Regulating Water Use

"Near universal" water metering should be introduced in England and Wales to help protect supplies, the Environment Agency has recommended.The agency also says there should be rewards for water companies that reduce the amount of water they provide. Its water strategy sets out measures it thinks should be implemented to protect resources up to 2050.The report says water metering should be accompanied by suitable tariffs to protect vulnerable groups and make reducing water use more attractive.

To summarise then .. .. .. force everyone to have a meter, force them to use less water then charge those who can afford it more money for the same product as those who can't.

This idea was floated on the weekend of the MPs expenses claims revelations (porn anyone?) so slipped under most peoples radar. Voluntary water metering, and the imposition of metering when a building changes occupier have lifted the uptake of metering to a mere 10% of the possible installations. Is that because people believe they know what will happen once they have a meter?

Speaks for itself

H/T to Adur Brewery

Separated at Birth?

When Derek Draper appeared on the C4 news I couldn't believe my eyes. MP? Since when? So I closed my eyes and all I could picture when he spewed his bile was Joe Pasquale.

Full video Here

OFQUAL agrees with The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG

As I've mentioned before I found some GCSE Science papers from 2008 over on The Libertarian Alliance:BLOG and my 10 year old daughter took and passed the lower tier test of the biology GCSE despite the fact that she hasn't even started secondary education yet. The news today that Kim Tattershall head of OFQUAL (the independent regulator of exam boards), in a letter [pdf] to the Schools Minister, argues that the changes made in 2005/2006 to the GCSE science exams have

"raised significant causes for concern"
"led to a fall in the quality of science assessments"
"(given) students too many optional ways to obtain the qualifications"
"(put)too much emphasis on multiple choice questions"

She goes on to single out the physics GCSE describing her findings as worrying and noting an overall decline in the standards of performance. Politicians have taken predictable stances over this evaluation. Schools Minister Jim Knight has tried to sidestep the issue by claiming it is a science issue and not a problem with GCSEs; the Shadow Schools Minister accuses the Government of devaluing science exams. Headteacher's representatives have also adopted predictable positions over the results of the evaluation with a distinct stance being taken by both private and state education bodies.

What do I think? I welcome the report and all of the criticisms it raises. For many years I've annoyed, angered and upset my youngest employees when I suggest that the GCSE exam is not as hard as the GCE it replaced or, if I'm honest, the GCE that my parents sat. Once I've explained that this is not their fault, but the fault of the system that educated them they feel less aggrieved. It usually takes around 12 months for them to come to accept that maybe I've got a valid point.

As has been oft referred to by many, including myself, as the root causes of the problem are the "education, education, education, speech by Blair coupled with the Labour obsession of proving, via statistics, that they are doing a good job running the country. Each year an every higher number of students must attain pass marks in GSCE exams to justify the huge sums of money thrown at the education system. Should that number decline then that would be deemed politically to be failure, which would never do. The smoke and mirrors introduction of the A* grade, first to GCSE and now to A level, is not because the education system is working too well but because it is failing our children and not teaching them well enough.

We need change and we need it 10 years ago.

Exams must be made tougher. Grades must be harder to achieve. Only the brightest students should be encouraged to continue in academic education but the less intelligent should have access to vocational studies if they desire it. Above all we must be honest with students about their level of academic ability and not give them a false impression about their potential.

Dad at 13? Update

Today's front page of The Mirror invites you to read the half page article on page 11 dedicated to the results of a DNA test carried out to determine if Alfie Patten is actually a father at 13. The same story has been removed from their website. I'm assuming that's because it breaches a court ruling about the matter?

Battle of the Bloggers

The Daily Politics site is building up the 'Battle of the Bloggers' with a countdown timer and the promise of fireworks. Personally I think that the discussion will be quite tame.


Prove me wrong Guido?

Update: Doesn't Derek whine? And doesn't he come across as rude?

Oh, and before I forget, the "line by line" dismissal promised on the show by Draper of Dan Hannan's destruction of Gorgon Brown is here apparently. Except it isn't anything of the sort.

Spying on you for your own good

Reuters is carrying an interview with David Omand, the cabinet's Security and Intelligence Coordinator in 2002-05, in which he forwards the view that prying into everyone's secrets is an acceptable way to forward counter-terrorism even though similar powers granted by RIPA, introduced for a similar reason, have been used by local councils at least 10,000 times in the last 5 years to detect anti-social behaviour.

"I think the British public would be on my side given the still significant threat from terrorism," said Omand, a former director of the Government Communications Headquarters, an intelligence agency that intercepts electronic communications.

As a member of the British public can I say unequivocally that as far as I'm concerned you can fuck right off and stop peddling the idea of a terrorist nightmare so that you can spy on all of us whenever you want to?

Omand says the state needs this power because Britain is more vulnerable to disruption as it becomes more networked and IT-dependent. Also, he says, sacrificing some privacy is preferable to other ways of boosting security such as altering the criminal law to make it easier to convict.

A translation : We must remove your freedoms to protect them.

The same old sequence of events. A few days ago the Home Secretary tells us that terrorists are capable of using ever worsening methods of attack then we have this idea floated that we need to hand over our privacy and freedom so that we can be protected from the threat we've been told about. The only thing missing is the reference to paedophiles, because everyone hates them, right?


Let me tell you a tale from my own experience. Back in the days when the pound was worth something against the Euro (you remember those days?) I used to take a day out every 6 months or so and head over the channel to take advantage of the lower tax rates in France to buy beer and fags. I remember the day clearly that I got followed on one of my trips. Two odd men got onto the bus from the terminal to the ferry at the very last moment, kept on bumping into them in during the crossing, saw them in Calais on a number of occasions, then they got on the same ferry back as me. I sat and listened to their conversation and it didn't seem comfortable, not like two blokes on a day trip, more like two employees on a business trip. When we left the ferry they had a few hundred B&H but nothing else. I thought it was odd at the time and then a few months later I found out that the boyfriend of one of my staff had been arrested for people smuggling. He'd frequently visited her work to meet her, frequently phoned her at (and I suspect she'd phoned him from) work. I'd spoken to him on many occasions and he seemed like a nice enough, if slightly deluded, chap. I had no idea of his nefarious activities. Have his actions, and the investigation into them, classed me as a potential criminal?

