The Real Stephen Booth

Going to work ill

2011-12-09T08:43:00.001Z

It's cold and flu season again which, of course, leads to the question of whether one should go to work ill or work from home (if possible) or take a sick day. Management, obviously, want us to come in even if we will infect the rest of our co-workers and devise policies that punish us if we do take a day sick.

I posted yesterday on my Facebook wall that a number of the staff sitting near to me at work had colds and were coughing a sneezing. I said it didn't look good, I'd probably catch it from either or both of them. One of my friends made an interesting comment likening being in the office with people with colds to passive smoking. Both are injurious to our health. Both are potentially life threatening (in particular where there are other factors involved such as age, general health and conditions such as diabetes or asthma). Both carry a risk to third parties (smoke on clothes from passive smoking, secondary infections when we come home from work or visit friends and relatives).

Why then, do we ban smoking in the office but ban not coming to the office when ill?

Potential Scam call from 02070597699

2011-11-15T11:26:00.001Z

Just had a call from 02070597699. Very bad background noise, caller sounded like she had a Phillipino or similar accent. Asked if I'd enterted an online competition recently for an iPhone, I've entered a few so said yes. She said that this was just a courtesy call to tell me that the competition had now closed and I'd be getting an email soon telling me what I'd won. She then went on to say that everyone who entered the contest was getting some free lottery tickets and how lucky I was. I hung up.

The phone they called me on is a mobile on Three and the only people who have that number besides myself and Three are my sister and the Telephone Preference Service. I only have the phone because my sister has a three phone and it's cheaper for me to have another phone on Three than to call her on my main phone which is on Orange.

I called the number back and asked the person who answered the name of the company, she said it is BTD European Services. I confirmed the company name and hung up.

I Googled the number and found a number of forums where people reported that this is a scam. Apparently later in the call they ask for personal details to prove ID and for bank account and sort code details.

Many a true word said in jest

2011-07-20T09:54:00.000+01:00

Not sure of the provenence of this:

Let's put the pensioners in jail and the criminals in a nursing home.

This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.

They'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheel chairs etc and they'd receive money instead of paying it out.

They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.

Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them.

A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell.

They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.

They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counselling, pool and education.

Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ's and legal aid would be free, on request.

Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens.

Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls.

There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.

The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised. Lights off at 9pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and pay £600.00 + per week and have no hope of ever getting out.

There does seem to have been a major shift in the last decade or so, an accelorating one, to move away from public sector provision of care to private sector. Care was never well paid but now it minimum wage territory.

Happiness at work

2011-06-02T08:02:00.000+01:00

BBC Breakfast are talking about a survey on what makes people happy at work. Usual stuff, apparently none of us are bothered about money but we all want regular feedback (not sure if the survey was deliberately biased, accidentally badly written or just totally fictional). I emailed int he below comment:

I think it varies from person to person, and from time to time for the same person, what makes them happy at work. It also probably depends a lot on the other pressures in their life.

For some people it's more money, for others it's a short commute. For some it's regular praise, for others it's varied and interesting work. For some it's the opportunity to meet people and work with them, for others it's the opportunity to shut themselves away in a room full of computers and only interact with people outside their immediate team by email.

Whilst much derided, more money may bring happiness as it allows you to support your family, finance activities that make you happy or support a charity or cause that is important to you. Money itself may not make you happy but what you can do with it does.

Probably too long (and too true) for them to read.

Very annoyed with Virgin Media

2011-05-16T11:44:00.000+01:00

Each week end for the last few weeks my dial up internet has been failing. Either no dial tone or get engaged tone when I dial up. My phone and Internet are both through Virgin Media so I've been calling their customer service line. Calling at the weekend, when the problem happens, is a disaster as only their Indian call centre is on duty so it's 40 minutes navigating their IVR and on hold to finally get through to someone who can't understand my accent or deal with anything that isn't in their script, who eventually says they're passing me to someone who can resolve the problem then another 30 minutes on hold when their system finally drops the call. I finally got through this morning and spoke to someone with a faint Scottish accent who could understand my Brummie accent. She called up their internet support section who said I'd have to call them direct on the premium rate number. This was 08:14 (according to the clock on BBC Breakfast). I called the nujmber they gave me only to get a recorded message to say that their office doesn't open until 08:00 (i.e. about quarter of an hour ago). I waited about 5 minutes and called back but just got the same message.

I do think that there's something seriously wrong with making a technical support line premium rate. This is something that is clearly a problem at their end, I'm calling their internet dial-up number and getting an engaged tone. This should not happen, yet they want to charge me to resolve it!

Not happy, very annoyed.

Public sector workers and skills

2011-04-13T08:39:00.000+01:00

On BBC breakfast this morning they had someone in who was talking about how public sector workers tend not to know how to sell their skills on the job market as well as private sector workers do. I emailed this in but as it's probably too long to get read on air I figured I'd post it here:

I have worked in both public and private sector over the past 15 years, everything from SME employing 50 people to big multi-national company or local council employing tens of thousands. The biggest difference I've found, in relation to skills, in comparing working in the public and private sectors is one of variety and career path.

I've found that in the private sector, in all but the smallest of companies, you are usually quite restricted in the work that you do and the skills you are expected to apply. You are also likely to have a fairly clear career path in terms of knowing where you are and what skills you need to develop to move to the next level up.

In the public sector career paths are less clear and you are typically expected to pick up a broad range of tasks and skills quite quickly and to a fairly high level. many of the consultants I've worked with have been surprised at how myself and my colleagues have switched around roles with a project and between different projects.

I think the driver here is around the restrictions on hiring. In the private sector if you know you need someone with a particular skill set for 6 months then you'll probably negotiate funding from your manager for a temporary contract, hire someone through an agency and that's it. In the public sector it can take 3-4 months to get approval for a temporary contract, another 3-4 to have the job description agreed and checked by HR and legal then 2-3 months to do the actual hiring as even if you go through an agency you usually have to advertise publicly as well for equalities reasons. Usually much quicker and easier to just grab an existing member of staff and tell them that it's now their responsibility, if they don't know how they should just look it up on the web (in their own time) or buy a book (at their own expense).

If public sector workers have difficulty explaining their skills it's probably because they have had to develop, use and discard such a variety that it's more of a question of which skills they should be talking about.

Really the biggest skill a public sector worker has is adaptability!

Why I think you should vote Yes to AV

2011-04-11T18:57:00.002+01:00

I have seen a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the media of late from those who oppose the proposed Alternative Voting (AV) system. I figured I'd post why I think the UK should switch to AV and people should vote yes in the coming referendum. First a little disclaimer...

A Little Disclaimer
Whilst I am a grassroots member of a UK political party this is by me as an individual, it has not been requested or endorsed by that or any other political party. I have been a member of various organisations that have used electoral systems similar to the proposed AV system and seen it in action, I have helped to run elections using the Single Transferable Vote system. I have read the leaflet from The Electoral Commission that has been sent to each household explaining how AV works. My view that the UK should adopt AV and the below is based on my own experiences and the information contained in that leaflet. I recommend that you read the leaflet.

I really do recommend that you read the leaflet
Seriously, it's a quick read and gives a very good explanation of the differences between the current system and the proposed AV system. If you haven't received yours yet, or maybe the hamster ate it, you can get a copy and even more information from here.

What is the current system and what is wrong with it?
The current system is called "First Past the Post". It's pretty simple really. Everyone has one vote and casts it by marking a piece of paper (usually with a cross) against the name of the person they want to vote for. After the polls have closed the papers are separated according to whose name has been marked and counted. Who ever gets the most votes wins. Simple and all well and fine and good where there's only two candidates or choices. You vote for one or the other (or you could spoil your ballot or just not bother to vote). There are a couple of really major problems with this system where there are three or more candidates (from memory there's usually around 7 or 8 in the constituency I live in) in that it often returns a candidate most people don't like (or at least would prefer someone else) and penalises minor parties.

Suppose there are 6 Candidates on the ballot. Candidate A receives 20% of the vote, candidate B gets 19.9%, candidate C 19.1%, candidate D gets 15.1% of the vote, candidate E gets 14.9% of the vote and candidate F gets 10%. Under first past the post candidate A is declared the winner. But just a sec, 80% of those who voted said they wanted someone other than candidate A. 80%! That's a lot, well over half. Also candidate B was only 0.1% of the vote behind candidate A, nearly as many people wanted them although slightly more wanted someone else (but not necessarily candidate A). OK so figures like that are uncommon and probably unlikely. What is quite common is the winning candidate polling only 30-40% of the vote and their nearest competitor being only slightly behind (i.e. marginal seats).

The current system penalises minor parties by dissuading their supporters from voting for them. When there are 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 or 15 (the maximum I've seen on one ballot) candidates then unless you think that your preferred candidate has a good chance of being in the top 3 you might think that you are throwing your vote away. You'd be right. Under the current system voting for a minor party candidate is the equivalent of writing "I am a fish" across your ballot paper. This means that a lot of people vote for a party they maybe don't like but dislike less than the other two parties in the top 3. Some candidates plays this up and and include in their election material "These parties have no chance here, don't vote for them. Vote for us else the [some party they think the voters will see as a threat] will get in." In my example above the party that candidate F belongs to might actually have quite a bit of support, maybe enough to turn that 10% into 20.1%. They don't get the votes because a lot of their supporters think they don't have a chance so vote for a different party, no-one ever knows how much support they really have because their supporters are afraid of wasting their vote and think that if they vote for the party they like that will allow the party they hate to get in.

So what's the alternative and why is it better?
The leaflet gives a much better explanation than I can but here's a summary. Same names on the ballot paper, same ballot box. This time rather than just putting an X (although you can still do that if you really want) you can now rank the candidates in order of preference. You don't have to rank them all, but you can if you want, you can just rank your top few and leave the rest unmarked. When the polls close the ballots are collected as before and sorted but this time according to who has the first preference marked on each (an X or a 1) and these are counted. If a candidate gets 50%+1 or more of the votes then they are the winner and the process stops, we have a candidate that more then half of the people who voted wanted. Quite likely there may be a candidate who has more votes than any one other candidate but less than 50% of the total vote. In that situation the candidate who got the least votes is disqualified an their votes checked for second choices. If there's no second choice then the ballots are discarded (i.e. put away, they're not thrown away) but those where there is a second choice expressed are added to the appropriate pile and to the total for those candidates. If one candidate now has 50%+1 or more of the vote then they are the winner and the process stops, if not then the candidate who now has the least votes is disqualified and their votes checked for second, third, fourth &c preferences. They will then be added to the pile (and count) for the candidate who got second preference unless that candidate has been disqualified in which case they will be added to the pile and count for the third preference and so on, papers with no valid preferences are discarded. This continues until either one candidate has 50%+1 or more of the votes or, rarely, there are no further preferences so no more transfers can be made.

The advantages of this system are that the winning candidate is almost always going to have been a high preference for over half of the voters (in my experience the winning candidate is usually one who was first or second in the first count) and it gives supporters of minority parties to express their first preference but still vote for a majority party (who they like but not as much as the minority party) as second choice so reducing the risk of the opposing majority party (who they hate) getting in.

But doesn't this mean some people get more than one vote?
No! I've heard this claim being made on TV by the 'No' campaigners. It's disinformation to scare people into thinking that AV is an attack on democracy. It isn't, if anything it promotes true democracy. Everyone still only has one vote and only one vote. It's that that one vote can be transferred to a second preference if the first preference comes last.

Might this let an extremist candidate win an election?
Possibly. Yes it is possible that a candidate from an extremist party could get in if they poll at least 50%+1 of the vote in their constituency. That is how democracy is supposed to work, the candidate who most people want to win should win. If you don't think a candidate should win then vote against them and get out and campaign against them. Get a blog, get a soap box, get active. That is how democracy should work. Also, bear in mind that an extremist can win with just 20, 30 or 40% of the vote under the current system so long as the rest of the vote is sufficiently fragmented.

Splitting PDFs

2011-04-05T15:31:00.002+01:00

Had a bit of a change today. There's a report that produced weekly at work, as a PDF file, for all our projects. Basically a highlight/checkpoint report. Problem is that there's hundreds of projects and we don't want project managers to have to go through the whole list to find the one or two pages that impact them (they just won't). We were looking to split the file by project so each project manager would only have to look at the reports for their own project. Fortunately each project is bookmarked in the PDF so we had something we could split on.

I was tasked with finding a suitable product. After looking at a few dozen I finally settled on A-PDF Split. I particularly liked the way you can control the output filenames with macros.

NitroPDF was a close second but cost a lot more, fine if you want the extra functionality (it does more than split) but we didn't need that, and didn't have such good control on the output filenames. The majority of the other products were total 'dog with three legs', many just didn't work at all or threw up loads of errors. A-PDF Split does what we need and doesn't cost much. There's also a command line version for if you need to do offline batch processing, but there's no trial version of that so I couldn't try it.

Emailing councillors about missing drain grids

2011-02-27T19:36:00.000Z

Emailed my local councilors (via WriteTothem):

Dear Daphne Gaved, David Osborne and David Willis,

I am writing to you about a failure of the council to deal with a dangerous situation in a timely manner.

On Wednesday 2nd February 2011 I noticed that the grids had been removed from a number of drains near my home,. specifically 2 on Medley Road near the corner with Gough Road and one on Tomey Road near the corner with Holte Road. Whilst two of these (the one on Tomey road and one of those on medley Road) had barriers around them (marked as belonging to, and presumably being put there by, Amey, the council's contractor for road maintenance and repair), one was just left open. This was logged and I was given a job reference number of 80035851110.

