If you're voting tomorrow...

... something to think about.

Cash for castellations

I think the thing that has tickled me most in the MPs' expenses scandal has been learning the vast array of things one can go through life spending money on. Oh, how my horizons have been broadened. I guess if I'd given the matter some thought, it would have occurred to me that if one has a moat, one needs to pay someone to clean it. But the existence of duck houses shaped like mansions was a bit of a surprise. My absolute favourite, though, has to be the monogrammed well grate. Who knew?

In other news, did anyone else get the apology/vote for us letter from Gordon Brown? Any idea why he got one of his kids to sign it on his behalf using a Berol Fine pen?

Ginger is feeling hopeful

Thank you America.

Ah, Boris.

Boris, Boris, Boris. Do try to do your homework first. Or else you'll only go around saying that documents don't exist when they do, and you had access to them, if only you'd noticed.

Also, statements such as

"these are going to be the most wonderful Olympics in history, since 753BC or
whenever it was that they kicked off".

sound rather less endearing in print, and rather more idiotic. This is why I was happy to see you on political comedy shows, and not running my city.

A Political Twist

Well, quite an eventful couple of days in UK politics. Firstly, the Government narrowly wins a vote to increase the number of days terror suspects can be imprisoned without charge, partly thanks to what some regard as Brown almost bribing DUP members to back him. That a political leader in trouble should go to such lengths to secure a successful vote it perhaps not surprising.

But what happened today was. David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, resigned not just from the shadow cabinet, but as an MP, in order to protest against the result, and to trigger a by-election on the issue. It's a move that is being hailed as 'unprecedented' in UK politics, and seems to be as much a shock for his party and leader as it has been for the government and the media.

Personally, although my voting habits are firmly to the left (which does not necessarily mean Labour these days), I've got to applaud Mr Davis for taking such a stand. His actions, alongside those Labour cabinet ministers who were willing to resign their posts over the Hybrid Embryo vote, demonstrate that successful politicians don't necessarily lack integrity. He has an awful lot to lose - even if he wins back his seat there will be no guarantee that he'll be warmly welcomed back - there is some suggestion that this is likely to seriously displease David Cameron for bringing into turmoil what has been a recent increase in the popularity of his party. But sometimes you've just got to take that kind of risk if you really care about something.

It'll be the first time in my life I'll be willing a Tory candidate to win an election!

Deep breaths

Okay, getting over the initial shock (which wasn't a total shock really, based on the wisps of info that have been emerging through the day), here are some thoughts about the results in general:

• Deeply frustrated at the outcome, but had been bracing myself for it for a couple of days now. Still, finding it hard to work out what 1.17m people think he has to offer them for the next four years.
• Will be interested to see what proportion of second preference votes Brian Paddick got. I wouldn't be surprised if it was bigger than his first preference proportion.
• Delighted that Sian Berry got so many votes. I'm hoping that the Greens get at least a couple of seats in the assembly. She was a really decent outside candidate, and I hope she gets to have some role in the London Assembly.
• Really worried that the BNP managed to come fifth, with quite a chunk of votes. Desperately hoping they don't get any assembly seats.
• Still not convinced of the value of independent candidates standing for this kind of election. I've only just got around to finding out who Winston McKenzie is. Seems to be a serial electioneer, having been associated with a marvellously contradictory range of parties.
• Disappointed that the BBC cut the coverage just as Sian was starting her speech, but I guess if they'd broadcast her, then they'd have had to broadcast some other people who should probably not get air time.
• Intrigued by the heavy thanking of the Police early in the speeches of the three main candidates. Was there trouble anticipated?
• Wondering how much the rest of the UK are laughing at us right now.
• I've never been an Evening Standard reader, and I'm certainly not going to start now.

*sigh*

And the winner is...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I may have to go into exile for the next four years :'(

Please Spare Us

I'm really really worried Boris Johnson will become Mayor of London. I dread to think what he will do to my beatiful city if he's elected. Please watch this and vote for anyone but him or the BNP, if you're eligible to do so.