Even now, whenever I return from traveling to the continent, I am always stopped by HMRC on my return and subjected to a barrage of questions about where I've been, who I met, who I travelled with. Every single time. I have no criminal record, no parking tickets or speeding fines, I've never been arrested and yet I'm interrogated on every occasion I travel to mainland Europe because, I strongly suspect, of the actions of the ex-boyfriend of an ex-employee. And now the Government wishes to datamine for more connections between people and potential criminals or terrorists.

By reading this blog post you have just provided them a tenuous connection between a convicted people smuggler and yourself. Vote Labour

Terrorist Threat?

I've just been peeking at the 'Design a Terrorist Outrage' post by TheLandedUnderclass and rather than clogging up his comment thread with potential breaches of the Terrorism Act 2000, risking breach of section 58 on his blog, I'll take the risk here instead. Not that I am, have been, or am considering becoming a terrorist you understand but the concept of terrorist attacks is constantly being forced upon us and it's hard not to contemplate the ideas during the quiet moments before sleep finally arrives. Indeed it was only yesterday that the Home Secretary was warning that the possibility of terrorists using a 'dirty bomb' was "severe", "highly likely" and "could happen without warning". So purely as a though exercise .. .. .. .. ..

The common denominator of all terror attacks, both successful and unsuccessful, has been that they occur in densely populated areas with hundreds of witnesses, either directly or indirectly. There is always relatively good access for news crews to show harrowing pictures of victims being escorted away from the scene of the attack or the wreckage of the vehicles involved. Grainy CCTV images are becoming the norm (does that say more about the surveillance society that we live in?). People who live outside of the cities where the attacks occur decide for a while to avoid them until they perceive that the threat has receded and they then carry on as before. The odds of being caught up in the mayhem are slim, aren't they, if you live in a smaller town or village?

Loss of life in major cities isn't really terrorising the majority of residents of these islands. The question for you, dear reader, is what would? I'm surprised that I've never had a knock on the door in the middle of the night from a member of HM Police as I've often discussed the idea of where terrorists get it wrong. At work, in the pub, on the streets. I've been putting forward my particular point of view for over 10 years whenever the discussion has arisen, usually prompted by a news piece, and thankfully so far my vision of terror has not become reality. Tempting fate once again then I'll proceed.

If terrorists really wanted to be effective they would, in my opinion, hit targets of no value whatsoever. Imagine the uncertainty we'd all face if bombs started exploding in quiet rural villages in the middle of the night. Imagine the fear you'd feel if there was little or no way to rationalise the reasons for the attack. Totally random, totally unpredictable, thoroughly scary. The number of casualties would be comparatively low but the effect would be far more devastating to the psyché of the nation.

Wii Firmware Update 4.0

Finally, after Miyamoto and Reggie hinted at a storage solution around E3 time last year, the expected firmware update has arrived that allows Wii Channels to be stored on an SD card. It integrates well into the existing Wii Menu and once accessed follows a similar format to the data maintenance screens. The new features allow access to channels stored on the SD card, letting you play them without having to copy them first to your Wii memory. Like this



Need help with your storage solutions? Ask on the Gameov3r Forum

As NOT seen on the BBC

PETA supports rewriting history

Some students at a Massachusetts High School are outraged at some of the content of Activision's game Call of Duty, World at War. During that game, a recreation of the struggles in World War II, you are required to shoot dogs to prevent them from attacking you. . Breanna Lucci serves as president of the Animal Rights Club at the Academy of Notre Dame (NDA) in Tyngsborough, says

"Killing dogs as a form of entertainment … over and over again. That's one of the objects of the game,"
"Parents need to know what they are buying their kids. Killing animals should not be a form of entertainment."
"My brother is a sweetheart. He won't be killing dogs after playing. But some people might."

PETA have jumped on this bandwagon saying

To help the folks at Activision Blizzard learn about the ethical treatment of animals (something we're sorta experts on) we're offering to let them take PETA's "Developing Empathy for Animals" seminar free of charge, and we're sending a package of dog-friendly Nintendogs games to their office.

With a little Nintendogs influence, perhaps the next Call of Duty game will have you unlock achievements for petting the dogs you encounter and going on walks or playing Frisbee with them.

So remember this .. .. .. when the Allied soldiers were fighting against the forces of the Axis instead of killing trained attack dogs they should have been showing them love and playing frisbee with them. What next? Rebranding fish as sea kittens? Ooops! Too late.

How to read a graph

Fraser Nelson published this story on the Spectator site on Sunday



Now I'm no expert, so you'll have to forgive me, but doesn't that graph show a decline in the levels of debt if there was a Tory Govt? Doesn't it show, whatever the body of the text may suggest, that debt will rise faster and higher if Gordon Brown manages to win the next election?

More 'second home' expenses

From the Telegraph:

Mr McNulty lives with his wife Christine Gilbert in a house she owns in Hammersmith, three miles from Westminster. Yet the minister has been claiming up to £14,000 a year in parliamentary expenses to help pay for another house he owns in Harrow, 11 miles from the Commons, in which his parents live.

The MP can claim the money because the house is in his Harrow constituency and so qualifies him for the second home allowance.

Just in case that's not clear enough .. .. .. he was claiming 'second home allowance' on a property that is further away from Westminster than the house he lives in.

