Fairtrade Foundation plans record attempt for Fairtrade Fortnight

The Fairtrade Foundation wants as many people as possible to eat a Fairtrade banana between noon on Friday 6th March and noon on Saturday 7th March in order to set a world record.

To join in and add yourself to the "Go Bananas" Google Map, sign up here.

Over 200,000 people have signed up so far.

Nottingham University Students' Union, Vanilla Restaurant & Bar in Great Titchfield Street, Central London, and Staffordshire Council are just three of the organisations taking part.

Why not join in and do your bit to support the Fairtrade movement?

The Fairtrade Labelling Organisation quote a study that showing 92% of consumers will pay extra in a recession for a product that is ethically certified, while 68 % of consumers remain loyal to a brand in a recession if it is one that supports a good cause.

Fairtrade Fortnight will also see events take place all around Britain, including a Business Breakfast exploring whether the global economic downturn will have a major impact on the Fairtrade movement. Details are here.

Cuts in public services but not public sector bosses' and government ministers' pensions

Audit Commission chief Steve Bundred has commented that drastic cuts in public services are likely to occur when the recession ends (and it seems like it will never end).

Someone needs to hint to Gordon Brown that it might be time to take a pension cut.

Today's Guardian reports that Still Prime Minister Brown will receive a pension of £87,000 per year (higher than what most people earn in this country).

£37,000 of this is because he was an MP for over twenty years (why this merits extra cash I do not know).

It is interesting that this is not mentioned by the Prime Minister when he rages about former RBS executive Sir Fred Goodwin's £16 million pension.

The Guardian also mentions that former deputy prime minister John Prescott will receive £60,000 per year, £37,000 of it for long service.

Unlike well-paid public sector bosses, the average public sector worker recieves a £4,700 occupation pension supplemented by a state pension of £4716 per year (dependent on Nat.Insurance contributions).

No wonder a summer of rage is predictedby Superintendent David Hartshorn of the Metropolitan Police's public order branch.

Earlier this week activists held a pancake day parade along Oxford Street while hanging an effigy of a banker at Tyburn in the march of "the Corporate Undead".

Sussex University product design students looking for venue to showcase their work

Final year product design students at the University of Sussex are looking to raise money for a new venue for their end of year show in June.

Due to health and safety reasons, the usual exhibition space on campus, InQbate, cannot be used.

Earlier this month, product design students held a raffle at Walkabout, but they are still looking for more money for a new venue.

If you want to donate, contact cassandara_jonesAThotmail.com (replacing the AT with @) for more information.

It would be a huge shame if final year students were unable to exhibit their work to their friends and their family.

Read more in The Badger, Sussex's student newspaper.

Meridian Society Lecture: Coverage of Social Issues on Chinese Television

After work today I visited the London School of Economics for a talk by Ms Peng Wenlan, the Chair of the Meridian Society, set up to promote Chinese culture.

Peng Wenlan used to work at China Central Television (CCTV) and, betwen 2006 and 2007, was the BBC’s Documentary Consultant on a BBC World Service project to train documentary filmmakers in west China.

She told us that she believed the Chinese government is finally starting to lessen restrictions on reporting of subjects they disliked, and was critical of many Western media companies, who she accused of only having an interest in China when "China season" was taking place.

When Peng Wenlan worked at CCTV during the 1980's, self-censorship was common as media workers were worried about being criticsed by the government. One example was how an introduction had to be recorded to a dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Kareinia becuas adultery occurs within the book.

Ms Peng Wenlan also showed us the documentary "School On The Cliff", about a school in China located in a village at the top of a mountain, only accessible by climbing five wooden ladders.

The school did not have a teacher until recently, when Li Guilin and his wife decided to teach the children of the Yi community. As the children do not speak Chinese, they have to learn a whole new language.

The half hour documentary, showing the hard work of Li Guilin and his wife, as well as the diligence and hard work of the young children, was voted the sixth most popular documentary on BBC World News in the Best of the Year online vote.

Peng Wenlan recalled how some people working on the documentary were shocked that the footage of schoolchildren singing the Chinese National Anthem had an interview interspersed in the middle.

An interesting talk with good questions. I am going to join the Meridian Society.

There is more information on Chinese talks in London here.

Facebook releases proposed terms and conditions for their users' review

After the anger over Facebook changing their terms and conditions regarding information shared, with 91,000 joining a Facebook group opposing the proposed changes, the popular social networking site is attempting to portray a more transparent image.

Today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the Facebook Blog that "Beginning today, we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your opinion over how Facebook is governed." and linked to two documents, the Facebook Principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use.

Facebook users will be able to vote for against proposed changes regarding these documents before they become official.

Interesting online consultation. Both groups, part of the Facebook Town Hall, have a few thousand members.

It is important that Facebook try to publicise this online consultation more prominently on the site, perhaps with some adverts. I wonder if Facebook could message all users regarding this.

Although an announcement has appeared on my Facebook home page, many people click close without reading what is a very long paragraph of text.

You will need to sign in to Facebook to read most of the links on this page.

This is an excellent example of how an online community has to adapt to its users' needs, as Clay Shirky highlights.

Is this what passes for journalism in the Daily Mail? Liz Jones viciously attacks Frankie Burnham

It's very easy for people to attack the Daily Mail, although some of their criticism is justified, and I'm not doing so here, although I would question their choice of columns for publication.

However, I would like to highlight possibly the worst article ever published in the Daily Mail that couldn't be seen as racist or homophobic, this rather tedious and unpleasent column by Liz Jones about Frankie Burnham, the wife of Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.

As far as I know, Frankie Burnham has never harmed anybody.

Frankie Burnham's "crime" was to wear an outfit at an unveiling of a statue of the Queen Mother that Liz Jones found too garish.

Firstly, the occasion was to reveal a statue of a famous person who died several years ago. It wasn't a funeral.

Secondly, I doubt the Queen Mother would have wanted a crowd of people dressed in dark colours looking sad. Didn't she enjoy the good times, racing, alcohol (and being revoltingly backward in her bigoted views)?

Also, it's not Frankie Burham wore a Sex Pistols T-shirt, sandals, and a pair of denim shorts.

She wore a nice white dress, a nice straw hat and a smart (if slightly loud) red coat.

Liz Jones says "Mrs Burnham, let me try to overlook the unadorned, Eastern Europe refugee make-up and hairstyle, as well as the floppy hat you probably had left over from some awful suburban wedding, and let me first address your patent Mary Jane shoes."

Aside from being rather offensive to Eastern Europeans, what a cheap personal attack, not on her behaviour but on her clothes.

This reminds me of a child at school picking on another for not dressing correctly.

In fairness, Liz Jones did also criticise the clothes of Princess Eugene and Beatrice as they watched the unveiling of a statue of one of their family. Classy!

This is not the first time that Liz Jones has written about Frankie Burnham. A few weeks ago, she wrote an interesting column about her appearence on Blind Date 16 years ago, when she dated future Tory marketing director Will Harris (which has some interesting allegations by Harris on how Blind Date set him up to look bad).

However, this article was boring, mean and tedious. Apprantly, Frankie Burnham has insulted the British public with her choice of clothes, although I think the insult was to Daily Mail readers by Liz Jones with her spiteful comments "Who is your role model this time - Jean Shrimpton?".

She also tells Mrs Burnham that she "does not have the legs" for a mini. Can we see Liz Jones' legs? Are they lovely? Are they any of my business? No? Then why are Frankie Burnham's legs Liz Jones' business?

It was also snobbish,saying "Where is this outfit from? Next? Primark? Oxfam?" While I loathe Next and Primark, there is nothing wrong with buying clothes from Oxfam.

Many people feel likewise, and today Liz Jones wrote a follow up saying she recieved quite a bit of flak.

While she admits that all women make a "fashion howler" sometimes (and I'd add most men to that as well), she blames Frankie Burnham for women not taking themselves seriously, and says "What real, normal women do I stand accused of bashing?"

How this article can be considered acceptable I do not know. Given the Daily Mail is in my Google Reader, I cannot say I do not read the paper, but I am sick of the constant lookist articles.

Even when she writes about current affairs Liz Jones still manages to insult people, offending those with relatives or friends with dementia when she joked about memory clinics in a tedious article about the snowfall this month.

Well, I also experienced the same snowfall and I got the (packed) Central Line to Liverpool Street and then took the tube to King's Cross for a staff meeting.

Arrived early, even, becuase I did a little thing called Getting Up Earlier.

And Liz?

On Monday morning, when the first flakes had started to fall here, I ignored all the warnings and set off for London.

It’ll be fine, I’d thought stupidly.

I had virtually no control over my car, and after trying to inch my way down a hill (very difficult in an automatic BMW, where the only control you have is to touch your brakes), I was forced to stop at a crazy angle.

Three cars lined up behind me, and a crowd of more durable folk clustered round my window.

‘You are going to have to keep going,’ they told me. ‘We can’t go past you because we might crash into you.’

‘But why do I have to go first?’ I wailed. ‘It’s not fair.’

I had no choice but to keep going, sweat pouring from my forehead with fear, until I slid into the turning to a field.

I had to abandon my car, and tramp by the side of the road (I hadn’t even thought to put on gloves or a hat), until at last a passing 4x4 took pity on my form, slumped by the side of the road, seated on my giant Prada tote, and gave me a lift back to the bottom of my lane.

I doubt Frankie Burnham forgets to put on gloves or a hat when going outside in the snow, nor does she fall to pieces when she can't drive to London.

Sports club members to get priority for 2012 Olympics tickets

I wouldn't go as far as Chris Morris on the Day Today shouting out "I hate Sebastian Coe", but I'm slightly dismayed that Sebastian Coe wants to give priority for 2012 Olympic tickets to members of sports clubs.

Coe argues that "it is clearly important these tickets go to the right people" and that it was important to encourage participation in sport.

Too true. It is ironic, however, that half a billion pounds was diverted from grassroots sports clubs to pay for the ever-rising cost of the 2012 Olympics.

Many of these sports club keep children out of trouble. The idea that money was taken from sporting clubs that everybody used to fund sporting events taken part in by a few top athletes is sickening.

Not a single Olympic competitor has condemned the grassroots sports cuts.

Maybe if money had been taken from others areas (or if we never bid for the Olympic Games in the first place), there wouldn't be a problem with getting people to take part in sport.

Sports clubs aren't the only way of keeping healthy either. Most weekends, I go for walks in East London, sometimes with a friend, sometimes by myself.

While walking isn't a sport, I am adopting an active lifestyle. Am I less worthy of Olympic tickets than someone who goes to a rugby club.

There is also an argument that sports clubs are mainly used by those who have more money and time. Isn't this a way of rewarding the better-off?

Personally, I think it was a bad idea for London to bid for the Olympics.

You could argue that the recession could not have been forseen in July 2005 when those gormless people partied the day before the bombs went off, but I would urge all supporters of the bid to take a trip out to Stratford, where the Olympic village will be and where many events will take place.

You can use the Central Line (always packed during peak times and evenings), the DLR (seemingly packed all the time) and the Jubilee Line (packed during peak times and evenings, as well as most other times between Waterloo and West Ham), or the London Overground (slow, not many trains).

If these lines are already full much of the time now, what will they be like in 2012?

To be fair, new Docklands Light Railway stations are being constructed in Stratford for the Olympics and there will be four trains an hour on all lines from 2011 (oh, the luxury!) as well as new carriages to replace the repainted old ones.

Even the Tfl website acknowledges how rubbish the London Overground currently is, saying that there will exist "A fast, frequent and reliable service from 2010, following improvements to signals, tracks and points."

The same goes for Earls Court (near a chaotic Underground station with confusing displays on the District Line) and Eton Dorney near Windsor Castle (mainline trains only, no Tube or Overground)

Personally, I'd rather see Transport for London spend money on projects that would benefit Londoners rather than Olympic visitors.

The Stratford area may be getting more DLR stations but what about South Londoners now the Cross River Tram has been cancelled? What about the extension of the Croyden Tramlink to Crystal Palace? Cancelled for lack of funding.

Transport for London give the impression that all work they do is done for the Olympics, not for Londoners.

The page of the site discussing work at Southfields tube station says "Southfields station is a key gateway to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for events such as the Wimbledon Tennis Championships the London 2012 Olympic Games."

