Dreams on the Bitface

I can’t decide on this David Davis thing Is it just a stunt? Is he genuinely concerned enough about civil liberties to take the chance (small though it is) of losing his seat? Certainly he sounds sincere when he talks about his concerns about the growth of state power; and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty counts him as a friend, it seems.

But as others have pointed out he has a bad reputation on some other rights votes.

Still, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d be better than Kelvin Mc-bloody-Kenzie.. (as backed by Rupert Murdoch, of course).

The most concerning thing, though, is the talk to the effect that the public is in favour of 42-day detention without trial. This member of the public most certainly is not, and I’m sure I’m by no means alone. And honestly: would people who’ve really thought it through be in favour of this kind of thing? I find it hard to believe. What happened, if it’s true, to the great British sense of fair play, of support for the underdog, even of disrespect for authority? Is this another facet of the grumbling about human rights I wrote about before?

Maybe we need to re-educate people about what is good and right. But how?

And then Ireland have voted ‘No’ to the EU treaty. I can’t help but think that this is a bad thing. The EU itself has been a net good for Europe and the world, as I’ve probably said here before. Whether these reforms will really make it better and more democratic, or not, I can’t say: I haven’t studied it.

Thing is, though, I would probably have been in favour of the EU constitution; if only because we could do with one in the UK. Admittedly, I’d want one that got rid of the monarchy and introduced an elected upper chamber in parliament, but one that further enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights would be a good start.

It would be quite difficult to amend it, mind you, since you’d need a Europe-wide referendum.

But I’m havering fancifully here: it was never meant to be that kind of constitution.

What now, then? Who knows, really. I expect they’ll either re-work it slightly and try again, or just apply various components of it without the treaty.

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

So the Tories took Crewe and Nantwich in the by-election.

I don’t understand (never have) the mentality, the mindset, the brains of ‘floating voters’. I’m not saying that no-one should ever change their mind, in politics or anything else; nor do I think that people can’t be convinced by the arguments over issues – nor, for that matter, swayed by the force of a candidate’s personality. Furthermore, I speak as one who has voted against Labour, my lifetime-favoured party, in recent years.

But floating voters – and in particular ones who’ll switch all the way between Labour and Tory – I just don’t understand them.

Of course it’s possible – even likely – that no-one actually describes themself as a floating voter. They might all say, “I decide on the issues each time,” or even, ”... by who I like…” That would be OK, y’know? I could get behind that, sort of. I mean, it doesn’t sound very committed; but it could be. On each occasion you could examine the candidates’ and/or their parties’ positions on human rights/the environment/tax cuts/hanging and flogging (or whatever your particular concerns may be). Match them against your own position and preferences, and see who suits you best.

But I’m not convinced that’s what the bulk of these ‘floaters’ do.

See, I suspect that they mostly take little to no interest in politics (which is to say, little to no interest in the world) between elections. Then when one does roll round they vote whatever way their stupid, dumbfuck tablod paper tells them to.

Though I may be doing many people a great disservice there. And at least they do get out and vote.

It’s just that sometimes the world might be a better place if they didn’t.

Jeremy Hardy obviously feels similarly to me: on The News Quiz the other night he said that floating voters who switched all the way from Labour to Tory (rather than voting, say, Green or LibDem) were like someone saying, “Well, I’ve always had my hair cut at the barbers in the High Street, but this time I’m just going to set my head on fire!”

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

You know what’s coming. It’s nearly the 1st of May, and that means elections. An all-too-infrequent chance to exercise our fundamental democratic right and duty. Always important, even when you’re quite happy with how things are. Somebody else won’t be, and you don’t want them to change things.

Of course, that’s not what gets people out to vote: a desire for change is much more likely to bring crowds to the local schools, village halls, and other little nooks and crannies of public space that experience a kind of sovereignty for a day.

Either way, there’s no better or nobler duty that you can do in a few minutes in a small cubicle with a pencil and a piece of paper.

And if you live in London, and have a vote, please, please, please get out and use it against Boris Johnson.

I don’t really care who you vote for (well, the BNP are standing, but I’m sure anyone reading this is much too decent and right-thinking to go there). Though it’s clear that only Ken has a serious chance of keeping the bumbling buffoon out.

I’m convinced, by the way, that the Tories put him up to it as a joke. The thinking probably went something like, “Nobody’s going to beat Livingstone, so let’s put comedy candidate up, and make a mockery of the whole thing.” Then somehow, thanks largely to the vile rag that is The Evening Standard, and the lack of seriousness with which some people treat politics, Boris climbed up the polls, and now looks like a serious contender for the Mayorship.

