Longrider

Earlier this week, I complained about the girl who was arrested for an “offensive” T-shirt - even though wearing offensive clothing is not illegal. There is, perhaps, an argument for implementing fashion police, but that is another matter…

Yesterday, an 82 year old heckler was bundled out of the Labour Party conference for heckling Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary.

“Walter Wolfgang, of London, was ejected after shouting “nonsense” as the foreign secretary defended Iraq policy.”

So, this is what our democracy has come to. Heckling political speakers has a long and fine tradition in this country - we like to call it freedom of speech. Political speakers are, by their very nature, putting themselves up for criticism and in a free, fair society, criticism is a reasonable thing to anticipate. It is a part of the two way dialogue that we have come to expect. Well, it seems we can expect it no more. The Labour Party no longer tolerates dissenting voices. This would seem to contradict the deputy prime minister’s desire for greater political involvement on the part of the electorate. Or are we to presume that this only applies if you support New Labour?

The Government has been getting rather fond of ejecting political opponents that prove inconvenient to its new world order of late.

“Four No2ID campaigners were ejected from Gateshead Metro Centre yesterday, after their attempts to protest against the introduction of a national identity register and identity card were deemed “inappropriate” for local shoppers.”

That is when they are not having them arrested on suspicion that they might do something or other based on whatever charge the police decide to make up on the day.

“Six civil liberties campaigners have been arrested outside a summit of European ministers on Tyneside.”

Perhaps these people were wearing offensive clothing?

Tony Blair did have the grace to apologise this morning on the BBC Breakfast programme. Unfortunately this is too little, too late. And, given his previous record, are we to believe him anyway?

“Mr Blair said: “It is difficult for them (stewards) when someone is interrupting someone’s speech, but it should be handled sensitively, particularly with an older person.”"

The age of the person is irrelevant - and the training of stewards should have been thought about before, rather than after the event. After all, political heckling has been going on for centuries. If they aren’t prepared for a bit of heckling how can we be convinced they are prepared for a suicide bomber? Of course they were and this is exactly what they planned to do about it. The apology is merely damage limitation after it hit the headlines. Had it been a young and athletic person, likely as not, they would have got away with it.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this sorry little debacle is that Mr Wolfgang was prevented from re-entering the conference by the police under the powers of the Prevention of Terrorism Act

What?! A heckler is now treated as if he is a terrorist? Is this how New Labour plans to silence its critics? If Mr Wolfgang had been a terrorist, he would not have shouted “nonsense” at the Foreign Secretary, he would have triggered a device and the news bulletins would have been somewhat different this morning. As gross over reactions go, this one takes a complete packet of custard creams.

Addendum: I was directed to this entry over at The Chicken Yoghurt. This (in relation to the Prevention of Terrorism Act) says it all:

“New Labour lack the maturity to regulate the use of these powers - they’re very handy when you want to get into a dick-swinging contest with an octogenarian.”

Well, it’s underway. The countdown to….

Christmas. Ack!

As a practising non-Christian, I don’t do Christmas. As someone who is utterly appalled by the blatant cheesy exploitation that is our modern commercial Christmas, I am even more determined not to do Christmas.

The thump on the doormat this morning caused by the Comet “Santa’s Gift Collection” went straight to the place it is best sent - the recycle bin.

It is October, for crying out loud. Okay, nearly the end of October, but this overhyped day with its plastic bonhomie is still nearly two months away. I don’t even want to hear the awful “C” word even mentioned before December kicks in.

Bah! Humbug!

Well, I finally had enough of the temporary work today. Strictly speaking, I’d had enough a long time ago, but decided to hang on in there while my main work was in the doldrums. It hasn’t yet built up to where it should be but is sufficiently on the cusp to make the decision I made today.

The problem for me is that I don’t much like driving, so temping as a driver is a bit of a bummer to start with. Add to that, the running about trying to find places, then trying to find somewhere to park, manoeuvring a large vehicle in confined spaces and the interminable traffic and it all adds up to more stress than a little over the minimum wage is worth. So, when I did a trip to Exeter the other week, I was on the point of saying enough is enough.

