for the election in 2004. Isn't it about now that those with Presidential ambitions start to "step up to the plate"?

On BBC4 I taped Journeys with George last night and also watched an entertaining documentary entitled Last Party 2000 with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, trying to discover why there's so much political apathy today. A fair question to ask when last night, there were turnouts in the 30-40% marks. People just don't seem to care about their democratic rights for which people died. My view is that you have no right to complain if you didn't vote.

I think I'm on some kind of politics "kick" at the moment. I don't know whether it's because I watched three episodes of The West Wing at the weekend (catching up - and discovering that if I record the late night repeat on E4, I get it commercial free), just reading about IDS and the Conservatives digging themselves deeper and deeper into the mire ("unite or die"), or watching Journeys with George the other night (see previous entry).

Anyway, today is the day of the mid-terms in the States, and it looks very interesting and very tight. Early indications at the time of writing seem to make it too close to call, or according to Channel 4 news earlier, slightly in favour of the Republicans, but it seems that following the 2000 catastrophe, they're all being a little slower making their predictions. Probably as well. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that the Democrats can stop the Republicans taking control of the senate.

In the meantime, I'm really happy that today I got tickets to the London Film Festival screening of Bowling for Columbine this Sunday. With any luck Michael Moore should be there to introduce it.