The BBC quote him as saying

"I have said these things need to be looked at," he said. "There are anomalies."

Looked at? Anomalies? When the Parliament's Committee on Standards in Public Life looked at it in February they decided that no inquiry was needed. Which is no real surprise given the levels of corruption, greed and excess currently in favour in Parliament. Mcnulty's spokesman said that the MP was

"completely compliant with all the regulations around the allowances for second homes".

"There is absolutely nothing irregular in Tony's situation,"

which is precisely the problem. The regulations regarding expenses are set up and policed in such a way that the only winners are the MPs themselves. If this kind of abuse was happening in a banking institution I imagine the the "court of public opinion" might have something to say about it? Maybe it is time for the Government to step in and do something to end this "unacceptable" situation? After all it is just "money for nothing" isn't it? With unemployment hitting 2,000,000 and rising you can hardly call Mcnulty's tenure a resounding success.

The Gingerbread Man as seen by an 8 year old.

Juniorff2 came home from school one day early this year excitedly clutching a letter inviting parents to join their children for some creative learning. We filled in the response slip and the following morning he raced round to school (surprisingly not an unusual occurrence) to return it on the assumption that if he was first he would have a higher chance of getting one of the limited places for the course. He was particularly enthused because, over the space of 6 weeks, we would be designing and making a variety of puppets.

At the end of the day he got the confirmation letter he shot out of class with a huge grin on his face. Then the realisation dawned on me that, due to our varied work commitments, I would be the parent attending the sessions with him. Puppets eh? That shouldn't be too hard should it?

Session 1. Make a stick puppet. Colour, cut, sticky mess, cut, stick to stick, done! The two of us are rightly proud of the final product of the first session.

Session 2. Make a glove puppet. More complicated than before as it involves the arcane art of sewing. Sewing is one of those mysterious skills that you either can or can't. Fortunately for us juniorff2 has mastery over the basics and we could therefore proceed with the glove puppet. Unfortunately for us he decided that as he had done all of the hard work (I maintain to this day that if he hadn't had a competent supervisor overseeing the effort.. .. .. .. ) it would be his, and his alone, decision as to how the Gingerbread Man would be decorated. I explained at length that a gun was not part of the story, that the Gingerbread Man was a happy soul, but he was insistent. The wrap up at the end of the session when all of the families present showcased their work was, erm, interesting to say the least.

Freudian Slip?

Only a few moments into her first answer on Question Time last night Tessa Jowell refers to the opposition party as the Conservative Government.

Preparing for the general election Tessa?

Educational Elitism

Earlier this week I read in The Times that Cambridge University wishes to increase the required grades for undergraduate entry to A*, A, A from their current requirement of A, A, A when the new A* grade comes into effect in 2010.

The Sutton Trust, which campaigns to reduce inequality in education, said that using the A* would benefit only students at the best schools. Its director, Lee Elliot Major, described it as “another sign of the ever-growing arms race that defines the issue of social mobility – just as the playing field begins to level out for the less affluent up pops a new way for the privileged to assert their advantage”.

For me that quote sums up entirely the issues surrounding the way our education system is viewed. as the playing field begins to level out for the less affluent is another way of saying we've managed to dumb down the system so much that children who would have failed the GCE O-level can now get seemingly respectable grades in the GCSE allowing them to achieve the same results as their more intelligent peers. Which is wrong wrong wrong.

Mrs ff works as a teaching assistant, The Commuter's wife is a teacher, as is my sister, and I draw from their experiences when I say that the current system of targets and performance related pay has damaged the way our children are educated. The incentives to push the brightest children further have been removed by the obsession with conformity. Those students who are assessed as being good for at least 5 GCSE passes at grade C or above have less attention lavished on them than those who need help to achieve that goal. If a child has reached the minimum standard expected then they are virtually ignored in favour of the child that can be helped to improve a little and guarantee next year's pay rise. This isn't just happening at one state school; anecdotal evidence suggests it happens across the country.

It frustrates me enormously that to accommodate this philosophy the standard of GSCE (I can't be the only one who remembers the claim of one exam for every child that was used when the CSE and GCE were replaced?) papers are so low that my 10 year old daughter, still in primary education, can score a decent pass mark on the lower tier of a recent GCSE biology paper. I'll repeat that .. .. .. at 10 years old, without any formal secondary level education, my daughter passed that exam. If that is the level playing field that The Sutton Trust are referring to then I'd prefer that it didn't exist. If we don't push our brighter students to perform academically then we will have no new ideas, no new breakthroughs in medical and technological sciences save for those which come from abroad. And that can't be a good thing can it?

Back to where we started then and the idea whether universities should discriminate their intake based on ability. It is the only solution to ensure that we foster an admiration of, and aspiration to be, academically brilliant in our younger generation. The idea that 50% of our student body should attend university irrespective of ability is fucking dangerous. It doesn't reward hard work, it doesn't encourage learning, it doesn't encourage the ethics of struggle for achievement. Instead it devalues the hard work of the most studious individuals, it encourages thousands of young people to saddle themselves with massive amounts of debt, it devalues every degree issued by a British university.

I agree with and applaud the decision taken by Cambridge and hope that other universities follow suit. University should be the preserve of only the most intelligent, irrespective of their background or upbringing, and the sooner we return to that idea the sooner we will fix our broken education system.

Too fat to work

I read about this story via Leg Iron the other day and agree wholeheartedly with his assessment of the situation. I'd like to bring a few other stories about the family that have been published in the mainstream media back into your attention if I may?

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

So, to recap, we give this obnoxious, inconsiderate, disruptive family over £22,000 a year in benefit payments. To quote, if I may, The Devil .. .. .. .. .. .. Fucking Hellski!