And as for Londoners having to pay extra council tax for the Olympics, why shouldn't they get concessions on their tickets instead of handing out priority tickets to sports club members?

I wonder what London would look like if the money raised from council tax for the 2012 Olympics was spent on policing or council housing or after-school clubs.

Why are we spending money on sporting events when schemes to keep young people off the street are underfunded? (And how many MP's that cheered the bid supported the selling off of school playing fields during the last decade?).

However, one benefit of the Olympic Games for me is the Lee Valey Velo Park, which will "remain for Londoners after the 2012 Games." Let's hope so, and let's hope it is built on budget, on time and to specifications.

America's Republican Party still contains homophobes

You would think that after being rejected at the polls a few months ago, the Republican Party would try to present a more moderate and sensible face in order to gain as much support as possible for the 2012 election.

Seemingly not.

Republican Party national committee chair Michael Steele said that the acceptance of civil unions by his party would be "backslid[ing] on a core, founding value of this country" and said that it would mean being "loosey-goosey on marriage."

Senator Chris Butters of Utah (not the little yellow-haired child from South Park)compared gay activists to "radical Muslims" and said they are "probably the greatest threat to America going down." (More that terrorism, the financial crisis or the continued presence of Ricky Gervais?).

He was removed from a judiciary committee as a consequence after his comments to a filmmaker, which some people disagree with.

Senator Scott Renfroe in Colorado compared laws helping homosexuals to legalising murderer and adultery, opposing benefits for the partners of gay and lesbian state employees.

He used religion to back up his bigotry, quoting the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible to make the claim that women were created as man's helper.

Personally, I believe that God cares about what is in people's hearts, not what sex the person they love is.

Senator Renfroe seems to think that "all sort of sin" is illegal. Having read the Bible, I know that gambling is regarded as a sin, yet I'm pretty sure gambling is legal in Colorado.

However, unlike in many places, adultery is still a crime in Colorado. I wonder how many people have been prosecuted under the law.

As for civil unions, I support gay marriage.

If marriage will be destroyed by homosexuals taking part, it probably was quite shaky anyway.

Marriage is not a wholly religious institution, there are marriages in places of worship and marriages in civil buildings.

Happily, some prominent Americans are fighting homophobia. Benjamin Todd Jealous of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) asked state House and Senate leaders to pass resolutions supporting the right of gay couples to marry.

And as for Senator Butters, it's great that things are going so well in Utah that all he has to worry about is homosexuals, apart from the scamming of $2.5 million dollars from state funds (the sort of scam emailed to me ten times a day by crooks like yaoabalo444@gmail.com or mrsherrif015@yahoo.com) and missing nerve gas.

In related news, a Vietnamese radio station has been helping fight homophobia in a country where gays and lesbians are referred to as "half-man, half-woman" or as having "sick lives."

Gunsmoke and Mirrors: How Sinn Féin dressed up defeat as victory by Henry McDonald

Henry McDonald's blistering attack on Sinn Féin is a must read for any naive person who thought the Irish Republican Army was full of wronged heroes.

He highlights the failure that the murderous "armed struggle" had to change the British governments' mind, quoting former IRA volunteers, and makes clear the difference between Sinn Féin's rhetoric twenty years ago and their rhetoric now as coalition partners.

In 1989 an article in Coiste na n-larchimi blamed "British finance and multinational capital", while in 2007 Gerry Adams said that the "Celtic Tiger" economy (with lower corporation tax than Britain) was a reason for Northern Ireland to join the Irish Republic.

The 2003 Sinn Féin manifesto is described as "reach-out-to-unionists love bombing", compared with a 1982 leaflet discussing "unionist domination".

McDonald also examines Sinn Féin's treatment of far left Northern Irish groups such as the People's Democracy and the Irish National Liberation Army. The latter built the bomb that killed Tory MP Aiery Neave, and bombed the Droppin' Well Bar in Ballykelly, County Londonderry, killing seventeen people.

Interestingly, a handful of Protestant socialists joined the Irish National Liberation Army.

He also attacks British left supports of Sinn Féin, and at times I do feel Henry McDonald seems to dislike most of the left, rather than just those who supported Sinn Féin (although he did write for the Observer and is now Irish correspondent for the Guardian.)

Rightly, he highlights some of the vile ignorance that the British left had of the Irish Republican Army's nature, including the For Beginners book on Ireland, as well as the bizarre comments by former Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell on "honouring those people involved in the armed struggle."

McDonald compares this one-sided view of the Irish conflict with the present-day one-sided view of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Some ignorant Americans fund NORAID and support the IRA, and McDonald alleges that the Clinton adminstration tried to play down IRA arms smuggling, while the Bush adminstration took a tougher line on the IRA, in particular envoy to Northern Ireland Richard Haas.

First time I've ever agreed with George Bush.

At the end of Gunsmoke and Mirrors, McDonald, who is from the republican Markets area of Belfast, sums up how futile the murderous armed struggle was and writes a chapter on the differences between Sinn Féin and Al-Qaeda, claiming that the IRA didn't deliberatly set out to kill civilians, which seems to me rather like saying a drunk driver doesn't set out to kill people.

Both were aware that there was a strong chance that the bombs they planted would kill innocent people.

Like myself, McDonald does admit that loyalist paramilitaries also committed murderous acts, and that British Governments made many mistakes, some wicked. He mentions the murky role of Freddie Scappaticci (Stake Knife) and his actions while a British agent as one example of the latter.

This book should be in every American library and school to counteract Irish Northern Aid Committee lies.

My copy was from the Barbican Library in London, but you can order a copy from the publishers Gill and Macmillan.

ISBN is 978-0717142989.

UK sued by Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq over Israel arms sales

The Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, based in the West Bank, has filed a lawsuit at the High Court over the United Kingdom's continuation of trade with Israel following the Gaza action, according to Al Jazeera English.

Al-Haq wants Britain to suspend all financial, military or ministerial assistance to Tel Aviv and put pressure on the European Union to "suspend [its] preferential trading agreement with Israel until it demonstrates full respect for its human rights obligations".

Three British ministers, David Miliband, foreign minister, John Hutton, defence minister and Peter Mandelson, business minister, have been named in the lawsuit.

Al-Haq is represented by Phil Shiner of the group Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), who told Al-Jazeera "All states are under an obligation not to render assistance and not to recognise the illegal situation [in Gaza] and to co-operate together by all lawful means to end that particular situation ... and to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions.

"The UK government has gone completely in the wrong direction. It has increased its arms exports [to Israel]. It continues to import Israeli arms, it continues to invite Israeli arms manufacturers to arms fairs here".

Al-Haq was founded in 1979 by a group of Palestinian lawyers and documents human rights abuses by all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Shawan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq, told The Muslim News that he was in London with the hope that Britain's judicial system will provide "at the very least, hope for the Palestinian people and again provide meaning to the principle of justice and international law".

A spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London responded by saying that "the series of claims made by PIL are wholly inapt for resolution in domestic legal proceedings. It would not be appropriate to comment further on this at this stage." and also claimed, according to Maan News Agency, that Britain has some of the tightest arms sales regulations in the world.

Meanwhile, the attacks in the Middle East continue.

Israel has fired shells into Lebanon in response to a rocket attack on Maalot which injured three people, alleged to have been caused by Hizbollah.

The Lebanese army claims to have found two wooden rocket launchers in the Qleileh-Mansouri area.

Cardiff University occupied by pro-Palestinan students

In Britain, university occupations continue with Cardiff University students occupying the Shandon lecture theatre today in protest at their university's investment in the arms trade.

Like the other occupations, they are blogging their actions.

The Cardiff University student protesters list their demands on the Occupied Cardiff blog, including a statement of support for Saudi ex-BAE trade unionist Yahya Al Faifi and an official day of solidarity with Gaza supported by Cardiff University.

Cardiff Students Against War say "Expect teach-ins, guest lecturers, live music and hosting of the live video linkup with Gazan students, organised by Federation of Student Islamic Societies."

They claim to have received messages of support from Alan Thomson of UNISON Ymlaen Branch; Leanne Wood AC/AM (Plaid Cymru), Anne Greagsby from the campaign against military training at St Athan, CND Cyrmu; and John Rees, co-founder of Stop the War Coalition

British Gas punish green pensioner Margaret Pracy for using too little electricty

British Gas has been accused by thrifty Brighton pensioner Margaret Pracy of punishing her for using too little energy.

Her consumption has fallen below "the minimum threshold", whatever this means, and she will now have to pay 54p extra per week.

I can't see any mention of a minimum threshold on the British Gas website, and I can't see any legal basis for this charge.

The utility readily admit that "a very small number of customers who use very little electricity experienced a small incremental charge of 54p per week," after November 2008 price changes.

British Gas also say "We will speak to Mrs Pracy to explain these charges and discuss any other energy efficiency measures for which she may be eligible." So she should only use energy efficiency measures British Gas approve of.

How they can be explained other than "We can do what we want" I do not know.

Margaret Pracy and others like her are being charged £28.08 per year for not using enough gas. I cannot see how this is justified.

I am glad Brighton and Hove Green Party have highlighted this,and hope Margaret Pracey's MP (who I assume is David Lepper, nice man) does something.

I would also echo Councillor Randall's call for Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Climate Change and Energy, to take action, and I hope the left put some pressure on greedy utility companies.

As for the commentators on the Argus thread who ask why Ms Pracy is complaing, maybe they should consider principles and how it feels to be on a pension.

Daily Mail attacks £81,000-£160,000 government Web 2.0 role

The Daily Mail's Benedict Brogan has written an article attacking the government advertising for an £81,000 - £160,000 a year Director of Digital Engagement.

He's right - but only on one point. The salary for this job is ridiculously high. It should be no more than £50,000 at most.

If any civil servants are ever made redundant because of lack of money, the party should hang its head in shame (although the Daily Mail's headline fails to accurately mention the salary range)

Brogan quotes Tory MP David Davies (not the former Shadow Home Secretary, the Conservative MP for Monmouth who recently criticised the funding of a film about IRA hunger strikers), as saying "It defies belief that ministers are faffing around on Facebook and Twitter. It is a grotesque amount of public money to waste on a pointless job."

David Davies is wrong, out of touch and unable to understand new methods of communication. His website, although readable, has no content other than text or pictures.

However, he does link to Iain Dale's blog. Maybe Iain could give David Davies a few lessons on a good website.

People are tiring of reading printed newsletters from their MP's and want to be able to recieve updates about their work via Facebook or on Twitter.

Few people watch party political broadcasts any more either (though you can see some good ones at City of York Councillor James Alexander's Youtube page.)

The idea that ministers use Twitter solely to "faff around" is rubbish. It is important that people can connect with their elected representatives.

Susie Squire, the TaxPayers' Alliance campaign manager, has come up with a smug little soundbite, saying "The Government should not be spending money on a Twittercrat during a recession."

Oh, Twittercrat! Because he's a bureaucrat and his job involves Twitter!

While there is an argument for not hiring extra people during a recession, I resent the way Susie Squire and David Davies paint this job as a waste of time.

If the Government was recruiting for a non-new media role at this salary, I wonder if the press would be so excited.

Pete Swabey on the Information Age Blog makes the same point, also arguing that social media is more likely to create a two-way conversation than one-way propaganda.

Swabey has however confused David Davis with David Davies (a mistake many make, no doubt I have done it before).

I have to register, state my area of interest and sign up to a newsletter to comment, so can't write on the Information Age Blog.

nb: I confused this with a Labour Party hire and so have re-edited the post. Here are Matthew Sincair's comments on my original post.

"You've made an interesting mistake there. It isn't the Labour Party advertising this post but the Government. While twitter and particularly blogging have many political uses this is a role that the taxpayer is supporting, and which therefore shouldn't be used for party political advantage or to put across the Civil Servant's opinion - undermining their impartiality.

We've seen new media used effectively by political groups and campaigns, like Barack Obama's in the States but the Civil Service trying to get in on this fad just suggests they have no idea of their proper function. While people do need information in order to access services this isn't going to come through impermanent systems like Twitter.

This is either a faddish waste of time or is actually going to be the use of taxpayers' money for political purposes."

One law for the Royal Family and politicans, another law for the rest of us

One of the most repulsive advertising campaigns undertaken by the Government is one reminding those on benefit that if they lie about their circumstances, they will be punished.

