About ATGW

Civil serpent.

The Irony, It burns…

Posted on Wed, 25 June, 2008 by ATGW

Don’t you just love “Have Your Say“? What a wonderful place for those without any education, or any concept of the society they live in, to get burning issues off their chest without any fear of being punched in the face.

One of today’s topics is “Should witnesses have the right to anonymity” (link may be dead by the time you read this but it lives in the BBC archives). In a nutshell, the Law Lords upheld a long standing British legal tradition that says you have the right to face your accuser, and now the moaning-right want to abolish it. Ostensibly this is to allow people to give evidence without fear of criminal retribution (which, incidentally already happens and has happened for many, many years).

I think removing this right would be insane. It wouldn’t really help the police as they can already protect a witness under threat, but would allow people to lie without having to suffer the consequences. This is, IMHO, a very bad thing.

Anyway, on HYS there is a healthy mix of reactions. This is good as it means there are sane people out there. Ironically, the pro-anonymity argument seems to wrap itself up in contradictions…

Take this tirade against the law lords for their ruling:

The government is supposed to make the laws in this country, not a bunch of sad, senile old freaks. It’s patently obvious to anyone with an IQ greater than that of a prune that witnesses should be allowed anonymity, otherwise no one in their right mind would ever give evidence against criminal gangs. These idiots should not be allowed to make any more decisions of this kind.

Wow. The elected government (so often the brunt of right-wingers ire) is better a the law than the Law lords? Hmm. I disagree but that is not the issue. From this madness we get on to how the quality of the witness will be determined if the accussed can not challenge them:

The quality of the evidence will be taken into consideration by the judge during the trial. This will determine the validity and the Jury will be directed accordingly.

Wow. Ironic, isn’t it?

Blame the Cold War

Posted on Wed, 25 June, 2008 by ATGW

Yet another “downside” of the thawing tensions between East and West was announced on the BBC today. Sir Edmund Burton was investigating the MOD’s woeful inability to prevent laptops going missing, and one of his conclusions was reported as:

Armed forces recruits from the “Facebook generation” do not take data security seriously enough, a Ministry of Defence security probe has found. (…)
In a highly critical report, he says the MoD had lost its Cold War discipline for data security and there was “little awareness” of its importance among staff. As a result a major security incident had been “inevitable”.

I sort of agree in that such a loss was (and still is) inevitable. However, I am not convinced it is as clear cut as the “facebook” generation or the end of the cold war.

First off, most of these breaches are not made by inexperienced recruits – they are not the sort of person who carries a laptop around with huge amounts of classified material. The people who do this are senior members of staff (even MPs…), I doubt Hazel Blears is part of the “facebook” generation – she simply had material on her machine that shouldn’t have been there and it got stolen. The MOD losses are similar.

Portable IT equipment is a high value target for theives, by its very nature it lends itself to being carted away easily. Of course people will try to steal things like this so any security plan must take that as an assumption and build from there (such as not putting unnecessary data there in the first place…). It is not the cold war’s fault for having the barefaced cheek to end.

The larger “issue” of all this, is despite the poor record, our government is continually trying to record and store more and more data on its citizens. Imagine the security compromise possible when a laptop containing 25,000,000 (not a made up number) people’s ID card details goes missing…

Remind me again why ID cards are good?

No Photo Day 2008

Posted on Tue, 24 June, 2008 by ATGW

Following my posting yesterday (although I doubt the two are linked), I received a message on flickr today, inviting me to join a group (No Photographs Day / 15.DEC.2008) that read:

All,
We, the photographers of the world, are at risk. More and more we are viewed with suspicion, more and more we are subject to illegal interpretations of new anti-terrorism laws, more and more are we stopped and our cameras, our film, our digital media are either confiscated or wiped by officials unaware of the real laws. More and more are we bullied, more and more are we treated with disrespect and fear.
This needs to stop.
This group is to organize a protest.
This protest will involve attempting to get *every* member of flickr to refrain from uploading *any photographs* on a specific day.
This day will be Monday, December 15th 2008.
Join the group, put it in your diaries, tell your friends, discuss in the group, tell people you know in the media, come together.
Come together before it’s illegal to use a camera in a public place.