Policing the old fashioned way

I was reading the latest from mummylonglegs about the mistreatment, after the arrest had been made, of a terrorist suspect. She's commenting on a BBC story, the behaviour of the police during the arrest, and the subsequent inability to shed light on the events as the officers involved all refused to give evidence (that would, no doubt, incriminate them or their fellow officers?). Mummylonglegs is rightly angry that the people paid to uphold the law are, it seems in this case, not actually following the law themselves.

What worries, annoys and generally angers me more though (sorry mummy) is part of a statement released by Mr Ahmad's family.

The alleged taunt, "Where is your God now?" was an attack "on every single Muslim in the world", they said.

Now, call me old-fashioned if you will, but an insult aimed at one individual is not an attack on a whole religious belief system. In the same way that (wrongly) dangling a naughty child over a balcony by their ankles and asking if they want to test the theory of gravity is not an attack on Science. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi on Question Time (12/03/09) asserted repeatedly that each person is an individual and should not be seen as 'a homogeneous Muslim block', yet it suits the family of this mistreated man to invoke the passions of a whole religion because of this incident. And I find that as worrying as the alleged offences against the officers.

Plain Speaking

The BBC carries a list of 200 words (although I haven't actually counted them to check)that the LGA has said must no longer be used by local councils in an attempt to make them more understandable. The list of words?

Across-the-piece, Actioned, Advocate, Agencies, Ambassador, Area based, Area focused, Autonomous, Baseline, Beacon, Benchmarking, Best Practice, Blue sky thinking, Bottom-Up ,CAAs, Can do culture, Capabilities, Capacity, Capacity building, Cascading, Cautiously welcome, Challenge, Champion ,Citizen empowerment, Client, Cohesive communities, Cohesiveness, Collaboration, Commissioning, Community engagement, Compact, Conditionality, Consensual, Contestability, Contextual, Core developments, Core Message, Core principles, Core Value, Coterminosity, Coterminous, Cross-cutting, Cross-fertilisation, Customer, Democratic legitimacy, Democratic mandate, Dialogue, Direction of travel, Distorts spending priorities, Double devolution, Downstream, Early Win, Edge-fit, Embedded, Empowerment, Enabler, Engagement, Engaging users, Enhance, Evidence Base, Exemplar, External challenge, Facilitate, Fast-Track, Flex, Flexibilities and Freedoms, Framework, Fulcrum, Functionality, Funding streams, Gateway review, Going forward, Good practice, Governance, Guidelines, Holistic, Holistic governance, Horizon scanning, Improvement levers, Incentivising, Income streams, Indicators, Initiative, Innovative capacity, Inspectorates, Interdepartmental, Interface, Iteration, Joined up, Joint working, LAAs, Level playing field, Lever, Leverage, Localities, Lowlights ,MAAs, Mainstreaming, Management capacity, Meaningful consultation, Meaningful dialogue, Mechanisms, Menu of Options, Multi-agency, Multidisciplinary, Municipalities, Network model, Normalising, Outcomes, Outcomes, Output, Outsourced, Overarching, Paradigm, Parameter, Participatory, Partnership working, Partnerships,Pathfinder, Peer challenge, Performance Network, Place shaping, Pooled budgets, Pooled resources, Pooled risk, Populace, Potentialities, Practitioners, Predictors of Beaconicity, Preventative services, Prioritization, Priority, Proactive, Process driven, Procure, Procurement, Promulgate, Proportionality, Protocol, Provider vehicles, Quantum, Quick hit, Quick win, Rationalisation, Rebaselining, Reconfigured, Resource allocation, Revenue Streams, Risk based, Robust, Scaled-back, Scoping, Sector wise, Seedbed, Self-aggrandizement, Service users, Shared priority, Shell developments, Signpost, Single conversations, Single point of contact, Situational, Slippage, Social contracts, Social exclusion, Spatial, Stakeholder, Step change, Strategic, Strategic priorities, Streamlined, Sub-regional, Subsidiarity, Sustainable, Sustainable communities, Symposium, Synergies, Systematics, Taxonomy, Tested for Soundness, Thematic, Thinking outside of the box, Third sector, Toolkit, Top-down, Trajectory, Tranche, Transactional, Transformational, Transparency, Upstream, Upward trend, Utilise, Value-added, Vision, Visionary, Welcome, Wellbeing, Worklessness

Some of those words are perfectly reasonable to use, in their correct context of course, and I for one will be sad to see the contraction of scope of language used by the councils. That many people fail to understand the meaning of, for example, facilitate is not the fault of the council but the failure of the education system. Dumbing down is not the answer. However I won't be upset to see the demise of some of the middle manager speak though and I'll happily wave goodbye to 'Holisitc Governance' 'Conditionality' and 'Blue Sky Thinking' .


Do I think the correct prioritisation will be given to this reconfigured approach to functionality? I doubt it. As a test I've created a simple bingo game. Each time I receive glossy literature from my local council I'll grab my lingobingo card and check to see if I can leap around shouting "HOUSE"! Feel free to play along.

2,000,000 unemployed

Now that the official unemployment job seeker figure has reached 2 million people, how long before this ad campaign is 'freshened up' for another airing?

FSA to totally screw the economy?

I was out on the Downs with the MTB group earlier and The Mortgage Adviser was, to put it bluntly, shitting his pants over the future of his business. There is an impending announcement to be made by Lord Turner, the head of the FSA, that could include a legal requirement for mortgage approvals of no more than 3x the applicants' earnings.

Should that prove to be correct then the housing market in this country will go directly down the toilet.


Fingers crossed that his worst fears aren't realised.

Great advert

Hat-tip to LOBBYDOG once again, this time for highlighting the website of Roger Helmer MEP .

What an informative campaign he is fronting. I think I may have to investigate further ............

More Alcohol Tax

After members of the Government have not openly welcomed the proposals from Sir Liam Donaldson for a minimum charge per unit of alcohol he is quoted in The Times thus:

"The concept of passive drinking and the devastating collateral effect that alcohol can have on others must be addressed on a national scale."