When there was no change by Friday (as a minimum I was hoping that someone would come and put barriers around open drain) I submitted a report to the council through the website FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/161865) on 4th February. We are now nearly 4 weeks from the initial report and the only change I have seen is that it appears that a bin sack has fallen or been put into the open drain and that the barriers around the open drain on Tomey Road keep falling over.

Could you please follow this up and at least have the issue with missing and insubstantial barriers be resolved.

Thank you

Stephen

If that doesn't work my only option will be Ed Doolan.

Economic Loss

2011-01-24T08:08:00.000Z

Just sent this in to BBC Breakfast regarding an item they had on this morning.

If you look at the economies, such as India, that are now growing and taking work that used to be done here, the common factor seems to be training. For getting on for 40 years the Indian government has been pouring money into education and training. Indian universities now graduate more Computer Science Honours graduates each year than there are people working in the UK. Meanwhile our government is slashing education funding, raising the cost of education and cutting down or off financial support for students. Is it any wonder we're slipping behind?

Apparently a number of companies are looking for massive government investment.

Relativity and all that

2011-01-02T14:32:00.000Z

Just watched a documentary about galaxies. They mentioned something called Dark Energy that acts opposite to Dark Matter. Apparently Dark Energy repulsive powers will eventually overcome the attractive powers of Dark Matter and cause galaxies to move apart faster than the speed of light. This reminded me of something I've never really been able to fully get my head around.

Suppose you are standing on planet A, you can see two other planets, X and Y in opposite directions (so if you drew a straight line from X to Y it would pass through a):

X----------A---------Y

X and Y start traveling away from you in opposite directions at 100kph. In the frame of reference of planet A each are traveling at 100kph in opposite directions, you might represent this as a vector of 100kph and -100kph in the X-Axis or X(100,0,0) and Y(-100,0,0). If one goes to the X frame of reference then we see A moving away at 100kph and Y at 200kph. Easy enough to model with a long straight road, two cars and a few of those speed guns the police use, maybe Top Gear will give it a go some day.

Speed (or velocity) is just distance traveled over time or increase in distance between two points (one designated as fixed in the frame of reference). So when we say that X and Y are traveling away from A at 100kph were actually saying that in the A frame of references the distance between X and A and between Y and A is increasing by 100km for every hour that elapses. In the X frame of reference The distance between X and A is increasing at 100km each hour and the distance between X and Y is increasing by 200km each hour.

Now suppose we increase the speed, in the A frame of reference, to 5.395x10^8kph. Back in the X frame of reference A is now whizzing away at 5.395X10^8kph and Y at 1.079x10^9kph. Thing is that if we increase the speed, in the A frame of reference, whilst in the X frame of reference the speed of A will increase the speed of Y will remain at 1.079x10^9kph because that is the speed of light in free space (c) and is the top speed matter can attain.

Now say we increase the speed in the the A frame of reference to c and measure the distance between our 3 planets (we'll call that T0) then measure the distance again an hour later (T1). Say at T0 the distance between A and both X and Y is 1.079x10^9km so the distance between X and Y will be 2.158x10^km:

X--------A---------Y

After one hour the distance, still in the A frame of reference, from A to X would now be 2.158x10^9, same as from A to Y, whilst the distance from X to Y would be 4.316x10^9km as both gave been traveling away from A at 1.079x10^9kph:

X--------------------A--------------------Y

In the X frame of reference, however, whilst A has been traveling away at 1.079x10^9 Y has also been traveling away at only 1.079x10^9kph, not at 2.158x0^9kph, as that is the maximum speed of matter. Therefore whilst the distance from X to A has increased to 2.158x10^9km to distance fro X to Y in the X frame of reference will be 3.237x10^9km:

X-------------------A----------Y

That's what confuses me.

Living longer and funding education

2010-12-30T08:37:00.001Z

BBC Breakfast are running two stories this morning, as separate and distinct stories, which appear to be linked. I emailed in a comment. Unfortunately as my comment ran rather long I doubt they will read it out, I'm reproducing it here.

You appear not to have noticed but two of the stories you're running this morning seem to be linked. The stories are that more people are going to live to 100 and the comparison between students of the baby boomer generation who had free university education and the current (and last) generation who have had to pay.

SAGA say that older people need to work to supplement their income, this of course removes jobs that younger people could have taken up. Your interviewee on free education enjoyed by baby boomers says that had 40% of her generation gone to university they may have had to pay for their education. If older people are to work longer then something must be done with the younger people who cannot then find work. Investing in education (vocational as well as academic) is an excellent way to keep them off the job market longer, maybe change from a working life of 15 to 65 to one of 25 to 75. This would also address the skills shortage we have had in this country since the 1980s and reduce our reliance on skilled migrant workers, or maybe balance the migrants coming in with our own citizens migrating overseas where their particular skills are needed.

We seem to have a choice. Either subsidise young people to stay in education longer and off the job market or subsidise older people to leave the job market and enjoy 30+ years of retirement. I suspect the former would be better for the long term economy. Alternatively we all move to part-time/job-share working and all take a hit over our entire careers.

Just had a thought about dealing with road tax evasion and uninsured/unMOTed drivers/cars

2010-12-17T14:32:00.000Z

My manager was just talking about how in sonme continental countries the tax, MOT and insurance certificates are a single document and you can't MOT your car until it's taxed and insured. She suggested that we should implement that here.

It gave me an idea!

Currently in the UK you cannot tax your car until you have an MOT and insurance. If, therefore, you don't tax your car you can get away with no MOT or insurance. My idea is to turn the tax disc into a 2 part document. Retain the current paper disc but add a smart card. Compel all petrol retailers to attach a reader for the card to their pumps (maybe offer grants and/or loans to smaller retailers, in particular in areas where there is restricted availability of petrol retailers). If the card is not inserted the pump will not dispense fuel. The card would store the date the next MOT is due, which garage did the last MOT, the date the insurance is due for renewal, who the insurance is with and type of fuel the car takes (so if you pick up the wrong nozzle the pump can warn you and not dispense fuel until you pick up the correct nozzle or acknowledge the message), maybe reg number, make and model of the car. It could also store when you filled up, how much fuel you had and how much it cost, some retailers may want to offer a service to print off your fuel use for you. If the tax, MOT or Insurance is more than a month overdue the pump either won't dispense fuel or will only dispense a small quantity. I am not suggesting that any central database be kept linking cards to petrol purchases so 'Database State' whiners don't need to get all het up.

The result of this would be that if you don't have a current MOT and insurance you can't buy fuel, or can only buy a small amount. Essentially it's enforcing the rule that if you want to drive you have to do so legally.

The main hole I can see is that people may use the card for one car with another so they might have one car which is taxed, insured and MOTed and use the card to fill up one that isn't and whilst the card may show that the car is insured it doesn't guarantee that the person currently driving it is insured. A smaller hole is that some retailers may use the card as a way to gather marketing information and to make offers, "Hey, you're insurance is up for renewal. Would you like us to get you a quote?" Even that could be an advantage as insurers (and quote websites such as confused.com &c)could put vending machines in petrol stations and other locations to allow people to buy or upgrade their insurance by inserting their card and just tapping in relevant details such as the type of insurance needed and who will need to be insured.

Directly elected mayor for Birmingham?

2010-12-14T08:05:00.000Z

It seems that Birmingham is to get a referendum on whether to have an elected mayor. A number of people have expressed interest in the role, including Yardley MP John Hemming.

I like the idea of a directly elected mayor. A major weakness of the current structure (leader of the council being the leader of the ruling party) is that whilst I might like a party or the local candidate and vote on that basis I might not like the leader of the party. The impact of my vote is dictated by an unelected party machine. A directly elected mayor gives me the opportunity to vote for the person I want to lead the council, including an independent if that's what I want.

Whilst many of those who expressed and interest in the role are existing party politicians, John Hemming stated that he would only run as a nominee of his party and not as an independent, a directly elected mayor gives us the opportunity to vote for an independent. We can vote for the person who we believe will deliver what we want, not someone beholden to a party machine and vested corporate interests.

Student Protests - Again

2010-12-09T08:28:00.001Z

Just emailed this to BBC Breakfast:

Much as it was suggested that motorists remember which petrol stations inflated their prices now and not shop there in the future, hopefully students (and those who now will not have the opportunity to become students) will remember the actions of the Tory and Lib Dem parties now in their future voting behaviour. Politicians are there to serve us, the voters, unfortunately they will only do that if they know they will be held to account for their actions.

I do think that a lot of the problems with the political system in recent years are that voters have tended to take a very short term view and failed to hold politicians to account for their actions and/or have gotten wrapped up in some short term single issue and allowed unsound ideologies to dominate the political debate leading to a party who are destructive to the opportunities and rights of the majority of people to become dominant.

Is your journey necessary?

2010-12-07T08:17:00.000Z

Each time there's a heavy snowfall we're told to only travel if it's really necessary to do so. Thing is, for most of us the journey we're most likely to make is too work. How many of us have a manager who will accept "There was lots of snow and ice, the roads were blocked so I can't make it in." as a reason to not attend work?

There was a letter in yesterday's Metro newspaper from someone who lived in the French Pyrenees, where heavy snowfall is common. Apparently there if people think there's to much snow to make it to work they just go back to bed and wait till the next day when the snow ploughs will have been round and cleared all the roads.

Student protests

2010-12-06T22:58:00.000Z

John Hemming MP (LibDem, Yardley) was on BBC Radio WM this lunch time as his office had been invaded by by a group of students. He wasn't there but did sound very unhappy at them being there, complaining they were disrupting the work of his office. He made reference to someone having been arrested in Saudi(was this the Imaam who had been arrest by the Saudi religious police then released when Radio WM publicised the situation or someone else?) and to a couple who were destitute as they had received no benefits.

Empty grit bin

2010-12-03T08:27:00.000Z

The grit bin round the corner from my house is empty, again. I jusrt reported this via Fix My Street:

The grit bin on Tomey road (near corner with Albion road) is empty again. It was about half full on Sunday evening so has emptied in the past 4 days.

Earlier this year Cllr Daphne Gaved told me that as the council don't grit side roads and pavements but do provide grit it is the duty of residents to grit their road. Obviously if there's not grit we can't do this.

Please refill the grit bin. Also please advise the process of requesting a grit bin be placed on Gough Road(preferably on the corner with Medley road).

Thanks

Probably won't do any good but at least when the local Lib Dem councilors (Daphne, mentioned above, is one of three Lib Dem councilors in this ward, the local MP (John Hemming) is also a Lib Dem and the council is a Con-Dem coalition) come campaigning and I point out the lack of grit preventing us from gritting our road and pavements I can also point out that when the bin was emptied I requested it be refilled.

I have been treating the pavement outside my house with salt, hence my house (and my neighbours' due to my salt being carried on people's shoes) are the only ones clear of snow in front.

2010-10-31T11:03:00.000Z

Just emailed this to Sunday Morning live relating to their item claiming prisons don't work.

Based on people I know who have been in prison I think that they don't work but that it's a problem of implementation rather than something inherent. I do also think that too many criminals who don't get sent to prison for minor offenses which set a pattern that later escalates to more serious crime by which time it's too late.

I believe that prison should be a place of both punishment and rehabilitation. First punishment then rehabilitation, to try to do both at the same time is insanity. The first time some one is sent to prison a little punishment followed by a lot of rehabilitation, subsequently more punishment and less (proportionately) rehabilitation. The punishment should be such that it provokes a real fear of returning to prison and the rehabilitation should look to find and address the factors that lead the person to crime.

Where possible first time offenders should be housed separately from repeat or long term offenders. This would reduce the opportunities for someone who maybe just 'fall in with a bad crowd' to fall in with a worse one by meeting people with established connections to the criminal infrastructure.

There is over crowding in prisons, fortunately there is a fairly simple solution to this. Build more prisons, but be smart about where they are built. There are many small islands in the North Sea and North Atlantic that used to be occupied crofter subsistence farmers but were abandoned in the 19th and 20th centuries when crofting became uneconomic and people left for the mainland. These would be ideal sites for prisons for the punishment phase of a sentence. Due to the remoteness and hostile climate a prison, in particular one built to a Panopticon design, would need less staff than a traditional design built in a city. The hostile but livable climate (remember, people lived there for centuries quite well) provides both an extra element to the punishment directly and would allow opportunities for the prisoners to be put to work growing some of the food required so reducing costs further (less food to ship in) and improving security (someone tired from working in the fields is unlikely to have the energy to cause trouble). It may also inculcate the idea of working for reward and lay the ground work for the rehabilitation phase that follows. The location may cause problems for visiting, but then this is the punishment phase and isolation from past associations may both enhance the punishment and disrupt links to factors that put the prisoner in the position of committing crimes.

Moving prisoners to remote island prisons for the punishment phase would free up spaces in more traditional prisons in towns and cities for the rehabilitation phase.

Not PC, but true.

Consuming news content in a paywalled world

2010-07-11T14:47:00.004+01:00

In today's Observer David Mitchell published an Op-Ed piece about Murdoch's decision to charge for access to the Time website. A number of the comments discussed the idea of paying for professional content on the web. I was moved to post the below:

I think the 'paywall' on a single provider is a wrong turn. About 20 years ago sci-fi author Harry Harrison and robotics/AI researcher Marvin Minsky suggested something I think is much more likely in their book "The Turing Option". The book is an Industrial Espionage/action/thriller story but quite early in the book they talk about a way we can consume news.