Now, I am not yet convinced of the value this action will take, but I rarely see the point in “awareness raising” activities so that is not unusual. However, the group does address something I have begun to become interested in (which is why I have “raised awareness” of it through the medium of blog).

Added to this, it (worryingly) seems there are many groups of people who have had problems in one way or another because of their interest in photography:

Representative or not, it is a sorry state of affairs if people in the “free” civilized societies in the west can not carry out a harmless pastime that has been enjoyed for a hundred years. Wont life be better when we carry our papers round, are stopped at random by non-Police Security / Border Guards, are monitored 24/7, have all our emails sifted through by civil servants, be imprisoned for drawings …

Welcome to the New World Order.

Time to lighten the mood

Posted on Mon, 23 June, 2008 by ATGW

I will applogise for the last few posts here being a bit morose and screaming about the doom and gloom of our crazy world. To try and make things better (and to shamelessly get more hits on my flickr stream 🙂 ) I want you to have a look at these four castle pictures and let me know which one you think is the best – comments on flickr would be preferred but here will do 🙂

Thanks for your patience and the normal miserable service will resume tomorrow.

Rights fading away

Posted on Mon, 23 June, 2008 by ATGW

If you hadn’t already noticed, I am a keen hobbyist photographer. I love going out with my family and taking pictures of everything around me. This is pretty harmless and it gives us nice pictures to hang on the walls or foist off on relatives in place of Christmas and Birthday presents. As a pastime, there could be much worse.

Being interested in photography, I always considered myself lucky that I was born in a democracy where people are basically free to indulge in their hobbies and predominantly interested in landscape photography where you dont have to ask someone to smile.

It seems, however, I was actually quite wrong and it is only my tendency for landscape shots that keeps me on the right side of the law. Despite our “evil freedoms” being abhorrent to the nutcases like Usama Bin Laden, we actually have a lot less than you would think. Actually, that isn’t true (yet) but I will come back to this.

Two news items from this weeks Amateur Photographer magazine give pause for thought about our “rights” and freedoms. The first is a worrying incident in the land of the free:

A TV crew filming a story about photographers being harassed at a US railway station were stopped by security and told to switch off their cameras. (…) Tom Fitzgerald, a reporter for Fox 5 television, was interviewing the chief spokesman for rail operator Amtrak when a security guard ordered the crew to stop filming. Ironically, the spokesman had apparently just confirmed to the reporter that photography was, in fact, allowed.

It continues to mention that this is not an isolated incident (flickr discussion) and the madness that “moves are afoot to introduce draft legislation designed to protect the rights of photographers to take pictures.”

It is doubly ironic that they tried to put paid to the film crew filming the company spokesman saying filming was allowed. What better example of corporate non-communication could there be?

The Amtrak Goons are insane, but are not alone. We have a similar problem in the UK:

Olympics 2012 bosses have apologised to photographers who complained about heavy-handed treatment by security guards at the East London construction site. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) came under fire after two amateur photographers complained following a confrontation outside the site on 3 May. Louis Berk and Steve Kessel say they were left feeling intimidated after guards demanded to see their identification. ODA spokeswoman Laura Voyle said the guards approached the photographers ‘to investigate a report that they had been seen within the Olympic Park boundary’. However, the pair insisted they had been on a ‘public pavement’ and had not ventured onto the Olympic site itself. (…) And [Olympics Security Manager] promised to conduct a ‘review of instructions on how they will deal with issues relating to photography’. (…) However, [Louis Berk] does not feel reassured, telling us: ‘What concerns me is that I still don’t know if the ODA realises that suspicion of taking photographs of their property from a ‘public place’ is not a cause for intervention by the guard force.’