Sorry? Passive Drinking? As in waterboarding and similar tortures that our Government is not no way definitely not involved in? How the fuck can one drink passively? I understand the concept behind passive smoking (even though the science of its level of harm is far from conclusive) but passive drinking? How desperate are you to justify your decision that you need to come out with that kind of ridiculous comment?

Who'd have thought it?

Ugly scenes at TV model audition

Not really much to add to that .. .. .. .. ..

It's YOUR fault

From The Times

A HIGH COURT judge has ruled that cyclists are partly to blame for their injuries if they fail to wear a helmet, even if the accident was not their fault.

Mr Justice Griffith Williams accepted Smith’s case that he was close to the centre of the road, preparing to turn right into a driveway, when the motorcyclist, travelling at excessive speed in the same direction, tried to overtake him on the offside.

However, Smith had not been wearing a cycle helmet. The judge is the first to express sympathy for the view that this omission put the cyclist at fault and made him partly responsible for his own brain damage.

“There can be no doubt that the failure to wear a helmet may expose the cyclist to risk of greater injury,” he ruled. Subject to limitations, “any injury sustained may be the cyclist’s own fault”.

Smith’s head hit the ground at more than 12mph and the judge therefore concluded that wearing a helmet would not have made any difference.

But by establishing the principle of “contributory negligence” in cases involving helmetless cyclists, the ruling could open the door to attempts to reduce damages by insurers.

Did I understand that correctly? If you are behaving in a legal fashion and through no fault of yours another road user smashes you off your bicycle you are partly responsible to blame for your injuries? So there you are, stationary at traffic lights, and some twat knocks you off your bike. If you aren't wearing a helmet it's partly your fault.* Given that studies show that other road users give less clearance to cyclists who wear helmets which will increase chance of contact there is a strong argument against wearing a helmet on the roads. In fact

The author was hit by a bus and a truck during the experiment, and was wearing a helmet both times.

Whilst that isn't conclusive proof it lends a certain weight to the argument that riding on the roads is no safer when wearing a helmet than when not. However doing nothing (i.e. not creating new and restrictive pieces of legislation)is not in the lexicon of the current Government so expect to see lid wearing while road riding being made mandatory in the near future.




* When riding offroad most accidents are indeed rider initiated and if you have an accident it is, in 99% of cases, your fault. I should know. Luckily all of the injuries I've sustained have been, so far, below my knees.

Alcohol Tax

The Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson has proposed a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol contained in drink as a baseline price which, apparently, will is aimed at tackling alcohol misuse and is set out in his annual report on the nation's health. The BBC's health correspondent, Adam Brimelow, added that recent research from the Department of Health had shown that a minimum of 50 pence per unit of alcohol would reduce consumption by almost 7%. Which is totally at odds with the claim by the Scottish Government, backing the Royal College of Physicians, that a 30p unit minimum price will reduce consumption by 30% published on the BBC site a mere 2 days earlier. Unless the locational stereotype of the tight fisted Scotsman is actually a reality.


A bottle of Marstons Old Speckled Hen has, according to the very limited Drinkaware calculator, 2.56 units of alcohol. Under the new proposals it would have a minimum price of £1.28 which is lower than it's normal retail price.

A 500ml can of Fosters, containing 2 units would have a minimum price of £1.00

A pint of Stella, 2.95 units, £1.48

A bottle of generic vodka, 28 units, £14.00

A 13% bottle of wine, 9.75 units, £4.88 (although having just seen a BBC report on the TV they are reporting this as a £4 price rather than a £5 price)

CAMRA may not be too upset as it should not affect the price of a pint of beer in a pub but will impact on supermarket sales. To be fair to CAMRA they have been campaigning for a long time to reduce the tax on draught beer rather than increasing tax on all alcohol.

So who wins?
1. To regulate and police the proposals there will be, no doubt, an army of pricing police who scour the country checking compliance.
2. Increasing the price that we the consumers pay will increase the VAT revenue for the government.
3. Being 'forced' to charge more for alcohol can't really upset the likes of Tesco. While it will remove the opportunity to use alcohol as a loss leader they can go back to offering other products below cost.
4. Small breweries that have higher operating costs might see people switch to their products which, at present, are less attractive than mass produced products.

Who loses?
1. The evil nasty tossers who sell alcohol at discounted prices would be forced to stop discounting.
2. ANYONE who buys alcohol.

Is there any hope?
Well there might be. The Adur Brewery has a quote from a ruling by The European Court of Justice from when they threw out the Greek idea for minimum pricing for tobacco.

measures based on Article 30 of the Treaty cannot be justified unless they are necessary in order to attain the objective pursued by that article and that objective is not capable of being attained by measures which are less restrictive of intra-Community trade.

and

In this case it must be observed that the objective of protecting public health may be adequately attained by increased taxation of manufactured tobacco products, which would safeguard the principle of free formulation of prices.

It seems that once again we may have to rely on the EU to prevent The Labour Party from screwing us with ever more restrictive legislation. An ironic situation indeed. After all that I need a drink.

Business as usual

Just had a quick look over at Liebourlist and it sums up the current Labour Party perfectly. Let me explain .. .. .. ..

A few days ago a Tory activist created a slogan generator to make it easier for other Conservatives to create banners for their sites. Predictably, word got out and many people, myself included, had a play with the different possibilities it presented. The creator realised and took the slogan generator down.

So in step Liebourlist, steal the idea, and use it to attack the Tories. Except where the original worked quite well the imitation is, well, an imitation. Oh they've tinkered with it to iron out the early problems and added their own branding to the results, but it remains an idea stolen from someone else and they are offering a prize for the most creative slogan.




So no change there then.