What they describe is that rather than buying a newspaper or magazine you subscribe to a service that scours the various media out there on the net (bear in mind that this was written well before the web really came about, the 'Internet' was basically USENET, email and FTP). You would tell the service the sort of things you are interested, this would be geographical areas, your work, films you like, books you like, sports you're interested, teams you follow &c. It would then identify the sorts of articles you'd be interested in and present them to you. It would also track which articles you actually read, which you re-read, which you saved for future reference &c then use this information to fine tune it's selections in future. It may also factor in things like reputation of the uthor and who else reads them. Over time, probably quite quickly, the articles presented to you would get closer and closer to what you want to read. You would pay the service a regular fixed subscription and they in turn would pay the content providers based on items used.

Given developments of the web such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Digg &c, I suspect that the service would also offer you the option to blog/tweet/post/comment about the article you just read then use that to refine future choices. It may even analyse your comments to judge how strong your interest is, did you just post the link with maybe a short "interesting article." comment or did you write an essay analysing the article, referencing other articles and including quotes? Some analysis of who you read may also be done, if you always read David Mitchell's articles on some subjects you're interested in then maybe you might be interested in his articles on a subject you're not usually that interested in.

We're already seeing some of this in Google Alerts and Amazon Recommendations. Google Alerts falls short due to the fact that it relies on you to create the search string, there's no analysis going on, it's just giving you the top few results if you ran this search now that are new since since the last time it sent the results to you. The results improve over time but due to the general improvement of the Google search algorithm rather than your individual choices. Amazon falls down on two things, one minor and one major. The minor one is that simply their analysis isn't up to it yet because their data volume is too small. They're just looking at what books/DVDs/CDs you've bought, which may include ones you bought as presents so they're what your great aunt Gladys is interested in not you, and most people don't buy enough to generate a meaningful data set, although you can improve the recommendations immensely by when you look at the recommendations page actually clicking the "I've already got this" or "Not interested" buttons. The major cause of failure is more fundamental and cannot be solved with technology, it's run by the marketing department and they want to sell you stuff. Because they want to sell you stuff and the cost of a bad recommendation is the same as no recommendation (you don't buy the product), they will use the most tenuous of links to make a recommendation. With a subscription service you are making multiple choices each day as to what to read and what not, and then add in things like twitter and digg to re-enforce the choices (maybe even have a "Not Interested" button), so a sizable data set will quickly build up. As it is a subscription model there is no incentive to make bad recommendations, if you read an article you're not interested in they don't make any extra money and it may cost them more as they now have to pay the content provider. If they make a lot of bad recommendations then you may leave them and go to a different service. Their business model, their profits, rely on you choosing to read a small number of articles you are very interested in every day so you'll keep paying your subscription but they won't have to pay the content providers too much.

This would also help the small content providers, who cannot afford to set up a micropayments system, as they can just license their content to the subscription services and get the aggregated payments.

I do think that something like that, where you don't pay the content provider directly but pay the aggregator who the licenses the material from the content provider, is a distinct possibility. Something like the iPad/Tablet-PC is probably the ideal platform and set top devices coupled to a 'reusable ePaper' printer would be good, but smart phones and more traditional PC/Laptop platforms would also work well.

Tories cut free school lunches for children from low income families

2010-06-13T21:31:00.002+01:00

Michael Gove, Education Secretary, as decided to abolish free school meals for children from low income families. This means that those on the lowest incomes could face an annual bill equivalent to at least 2 weeks' income, per child.

I do wonder what schools are supposed to with those children (in particular those too young to understand why they cannot have a school dinner like their classmates) at lunchtime or when those children are too distracted by hunger in the afternoon to study? What about those schools in low income areas where a significant proportion of the pupils receive free school meals? Perhaps the school will have to close up their kitchen because it's not economical to run for such a small number of diners?

Free school meals for children of low income or destitute families started in the 1880s and became universal in 1944. I had them in the 1980s, without them lunch would have been nothing or just a packet of supermarket own brand crisps because we couldn't afford anything more.

I think we've got a strong chance, based on the Tory-LibDem alliance's actions so far, of a double dip recession and wouldn't completely rule out a bloody revolution.

I am reminded of something Andrew Marr said in his series "History of Modern Britain". He was talking about the impact of the Thatcher government of the early 1980s and raised the point that "Britain used to be a country proud that you didn't see beggars in the street, now you saw them everywhere."

Performance Development Reviews

2010-06-12T13:28:00.004+01:00

It's Performance Development Review (PDR) season at work. A lot of people have been complaining about our PDR system, largely because it is so time consuming and complex. The form itself is 20-30 A4 pages (depending how verbose you are in completing the sections) and takes several hours to complete. There's also a quite complex link to pay. Much of the complexity links to the fact that pay is centrally controlled. This got me to thinking about PDR systems, how they relate to pay and how the whole thing could be simplified. I'm assuming a total green field and the only restrictions are what is legal and achievable.

I should possibly say at this point that my job is busines analysis which is largely about redesigning and implementing business processes, and IT systems to support them.

First off the PDR form and how it is used. The form itself I see as being 2 pages, or rather two sides, of A4. It could even be set up as two tabs in a spreadsheet. If individuals want to attach extra sheets of narrative or detail that's up to them. Typically the only people who will see a form will be the person it refers to, their manager and their manager's manager. HR may, in response to a complaint or query or as part of a random or scheduled spot check/oversight, also see them but would not usually get involved.

Side one of the form has at the top the basic identity information of whose PDR it is (the direct), who their manager is and the relevant dates. Immediately below that are three boxes for objectives for the coming year, each person having one to three objectives for the year. I realize that that might seem like an incredibly small number but objectives should be broad and quite high level and, as Drucker said, a person can only concentrate on one thing at a time, may be two. If you come up with more than three goals then you're probably trying to stretch your direct report too thin, some of the goals are 'nice to haves' rather than 'important/essential' or some of the goals can be combined because you've gone too detailed and/or prescriptive. Next section is a box for detailing what development the direct should have over the coming year with an indication of how it will be delivered. Finally, three signature boxes. One each for the direct, the manager and the manager's manager agreeing the goals and development. The reason for bringing in the manager's manager is both as a check (is the manager setting the bar too low or too high, are they agreeing unreasonable development, do they seem to be favouring some directs over others or are they setting objectives that don't serve the organisation's goals) and because they should have a broader view, as they probably manage more teams, so can spot common trends and synergies.

Side 2 is virtually identical to side 1, although you'd probably lose the top section of who it's for and their manager's details. Now, instead of talking about what the direct will achieve and do you're talking about what the direct has achieved and done then giving a score. The sign off box is agreeing the score. Exactly what scoring system to use depends on local preferences but I'd suggest either a 1 to 5 (1= objective not achieved or achieved well below expected standard, 5 = objective achieved well above expected standard and 3 = objective achieved to expected standard or not achieved for reasons outside the directs control) or Red/Amber/Green (mapping to 1, 3 and 5 in the 1 to 5 scoring system, maybe add other colour for the "not achieved for reasons outside the directs control" situation). I do think the "not achieved for reasons outside the directs control" situation should be addressed. Reviews tend to be an annual thing and a year is a long time, things change. It could be that an objective that was very important last year became unimportant. Maybe a goal depended on something else, or someone else, which fell through. A couple of classic examples are: The direct had an objective of achieving a certification that required them to attend a course but cuts to the training budget meant they were unable to attend that course; In a consultancy organisation the direct had a goal of being fee earning for a certain proportion of the year but changes in the market meant that their particular skill set was needed less so they had to spend time retraining and fell short of their goal.

A lot of people talk, and write, about SMART objectives. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebased. Mark and Mike over on Manager Tools recommend just looking at M and T in their podcast on setting annual goals, I won't rehash the rationale here but I do recommend everyone listen to that podcast (and their other podcasts), a lot of my thinking that has lead me to this post has been influenced by their podcasts. Whilst I agree with the arguments for MT goals my experience tells me that the A needs to be added back in (so it's a MAT objective), too often an over confident direct or over ambitious manager will put in a goal that simply isn't achievable. The check is needed. The objectives should, of course, serve the objectives of the team. Usually a good objective will be something that can be stated in one or two short sentences. For example "Be fee earning for at least 75% of year.", "Generate an average of at least 10 sales leads each month. Convert at least one sales lead a month into a sale.", "At least 60% 'Good', 'Very Good' or 'Excellent' rating on customer satisfaction survey by end of year.", "Issue an average of 50 or more parking fixed penalty notices per day, to be measured fortnightly. No more than 5% successfully appealed.", "Gain PRINCE2 Practitioner certification within 3 months" &c. You'll notice that every one of those has something that can be measured (mostly a number but in one case it's a yes/no, you either do or don't get the certification) and a time scale. The direct has something clear to aim for and knows when it's due, they can also measure their progress towards their goal. At the end of the year the manager has something objective to measure the direct against, there is some wriggle room for humanity and taking account of circumstance of course.

But what do you do where there isn't a clear measure? This is addressed in the Manager Tools cast on goals, listen out for the story of "John and the Gate Guards". In summary, if you can't measure the outcome itself find a proxy. Two of the example objectives I mentioned above actually use proxies. The first is fairly obvious, "At least 60% 'Good', 'Very Good' or 'Excellent' rating on customer satisfaction survey by end of year.", what our objective here is is to have satisfied customers but satisfaction can't really be measured directly, there's no meter you attach to your customer that will tell you if they're satisfied or not. What you can do is survey your customers and get them to tell you how satisfied they feel. Whilst for an individual customer this might not be a good objective measure (some people are never satisfied, or maybe have unrealistic expectations, whilst others are too polite to say when they're not) by collating the results of many surveys you can get a meaningful average while the outliers cancel each other out (although you should probably still talk to them to address individual complaints and find out what went particularly well). The second is less obvious, it is "Issue an average of 50 or more parking fixed penalty notices per day, to be measured fortnightly. No more than 5% successfully appealed.", more specifically the second part. It's easy to measure how many fixed penalty notices ware issued in a day, just count the stubs. What you cannot measure is if they were legitimately issued or if the direct just stuck them on 100 random cars then spent the rest of the day in the pub. What you can measure is how many were appealed and how many of those appeals were upheld, this is a proxy for the legitimacy of the issuance.

Once you have the scores obviously you want to do something with them, usually pay progression or regression. Many employers, especially in times of recession, try to centralise control on pay levels. Big mistake. The main things this achieves is putting an administrative overhead on the centre, slows the performance management process and removes a big chunk of the responsibility to manage from managers. Control on an individual's pay should rest with their manager, with oversight by their manager's manager and a right of appeal to the centre.

This can be achieved by assigning each manager a budget for their directs' pay and make them responsible for assigning it appropriately within the law and procedures of the company. They can then incentivise good performance and correct poor performance through pay (although other methods should be exhausted first). If someone leaves their team this also provides them with the choice of refilling the post at the same rate of pay, filling it at a different rate of pay or deleting the post and using the money saved to increase the pay of the remaining staff in recognition of the extra work they're doing. There would have to be a way for managers to bid for a budget increase, more senior managers to claw back excess and directs to appeal any reduction in pay before it happens.

2010-06-09T08:26:00.005+01:00

Just emailed BBC Breakfast News this comment on their interview about public sector cuts this year:

One of your interviewees (I didn't catch her name) made a misleading statement. The government are not cutting £6bn this year, that was what they cut just before Whitsun. Total cuts this year are £60bn. The last cuts were just a taster.

Personally I agree with the other interviewee, now is a very very bad time for large cuts. Large cuts now are a recipe for disaster and a double dip recession. Small cuts are possible but we shouldn't be looking at large cuts this side of 2012. I'd look at cutting the JNC grades (very senior managers, mostly £100k+) in local government and equivalent in other bodies.

Interestingly, my suggestion of cutting senior managers is what Stephen Hughes (Chief Exec of Birmingham City Council) is apparently considering.

I also like the 'Total Place' proposal of the last government. Rationalise and link up public sector systems and bring them under a single management structure so the UK can leverage economies of scale to the greatest extent. Even something as simple as a single payroll system for the whole of the UK public sector would save incredible amounts and make enforcing equal pay legislation a breeze.

Degradation of the 37 bus service

2010-06-08T08:24:00.002+01:00

Just sent this to my local councillors:
Dear David Willis, Daphne Gaved and David Osborne,

I wish to express my concerns at recent changes in the number 37 bus service which runs along the Warwick and Stratford roads connecting Solihull and Birmingham centres. I am a frequent user of this service as I cannot drive and work in Birmingham City Centre. Additionally to get to most other areas (e.g. most of my immediate family live in or near to Sheldon) I have to take the 37 to either Solihull or Birmingham centre and catch a connecting service. For this reason I have a bus pass which I purchase via monthly direct debit.

Up until last year the vast majority of buses on this route (and virtually all at peak times) were run by Travel West Midlands (TWM), owned and operated by National Express. This was good as my bus pass can only be used on TWM. Over the past year more and more non-TWM buses ("Touchwood Connect" appears to be be the most common offender) and a commensurate reduction in TWM buses. I cannot use my pass on these buses. Whilst the service still runs frequently (they advertise every 1-7 minutes, 3-15 would be more accurate) I often have to wait 20 minutes or more for a bus on which I can use my pass on. This is less than ideal for getting to work.

I am frequently left with a choice of waiting for a bus I can use my pass on (so extending my commute), paying fare for a journey I've already paid for in my bus pass or considering upgrading to a much more expensive card hat is accepted on non-TWM buses and train/Metro services (which I very rarely need to use).