Not sure how much it cost, but a campaign publicising holiday rights for workers cost £2.5m of public money. The benefit fraud campaign has been running for longer.

I'm not in favour of benefit fraud, but I hate the campaign for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's tagline that treats the reader like a criminal "No if's, no but's".

Secondly, it must be horrible for those on benefits and telling the truth to see agressive posters reminding them not to lie each time they go to the shops or take the bus to a job interview/health appointment.

Thirdly, it's a reminder how some people wasting public money are (rightly) punished, and some get away with it.

Today, The Times reports that the Duke of York spend £6,000 of taxpayer's money flying 70 miles to open a bridge during a terrible recession.

The Times reports that "A first-class train ticket would have cost just £90.60", although I'm not sure I'd use the word just in that sentence, and why couldn't the Duke of York travel with the "commoners"? Maybe he thinks we'd try to sell him into slavery.

You can also read more details of how the Duke of York has wasted our money.

Last February, this parasite spent £100,000 of public money on a trip to America using a twelve seater private jet.

I wonder what that £100,000 could have been spent on. How about going towards the Cross River Tram, intended to improve transport in North and South London, on hold due to lack of funding?

I wonder how the Royalists who crow "oh, they only cost each person 69p a year" will explain this.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson told The Times that the helicopter had been judged the most suitable mode of travel because of security and timing, as if terrorists couldn't shoot it down from a nearby field.

Another way to spend lots of public money seems to be to become a top (in terms of seniority, not ability) politican.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has been accused of naming her sister's London home as her main residence and her Redditch family home as her "second home", meaning she could claim £116,000 in second home expense.

On Cookd and Bombd, there was a delightful Photoshop of Jacqui Smith in one of those "No if's, no but's" benefits adverts.

As Carol Cadwalladr says, this is rather perfect revenge for someone who wants us to sniff out benefit thieves and those who look suspicious.

Who will listen to the Home Secretary's advice now?

Jacqui Smith isn't the only senior MP who is facing questions.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, MP for Epsom and Ewell, is claiming £100,000 (that's 1653 times the average weekly benefit a claimant over 24 recieves) for a flat only seventeen miles from his main home in Surrey.

And some MEP's are earning millions according to an investigation by David Craig in The Times.

Enough is enough. Ordinary people are suffering while the elite rake in money.

We need to get rid of the Royal Family and have a scrutinised President figurehead, elect a government that will punish greedy MP's, and encourage MEP's to do something about the minority who lap up public money.

I suggest we have a March Against Public Fund Pilfering through the centre of London, stopping at the Houses of Parliament, Cabinet Offices and MP's favourite resturants.

Who will rid Britain of these greedy fat cats?

Epping Forest walks and more fun on the Central Line

Yesterday was the first sunny day we've had since I moved to London, and probably the first sunny day since September.

I live about ten minutes walk from Epping Forest and decided to visit it with a friend.

Heading north, we walked past the charming Leytonstone Business and Enterprise Specialist School and we saw a small field with a track.

Following this track, we came to a main road, and on the other side was a snack bar and a car park.

Beyond was the beautiful Epping Forest, with seagulls, holidaymakers in boats on lakes, the occasional game of sport and dog walkers.

I strongly recommed that you visit Epping Forest whenever the weather is warm and you have free time. It is a oasis of calm.

The 257 bus stops nearby and the nearest tubes is Snaresbrook.

Afterwards, I recommend a visit to the Luna Lounge, a wonderful jazz club at 7 Church Lane, Leytonstone, a very short walk from the tube and bus stations. Open every day except Tuesday, entrance is free Thursday-Saturday and cheap Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.

Nice atmosphere and food served in the cafe upstairs.

It amazes me that a peaceful forest can exist not far from the busy A12 and the Central Line sardine tins.

Talking of the Central Line, I was travelling home from Mile End (I take the District Line from Aldgate East and change at Mile End in the evening) and was thanked for taking the Central Line when the train pulled up at each station.

It was rather odd and became irritating by the time Leytonstone appeared.

I'm not sure why Transport for London wants to thank people for taking a certain line. Taking the tube might be something to thank people for, especially with the rip-off fares. But it's the same amount of money whichever line people use.

It's not like the Central Line is underused - it carries the second highest amount of passengers per year.

The Northern Line has just over 200 million journeys per year, as opposed to the Cental Line's 199 million per year (many of them from Leytonstone to Liverpool Street it seems) and is shorter. One dreads to think what the Northern Line must be like in the rush hour.

And is it me, or is the rush hour getting longer? I stayed late at the office for a couple of days last month and at 9pm the tubes were still crowded. Maybe it's linked to the recession.

Central Line announcements I would like to hear include "Please wait to see if people are trying to get off the train before barging on" and "Please don't stand in front of the doorway if you are not getting off and there is space at the side."

I'd actually like to thank people who don't take the Central Line - you are helping to make my morning and evening commutes slightly less crowded!

London Conference on Combating Antisemitism publishes declaration as BNP threat rises

This week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) held an international summit conference designed to formulate new strategies for countering global antisemitism,attended by more than 100 lawmakers from 35 countries.


As a result of this conference, a declaration on challenging and prohibiting antisemitism, as well as education to combat prejudice, has been published.

You can read a speech given at the London Conference on Combating Antisemitism by David Hirsh here.

Aside from the threat by some of the far left, who confuse the legitimate opposition of Israel's military actions in Gaza with hating Israelis, the British National Party (BNP) has also being doing well despite the recent release of a list claiming to be a document of all members.

The foul far-right party won a council seat on Sevenoaks District Council in Kent this week, and The Times reports that the British National Party narrowly failed to win a seat at Bexley, southeast London, last month.

The BNP also did well in wards in Yorkshire and Lewisham, South London, recently.

Of course, racism rises during periods of economic disaster as people look for scapegoats.

Iain Dale also believes that Labour and UKIP voters have been switching to the BNP as the party has tried to portray itself as in touch with the white working class.

So how do we fight the far right? One way is to expose how they behave in government, and another is to explain why their policies are so wrong.

They twist any political problem to suit their dogma and shout about crimes committed by ethnic groups they hate as if they were the only crimes that ever took place.

They also scapegoat homosexuals, desire to link foreign aid with a voluntary resettlement policy, and support the death penalty, which would mean a lot of wrongly convicted people put to death. They also scapegoat asylum seekers (many of whom have suffered torture and are fleeing persecution).

They also want to raise motorway speed limits and absorb the Republic of Ireland into the United Kingdom.

It's also important to note that the BNP do not have a single MP or a single MEP.

Although dangerous at a local level, they will never get into real power even if governments become complacent like they were in the 1970's, because so many people are prepared to march in protest and expose their true nature.

It would be nice if Indymedia was used to mobilise support against the British National Party, instead of calling for Israeli to be dismantled like the third comment on this page does.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising within Organisations by Clay Shirky

As part of my work with ISEAL, I'm involved in the creation of an exciting online community for ISEAL members and stakeholders.

So far, we've been looking at consultants for the project, and will be making a decision very soon.

I've also been given two books that are useful in thinking about online communities, and the first of these is Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody.

The book is useful in understanding how and why online communication methods are used, including Wikipedia, whose creation Shirky documents (interestingly, we're also working with wikis at ISEAL regarding our online consultations).

Shirky discusses how communities enable the interaction of ordinary people through the examples of a stolen phone retrieved using the power of the web and the highlighting of American Senator Trent Lott's support for racist bigot Strom Thurmond by blogs after the mainstream press did not cover it due to their news values.

He also makes the point that some user generated content will be targeted at a specific person while some will be targeted at many readers (consider the difference between a Facebook post and a Facebook status. The former is left for one person and wil be read by several dozen, the latter will be read by many including those browsing Facebook).

A community should also be responsive to the needs of its users, and Shirky provides the Flickr group Black and White Maniacs (black and white photos) as an example of a community that succeds in this.

Communities must be interesting, unlike the L.A. Times' Wikitorial, which failed because there was no point in editing editorials from the paper except to troll.

They must encourage people to gather and to share information and content, perhaps providing rewards.

Shirky's book is essential for anyone interested in the forces behind online communities.

Fifty years ago, only a few people were able to publish content and invite others to comment. Today, anyone can set up a blog, create a website or a Facebook group, and the most successful ones will become thriving online communities.

Have you been involved in setting up an online community? What advice would you give?

Digital speed limit map for satnav launched by Transport for London

A digital speed limit map has been launched by Transport for London.

This map can be used with any satellite navigation or Global Positioning System (GPS), and will be able to display the current, accurate speed limit to a driver and tell them if they exceed the speed limit.

A University of Leeds and Motor Industry Research Association study estimated that the number of road collisions could be reduced by 10 per cent if everyone used the speed limit map.

You can download a beta version of the map here. Transport for London may seek feedback on your experience with the beta version, which will be used to remove bugs. There are also files for developers.

Chris Lines, Head of TfL's London Road Safety Unit, said, 'This technology will mean drivers know the correct speed limit at all times, which will help them to drive more safely...

"Some of the sat-nav devices currently on the market can already adopt this new map and we hope other manufacturers will make the necessary adaptations to help make London's roads safer for everyone."

Although I don't like the increase in usage of satellite navigation devices, which have given some drivers incorrect information, and in some cases led to tragedy, I hope that this idea by Transport for London will reduce the number of people killed on London's roads by speeding cars.

Should recent Italian rape laws be adopted in Britain?

Italy's parliament has passed a decree that sets a mandatory life sentence for the rape of children or attacks where the victim is murdered.

It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols to be carried out by unarmed and unpaid volunteers.

I don't like that fact that some politicians, such as Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the anti-immigrant Northern League, are using recent sexual assaults, some of which were by immigrants to whip up xenophobia and anti-immigrant feeling.

However, I do believe that there should be a mandatory life sentence for the rape of a child, a mandatory twenty year sentence for the rape of an adult (at the very least) and a mandatory life sentence for rape and murder.

I'd also like to see street patrols like the Guardian Angels, people who work closely with the local police to protect others, like street pastors do.

In Harrow, where I used to live while attending Westminster University, there was a court case involving the rape of a fourteen year old girl last year.

Most disturbingly, prosecutor Nicholas Corsellis claimed that "there were clearly other men who were prepared to join in, waiting their turn rather than trying to stop the child being raped."

Tonight in Bristol, some courageous people are fighting back.

The Bristol Reclaim The Night March, accompanied by samba bands, is taking place from 6pm until late, with speeches at the Trinity Centre followed by music and dancing.

Earlier today, marchers, many with tin can candles, walked from College Green to the Trinity Centre. It's good to see Bristol Indymedia publicising this event (and that the site isn't as crazy as UK Indymedia).

Today, Bristol's new Sexual Assault Referral Clinic, The Bridge, opened, and later this year Bristol's first Rape Crisis centre will also open, in a county where only 4.2% of reported rapes end in a conviction.

The Bridge is in the central sexual health clinic in Tower Hill, near Castle Park.

Too many judges are handing down soft sentences to rapists. Three men who raped a sixteen year old in Seven Sisters and mutilated her with caustic soda were originally given under ten years each, but are now having their sentences reviewed.

I'd also like to see harsher punishments for those who abuse animals.

Eighteen year old Declan Baker of Angus, Scotland, was only fined £150 and handed a seven year pet ban and a 120 hour community order for putting a cat in a microwave, so this vile person will be able to keep animals again in a few years. Shame he wasn't microwaved himself. He should have been imprisoned for his crimes and banned from keeping animals for life, as well as fined much more.

Come on Labour, get tough on the rapists and animal abusers if you want to win a fifth term or at least avoid a massive defeat in 2010.

Some informed sources on the Israel-Palestine conflict

I have just finished reading Holy Land, Unholy War by Anton La Guardia, an excellent history of the state of Israel.

The book covers the history of Israel from 1900 BC to 2006, and has extensive detail on the partition of the Middle East in 1918 by Allied powers, the presidencies of Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, as well as the uniqueness of the holy city of Jerusalem and the life that Palestinians and Samaritans lead.

Anton La Guardia is even handed and has spoken to many of the key players, as well as travelled extensively round the Middle East. He was a former Diplomatic Editor of The Daily Telegraph and has also written for The Economist.

I recommend this book, and I also recommend reading an article by the wonderful Peter Tatchell on Comment Is Free, the Guardian's blog network.