A call yesterday to do a trip to Bridgwater today was elicited out of me against my better judgement. Frankie suggested to me at around four o’clock this morning that if I felt that bad, I should phone in sick. My displeasure must have been that obvious… But phone who? At that time in the morning, I had no idea who I would contact - besides, it would mean letting people down. So, reluctantly, I went to Avonmouth and presented myself to the client.

From then on in, it was downhill. Trying to find someone who would take some responsibility to start with was difficult enough - so I was sent from one end of the warehouse to the other and back again. Not auspicious and guaranteed to lower my humour readings by several kelvin. Then it was out to the van. I was handed sheets of invoices with the delivery details and a van full of boxes.

Now, you would think that a company using an agency driver would help a little by loading the vehicle in such a way that the clients’ orders were easily identifiable. Well, all the previous clients I’d delivered for did. Previous clients also printed off local maps to help with navigation. Not that I needed this as I use my GPS, but it is a sensible thing to do. Oh, to make my mood deteriorate further, the trip to Bridgwater was now Bridgwater and the Forest of Dean. Bridgwater is about 50 miles south of Bristol and the Forest of Dean is about 30 - 40 miles north of Bristol - that’s right, they are in opposite directions. It is just asking for trouble to have a delivery round that starts and finishes about 100 miles apart in opposite directions.

An accident on the motorway lost me an hour before I’d made much headway, so the downhill run was accelerating alarmingly and my mood plummeted to minus kelvin values.

When I go to the first drop I realised just what I’d let myself in for. Six sheets of invoices aligned to numerous boxes that were stacked in the van somewhere - along with everyone elses orders. I spent two hours churning over boxes of frozen foods, digging out the order, getting mixed up and traipsing up and down two flights of stairs. The shop receiving the order didn’t make anyone available to help me check off the goods, and it is entirely possible that I made mistakes - after two hours, I was tired, fed up and couldn’t care less anyway. If they cared enough, they would have made the time to check as I unloaded. They didn’t, so too bad. It was only a sense of duty that made me carry on to the other clients in the vicinity. I nearly called it a day there and then - it was a close run thing.

These two were relatively simple, so sorting out the invoices to goods was not as onerous as the first drop. Nonetheless, there were items on the invoice that were not in the van - I suspect that they were at the first drop. There were also items in the van that didn’t correspond to invoices, strengthening my suspicion that the first drop had turned to ratshit.

Heading north on the motorway to the next drop in the Forest of Dean - past the depot by about 40 miles, I realised that I had neither the inclination nor the time to complete this round of deliveries. I’d been on the road 8 hours by this time and was exhausted. Even my sense of duty was not enough to overcome my sheer exhaustion. I phoned ahead and left a message with the office that I was running out of time and as two ambulances had just passed me on the hard shoulder, things were not looking good. The next hour was spent stationary on the motorway while the police removed a five car pileup.

I also phoned the agency and advised them that I no longer wanted any work - I told them that my own work was now building up - I thought that the diplomatic thing to do. As this client was a new one, they wanted feedback. They got it. In buckets. I was not impressed and said so. I advised them that if I had not been ceasing to work for them, this client would be one that I would never want to work for ever again. Ever. I think the message was reasonably unambiguous.

Then the client’s supervisor phoned me back. He was unimpressed. My drops should have been completed hours ago. The inference being that there was something wrong with me. When someone says they mean no disrespect, they usually mean that they do mean to disrespect. There was a slowly bubbling anger building up inside me by this point. However, I remained calm. The kind of icy calm that only deep anger can produce. I pointed out the manner in which the van had been loaded, causing me to spend overlong sorting out the orders. Surely it made sense to sort them at the depot ready for the driver. An agency driver who does not know their stock, system, or customers, will inevitably lack the efficiency of an employee - so helping with little things like this will maximise efficiency. “Not in this company,” came the reply. Well, that summed it up for me. I’ve never come across such a piss-poor shambolic shower as this organisation. I advised the agency of my opinion - any temps following me need to know what they are letting themselves in for.