There is more madness around the 2012 London Olympics but this highlights the current problem.

In a nutshell, both instances were the result of private Security Guards not being aware of the rules regarding their location. This is down to poor education by their employer. In the UK you can photograph almost anything (some locations are exempt under the 1911 Official Secrets Act) from a public place. If you can see it, you can photograph it. Kind of makes sense really. It is different if you are on private property, but 90% of the time the property owner will give permission. Again, it makes sense. I can only assume the law is similar in America.

What is worrying is that both instances show people have a default setting of STOPPING photography. I will be charitable and say neither organisation put out instructions to annoy members of the public (including tax payers who paid for the bloody Olympic-farce) so the security guards must have assumed the camera was a security threat. Over the last few months there have been lots of occasions where over zealous guardians have taken offence at people trying to take photographs, even in (weirdly) popular tourist destinations like Trafalgar Square. I have read claims that people were questioned because they could be “terrorists doing reconnaissance” (with an overt camera and tripod – good job Johnny Foreigner isn’t clever enough to use a mobile phone camera…) or other equally spurious risks (there were children present etc..).

The problem is, these fears (and certainly this one in particular) are nonsense. Bruce Schneier, BT’s chief security technology officer, recently wrote an excellent article for the Guardian where he dismisses most of these fears. The article is really, really worth reading even if you aren’t a photographer – there are many more “freedoms” at risk from our apathetic approach to them and “terrorism.” Schneier has an interesting theory that this madness where we fear long-lens cameras is because it is a “Movie Plot Threat.” Also worth reading.

Sadly, it may well be too little, too late for our society. We fear that the evil Islamic terrorists will destroy our culture, so to “beat” them we destroy it ourselves. Well done us.

Cursed?

Posted on Thu, 19 June, 2008 by ATGW

Ok, it is generally accepted that “luck” is a very difficult concept to quantify scientifically. Everyone has their own idea what it is and some people even think it has a “cause” and can be manipulated. Gamblers have a notoriously twisted idea of what “luck” is and how it can seemingly overcome mathematical certainties. Historically, humans from every corner of the globe have even objectified it into religions and religious icons. For some reason, certain Christians have a pagan approach to luck and think praying to the invisible will influence “luck” in their favour. All very strange.

Anyway, in view of this, I have spent the last few weeks carrying out an experiment that I am, as I have always suspected, cursed with bad luck… My PC is not possessed by the devil, it doesn’t hate me, I am just very unlucky – which is why every time I need an internet connection it goes down. This is not good news, but at least it explains why every week I do the national lottery and, despite the odds, I never get a single number. Ever. Now, part of me suspects the odds against that are greater than the odds against winning the lottery, but now I know the real reason©™.

My experiment has been simple. There are, basically, two routes I can take from work to get home. Because of the hideous nature of road traffic, my journey home normally takes in excess of an hour and I travel at the majestic average speed of 29mph. Aren’t modern cars wonderful. The upside of this mind numbing tedium is that I have time to think about things, and I realised that no matter which route I take, it takes me about the same lenght of time to get home and more importantly whatever lane I choose, the other goes faster.

Any drivers out there will undoubtedly share that experience. You are stuck in snail like traffic and all around you the cars are going faster. You change lane, only to discover the other lane has started moving. It is more than a little annoying.

So, during my thinking, I decided to see what was the best thing to do. Should I pick a lane and stay in it? Should I change as much as possible and fight my way forward. I know strong advocates of both options. Add to this, which route should I take?

From this, my experiment was formed… The plan was, over the course of several weeks to drive home a different way each time. Weeks 1 – 3 I would take “Route A” and then weeks 4 – 6 would be “Route B”. Although all at about the same time of day, each week would be either staying in the left hand lane, staying in the right hand lane or changing lanes as instinct dictates. As a “control” for the first two weeks, I would make a note of a car that joined about the same time as I did but in the other lane and see if they were ahead or behind me.