It will be a disaster for London if he gets elected, of course. We can only hope that it will backfire on the Tories: that he fails fast enough that it seriously harms them in the general election.

Putting your hopes for the country on disaster for your city is no position to be in, though. So I can only reiterate: get out and vote, and stop Boris. Give at least your second vote to Ken. He has his faults, but he’s done a pretty good job of running the city this last eight years.

Vote!

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

It is a tragedy that a member of the public, when interviewed on the radio, should say, when the phrase “human rights” comes up, “Oh, bloody hell, human rights, suffin fussin wussin mumble grumble,” in a tone of disgust.

The subject being discussed was the call to ban this “Mosquito” device, which is intended to stop kids and teenagers from hanging around shops or elsewhere by emitting an annoying noise which is too high for older ears to hear. But it could as easily have been the bugging of prisoner-lawyer conversations, or one of a dozen other triggers for what Dave Hill calls the “seething classes”.

Here’s the thing, people: human rights are a good thing.

I can’t quite believe I’m having to write that. Again: human rights, and governments upholding them, are good. An unequivocal good. There’s no question here; we’re not in any kind of moral grey area. Some things are as stark and as plain as the type and the paper on some of the entities I’m about to blame: treating people with equality before the law, with respect; acknowledging a basic set of rights to which every human being is entitled, and striving to make those rights available to everyone: these things are an unequivocal good.

Let me spell this out in words of one syllable:

That’s what our parents and grandparents fought the fucking war for!

OK, went a bit over my syllable count there.

It is just a few years since the incoming Labour government passed the Human Rights Act, incorporating into UK law the European Convention on Human Rights; how has our country got to the position, since then, that “human rights” has become a swear word?

I blame the tabloids. Specifically, I blame the right-wing, ranting, seething, whinging rags of the Daily Mail, and the Murdoch-owned scumsheets. I blame big business and the CBI; I blame the petty little-Englander mentality of a disturbingly vocal minority of the citizens of our great, multicultural nation.

What is to be done about it? How do we regain the natural state of the British psyche, where we stick up for the underdog, as well as have a respect for natural justice? Or, if not regain it (since it hasn’t really gone anywhere) at least make its voice audible again? How are we to make the complainers tone down, or better, teach them, show them, that human rights are for everybody (even the complainers), not just for the tiny minorities whose stories get wildly inflated in the tabloids; and that even those tiny minorities (where they actually exist) deserve the protection of those rights; and perhaps above all, that our society, our nation, is enriched and improved by our granting and acknowledging those rights?

Technorati Tags: human rights, seething classes, whingers, mosquito, mosquito device

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

I probably don’t need anything more than the title for this one. I mean, who the hell would ever think it was a good a idea to let McDonald’s issue qualifications “equivalent to A-levels”? I’ve nothing against on-the-job training, of course: that’s a good thing. And businesses sponsoring people to study for recognised qualifications, and so on: all good.

But letting businesses issue qualifications that have that equivalence? I thought we were supposed to be worried about the devaluing of A-levels; it seems unlikely that allowing commercial interests to issue them (or their “equivalents”) will do anything other than further lower their value.

And I feel bound to say: would you like fries with your certificate, sir or madam?

Technorati Tags: McDonald’s, McJobs, qualifications, stupidity

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

Creation science is a purely destructive enterprise, like comment trolling or wiki vandalism. Its entire impact results from scrawling across the work of real scientists questions and cavils phrased in a manner just scientific-sounding enough to trouble anyone who knows nothing in detail about the field being traduced.

From the excellent Mr MacLeod. Let’s start the year the way we mean to go on.

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

I see that Tony Blair has become a catholic. No surprise there. But as an ex-catholic atheist myself, I’m feeling down with Nick Clegg.

In other catholic-related news, there’s a fine analysis of ‘Fairytale of New York’ on the BBC website, after the Radio 1 farrago. And I hadn’t realised that Shane McGowan’s birthday is Christmas Day. So as well as Newtonmas, we can also celebrate McGowanmas on Tuesday.

Rationalism and excess: what a fine seasonal combination.

Technorati Tags: Tony Blair, Shane McGowan, catholicism, Pogues, christmas, newtonmas

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

The people who are queuing outside branches of Northern Rock are fooling themselves, and if anything are likely to trigger the problem they fear.