This reduction in service and utility of my pass makes the recently announced 10% price hike even more galling.

I have noted that other services do not seem to have seen similar changes. I also note that yourselves and John Hemming MP recently campaigned for the re-instating of a service covering some of the more affluent parts of Yardley, the 40/41 service.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Booth

Be interesting to see what if any response I get, given that Daphne at least knows I'm a Labour party member (it came up when she was stood on my doorstep one time).

Power corrupts

2010-05-17T07:59:00.005+01:00

I can't shake the feeling that the LibDem party have sold their principles for a sniff of power? I suspect a sniff is all they will get. Maybe it's time to dust off the old 'Whig' nickname?

Recently a number of commentators have been going on about how the last Labour government have left the country £3bn in debt (actually it's more that bailing out the banks has left us in debt). Yesterday 'Blighty' ran "Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain" back to back, carting the 60 years from the end of World War Two to the early 21st Century. Something that became obvious seeing the episodes back to back like that is there there's a pattern. Each Tory government builds up a massive debt, coupled to a damaged industrial base, that the succeeding Labour government has to repay and rebuild. The Macmillan government left the country the equivalent of £11tn in debt for the Wilson government to repay.

Tories won't offer Electoral reform

2010-05-10T08:15:00.003+01:00

Andrew Pierce of the ~~Tory PR department~~Daily Mail just said on BBC Breakfast that there is no way the Tories will offer real electoral reform. "Turkeys tend not to vote for Christmas", he said.

Personally I'd like to see a Lab-Lib-Others coalition (this 'Progressive Rainbow Alliance' people have been talking about) with three goals:

Get a process in place to get us out of this recession centered around improving productivity rather than cutting services.

Introduce electoral reform, I favour a form of Single Transferable Vote.

Call another election to be held within 18 months under the new system, so giving plenty of notice to parties and public and allowing plenty of time for people to learn how the new system works.

I do have two concerns about most of the Proportional Representation systems I've heard discussed. Firstly you vote for a party rather than an individual and you may find that you don't have an MP dedicated to your own area, someone that you can hold to account if they fail to deliver on their promises. Secondly (but linked to the first) any system based around party lists tends to favour party grandees and apparatchiks over radicals (this already happens to a degree with safe seats) and make individual MPs less likely to go against the party machine in defense or favour of their constituency.

Maybe something could be worked out with dividing the country into 10-12 regions of approximately equal population and the same number of seats. Require each party to set a list for each region with candidates appearing on one and only one list.

Tell Nick what you think

2010-05-08T22:47:00.002+01:00

Just called the Lib Dems on 0207 222 7999 to express my concerns at a potential coalition with the Tories. Got voice mail but was cut off mid-message.

I really do think that a coalition with the Tories right now would be an awful thing for the country.

It has recently been reported that Cameron may try to get around tradition and constitutional law to basically suspend the democratic process have himself declared ruler. Someone tried that before, it lead to one of the bloodiest wars this country has ever fought and the original perpetrator having his head cut off.

A funny thing happened in the queue at the polling station

2010-05-08T21:33:00.003+01:00

My local polling station is at the school just around the corner, Golden Hillock school. I tend to vote in the morning (before the party stooges get organised so I don't get them following me into the polling booth, OK that only happened once but that was once too often). Usually it's just me and the people manning the polling station. This time there were a couple of women ahead of me so I waited. My wait was extended somewhat by one of the staff arguing with one of the voters, telling her that she could not vote for the party she wanted to vote for and must vote for another party.

I then picked up my ballot paper and voted for the candidates I wanted to vote for and left.

BTW, the reason the women in the polling station couldn't vote for the party she wanted to vote for was she wanted to vote for 'Respect' and they weren't standing. There are a lot of reasons not to vote for 'Respect' but that's probably the solidest.

Lib dem visitation

2010-02-14T16:43:00.002Z

Had a visit from the local Lib Dems today (Daphne Gaved, Jim Willis and someone who appeared to be one of their heavies). They were trying to convince me to vote for them. I raised my concerns about the failure to grit in the recent freeze, the cuts to council staff pay and the staff and service cuts planned for the near future. Well, I tried to. They seemed more interested in attacking Labour and Ms Gaved seemed at one point trying to imply that the failure to grit was somehow my fault.

We also got into a discussion about John Hemming MP. Their description of him was very different from my impression from each of the three occasions I've met him and from reading his blog.

Saving the economy

2010-02-12T22:46:00.002Z

Today's FT had an interesting opinion piece from Martin Wolf. The thrust of the piece was how what the UK could do with right now is a hung parliament. That's something I think I could live with so long as it was Labour as the largest minority in coalition with independents and small parties. Mr Wolf seems to favour a Labour/Lib-Dem coalition.

More interesting is his assertion that what is needed to boost the economy is for the private sector to start spending more. Now, how are we going to achieve this, when we have this national deficit to clear (although, as Mr Wolf points out, we're more than servicing our debt by a long chalk so we're not in a bad state by any measure so our credit rating is still very good)? The first and most obvious thing that occurred to me is for the public sector to look at what services it can provide to the private on a fee basis then use the money raised to reduce tax to fund other, socially necessary/desirable, services.

The private sector already receives many services from the pubic sector such as defense of trade, waste disposal, legal protection of contracts, transport network &c. These are not the sort of things that lend them selves to a directly charged, fee based, service for the same reason that those who suggest that individuals should be able to opt out of tax by declining to use publicly provided services, if you're in the country you cannot avoid using the services it provides. The sorts of services that the public sector could provide to the private, directly charging a fee, are exactly the sorts of services that tend to get outsourced. Things like IT datacentre and network provision. If the public sector as a whole got together the economies of scale would be astronomical Additionally the marginal cost of supporting private sector users on top of the existing public sector would be minuscule. Add to this that the public sector already has many people well skilled in dealing with large and complex environments and you have a prime opportunity for a software as a managed service provision.

Checklist for accessibility of polling stations

2010-02-07T18:00:00.002Z

SCOPE have published a checklist for what you need to have a polling station accessible to people with disabilities:

http://www.timetogetequal.org.uk/page.asp?section=173§ionTitle=Polling+station+checklist&dm_i=6J4,3FCG,1M26SE,AP08,1

I think my local polling station (Golden Hillock Road School) fails on pretty much every criteria.

Cameron to freeze publicsector pay for those on over £18k?

2010-02-06T16:43:00.002Z

I heard last night that apparently one of the things David Cameron has promised to do if elected is to freeze the pay of all public sector workers on £18k or more a year. This is presumably because it was nurses, doctors, refuse collectors, care assistants, neighbourhood advisors &c who caused the recession we're currently coming out of. Meanwhile the bankers and city traders who provide vital public services and keep the country running finally get the pay rises and bonuses they so richly deserve.

Peition to keep Cadbury's a British brand

2010-01-24T22:55:00.002Z

Apparently there is a motion tabled by some Birmingham MPs to keep the Cadbury and Bourneville brands British. Some people have created an online petition in support of this motion, sign here.

There's also a Facebook group which is rather more forthright.

Avatar 3D, Disappointed

2009-12-20T12:12:00.003Z

Friday night I went to see Avatar in 3D with my sister, Lynne, at the Cineworld cinema in the Touchwood centre in Solihull. Quite disappointing.

As a, flat, film it would have been OK. Story was good (albeit a pretty blatant rip off of Anne McCaffrery ('Pern' and 'Petabee' series of books) as both Lynne and I noted). Performances were good, mostly (should hove gotten Sam Elliot to play the Colonel).

The problems started in buying the tickets. Firstly the guy behind the counter (Alexander,according to his name badge) was rude from the get go. Then there was an extra charge for the film being in 3D, despite my having an 'Unlimited Card' (perhaps the management of Cineworld need to look up the word Unlimited or rename the card to the "Very Limited' card), which basically doubled the total cost.

When we got in to the screen there were a lot more ads than usual. Then the film started, the film I'd paid an extra charge to see in 3D. I saw no 3rd dimension. Without the glasses on some parts of the screen looked fuzzy or double image (presumably these were the things that were supposed to appear to come out of the screen) but with the glasses on they just looked less fuzzy, not 3 dimensional. There were various standard 3D tricks (e.g. a golf ball being played directly into camera) and I did get feeling of eye strain, possibly from trying to see the 3D stuff.

The next day Lynne sent me a text to say that she had developed a migraine after watching the film.

My recommendation, go see the film but see it flat not 3D, save yourself the price of an extra ticket and a headache.

An unhappy experience in Bacchus Bar under Burlington Hotel on New St

2009-11-07T15:27:00.004Z

Went for lunch at Bacchus bar off New Street in Birmingham yesterday, with my Sister, as our planned venue for lunch was too busy. It was an abysmal experience. The bar tender who served me seemed to be suffering from some sort of cold symptoms and was couching often with no attempt to cover his mouth or use a tissue. The food took over half an hour to arrive, which for a weekday lunch time is a very long time. They could not even use the excuse of being busy as the place was half empty and most people did not seem to be eating or had been served before we arrived.

I had rump steak and chips with beer battered onion rings, my sister had a chicken pie with vegetables. My sister said her pie was fine althought he meat showed obvious signs of being mechanically recovered meat including tool marks on the meat. My steak was small, very tough and slightly over done it also contained far more sinews than rump could reasonably be expected to, it was more like stewing steak than rump. The chips had clearly been fried along side fish (there were bits of batter and a slight fishy taste, although not enough to set off my allergy to fish). The onion rings seemed to have been battered with ordinary batter, not beer batter.

The two meals with a large coke each came to just over £23.

For comparison our normal Friday lunch (either 2 mixed grills or a mixed grill and a roast dinner, again with two large cokes, at the Windsor on Cannon St) is much quicker, much better prepared and comes to around £16.

I won't be returning.

It may be churlish to point this out but, the decor seemed to include Ancient Roman, medieval European, Classical Egyptian and 19th Century European, but none of the Classical Athenian Greek that the name would suggest.

Afghanistan

2009-11-06T08:16:00.002Z

I was chatting with one of my colleagues at work last night. He's a Muslim originating from the Pashtun region (which covers north west Pakistan and a sizable chunk of Afghanistan), although I believe that he himself was born in the UK. We talked about the 5 British troops and 3 Afghanis killed by the Afghani security officer. My colleague said that this event was because the Afghani people don't see the Taliban as the enemy, they see the UK and US security forces as the enemy, and that the Afghani people see only 2 ways to win, military victory or death. I then asked if he was saying that the only mutually satisfactory outcome would be to just wipe out the entire population of Afghanistan (NB, I'm not actually proposing we do that), perhaps start by dropping Napalm on all the population centres. He agreed (after I'd explained what Napalm is and what it does) that that would be the only possible outcome.

Based on conversations I've had with other people, including recent immigrants from Afghanistan, I don't actually think that he is correct.

Moving boundaries?

2009-11-05T08:40:00.002Z

Just seen the latest campaigning bulletin from the South Yardley Liberal Democrats. In it they seem to be claiming responsibility for the opening of a new health centre on Richmond Road.

The thing is, I grew up near Richmond road, my mother still lives in the area, I know that area well. That road is not in South Yardley ward, Yardley constituency or even Birmingham. It's in the Lyndon ward of Solihull, maybe edging into Olton ward at one end but still Solihull. Also, unless the new health centre was built to look exactly like the old one, it's been there over 20 years.

Looking at the front page of that same missive, I can't help but wonder where they found these 83% of local voters who blame Labour for the job losses at JLR, LDV and elsewhere in Birmingham. Acocks Green Conservative Association perhaps? Most of the people I know lay the blame at the door of the leader and deputy leader of Birmingham City Council. My racist (and apparently not very bright) neighbour seems to reckon it's the fault of our former colonies in the Indian sub-continent (well, he doesn't use those exact words).

Overall I doubt the veracity of the whole publication.

Unchecked parents can't loiter in play areas

2009-10-30T08:03:00.001Z

Just sent this comment to BBC Breakfast news about their item on parents who haven't been CRB checked not being allowed to loiter in supervised children's play areas:

"It seems very sensible to prevent non-CRB checked adults (be they parents or not) loitering around children's play areas. Being a parent and being a pedophile are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite. Statistically the person most likely to abuse a child is not the media hyped loner lurking in the bushes but actually that child's parents, another parent or trusted family member or friend.

Possibly a more interesting question is why these parents who say they want to stay in the play areas don't get the CRB check. What are they afraid it will turn up?"

JSA, not EMA

2009-10-21T18:34:00.003+01:00

I recently heard through a local college that EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) may be scrapped because the administrative costs are too high. It seems to me that the best way forward would be to roll those on EMA on to the Job Seekers Allowance system. JSA is unlikely to be scrapped (unless it's replaced with something equivalent) and with the existing scale and infrastructure the additional administrative costs should be minimal.

I have therefore started a petition to the prime minister to scrap EMA and allow those who are/would be entitled to claim JSA. I am aware, from people I know who are JSA claimants that the job centres already let people 'sign on' over the web or to simply come to the job centre and swiping a card. Either this could be carried over to the pseudo-EMA claimants or perhaps the colleges could be required to 'sign on' their students to maintain the requirement of attendance to get paid (though if it's a case of we'll pay someone to sit around and do nothing why should we stop paying someone just cos they miss a couple of days of a course?)

