So, let me get this straight. After an increasing loss of confidence amongst the parliamentary party (though not the members in the country), your leader submitted himself for re-election. Then one of your potential leaders, and the internal affairs spokey, is the subject of a Murdoch tabloid sting and feels he has to resign. Meanwhile, the other opposition party is spouting a lot of touchy-feely guff, but without any concrete policies to back them up.

So, Liberal Democrats, how does it feel to be a grown-up political party?

Yes, Mark Oaten, the winner of Question Muck barely ten days ago, is no longer a candidate for the party's leadership. Indeed, he's no longer the party's internal affairs minister. The reason? Rupert Murdoch's tabloid organ has found out that he's been seeing male prostitutes.

Now, I'm tempted to ask what's the actual offence here, what's the resigning matter. Last week, the Labour party put forward proposals to liberalise the laws on prostitution. Surely this week-end's news makes Mr Oaten better placed to speak on this matter, for he is speaking from experience.

That he's speaking from experience would surely taint his objectivity. But do we need politicians to be objective? Labour doesn't think so - why else would it have closed the assisted places scheme, imposed an undemocratic electoral system, or attempted to ban hunting with hounds. None of those measures were clearly objectively right, none of them enjoyed a clear mandate from the country as a whole, but all stemmed from Labour's traditional class warfare. We need someone else with the courage of their convictions to put an opposing view.

If Mr Oaten wishes to resign, then that is a matter for him. I wish him well, and hope he makes a swift return to front-line politics.

More: Max Hastings has something intelligent to say on the matter, and that becomes a personal best...

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posted 23 Jan 2006, 19.29 +0000

I hear that Google is telling some people from one of the competing provincial governments to go away. If we're to believe the hype, this is a principled stand from a company that believes in its own wonderfulness.

Nonsense, says this critic. I've been increasingly worried that Google's data retention policy will come back to haunt us. Google's retention policy is very simple - it keeps everything forever. Now, the representatives of the Corporatist faction are demanding that Google exploit their database so that the Corporatists can look good. I should note that Google's refusal is couched in terms of the effect they claim it would have on their business, and not the effect it would clearly have on the privacy expectations of their customers.

The point is not so much over the merit of Google's decision to refuse, or of Yahoo and MSN to give the information. The point is that all these search behemoths have such a massive collection of information in the first place. Why do they need it? Why are we glibly handing over details about our interests to these faceless, nameless people?

There are anonymous proxies - in the absence of any other, I continue to recommend the yahoogle engine provided by Scroogle.

Your privacy has value. Here today, gone tomorrow search companies may not. Those who cannot respect the fundamentals of democracy, or playing by the rules they wrote, certainly do not.

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posted 23 Jan 2006, 19.35 +0000

More on the government's plans to introduce identity cards by stealth a passport validation service. Still, the Lords have inflicted defeat four, keeping the cards voluntary.

So a man walks into this car dealership, right, and says, "Sell me a lemon." And, lo, the dealer did sell him a lemon. Three years on, said man posts a long rant about the whiff of citric acid eminating from his car, and solicits donations to buy a less tangy replacement. One that doesn't have pips for seats, or a strange green woody bit at the front. I'd be more impressed if he were going to buy a rail ticket.

I see that public transport use in the West Midlands is up again. I also notice that there was no train service in the region yesterday, because operator Central Trains was unable to find enough drivers to work. It's the second time Central has defaulted on its franchise obligations in little more than a month. Surely these two facts are mutually incompatible.

More change at the Home Service, where they'll now be opting out of the World Service at 5.20am, for an extended shipping forecast, followed by a 13-minute news bulletin. There's a prayer at 5.43, and farming news at 5.45. Currently, the service opens with the Radio Theme, a medley of folk tunes from across the nation, with the shipping forecast at 5.35, and no news until 6. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with the format until 1998, when the World Service continued until 5.45, and there was time for the theme and the shipping before a ten-minute bulletin at 6. Farming news at 6.10 and prayers at 6.25 led to a Today programme of sensible length.

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posted 23 Jan 2006, 20.21 +0000

The results from the Canadian election:

Con 124
Lib 103
BQ 51
NDP 29
Ind 1

(C total includes Parry Sound-Muskoka ON, where a recount is probable, based on a C majority of 21 votes.)

The main change came in Quebec, where the Bloc lost three seats, and the Liberals eight. Independent Andre Arthur won in Portneuf-Jacques Cartier, but the Conservatives picked up the other ten ridings to change hands. In the Montreal area, three cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister, were amongst seven defeated Liberals. The Conservatives also made breakthroughs in the far east and far west of the province. Ten gains here is beyond the Tories' wildest dreams, and perhaps shows that they can yet function as a national party. It also suggests that the people of Quebec are not hankering for another seperation referendum.