Slightly bored at work today

A bit of fun

I found this little game via Obo. Somewhat surprisingly the generator has been pulled .. .. ..

Firefox addons

Adverts annoy me. It doesn't matter what media they appear in they annoy me. Intrusive, disruptive corporate slogans that can often reveal more from what they don't say than they do. It's why I love Firefox and the ability to customise my internet browsing. It's why I will never voluntarily place adverts on this site (although there may be the odd link to things that I feel are worth linking to).

Step forward my best friend of the addon world, AdBlockPlus. Eliminating 98% of the ads once installed and only a few clicks to remove the ones that slip through the net.

Other addons that I'm currently using include NoScript which prevents webpages from taking over your browser. Not quite so easy to use as it's default level is to block everything but you can temporarily or permanently allow each new script you encounter. So far it's blocked every rickroll site that I've found.

Then there's SquiggleSR. Set the frequency of the Google inquiry rate, import a few RSS feeds from which it will retrieve words to use in those inquiries, and off it goes sending search requests to Google. One day I may just switch off AdBlockPlus to see what kind of adverts I generate from the random requests it's sending. Or not.

One thing I can't find is a proper English dictionary plug-in designed for British spelling of words such as colour which my current British English Dictionary insists I am spelling incorrectly.

fakecharities?

I've been having a rummage around to see what I can find to add to the fakecharities website and I've got a few leads that could yet prove interesting.

Like, for example, ActionAid who in 2007 received £2,067,000 from the British Government, along with £4,826,000 from the European Union, £190,000 from Jersey and £80,000 from Guernsey .. .. .. in total £7,228,000 in taxpayers cash.

or Everychild, who received more than half of it's income from the European Commission.

or Action on Disability and Development who receive funding from the Department for International Development and the European Commission worth almost half of their annual income.

Where did these names crop up? On the site of one of the worst kinds of business .. .. .. the doorstep charity collector. One such company is called Gift and they thoughtfully provide a list of the charities that have recruited them to guilt homeowners into donating. Unlike those doorstep hypocrites I do this for free.

Scottish Students.. .. .. a row over funding.

From the BBC

The Liberal Democrats are to call for Scottish students to be given a guaranteed income of £7,000 a year.The Lib Dems said the £7,000 minimum income guarantee would be made up from a combination of grants, loans and parental contributions.

Labour education spokeswoman Claire Baker said the Lib Dems' proposals were "unaffordable and unachievable" in this parliament. Her party wants to see a £7,000 minimum income for the poorest students.

Both proposals seem ridiculous. Force parents to supply their offspring with a Government determined income if the Goverment decides you can afford it from the Lib Dems or, if you prefer, only throw money at those who really need it (i.e. potential Labour voters) from Labour.

With the current financial meltdown isn't it time to reassess the amount of money that is siphoned out of England in favour of Scotland?

Balls?

The Secretary of State for Children,Schools and Families speaking at Lord Laming's Progress Report said


I do not want to throw out the baby with bathwater here,


I can think of better expressions to use given the topic being discussed




tipped off by Guido

Chocolate doesn't have to be taxing

Dr David Walker, a Scottish GP, has proposed additional taxes be placed on chocolate to curb the rise in levels of obesity according to the BBC

"Obesity is a mushrooming problem. We are heading the same way as the United States. There is an explosion of obesity and the related medical conditions, like type 2 diabetes. I see chocolate as a major player in this, and I think a tax on products containing chocolate could make a real difference. There is lots of negative publicity about other fast food and junk food but chocolate is sneaking under the radar. People have been lulled into a false sense of security about chocolate. I had one patient recently who said to me she thought chocolate was good for you. People are being brainwashed into believing this."

Brainwashed eh? Not so long ago the BBC, yes the same BBC, carried a story about research into the possible benefits of eating chocolate.

Eating dark chocolate could help control diabetes and blood pressure, Italian experts say.Researchers found eating 100g of dark chocolate each day for 15 days lowered blood pressure in the 15 person-study.The University of L'Aquila team also found the body's ability to metabolise sugar - a problem for people with diabetes - was improved.


Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust released this to the press regarding chocolate a few years ago.

The research team is going to conduct further studies in to the medical benefits of chocolate for Type II diabetic patients and women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

Or, if you prefer, more from the BBC

The new research measures the amount of catechins - the chemical thought to be behind the benefits - in different types of chocolate.The substance is also found in tea - leading the researchers to recommend a cup of tea with a chocolate biscuit as one way to help maintain good health.The researchers, from Holland's National Institute of Public Health and Environment, published their findings in The Lancet medical journal. Dr Ilja Arts and colleagues examined the chemical compounds in a range of foods and discovered that catechins are found in chocolate.Up until now tea was thought to contain the largest amount but the new research indicates that dark chocolate has four times as many.

A meta analysis published in the Journal of the AMA concludes

Current randomized dietary studies indicate that consumption of foods rich in cocoa may reduce blood pressure

It's no surprise to me that the average, non-medical, person could hold the opinion that eating chocolate has health benefits while the scientific and medical community continues to publish results such as these. Can the question "does eating chocolate have health benefits?" be conclusively answered? As with most dietary investigations I imagine the list of clauses and caveats will be a long one if ever a definitive answer can be produced.


Should we increase the taxation on chocolate to curb demand? The only reason that I can see is for the purpose of raising tax revenue not for any positive health benefits. The obsession with taxation as a tool to control consumption has to end now. Give us the information, let us make our own decisions, leave us alone.

Moss

I was skimming through the files on my mobile phone and came across this image which reminded me of the conversation that lead to the taking of the photo. I'm one of the 'a device should do one thing' minded people but sometimes the ability to perform a basic level of other, secondary, tasks is convenient and this image is proof of that. Certainly I could have carried one of my cameras with me across the Downs but it would have been at the expense of the spare inner tube, something that can on occasion prove more vital.