Temping? You can keep it.
—–

There’s an interesting little spat going on between The Devil’s Kitchen and Neu Labour apologist, Neil Harding on the matter of identity cards. While the invective is entertaining, I don’t plan to join in. I merely want to reiterate just why this bill is such an appalling idea.

Firstly, let’s look at why we are supposed to need them.

Terrorism - I’ll start with this one because it is perhaps the most high profile reason given and is the one most readily refuted. Indeed, so weak is it as a justification that the home secretary, Charles Clarke has admitted that identity cards would have made no difference to the London bombings in July. Home grown terrorists will have identity cards. And, being otherwise innocent of any such activity until they carry out their outrages, they will not trigger any alarm bells. Yet still government ministers and apologists will spout this reason. They modify their language, which is true enough. Nowadays, we are told, ID cards will cause disruption to terrorist activities. How, exactly, remains a mystery.

Benefit fraud - we hear less of this lately, although that may change as the quicksands of justification shift from one dubious argument to another in an attempt to wrong foot anyone who dares to question the masters of Whitehall. Benefit fraud usually consists of black market labour working cash in hand while claiming benefit or tax credits. There is a lie, but that lie is not about who the person is, rather it is about their circumstances. ID cards and the national identity register that will underpin it, presumably will identify the benefit cheats. How, exactly, remains a mystery.

Identity fraud - this is the flavour of the moment. Everyone is talking about it. Unfortunately everyone does not agree what, exactly, we are talking about. When the home office speaks of identity fraud, it is sweeping in all sorts of nefarious activities that cannot be considered as stealing an identity. Using false documents to pass oneself off as another for the purposes of deception is not stealing an identity. At best, this can be classed as borrowing it for a short period for the purposes of carrying out the main criminal activity; theft. Stealing an identity means just that; living as another; taking over their life and using their good standing to obtain goods, services, loans, accommodation, benefits or whatever. The “Day of the Jackal” type of deception is true identlty theft. Using a cloned or stolen credit card to buy something on the Internet is most certainly not identity theft. Of course, this bill before parliament does set out to make this a specific offence and I support that. At least then, it will be defined and people properly prosecuted if caught. If we assume that the national identity register works as it is supposed that it will and that the technology is faultless and the people operating it do so with fine precision, it is conceivable that the system will have some effect on identity theft. However, bear in mind that the scheme will cost according to government figures around £5.8Bn to save, what? £35million per annum? If the LSE research is the more accurate (£18Bn), the cost benefit looks even weaker. This is using a crowbar to pick a padlock - for something that might have some impact.

Illegal immigration - Ignoring for a moment that people migrating to this country are already issued with identity cards, it is unclear how ID cards will have any impact. Illegals hide away from those places where they are likely to be challenged. They work for people who don’t ask questions and certainly won’t be asking for ID cards. Yet this scheme is supposed to solve all of this. How, exactly, remains a mystery.

Proving who we are – this perhaps is the crux of my objection. Charles Clarke poses with an inane grin brandishing an Identity Card while telling us that this is not Big Brother, it is the means of controlling Big Brother, a means of controlling and asserting our identity. What tosh! I am perfectly capable of asserting my identity should I so wish. The reality is that for much of the time, I simply don’t need to. How frequently do we need to prove who we are? Most of the people with whom we do business couldn’t care less who we are; simply that we have the wherewithal to pay them. What we have here is a self-fulfilling need. A need created by government for a problem that does not exist. Incidentally, it is a need for which the government has a solution – special price £30, just for you and I’m cutting my own throat, here. Now, doesn’t that give you a warm little glow deep inside?

The other issue I have is the intrusive nature of the national identity register. Of the 51 registerable facts, the government has a right to know my name and current address if I am to do business with them. Those government agencies with which I interact, have this information already. The other 49 registerable facts are nobody’s business but mine. Why, exactly, does the home office need to know where I used to live? If I had taken on a new identity to flee an abusive relationship, I would be deeply worried about revealing this information. I might be masquerading under a different name, but the unique identifier and biometric information would unmask me – this, presuming that the technology works as it should.