Ontario saw 21 Liberals defeated, sixteen to the Conservatives and five to the NDP. The Toronto metropolitan area remained staunchly Liberal, the party retained 53 of the 63 ridings. Outside of Hogtown, voters swung massively towards the Conservatives, with all the net Tory gains coming in these rural parts.

The Conservatives didn't make any significant breakthrough in the Atlantic provinces, winning only Avalon (NL) and Tobique-Mactaquac (NB), two seats that they might have regarded as home territory in the early 90s.

The Prairies provinces turned from deep blue to even deeper blue, with the Conservatives picking up all but eight seats in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Alberta is now entirely represented by the Blues, though the Liberals gained the northern Saskatchewan seat of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River by just 110 votes. The same margin in Winnipeg South saw the riding go to the Conservatives; Churchill in northern Manitoba was another Liberal gain.

British Columbia was interesting; many three-way votes saw the NDP emerge on top in ten seats, a net gain of five from the Conservatives. The Tories remained popular outside the Vancouver-Victoria area, but Liberals (who had a net gain of one) and the NDP profited from the heavily split vote in the urban areas.

The sitting Liberal member for the North West Territory was defeated by the NDP candidate. The last result in came from Nunavut, where the sitting Liberal just beat her Conservative opponent.

Analysis is called for

Now, what can we conclude from this result? I think the main message is that, even given their strength in Quebec, the Conservatives have failed to break out of their western heartland, and have hardly profited from the general disenchantment with the Liberals. The Tories won back ridings that had (at least until 1993) appeared to be natural territory, but didn't make any significant breakthrough in BC or Ontario.

The NDP has a chance to establish itself as a harrying party of the left, but must be on the guard against Liberals stealing their policies. With the resignation of Paul Martin, the Liberals have a chance to re-invent themselves and put the whole sordid sponsorship matter behind them. Let's hope they have a David Cameron figure amongst their ranks.

And with such a narrow minority - over 30 seats short of victory, and behind the combined Liberal-NDP weight - the Conservatives will have to moderate their platform. Same-sex marriage may yet be the subject of a free vote, but I see no way that it will suddenly cease. The cut in the GST may go though, but some of the other spending reductions will not.

And I think we're going to be doing it all again, probably around Thanksgiving 2007. And we're going to be doing it all again every eighteen months or so until the Liberals and NDP merge; or the Liberals start to re-capture seats in the Prairies; or the BQ and Conservatives merge; or the Bloc Quebecois ceases to be a strong force in the province; or the Conservatives make headway in the east and west. I think these are in ascending order of probability, but only time will tell.

A couple of human interest stories - Michael Ignatieff, the culture critic, has been elected; so has Olivia Chow, wife of NDP leader Jack Layton. We're not able to come up with any other party leader whose spouse is also in parliament.

Lest we forget, the Canadian election count was just about completed in six hours, and polls across much of the country remained open for the first half of that timeframe. The UK, which brings all the votes to one central counting hall, generally takes the best part of a day to complete its count. The southern provinces that reject the rule of Ottawa are still in the stone age, typically taking ten days to complete their count. That's something like forty times longer than their friends in the north.

Finally, a big yah-boo-sucks to all the Canadian media outlets, for not providing a simple list of Gains And Losses. It wouldn't be difficult to tabulate the thirty-odd seats lost by one party and won by another, so how come no-one's done it? As such, I won't be updating the Swingometer for a night or two.

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posted 24 Jan 2006, 19.37 +0000

BUGS bans the Evangelical Christian Union from its premises. As ever, the story (which has also made the Universal Daily Registertab) doesn't quite live up to the billing.

The ECU, like all religious groups - indeed, like all student interest groups, religious or otherwise - is subject to the Guild's rules for funding. The current rules (PDF link) came into being at some point in the late 1990s, after my time there, but before anyone I know was there. In effect, the ECU is looking for approval to restrict membership (clause 5.3) to those professing the Christian faith as the ECU understands it (clause 5 of the ECU's proposed constitution (another PDF link), referring back to clause 3.) This is allowed, but only on approval by the Guild's Council.

Following a spirited debate in December (PDF link, page 3), there's a motion before to-morrow's Guild Council (yep, PDF link) to allow recognition of the ECU. Still with me? Good.

Now, what has all this got to do with to-day's press stories? Well, when is Guild Council meeting? To-morrow. The motion before Council requires an absolute majority. I think it's fair to say that the meeting won't give an absolute majority, because abstentions and absences will be counted as No-votes.

