Longrider

Martin Rosenbaum on the successful high court action forcing MPs to reveal their expenses:

MPs have become the real ‘victims’ of freedom of information.

Er…

These people are paid with taxpayers’ money – that is, money from you and I, to carry out their duties. Their expenses, therefore, are our business. And, if MPs are claiming legitimate expenses, what is the problem with transparency? Oh, what’s that expression they keep throwing out at us? Oh, yeah, that’s it… “If you have nothing to hide…”

Victims my arse!

The concept of a voluntary code for bloggers (read; they would like it to be compulsory) has been burping about for a while now. Via The Englishman, I see that the Torygraph has regurgitated it today:

A voluntary code of conduct for bloggers and internet commentators is supported by almost half of all internet users, a survey has claimed.

The researchers said 46 per cent of web users believe bloggers should agree to a set of guidelines which reflected the laws on defamation, intellectual property rights and incitement.

Four per cent strongly opposed the suggestion and 15 per cent had no opinion.

Like the Englishman, I am one of the four percent. I own this site. I decide what is published. My comments policy covers such things as libel and that, frankly, is sufficient. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere. I do not need a voluntary code and will never sign up for one. Ever. Clear?

In the Englishman’s comments, MarkS asks cui bono? The answer, it seems, is a law firm. Well, ain’t that a surprise?

I repeat; I own this blog. It is a private space; you are here as a guest. I decide what is published. If you, as a guest, do not like what I write, then you don’t have to read it. I don’t engage in libellous comment (at least, not knowingly and if my attention was drawn to it, I’d take the appropriate action), so to those who would want me to sign up for a blogging code, I would merely ask; What part of “never” do you not understand?

Thanks to an email from Jules, I finally got to the bottom of this affair. It was Jules’ email that pointed me in the right direction. It seems that I had been infected by this.

When Google first contacted me, they referred to badware on Felix Domesticus and as I pointed out before, this had suffered problems with an upgrade, so the scripts were all over the place. Having rebuilt it, I checked it and it was clean. As it turns out, it never was infected in the first place.

I subsequently noticed that this place; longrider.co.uk/blog was also showing a warning, so I checked out that, too and found nothing. Scans of both sites revealed them both to be clean. My conclusion that the googlebot was over reacting seemed to be confirmed by others experiencing similar difficulties. I asked Google to review my sites and they were given a clean bill of health.

Consequently, when Jules advised me that Google were once more labelling this site as dangerous, I was, understandably annoyed. We had been through all this, and I was not looking forward to trawling through pages of script looking for a Will o’ the Wisp again. In his email, Jules told me that it was my main page that was infected. So, I went though index.php, header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php to no avail. I ran it through spybye.org and it came out as clean. I did the same for Felix Domesticus just in case. Again, clean. Then it hit me… Did Jules mean longrider.co.uk/index.htm? This is nothing more than a blank holding page that I never use. Yup, that was it. As it turned out the compromised file was hiding in plain sight.

So, having found it at last and removed it, I can ask Google to review it again. How do I feel about my annoyance with Google now that their bot has been shown to be correct? Still annoyed, frankly. If their information had been more specific rather than downright misleading, I’d have discovered the malicious code more quickly. Simply telling me that there is something, somewhere on my site is less than helpful. Telling me that it is on one site when it is on another is misleading to the point of being completely useless. I’m reasonably tech savvy, but malicious codes and hacking are not something with which I am familiar, so if I’m to trawl through the site, it helps to know what I am looking for. Jules’ link gave me that clue, so when spybye picked up the URL, I found it relatively easily.

So, Google, tell me what I am looking for and tell me with some degree of accuracy, where I should be looking and I won’t waste hours of my time on a fruitless search through lines of code that are perfectly okay.

As it turns out, the risk was relatively low anyway – Longrider Blog and Felix Domesticus were clean. If you do a search on Longrider, it is this place that comes up, not the holding page. So those of you who came straight here, there never was a risk to you.