Tatchell criticses Israel for its actions in Gaza but also criticises the left for its attitude towards Hamas. Many Comment Is Free readers disagree, in particular the odious luna17, who denounces Tatchell in typical far leftist hysterical words "Peter Tatchell sadly has a track record of failing to recognise that imperialism - with its attendant bloodshed and destruction - is a far greater problem than the erroneous ideologies of some of its opponents."

Harry's Place is also worth a read, although I strongly disagree with some of the views held.

The responses of some commentators to Peter Tatchell's excellent piece, calling him an idiot, a Jew hater, and even one that directly comments on his race, "How very typically imperialist of a left-wing British intellectual to prescribe a solution not acceptable to the people involved for a problem of which he is not a part." from "Israelinurse", as if Peter Tatchell being British makes his opinion less valued, are similar to those on Comment is Free.

It has also been reported that the The Palestinian Telegraph, a newspaper covering life in Gaza, will soon be launched and is looking for funds and volunteers. Editor in Chief is Gaza journalist Sameh A. Habeeb. More at the Facebook group.

Alarming reports of homophobia in the fire service

Stonewall, the excellent organisation campaigning for equal rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, has told fire brigades to do more to ensure gay firefighters are not bullied at work.

The group claims that staff have experienced name-calling and physical abuse and even had safety equipment tampered with as a sick joke.

The BBC reports that fire minister Sadiq Khan wrote to fire chiefs urging them to "eradicate" homophobic behaviour, with the letter countersigned by Stonewall, the FBU, the Local Government Association, the Chief Fire Officers' Association, Unison, the Asian Fire Service Association, the Fire Officers' Association, the GMB, the National Disabled Fire Association, Networking Women in the Fire Service and the Retained Firefighters Union.

The Fire Brigades Union has a number of sections, and one of them is for lesbian and gay members.

Pat Carberry, secretary of the FBU's gay and lesbian committee, said those openly homosexual often faced mockery and intimidation, while brigades often did not understand how to deal with complaints.

Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index only lists London Fire Brigade (14) and Cleveland Fire Brigade (90) in its list of Top 100 Employers 2009.

Homophobia does not receive enough attention in this country, and many British people still have a bigoted view of homosexuals and bisexuals.

Just look at the embellishing of a perfectly fair story on grandparents unable to adopt their own grandchildren by some papers complaining about the couple who did adopt the children being gay.

Peter Hitchens recently wrote a vile article in the Mail on Sunday headlined "We show tolerance to 'gays' and get tyranny in return", as if homosexuals are forcing heterosexuals to work in the mines for fourteen hours a day while secret police roam the streets forcing people to be gay.

Hitchens, who is the right wing equivalent of the worst UK Indymedia commentator, also complained that people were "unable" to say that homosexual couples are not equal in all ways to heterosexual married couples.

However, no one has locked him up, let alone tried to prosecute him, for implying this in his wretched column, so I think we can safely dismiss Peter Hitchens' homophobia - filled comments as hate-stirring tosh from a man who wishes we were living in the 1930's.

You can help to counteract these backward bigoted views by supporting Stonewall's work, in particular taking part in the 3 May Brighton Equality Walk.

Let's also make the use of the work "gay" as a insult unacceptable. Let's challenge anyone who uses the word that way in workplaces, the home or in schools.

There is nothing wrong with being gay or bisexual. Regardless of who they love, everyone has the right to fair treatment at work.

I hope that procedures are put in place to get rid of firefighters who are being homophobic towards colleagues. It sounds like the Fire Bridgades Union are supporting action.

It is disappointing that only the BBC reported this important story, although a Google News search did highlight important news on cuts to fire services in Salford.

Twitter satire in Private Eye

Private Eye 1230 contains a rather interesting satire of Stephen Fry's Twitter on page eighteen, near the Apparently cartoon and Victor Lewis-Smith's column.

The satire also makes some points about Twitter itself, portraying it as a place where celebrites talk obsessed drivel.

We see tweets from Jonathan Ross, Alan Titchmarsh and Kathy Lette, sent from "TweeterQuip" and "Tweetie".

I think the satire is a little unfair. Lots of people chat to Stephen Fry on Twitter, most of them ordinary people with interesting tweets.

There is also a slight inaccuracy. On Twitter, we cannot see the messages people have been sent, only the ones they send to others. This is not reflected in the Private Eye Twitter parody.

However, the gentle parody of Twitter is in keeping with Private Eye's cautious attitude towards Web 2.0.

Of course, the parody is also used to send up Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Alan Titchmarsh and Kathy Lette

Private Eye (which is the best publication in Britain) also notes that there was a 4.3% rise in Mini sales last year, while 19% of BMW's Cowley plant workforce in Oxford, who make Minis, are being made redundant.

RBS taken to court by shareholder

This is an interesting case. Retired QC Ian Hamilton is waiting to hear from Sheriff Simon Pender if he can take the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to the small claims court for alleged negligence in offering shares for sale in a rights issue.

Mr Hamilton says that RBS should have known about the state of its finances when offering the shares for sale.

The former QC, from North Connel,Scotland, bought 640 shares at £2 per share in April 2008. The shares are now valued at less than 20p.

He wants to keep the case in the small claims court to limit his expenses, but RBS want to move the case to a higher court as it involves "detailed pleadings".

Could this be the first of many such cases? And wouldn't most of the compensation be paid by the public as RBS is 68% owned by taxpayers?

More.

Art goes too far on the Stockholm Metro

Master's degree student Magnugs Nugstafsson, studying at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack)in Stockholm, Sweden, submitted a video of a masked man spray painting graffiti on a Stockholm Metro (Stockholms tunnelbana) train, before smashing a window and jumped through it onto the platform.

According to the BBC, transport authority chairman Christer Wennerholm says damages are being sought.

No-one is sure if Magnugs Nugstafsson was involved in the vandalism or if he simply recorded it, but I reckon the masked man should be prosecuted for the Swedish version of criminal damage, as well as banned from the Tunnelbana for life.

How did he know that someone wasn't going to be walking along the platform and be hit by the glass?

Some of the metro trains are controlled by automatic train operation (ATO) like the Docklands Light Railway in London, but the BBC story does not say if the "art" took place on the Green Line, where all trains are controlled by ATO, or if it took place on the Blue or Red Line.

If the latter, the driver may have been distracted by the noise and failed to stop at a signal.

Konstfack's website does not offer translation into other languages and I cannot understand Swedish, but the BBC describes Magnugs Nugstafsson as saying "My ambition is to take my personal experience and relation with graffiti into new media and environments, without losing the energy of traditional graffiti bombing".

One wonders what Magnugs Nugstafsson will consider next for "art".

Will he try to spray paint in a primary school during P.E. before breaking wind in the faces of young children?

The Stockholm Metro (Stockholms tunnelbana) and graffiti:

Interestingly, the Tunnelbana has always had a problem with graffiti, which has cost 100 million krona per year to clean up. I wonder how much that "art" has cost Stockholm County Council.

I will be disappointed if the masked graffiti artist/window breaker does not receive more than a claim for damages.

Hopefully no copycat incidents will occur on the London Underground, although I can't imagine an "artist" having enough room to spray graffiti on the Central Line from Leytonstone to Liverpool Street.

The number of discarded Metro newspapers left behind by litter louts (first given out on the Tunnelbana) is unsightly enough.

An idea for Sussex University: Bottle collectives

Sussex University, where I was an undergraduate student for three years, is currently trying to stop the student union shops from selling bottled water.

One way to do this would be to decrease the demand by promoting tap water.

However, students buy bottled water because they cannot be bothered to carry around a plastic bottle and rinse it out regularly.

I therefore propose that Sussex University adopts a Bottle Collective.

Most people have a handful of plastic bottles lying around waiting for recycling, and people often buy bottled squash and juice.

Students could be encouraged to wash out these bottles and bring them to a designated campus flat, where they could be stored and handed out to others to fill with water and store in their fridge.

These bottles of tap water could then be taken on hot days to a stall in Library Square and handed out for free/charity donation to passing students.

These students wouldn't buy tap water from student union shops, there would be less demand and less bottled water would be on sale.

Bottles could be given back to the Bottle Collective afterwards and washed out for use again.

IRA supporters on Facebook distort the truth

I don't usually write blog posts about comments left on my blog, as I don't want people to feel that I'm going to rant if they leave a negative comment, but I was slightly sickened by a comment by "informed_irish" on my blog post from April 2008, where I commented on a Facebook group supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

This anoymous County Kildare resident describes me as "having the intelligence of a stone" for one "who professes to be intelligent", angry with my likening the IRA to Al-Qaeda (although I was simply stating the double standards of American supporters of the IRA, not making a distinction between the two groups).

Nice. I think it's a bit daft to call people who disagree with you stupid, and I've never boasted about being intelligent on my blog. Maybe informed_irish doesn't like former students much, though I wonder how someone with the intelligence of a stone could pass a BA, MA and get an interesting job.

Someone with the intelligence of a stone could easily claim that the Birmingham pub bombings were the thought of the British Government because "they did not respond quickly enough to the warning".

I tend to blame the person who set the bomb, like I blame the people who murdered Lord Mountbatten, two teenagers and an 83 year old woman, who murdered five people in a pub in Guildford and who bombed the centre of Manchester in 1996. Oh - that was the Provisional IRA, a splinter group of the IRA.

It is of course important to highlight that loyalist terrorists, although not opened condemend by the British media then like republican terrorists were, were just as evil, murdering many innocent Catholics.

The British Government wasn't always decent either, nor did the British justice system always convict the right people, although I think Margaret Thatcher was right not to give in to the demands of Bobby Sands (about the only thing she ever did right).

He was not arrested for being a member of the IRA, but for possessing firearms fired at the then Royal Ulster Constabulary.

I suppose one could argue for political prisoner status after he was elected an MP.

For those in the republican community who were shocked by his death, if a British MP said that they would starve himself or herself to death if the IRA did not renounce violence, would you have called on them to?

The response of many European students to burn the Union Jack and the decision to name streets in France after Sands was revolting.

I'm also furious that sucessive American Presidents did so little to take action against American funding of terrorism (something that British politicans never bring up when fawning about the "special relationship".

Tony Benn was right when he said "It's one thing to die for your beliefs, it's another thing to kill for your doctrine."

Though I don't believe Bobby Sands should have been granted political prisoner status, I admire him for his determination to die for his beliefs.

I don't admire those who would kill for their political viewpoints, whether IRA, UDF, Hamas, governments or the far right.

Interestingly, the group (Supporters of the IRA (Irish Republican Army)) (linked in my April 2008 post) have had a link to my first post on their group for months, yet this is the first time someone has commentated.

Should a group supporting the Irish Republican Army with a donation link be informed on Facebook?

Given that most people in Northern Ireland are now committed to working together for peace, it's sad some people can't move on.

I'd be perfectly happy for Northern Ireland to become part of the Irish Republic, it's the murders of innocent people that anger me.

Comment on Israeli-Palestine situation:

In deleting informed_irish's duplicate comment, I accidently deleted one about the Israeli-Palestine situation.

I apologise for that. If you made the comment, please leave it again.

British Film Institute Future Film Festival at BFI Southbank

Yesterday I went with my friend Yixiang to the British Film Institute's Future Film Festival at BFI Southbank, organised by BBC Blast.

The hour of films opened with Estate.Us by Peter Johnson, which was set on an estate in Tottenham, North London. It reminded me slightly of The Wire in the way it gave a thorough and sometimes sympathetic depiction of petty and not so petty criminals, as well as innocent people caught up in it all.

Estate.Us focused on the life of Tyrell and his odds on avoiding a life of crime, and the film was shot with help from The Bridge NDC , a local regeneration project.

Second was the short and sweet Me and My Home, where Anca from Transylvania showed us her home and family, as part of a digital pen pal project.

Then the light-hearted "Jokes from around the World", where immigrants shared their stories of confusion in London , including not understanding how eggs can only be boguht in a sextet, or how escalators worked.

Rule 2, a longer film about a solider and how his conversation via a webcam with his family became more false as both sides struggled to hide their worries, followed, and then in Old Journey Back Home, Arbnor, a sixteen year old boy from Kosovo, interviewed his grandfather about life in Eastern Europe.