Now add a dash of socialism...

I'm quite a keen baker, and I've had various positive comments in return for cakes, the highest of which being anything that suggests I'm nearly as good as my mother. But I heard the strangest ever baking-related comment today.

Recently I spent a weekend visiting a friend who'd moved away. On the Saturday she'd invited people round for dinner, so while she prepared that I volunteered to make a chocolate espresso cake for dessert. (Note: Cadbury's Dream is not a good substitute for white chocolate and does not melt well in a microwave. The burning smell did clear fairly quickly though...)

Anyway, to the point - there was plenty left over so on the Monday my friend took the remains in to her workplace to offer to her colleagues. Which prompted the following conversation:

Colleague: Is this one of those do-gooder cakes?
Friend: Eh?
Colleague: One of those do-gooder, fair trade, ethical thingies.
Friend: Well, the coffee is fair trade...

What on earth is a 'do-gooder' cake? How can you tell from the taste whether the ingredients are fair trade or not? And who in their right mind gets snooty about ingredients when someone is waving free chocolate cake under their nose?

I dunno - perhaps I stirred in a sprinkling of my leftie politics when I made it. Or maybe wrapping it in a copy of Populorum Progressio was a bit of a giveaway...

Brother Anthony

Deary me, I've been a useless blogger of late.

Anyway - my initial knee-jerk thoughts on Tony Blair becoming a Catholic:

• Weren't we good enough for him when he was PM?
• Is he going to do a U-turn on various issues that rather set him against the RC church's teachings?
• Why is he so special that he was received now? It's traditional for new members to be received, publicly, at Easter. Or...
• ...is this a ploy orchestrated by Alistair Campbell in an attempt to upstage Jesus? ;-)

Sorry, I'm not being very charitable am I? Will try harder.

Blood on our labcoats

It always sucks when you discover an organisation you're associated with is not quite what it seems. Particularly if the hidden side isn't one of which you approve.

I strongly feel that universities should be apolitical institutions with respect to their governance. Not that students and academics within them shouldn't argue for or against various political concepts and ideals - rather that the institutions themselves are free from the sway and trends of politics, as might be imposed on their operation.

Working from within that framework, I find it both disappointing and disturbing to discover just how many UK universities have shares in arms companies. What place does arms dealing have in what is supposed to be a climate of academic thought, learning and research? It's somewhat disconcerting to realise that the tuition I sought to try to make a positive contribution to society was indirectly supported by an industry whose products maim and kill. 'Disconcerting' is probably not the word to describe the sensation experienced by those on the receiving end of such 'products'.

It gets worse (and more bizarre). Reed Elsevier, a major force in scientific journal publishing, also run arms fairs such as DSEI, which attracted protest today. I cannot begin to fathom what kind of board meeting resulted in that decision:

"Right, ladies and gentlemen, we need to do something to increase our revenue. Any ideas?"
"How about we become pioneers in Open Access publishing, thus benefiting the academic community and perhaps society as a whole?"
"No, not profitable enough. Any other thoughts?
"Well, we could run arms fairs and invite military from around the world to come shopping?"
"Excellent idea!"

As it happens, Reed Elsevier have decided to sell off this enterprise at the end of the year due to criticism from a number of sources. I'm glad of this, as boycotting KitKats because Nestle are evil bastards is one thing, but trying to avoid Reed Elsevier's publications whilst simultaneously trying to make a reasonable stab at this 'cancer research thing' is rather more problematic. It's a strange old world where civilian war casualties are somehow linked to cancer patients in peaceful nation states, but such is the complex web that underpins commercial enterprise. Whatever my purist ideals about working in academia and not industry, I'm becoming increasingly aware of my need to get to grips with commerce and economics if I want to try to live an ethical life.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Some wonderful bits in this week's Now Show on Radio 4 regarding the attempted terrorists attacks:

SP: Well, we all had a lucky escape this week as Britain was saved from two terrorist attacks by the fact... that it's Britain. First, two would-be bombers failed to remember when attacking Glasgow Airport that it would be full of Glaswegians. People who would have no problem repeated punching a man in the face even while he was on fire.