Sitting as I do in training rooms on a daily basis, I’m used to casting an eye over the various safety posters that litter railway premises. Some are valid and provide useful information. Some are pretty inane, but harmless enough.

Recently, Network Rail started issuing a series of safety information posters under their “365 Safety” logo. Most of these have either been genuinely useful or statements of the obvious, but nonetheless, not particularly worthy of comment. Today, though, I saw one that took my breath away. It exhorted us to eat healthily, to make sure we consume the requisite approved five a day fruit and veggies.

I no longer work for Network Rail, so can cast an eye over this poster and cheerfully ignore its stupidity. If I worked for them still, I’d be insulted and patronised. I’d also wonder at them wasting money on something that is absolutely nothing to do with them.

Via Rachel, I came across the unfortunate story of Natalie who has been misrepresented by the Daily Mail. Natalie is, unsurprisingly, angry and upset by this. The journalist engaged in a ten minute phone interview and then went to press.

On April 30th just after 3.30pm, I snatched up my phone and bit the bullet. I called up the journalist that had ‘interviewed’ me (I say this loosely) and expressed my upset at her not actually stating that she was interviewing me and my concern that I would be included in a feature about revenge, which is not what I, or this blog are about. I told her quite shrilly (I was stressed for fecks sake) that I did NOT want to open the paper and see something like “Blogger gets revenge on ex with her blog!” or some other pathetic headline.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. Why am I not surprised by this? Newspapers want to sell copy and, frankly, bad news or news about people behaving badly tends to sell rather better than “blogger writes about self help for women”. E-venge is sooo much more sexy. So, e-venge it was. Natalie also tells us that there were 26 inaccuracies in the article. Again, I am not surprised. If my railway career taught me anything it is that journalists are incapable of accurate, factual reporting. They either get it wrong through sheer ignorance or twist it to make the story appear more salacious than it really is. I lose count of the times following the Paddington crash when a journalist would spout utter bollocks about signal sighting like they knew anything about the subject.

I also recall a colleague who fell victim to having her words “twisted by knaves to make traps for fools”; in her case, it was the Sun. She was angry and devastated to find herself splashed across its wretched pages. It took a long time for her to get over the sense of anger and betrayal.

As a signalling manager, it was my responsibility to attend incidents. Journalists have a habit of turning up at incidents looking for a juicy story, and an unguarded comment could lead to a damaging headline. Therefore, we were under strict instructions not to talk to the press unless we were media trained. More recently, I was contacted by Channel 4 following one of my articles about the legality of dress codes in the workplace; in particular, about men with long hair. She wanted me to appear on a reality TV show; The Salon as they were planning a feature on men with long hair. She was disappointed and bemused when I flatly refused. I did so for exactly the same reason that my Railtrack employers insisted that I did not speak to the press when attending incidents; an unguarded comment can be taken out of context and twisted out of its original meaning and used against the utterer. I would have no editorial control, therefore, I would have no control over how I would appear on the finished piece. It would have been easy to make me look foolish with subtle editing. No, thankyou, very much.

For much of his life, Freddie Mercury refused to talk to newspapers. His line was simple enough; they are going to make it up anyway, so they don’t need help from me. It was a stance he maintained until a day or so before his death. It is a wise stance and one worth emulating.

It’s a bit late for Natalie, but for any other bloggers out there, I have one important piece of advice; take a deep breath and pause if you are asked for an interview. Ask yourself if you really want to do this. I know it is flattering and you are looking at your fifteen minutes of fame, but they are not thinking of you, they are thinking of their copy, of selling newspapers. You are just a means to that end; a pawn in their game. Is that fifteen minutes of fame worth a damaged reputation and the heartache that goes with it? If you take one piece of advice away from this site, then take this; never, ever, talk to the press. Oh, and don’t buy the Daily Mail, but that’s a given, isn’t it?