After a short film called tuesday reflecting on the filmmaker's life, an excellent documentary about children with disabilities called Personal Demons was shown.

A boy in a wheelchair explained how he wanted to be able to play football, while a girl told us about her Asperger's syndrome.

Sadly we didn't have time to see Pimp It or Stop as there was an interval due to a technical change, but I enjoyed all the films, especially Estate.Us and Personal Demons.

The Future Film Festival takes place every month and is for 15-25 year olds. Admission is free and you can find out more information here.

London Metropolitan University in crisis

A financial crisis at London Metropolitan University (London Met) has lead to the threat of four hundred redundencies

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) found that London Met has inflated the numbers of students attending the university since 2005 by failing to report some students dropping out.

This means that the university has recieved £38 million in funding that it was not entitled to, which it now has to repay.

Hefce, rather oddly, also want to impose a £15 million cut in the university's grant for 2008-09, which will hurt current London Met students.

There are also allegations that the chair of the UCU union at London Met, Amanda Sackur, is being victimised by university management.

There is a motion before the House of Commons initated by local MP Jeremy Corbyn opposing the job cuts.

On January 28, staff and students from London Met lobbied the Governors of London Metropolitan University, meeting to discuss the £15m budget cut and the £38m repayment to Hefce. They demanded action against Vice Chancellor Brian Roper.

Like Surrey Police, London Metropolitan University is happy to recruit well-paid posts even in a financial crisis where others are being cut.

It is advertising for a Senior Lecturer in Therapeutic Counselling at a pro rata salary of £37,137 - £46,767. StudentNewspaper.org also mentions advertising for a £54,000 role regarding counselling studies, but I cannot see that on the website.

For some reason no mention of this is made on MetSu, the Student Union website, and the issue of The Verve, the student magazine, on the website appears to have been published before the news.

There is of course no mention of the crisis on the London Met site either. The latest news item states that "London Met demonstrates a pervasive culture of internationally recognised research".

Alarmingly, nothing on Indymedia either.

The UCU has created a petition opposing staff cuts at London Met, as well as calling for the government to intervene with Hefce to secure London Metropolitan's funding, governance and future.

The next meeting of the campaign against cuts is on Tuesday 17 February, Tower Building, at 1pm.

A day of action will take place on Wednesday 18 February at the City Campus from 1pm to 2pm and the Rocket Building from noon to 2pm.

According to Student Newspaper.org, Manchester College of Arts and Technology has also been accused of reporting incorrect student numbers to gain more money.

Kingston University is also alleged to have incorrectly reported dropout figures.

Personally I one hundred per cent support the staff and students of London Met. They did not give inaccurate reports to Hefce, and the governors and VC of London Met should have their pay cut to help fill the funding gap.

I urge you to get involved in the campaign to oppose the cuts at London Met and to attend the Day of Action on Wednesday 18 Feb.

For too long senior management at some of Britain's universities have been getting away with incompetance and venal acts, supported by commentators such as John from Stockport on the BBC link, who wouldn't care if every university lost government funding so long as he PAID LESS TAX because that's all that's important in his little bubble.

I know it is easy to say this when so many students work part-time and have demanding degrees.

NUS President Wes Streeting is right when he says "The problems the university faces come from the top to the bottom rather than the other way around.", but student apathy and demoralisation is also a problem.

There are 34,000 students at London Met. Imagine what a sight that would be outside Brian Roper's offices.

There has also been a limit imposed on students numbers by Universities' Secretary John Denham, and a financial penalty will be imposed for those universities who go over this.

Again, students will be penalised for the actions of their senior management.

Plymouth Herald creates social networking site

Interesting news from Andy Dickinson that the Plymouth Herald in South West England has created its own social networking site.

According to Press Gazette, over 200 people have joined since the early January launch.

IHerald allows users to share video, audio and photos, create profiles, write blogs, as well as take part in message board discussions, take part in chat and join groups.

KickApps was used to create the platform.

The front page provides a neat summary of all content created in various parts of the site.

On Andy Dickinson's blog, web editor Neil Shaw responds to his points.

The Plymouth Herald also makes good use of other forms of social media, with a neat graphic allowing people to follow them on Youtube, Myspace, bebo, Twitter, Facebook and by mobile, email or RSS feed.

Facebook has allowed us to take our content direct to a new audience who are genuinely interested in us and Plymouth news, and it has allowed those users to contact us with information (just today we were tipped off about a large number of job cuts in the city, while yesterday we were sent tributes to a young mum who died in the city over Facebook). But while it has raised the profile and altered the image of our brand among a key audience (damn, must have been spending too much time with the marketing team) it can’t really provided the interaction we want, or the UGC*.

And this is the point: having your own social networking site one can customise and adapt as oppose to using a already exisiting social networking site built for a wider audience that has limitations (e.g. 5,000 person limit).

The Plymouth Herald's excellent approach to the rise of social media should be studied by other media, in particular fellow local newspapers.

People are visiting the site to interact and upload their own content, which could be used by Plymouth Herald journalists as the starting point for a news story.

And when people visit the site to interact, many will also read the content of the paper itself online.

Newspaper as community portal. The future.

*User-generated content

Gormenghast: Taken Back To Schooldays

I managed to pick up a television series that was part of my childhood in Fopp last week, Gormenghast.

A wonderful fantasy series, Gormenghast is adopted from Mervyn Peake's novels, which I read a few years ago but haven't yet revisited.

The main plot is the rise of former kitchen worker Steerpike and his plotting to take over Gormenghast, ruled by the Groan family.

Spoliers follow. After escaping from the kitchens and the foul Swelter (wonderful acting from Richard Griffiths), Steerpike first befriends the vain Fusica, then the stupid Clarice and Cora, and then the eccentric Doctor and Irma Prunesquallor.

He manages to convince Clarice and Cora that he is helping them, and burns down the library, driving Lord Groan mad.

After causing monosyllablic servant Flay (Christopher Lee) to be banished for hurting Lady Groan's cats, Steerpike is on the rise, becoming the Secretary after killing cantankerous Barquentine.

None of the out of touch and slightly mad inner circle realises that the sincere Steerpike wants to murder them all until the heir to the Groan throne, Titus, discovers Steerpike's treachary and reveals all.

Steerpike is hunted down and Titus delivers the killing blow, pleasing his mother who was angered by his dislike of Gormenghast.

Gormenghast has wonderful eccentric characters and thrills, stunning CGI and a theatrical feel.

It is also interested to see the slow introduction of technology into the land.

I strongly recommend buying this series on DVD.

Watching it again for the first time since 2000 takes me back to being thirteen again in my first year of Magdalen College School, being taught English in what has now become the gym by a supply teacher standing in for my friend David Brunton, a great man who would have loved Gormenghast.

It's always good to watch a television show from your childhood and see in your mind's eye the large classroom with the broken-off window fastners and the odd peach carpet, in a building since rennovated for exercise machines. Memories awakened.

Nostalgia is a curse, but I do sometimes miss school and the humour within, and I certainly miss David, the linchpin of Magdalen.

I enjoy my job and have enjoyed (to an extent) my time at university, but I do look back on my time at Magdalen with some affection.

I even miss the old library with its eccentric curator, its huge desk, dusty old books (including a book on trolleybuses by one of our music teachers, Volume 5) and glass displays of former trophies and pictures of schoolboys at Magdalen fifty years ago.

The bizarre roundabout in the playground with its warning lights and flowerbed also made us laugh, although I guess it reflected the waste of money on the Olympic Games and the Millenium Dome in London and the "Parisian boulevards" in Sussex University.

I'd like to go back to Magdalen College School someone. One of my friends did - and was upbraided by a rather haughty prefect asking if he needed any help. Maybe he didn't look like an Old Waynefleete (the name for old boys of Magdalen).

I shall stroll back over Magdalen Bridge into Cowley Place sometime.

Sick comments in the Guardian and the demise of a project that could have helped

Yesterday I wrote a blog post commenting on the failure of the British Left to make any breakthrough.

The letters page of today's Guardian Weekend, which made me want to run up and down Leytonstone High Road screaming with rage, contained several in reply to Nicholas Blincoe's excellent article on living with antisocial teens.

Paul Whitehouse from SW9 decides to blame the victim, going off into a long rant about the middle class voting in the Tories (many working class people looking to make money also voted for the Tories) and implies that Nicholas Blincoe is to blame for "living down among the workers" and "expect[ing] them to mimice their values".

Mark Johnson from Future Horizons criticses the Guardian for even having published the story, claiming that it does not add anything "to the debate about disadvanted children". How dare the Guardian publish an article that Mr Johnson does not approve?

Emily Hannah from London N8 also blames the victim, asking if Nicholas Blincoe talked to the children as "fellow hman beings or as an owner-occupier in a council block with a financial interest in its maintance but not in the lives of its neighbours."

It's his fault you see, as he owns his own home.

While I agree partly that the social decay of this country is producing deprived and unhappy children, and that selling off council houses contributed to social decay in the eighties, these people's desire to blame the victims of antisocial behaviour because of their background is almost as one-sided, stupid and tasteless as those who praise Hamas.

I wonder if Paul Whitehouse, Mark Johnson or Emily Hannah, those haters of the middle class and apologists for anti social children, have given any aid to projects such as the London Boxing Academy Community Project or the Stop Da Violence project.

They might also have done something to stop the closure of Peckham's Spike project, which is now looking for a new home.

Eleven years ago, the derelict Camberwell Resettlement Unit was taken over by a group of people, who according to activist sheet Schnews "planted a garden and offered courses on permaculture. They put in a recording studio, rehearsal hall and video making facilities. They built a dojo for martial arts and yoga. Once a week there was a Well-being clinic that offered free complementary therapies."

Peckham, which currently has poor public transport links , has a gang problem, one of the few reasons why the borough ever makes the national news.

The Spike project was doing something to change that, but Southwark Council decided to close the place down despite offers to pay for the project.

Court bailiffs promised at least two weeks notice would be given to allow the project's equipment to be moved out, but no notice was given and people had to talk their way back in to reclaim their vehicles and possessions.

One caretaker told activist sheet SchNEWS,"We had a cup of tea with one of the security guards and he told me how bad he felt, knowing that the building hadn't been sold and how he was just costing the council money for no reason..."

The Spike has launched an appeal for help finding a new location for the project, or failing that, for individual elements of the project to continue.

The Music Studio, Well-Being Space & Community Garden all need re-housing to continue their work. If you can assist contact infoATspikesurplus.org (replace AT with @ first) or call 020 7252 9733.

I don't expect Paul Whitehouse, Mark Johnson or Emily Hannah will. They're far to busy repeating their dogmatic views.

Documentary on The Spike.

What has happened to the left in Britain?

Why isn't the extra-parliamentary left doing better?

Some people, mostly on the right, still describe the Labour Party is left wing. I would describe them as slightly right of centre in some ways, and slightly left of centre in others. Not many others.

With capitalism for the first time since the 1980's being portrayed by many in the mainstream media as a system with flaws, one would have thought that socialism would be on the rise.

However, the problem with the socialist parties is there are so many of them, as Tony Benn famously remarked.

Despite the relative popularity of Respect, there is no hope that a left party can win election while it is so fragmented.

The other problem with the left is its dogmaic insistence on ignoring or denouncing facts that do not shift its viewpoint, rather than shifting its viewpoint to accommodate facts.

Reading UK Indymedia, the online home of the hard left, is like picking through turds to find jewels.

Some of the posts highlight important events and abuses the mainstream media has not covered, such as the deportation of the Soualhia family to Algeria

Some of the posts are ridiculous or one sided, such as the obsession with only seeing one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A post quoting Amnesty International USA's report on Hamas has some particularly foul responses.

"The Hidden Hand", who has no doubt never been to Israel or Palestine, says: "Hamas is not an 'armed faction', nor a 'paramilitary group' ... it is the legitimate government of Palestine, groups that oppose them with betrayal and arms deserve very little of our sympathy. In a time of war an instant death penalty is the norm for such behaviour - however unsavoury it may appear to us luxuriating at our computers."

Nice. That's the same Hamas which has been engaged in a campaign of murder and torture, according to Palestians.

Unlike Harry's Place, I understand why people are angry about Operation Cast Lead, Israel's miltary operation in Palestine.

It killed a lot of innocent people who had no power over Hamas.