This is, quite clearly, the evangelical wing getting its retaliation in first. As the current Guild President, Richard Angell, points out, the other fifteen faith groups have no problem meeting these requirements. Yet the evangelical christians aren't prepared to be bound by the democratic decision of their fellow students.

Regrettably, it looks as if m'learned friends Mr and Mrs Lawyer are going to become involved. I'm happy to stump up something for the Guild's defence. And remember that none of this would have happened under the halcyon days of Charlotte Harris and Alison Griffin.

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posted 25 Jan 2006, 22.10 +0000

Last week, I put up the Big Canadian Election Swing Chart. Here's the version with the results added.

We can see that the Conservatives took most of the Liberal-held seats on their target list (below the black line in the first column), but managed to lose some of their relatively safe seats further up. The Liberal challenge in Quebec completely fizzled out, with the Bloc taking the three Liberal marginals. The Conservatives were so far out that I didn't list them on the chart. The NDP lost a couple of seats it might have held on to, but picked up many more Liberal-held ones. However, the NDP lost four of its own marginals to the Conservatives, including one where the Liberals came up from third.

In short, there was no national pattern to the results. In effect, there were four contests - in Atlantic Canada, Montreal, and urban Ontario, Conservatives versus Liberals or NDP; in rural Ontario and the prairie provinces, Conservative hegemony; in British Columbia and the Arctic, Conservative versus Liberal versus NDP; and in Quebec outside Montreal, Bloc versus Conservative. If they're to seriously challenge for an overall majority, the Conservatives would need to make inroads into one or more of the three remaining regions. Quebec appears to hold the key.

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posted 27 Jan 2006, 14.53 +0000

At this point, I would like to write about Newsbump, a UK-based news aggregator that lets its users rate the most important news stories.

Much as I would like to, a review is impossible. Here's the first thing the site displays: "I'm sorry, but you need a Javascript enabled browser to use this website. Your browser doesn't seem to support Javascript. You can download a free browser that does here [link to Firefox]. Please come back when you have a browser that supports Javascript."

Umm, no. Javascript is insecure and really should not be used for the core functionality of a site. Your site does not *need* Javascript in order to work. It is possible to build a server-side architecture that operates entirely through HTML links and forms. The only reason you need Javascript is because you are lazy.

Next!

The new Popjustice. Almost as good as the old Popjustice, but with a fatal flaw. They've closed the old discussion boards, and are forcing all the users to re-register for the new ones. But the new registration form ... it relies on Javascript. As any fool knows, it is possible to build an HTML form entirely in, well, HTML. Why Popjustice insists on using the less secure Javascript method is completely beyond me. One thing seems to be certain, my days on the PJ board are over, effective last Sunday.

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posted 28 Jan 2006, 16.40 +0000

More links, and a brief round-up of the week's news.

Pay as you pollute - a serious proposal for a Carbon Card, allowing individuals to trade allowances to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Could this be used to top-up welfare payments?

Further to last week's objections to Zoë Salmon, the editor of Blue Peter has written with his response. The phrase "Richard, you can say what you like, she's still crap. Thank goodness Geth, Matt, and Konnie can hold the show together around the walking disaster area."

One from the department of not very big and not very clever.

Scientific breakthrough of the week. Want to know the value of π but all you've got is a Scrabble set? It's easy ... or should that be e-asy. Use the twelve letter "e"s as follows:
(((e+(e+e))/((e+e)-(((e/((e*e)-e))^e)/e)))^e)
And that, my friends, is as near as you're going to get to π.

Regular readers will know that we have very few good words to say about Google. The search behemoth entered into the market of Red China this week, and kow-towed to the repressive regime there, filtering out results that the murderers find "objectionable." Though Google will tell people that their results have been filtered, this is nothing more than an attempt to build up market share and hope for a more profitable regime later.

But we've worked out the main problem with Google. See point IIe of their corporate code of conduct.

"The people have spoken. The bastards."

Palestine voted in her general election this week, and the election was free and fair. Over three-quarters of the voters made it to the polls, and a sizable majority of them voted for the Hamas party, a group that until recently had been calling for the removal of Israel as a political entity.

So, what's the reaction been to this flowering of democratic honesty and self-determination? Freezing all aid and encouraging revolution. Well, that's the response from the Corporatist shadow government in the mess that is Canada South. The Corporatists - who can't actually claim to win electionss themselves without widespread ballot-rigging and blatant gerrymandering - urge the removal of a legitimately-elected government, purely because it inconveniences them. Is there no end to this imbecility?

