The BBC have an interesting collection of comments in the “have your say” section – This is well worth looking at.
Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dems) sums up the “non compulsory measures” of the ID Card Scheme quite nicely – “The only way in which people will be able to opt out of the system is by giving up their right to travel abroad” – but interestingly this keeps it in the same boat as passports meaning (to me at least) UK ID cards are pretty pointless beasts.

While I realise it isnt representative of the population as a whole, the fact 75% of people are against ID cards seems telling…

The NO2ID Site may be of interest to some of you – http://www.no2id.net/

They were great arguments against ID cards. However, rational arguments cut no ice in this discussion. Is there a  minister with friend(s) on the board of the company that will get the contract?

Any serious criminal or terrorist will get as much apparently legit ID as they need. Probably with our names on…. The average person will get more and more accepting of measures that do nothing to improve their security but add endless potential disasters to the pre-existing pool of potential disasters.

The Franklin quote was most fitting. Are we really so pathetic in the 21st century that we can throw away centuries of basic freedom without even seeing that we are doing it. Cameras everywhere – has the crime rate dropped to zero. “Anti-social behaviour” a new substitute for actually finding people guilty of breaking specific laws, how much of a rant has this become??

Well, if you cant guess, this whole deal annoys the **** out of me.

The three main failings with the ID card system that spring immediately to mind are (and given time I am sure I can come up with more!): Continue reading →

Ok, on further investigation it appeared that an over zealous “cut and paste” from the BBC website (the URL oddly enough) brought with it some insane div tags which weren’t properly nested. This in turn, adjusted the natural flow of the page and made the “sidebar” content become part of the main page content.

In IE this had the effect of moving the sidebar to the bottom of the page, FireFox had the decency to do this as well as removing the background image. Nice.

Still, solved now.

Despite the optimisim of previous posts (for example http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/12/css-oddnes-solved/ ) it seems the almost random effects of the CSS / XHTML here are continuing to go all over the place. Sadly, I still have no idea why this is happening or what can be done about it.

I think a new theme is called for.

Judging from the news headlines, it seems that the ID card bill has been passed by the house of commons. Quote from BBC website:

Ministers have won a Commons vote making it compulsory for people to be given ID cards – and put on a register – when they apply for passports.

Well, it seems like a back door attack on what was once considered a “right” of the British People. Oddly I fail to see how this would make anyone in the country any safer? Would it have prevented the London bombings in July? Did we need these measures to prevent the IRA (were they even seriously considered even when the IRA mortared 10 Downing Street?)?

Interestingly, lots of other countries do have compulsory ID cards – Spain for example – and has it shown any effect in reducing identity theft of preventing terrorist attacks?

I suspect the answer is no.

Sadly, as previously mentioned, we are in a brave new world now. With each passing month there are new laws (no religious jokes for example) which limit our ability to express ourselves (not really a “right” as we dont have a bill of rights per se in the UK)

Looks like it could be time to emigrate.

(To steal a good phrase from Trevor Phillips)

The hopes that the common sense of the lords might get some sanity restored to the mad rush towards making 1984 look like Brave New World are dashed again I see

Well, it looks like the nutcases have finally taken over the asylum. Headlines from the BBC announce “MPs back ID cards passports plan” (quote taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4707608.stm, updated 2018hrs, visited 2037 hrs today).

Truly sad news.

I see that Compuskills has extended its special offer until April. http://www.compuskills.co.uk/

I see on Steve Wozniak’s site that there are a few quick-time movies of him riding a Segway.  It looks like a lawn-mower. Is it some abstract joke or is he really showing off  a lawn-mower scooter combo?

Well, it starts today on Sky (which I dont have and wont get…) so it seems like I am going to have to wait for the boxed DVD set (again). Feel free to let me know how it goes 🙂

Well, as previously mentioned (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/11/css-oddity/) there seemed to be a few problems with how the stylesheet for this blog actually presented the pages.

As CSS seems to be the bane of my life, I was resolved to trying various tricks and hack to get it working but no matter what, it always seemed to be a case of working in either IE or FireFox (never both, and rarely FireFox…) which was annoying to say the least. Continue reading →

Does anybody else think that killing off birds because of “bird flu” is going to be the next supposedly environmentally friendly thing to happen?

There are already much less pigeons in this city than there were. No one is supposed to like pigeons or care what happens to them because they crap on public buildings. The fact that we only have so many pigeons in the cities because we needed them to carry messages doesn’t seem to make any difference. They are supposed to be disease-ridden and, therefore, the enemy.

Now everyone is getting terrified of bird flu, what odds would you give for the survival of  bird species? Agencies that are supposed to protect the environment will have reasons that seem good to them to “cull” – kill off – even more of the few wild creatures that still share our environment.  What an incredibly dumb species we are.

I am not sure why, but the CSS for this blog seems to have grown a mind of its own. In the two weeks I have been away something has changed and now (in firefox) it wont show the background colour in the main page (but will on message pages) and in IE, the menu bars on the right fall to the bottom of the page.

Very odd and may result in a new theme soon.

http://fantomaster.com/fantomNews/archives/2005/05/04/google-the-coming-out-of-a-datascraper-spook/ has a piece that suggests that Google’s accelerator is going well over the top in the information it collects.

According to fantom, the Web Accelerator is “arguably the most audacious and blatant piece of spyware ever visited upon the global Web.”  Setting aside the point that “arguably” anything can be considered anything, it’s worth a read.