However, Hamas was also partly responsible for the attack as it was carried out in response to their rockets being fired into the homes of Israeli citizens.

This is something that many of those who boycott Israeli goods, describe Israelis as Nazis and shout "We are all Hamas" ignore.

An honest left voice would oppose the tactics of the Israeli Defence Force and Hamas, and support the civilians on both sides.

Even Tony Benn, someone I hugely admire and agree with on many issues, fails to take a balanced view on this issue.

There are of course supporters of Israel's action who take a similarly one-sided view, in particular Spectator and Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips.

However, I haven't seen any of these people smashing up coffee shops or

The Left also fail to acknowledge that many criminals would be evil regardless of how society was organised.

Mark Steel, someone else I hugely admire, always irritates me when he tries to play down the menage of teenage antisocial actions.

Although the number of deaths in police custody needs to be explained, I want to see a police force that can use discretion, isn't chasing targets, has much more funding and has elected chief constables, something that Hazel Blears described as "barmy" when the Tories proposed them (although Hazel Blears' stupidity is well documented by George Monbiot).

I want to see a police force that has more armed officers to reflect the rising number of handguns on our streets, that has better equipment and better pay.

We need a police force that doesn't pick on soft targets to improve the crime figures, but one that cleans up the streets.

Too many people are too scared to go outside after dark, and in the gangland areas of major cities people dread a stray bullet coming through their window.

All the Left can do is denounce the police (although I agree to an extent about the Forward Intelligence Team, which seems to waste time gathering information on peaceful demonstrators) and fail to help those who are tired of a rising tide of vile behaviour and yob culture.

I have seen a lot of leftist rhetoric directed against Israel, some justified, most not.

I have seen the odd left voice defend Robert Mugabe, someone who starved an entire people that those left voices, unlike myself, have never and will never meet.

I have seen few leftist voices denounce James Purnell, a loathsome and greedy man who attacks the unemployed during a recession, but I have heard leftist voices describe taxpayers as paying to fund the murder of "children. Iraqi children."

Of course, Melanie Phillips drools over Purnell's reforms and wants them to go further. Some Daily Mail readers have left comments disagreeing, but Richard from York is the most insane of those who agree:

If people cannot afford to support children out of their own earnings, they should not have them. The state (i.e. we the taxpayers) should only pay benefits for only one child per family. Obviously, in the case of redundancy, this restriction would not apply.

I would go further. People should earn the right to vote. People outside of full time education who have never worked, should not be entitled to vote. If you do not want to contribute to society, then you should have no right to influence society.

I have not heard any protest against the cuts in grassroots sport to pay for the wasteful Olympics, nor the shameful expense of public transport (£2.70 from Leytonstone to Liverpool Street each way in peak times.)

We need a left that doesn't posture but works with ordinary people to find out what they want.

We need a left that realises where Labour and Tories have failed, but also where they have failed.

Until then, the Right in the form of Cameron's Tories looks set to take over from the Centre-Right in the form of Brown's Labour.

Look at the London Mayoral elections.

Ken Livingstone, who had excellent domestic policies but was far too friendly with homophoic suicide boming supporter Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, lost to useless and idiotic Boris Johnson.

Funding agreed for phase two of East London Line

Good news for those living in South London.

Funding has been agreed for phase two of the East London Line, which will run from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction, via Peckham with a Northern Line interchange at Clapham High Street.

The line will be completed before the 2012 Olympic Games, according to Transport for London (the only motivation Tfl and Mayor Johnson seem to have to improve public transport is the 2012 Olympic Games).

Phase one of the East London Line, from Dalston Junction to West Croyden, will hopefully be completed by June 2010, and an extension to Highbury and Islington will hopefully be completed by February 2011.

It is disappointing that Tfl does not give many details on frequency.

Trains will run every five minuites between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays, but there will only be four trains per hour from Dalston Junction to Clapham Junction, which seems far too few.

It's just a shame the Croyden Tramlink extension to Crystal Palace was cancelled due to lack of funding.

Bishop arrested for taking photos of children on rooftop

A London bishop has alleged police treated him brutally after they arrested him for taking photos of his children on the roof.

Bishop Jonathan Blake and his two sons were taking part in a school competiton to read a book in an usual place.

He told the Daily Mail "As we were going up I noticed the neighbours were looking up at us strangely. I had no idea they were calling the police."

Police arrived at the house in Welling, Bexley, SE London, and arrested Bishop Blake. He alleges an officer punched him in the back and grabbed him by tightened handcuffs.

Bishop Jonathan Blake also claims that he was allowed no food or water for the first eight hours of his detention, and that officers refused to let him telephone his family for a bottle of water until he told them he felt seriously dehydrated after 14 hours.

He has set up a website, When No-One's Watching, about alleged police brutality.

Police have claimed that no complaint has been made by Bishop Blake.

Bishop Blake claims that the children were in a secure harness and that they got onto the roof via a flat-roof extension at the back of their house, which I would say is quite important in determining whether he was responsible or not.

It's also surprising that none of the parents asked Bishop Blake what the children were doing on the rooftop.

One wonders if it was really worth arresting the bishop over.

Although he was bailed, no further action is being taken by officers.

Google Social Media blog launched

Google has started a blog about social media within Google, and so far the blog discusses Google Friend Connect, with other social initiatives and community events such as OpenSocial in the pipeline for later posts.

The blog already has 675 people subscribed to its Feedburner feed and 1011 members who joined using Google Friend Connect.

At ISEAL, we've also started a blog regarding the use of online tools for use in online consulations and online communities. Why not have a look?

Over the new few months, we'll be launching two online consultations for our members as well as an online community

2009 Israeli election ends in Kadima-Likud stalemate

There has been no clear winner of the Israeli election, whose results were announced today.

The centerist Kadima party won 28 seats, while the right-wing Likud party won 27 seats.

Sixty seats are needed to form a government.

In third place was Yisrael Beiteinu, which advocates redrawing the border between Israel and Palestine to reduce the number of Arab citizens in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs are unhappy with this proposal.

The Labour Party came fourth, its worst ever result, dropping from 19 to 13 seats.

A coalition government is now required, and there will be much debate between parties.

Although Daniel Finklestein belives that whoever rules Israel does not matter, I wonder if we will see a more hardline approach to the question of relations with Palestine, Egypt and Iran, with perhaps another military invasion if rockets continue to be fired into Israeli houses.

However, whoever wins, it is unlikely that they will find a solution to the Gaza conflict, and the numbers of innocents killed on both sites will rise.

More comments on the 2009 Israeli election at Harry's Place.

Tories and Labour prove George Monbiot right in his debate with Hazel Blears

Cabinet Minister Hazel Blears appears to be backing down in her debate with George Monbiot, or maybe she's bored of the whole debate.

Instead of firing off another column in retaliation to George Monbiot's latest salvo, she's decided to write a letter to the Guardian instead inviting George Monbiot to visit her constituency of Salford so young Labour party members and Blears could show Monbiot round, which would apparently explain why she was "voting Labour in the Commons for the past 12 years."

So Hazel Blears is proposing that Salford Labour Party members and herself tell George Monbiot how well Labour is doing in Salford and elsewhere.

I can see George Monbiot taking her up on that totally unbiased tour of Salford.

Ironically (and doesn't irony seem to be heavy in the air like 1950's fog recently?), MP's seized the opportunity to show how they could waste time and money by picking fights with each other.

After the usual slanging match that is prime minister's questions, tedious David Cameron brought up the subject of Gordon Brown getting the painter Titian's age wrong when mentioning him at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Nothing much has happened in Britain or globally, you see, so they were stuck for things to discuss.

Things became more pointless when a Tory staff member editied Wikipedia's entry on Titian so his age was listed as 86, the age Cameron claimed in the House of Commons he had died at.

Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle wasted more time by asking the deputy Speaker of the House of Commons: "I wonder whether you could tell the House whether you have had representations from the leader of the opposition so that he might correct the comments that he made about Titian.

"Or is it enough in this modern age for the leader of the opposition's staff simply to alter Wikipedia?"

So all this time-wasting over a trivia mistake made by Gordon Brown a month ago.

Next Prime Minister's Questions, Nick Clegg will tell David Cameron off for getting the Celebrity Big Brother 2009 winner's name wrong and this will become the fifth most read story on the BBC, just like this rubbish was.

Iranian bloggers sentenced to be imprisoned and lashed for alleged treason and gambling

Rooz Online reports that four Iranian bloggers, Javad Gholam Tamimi, Shahram Rafizadeh, Rouzbeh Mir ‎Ebrahimi and Omid Memarian, have been sentenced in Tehran to between nine months and four years in prison each as well as various numbers of lashes for a number of alleged crimes.

The four are accused of crimes including "propaganda against regime", ‎‎"membership in illegal groups" and "possession of playing cards".

They were arrested in September 2004 along with 17 others, and spent several ‎months in in solitary confinement, forced to confess by Tehran’s Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi.‎

Omid Memarian told Rooz Online: "The officers who interrogated me and extracted the confessions that ‎they wanted while I was held in solitary confinement under all kinds of physical and ‎psychological pressures were sexual and mental abusers.‎"

Former President of Iran Mohammad Khatami’s ‎deputy, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, wrote on his blog Webneveshtha about the abuses, later hacked by Iranian authorities.

Amnesty USA reports widespread torture and abuse in Iraninan prisons, including one inmate needing his hands amputated after he was tied to a ceiling fan by staff, which severed the circulation.

I wonder if the British Left will ever be able to oppose war with Iran while condemnming that vile regime (which is my position).

Too many left wingers condemn evil when it fits their dogma but not when it doesn't.

An excellent piece by Sussex student Ruthie Samuel condemns the whitewashing of Hamas' crimes by some Sussex students, as well as the invitation of Hamas supporter Dr Azzam Tamimi to speak at my former university (which also turned my stomach).

Fellow Sussez student Jamie Askew was not opposed to Dr Azzam Tamimi's presence, but was concerned by the alleged support some students gave to his views.

It seemed that any person who held a position, other than that demonstrated by the speakers, and who condemned the use of violence was not allowed to have that opinion in that room. The meeting reached a point where one member stood and argued that any individual who did not support Hamas would not be welcome to demonstrate with the activists in any subsequent action. This instantly alienated me and made me feel that to support a group of oppressed people I had to instantly support their government.

Transport for London Fail Whales and Fat Cats

Going Underground's Annie Mole and johnin60seconds have both created London Underground-themed Fail Whales.

They deal with the snow, but I'd also add the general poor service as another "fail" (I hate the phrase as it's become a means of saying someone is wrong without making an argument, although I think the Fail Whales are more sophisticated).

While I understand that signal failures are an alternative to derailment or worse, there are so many of them recently.

My journey home deviates from its Aldgate East-Leytonstone route (I change at Mile End for the Central Line as it is too packed to get on at Liverpool Street) about once a week on average.

Last week and the week before, I had to take the District Line to West Ham, the Jubilee Line to Stratford, and the 257 bus to Leytonstone town centre, as documented here on 27 Jan.

Tonight, the District and Hammersmith and City lines had signal failure.

This meant that I would either have to take an even-more crowded line from Liverpool Street or take a bus to London Bridge underground station and take the Jubilee Line to Stratford, and a Central Line train home.

At this rate, I'm wasting an extra half hour a week at least because of problems on the London Underground, and an extra 90p if I take a bus.

It all adds up. Assuming my commute is the same for the next twelve months, I will have spent an extra 26 hours and £46.80 (although I would have used a weekly travelcard half that time, so say £23.40) due to London Underground delays.

I pay £27 a week to travel a fifteen minute journey, a rip-off.

Why are there so many signal failures despite the weekends being used for repair works?

And Tfl want to lay off 1000 workers? I predict a worsening Underground service ahead.

While they claim that these will only affect "departments such as IT, finance, HR and legal" and admin, what guarentee do we have that this will not affect frontline services (especially Information Technology and admin) or that more job cuts won't follow?

What happens if Tfl workers are wrongly deployed because of a lack of admin staff?

And while workers are laid off and services continue to be poor, the London Underground bosses have been earning six-figure salaries.

We should contact Peter Hendy, Bob Kiley and Tim O’Toole as well as the other Transport for London bosses, and ask how they can justify being paid so much money.

