Recently in Politics Category
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.
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.
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