Anyway, today it all ended and the results were in. The basic conclusion is that I am cursed with bad luck. Seriously.

The average journey times for both routes was about 1hr 30mins (with very little deviation), giving me an average speed of 31mph. Wonderful eh? It seems that neither route was better, and changing lanes was no faster or slower than staying put. Also, it didn’t really matter what lane I was in, the time was pretty much the same.

Weirder still came when I was doing the “single lane” part. Every single time, every day for four of the six weeks, what ever lane I was in turned out to be the slowest. Without fail, a vehicle that joined the traffic the same time as me, would make faster progress if they were in a different lane to me. In some instances the other lane was going so fast I lost the vehicle (and visibility on this stretch is quite far), while in others, they were only a few minutes ahead of me – but they were ALWAYS ahead.

Like I said, the only redeeming feature of this is at least now I know why I never get a single number on the lottery. Maybe Luck hates Atheists. Or just me…

Vista is teh work of teh debil

Posted on Sun, 15 June, 2008 by ATGW

A few weeks ago I finally cracked and bought a new PC. Out of the box, this one was great. The HDD is massive and silent. The huge amount of RAM makes Photoshop usable once more and the widescreen monitor is a pleasure to look at.

What really lets the whole deal down is Microsoft Vista. It is, without a doubt, the worst operating system I have ever used. Yes, it may seem like it does more than MS-DOS but, in reality, it constrains you more (and uses a trillion times more system resources). Vista is pretty. It has nice icons and the transparency looks cool for the first hour or so you use it, but the reality is I had a more stable system with Windows 3.11 (even my ME box crashed less).

All the doom and gloom aside, my Vista box only has a few problems but they are monumental annoyances. I would rather have the limited use Windows 95 gave without the massive inconveniences Vista forces on me. Let me explain:

First off: I have (at the moment) 136 problem reports waiting for solutions. The very existence of these annoys me. Windows claims to be able to search for a solution then comes back with nothing. I also have 4 which claim they have solutions but I cant find out what the solution is. This is leading to no small degree of madness.

Next in line: Vista makes it harder for me to make changes than Ubuntu. Every time I try to do something I have to give administrator authority. It gets to the point where I almost authorise without looking. This is not making the system safer by any stretch of the imagination.

Thirdly: The resources it uses is astronomical. If I have no applications open, nearly 1GB of RAM is being used. What do I get for this? Transparent icons. Wow.

Fourthly: It crashes. It is no more stable than Windows ME and a far cry from what I would have expected from Win2k or WinNT. If I get another USB driver error message I will explode…. Argh… Boom…

Last but not least: It hates my software. The Rise of The Machines is obviously a genuine event because my Devil Infested Vista machine has software it just doesn’t like. Not in the normal software failure way, but almost random dislikes for certain applications (they run fine on the other Vista machine…).

The two applications The DevilVista hates at the moment are Opera and eMule (before you ask, I only use this share legitimate files, I would never use it get warez or the like). It hates them to the extent that neither are usable any more.

When I open Opera, it seems to open fine. All my previous windows and tabs load and the system works as normal. The evidence this is a recent dislike is evinced by the fact sites I visited last week as still available on load. However, over the last four days every time I click on ANY link in Opera or type an address in the URL bar and press go, the USB WiFi connection drops out. The network goes from full strength (the router is about 8 feet away), to unable to find any networks. Normally, there are about six or seven networks within range, but this instantly goes to none. No matter of refreshing will cure it. (remember this state).

eMule is different. I can open it. Connect to Kad or a Server and start sharing files (all legitimate remember). This works well for about 60 – 90 minutes whereupon the WiFi network vanishes and I am at the same state as above. eMule worked fine until about four weeks ago so this is not time coincident with the Opera curse.