Presuming that scenario – that technology works, the database is accurate and everybody involved is competent and incorruptible, the nature of the database and the audit trail makes profiling a doddle in a manner previously not possible. In the event of it not working as it should, profiling will still go on; it’s just that the results will be flawed. For the victim this could have devastating consequences.

Those who support this bill, do so in the belief that we, the people, need to be controlled and guided, identified and tagged for our own good. To protect us from those the government deems will do us harm. Those of us who object do so because we are adults and wish to be treated as such; to live our lives as we see fit, without interference, providing it harms no one else.

A few months back I read a comment written by a Swede. He claimed that their system was an excellent one and that it made access to services so much simpler, they couldn’t possibly manage without their ID cards. Of course not. If the government makes living without one all but impossible, naturally they will make life easier. They are a self-fulfilling need. In the real world, we simply do not need them.
—–

Libertine has been discussing the Christians’ somewhat ambiguous relationship with the festival of hallowe’en. Indeed, their reaction to this festival is bordering on the schizophrenic.

“About ten years ago, the fundamentalist complaint du jour in my town was Halloween. They asserted that Halloween was an evil, Satanic holiday designed to turn children into godless demons. At that time, they made a lot of trouble for local public schools, harassing them about school Halloween decorations and celebrations.

In reaction, many fundie churches began sponsoring what they called “fall festivals”. These were children’s parties at the church with pumpkins and other harvest/autumn decorations, but no witches, devils, ghosts or goblins. Most of the churches allowed the kids to dress up in non-spooky costumes, but a few of the more extreme ones banned all sorts of costumes.”

Now the Church of England comes up with this.

“Hallowe’en has become associated with the occult and should be reclaimed by Christians and even renamed “Lite-Nite”, a Church of England bishop says.

The Bishop of Bolton, the Rt Rev David Gillett, says that Hallowe’en was not originally an occult celebration but has picked up “dangerous” traits over the centuries.”

Yet the good bishop is well aware of the roots of hallowe’en:

“The bishop says the origins of Hallowe’en can be traced back more than 2,000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer and the gathering in of the harvest.

“There has been a widespread increase in New Age spiritualities and connections with dark occult happenings have surfaced in certain areas,” he says. “Hallowe’en has, in many ways, reverted to its pre-Christian days.”"

As he himself points out; Celtic mythology predates Christianity somewhat. So the idea of “reclaiming” hallowe’en for Christianity, or that it was not originally a non-Christian festival is rather absurd. And so what if it has reverted to its Pagan roots? What is the problem with that? Christianity is just another religious cult; it has no claim over pagan festivals, nor rights to judge them.

However, I do agree with the Bishop when it comes to that nasty little practice of blackmail or extortion with menaces masquerading as a childish game; “trick or treat”.

“In an article in Crux, the Manchester diocesan magazine, he says that many people worry about intimidation and violence when they open their doors.”

Whether or not there is violence, the whole concept of demanding something with the threat of mischief if the demand is refused is repugnant. It may appear to be a game, but underlying it is a nasty message indeed. We do not comply with “trick or treat”. We simply do not open the door.

This story has been doing the rounds over the past couple of days. It is worthy of comment because in the great ID cards debate, it is the little things that get overlooked and Carol Sarler brings the matter neatly back to Earth with a satisfying bump.

“No. It is not Big Brother who should alarm us; it is that ubiquitously chippy runt-of-a-litter Little Brother, already in waiting by the million for his reincarnation as, for instance, my wine merchant above, so he can dedicate himself to making the rest of us miserable for no other reason than that he likes it and he can.

No matter how they puff their chests, these really are the little people. Little in heart, little in soul. ‘It’s company policy’ may well be their most regularly cited excuse - and, to be sure, managements do make rules - but when it comes to the interpretation of those rules, the further down the food chain you go, the more you find that the spirit and the letter are divided by nothing more gainful than power or spite.”