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/jsanotema/

British Computer Society Birmingham branch launch new website

2009-10-06T08:24:00.002+01:00

I didn't know they had an old website so can't compare the new one to the old. There it is though: http://birmingham.bcs.org/

It does follow the new branding of the BCS.

Actually that I didn't know my local branch had a website is probably pretty indicative of the key problem the BCS has. Communication. They don't do it terribly well. Not with their members and especially not with employers. It seems to be the only professional body that isn't the de facto, if not de jure, requirement for advancement in the field they represent.

PRINCE2

2009-10-02T09:02:00.002+01:00

Got the results for my PRINCE2 practitioner exam. I passed! Got 84% which is way more than I thought.

Some people at work commented that this is higher than the minimum score you need to become a trainer in PRINCE2. I have been thinking of asking one of the project manager's at work if he would like to collaborate on a book.

Aging population and working past retirement age

2009-10-02T08:43:00.000+01:00

Sent this to BBC Breakfast as a comment, don't expect they'll read it out so posting here. They're talking out the aging population and people working past retirement age:

The downside of working part time past 'retirement' is that the way many benefits and pension schemes are set up means that any income from part time work will be taken out of your pension or other income.

I do agree that older people should be allowed to remain in work, I'll be 40 next year and expect to have to stay in work into my 70s. Perhaps the way to deal with the perceived competition for jobs between old and young is to look at the younger end for changes. We're already part way into the change. Rather than expecting the majority of people to leave full time eduction at 16 or 18 we should be encouraging them to stay in full, or close to full, time education longer. This does not necessarily mean 6th form or university, it could mean vocational training, apprenticeship, voluntary work or a mixture of these.

This could be continued into adult life where people could be supported in taking career breaks to study for career changes or development. We've moved from one job for life being the norm to many jobs in a career for life, perhaps we can now move to multiple careers in a life.

PRINCE2 and British Computer Society

2009-09-20T13:23:00.002+01:00

I took and passed PRINCE2 (2009) Foundation level certification last week, also took the Practitioner level exam but it takes a couple of weeks for the results to come through for that so I won't know for a while if I've passed that. I'm really not sure if I passed the Practitioner or not. If I failed I don't think it will be by much. Apparently there were a lot of complaints from employers that the 2005 exam was too easy so the 2009 exam has been toughened up and the pass mark increased so the pass rate will be lower. They've also introduced a new type of question called Assertion-Reason that test knowledge, reasoning and logic and have abolished half marks (in the 2005 objective exam if the question was to pick two items from a list and you only got one right you;d still get half a mark, now you have to get both right to get any credit at all).

On Saturday I got an email from the British Computer Society to say they've added a professional networking site for members. It was launched today so I signed in and set up a profile. I've also created a couple of groups, one for members in the West Midlands (the county I live in) and one for members involved in Project or Programme Management.

Fake e-mail messages from HM Revenues and Customs

2009-04-30T12:05:00.002+01:00

This was circulated at work

Some staff may have received an e-mail message purporting to come from HM Revenues and Customs and suggesting that you may be due a tax rebate. These messages are fake and are an attempt to obtain personal and financial details which could be used to commit fraud or other crimes. HMRC do not communicate with taxpayers in this way.

"Not a glass ceiling, sticky floor"

2009-04-29T13:09:00.002+01:00

Gail Rebuck, CEO of Random House publishing (first female to head up a major publishing group), has won the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year. She said that she feels it's not that there is a glass ceiling stopping women getting into the higher levels (i.e. progress so far then stop) but rather that women find it difficult to rise from the lower levels of a company. She said, "Women don't particularly want to progress onto the next stage - it doesn't look very pleasant, because it is full of stress or because it might interfere with other aspects of their lives."

A couple of years ago Harvard Business Review ran an article that similarly cast doubt on the existence of a 'Glass Ceiling'. The article argued that rather than a simple barrier just below the board room women traversed a labyrinth through out the company to progress to higher levels. The HBR article itself is not publicly accessible, you need to subscribe to the magazine, but a similar article can be found here. There's also an article on Bosswoman from Susan Robinson, PhD, referencing the HBR article.

In her article Robinson makes a number of recommendations, most of which relate to the fact that women are far more likely than men to be responsible for caring for dependants and the home. In particular she recommends that women not complain about their home life at work, if they have to leave early due to a family situation they simply state that they have a commitment rather than going into details and that they be realistic about their home and standards of cleanliness, choose a home setup they can easily maintain (e.g. avoid nicknacks that are just dust traps, choose fabrics that are easy to maintain &c) and set realistic standards about cleanliness. There are 168 hours in a week so if we assume 8 hours sleep a night plus 5 days of 8 hours at work and 2 hours commute a day that leaves 62 hours for leisure, eating, socialising, networking (these days a vital part of career development), overtime, cooking, cleaning, paying bills, shopping &c. The more time you spend on cooking and cleaning the less is available for the fun stuff and career development.

The only issue I really have with Robinson's recommendations is that they are firmly entrenched in the presumption that cleaning and looking after the family are the sole responsibility of women. Maybe that's just pragmatism, or perhaps it's surrender. I see it as a social issue that needs to be addressed.

Incidentally, I'm single and live alone. If my house needs cleaning I have to clean it (although I do sometimes bung my nieces (no kids of my own, just two nieces, no nephews) twenty quid to help me with a big 'spring Clean'). I have had to settle on a standard of cleanliness that balances between how clean I want my house to be and the time I'm prepared to spend achieving it. Others may set higher standards, that's their choice but then the time taken to achieve it is therefore also their choice.

What is a manager?

2009-03-31T14:22:00.002+01:00

A question was posted on one of the discussion forums I use asking "What is a manager?". I came up with: "A manager is a person employed to facilitate and direct the activities of their staff to deliver to the goals of the company."

Coincidence

2009-03-26T22:51:00.003Z

I discovered today that one of my colleagues at work was at the same university as me at the same time as me. Well, she started the same time as me but studied a 3 year programme where as I studied a 4 year programme so she graduated a year earlier than me.

Keele was a small university, 5,000 students, but I don't think we moved in the same circles. On the other hand, it's been getting on for 20 years ago we both started and I have a shocking memory for names so we might have met. Also, I was heavily involved in the student's union (I think I spoke at every Union General meeting during my 4 years at Keele bar one) and RAG so there's a chance that she might have seen me pontificating from the lectern or out fund raising.

New Blog - Stephen's SAP Blog

2009-03-26T22:48:00.000Z

As I'm now beginning to work on SAP I've started a blog about it, mostly just somewhere to make notes about interesting/useful things I come across. If it also helps anyone else then great but if it doesn't then no worries.

One of the things I have noticed, comparing Oracle with SAP, is that whilst for Oracle you can find online free resources at pretty much any level (both official Oracle sites and individual sites and blogs) in SAP there seems to be loads of 'salesy' type sites telling you how wonderful SAP is and how it will revolutionise the way you do business (presumably for the better) and some very in depth technical sites (mostly forums), where you're sunk if you can't get in an manually edit the data and code, there's nothing anywhere in between. There certainly don't seem to be any how-tos, any pages that seem to be telling you howto when they come up in Google searches are actually saying "If you want to find out how to sign up for our course and pay us a lot of money." Of community there seems to be little, aside from the aforementioned bit twiddler forums.

http://stephenssapblog.blogspot.com/

I admit I'm a bit Leonard of Quirm when it comes to blog names.

How about Free Prescriptions for England?

2009-03-08T11:36:00.004Z

Having read recently about how Scotland and Norther Ireland were soon to join Wales in giving free prescription medicine to all, I thought I'd go to the Nomber10 petitions site to see if there are any petitions to extend that to England. I found 2:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/prescriptionfree/
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Prescription-s/

I would suggest that anyone (in the UK,obviously) who agrees that prescriptions throughout the UK should be free, not just in 'Everywhere that isn't England', signs these. The first closes April this year and the second closes January next year but currently has more signatures. Maybe it will do some good, maybe it won't, but it's got to be worth 5 minutes.

Only 11% of precriptions redeemed are chargable, the vast majority being exempt for any of a number of reasons. In all likelihood the added cost of those 11% being made free would not be onerous. Infact, I do wonder if the costs of administering those charges may not outweigh the income. I submitted an FOI request to the Department of health to find out:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/income_from_prescription_charges#incoming-19483

I fully expect them to come back with one of the normal excuses like "We don't hold that information, try the local PCTs" or "We do hold that information but it will cost too much to collate it and send it to you." Worth a try though. If anyone else wants to submit a similar request to Department of health or their own PCT, have at 'em.

Politicians work for us, if we keep bothering them they might remember it. Squeaky wheel gets oil and all that.

Dumb Spammers

2008-11-12T13:47:00.001Z

Just received the following spam mail to my work account:

Please note: we tried to contact you several weeks ago, unfortunately we did not receive a response. You still may qualify to become a member and we are extending our invitation to you one more time. As a reminder the date below reflects the initial attempt to contact you. We are providing an additional 5 day extension through November 18, 2008.

Stephen Booth,

I am pleased to inform you that today, October 22, 2008 Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals has selected you as potential candidate into our organization to represent Birmingham, , United Kingdom. Your professional experience with Birmingham Air Conditioning Ltd. as Company Secretary has been recognized and has qualified you to possibly be included. Emerald Who's Who is the authority for professional networking and recognition in virtually every industry across the globe.

Based on the research our team and our affiliates were able to find, you are the type of professional we would like to include as part of our executive and professional organization.
Our members assist each other with business and career opportunities everyday. Emerald Who's Who is consistently helping our members increase existing business, develop new ventures and acquire new contacts, locally, nationally and internationally.

Should you be inducted into Emerald Who's Who, you will also be included in the 2008-2009 edition of Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals. This is an annual edition of accomplished individuals across the world.

Your inclusion into our organization requires that further professional information about you is provided within the next 5 days.

Please note there is no charge to be considered into the Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals.
We have provided the below links to help you submit your information quickly and easily. Both URL's are the same, however should you not be able to click, please copy and paste #2. Please note your information will be encrypted and transferred safely over the internet as we use, the leading security service for security and protection. Your information will also be protected once stored on our secure servers.
> Click on this hyper link
1) http://ewwdirectory.com/ [MUNGED]
Or manually enter the below link into your web browser
2) http://ewwdirectory.com/ [MUNGED]

While our editorial department is continuously working on publishing timelines, I cannot assure that you will be included in our next annual publication featuring all executives and professionals like yourself. If we receive your information in the next 5 days, we can still consider your submission.

Kind regards,

Anthony Miller

Research Director

Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals Inc.

954 3rd Ave, Suite 817, NY, New York, 10022
http://ewwdirectory.com/ [MUNGED]

Emerald Who's Who for Executives and Professionals is not affiliated with Marquis Who's Who or any other Who's Who organization or publication.

Thank you for your time, should you wish to no longer receive any further e-mail from us at this address, please follow the directions below.
We make every effort to remove those individuals who have asked to be unsubscribe, however if you have done so via email, and have received this for a second time, we apologize. Please use the unsubscribe link below to ensure you are removed from our invitations. Thank you for your time and patience.

I am not nor ever have been a Company Secretary and I don't work for and have never worked for Birmingham Air Conditioning. Not only are the spamming but also they're spamming the wrong person.

They should be drowned!

Is this a scam? Calls from 01792572140

2008-11-11T18:18:00.000Z

I've been getting a number of calls from people claiming to work for 3 who then ask a bunch of questions to "Confirm [my] identity", the sort of questions someone running an identity theft scam might ask. I've emailed 3 to check:

Hi,

I have received a number of missed calls from a number apparently in Swansea (01792572140) today I managed to pick on up and the person on the other end identified themselves as being from yourselves. They said that someone would call me to talk about handset upgrades (despite me saying I'm quite happy with my handset and I had selected it explicitly because it is a Skype Phone and I had bought it to use Skype). they then went on to ask a series of questions, "To confirm [my] identity". These questions were the sort that an identity thief would be likely to ask (home post code, date of birth &c) and, as I pointed out to them, they called me so of the two people on the call I'm the one who's identity does not need to be confirmed.

Can you please confirm if the phone number 01792572140 is one you use for outgoing calls (this was the first thing to trigger my suspicions, it's rare for an outgoing line from a call centre to identify itself).

Thanks

Stephen

Hopefully they'll respond soon.

A new stop on the 900 route

2008-08-11T16:45:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking of lobbying for an extra stop on the 900 bus route. For those not familiar with this route, it's a limited stop route from Birmingham City Centre to Coventry via Birmingham International station (which links to NEC and Birmingham International Airport). Most of the route is along the A45 Coventry road but between Bordesley Island and Hay Mills Island (also known as Asda Island because there's a large Asda next to it) it goes along Small Heath Bypass, to avoid the heavy traffic congestion in Small Heath. This is a long span without a stop, possibly the longest until it leaves Birmingham International Station towards Coventry (and vice versa on the return).

The extra stop I'm thinking of proposing is at the point where Small Heath Bypass crosses Golden Hillock road (where there is a small traffic island). From what I can see there is ample space before the small traffic island in both directions for a recessed stop allowing for space before the junction to pull out.

A stop there would link the 900 route to the Inner Circle (8) route and to Small Heath rail station. It would also serve Ghamgol Sharif Mosque, the houses near by and the businesses near by. It would also provide an almost direct bus link (either the 900 then walk about a third of a mile or the 900 then take the 8a down Golden Hillock road) to the Ackers activity centre from the centre of Birmingham, Hay Mills, Yardley, Sheldon, Elmdon and all along the A45 as far as Coventry centre.