Tfl bosses awarded themselves more than £17m in salaries and bonuses last year, but there is no many to extend the Croyden Tramlink to Crystal Palace.

Maybe we should create protest cards and post them to Transport for London's head office.

They could resemble the Oyster Card in design but be bigger so no one could think they were fake or real cards.

I also suggest a Facebook campaign and an email temple that could be emailed to Tfl.

Over one hundred die in Australian bushfires

A terrible tragedy is taking place in Australia.

Bushfires have claimed the lives of one hundred and seventy people in the state of Victoria.

Some of the fires are thought to have been started by arsonists, according to police.

Thousands of homes have been lost, and tens of thousands of hectares have been destroyed.

One area, Strathewen, lost over ten per cent of its two hundred resident, while the moutain hamlet of Marysville was nearly totally destroyed by fire, with only a bakery standing.

Premier John Brumby has announced a royal commission into the Victorian bushfires, according to The Age.

You can help the people of Victoria by donating to the Australian Red Cross, the Australian Salvation Army (and your local one is always worth supporting also), Wildlife Victoria and Victoria's fire service.

On popular forum Something Awful, one poster who is a firefighter also mentioned the lack of an Asset Proctection Zone (defensible space between the house and the surrounding vegetation) as making the situation worse for many.

The Australian Football League will hold a NAB Cup Bushfire Appeal game at Telstra Dome, Melbourne Docklands area, on Friday night to raise money for those affected by the bushfires.

The Age's map of bushfires in Victoria, as well as fire alert messages from the Department of Sustainability and Enviroment and the Country Fire Authority.

The Herald Sun has a condolences book while the Australian lists more ways to help the victims.

Is Surrey Police really underfunded?

According to the BBC, Surrey Police has announced plans to cut 140 officers and staff jobs in 2009/2010.

Although they do not give the police officer: police staff ratio, no doubt frontline policing will be affected.

Currently, 1,921 officers patrol the county of Surrey, which has 1,067,200 resident there.

Visiting the Surrey Police website's job section, curious to see if the force was scaling back on recruiting, I was surprised to see advertised a number of high paid human resources posts.

"Can you tell the difference between a Business Partner and an HR Manager?" asks an advert for a Business Partner in Guildford, £50k-60K and car allowance.

Surrey Police are also looking for a Consultancy Advisor at 31k-36k, an Employee Relations Manager at £40k to £48k and a Consultancy Unit Manager at the same wage.

Good to see the cash-strapped force is cutting back on nonessential posts.

In fairness, they are also recruiting an Investigating Officer at £26k (civilian post) and a Police Support Officer at £19k.

Police officers are not currently being recruited.

If I was resident in Surrey, I would want police budgets spent on hiring more police officers or essential civilian workers, not lavishly paid HR staff.

Surrey Police's crime map.

Transport for London emergency team decided that public knowing emergency equipment location would be "of marginal utility"

Via UK Indymedia, a blog post from Demos' Resilient Nation highlighting an exchange between Tim O’Toole, the Managing Director of the London Underground, and Patrick Mercer, Member of Parliment for Newark and Retford, Nottinghamshire, during a hearing related to Project Contest, an anti-terrorism project.

Chairman: I am specifically referring to the trains because again, talking to the victims, many of them, as you know, had to get out and walk on to the tracks carrying casualties and they had nothing with which to carry them, yet it would appear that there were carry sheets which were available, yet nobody was told where they were, in what quantities, how to get them or how to use them. The first question: do these things exist or not?
Mr O’Toole: They do exist. They do not exist in a number that would have been able to address that situation because there just is not room for them, and the intention is that the real purpose is to deal with the one-off and the idea is that the driver or a member of station staff who responds to a situation would access it.
Chairman: Where are they kept?
Mr O’Toole: They are kept under the seat compartments.
Chairman: How many of them?
Mr O’Toole: Two on every train, I am informed.
Chairman: Two on every train rather than every carriage?
Mr O’Toole: Yes.
Chairman: Why are the public not told where they are?
Mr O’Toole: Because the public does not have access to them, the driver has to access them.
Chairman: Have you considered putting such devices in each carriage?
Mr O’Toole: Well, we consider all of these ideas as they come along, but again our emergency team had a review of how exactly would this work, would it be effective, how would people deal with that, and determined that it would be of marginal utility.

So if you travel on London Underground, remember that it's of marginal utility that you know where emergency equipment is.

Tim O'Toole also discusses the unreliable radios that the British Transport Police and Tfl workers were using during the London bombings of summer 2005, calling Connect a "failed PFI system".

Transcript here.

Fopp is kept alive by HMV

Bit of a departure from my usual posts this one.

I went into town yesterday to go to the Barbican and do a bit of shopping, and discovered while walking through Leicester Square that there is still a Fopp open in London, in Earlham Street.

When I was a student in Brighton, Fopp was a great place for cheap yet good quality books, music and DVD's, far cheaper than HMV.

Zavvi fufilled the role of Fopp for a while in Oxford, but they were pretty expensive, and I think most of their stores are now closed, although the Bloomesbury one was still there last Monday.

HMV seems to have bought eight Fopp stores around Britain.

Sadly the Fopp in Covent Garden is not as cheap as the Fopp in Brighton, which is hardly surprising given how expensive things are in London, even during a recession.

However, I did manage to get Gormenghast on DVD for £7 (I think it was the last one on display), a Trojan R&B box set and The Motown Story on CD (which is WONDERFUL, dance-round-your-bedroom music).

I can't help think how much nicer London Underground journeys would be if they played motown during the morning and reggae and ska in the evening, although some people would probably try and dance to it during rush hour.

I wonder what songs would suit a packed communte on the Central Line, or a slow ride on the District line.

Maybe the Specials' "Ghost Town" or Martha and Vandellas' "Nowhere To Run" (from the crush of tepid people).

Dr Ben Goldacre accused of copyright infringement by LBC 97.3 FM following MMR show blog posting

Just heard via Harry's Place that Guardian columnist and author Dr Ben Goldacre is being accused of having committed copyright infringement by posting a recording of a show where presenter Jeni Barnett made negative comments about the MMR vaccine and made rather bizarre comments to an NHS nurse who rang in to contradict her account.

I don't know much about the MMR debate other than what I have read in Private Eye (anti) and various blogs (pro), but Dr Ben Goldacre makes a convincing argument for having the MMR vaccine.

It seems bizarre that LBC and their parent company Global Media are so angry over a radio clip being republished, although they do charge £4 for people to download shows online using a credit card.

Dr Ben Goldacre comments more on this legal action here, and is looking for a media lawyer.

There seems to be a clear public interest defence her, if, as Dr Ben Goldacre says, the comments made on the show were untrue.

Like I say, I have no clear idea on this topic myself. As I have no children, this topic is not one I have been reading on a regular basis.

My concern is that LBC's response to Dr Goldacre providing evidence of something he was discussing is draconian, with the station making no comment on the actual content.

Jeni says

I am not a scientist, I would not claim to be a scientist. When tested on the contents of the MMR vaccine I told the truth. I did not have the facts to hand. Was I ill informed? Yes.As a responsible broadcaster I should have been better prepared as a parent, however, I can fight my corner. I don't know everything that goes into cigarettes but I do know they are harmful.

The second comment on that page, that Jeni has more right than scientists to voice an opinion because she is a mother, is ludicrous.

I advise writing to LBC to tell them to drop the action against Dr Goldacre -and to respond to his criticism- as well as donating to and reading his excellent blog.

Not sure if I can link directly to the page providing the recording, but you can here the audio file on the excellent Wikileaks, full of interesting news.

Harry's Place also links to this Times article about a rise in measles and the anti-MMR campaign.

Do you have a view on the MMR debate? Have you given your children the vaccine?

What price the special relationship?

Note: Some people will claim that I am "anti-american" for this post. I don't hate America, American people or American culture (except for some of their more generic sitcoms. Indeed, I'm listing to some Motown recorded in America and have taken out book from the Barbican, some of which were written about Americans).

Watching television news Monday night, mixed in with reports of people's experiences in the snow (and it's SO irritating it's back Sunday and Monday) was a report that David Milliband had met Secretary of State and devotee of the lunatic section of the Democratic Party Hilary Clinton.

Wow. It was treated like a fascinating story, even though it was nothing more than two countries having a chinwag.

Meanwhile, a man is sentenced to three years in a Thai prison for writing a paragraph in his book that offended the Thai king, while the United Nations has been accused of allowing massacres in the Congo.

Why do we need a special relationship with the US anyway? It goes against all the rules of diplomacy. You don't treat one friendly country as much more useful that the others.

American lifestyles are not what we want to emulate. We don't need more cars on our road (except for rural areas and the disabled) and we need to tackle our growing gang problem.

We need to move towards a Swedish-style welfare state, better public services (the Central Line has severe delays almost once a week) and lower crime.

I also feel we should reexamine whether we still need US military bases in the UK, and we should certainly get rid of Trident, an expensive defence against something that would lead to world nuclear war anyway.

We should be moving towards closed relationships with Europe, in order to have more influence on the European stage, and should also be forging closer ties with India and other rising economics (though China's human rights abuses make it a different case).

I'm tired of people describing as "anti-American" those who were opposed to the Iraq War and those who make any criticism of America. Most people aren't like the worst of UK Indymedia or those who snigger at American people.

We should treat America like we treat Spain or Mexico, as a friendly ally that we can do business with, not as a big brother than we trust blindly.

I am sick and tired of British politicans doing something because America suggests it.

Nouveau parti anticapitaliste,New Anti Capitalist Party, launched in France

The New Anti Capitalist Party (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste or NPA) has been launched in France by former presidential candidate Olivier Besancenot.

The party's aim is to "build a new socialist, democratic perspective for the twenty-first century". The NPA will replace the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, and will have no single leader.

This weekend a conference will take place deciding on the party's name, as well as its principles and rulebook. The party has already supported the Palestinans in the Gaza conflict, as well as withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan and better public services.

You can read an interview with John Mullen, the editor of Socialisme International, on the New Anti-Capitalist Party here.

Mullen claims that an NPA meeting in Montpellier had 2000 people. It is interesting that he mentions the problems that French left parties have had in working together, this is true for British left parties.

Mark Steel's books Reasons to Be Cheerful and What's Going On are a good depiction of the British left's tenency to fight itself.

Recently France has experienced a general strike against French President Nicolas Sarkozy's policies, with the Socialist Party of Great Britain claiming that "Around 200,000 gathered in Paris, 150,000 in Marseilles, 70,000 in Toulouse and 30,000 in Rouen" (northwest France, capital of Normandy.

There have also been university protests in Strasbourg, where students threw objects at police during a protest against the visit of Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse.

The proposed social and economic changes by the French Government include budget and staff cuts at universities.

The Daily Telegraph provides a short profile of Olivier Besancenot.

Hazel Blears attacks George Monbiot in the Guardian

This Tuesday, campaigner George Monbiot wrote what I consider to be a fair article on the problems with our democracy, claiming that measures which might encourage greater participation have been postponed, and that a MoveOn.org campaign for the United Kingdom would help.

It was published in the Guardian on Tuesday.

Aside from having a go at some of the New Labour frontbench, calling Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, Alistair Darling, Hazel Blears, Peter Mandelson and John Hutton "political ghosts", there was nothing offensive about the article.

Today saw an angry response from Hazel Blears, calling the article "cynical and corrosive commentary" and saying she found it funny that someone who had never stood for political office called her a coward.

It's not that risky to stand for political office: £500 deposit and the possibility of a sex scandel being exposed, that's about it. It's risky to write columns attacking governments and major players, and stand up for what you believe in.

Incidentaly, George Monbiot was once attacked by security guards, who stuck a spike through his foot. He's also been shot at and beaten up, according to his books. Has Hazel Blears been shot at?

The idea that only elected politicians take risks is crazy. Blears also makes personal references to Monbiot's family:

I might have had more respect for his views if he had followed in his family tradition of service to the Conservative party, rather than joining the "commentariat" - wielding great influence without accountability.

As if people who read Monbiot don't consider his political leanings.

More people standing for office, Hazel Blears' solution, will not solve the problem.

What will is reducing the salaries of MP's and removing their other little perks (or most of them), as well as considering alternative voting systems such as proportional representation.

Hazel Blears can criticise George Monbiot's article all she wants, but I felt her response was personal, slightly hysterical and against the debate she claims to want to encourage.

