National vs. Local

Way back in May, Gert left a comment on a post I’d written about local elections.

And why on earth should national and international factors matter in local elections? Or are you saying people are too thick to understand democracy…which is a rather patronising view?

Now, at the time I wasn’t saying that at all. But when I look at certain politics stories, it’s certainly true that both the media and the various political parties do connect national and local politics in local elections.

You only have to look at yesterday’s stories about Gordon Brown postponing the 2p fuel duty rise – “The planned 2p fuel duty rise is postponed – but Gordon Brown denies the move is linked to next week’s by-election.” (the BBC’s summary paragraph)

And in last week’s by-election win by David Davis, the story carried a quote of “Mr Davis said: ‘We have fired a shot across the bows of Gordon Brown’s arrogant, arbitrary and authoritarian government.’”

So yes, it certainly seems like there’s plenty of people who do connect up national and local elections and politics.

Non-suspicious?

There’s something about this story that’s just bizarre.

A man – the last resident of a block destined for redevelopment – is found in his house beheaded by a chainsaw. And the police say it’s “non-suspicious”.

Now it’s obvious that I read far too many crime/thriller type novels, but the entire thing just sounds dodgy as shit to me. If nothing else, it’s an impressive way to kill yourself – using a chainsaw to behead yourself.

Still, as I’ve said before, I’ve just got a cynical mind.

Laser-driven Topography

There’s an interesting thing on the BBC today about using a laser radar from a plan to map the topography of the United Kingdom. One aspect of this work is to estimate which parts of the country are most liable to flooding.

However, one quote from the piece amused me.

“During our flight, he told me: “The difference between an area flooding and not flooding is 6ins and the data we are gathering here has an accuracy in elevation of about 15cm. That could be the difference between the water flowing over the threshold of somebody’s doorstep and not.”

© BBC 2008

Now I’m pretty sure that 6in is the same as 15cm. The change in measurement is enough to screw things up on occasion (See the Mars Lander with Beagle II on it for a perfect example) but this one is quite funny all the same.

Communications Database

The BBC are today reporting a plan by the government to store every phone call and email in a database. Hell, even communist russia couldn’t manage to record everything – talk about totalitarian crap. But I must admit that the entire database concept both fascinates and annoys me simultaneously.

First, how long will it take to set up something like this? (Bearing in mind we’re working on Government-time, rather than anything sane) Let’s not forget that the NHS ‘national database’ won’t be completed ’til at least 2014, having already been in development for a fair number of years.

Secondly, how will the data be collected? Would I have to register my home-based SMTP server as something that could be indexed by the database? Or is it a case that all email traffic would just be collected by the ISPs? What about spam? Will the database be recording that as well? What about text messages? Will they be stored? If not, why not? And with the incidence of pay as you go mobile phones for calls etc., how would you trace them to the right person. I suspect there’d be a lot of phones registered in the name Michael Mouse, or Donald Duck, for example.

Then there’s the entire issue of data protection – and even of how long the data will be kept. Twelve months? Twenty-four? Sixty? Considering the data-protection screw-ups of the last twelve months, would you expect the data about your emails and phone calls to stay protected any more securely than – for example – the information about your child benefits, driving licence details, credit card details, or anything else that the Government’s lost copies of recently?

Of course, those questions don’t even scratch the surface of the problems. Why the hell should the government be allowed to just keep all records, based on the premise that they might (and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty fucking slim chance. Even 1000 ‘terrorist’ cases – a number I’ve pulled out of the air – would be less than 1% of 1% of the UK’s populace.) be needed in some kind of anti-terrorism case.

Even more importantly, if this system were to be created and used by the government, now that it’s been publicised, you’d have to be a remarkably fucking stupid terrorist to then communicate via email, phone call, or (perhaps) text message. Instead, they could just go back to using the post, or meeting up, or notice-boards.

Communication doesn’t rely on email and mobile phones – no matter how much the Government wishes it would, so that they could record everything.

Election Losses

“Gordon Brown says it has been a “bad and disappointing” election for Labour“

In light of the recent governmentary cockups – 10% tax rate, house prices going down, oil (and just about every other) price going up, fuel price exploding, multiple strikes etc. – is it really any surprise to see that people are finally getting sick of Labour?

And when we then get told that £50bn of our money is going to help out the banks (and is thus at risk of being lost, if those banks collapse in the credit crunch) while the 10% tax rate is abolished (as Ian Hislop put it on Have I Got News For You, “the government has taken from the poor and given to the rich”) it’s just another nail in the coffin of Labour.

A “bad and disappointing” election? Only to the people in Labour. Most of the people with any common sense see it as the beginning of a very well deserved end…

Doing the Maths

I’m quite amazed by the scale of the scam in this story, about a couple who claimed benefits for no less than sixteen children – all while living in what’s described as a “one-room property”. I don’t know if that means ‘one bedroom’ or was just a unit in a hostel, or somesuch, but either way it’s awesome to be claiming to have eighteen people living in that property.

After all, I assume that they were also claiming some kind of housing benefit for living in that property – so any decent piece of joined-up work would enable the Tax Credits people, or the Benefits Agency (or whatever the hell it’s called this week) to possibly think that the claim might be just a weeny bit fraudulent.