I guess my local councillors are my best starting point. I'm in the process of formulating my communication and deciding how to send it. This entry is very much draft 0.9.

More calls from 01254277054

2008-07-01T17:07:00.000+01:00

Just had yet another call from them (they've been calling me twice a day on average but just silence when I pick up). This time there was actually someone on the line. The call went:
"Hi Stephen Booth speaking."
"Hi, I'm XXXXXXX with GM connect."
"Yes, I've heard of your company. Are you aware that you're calling a number that's registered with the Telephone Preference Service?"
"We're a supplier of mobile"
(interrupting)"Are you aware that you're calling a number that's registered with the Telephone Preference Service and you're probably breaking the law?" (actually I don't know if it's a law or just industry code of practice they're breaking)
"We supply mobile"
(interrupting) "Could I speak to your supervisor or the call centre manager please?"
"" (Silence)
"Could I speak to your supervisor or the call centre manager please?"
""
"Could I speak to your supervisor or the call centre manager please?"
""
"Could I speak to your supervisor or the call centre manager please?"
""
"Could I speak to your supervisor or the call centre manager please?"
(click) He hung up.

Stephen

Nuisance Silent Calls - 01254277054

2008-06-13T12:14:00.000+01:00

Once or twice a day for the past few days I've been getting calls from 01254277054 that hang up as soon as I answer. When I called back I just got music so hung up.

I Googled the number and discovered that apparently quite a few people have been having the same problem. Apparently it's a company called GM Connect who are trying to sell new mobile phones to people. The number they're calling me on is one I've only had for about 8 months and don't give out other than to family members and close friends. The number I normally give out is for my Orange phone which is my main number. This number is on 3 and I only have it because my sister and one of my friends switched to 3 and the cost of calling them from Orange (indeed any network other than 3) is huge, my Orange phone bill more than doubled, and I worked out it would be cheaper to get a phone on 3 just to call them on than to pay for the calls on Orange. My 3 phone bill is about £15 a month but has saved me about £25 a month on my Orange bill. Plus the phone is a Skype phone so I can now call people for free on Skype without needing to boot up my PC.

A while back John Hemming MP was campaigning against silent calls (where a call centre uses an autodialer to call you but when you answer there's no agent to take the call). I wonder if he'd be interested in this?

Council strike suspended

2008-02-25T15:52:00.000Z

The strike by Birmingham City Council staff planned for tommorrow has been suspended when the council agreed to further talks on issues raised by the unions. Further details on the UNISON Birmingham Branch website.

Phones 4 U Suck

2008-01-28T22:29:00.000Z

Met my sister this afternoon, straight from work. She had to take a couple of mobile phones back to the shop due to problems.

At the end of September last year she bought three phones on contract (one on Orange for her daughter and two on 3 for herself and her husband) from Phones 4 U (the one at 87-88 High street in Birmingham), she also took out insurance on each phone. The insurance on each one is £10 a month, which is a total rip off (the going rate is £2-3 a month). In the shop they said that it was a great deal, unfortunately my sister tends to trust what she's told rather than realising that the people in the shop are paid according to how well they can lie without getting caught out or saying something that is actually illegal (a good deal, but compared to what? A good deal compared to the bad deal they're also offering? They don't have to compare it to the deals being offered by other retailers). She also bought a hard protective case for each phone to prevent accidental damage.

Her daughter's phone was sold as being new but when they got it home they found that there were already phone numbers stored on it, clearly it was a refurb. they went back tot he shop and were told "That's wierd." At this point I would have demanded a replacement but of course she didn't. Recently the speaker has been playing up (crackly) and the 4 and 5 keys have been sticking. So we take it back to the shop. The guy in the shop (I tried to get his name but he wouldn't give it (ignored the question) and everyone else in the shop denied knowing him) first denied any problem with the speaker (apparently he was the only one who couldn't hear it) and said that the keys shouldn't stick (a lot fo things shouldn't happen, but they sometimes do). Then he started saying that my niece must have dropped it to cause the problems so she'd have to pay for the repairs. Finally he agreed to send it in for a warranty repair (which will take at least 2 weeks) but kept going on about how if they found any evidence that it was dropped then that will be a charged repair. He also said that if they sent it in for repair under the insurance (that good deal that costs only 3-5 times as much as every other deal) then any damage would be repaired but they'd have to pay a £50 excess, and excess they hadn't been told about when they bought the insurance.

The other phone belonged to my sister's husband, the screen had failed and developed cracks. He insisted that this must be accidental damage (although how a screen on a phone inside a hard protective case that is supposed to be designed to protect the screen could be accidental damage is anybody's guess). They're going to have that done as an insurance fix and pay the £50 excess.

The whole time we were there we were subjected to dismissive and negative treatment by the staff of phones for you as if it was we who were running a scam rather than them. Utterly unprofessional.

My sister and my niece now don't have mobile phones (imagine, a 16 year old girl without a mobile! How ever will she survive), my sister has had to pass her mobile on to her husband (hopefully that one won't break as well, it's the same make and model).

I got my first mobile in 1998, I've had several in that time (including work phones), I now have 4 (two contract on Orange and 3, I got the 3 phone because my sister a one of my friend's had switched to that network and it worked out cheaper to get a 3 contract phone than to call them from my Orange phone), one Pay-As-You-Go and one work. I have had to claim on the insurance a few times due to accidental damage and theft. The most I've ever paid for insurance on a phone is £2.90 a month, I have never had to pay any excess for repair or replacement. I've always gone to the network's own shop (first phone was Cellnet, then Orange and finally 3 for my newest phone). Today's experiences have shown, as far as I can tell, that you should never go to Phones 4 U, certainly never the one on the corner of Birmingham High Street and New Street. I hope they go out of business soon.

UNISON Birmingham Branch gets a website

2008-01-28T19:32:00.000Z

UNISON Birmingham branch finally has a website. The actual content was written months ago, the hold up has been getting those who hold the login details for the web server to release them, serious case of idiocy and not wanting to release even the smallest bit of power despite not being able to use it.

The layout is a bit crap right now but that's because the person who insisted in it being that way thinking purely in a paper documents. I'm hoping to replace it with something better soon, the important thing was to get something up ahead of the strike next week.

Dyspraxia

2008-01-16T16:00:00.000Z

One of my colleagues spoke to me yesterday about a friend of her's who has a 3 year old son with Dyspraxia,a congenital disability that I have. Apparently she had told this person about me and said that I'd talk to her friend and the friend's husband about it and how to deal with it. I emailed this to my colleague to pass on.

This is the link to the Dyspraxia Foundation web site:
http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/

Whilst they're often confused (even by medical professionals) and
often listed together Dyspraxia is not like Dyslexia. There is some
overlap of symptoms but they are different. For example a common
symptom of Dyslexia is not being able to read, Dyspraxics also often
have problems with reading but for us the problem is more about
parsing the word and working out what it means (especially if it is
used in a metaphor or it's meaning is shaded) rather than not being
able to read it at all. Different coloured paper, coloured glasses or
a coloured sheet of acetate can help a Dyslexic but won't help a
Dyspraxic any more than it would someone with neither condition.

A literal translation of the word Dyspraxia would be "Can't Do" or
"UnPractical". It's a condition, or rather family of closely related
conditions, that has as a core symptom problems with balance and
co-ordination. On the plus side these symptoms fade with age, it's a
regressive condition. When I was young and through my teens and early
adult years my disability was refered to as purely "Lack of
Co-ordination" or "Poor Hand-Eye Co-ordination", the only recognised
symptoms were problems with co-ordination and balance, my problems
with social skills were put down to my being shy or even 'just being
difficult'.

I first heard the term Dyspraxia when I was 29 and visited my GP for a
review of my hay fever medication and he looked at my notes and said
something like "Ah, you're the one with Dyspraxia. Did you now we
have a support group?" My first response was to say no but he
explained that the condition that I'd thought was called 'Lack of
Co-ordination' was actually properly called Dyspraxia and had a whole
host of other symptoms attached, many of which I hadn't know were
symptoms of my disability and thought were something 'wrong' with me.
I also discovered that it is a lot more common than I'd previously
thought and not restricted to men, I'd previously been told it was
three in every thousand males but from what I've read it could be as
high as one on 10 depending on how tightly one adheres to the strict
definition and, whilst it mostly affects males, does affect both
genders. Whilst there's no 100% proof it does seem that Dyspraxia
does run in families so if a child has it the odds are that one of
their parents, usually the father, will also have it to some degree.

Typical symptoms include:

Problems with balance, tendancy to trip, especially on moving
vehicles such as buses (if I have to stand on a bus I have to hold on
to a pole with each hand). To get an idea of the impact imagine
getting moderately drunk, say 1.5 to twice the legal limit for
driving, and trying to stand on a moving bus or walk the wrong way on
an escalator

Problems with co-ordination, especially things that require a high
degree of fine motor control such as writing, may develop 'writer's
cramp' much more quickly than most people

Lack of empathy and difficulty 'reading' other people

Tendancy to interrupt

Problems using moving stairs (feelings of extreme discomfort,
falling over, tending to go to extreme lengths to avoid and may 'over
react' if forced to use them)

Bad at sports (will go to kick a football and miss, can't catch
something thrown to them, can't hit a tennis ball with a tennis
racquet &c)

Excessive emotional responses, may have fits of anger or frustration

Untidy dress, rumpled clothes and may have problems buttoning a
shirt (out by one matching buttons to button holes or may skip a
button or button hole)

Generally untidy (messy bedroom, untidy work area &c) but
obsessional about order in specific things (e.g. CDs have to be in a
specific order or grouping that may seem unfathomable to others and
have to be put back into the cases as soon as they are removed from
the player)

Problems developing physical strength, may be much worse on one side
than the other

Problems gripping things, again may be much worse on one side than the
other

Tendancy to take things literally and to express oneself literally

Inability to play a musical instrument

Difficulty sleeping, both difficult to get to sleep and difficulty
staying asleep

Easily distracted

Can't draw or paint, when try they look like those produced by a
small child (I'll bring in some of my paintings sometime)

Problems hearing speech when there's lots of background noise (one
of the things that M****** does that really drives me up the wall is
in a meeting he'll start whispering in my ear whilst management are
talking, if I listen to him I literally cannot hear them and if I
listen to them I literally cannot hear him)

Tactile defensiveness. Physical contact with another person can be
very uncomfortable, this is one of the symptoms I have to a much
higher degree than most dyspraxics

Strong dislike for change that can result in extreme frustration and
even anger, in particular where change has happened when they weren't
present

Problems with memory, especially names and instructions (if you give
me a set of verbal instructions by the time you've reached number 4
I've probably forgotten number 1)

Poor posture leading to health problems and pain (back ache,
shoulder pain, neck pain)

There are many other symptoms as well. It's important to note that
other than the first two on that list the rest can be explained by
labelling a child as 'lazy' or 'rude'. Indeed that's how I was
labelled through most of my life and sometimes still am. Also not all
dyspraxics have all the symptoms or necessarily the same symptoms
(although the ones listed above are very common and the first four are
pretty definitive). For example a fairly common symptom is not being
able to relate a map to the physical world it represents, this is not
something I have ever had major problems with, although I do often
find it easier to navigate a map if I turn it to match the orientation
of the physical area (so if I'm facing south I'll turn the map so it's
upside down), similarly a commonly described symptom of Dyspraxia is
having problems seeing how things fit together (pattern matching
problems, navigating a maze, jigsaws or seeing how the parts of
something fit together to make the whole) but it's not something I've
ever had problems with.

In terms of dealing with it the most important step is the diagnosis.
Because so many of the symptoms can be written off as being the result
of laziness it's important to recognise them for what they are,
symptoms of a disability. As an adult it's a great relief to discover
that some of the more steress causing aspect of your life are finally
explicable.

Once you've identified the particular symptoms of someone with
dyspraxia, in particular a child, there are loads of ways of dealing
with them. Based on what I've read I think something that is
important for someone who doesn't have Dyspraxia dealing with someone
who does is that due to the symptoms relating to perception a person
with Dyspraxia literally does not see the world the way you do, or to
put it another way we see the world literally and without emotional or
other shading. Something I found very hard as a child and still do to
a degree is around time. If someone says they will come and see me at
three o'clock my first reaction is to expect them to show up at three
o'clock, probably not two fifty nine and certainly not three oh one.
Intellectually I know that three o'clock doesn't mean three o'clock
but my subconscious.

The major issues and how you solve them will vary from person to
person. You have to find out what the symptoms are for yourself or
the person you're dealing with and fit to them, a standardised
solution won't work. Below are some possible things, they may work or
they may not.

Some things you just have to live with and tolerate. For example I
have to live with the fact that any contact with another person is
uncomfortable to me but it's going to happen as part of normal life.
Shaking hands can feel like shaking a slimy fish and a 'bone-crusher'
hand shake is absolute agony, a pat on the back feels like punch, a
touch on the arm can feel like either being touched by something slimy
or burn like having an acid or alkali solution poured on. A hug can
feel like being crushed. Those things are going to happen so I just
had to learn to brace myself and deal with it. Avoiding contact or
trying to explain that it's uncomfortable just leads to being seen as
rude/antisocial or makign a fuss over nothing (one of the people on
the NJB insists on giving everyione a huig and kiss goodbye, she may
as well punch me in the face as do that). Also Dyspraxics often have
behaviours that puzzle others, for example you know how when you go to
a cafe or a pub that serves food there's often a little pot on the
table filled with different sorts of sugar/sweetner or sauces, well in
those situations I have a strong compulsion to sort them so that all
of the same are together and they are neatly lined up with similar
colours separated by dis-similar colours (so sachets of chili sauce
and tomato ketchup (both red) have to be separated by, say, mayonaise
(tends to be blue) or horseradish (tends to be very light creamy
brown)).