We were stopped while the group of 12 reformed at the top of a climb when I noticed the generous handful of moss wedged into the water bottle cage on that Cove Hummer (TI) frame. Curious I asked the purpose of said vegetation. I was then treated to an explanation of the varied and various potential uses of moss from secondary water supply to wound wadding, from beardy disguise to emergency merkin.

The joys of exhaustion driven conversation!

More VAT spin

During PMQ's that just ended Gordon Brown snuck in the allegation that the average family is £20 per month better off due to the VAT cut.Doing some very simplistic maths, and assuming that all businesses have passed on the cut on all VATable items, I find this hard to believe.

@17.5% VAT an item with a base cost of 85p costs the consumer £1.00

@15% VAT the same item costs the consumer 98p, a saving of 2p against every pound that was spent under the higher VAT regime.


To save £20.00 per month you would need to have been spending £1000 per month on VATable goods .. .. .. now you would be spending £980 per month. The VAT cut on alcohol, fuel and tobacco is removed from the calculations as there was a rise in Duty on those items to compensate for the VAT cut. Not all food attracts VAT either.


So, once your mortgage, water rates, council tax, heating and lighting bills, car fuel, zero rated food items, alcohol and tobacco have been paid for each month do you really have £980 of disposable income?


Me neither.


So can someone clever explain how the VAT cut is saving me £20 per month please?

I know what's best for your kids - NZ style

It seems that since Jack Thompson got disbarred there is another figure coming to the fore in the campaign against video games. Step forward New Zealand's chief censor Mr Bill Hastings. Already the subject of controversy in New Zealand for being open and honest about his sexuality this Canadian has announced plans that would make our authoritarian rulers here proud.

Parents who give their underage children access to violent video games should be prosecuted to serve as "shock value" to other families, says chief censor Bill Hastings.Laws around video games were "an even stricter regime than alcohol", because if an adult gives a child aged under 18 access to a restricted video game even in their own home they are breaking the law, he said.

Mr Hastings told The Dominion Post yesterday that if someone was caught knowingly allowing a child access to restricted video games such as the R-18 Grand Theft Auto series they could be punished by up to three months' imprisonment or a fine of up to $10,000.

"They might think the offence is silly, but it ain't".

For fucks sake Bill when did you know more about raising my children than I do you headline grabbing cocksucker? Imprisoning parents? Who will look after their 'abused' children while they do time. The State? And how would you determine if the parents are complicit in their children playing the games without a network of spies informing on the general population there?

Thoughts of the mud stained mind

As I was riding home tonight after a thrash across the mud trap that is currently the South Downs I got to thinking about something that was written on LieBoreList. In the article Joy Johnson accuses that the attacks on Harriet Harman are

"a typical bit of misogyny"

A bit odd that people are accused of using sexist language against Harriet when, at the 2008 Labour Party Conference, she used the following to describe David Cameron.

"And their leader, David Cameron, says one thing when he means another.
There is something not quite right about him.
He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about.
You know the kind of man I'm talking about.
He'll promise you the world. Promise to make all your dreams come true.
But if he got his wicked way with - you in the ballot box - you'd never hear from him again."

Well that got me thinking. What is the term for when a woman abuses men purely for being male? A Greerism? I have yet to encounter the correct term or if I have then recalling it has eluded me. Maybe that's because, as a man, I can't concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Why is it that the Leader of the House of Commons can use such sexist speech, the same MP who is supposedly championing equality? Did Joy Johnson attend the conference and hear that speech? If so, how can she sit at a computer and type the piece that she did with a straight face?

Probably at this point I should declare, for clarity, that I'm not in favour of rampant sexism. Or flaccid sexism either for that matter. I take the view that we are all individuals and as such are all unique. I also don't subscribe to the idea that men and women are equal. In my experience we are different in many ways. Different. Not that one gender is better than the other, just different. I have no faith in the idea that legislating in favour of one gender group (or for that matter in favour of any group based on one common factor) is a good thing.

I get angry with people like Joy. They always seem to find a voice to decry the words and actions of *gasp* males who are daring to suggest that someone who trained as a lawyer has said one of the stupidest things ever when she spoke on the BBC

"It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract, but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the government steps in."

They always seem to use the "you can't be nasty to her because she's female" defence. Which, I'm afraid, would have the Suffragettes spinning in their graves. But of course no woman could ever be sexist could they?

Adjust your SPECS

This story in The Times today

THE government is to cut the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph on most of Britain’s roads, enforced by a new generation of average speed cameras.

The reduction , to be imposed as early as next year, will affect two thirds of the country’s road network. Drivers will still be able to reach 70mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 60mph on the safest A roads.

Jim Fitzpatrick, the roads minister, defended the plan, which will be the most dramatic cut since 1978, when the national speed limit was reduced from 70mph to 60mph.

“There will be some in the driving lobby who think this is a further attack and a restriction on people’s freedom,” he said. “But when you compare that to the fact we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads, it would be irresponsible not to do something about it. I’m sure that the vast majority of motorists would support the proposals.”

has caused some angry reaction here, here, and here, to name but a few places. I'm bemused by the need to install cameras to enforce a new limit. On my commute to work there is a stretch of road that I regularly use that used to be a 60mph limit but recently changed to 50mph. And the majority of drivers do indeed drive at 50 mph without the need for a series of spy cameras. The reason? The thing that I've found when driving along country lanes is that it only takes one slow moving vehicle to then slow down all of the traffic behind it. One tractor, one horse, one cyclist, one James May (complete with attached caravan) is enough to reduce the speed of a line of cars until such time that they can safely overtake. Twisty, windy rural lanes tend to be lacking in safe overtaking spots (one of the main reasons I bought a small car with a large engine was to increase the number of safe overtaking spots on my daily commute). Reducing the speed limit in itself would therefore reduce the average speed of the majority of vehicles using the rural roads without the need to install enforcement cameras.