It has a "how dare someone who never stood for election attack me" feel, and I don't like the way New Labour politicans use hyperbole and hysterical denoucements to defend their actions. This comment by Shazzbot sums it up.

Consider Margaret Beckett on George Osbourne:

I heard on the news George Osborne had said this was a harmful thing to say, I can not believe the cheek of this man who has done nothing except make negative remarks and try and talk Britain down.

George Osbourne's job is to oppose the government when he thinks they are wrong.

The claim that a shadow chancellor of the exchequer has tried talk Britain down also implies he is partly responsible for the recession.

And describing a recession as a depression is going to hit the markets.

These kind of responses seem to show a panicking government.

George Monbiot's reply to Hazel Blears in the Guardian on Tuesday 10 Feb, which looks in detail at her voting record.

Fake parking tickets cause malware problems in USA

If you have a piece of paper placed on your windscreen asking you to visit a website to "view pictures with information about your parking preferences", tear it up.

Visiting the link will install the Vundo Trojan, which tries to install a fake virus scanner on your computer.

The BBC reports that this happened to car drivers in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

New BBC weather map launched

If you want to find out more about the weather expected in the next fortnight, the BBC has launched a new weather website in beta.

Richard Chapman explains on the Editors Blog that information is now organised by location rather than by data type, while it has been widened to improve navigation..

The site also has a nice light blue colour and has a video.

I see that there is more snow forecast in London on Friday, meaning getting up by 6pm in case the Central Line is closed.

On Monday, all the London buses were taken off the road and most Underground lines were part suspended.

Kent blogger threatned with legal action over comments on local TV station

Rather disturbing story in Private Eye 1229 about Kent blogger Tony Flaig, who was threatned with legal action by Ten Alps, who make programmes for Kent TV, after he criticsed the local channel's cost and its news values.

As well as a letter from director of communications Jo Phillips accusing him of defamation, he was also told by Kent County Council's director of law and governance Geoff Wild that he had to expect the consequences of "choos[ing]to exercise your right to free speech in the manner that you do..."

Kent TV is a media outlet funded by Kent council tax payers. Mr Flaig has every right to record his views in his excellent blog, linked above.

Will Labour council leader Mike Eddy, who said that he was concerned Kent TV would be a "propaganda machine", also be threatned with legal action?

Tony Flaig says that council leader Paul Carter has sent him "an acknowledgement that indeed I'm entitled to exercise [the right to freedom of speech], but Kent TV are still concerned that his comments do not "distinguish between me criticising Kent TV which is funded by you and I the taxpayer, and third party providers of goods and services." You can see Tony's letter to Paul Carter here.

I urge the good citizens of Kent to vote out all those councillors who failed to support Mr Flaig, and to read his blog regulary. It covers a wide range of interesting local stories, and is now in my Google Reader.

On a side point, is Kent TV having an option marked "dunno" in an online poll really an example to Kent schoolchildren? Will I be sued for that remark?

Election in Israel on 10 February

It may have recieved a low profile compared with the recent snowfall in Britain or the fact that David Milliband and Hilary Clinton had a meeting, wow!, but next week sees a legislative election in Israel.

The elections were brought forward from 2010 because Tzipi Livni failed to form a coalition government after former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned. According to opinion polls, a poor means of predicting elections, the ruling Kadmir party is favourite to win, with the Labor party (sic) in second place.

Unlike with the blanket coverage of the American 2008 election, there won't be much analysis of the results by the media. However, the February 10 election seems to me to be very newsworthy.

Parties standing for Knesset seats include the Likud Party, the Labor Party, the Kadima Party and Yisrael Beiteinu, led by MK Avigdor Lieberman, who Israeli newspaper Harretz has accused of being a far right bigot. There are forty-three to choose from in total, and voting is done by proportional representation.

Times will be tough for the new Israeli Prime Minister. Aside from working out how to bring an end to the Gaza conflict, he will also have to repair Israel's image abroad.

Jean-Moïse Braitberg has written an open letter to the Israeli president asking for his grandfather's name to be removed from the Yad Vashem memorial, dedicated to Jews murdered by the Nazis. Across Britain, students protest the Gaza conflict, while the
Union of Jewish students claims a rise in anti-semitism on campus.

There are many decent people opposed to the deaths in Gaza, but anti-semites are also using the conflict to attack Jews. Look at the demonstrators chanting "We are all Hamas now!"

You can read Alex Stein's thoughts on the Israeli elections here.

I wonder what policies the new Israeli president will put in place. I hope they directly or indirectly lead to fewer rockets fired into Israeli houses and fewer dead civilians in Gaza.

And I hope that Hamas is voted out when the Palestinian elections next occur, and replaced with a party that doesn't try to escalate military conflict.

Police alcohol stings seem of dubious benefit

The Oxford Times reports that two supervisors face prosecution and a shop worker will be fined £80 after youths were sent in by undercover police to try to buy alcohol.

Great. And what has that achieved?

Working in an off-licence can be dangerous, especially around areas like Barton or Wood Farm, some of the roughest parts of Oxford.

Shop workers don't sell children alcohol out of wickedness. They are scared of the teenager returning with six others armed with knives.

Now two people could lose their jobs and a worker in a low paid job will have less money.

What we need is more police to protect shop workers, not people trying to catch them out.

NO4TH campaign against a Labour general election win

A website has been set up to campaign against a Labour general election win.

Although Nick Cohen feels it is almost certain Labour will lose, according to his latest Observer column, I'm not so sure.

The Tories haven't presented much of an alternative to Alistair Darling's plans, apart from the proposed income tax cut.

Some of the comments posted on the site, which simply has a sign=up sheet and information on the campaign, are pretty odd.

For example, some seem to think Gordon Brown is socialist, despite his love of the rotten Private Finance Initiative and his "light touch" financial regulation.

Thomas Howell demanded last week: "PEOPLE! WRITE TO OUR QUEEN AND DEMAND SHE DISSOLVE PARLIAMENT WITH OR WITHOUT BROWN'S KNOWLEDGE! WE WILL SEND A MESSAGE TO OUR POLITICAL ELITE, TORY OR LABOUR, THAT IF THEY WILL NOT GIVE US DEMOCRACY WE WILL TAKE IT!" as if the Queen regulary reads letters from the public angrily demanding that she decides to interfere with democracy.

Alan Douglas, who wrote a reasonable comments about Labour's policies, then posted below "I wrote to you recently to call you a c***. I stand by that view."

I also wonder how much good this site will do. The actual number of people signed up isn't displayed on the front page, so unless you go through all pages it's hard to discover.

Will Gordon Brown consider resigning because he reads "The only good thing about the economic disaster you have brought on the people of this country is that the wheels have fallen off your poxy EU/CommonPurpose/New World Order?"

Will Labour voters be discouraged by Russell saying: "I'd vote for a political party consisting entirely of household shrubbery before I'd vote for the incompetent, ignorant and borderline fascist bunch of retards that currently inhabit the top and middle tiers of the labour party."

I do agree that Gordon Brown is a rotten prime minister, but not for many of the reasons given by NO4TH commentators.

In other news, here are 25 facts about John Prescott as posted by Prescott himself.

It's snow joke: London transport grinds to a halt

How was your journey into work/school this morning? If you live in London like me, it was probably pretty terrible.

Despite setting off an hour earlier, it took me forty minutes to get to Liverpool Street, and there were problems with the doors closing at every station. Most of the Underground above surface was closed.

No London buses were running, due to the failure of local councils to grit the roads, and there were few cars on the A12 this morning.

Getting into King's Cross, I managed to take a photograph of a mutant snowman/car near where we had our ISEAL staff meeting.














What surprises me is how well the rest of Britain coped. In Oxford, the dismal local bus service was running properly, and buses from Oxford to London and Oxford to Heathrow were also fine, though Oxford to Gatwick buses were suspended.

In London, however, most people took the day off or stood around moaning about the public transport.

The Central London Congestion Charge was suspended today, as was the London Overground Willesden to Clapham Junction service and the Croyden Tramlink.

At the time of blogging, the Circle line is suspended, while the Bakerloo, District, Jubilee, Hammersmith, Metropolitan and Picadilly lines are part suspended.

Most buses are disrupted, and driving is still dangerous given the icy roads.

There will be some snow tommorow, and on Thursday, Friday and probably Sunday.

It was nice to see children running around throwing snowballs, and snowmen popping up all over London.

Update to Google Earth and Google News for Singapore launced

Google has launched Google Ocean, an update to Google Earth which allows users to browse the ocean floor, as well as obtain information from leading scientists, researchers, and ocean explorers.

The corporation has also released Google News for Singapore and a new help section for Google News.

Frost/Nixon: A Review

I saw the acclaimed Frost/Nixon last night with a friend at the South Woodford Odeon.

The film, for those unaware, tells the story of an interview between television presenter David Frost and former United States President Richard Nixon, soon after the former resigned from office.

Although Nixon and his advisors are initally able to fob Frost off with soft answers to his questions, leading those working with Frost on the project to question his actions, eventually Frost and his co-worker James Reston, Jr.

I was initally wary of seeing the film - I would have preferred more of a docudrama, but I feel that Frost/Nixon didn't present their film as the unvarnished events, although as mentioned below some critics feel the film rewrote history.

Frank Langella seemed much more charming than the actual Nixon, a man who always came across as angry on period footage...and as more human than many world leaders, with all the negative and positive connotations that word commands.

Langella's Richard Nixon is a smooth operator up until Frost's revelations. By the end, he has recovered some of his charm.

However, the real Richard Nixon's warts-and-all actions make him garner sympathy.

Frank Langella's Nixon is much less understandable.

Michael Sheen is a charming if slightly cheesy David Frost, who often seems out of his depth and tries to smile his way through tricky situations.

He doesn't seem much like the Al-Jazeera presenter, regulary referenced on the dire Dead Ringers, that we know and love today.

The film also fails to mention Frost's presentation of That Was The Week That Was.

The only downside of the film was the use of pretend interviews throughout, especially the first twenty minuites, which broke up the action and were incredibly tedious.

Most of them, aside from James Reston, Jr's remarks about the power of televison, were superflous.

Aside from that quibble, the film had me hooked. The excellent period footage at the beginning caused hairs to rise on my neck, and I never got bored once.

Frost/Nixon is also funny, with Nixon having some great lines about his greed, and Frost's Australian antics come in for some gentle jokes.

The interview itself is gripping, and the film maintains a steady pace.

Criticism of the film's accuracy:

I would be being partisan if I did not mention that some have criticsed the film's historical accuracy.

Elizabeth Drew of the Huffington Post accuses the film of omitting that Nixon was set to recieve twenty per cent of the profits, as well as making up the confession that Nixon gave to Frost.

These are serious charges, and Frost/Nixon should not be seen as a definitive account of the interview (which should be on Youtube and was recently given away with the Independent newspaper), nor does it claim to be.

Many people in the South Woodford Odeon last night were old enough to remember the Watergate scandel and the other murky deeds Nixon took part in, including his wiretapping of John F Kennedy, Edmund S. Muskie, and Hubert Humphrey, and his use of government departments to harass opponents.

As for those like me who grew up after the Seventies, I would urge you not to look at Frost/Nixon as historial fact, rather as a piece of entertainment based on fact.

Watch the original interviews, read Bob Woodward's All The President's Men and research that fascinating period in American history.

Many people try to play down the Nixon years, notabally people who say "Bush/Reagan was worse."

Well, many of those people only focus on Watergate, and not Nixon's other misdeeds. They also fail to see them in context. They may not shock us now, but they horrified people then.

I strongly recommend Frost/Nixon: but I also strongly recommend you to bear in mind that this is not a wholly accurate portrayel of events.

Harry's Place on 100 years of the state pension

An interesting article by Mira on Harry's Place about the one hundredth anniversary of the state pension, as well as the threats to the state pension today.

I have to wonder if the two commentators on the post who seem to want all unemployed people to march through the snow begging for jobs have acutally worked in a low paid retail job - I have, and it's pretty unpleasent.

More likely, Patrick G and ChrisC work in cushy office blocks with high salaries, two cars in the drive and a nice semi in the suburbs.

They should read Polly Toynbee's Hard Work and consider what life is like for low paid workers.

The BBC have also covered the anniversary.