Anyway, I try to troubleshoot the WiFi connection. Windows is no help, coming up with spurious error messages and terrible advice (and complaining it cant get online to find help… the irony.. it burns…). I try unplugging the device and re-attaching – this just kills it as now the device no longer exists on the system. My WiFi connector is attached to an external, powered, USB hub so I take the plug out of one port and put it in a different one.

This makes things go very weird. Initially it is great, the WiFi light comes on, and networks are found. I try to connect to the router and it asks for the WEP key. So far so good. It then connects to the router but refuses to “identify” (whatever the **** that means) and I am restricted to “local” access only. I try to log into the router (surely that is part of the “Local” network) and it just fails – unable to connect to server. (In the meantime, the laptop on the table next to me connects fine). In the end, admitting defeat, I reboot only to discover the BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER Blue Screen of Death message and it reboots again. This time everything works fine, I log in and it connects first time, every time.

It is coming close to driving me mad. For the most part, I can get away with out using Opera and eMule but the apparently arbitrary nature of this software vendetta is confusing. The machine used to run both without any problems. I am a touch concerned it may start to hate MS Office or FireFox and then there will be a real problem.

For completeness’ sake: I have run AVG and SpyBot S&D with upto date definitions. I have tried an online virus scanner and a rootkit checker – all seems to be clean. I am not yet willing to reinstall everything (there is a lot on the pc) and, before it is suggested I dont want a Mac (too expensive) and while I may install Linux (Not Ubuntu after my previous efforts, but PcLinuxOs is tempting) it isnt a solution.

Tail continues to wag dog

Posted on Sat, 14 June, 2008 by ATGW

I may have imagined it, but I am sure once upon a time the media reported news that happened rather than created the news all by itself. If they ever did exist, those days are gone now.

This week we saw yet another example of how the public, inspired by various media outlets begging for 24 hour news items, are gullible and (generally) selfish. Part of me honestly wonders if democracy is really the best way for a nation to govern itself – the selfishness of individuals is so strong that, over a nation, it really cant be a good thing.

The latest example is about Petrol (Gasoline) again. Earlier in the week we were fed lurid headlines about the impending Shell delivery drivers strike and how “1 in 10 forecourts would run out of petrol.” Set against this, the government kept saying “there is enough fuel, don’t panic, what ever you do, don’t panic buy.”

Seems fairly reasonable. The drivers have a right to strike (even if I think they are already grossly over paid – they earn twice what a nurse or teacher does) and I wish them all the best at getting a pay rise. Likewise, the government are correct. Four days of no deliveries to Shell garages is not going to impact the average person. If it came close to that, there are measures available to restore the balance (although rationing would be harsh). All in all, it is almost a non-news-event. Yes, there will be a strike but so what?

Now, we factor in the “human” element. By human, I mean ill-informed, fearful, ignorant and selfish. Proper “human” traits (*). As I see it, the thinking goes like this:

The news keeps showing how 1 in 10 forecourts will run out of fuel, so there must be something to worry about. The news keeps interviewing other “average people” who are worried, so I should worry as well. More news items about which petrol stations will be the most affected, so I should be worried. The government keeps telling me nothing bad will happen, now I am really worried. I rush out and panic buy as much fuel as I can get my hands on. I queue up for a while, cos there are lots of other people panic buying today. But I get loads of fuel and drive home.

Relaxing slightly, with my full tank, I turn on the news. After a day of people panic buying, wow, some petrol stations are running out of fuel. The news was right and the government lied to us again. I was right to buy loads of fuel…

Yes, it seems crazy, but this is what has happened in the UK. Despite all the assurances, people panic bought fuel (often despite not having any planned journey to go on…) and, as the media predicted petrol stations ran out.