Other stuff can be accomodated with little effort, e.g. don't change
things around without warning [1] and only make small incremental
changes with time in between to get accustomed to the new environment,
avoid unnecessary metaphor, realise that someone with Dyspraxia might
need a little longer to digest new information, may have difficulty
telling when you're angry/upset/happy and may act inappropriately
because as far as they are aware their action is an appropriate
reaction to the situation &c.

Co-ordination problems in things like handwriting can be handled by
allowing extra time and opportunity for frequent breaks, in school the
best thing the teachers could have done for me would be to provide
handouts with the bulk of the text of the class which I could then
annotate rather than expecting me to copy reams of text off the black
board or an OHP. Problems with balance can be addressed by making
sure that in areas where it's likely to be a problem (e.g. on a moving
bus or stairs) they have something to hang on to. Apparently there
are physiotherapies that can help but I doubt that someone with
Dyspraxia (unless it's very mild) could achieve complete normalcy.

Problems with sleep can be handled by allowing for a nap during the
day and a later bed time (so let a kid of an age where you'd normally
expect them to go to bed at say 8pm stay up till 9 or 10 but let them
take a nap at lunch or tea time[2]) and minimising light and noise in
their bedroom (double glazing, thick curtains of a dark material (on
both sides) that extend further around the window frame than normal,
close fitting door &c)

Minimise background noise and avoid situations where two or more
people are talking to a person with dyspraxia at the same time.

Give instructions in writing rather than verbally and break tasks down
into chunks.

Stephen

[1] e.g. When I go to a fast food place (e.g. KFC, Burger King &c) I
always have the exact same thing, only changing when they change the
menu so forcing me to change
[2] There actually a lot of evidence that our pattern of stay up for
16-18 hours straight then sleep 6-8 hours solid is unnatural and what
we should really be doing is sleeping less at night but having a
siesta or two during the day. Far better for our health.

Lectures

2006-09-01T15:27:00.000+01:00

My alma mater just emailed me about a couple of lecture series they're running:

Why not retain your intellectual faculties at the white-heat they enjoyed while you were at Keele!

WORLD AFFAIRS LECTURE SERIES

The World Affairs Group has drawn up an extremely stimulating series of lectures and speakers for their 2006-2007 programme. All Lectures start at 7.30 p.m. in the Westminster Theatre, Chancellor’s Building). Please note course fee below.

September 28^th	Prof Paul Rogers	Bradford University	“A War Too Far”
October 5^th	Prof D Stevenson	L.S.E.	War and Peace in the 20^th Century
October 12^th	Dr C Spence	Director Middle East Studies Chatham House	“Iran”
October 19^th	Dr D Nussbuam	Transparency International Berlin	World Wide Corruption!
October 26^th	Sir Digby Jones	Chief Ext C.B.I.	Globalisation – Threat or Opportunity?
November 2^nd	Lembit Öpik	Lib Dem MP	Northern Ireland
November 9^th	Anas Altikriti	Moslem Council	“Iraq” – a case point of Western Moral and Ethical Decline
November 16^th	Bruce Kent	Vice President, Nuclear Disarmament	Getting rid of Nuclear Weapons and War
November 23^rd	Dr G Watts	Science and Medical Author BBC Broadcaster	Mice, Molecules, Men. Moral Ethics and Biological Medicine
November 30^th	Prof Alex Danchev	Nottingham University	Terror and Torture
December 7^th	Prof M Temple	Staffordshire University	Politics and the Media
December 14^th	Dr Tim Jones	Innovara, London and Amsterdam	The World in 2026!
December 21^st	Lindsay Whitehouse	Deputy Governor Werrington Young Offenders’ Institute	Dealing with Young Offenders
January 4^th	Annual Dinner	Keele Hall	Sir Stephen Lander – Director General Serious Crime Squad; Former Head MI5
January 11^th	Werner Sabiers	German Journalist	Germany Today
January 18^th	Prof L Scott	Aberystwyth University	Intelligence in Crisis from Sept 11 to Iraq!
January 25^th	Dr S McKenzie	Keele University	Looting the World’s Culture Heritage
February 1^st	Dr M Breen Smyth	Aberystwyth University	Reconstruction – Northern Ireland, South Africa and the Middle East
February 8^th	Dr P Bou-Habib	Essex University	Justice for the Old and Young
February 15^th	Prof D Dorling	Sheffield University	The World as You Have Never Seen It Before
February 22^nd	Dr M O’Neill	Loughborough University	Immigration
March 1^st	Prof P Styles	Keele University	King Coal is Buried but is he Dead Yet?!
March 8^th	Dr P Fysh	Nottingham Trent University	Racism in France
March 15^th	Dr D Maxwell	Keele University	Zimbabwe
March 22^nd	Prof N Wheeler	Aberystwyth University	Humanitarian Intervention
March 29^th	Dr D Dunn	Keele University	Thinking about Peace

May 3^rd	Lord Carlisle QC	House of Lords	Terrorism and Civil Liberties – Where Now and Next?
May 10^th	Dr S Sharma	Keele University	India
May 17^th	Prof M Dando	Bradford University	Biological Warfare

“There is
a lot of evil in mankind

And we
have to be constantly vigilant to combat it

But there
is a lot of good in mankind

And
properly nurtured it will always triumph!”

Gandhi

Course fee
£25. Pensioners £13. Unemployed and Students free. Please make cheques payable to “World
Affairs”.

Why not
try the first three lectures free of charge? This course is dedicated to the
principles of free political debate. You must, however, have the tolerance to
accept that others may hold opposite views! If you want further information,
please ring Owen Powell on 01782 534934.

INAUGURAL
LECTURE PROGRAMME

DATE

LECTURER

TITLE

Tuesday, 3 October 2006

Professor Matthias Klaes

An
Introduction to Commerce in Five
Aphorisms

Wednesday, 25 October 2006

Professor John Wearden

The
Perception of Time

Thursday, 9 November 2006

Professor Steve Cropper

Playing a part: on
organising and evaluating collaborative
action

Tuesday, 5 December 2006

Professor Serguei Semenov

Imagine and Discover:
medical Imaging

Tuesday, 16 January 2007

Professor Andy Dobson

Political Animals

Thursday, 1 February 2007

Professor Jo Laybourn-Parry

Antarctica – the edge of
existence

Mm
Thursday, 22 February 2007

Professor Stephen Wilkinson

Choosing Children:

the ethics of selective
reproduction

Thursday, 8 March 2007

Professor Richard Hays

Education or workforce strategies? The precarious position of medical
schools.

Tuesday, 27 March 2007

Professor Ronnie Lippens

Whither Critical Criminology?

Wednesday, 2 May 2007

Professor Chris Main

Does
the Reign of Pain fall mainly in the Brain?

Tuesday, 15 May 2007

Professor Tom Scharf

The
Extremes of Age: Challenging
Poverty, Promoting Inclusion

ALL
INAUGURAL LECTURES COMMENCE AT 6.00 p.m. IN THE WESTMINSTER
THEATRE, CHANCELLOR’S BUILDING

Apologies
to those unable to enjoy these events due to
distance.

forever:
keele
John Easom
International Alumni Officer
Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG
Tel
00 44 (0)1782 583370 Fax 584422
Moved house or job? Don't forget to let the
Alumni Office know... www.keele.ac.uk/depts/uso/alumni

The World Affiars doesn't look that interesting but some of the inaugural lectures do. If it weren't for the distance I'd seriously consider going.

Office suite I'd really like

2006-08-22T14:13:00.000+01:00

I was just reading an article on Slashdot about the possibility of a version of Microsoft Office for Linux and it reminded me of something I've been thinking about, off and on, for some time. It first came up whilst I was trying to learn TeX, or rather the LaTeX implmentation of TeX. I got to thinking that what I would find really useful, at work at least, would be a wordprocessor that was entirely styles based and where if you edited a style the change would be automatically propagated to everywhere that style was used (a bit like how CSS is supposed to work, although the ability to 'lock' a document to the current set of styles would be useful although this could be achieved by exporting to PDF). A big problem I've found with styles in current word processors (MS Word, OpenOffice &c) is that if you chage a stle it very often will only change it for new uses of that style, existing text in that style will remain unchanged.

A lot of companies require that all documents be produced with a set set of fonts, sizes and colours to give a corporate standard. A styles based wordprocessor would allow them to create the required styles and provide them to all employees, probably along with document templates for standard corporate documentation. When the management decided they wanted to change the corporate style they could just update the style library and redistribute it, as each document was opened the changed styles would be applied. It would save a lot of hassle having to create the styles yourself and manually change each document when the corporate styles change.

I think that this would get us closer to the intention behind Tex of just getting on with writing the document and not fussing about the look of it. I suspect that it would also help make documents more accessible for people with disabilities as it would make them more readable by automated systems, similarly it would make documents more suited to automatic processing. Styles could be semantic in nature, rather then seeing a block of text which is defined as being "bold, 22pt, Arial Black, centred" the software would see one labelled "ChapterTitle".

Dentally Assaulted

2006-07-26T07:46:00.000+01:00

A filling fell out of one of my teeth last week, taking most of the tooth with it. As I don't have a dentist I had to go to the Dental Hospital.

I called in advance and they the only way to get treatment is to show up at 07:30 to get a number then there'd be a minimum two hour wait and I'd get treated, first untruth. I showed up at 06:45 on Friday morning (I booked the day off work) and there was already a queue of 8 people. By the time they opened the doors at 07:40 there was a queue of about 30 people. After the pushing and shoving I was 12th in line and got number 12. I was then told to come back at 13:30 as they would only be treating 10 people that morning and 10 in the afternoon. So if you want treatment there get there for 06:30 and bring something to sit on (that folds up quickly into something that can be used as a weapon) and a book.

I hung around in town for a while, did a bit of shopping and drank far too much coffee.

At about 13:00 I went back to the hospital and took a seat in the ground floor waiting room, as instructed. After about 45 minutes they opened up reception and started to call people through. I noticed that a lot of the people they were calling through didn't have a number and hadn't been there at 07:40, which revealed the second untruth. You don't have to show up early and get a number, you can be referred or even make an apppointment if you've been treated there before.

After about 25 minutes my number was called and I went to the reception desk and gave my details (Name, address, full ~~service~~medical history &c) then was sent to sit down in the waiting area again. Another 15 minutes passed and my name was called. I went into a side room which contained about half a dozen dentists chairs. I was dragged to one where a guy in his 40s (I guess a dentist) took my details including stuff like allegies (including the fact that I'm allergic to latex, i.e. what their examination gloves are made of) then looked in my mouth and confirmed that a large chunk of one of my molars had disapeared and the tooth would have to be pulled (the one positive thing about the dental hospital, they don't try to pad their income by 'saving' a tooth), I could have told them that at 07:40 that morning. I was sent to another waiting room, on the second floor this time.

About 15 minutes later I was called through and was seen by a student dentist who (based on his accent, body langauge and general manner) seemed to be from India, probably the Southern half and probably somewhere quite rural but with access to a large town or city (his English was excellent, better than many native speakers), probably Hindu or non-practicing Sikh (when you live and work in such a multi-ethnic environment as I do you learn to spot these things, I'm only mentioning the races to flesh out the story). He poked and prodded for a while and rattled some instruments around in my mouth, then he called over his supervisor to check his conclusions. His supervisor was a practicing Sikh who (from his turban, accent and body language) seemed to have either been born in the UK (probably London) or in Kenya and moved to the UK at an early age. The supervisor looked and prodded then confirmed what the dentist on the ground floor had said, better to have a ~~secondthird~~fourth (remember, I'd said from the get go what the problem was) diagnosis. They then sent me to the first floor to have an X-ray because they wanted to see where the roots went so they'd know if they would need to nick my gum.

I sat in another waiting room for a while then was subjected to a student X-ray tech (East African, I think) ramming his latex covered fingers down my throat (and wondering why I was choking) followed by his supervisor (Sutton Coldfied or Knowle) doing likewise with her fingers and bafflement as they tried to get the film in place. After I fought them off and finished retching I positioned the film (I was, after all, the one who knew for sure where the tooth in question was) and they took the shot. Usual delay for developing and I was looking at an X-ray of my tooth. I went back up to the second floor waiting room and waited.

Five minutes later (at least the waiting times were getting shorter) I was called back through to the treatment room where they told me they'd pull the tooth, they might need to nick my gum but it would be a small nick and they'd be able to sew it up no problems. I had a local aneasthetic (which hurt out of all proportion and tasted awful when it dripped on my tongue) and layed back, I sat up swilled and rinsed then layed back again. The student dentist snapped off the remainder of my tooth above the surface of the gum whilst asking his nurse what the various tools were for. He then called over his supervisor who looked at his work and said they'd have to drill out the rest of the tooth. Much rattling and drilling (interspersed with instructions to mount the burr the correct way around next time) they had removed all but one root and large chunks of the bone of my upper jaw. The supervisor explained that this root was a big one and curved, he also explained that they had to be careful. He then asked the student why they had to be careful. "There's a nerve behind it" the student guessed (wrong), "An artery" he tried again (wrong again). I thought about giving the right answer but the supervisor seemed determined to make this a learnig moment so I lay quietly bleeding into my mouth from the thumping great hole in my gum. Eventually (after the student had worked is way through every organ, bone, nerve, blood vessel and unidentifiable purple wibbly thing known to mankind (and a few known only to grey aliens from Proxima Centauri) except the right one) the supervisor relented and pointed out my sinus cavity, which if pierced would be a bad thing. Realisation dawned. More drilling and burring then some pulling and the root was out along with more hunks of upper jaw. The supervisor put a couple of stiches in then got the student to out some more in. After stiching my gum to my inner cheek then lower lip (also sewing part of my lips together) he eventually got a few stiches where they were supposed to be. I was sent on my way with an instruction to avoid heavy exercise (so not a problem) and to take Neurophen for the pain, not anything with Asprin in as that slows clotting, preferably before the aneasthetic wore off. By the time I got to a chemists (the Dental hospital is right in the jamedoulas so it was a bit of a hike) to buy some Neurophen the anaesthetic had worn off. I bought the pills and some water to take them with then took them and went to the bus stop.