I must admit that, if you had asked me a few days ago, I would probably have said that I thought that the Bank of England already backed the banks to the extent of protecting people’s deposits. Naive of me, perhaps; but after the Bank extended its line of credit to Northern Rock, and particularly since last night’s guarantee by the Chancellor, that their money will be covered by the government, it’s clear to an uninvolved bystander that they’d be better off staying at home and waiting. If the government can’t cover anything that might happen to NR, then we’ve got a much more serious problem than one wobbly bank on our hands.

Like the collapse of the pound.

And it would take the euro down with it; and probably the US dollar, and hence the world economy.

I’m not an economist, and you can call me complacent; but that’s not going to happen.

So leave the queues, people, and go on home (if you’ve got that much in savings, you obviously don’t have to go to work). And next time, remember that proverb about eggs and baskets.

Technorati Tags: money, banks, economy, northern rock, liquidity

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This entry was automatically crossposted from my blog, A Labourer at the Bitface. You can comment here on LJ, but it might be nice if you commented over there.

Start saying goodbye, then, to civil liberties in this country. Oh, maybe not now, and maybe not even that soon; but when the identity cards bill is passed, and the database has been built ¹ then the infrastructure will be in place for the world's largest ever experiment in social control.

We already have near-ubiquitous surveillance, with constantly-improving automatic recognition: of faces and of vehicle number plates. Add to that the national identity database with its biometrics, and the growing collection of DNA data, and I foresee the potential for a future that even Orwell in his worst nightmare wouldn't have believed possible.

Pessimistic? Yes, certainly. It may be that the public will rebel against it when they realise how much it will cost, for example. I gather that that is what happened in Australia. But even if they do, once the legislation is in place, how can it be stopped?  It seems likely that the best we can hope for there is a change of government. And realistically, that means the Tories.

After all this time there's no way on this Earth that I'm going to put my faith in that lot. No matter that they might have voted against the government on the bill, if they get into power and the act is in force, there isn't a chance — not a chance in all the worlds of the putative multiverse — that they'll repeal the legislation.

In fact, that is the true nightmare scenario: it's possible that Blair and Brown are not actually malicious about this, just stupid and corrosively misguided. Imagine, though, what it would have been like if Thatcher's government had had ubiquitous, mandatory ID and surveillance. Imagine (as I've suggested before) if that had been the situation during the miners' strike. Or when MI5 were undermining the Callaghan government, for that matter, although that's a slightly different nightmare.

And it just goes on and on: the Metropolitan Police are now going to drug-test their own officers. Now, you can safely argue that police officers shouldn't be under the influence while on duty: but it is a clear violation of their personal liberty, and it just adds to the way in which our national culture is becoming more and more authoritarian. Even totalitarian.

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1. I realise that that requires success in the biggest-ever government IT project, but bear with me.


Technorati Tags: politics, id cards

How quickly do events overrun the tardy blogger.  A few weks ago, when Charles Kennedy went public about his drinking, I started writing a piece about him, and his revelations' potential effect on the Liberal Democrats.  I didn't post it that day, and by the following evening things had changed so dramatically that what I said was almost useless as a post.

Later I started a replacement piece, but I never got round to completing and posting that, either.  Today's by-election victory is slightly ironic, then, considering that what I was originally saying was  mainly that he really had to resign because he had become an electoral liability to his party.   Add to that the Lib Dem leadership election and its Shock! Horror! personal revelations, and many would have expected them to do badly at the polls the next time they had a chance.

And then we get Dunfermline.  Which suggests to me that the personal affairs of the actual and potential party leadership are minor items at best in the eyes of the voters.  And also that people (in Scotland, at least) have had enough of Blair's repulsive Tory-lite policies, and are (not surprisingly) unimpressed by, and suspicious of, Cameron's cuddly stealth-Tory aproach.

I hoped, in my original piece, that the Lib Dems would be able to recover from their problems, because they're an important force in British politics.  Not least because they're still the only ones taking a principled stand against ID cards, on which everyone but No2ID seems to have gone silent recently.  Now I'd have to add the hope that the new guy, Willie Rennie, can get himself established in the Commons in time to vote against the next reading of the Bill.

I never thought that, in my life, I would be toasting a Labour by-election defeat, while at the same time bemoaning their privatisation and (lack of) civil-liberties policies; but we live in interesting times.  Times in which Britain desperately needs a third force in politics; and it remains the case — perhaps more so than ever, today — that the Liberal Democrats can be that force.

But I wish they weren't needed: I want the Labour party back.

Went to see Jon Stewart of The Daily Show on Sunday. He was doing one night in London, with, as it turned out, the executive producer and the head writer of the show.