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Footnote: Natalie has complained to the Press Complaints Commission, but she is also trying to get this story on as many blogs as possible to set the story straight. This is my contribution.

On Monday, I turn fifty. The thought that goes through my mind is; where did all that time go? It seems barely a day or so ago that I was dreading turning forty. At the time, I wrote an introspective for Bikenet, musing on growing older. Now it’s the big five-o.

My life has been somewhat chequered. This is in part due to not really having any sense of direction. As a teenager, I had the vague idea that I wanted to be a veterinary surgeon. What kid doesn’t? A staggering lack of self-awareness meant that I missed the blindingly obvious lack of talent in the physics and chemistry department – both prerequisites for this career. By the time I reached the fifth form, I had, indeed, realised that this was a non-starter. I thought, perhaps, I could go to sea; following in my grandfather’s footsteps; and join the merchant marine as a radio officer. Ah, but, my lack of prowess with the old physics rather got in the way again. Two years at college taught me that while I could just about scrape through the exams, I was never going to cut it. Besides, the merchant navy was disappearing fast.

I tried half-heartedly to get a trainee post with the GPO telephones, but they saw through me and that died a death before it ever got going. So, I drifted aimlessly into credit control. I was a passable credit controller but tired of it fairly quickly. A falling out with my employer left me temping for the best part of three years before I took a job delivering parts to garages on behalf of a motor factor. I kidded myself that as I was riding a bike and getting paid for it, I was doing okay. But even I could see through the self deception. I was a lackey; a poorly paid lackey and my twenties were rapidly drawing to a close and I had achieved nothing useful with my life. I had done a fair job of screwing up my education and my career through a series of bad choices.

Had I at the age of thirteen chosen the arts – something my art teacher exhorted me to do – I might have made a career in graphic design, writing or photography. As it was, these things are all confined to my extra-curricular life.

Two severe winters interjected by a wet summer put an end to my desire to ride a bike and be paid for it. In the spring of 1986, I qualified as a driving instructor at the age of 28. For the first time in my career, I felt that I was achieving something positive, that I had a career. I was a pretty good driving instructor, though I say so myself. I tended to specialise in those pupils who had struggled with learning to drive and my unflappable patience seemed to work with them and I enjoyed the job. Well, most of the time.

Then came the poll tax and 15% interest rates. Overnight, my client base dried up. I could have returned to the likes of BSM, but had been badly burned by the franchise system. A system that disadvantages the driving instructor while guaranteeing income for the school – no matter how little work they provide. It’s a bad system and my recent experiences working with the AA merely confirmed my dislike for it. Nothing has changed and my brief desire to return to this career on a part time basis was, in part, killed off by that discovery.

So, after five years as a driving instructor, a new career beckoned. I was offered a post with British Rail as a signalman in Bristol panel signalbox. When it was privatised a few years later, I found myself on strike. Even now, I wonder what possessed us. We gained nothing and some of the working relationships were never repaired. A pointless exercise that became politicised by both sides in the dispute. My relatively short involvement with the unions left a bad taste in my mouth.

Shortly after the strike, I took the opportunity to become a signalling manager. Looking after Westbury panel signalbox, these were, perhaps, the happiest of my railway career. As I approached forty, finally, it seemed, I had a sense of direction.

By the time I had turned forty, I wanted something else, a change. In the spring of 1999, I took promotion and was once more back in the training and development field – something for which I have a natural empathy. My new role was looking after the training and assessment requirements for the whole of the Western zone of Railtrack. To say that it was challenging would be an understatement. I was faced with systemic failure left by my predecessor and had to close the whole thing down and start again from scratch. That was fun. I made a name for myself  and that name was bastard. Curiously, mostly from those folk who when asked would insist that “something be done” about the training department. So, I did that something. As it meant removing the trainer, it also made me a callous bastard. I couldn’t win.