'Glaswegian': Smoking in a public place, eh? Take that, pal.

SP: And in London, one car bomb was only discovered because a drunk clubber fell down some stairs, while a second car bomb was towed away by traffic wardens for being illegally parked. The situation couldn't be more British if Michael Caine was standing outside Glasgow Airport, shouting: 'You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!'

---

SP: Amidst all the fear and panic, what these events showed, I think, is the advantages of taking global warming a bit more seriously. If we switch to a low carbon economy it would greatly help the fight against terror.

'Journalist': I'm here outside Glasgow Airport where, at 3.13, two terrorists attempted to ram the terminal entrance in an electric G-Wizz town car. Witnesses say the two-seater approached the terminal at speeds of up to 28 miles per hour, and smashed up against the revolving doors to the building, only to find that the door had a more powerful motor than the G-Wizz, and the car was soon trapped. One of the men then strapped several solar panels to himself and waited to catch fire...

---

JH: There was a lot of speculation, of course, as to whether the recent wave of failed car bomb attacks were the work of Al-Qaeda. The general consensus is that it was, but to be honest I'm not so sure. Think about the location of the first one: a nightclub called Tiger Tiger. I don't think it was Al-Qaeda. I'm pretty sure it was the work of William Blake fanatics. "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright"? We are dealing with fundamentalist poets.

'Terrorist': It is our goal to bring down a reign of iambic pentameter on anyone who does not appreciate the work of the romantics or the poets of the Renaissance. It is time to get metaphysical. We are the poetry terrorists. Who do you think has been planting those 'Poems on the Underground'? That's right - those nice posters are ours. Death to the limerick! Wordsworth be praised!

JH: They're dangerous, of course, but they're not as bad as the 'suicide poets'. They go to training camps in Japan to learn how to commit haiku.

Well, you've got to see the funny side, haven't you?

Reflections on Prominent Public Figures

Quite a few high-profile figures in the news in the last couple of days. How they have presented themselves has lead me to conclude the following:

• If you are a new PM having to make your first emergency address to the nation, and your predecessor was known for being media savvy, at the very least you could straighten your suit, stand up straight, and perhaps work on how you talk head-on to camera.
• If you are a member of the royal family, you probably shouldn't clap along to music as you just look daft and your timing is invariably out.
• Goodness knows how many thousands of pounds of private education and military training seem not to have rendered certain individuals capable of public speaking without consulting cue cards every five seconds.

Just my two pence worth, anyway.

More thoughts on the bombs

Ok, I know the revelation that there was, in fact, a second car bomb found today should make me feel a greater sense of gravity about this situation. But I couldn't help having an incredulous chuckle when I read this:

The second device was found in a blue 280E model Mercedes. It was given a parking ticket at 0230 BST on Friday after being found illegally parked in Cockspur Street. The vehicle was then towed to the Park Lane car pound about an hour later.

Traffic wardens are often accused of being over-zealous, but this has to take the biscuit for excess bureaucracy.

In all seriousness, though, the fact that the second car was originally in Cockspur Street makes me feel more convinced that the destination of the first car was Whitehall. Cockspur Street is the home of DCMS. Whitehall is the home of many more Government departments. It seems widely accepted that the timing of this just after the changeover of power and the formation of a new Cabinet is no coincidence. Whether the intention was structural damage, or loss of life, I really couldn't guess. I wouldn't even be surprised if it turned out that behind all of this was not an organisation, but an individual with a grudge.

Ah well. At least it's Saturday tomorrow.

Ginger's Guide to Commuting in the Midst of a Terror Alert

1. Discover that an area of central London is closed off due to the discovery off a bomb.
2. Realise that this will cause chaos for the part of your journey that involves the tube or a bus.
3. Look out the window. Note that it's bucketing down. Rule out walking.
4. Think, 'Sod it', and go back to bed until the rush hour and rain are over.
5. Proceed with journey as normal, experiencing no difficulties at all.