I believe that she is absolutely right. I was shouted at last week by a traffic warden in Exeter. Okay, yes, I had stopped in the “wrong” place. I was in an unfamiliar vehicle in an unfamiliar town, searching for an unfamiliar address. I needed to stop just long enough to get my bearings. Now this “gentleman” could have taken the opportunity to be polite, but he declined; instead opting for the bellowing across the street method guaranteed to draw attention to the matter - and, undoubtedly, to his tiny piece of authority and, boy, was he going to exercise it.

Of course, Charles Clarke tells us that the police will not be given extra powers and will not be able to demand that we produce our identity cards. For the sake of argument, I will assume that he is being genuine and that this will always be the case. However, there will be plenty of puffed up bully boys who will seize upon the opportunity to demand to see ID before a transaction takes place. There are those who, given a uniform and a hint of authority will relish the chance to bluster about and make life awkward for their fellow citizen, because as Ms Sarler points out, they can. Much like the traffic warden in Exeter the other week.

All of this reminds me of school. I was a quiet, introverted child; different from the norm. Consequently I was the target of bullies. It was my father who set me straight. He enrolled me in judo classes, insisting that this would give me the confidence to stand up to the bullies and that would make them leave me alone. I recall the stunned silence, punctuated by my assailant’s strained breathing that first time I used Ippon Seoinage in anger. I only did it the once. Once was enough. My lesson was this: never, ever tolerate bullies. It is a lesson I took with me from the playground to the adult world. I operate a zero tolerance approach to the puffed-up, self-important little tyrants that would dominate us in our lives when we interact with authorities or even in our business transactions. I do not plan to change this approach.

When I conduct business I share with that person or organisation just so much of my identity as I see fit for the purposes of the transaction. My motorcycle dealer, for example, has my name, address and telephone number. This enables him to register a new machine in my name and contact me in the event of a recall. He needs no more than this, and does not have access to any more than this. There are many transactions that do not require me to identify myself at all, therefore, I don’t. Because I don’t need to, I make that choice. The little Hitlers would seek to remove that choice because the bill would give them the power to do so and they will relish every moment of it.

Unfortunately, the solution is not as simple as a well delivered Ippon Seoinage, more’s the pity…

After a weekend of bombardment, the SPAM appears to have stopped. I have removed the referrer portal from the sidebar, so anyone expecting to increase their Google ratings by SPAMming me is in for a disappointment anyway. I’ve never really understood the mindset here. Trying to increase a site’s Google rating by SPAMming blogs doesn’t work. My trackbacks are moderated and I use a non-standard blog board that allows me to ban open proxy IPs, I have switched off all tools that might give succour to these creeps. I am not the only blogger who fights back - whether it is through moderation or filtering, the blogging community will take the necessary action to foil these attempts. So why do it? Or, more importantly, why do webmasters pay these scumbags to SPAM on their behalf when it doesn’t work?

Of course, I may be missing something here…

Today this blog is one year old. Some stats:

• 39,010 hits
• 353 entries
• 431 comments

A year ago, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about or even whether I had enough in me to write that much - I guess after all, I am full of something…

Mostly this has been political comment and mostly it has consisted of complaints about what is going wrong in the world. Consequently, it may give a misleading impression. I am not really a younger version of Victor Meldrew… honestly. Rather, I am a mild person, slow to anger, yet irritated by mediocrity and stupidity. The media that surrounds us is riddled by examples of both unfortunately. So perhaps I am an apprentice Victor Meldrew after all…

I’ve also been driven to blog about those things that interest me - and I hope people enjoy the photographs I’ve published here. Photography is a visual art and part of the enjoyment is seeing others enjoy the images one has created.

Then there’s the cats - we lost dear old Penfold in November and gained Berenike and Arsinoe in May. Indeed, I was blogging so much about the cats, that I started another blog, Felix Domesticus, devoted just to them. Yesterday I published the kittens’ six month pictures.

As the hits have increased and more people visit, my Google ranking has risen - I am the first “Longrider” you will see if you do a search. There is a downside to this - I am now being bombarded with SPAM. It’s a sort of inverse compliment, I suppose. It means that I’ve arrived.

It’s been an interesting year - here’s to the next.