It was good, though it could cynically be seen as an extended advert for their book, America: The Book. The largest part of the 75-minute show consisted of readings of extracts from the book. Those were enough to make me want to buy it, but the the funniest lines were probably in Stewart's introductory piece. The final section, consisting of questions from the audience, showed that both he and his co-stars are generally witty and able to think on their feet.

If volume of applause is a measure, though, the highlight of the night for much of the audience was a brief guest appearance. "For this next section we're going to ask for help from a member of the audience. We picked him before we started, so don't get up." Then a stocky, black-clad figure walked on. From my position high on the balcony, and with my notedly-poor facial-recognition skills, I couldn't tell who it was (though Frances, sitting next to me, could). I'd have recognised his voice, though. Ricky Gervais is officially more popular in London than Jon Stewart (which is not a surprise).

Gervais read the "funny names" from the book. This is a section on how US newscasters, weather forecasters and so on, can't have anything like an ordinary name. The authors identified formulas for the name-construction for the various roles. "A monosyllabic kitchen-related verb, followed by two unconnected words. Eg 'Chop Muddybottom.'"

As further evidence, were it needed, of my poor celeb-recognition, apparently I literally rubbed shoulders with Alan Rickman on the way out; then Frances said, "There's Salman Rushdie over there." "Where?" "There: standing in the middle of the road, with all the people round him."

I did even eventually see him, and recognised him. And while I accept that I'm bad at recognising faces — and celebrities in particular — I would contend that I just hadn't noticed him in the crowd at first, and recognised him perfectly well once I knew he was there..

Oh, and the title of this post? "We don't torture. We like to call it, uh, 'freedom tickling'"

You may not have noticed yet that Blunkett has resigned. Good riddance, obviously: New Labour is bad enough without introducing Tory sleaze into the mix.

Director of a DNA-testing company: with his history?

I'm afraid I did what the Commisioner told us not to do: I went in to Central London.

See, I live in Hackney, in the East, but work in Wimbledon, in the South-West.  So I was going to have to go into the centre sometime, to get home.  I just left work early.

The trains were running into Waterloo, pretty much as normal (but largely empty).  Of course, once there, there was no way to get across town: the Tube was closed, and no buses were running in Zone 1.  I took to Shanks' Pony.

Zone 1 is bigger than you think.  I guess I knew it extended as far as Angel, but it goes all the way up Essex Road.  I ended up getting a bus halfway along the Ball's Pond Road.  It took me about two and a half hours to get home.

Which isn't bad, all things considered.

Fortunately, the kids were going home from school with a friend's mum, so they were fine.  I left early mainly so as not to leave them with her too late.  And of course, to avoid the probable madness of the rush hour.

I am, of course, intensely angry at the scumpigs who would do such a thing.  But on a positive note, a lot of people seemed to be doing the same thing as me, and it was strangely pleasing to see so many people walking through London.  We should do more of it.  And for much better reasons, of course.

I feel I should have more to say, but am blank.

In other good news, over on BoingBoing, Cory is telling us that Euro software patents are dead:

The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive.

The bill was reportedly rejected because, politicians said, it pleased no-one in its current form.

Responding to the rejection the European Commission said it would not draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal.

This is excellent news, though as Cory goes on to say,

Software patents have been staked through the heart before, but they keep rising from the grave. There's too much monopoly rent waiting to be extracted by anti-competitive companies for them to simply give up and go home. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

A year or so ago the number one or two hit on Google for "software patents" was an article by an old friend of mine, John Gray, who is a Patent Attorney, in favour of them.  With well-reasoned arguments, as I recall.  Sadly the article appears to have gone now, though links to it remain.  Such is one of the weaknesses of the web, unfortunately, when you can't trust (some) publishers to keep their URLs pointing at something.

Update: asajeffrey found a mailing list post that, if not John's article that I was thinking of, certainly discusses the same ideas.  Thanks, Alan.  Note that I am not the "Martin" referred to in that post.

So, London gets it.  I was against it, but now I feel strangely pleased.

I think I was for it at first; I really enjoyed watching the Athens Olympics last summer, the kids enjoyed it, and the idea of having one just down the road sounded great.  But then I looked at the plans, and turned against it.  The main reason for my opposition was the effects that I think it will have on the Lower Lea (or Lee) Valley.  As far as I can tell, our beloved wilderness will be turned into bland parkland, with the associated loss of wildlife habitat.

However, it may not be as bad as all that, and there's no doubt that the potential regeneration here in East London — in particular the transport improvements — could be great.

My other concern is, of course, the cost, and how we taxpayers may be paying for it for decades.

But what the hell: my kids will be 15 and 11 in 2012, so it  should be fantastic for them.