I felt that I was settled. Ah, but, not me. Oh, no. I was asked to apply for a role at headquarters doing much as I had been doing, but nationally. This in part was a consequence of my being a bastard in my previous role. Although I liked my manager and the role, the conflict with the zones made life unbearable. Recommendations from Cullen were given to us to implement. Middle managers simply resisted. Network Rail as it had them become had a problem with serial disobedience and I was sick of trying to overcome it.

By this time, I was tired, disillusioned and ready to walk away. When Network Rail decided to shed a swathe of its middle managers in November 2003, I was one of those who went. The package was a decent one and I had a self-employed role all sorted out.

That self employed role should have enabled me to earn a decent living on part time hours. That it didn’t caused me several turbulent years. And it is only in this past year that I have found a client that offers me plenty of reliable work.

My mid forties saw a change in my attitude. Ambition evaporated. I realised that I don’t much like work. What I want; really, really want, is to bodge about, doing a bit of writing, mucking about on the computer, taking photographs of stunning landscapes, riding the bike and creating something with the garden. What matters to me is not my career – and, in all probability, never did. What is important to me is my home, my family, my leisure.

So, as fifty looms, I am working part time; sometimes as a trainer and assessor and sometimes as an auditor. I thoroughly enjoy it. For the first time in my career, I really do enjoy the job that I do – and, what is so important – is that I have more leisure time than I have ever had.

Ten years ago, I hankered for my lost youth. My lost youth was a somewhat directionless affair, riddled with bad decisions, insecurity and dead-end jobs. At fifty, I have a sense of direction, I am comfortable with who I am and that semi-retirement in France is going to happen within the next year or so. All we need is a buyer for the house and we are off.

Would I go back? If I could do so with the self-assuredness that only maturity can endow, sure, I’d like to make a few changes. But, overall, probably not. I’m not sure that I could cope with angst and insecurity.

It is usual at this point for people to say “and here’s to the next fifty”. I won’t. At fifty, I am still reasonably fit and healthy. I have all my hair and teeth. I am fortunate to look a good ten years younger than my actual years. But do I really want to be a centenarian? Do I want to be wheeled about, barely able to look after myself? No thanks. I want to go out while I’m still firing on all four. So, another thirty years or so will probably do me fine.

So, here’s to what’s left

The BBC site draws our attention to yet another attempt to put people on a database that will be abused, that will lead to people suffering gross injustice and that appears on the face of it, to have little in the way of safeguards:

Workers accused of theft or damage could soon find themselves blacklisted on a register to be shared among employers. It will be good for profits but campaigners say innocent people could find it impossible to get another job

This is not people who have been convicted of a crime, who have been demonstrably proved to have been guilty – this is simply a blacklist of grievances, of allegations, of subjective opinion, tittle tattle and unsubstantiated gossip. No “innocent until proven guilty” here. There is the useless and toothless data protection act that an aggrieved employee can call upon in the event of being wrongfully included on the database, of course. That is, if they are aware that they are on the blacklist in the first instance. At least with the criminal records fiasco, people get to see what is held on them.

I don’t have a problem with employers using references to check up on potential employees – that’s prefecrtly acceptable. And, in the event of a falling out between employer and employee, the employee may choose not to use that employer as a referee; it’s what I have done in the past. That this database is a terrible idea and is little more than a blacklist with no proper safeguards, and, indeed, is wide open to abuse by employers with a grievance and has the potential to wreck an innocent person’s life, is pretty obvious to a reasonable observer. However, to realise that not everyone is a reasonable person, indeed, that some are terminally and dangerously stupid, one only has to look at the comment from Les in Elgin. This moronic fuckwit has this to offer the discussion:

Big brother state? I’m all for that as at the end of the day, it makes society safer and fairer and gives criminals a harder time; if you have nothing to hide then why should you be worried?

To think that my grandfather ruined his health on the convoys, and died young as a consequence, to make this country a safer place for ignorant totalitarian shitheads like this.