The lessons I take from this are:

People are so truly selfish they no longer realise the effects of their actions. Listening to radio news yesterday there were dozens of people interviewed claiming they were filling up their cars and spare jerry cans (despite not planning to go anywhere) just in case. They wanted to make sure if there was a shortage other people suffered not them – no matter who may have greater need.
People are ignorant. Rather than think about the situation, people allow the 24 hour news outlets to feed them any nonsense and it is taken at face value. This is strange, given the number of times media organisations have been show to have falsified things to make news…
Which leads me to no one even comes close to trusting an “official” or “government” spokesperson. I actually think this is understandable, given the degree to which we are lied to on a daily basis, however sometimes they are telling the truth. Why the government spin doctors are “less trustworthy” than heavily biased media organisations’ spin doctors is beyond me.

Most frustrating of it all, is that the inevitable chain of events has done nothing but re-inforce people’s crazy ideas. Despite the government’s promises, petrol did run out (albeit hardly anywhere), so people add it to the list of times the government has lied. The media predicted it, so people add it to the list of things the media were correct. The selfish people are reassured that their selfishness was justified.

What is to blame for this? Has a generation been failed by the lack of a “proper” education? (I doubt it), are people inherently lazy and obedient? (again, I doubt it), have two decades of political lies and mismanagement of the public created a wary, scared public who feel they need to look after themselves because no one else will? (hmm).

Answers on a postcard to Number 10 Downing Street….

—

* sometimes I worry I am becoming sociopathic. Then I worry that writing things like that in a blog will count as a pre-crime and have me arrested. Then I relax because that line of crazy thinking means I am as mad, and human, as every one else…….. Wait, is that a helicopter overhead……… Why is it painted black? …….

Fame and Fortune

Status

Well, actually maybe neither fame or fortune, but I have just realised I am a “featured photographer” on Flickr now! (Check out the Strangford pages, you may have to scroll down a bit though…). I am sure this is of little interest to any one who is not in my immediate family, but I couldn’t resist 🙂 [edited to add Newtonabbey pages as well! Wow!]

The Atheist Thirteen

Posted on Fri, 13 June, 2008 by ATGW

It has been a while, but it seems we’ve been hit by another “meme” – this time it is the Atheist Thirteen from Nullifidian. For anyone who has already read Null’s post, I must apologise that a lot of the responses are similar.

(Null, if you read this – why is it called “Atheist 13” when there are 10 questions?)

Rules: If you’d like to take part, copy these questions, and answer them in your own words on your own blog.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

“A lack of belief in anything divine.”

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Not at all. While Religious Education at school talked about the various religions there was never anything resembling a serious effort to convince me any particular religion was more valid than any other (or even more valid than no-religion at all). This is the case even though I went to Church Sunday school for quite a time.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Idiocy.

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?

Astrophysics and related disciplines – astronomy, space travel etc. (I only picked astrophysics because Null beat me to Astronomy).

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?

I’d like people to stop talking about an “atheist community” as if it were a homogeneous group that shared more than a single idea. I cant think of any real meaning of “community” that seems to apply to the global network of atheists.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?

“That’s nice, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

God is really kind and benevolent but if you dont bow to his ever wish, no matter how capricious, you will suffer worse punishment than you can imagine for all of eternity. It is self refuting unless the person is a genuine idiot – and then it isnt worth refuting. Just wait until they forget to breathe and die.

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

That there isn’t an Atheist Community.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Dawkins because, although I used to hate him, he has grown on me. I like his “posh English scientist” TV demeanour. Hitchens is too arty and there isn’t enough scientific rigour in his comments. Harris really annoys me and I don’t know Dennett well enough.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

The Pope, because it would be a MAJOR achievement… (Unless he is, as I sometimes suspect, not really a Catholic).

Now name three other atheist blogs that you’d like to see take up the Atheist Thirteen gauntlet:

This is always the hard part. There are zillions of good atheist blogs but tagging them all would be close to insane. There are a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they are tagged and a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they aren’t tagged. For this, almost insurmountable, challenge I have picked three from our blogrolls at random:

The gorgeously designed and always entertaining “X is …“
The Snarling and Growling “Grumpy Lion“
The militant Bligbi.

Please don’t be upset if you have been missed out – if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged. Likewise, if you are one of the three above and don’t want to be tagged, I am OK with that.