I've been thinking about the practical implications of installing these Big Brother devices and can see many obstacles. Each one will need a power supply and secure connection to some kind of remote data collection point. How much of the countryside will need to be dug up to install them when they will not provide much extra benefit to road safety after reducing the speed limit (if any benefit is actually gained from the move)?

And then I thought back to the proposals made in 2005 for a pay-as-you-drive scheme of road charging. We're so used to seeing the dreadful Gatsos and Specs in our urban areas that we tend to overlook them. They still stand out in a rural setting. Does the lack of cameras on rural roads mean that it would be hard to record each journey made that didn't use a town center or major road? The pay-to-drive scheme's proposed pricing policy would make my daily commute far cheaper if I avoided the main routes and stuck to the narrower, currently quieter, more fun stretches of tarmac. Are these new proposals being put in place in preparation for the day that each of our journeys is logged and charged?


Update: The Daily Mirror is carrying the same story, as does The Daily Mail except they don't mention the need for average speed cameras to enforce the change of speed limit.

Testing a generation of kids?

A*

Over on the Libertarian Alliance Blog there are links aplenty to the GCSE papers produced by the AQA examination board for Physics , Maths, Chemistry and Biology that were sat in March 2008.

As an experiment I asked my 10 year old daughter to sit, under exam conditions, the Lower Tier section of the biology paper which she did, finishing comfortably within the 30 minutes allotted for the task. She achieved, without any formal schooling, a mark of 24/36. The content and structure of the paper was so simplistic that I am going to see how my other children, both much younger, fare when set the challenge. I will post the results once they have completed the test.

I find her result both reassuring and also very troubling indeed.

I'm reassured that my belief in her ability is grounded in fact. She is the bright, capable, dare I say attractive (although she definitely gets that from her mother) young lady that I've always imagined her to be. On the other hand there are people who would be happy to score the mark that she just did when they sat the paper for real last year. Which is disturbing as it indicates a real failure of the educational system. There is no doubt in my mind now why record numbers of students are gaining GCSE passes each year.

What can be done? I don't see a way for the current Government to change the situation without admitting that they have been lying to a generation of students about their acedemic worth. If there is a sudden and dramatic change to the way that papers are set, that grades are awarded, that leads to a lowering of the number of passes that would be political suicide for the Labour Party who have thrown billions of tax pounds at schools.

Friday Ads

As seen here

HI I got a ps3 for sale brand new not opend
only opend to put singstar in it 260ono, £26
Crawley

If it's been opened then .. .. .. ..

Question Time 05/03/09

My favourite line from the whole evening


I’m just a stupid old woman and I don’t understand anything about it - Germaine Greer


Never a truer word spoken.

Best. Heckle. Ever.

It was the early Nineties .. .. .. .. .. .. We were near the end of a long and boozy farewell evening when we entered the comedy club on the pretense of wishing to see some live acts, although the reality was that they had a late bar and we could continue drinking. One of the females in our group took a dislike to one of the comedians, to this day she can't remember why, so she started to heckle him. He responded by taunting her to heckle him for a whole minute. By the time she'd managed 2 minutes of non-stop abuse the blood had drained from his face. Not a subtle interruption, not particularly eloquent (if memory serves), however the commitment with which she delivered her criticism is near legendary.


I found a link on LOBBYDOG to a wonderful piece of audio. A heckle of such magnificence that it may well become my new favourite interruption of all time.

Alcohol Focus Scotland

Another candidate for fakecharities.org ?

News today of a plan to set a minimum price for a unit of alcohol in Scotland has been welcomed by AFS, who have been campaigning for it for a number of years. The pdf of their annual report 2007-08 shows they have been lobbying for the idea of minimum price for some time.

Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said: "Change won't happen overnight. But the combined efforts of government, health and police services, the alcohol industry, licensed trade and the voluntary sector should ensure significantly fewer Scots' lives are affected by alcohol misuse."

The information available for Scottish charities isn't readily available on the internet however this exchange from the Scottish Executive from 2002 seems to suggest a level of Government funding that is unmatched by public donations. Link that also with their close ties to the Scottish Executive and also the Scottish NHS and a picture, similar to so many fake charities, forms.

The long and tortuous tale of a banker's bonus.

It was agreed as part of his contract.

When he resigned the Government signed off the deal allowing him to keep the entitlement.

The end.*






* Unfortunately although this is how the story should end Harriet Harman seems to have decided that the tale should continue. While, in an amazing slip of the tongue, she admits that the contract is legally enforceable she says that that's not the case in the "court of public opinion".

Worrying times indeed. If Gordon, for it is he who is displeased by the amount of wealth sloshing to someone else other than the party faithful, decides to act to "claw back" some of Sir Fred's pension fund then get down to Ladbrookes and put your house on him doing it to others. Let's face it he's got previous for raiding the pension funds so it would not be out of character for him to try to redistribute the wealth from private individuals to the public purse which he controls.

I have no love for Sir Fred or the other senior figures in banks. I think that a pension income of £650,000 per year is an obscene amount of money for one person to receive.

Would I turn it down if I were in that position? No fucking way would I.

Do I think there needs to be a change in the way banker's contracts are written? Yes and no.

On the one hand I would selfishly rather see the profits made by a bank used to benefit the customers of that bank by increasing the interest rates on savings and reducing the interest rates on borrowing, giving better returns on life insurance and employing more counter staff to make using the service easier. On the other I think that to radically change the contracts would be unfair to all new employees putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to retirement and, more importantly, how a business does business is entirely it's own business provided it doesn't operate outside of the law.


I'd rather have a few Sir Freds than one H&SE officer.