This week's Spectator magazine has a cover article about how David Cameron (the shiny new leader of Britain's Conservative party - mmm, smell the aroma of freshly-broken cellophane around him) should not go around trying to be Corporatist Candidate X. It's a very good call - Mr Cameron's party needs to attract the vote of 3500 somebodies like me in order to win Northfield, which in turn is the sort of seat he needs to win to govern. Getting too close to an illegal regime won't exactly inspire confidence in his voters, will it.

Patty Hewitt, who David Cameron wants to stab in the eye (repeatedly) has promised to make NHS check-ups available for all. They'll be offered at birth, at 11, 18, "when people have their first children", and 50. This is a very good idea, and I'm only surprised that it's taken sixty years for the politicos to work out than a gramme of prevention is worth a kilo of cure. One idea that really could work, especially for the people aged around 30 - bring the doctors to people's places of work, and carry out the health checks there. The companies get a pay-off with a more healthy staff, and the staff see some return on the onerous levels of tax they're paying.

In sport, Amelie Mauresmo has finally won her first grand slam title, taking the Australian Open title. It's seven years since she shocked the world by reaching the final, and one of the commentators at last year's Wimbledon was suggesting she was "too nice" to win the big one. It's only thanks to two withdrawals in her last three matches that Mme Mauresmo has won the title, including in to-day's final.

England football coach Sven Goran Eriksson has announced he'll step down after this summer's world cup finals. This is very good news for those of us who piled into him on the BBC's Sportdaq, as he has turned an initial investment of just over £2 million on Monday morning into £10 million this morning. If you're going to get kneecapped, may as well do it in style.

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posted 28 Jan 2006, 19.11 +0000

I've been reading the various Beano annuals recently. The comic is pushing seventy years young, and still a cracking laugh. The Bash Street Kids annual was mostly composed of reprints from the mid 80s, with about twenty pages of new work, including a take on I'm a Celeb. There's a clear artistic difference between the two.

The difference between old and new styles is perhaps more noticeable in the Dennis The Menace book. Again, most of the book is reprints, this time from the early 90s, and they're different from the modern work.

Perhaps the newest work, in this year's Beano Book, is the strongest of all. New characters like Derek the Sheep rub shoulders with established faves like Minnie and Ivy. There's also space for revivals of Billy The Cat (though not Katie) and General Jumbo. I'm not impressed with the artist drawing the Bash St Kids, they're very cartoony and not really in keeping with the strip's tradition. I will note that many of the artwork is now signed, something they seem to have brought in very recently.

Certainly, there was no signed artwork in the 60s, the subject of the 19th (count 'em!) Golden Years book. The text strips weren't being promoted this year, just the strip cartoons. There was a certain camaaderie about the Beano and the Dandy during the decade, with characters popping up in each others' strips with regularity. That would be a function of fewer artists, drawing more strips, and able to bring guests in without troubling anyone else.

In not quite such high culture, I've been listening to the Shostakovitch concerts on The Third Programme. James Ross suggested that we eschew the current celebration of Mozart, and listen to more contemporary composers. That's always a good idea in my book.

Random thought - in the bar sequence of REM's Man in the Moon clip, does Michael Stipe intend to look like Peter "Nick Nick Nick" Docherty?

Radio 4's controller Mark Damazer was on Feedback to discuss the station's theme, and what he'll be commissioning to replace Home Truths. I'd suggest a show of authored radio essays, perhaps on the lines of CBC's Outfront or PRI's This American Life. The strength of Home Truths was the real-life stories it had; the weakness was that no item ran longer than eight to ten minutes, not long enough to develop a theme fully. Would this show be right for 9am Saturday? Perhaps not - maybe shift Getaway and the 10.30 documentary back to 9, and run %radio essays% from 10. Of course, this throws up a problem of the Monday repeat - when Parliament is sitting, the show has to be cut in half. But could we repeat it elsewhere in the week? This is Mr Damazer's dilemma.

Finally, two quick links. Why haven't you read The Da Vinci Code asks the book's publisher. Er, because my focus group reckons it's a pile of horse manure? And a review of Katie Melua - inspired by nothing more than a ham sandwich and a cold cup of tea.

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posted 29 Jan 2006, 19.20 +0000

This week's pick of the commentators is Jessica Poptastic on the closed minds of Audioscrobblers everywhere. "It's all country tunes and rock music" opines the leading popstrel, correctly pointing out that just two of a recent Top 100 were female-fronted acts - and one of those was the Black Eyed Pees.