Internment Returns

Posted on Wed, 11 June, 2008 by ATGW

Well, sadly, the craven government of the United Kingdom has surrendered to terrorism and taken yet another step in dismantling the fundamental liberties we have enjoyed for centuries. A basic principle enshrined in Medieval law was that the State should not deprive a person of their liberty without a trial. In practice this amounted to about 24 hours between detention and charging. In my lifetime this has increased to four weeks and now looks set to become six weeks.

Well done Terrorists.

If you are able, please try to find a clip of the BBC News 24 interview with Tony Benn. What ever your opinions on the man as a politician may be (for example, mine aren’t great), he pretty much summarises what people should be feeling about this travesty of justice.

Sadly, people don’t seem to be feeling this. If the statistics are to be believed 65% of the UK population supports 42 days detention of innocent people (which means the pop-survey I carried out at work this morning massively fails to reflect the UK population). I can only assume they all think the detainees will be some one else so the thought of suffering is alien to them. Even more worryingly, listening to the BBC Radio 1 street interviews in the run up to the vote showed me that 65% of the population do support it – but that is because they are beyond stupid.

One person who called in said 42 wasn’t enough and people should be detained “until they can prove they are not guilty.” Oh sweet Thor. Another said “there is no smoke without fire.” Lots of it was about putting the needs of the many over the needs of the few. Yes, I did just want to cry but I was driving at the time.

It seems we are reaping the rewards of a generation of bad teaching, dishonest politicians, media dominance and uncontrolled spin. People are no longer equipped to see when they are being led down the garden path and a total lack of civic understanding means that when they do suspect it, they no longer care.

If I could find a suitable country, I’d emigrate.

Civic Duty

Posted on Wed, 11 June, 2008 by ATGW

It seems that not only is the UK full of people too stupid to realise that 42 days detention of innocent people is a BADTHING©™®, but it is also full of people with a weird idea of what to do when something, which is a potential threat to national security, happens.

The second main news item on the BBC now (after the travesty of 42 days) is about the government losing some top secret documents on a train. Now, I am not going to harp on about the irony that a government that wants to intern people for six weeks is staffed by people who can’t look after a document for a sixty minute train journey. That would be too obvious 🙂

What really intrigued me is the actions of the member of public who found the documents. Did they, upon seeing the MOD and Government headers and top secret classifications, go straight to the police and report this heinous breach of national security?(*) No. Did they, on realising a crime had taken place report it to the police? No. Did they, in fact, do anything which could be described as fulfilling their public duty? Not really, no.

What they actually did was give it to the BBC security correspondent. Yes, not just turned up at the BBC and said here you go, they actually made enough arrangements to find out who the BBC security correspondent was (I have no idea and cant be bothered to look it up), then went to the BBC to hand over the documents. Madness.

What sort of world do we live in where 65% of people want innocent people locked up but don’t have the sense of civic duty to hand top secret documents in to the police, preferring to give them to the media….

—

* Top Secret apparently means “Information and material the unauthorized disclosure of which would cause EXCEPTIONALLY GRAVE DAMAGE to the nation (UK).” (source)

Identity Cards Will Cure All That Ails You

Posted on Sun, 8 June, 2008 by ATGW

Well, first off, thanks to Alun sending me the link to the monstrously funny site called “spEak You’re bRanes” and the simply amazing Twat O Tron, I no longer have the faintest idea if the garbage posted on the BBC website’s have your say section is even slightly real. Worryingly, I think that the gibberish there is actually posted by real people. I say real people, but now I am convinced they are actually employees of the Home Secretary posting nonsense in a thinly disguised attempt to change public opinion. I would hate to think that people this stupid would be able to use a computer well enough to access the internet.

One of today’s talking points is the prospect of introducing Identity Cards to this once free nation. Weirdly the BBC seems to have used the wrong tense with the title, but it is called “Is the government creating a ‘surveillance society’?” and, boy, has it generated some nonsense.

