Longrider

It will be three weeks tomorrow that Ahmose gave birth. The little darlings are now starting to move about and both have their eyes wide open.

I’ve stuck with my paper driving license precisely because I don’t want one of the new photo-licenses. I looked into it when they first came out. However, unlike my current license, they are in two parts - a credit card sized photo license and a paper license that you have to carry with it. This, combined with the hoops you have to jump through just to get one, put me off. I’ll be damned if I’ll chase around trying to find a JP prepared to sign my photograph - or pay my doctor for that matter. There is another reason why I’ve been reluctant to let the DVLA have my current driving license back. The DVLA have been making a habit over the past few years of "losing" motorcyclists’ category A entitlement. In other words, you no longer have a license to ride a motorcycle. DVLA accept no responsibility for the error and until the hapless rider retakes the motorcycle test, the right to ride and any current insurance are invalid. If anyone has to apply for an new license, the current advice is to keep a copy of the old one as it is the only evidence that you have the category A entitlement.

Now, it seems, having remained under the radar for so long, I’m going to have no choice but to renew my license. Not only will I be forced to change as a result of a mass recall of the licenses to comply with EU requirements, but I’ll be forced to pay a fee every few years to boot. This is yet another stealth tax on motoring.

"Motorists face paying a new charge of about £2.50 a year to help fund the cost of phasing out paper driving licences and replacing them with European-style photocard documents, under proposals being considered by ministers.

The planned “annual registration fee” will generate more than £80m for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and could come into force by 2007.

Alongside the new fee, the 21m motorists in Britain who already have a photocard licence are likely to be charged £19 or more to renew their documents every 10 years."

Oh, yes, there is another sting in the tail - as if there weren’t enough already. Driving licenses will, like passports be a primary document in relation to the National Identity Register currently being proposed in the ID Cards Bill going through parliament. This will mean that HMG will be able to force us onto its planned National Identity Register and issue us with ID cards using the mass recall of driving licenses.

The sleeper trains were always a bit of an oddity. I dealt with them at Bristol Temple Meads when I was a signaller there. The early shift at 06:00 would see the Glasgow sleeper stop for the daily shunt move. The car wagons would be dropped off before the train departed for the south west. In the evening on the late shift the reverse move would take place. The sleeper was a part of our daily routine - as much as the “Dusty Bins” refuse train. These services had their regular routine moves that we had rehearsed to the point where the timetable was in our heads. At the given time we were expecting the sleeper to dial in on our control panels - and if it was running late, the shunt moves would be disrupted and the early morning services at Temple Meads would involve re-platforming to make things fit out of time.

At £112 for a ticket, the London to Penzance service isn’t cheap - but then rail travel isn’t cheap for long distance travel anyway. The usual five hour run is taken at a more leisurely pace on the sleeper and takes eight hours thereby giving people a decent night’s sleep - one hopes. Alan Hamilton takes the Cornish Sleeper that runs from Paddington at 23:50 and arrives in Penzance at 08:08 the following morning. He describes something from a lost era - a time when life was a little more slow and the locomotive hauling the train would be named after a king or a castle. Even today, despite all that has happened to them, the railways evoke something romantic that is a piece of England lost forever.

I do hope that the night sleeper continues. It would be a shame to lose it.

For the dumb fucktard trackback spammers…

Can’t you read?

I’ll repeat it for you as intelligence clearly isn’t one of your traits:

The trackbacks on Blog City are moderated. That means that you don’t get your links counted on Google. Jerks.

Ah, that feels better….

Once again the religious hatred bill has reared its ugly head. Should it become law this bill will make it an offence to use words or behaviour that are likely to stir up religious hatred. While on the face of its this sounds perfectly reasonable, it is a catastrophic assault on free-speech. It is already an offence under the relevant race relations legislation to ridicule people on the basis of their ethnic origins. This is quite right and proper. However when we start to legislate against the criticism of belief systems then we move into an altogether different arena.

While ministers are saying that it will not ban people from offending, criticising or ridiculing faiths it is worth while looking to see what Melanie Philips has to say earlier this year when she attended a meeting called by organisations supporting the proposed new law. It became immediately apparent to her that this law would be interpreted in such a way that reasonable criticism would be stifled.

“For example, Robert Beckley, the ACPO faith officer, related how he had once wanted to launch a prosecution against people who had argued that Hindus and Muslims in Britain would enact a re-run of the violent Ayodhya dispute in northern India, but had been told he could not do so because the issue was religious rather than race hatred (which is covered by the present law). So now we know what kind of remark the police think they will now be able to prosecute on the grounds that it incites religious hatred.”

And…

“Then I asked Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the MCB,whether he thought that any public statements about Islamic terrorism, or any speculation about the number of Muslims in Britain who might support Islamic terrorism, would constitute incitement to religious hatred. He said: ‘There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered by this provision’.

So now we know what the MCB wants to prosecute under this proposed new law. “

If this doesn’t send a chill down your spine, then it should.

Rather than strengthen the existing blasphemy laws, which protect only Christians, we should be repealing them completely. They are an anachronism. I believe passionately that people should be allowed to practise whatever faith they wish, believe in whatever entity takes their fancy and indulge in whatever superstitious rituals these faiths involve. That is their right. I would be ready to defend that right. It is my right as a nonbeliever to criticise and ridicule those beliefs should I see fit. Beliefs and people’s feelings are not sacrosanct. Treating somebody less favourably because of their race is not the same as criticising their religious beliefs.

Indeed I am inclined towards Didier’s comment” that man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Under the new legislation I would probably be prosecuted for saying that. Indeed, under the new legislation I would probably be prosecuted for writing this post.

Now there is thought. I guess I will make my opinions known while it is still legal for me to do so.

Arsinoe and Ramose at two weeks. Their eyes are now open and they can lift their heads. Won’t be long before they are into everything.

Trackback and comment SPAM has been the scourge of many bloggers that I visit. I’ve seen a variety of methods for dealing with this flotsam. Turing numbers or text that has to be entered with comments being one such solution. This will supposedly stop automated entries - although I have heard that this can be overcome. It is a problem that also occurs in discussion fora and I notice that the NO2ID forum has been recently plagued by spammers spamvertising online casinos. So how do you stop it? When we pay for webspace, we do not do so to provide free advertising space for SPAMmers. On News & Views (so far SPAM free) I’ve disabled guest posting. If you want to post (or even see all of the discussion fora) you have to register. This at least places a hoop in the way of potential spammers. If they get past that, I have a range of admin and moderation options to deal with them should the worst happen.

But what about blogs and comment/trackback SPAM? Up until now, there wasn’t much I could do. I don’t host my own blog, so moderation was always limited to dealing with problems after the event. Fortunately for me, this has been a hypothetical issue. However, several people on Blog City have experienced problems. I had already decided to disable the blogboard if SPAMmers decided that I was a free advertising host for their casino or poker game. Rather take it offline than let these people use it. Comments and trackbacks however are there for all to see until the blog owner logs on and deals with it and while I would cheerfully lose the blogboard, I would not wish to lose the comments or trackback facility.

Until now. Yesterday, I got my first trackback SPAM. There was the usual email alerting me to the trackback. However, crucially, it was not live on the site. I had to approve it manually before it would appear. Suffice to say; it didn’t. Comments are now also subject to moderation at the discretion of the blog owner. At the moment, mine is set to appear straight away. However, should the SPAMmers strike, I’ll use the moderation facility.

I have some reservations about the new look Blog City, but this one is spot on.
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Cacti are another of my interests. Every spring the greenhouse comes alive with magnificent brightly coloured blooms. Here is a small selection of them.