Glad to see I'm not the only Londoner feeling fairly unconcerned about things.* You have to just get on with it really. Otherwise 'they' will have won. Whoever 'they' are.

For what it's worth, I reckon that Haymarket wasn't the intended target. I mean, I once had a not very nice evening in Tiger Tiger, but I don't think it's bad enough to be detonated. I personally reckon the car was headed for somewhere more prominent (Westminster?) but that the bomb started to malfunction (reports say the car was found filled with vapour) and the driver got scared, dumped the car and ran. We shall see.

Ginger

*If anything I'm more upset by the news that, when I documented my failed attempt to visit Fopp last week, it seems more was afoot than mere stocktaking. The chain has closed permanently. :-(

How many eejits does it take to run a council?

Parking Meter
Originally uploaded by adambowie

Quite a few, in the case of Westminster, it would seem.

Whilst the media focus was on other aspects of politics in the area, the council were busy being generally daft. They've come up with a wonderful (*ahem*) new idea for replacing parking meters. Instead of putting coins in a machine next to the parking space, you phone up a number, enter your credit card details, and a code for the area that you're parked in.

Aside from the bleedin' obvious issues of 'what if you don't have a mobile phone?' and 'what if you don't have a credit card?', there is just so much wrong with this idea. What if the number's constantly busy? What if the system that's supposed to update the attendants' hand held computers crashes? (Do you really think motorists will be given the benefit of the doubt?) The article says that for those without mobiles can use a pay and display system nearby, but a TV news report I saw said that this would also be card based. Never mind the fact that it's not especially difficult to use an intercepting device to obtain information from mobile phone calls, and thus obtain someone's card details. I must say, it takes quite a lot of skill to devise a scheme so thoroughly riddled with problems.

Oh, and I also found out that a friend who organised a charity concert at St John's, Smith Square, has had £250 deducted from the proceeds by the very same council, on the grounds that they were 15 minutes past the end of the license when they were packing away equipment. Niiiiice.


PS. I must say, I am amazed at just how many photos of parking meters there are on Flickr's Creative Commons site!

If you were Tony Blair...

... wouldn't you have been tempted to stand up at the beginning of PMQ's and say, 'Actually, Gordon, I think I've changed my mind..."?

Glad to see Cherie being as gracious as ever. Honestly. Is she really a QC?

"I know what you're like, Pestilence - you're always pulling stupid faces in photos"

"G8, keep your word; all our voices must be heard..."

So went the cry when I spent around 45 minutes last Saturday on the banks of the Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament, helping to make a racket. The purpose? To give Tony Blair and the other G8 leaders a 'wake up call' prior to this year's summit, to remind them of the promises they made on debt, trade and aid 2 years ago.

Why bother dragging all that up again? Didn't 'Make Poverty History' and Live 8 sort all that stuff out? Well, no, not entirely. Most of what was promised has yet to be achieved.

During those 45 minutes, if the statistics are correct, 156 children will have died from drinking dirty water. 45 women will have died in childbirth (most in circumstances easily preventable). 1.2 billion people are surviving on less that one dollar a day.

These things take time, of course. But without public pressure, is there a risk that the issues get sidelined? Looking around, it was quite depressing to notice the chronology of campaigning. The instruction was to wear white, so I turned up in my Make Trade Fair T shirt. I blended in quite well with those wearing Make Poverty History T shirts, or Drop the Debt or Jubilee 2000 T shirts. Successive campaigns that have yet to fully achieve their aims for social justice. Maybe this time?

On a lighter note, people-watching provided a fair amount of interest. We were 'entertained' by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, whose antics gave rise to one of the more amusing overhearings I've ever had (see title). Later, when I was leaning on the river wall, 'Death' sidled up to me and, in a voice creepily reminiscent of Alan Rickman's Snape, said, "Would you like to sit on the wall? You'd get a much better view. I could help you up there".

I declined.