All change in most of the major singles markets. Mattafix take over at the top of the German pops, while France sees Star Academy graduates take two of the top three positions. Amine did well in last year's edition, and J'voulais is the new best-seller. Natasha St-Pier won the contest a few years ago (and there have been so many contests that I forget exactly when), her new single Un ange frappe a ma porte lands in third place. The theme tune to Dora, l'exploratrice is also in the top ten. Hmmm.....

 20 17 Kent - The hjarta and smarta ep
 19 20 Depeche Mode - Precious
*18 19 Bert Bills - Advertising space
*17 NE Depeche Mode - A pain that I'm used to
 16 15 Melanie C - First day of my life
*15 NE Franz Ferdinand - Walk away
 14 re Bob Sinclar - Love generation
*13 18 Juanes - La camisa negra
 12  8 Black Eyed Peas - My humps
*11 12 James Blunt - Goodbye my lover
 10 11 DHT - Listen to your heart
  9  4 Mattafix - Big city life
* 8 NE Arctic Monkeys - When the sun goes down
  7  7 James Blunt - Ubiquitous
  6  6 Coldplay - Talk
  5  3 Sugababes - Push the button
  4  2 Sugababes - Ugly
* 3 10 Tina Arena - Aimer jusqu'a l'impossible
* 2  5 Kelly Clarkson - Because of you
* 1  1 Madonna - Hung up

In the UK, the Notorious BIG has his first number one, as Nasty girl inches past the Arctic Monkeys by a gnat's crotchet. Beyonce and Hi-tack also climb to new peaks, and I don't think we've had three climbers in the top four since 1995. The fastest climber is the Ordinary Bores' Bores will be bores, which rebounds from 30 to 9 on the back of one of them appearing in Bore Brother recently. Highest new entry honours, therefore, go to A-ha - Analogue is their first top ten single since their 1980s heyday, and isn't even the best track on the album. Farrel Williams and Young Cheesy enter in the top 20, and Starsailor's rather wonderful This time can only make number 24. You get what you give is back in the chart, originally a number 5 hit for the New Radicals in 1999, it's now suffered a cheesy dance cover from LMC. The original is still the best. Duh. With fastest climbers and A-ha, it feels like a chart from the 80s, and that feeling is compounded by the presence of a record climbing into the top 40. Sugar we're going down was soft-released late last year for Fall Out Boy, and they've climbed from the mid-100s up to position 37 this week. Though the occasional record has moved up into the 40 before now, I don't recall one enjoying such organic growth since Shaggy's Oh Carolina climbed to the top in the first quarter of 1993.

The reason why the Arctic Monkeys don't have the number one single - they have the fastest-selling album of all time, ever. Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not sold more than 500,000 copies this week, smashing the record set five years ago by ITV house-band Herasey. Richard Ashcroft's Key to the World would be number one in any other week, but not this one. The love songs of Daniel O'Donnell is a rather scary concept, but not for the people who put it at position 5. The Kooks' Inside In / Inside Out is number 9. The Ordinary Boys, A-ha, and Fall Out Boy all make their top 30 entries, as does great white hope Clap Your Hands Say Yea.

Here's the good stuff on the singles listing:

 2  1 Arctic Monkeys - When the sun goes down
10 NE A-ha - Analogue
17 16 Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeats
20 20 Sugababes - Ugly
21 21 DHT - Listen to your heart
22 23 Arctic Monkeys
- I bet you look good on the dancefloor
24 NE Starsailor - This time
25 22 Kelly Clarkson - Because of you
29 10 Son of Dork - Eddie's song
32 24 Editors - Munich
33 13 Belle and Sebastian - Funny little frog
37 43 Fall Out Boy - Sugar we're going down
38 33 Boys Aloud - I predicate a riot
39 28 Kooks - You don't love me
45 37 Sugababes - Push the button
53 NE Moby - Slipping away
56 NE Alex Parks - Honesty
63 56 Kelly Clarkson - Since you've been gone
67 31 Test Icicles - What's your damage

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posted 29 Jan 2006, 19.20 +0000

A cold and settled week, though calm winds ensured it wasn't too cold.

23 Mo sun                 -2/ 3
24 Tu cloud to sun         1/ 3
25 We cloud               -2/ 6
26 Th sun                  1/ 5
27 Fr cloud                1/ 4, 0.5
28 Sa sun                 -1/ 4, 2.0
29 Su sun                  0/ 4,

No fewer than 57½ degree heating days this week, the winter's total goes to 436. The score at this point last year: 347½/677½; the current figure was achieved on 19 Feb last year, a figure that has gone up by twelve days against last week.

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posted 29 Jan 2006, 19.21 +0000

older writing... write to