Take this wonder from “Joy Pattinson” (claiming to be from Switzerland, but that just makes me think it is the Twat o Tron):

I have no confidence in this “government” whatsoever! They are unelected, uncouth and incompetent. But I am for ID cards 100% but think they should include everybody over the age of 12 with so much knife crimes in the UK. ID cards are in focus in other European countries and they are not considered security states. But I prefer to live in on with security and less personal freedom than the other way around. ID card protect the honest and legitimates. Those protesting are suspect! Joy

What? Seriously this idiot is claiming that carrying ID cards will prevent knife crime. How, Zeus only knows. I honestly cant even work out where to begin with this bit of nonsense. And, as a point of note, the Labour Party were elected to power in the UK, it is down to the party to decide on the leader of the government.

“John from Wilts” also produces a strangely “Twat-0-Tron”-esque comment with:

I have 2 ID cards both Spanish. One has my name and address on it and my Spanish NHS number and my fingerprint on the reverse. The 2nd card is my medical card with my NHS number and date of birth. Should I have an accident anywhere in Spain when the card is swiped it gives my doctors name my Consultorio (Surgery) and access to my medical records which would include any time spent in hospital and the treatment recieved. What fuss people make about ID cards here is entirely childish and petty.

Again we have another magical use for ID cards to save lives. Quite why some one from Wiltshire thinks a Spanish health service card is any use to them – or different from carrying your British NHS card – is beyond me. Does the NHS even have a system which would allow this?

Oddly, this wonderful life saving use of ID cards is not one they could be put to – so quite how John From Wilts thinks it is relevant is beyond me. Is this an opening shot in the inevitable mission creep ID cards are going to suffer from?

People who support ID cards have a list of things they think the ID card will protect them from. The fact that none of these match the government claims is ignored. Weirdly, the government itself seems unable to quantify what value ID cards will give to our society. What crimes in the (say) last 10 years would have been prevented by people carrying ID cards?

Still, despite this, there seem to be people capable of at least some higher brain functions who support ID cards.

Why?

I blame teh skoolz

Posted on Tue, 3 June, 2008 by ATGW

On the Radio 1 news today there was a snippet (I am not going to look it up but it will be on the BBC website) about some truly stupid youngsters. Apparently, Police in Scotland have become the first in the UK to target people who admit to crimes on social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook. (*)

Now, for me, I think this is a good idea. If people (mostly “yoofs” according to the news) are stupid enough to commit a crime and then boast about it online they need to be taken out of the gene pool urgently. One of the young lads interviewed had apparently put up pictures of himself in a balaclava carrying a knife. Why he went to these lengths to remain anonymous, then outed himself online is beyond me.

The most frustrating part, and a good example of how taking away the “classical” education has failed children was a young retard complaining about the police scouring social networking sites to find offenders. He actually had the gall to say it was an invasion of his privacy for the police to look over his Bebo page to find out what crimes he has committed. Flabbergasting.

For me, it weakens the real destruction of our privacy when people think things like this are an invasion of privacy. It is like putting a full page advert in a newspaper and then complaining that people reading it are invading your privacy. Idiocy reigns.

—

* Oddly I cant find this on the real BBC news so I may have dreamed it – but I hope not as I was driving at the time…

French Village

Aside

If you are looking for a holiday to the south of France anytime soon, can I suggest you stop by Clairac for at least a visit. It is a gorgeous little town – you can see some shots of it on Flickr.

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Why Dont You Blog?

Challenging the Zeitgeist

Author Archives: ATGW

About ATGW

The Irony, It burns…

Blame the Cold War

No Photo Day 2008

Time to lighten the mood

Rights fading away

Cursed?

Vista is teh work of teh debil

Tail continues to wag dog

Fame and Fortune

Status

The Atheist Thirteen

Internment Returns

Civic Duty

I blame teh skoolz

French Village

Aside

About ATGW

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