How were they able to claim for so many children? Because the Tax Credits Agency doesn’t (or, one hopes, didn’t) require parents to provide a birth certificate as proof that the children existed.

It’s the final paragraph of the story that drives me crackers, though.

After the case Sarah Bamford, of HM Revenue and Customs, said: “This case is the result of many months of intense and thorough work by a dedicated team of tax credit investigation officers, determined to see that these fraudsters were brought to justice.”

© BBC News website 2008

If the system had been in place initially, there’d have been no sodding need for the investigation, because they wouldn’t have been able to make such a massive fraudulent claim at all. Fucking jobsworth self-serving HMRC doublespeak dickwads.

Crush A Grape…

I’m pleased to see that the accountant who tried sueing M&S for supposedly slipping on a grape in their carpark has lost his case. It was pretty spurious, obviously – with evidence based on the fact that once he’d fallen, the fruit was found on the sole of his shoe.

So I’m not surprised to see that the case has failed – to my mind it would’ve led to even more stupid Health and Safety notices, regulations, and general faffery, and to be honest we’ve got enough of those already.

Mind you, it’s also a surprise that the case was lost, because logic doesn’t seem to apply in these things, and particularly when a case is spurious and stupid, and could cause a whole bundle of new Health and Safety regulations.

Getting Away With It

I’ve written about a similar subject before, but I have to say that the news yesterday infuriated me. To me, the fact that some utter cockwad can film himself driving at 130+mph using his mobile phone, brag about it by uploading the video to YouTube, get prosecuted and get away with a four-month suspended sentence and an 18 months ban (oh, let’s not forget the 210 hours of community service) is just astonishing. It shouldn’t be, with the knowledge of the guy who drove at 172mph only getting a 10-week jail sentence, but it is.

I don’t understand the mentality of someone who films themselves speeding by taking one hand off the wheel, and filming it with a mobile phone, to me that’s a charge of dangerous driving right there. Doing it at 130+mph, that’s another charge. Posting it up to YouTube? OK, Terminal stupidity isn’t a criminal offence (although sometimes I think it should be) but still, I do think the sentence is still completely out of whack with the offence(s).

Cost-cutting

This story about two Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who stood by while a child drowned ‘because they weren’t trained for it’ goes to illustrate (yet again) an oft-repeated question- Just what use are PCSOs, anyway?

In short, they’re no flamin’ use at all. They don’t have powers of arrest, they can’t stop and search. Really all they are is extra bodies that count towards “police presence”- without being able to do anything that’s actually useful. Except, I suppose, from directing people to the nearest police station in order to report a crime.

Real or Fake

I must admit, I really don’t get the entire hysteria about ‘faked’ TV programmes. (the latest one is here, about the ITV documentary of a man dying with Alzheimers)

Now while I fully understand the problems with the ‘live’ TV shows with the faked winners of phone-in prizes, this supposed revelation that TV programmes are cut and edited to show a certain story – or cut and edited to link things together that didn’t actually happen at the same time – is (to me, anyway) a complete no-brainer. After all, how fucking stupid would you have to be to think that – for example – David Attenbrough is just walking around finding all these super-rare animals? Or that he’s the one diving with sharks, whales etc.?

To me, documentary programmes are actually the worst culprits of the lot (as Matt says in his comment on Dragon’s semi-related post) – where a so-called survival “expert” appears to have been in the wilderness for days surviving by drinking rancid horse piss or whatever, when he’s actually shacked up overnight in some hotel. But at the same time, again, what form of crackhead would actually believe he’s out there ‘alone’ when there’s a bloody huge TV crew around him?

I really don’t understand why all this crap about “TV is lying to us” is coming up now. It always has lied to us – well, since the invention of video-tape, anyway, as that’s when TV stopped being broadcast completely live. Every non-live programme is recorded, cut, edited and hacked about until it bears little (and sometimes no) resemblance to what actually happened. With dramas and so on, you know it’s fiction (OK, you’re supposed to know it’s fiction) and thus prone to cutting. But the documentaries and docu-dramas are still, to some degree or other, also fiction – they merely show portrayals as the director wants them. It’s not reality. Never has been, never will be.

Actually, one of the more interesting things about Attenborough’s “Planet Earth” series (I think that’s what it was called) was the ten minute mini-documentary bits at the end of each episode, which went some way to showing that a) it’s not all just David Attenborough finding all the animals, and b) that it could take days, weeks or months of filming before finding that elusive animal/bird.

But in the meantime, anyone who thinks that documentary programmes on TV are filmed as is, and are accurate portrayals of reality, well, they’re just delusional crackheads in the first place.

Whodunnit

Ever since the story of the little girl ‘abducted’ in Portugal last week started, there’s been something about it (OK, lots of things about it) that smelled bad.

Personally, I think the parents killed her – whether accidentally or deliberately, I’ve no idea – and the entire ‘abduction’ thing has been a ruse to divert attention and provide a reason for the child to suddenly not be around any more. I suspect that the Portuguese police are thinking along similar lines, from the way the search has never really seemed to be all that serious.

All the guff about ‘we left her and her younger brother and sister in the apartment while we went out for a meal – but we checked on them every half hour, honest‘ is just bizarre, especially when the apartment complex has a child-minding service etc.

Of course, I could be A) Overly cynical and B)Wrong – in many ways I hope I am, because whatever the result, it’s a pretty grim and sad situation.