Longrider

Try the Blunkett-O-Matic. I’d laugh if it didn’t make me want to weep.

Pressing the red button may, as the author warns: …generate actual policies that Blunkett has launched. I take no responsibility for any distress caused by sudden realisation of the truth, nor any feelings of fear, doom etc. for one’s own civil liberties.

Bit too close for comfort, methinks…
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Over at the UK ID Cards Blog Trevor Mendham points out that Big Blunkett is pushing through the ID cards bill with "unseemly haste".

He asks whether this is an abuse of the due parliamentary process. I can’t answer that one….Anyone?
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This article in the Telegraph fills me with abject horror. Am I, I wonder, the only one who finds the idea of the state interfering in family life an intrusion too far?

Margaret Hodge, the children’s minister believes that the state picks up the pieces when parenting goes wrong. Which sounds just so reasonable. However, in a free society, people are allowed to make mistakes and parenting is an area where people learn by doing and they don’t always get it right. But that doesn’t mean that the state does, either. When I see stories like this, I am thankful that I am not a parent.

The government doesn’t like accusations of being a "Nanny State" yet comes out with speeches like this. I’ve said it before;

Nanny State is exactly what it is.
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Sometimes, you come across a story that makes you take a couple of steps back in amazement. This is one of them. A piece of toast has sold on eBay for $28,000. Yes, $28,000! For a piece of toasted sandwich for crying out loud. Apparently it shows a face that is supposed to be the Virgin Mary. How that was decided heaven only knows (sic) as all I can see is a brown smudge, that may or may not vaguely resemble a face of some sort. I never met the Virgin Mary, so I couldn’t say whether this is a likeness or not.

The sale has prompted more spurious items on the eBay auctions - including a Virgin Mary toaster that "may or may not reproduce the Virgin Mary image."

I guess the only thing I can say about it is that it confirms my faith in the utter stupidity and gullibility of which mankind is capable. There’s a comfort factor in that…

According to Reform the overwhelming majority of Britons - some 71% of us - believe that HMG is introducing too much legislation that infringes personal liberty.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Reform is an independent non-party "think tank" and seems to be confirming my own view of these matters. What concerns me is that if these figures are true - why are we not seeing protests on the streets?

This story is also picked up over at Samizdata.
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I grew up in the back of a sidecar. My earliest childhood memories consist of peering out through a fugged-up perspex window at my father as he piloted a Norton 600 single and later a P&M Panther 650 through the English countryside (usually in the wet and cold). I also recall days and nights disrupted by the inevitable breakdown - along with hoping all the while that we would, eventually, reach our destination .

I notice in the Telegraph’s Motoring column that the sidecar is an option for a biker’s last ride. The reverend Paul Sinclair offers a unique funeral service - a sidecar hearse. Although he is a Pentecostal minister, he offers non-religious funerals to those who do not share his faith. Indeed, on one occasion, the hearse took a detour on its way to the crematorium via the incumbent’s local pub where the assembled party paid their last respects.

Well, there’s going out and there’s going out in style…..
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Firefox Version 1.0 is doing well with more than 5 million copies downloaded since its release. I said before that it is a good browser and that I switched during the beta stage. It seems that IE has dropped below the magical 90% figure. Well, healthy competition is no bad thing and a browser that is light on its feet and is secure is a positively good thing.
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Fossilised remains of a large sauropod have been discovered on the Isle of Wight. Well, the neck bone of one, anyway. Reckoned to be between 125 - 130 million years old, this would place it in the Jurassic period. So it would be a contemporary of other sauropods such as Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus, but much bigger, it seems. Going by this vertebra, they believe this lizard was over 20metres in length and weighed in at 40 - 50 tonnes. That’s one big reptile. Makes my tortoises (Triassic period) tame in comparison….