4 days later and I'm still in pain, my gum is still swollen (although less so than it was this morning).

I realise that the dental hospital is used to dealing with indigents, but that's no excuse for poor service and substandard care.

Creating a positive working environment

2006-05-24T18:37:00.000+01:00

I attended a short course on Monday on how to create a positive working environment and stress busting. Very interesting. The trainer handed out a printout of a webpage entitled "How to Create a Positive Work Atmosphere". The signs of a negative work environment seems like a spot on description of where I work right now.

Lib Dems in Birmingham

2006-04-30T20:08:00.000+01:00

In the ward I live in (South Yardley, Cllr Hemming is one of my councillors), or at least the part of the ward I live in (Greet), the Lib Dems have been campaigning on a slogan of "Lib Dem or BNP: It's a two horse race". Reading further into their election material they seem to be saying that the only way to keep the BNP out is to vote Lib Dem. Thing is, I've lived in or near to this ward most of my life. I've never seen anything to suggest that the fascists had any real chance of winning. I can't help but wonder if this is some sort of scare tactice to terrify the voters into supporting the Lib Dems, Greet is largely ethnically Pakistani Muslims with a mix of other South Asians.

Personally I'm going to vote Labour ont he grounds that of the Birmingham councillors I've met the only ones I've found to be remotely likable have been Labour.

Politics

2006-04-25T15:47:00.000+01:00

Interesting view on the UK 2005 elections.

The site looks at politics not just as a one dimensional line from left to right but as a 2 dimentional graph with left and right applying to just economic/social ideas (taxation, welfare, social security) whilst adding a perpendicular dimension looking at the degree of authoritarianism a person or group exhibits (regulation).

I think I agree in principle with what they're saying, and their discussion around the positions of the labour and conservative parties seems pretty accurate, I don't agree with their assessment of the BNP. From what I've seen and read the BNP are economically more right wing than that, maybe not as much so as the Tories but certainly more so than the Lib Dems. They are also much more authoritarian.

There's a quiz you can take to see where you fit on the scales. I came out on the far left just below middle line.

It would be interesting to see where some of our elected officials come. I've met some Lib Dem councillors who are very authoritarian and a couple of Tories who are socially quite liberal. I had one meeting with a Lib Dem councillor and a Tory councillor at the end of which all the attendees thought each of them was a member of the other's party.

Job Offers

2006-04-24T18:54:00.000+01:00

Just had a call from a recruitment consultancy offering me an interview with Barclay's bank for a DBA role looking after their share trading systems. Unfortunately it was a production support only role (aka DataBase Baby Sitting), which would bore me silly, so I had to turn it down.

The consultant said he'd got my CV off monster.co.uk. I only put my CV up there last Thursday and this is the third recruitment consultant to phone me having seen it there.

Fortunately I'm in the position right now where I have a job I can stand so I can afford to be picky about which jobs I go for, unfortunately all the jobs that seem to be coming through are ones that I either couldn't do (I can't drive so any jobs I can't access via public transport are out) or wouldn't want to do (e.g. the Barclay's one above).

Linked-In

2006-04-02T11:27:00.000+01:00

Anyone else use Linked-In?

It's kinda a social networking type of site but business/job seeking oriented. The idea being that you might not know anyone who has the skills you need for a job you have on offer or who can offer a job that would suit your skills but someone that you know might know someone or someone you know might know someone who knows someone &c. Of course it does rely on you actually knowing people and knowing that they have a profile on Linked-In.

My profile is at :http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/131/a3b

A few people I know are on there but it just seems so crass to invite someone to link to you.

Has anyone else noticed the utter lack of police around Birmingham city centre recently?

2006-01-07T16:37:00.000Z

Following an event last night (recounted below) I've contacted my MP, via WrtiteToThem.com about it:

Sir,

I have of late become concerned about the apparent reduction in the presence of police officers 'on the ground' in Birmingham City Centre. Until quite recently uniformed officers (both regular police and 'Community Support Officers') along with a mobile CCTV van were a common sight around the city centre, both daytime and late in the evening. Now, aside from special events and the occasional CSO during the day, they are not to be seen. I am aware that there are many fixed CCTV cameras around the area, but these seem to provide little if any deterrant and certainly are unable to provide anything by way of direct assistance to members of the public who are victims of crime. Plus many are privately owned and not monitored out of business hours.

This raises a number of concerns for public safety.

For example, last night I was entering the top end of New Street, from Victoria Square, a little after 10pm, having just taken my sister and her two children to see "The Wizard of Oz" at the Rep Theatre. Two black (African or West Indian) men, appearing to be in their late teens or twenties, were walking in the opposite direction. As they past us one started to shout at me calling me a "F**king Jew" (please excuse the use of profanity, I just want to ensure that you appreciate the tone of his speech) and other antisemitic statements (I am not Jewish but, presumably because I have a full beard and tend to wear black, occasionally some people assume that I am). Up until this point none of us had even looked at either of them, although obviously his statements at that point drew our attention. His companion then started walking towards me and threatened to "F**k [me] up good." (again, I appologise for repeating his use of profanity). Before I could react the one who had made the initial statements called him off and they hurried away.

I realise that nothing there would have resulted in any police officer wittnessing the scene to have arrested either of them and that if they were arrested the CPS would have declined to prosecute, deeming threats of violence against an individual to be too trivial to take to court. Which, along with the fact that they would be long gone before any police officers might show up, is why I did not call the police as soon as they were out of sight and earshot. I do, however, believe that if there had been a visible police presence the odds are that the event would not have happened and they would have just walked past.

Pleae bear in mind here that we're not talking about something that happened in some rarely travelled back street. We're talking about something that happened in a major thoroughfare of Birmingham City Centre, a principle route from the entertainment areas of Centenary Square and Broad Street to New Street station and the bus stops and taxi ranks around Corporation Street. There is a low but continuous flow of people through that area at that time of the evening.

I know that in the long term issues around urban poverty and the lack of positive male role models for boys and young men (the dress of the man who threatened me seemed to be straight out of a "50-Cent" video or one of the recent "Grand Theft Auto" console games) need to be resolved to reduce such occurances. I do feel that in the short term a visible police presence around the city centre would go a long way to breaking the cycle of violent behaviour.

Your's most faithfully,

Stephen Booth

NB where I have 'sanitised' words with ** here (to avoid tripping concent scanners) I left them unammended in the origial letter.

Linux for Libraries

2005-10-19T08:37:00.000+01:00

For some months, as part of the Open Source Academy, a small team in Birmingham City Council's Business Solutions and IT section have been investigating the use of Linux, as an alternative to Microsoft Windows, in the Libraries Service. The project is currently in the live pilot stage.

Tommorow night, Thursday 20th, the first public report on the project will be delivered to the South Birmingham Linux Users Group at Birmingham University. The meeting is open to anyone so, if you're interested and can get there feel free to show up. The venue is on the train station side of the campus.

I'm not ignoring you honey

2005-08-16T08:49:00.000+01:00

A study at Sheffield university discovered that men have greater difficulty understanding women's speech than other men's. It seems that the cause is that whilst men's speech is processed (by the listener) in the speech parts of the brain, women's speech is processed by the areas of the brain normally responsible for music.

How this might be used to improve intergender communication is left as an exercise for the reader.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

2005-08-09T07:48:00.000+01:00

According to the BBC the rate of rise of house prices has dropped to 5.4%.

Oh. How. Terrible.

How? Will? Home? Owners? Ever? Survive?

Come on! Average house price rise in 2004 was 17%. How much did the average salary go up by? 2%, if that?

[This entry was previously published on Livejournal_uk. The comments recieved do give an interesting insight into how much of an issue the lack of affordable housing is is.]

Issue de jour

2005-08-09T07:17:00.000+01:00

It's just been on the BBC news that despite many hospitals claiming shortages of doctors there is infact a glut of junior doctors. It's just that few hospitals will offer them the posts with training that they need to progress.

There is a plan to offer an alternate path, we'll have to see how that works out.

Birmingham Metroblog a week old

2005-07-24T15:17:00.000+01:00

The Birmingham Metroblog is now a week old and seems to be going strong. Hopefully we'll be able to keep up the momentum and maybe attract some more writers.

I've only managed 5 entries so far. One giving an over view of the Birmingham Wheel, one introducing the Council House Clock (aka Big Brum), the three attempts at Op-Ed pieces about the councils plans for the Central Library, the electronic notice boards in the bus stops finally being put to use on the 11 route and, today, an entry dealing with the new technology and access routes to services the city council have introduced and a quick look to the future.

Birmingham Metroblog Goes Live

2005-07-21T08:35:00.000+01:00

The Birmingham Metroblog has gone live.

We actually started posting entries a couple of days ago but the organisers asked us not to direct people to the blog prior to the official go live. They wanted there to be a couple of days of entries for people to see when the blog went live.

Housing and Civic pride

2005-07-15T18:29:00.000+01:00

Whilst searching for something else I came accross this very interesting, and above all largely correct, article on housing and house prices. I don't really agree with the wholesale ripping down of our towns and cities to rebuild them in a more civic light, but I do think that we need to build a lot more housing, especially social housing owned and managed by the local town/city councils and housing associations who have a mandate to provide affordable housing to those on low wages.

Ripping out the neo-slums that have arisen in the last century and demolishing the Big Blue Turd would be an excellent idea. Affordable housing (not Luxury apartments that mostly stand empty) and commerical areas where you can shop and be entertained on a reasonable budget would seem to be what is needed.

More on Corporate Blogging

2005-07-15T17:56:00.000+01:00

I was sent a link to a report on Corporate Blogging. I've only had a chance to read a few pages so far (this entry is as much so I'll be able to find the lnk when I get home), looks fairly bland.

The report says it's fine to link to so long as you also linkl to the site's main page so here's the link.

I'll write more when I've read the rest of the article if I can be bothered.

We're all journalists now

2005-07-11T21:33:00.000+01:00

Today's Grauniad had an article about New Media and citizen reporting today in the G2 section. It was mostly about how the bomb attack last week in London seems to have been a tipping point in the media due to the way most of the reporting came not from professional journalists but from members of the public using their mobile phones to take and send in photos and video. Very often these pictures would be on the TV news within minutes of being shot.

LiveJournal got a name check (along with a coment from 'The site administrator') in a section of the article about the rise of blogs. Blogspot wasn't mentioned.

This weekend

2005-07-10T20:31:00.000+01:00

I've been installing Ubuntu 5.04 on one of my PCs (a P II 400MHz with 384Mb RAM which previously has SuSE 8.1 installed).

The install ran pretty smoothly, the hardware is pretty vanilla. Sound isn't working, it doesn't report any errors and seems to try to play the sound but nothing comes out of the speakers. That said, I've never managed to install any distro on any PC and have the sound work without a lot of fiddling and downloading of additional drivers.

I am finding that I'm having problems in that I'm having to fight the operating system to get it to do what I want rather than what it thinks I want.

I can access shared drives on my Windows XP boxes through the file browser app by entering the URI in the address box (i.e. smb://machine/drive) but it won't mount them (it doesn't have smbmount and the package manager doesn't list it as being in any of the available packages, I have all the Samba packages installed). Also whilst the installer found the second hard drive (and it would partition and format the drive) it won't let me create or mount any file systems on it. The box has a 6.2Gb drive (IDE master) and a 10.2Gb drive (IDE slave). It installed on the 10.2Gb drive to give me about 9.6Gb of file system space plus about 500Mb of swap.

The struggles will continue.

Birmingham MetroBlog

2005-07-10T12:56:00.000+01:00

Sadly it looks like there's a shortage of people signing up to write for the Birmingham Metroblog, that or the people running the site are getting behind in checking/adding people. They said we need at least 10 contributors before we can get started.

You can apply here if you think you've got what it takes.

Not in Islam's name

2005-07-10T12:33:00.000+01:00

Interesting article about most Muslim's fears following Al'Queda attacks.

I can't say I agree with everything in the article (I don't think that a withdrawal from Palestine will reduce the threat from Al'Queda one bit and it's clear from their actions elsewhere in the world that Al'Queda were transnational well before 9/11 and the resulting action in Afgahnistan) but most of it does seem to fit in with comments from my Muslim co-workers.

Here's some stuff about the history of Al'Queda

MetroBlogging

2005-07-02T17:22:00.000+01:00

One of my friends on LiveJournal pointed out this too me. Apparently what it's about is blogs centred around cities (or at least geographucal locations) with reports from people who live there. They're trying to drum up some more contributors for the Birmingham (England) blog.

There is a LiveJournal community blog for Birmingham, but I don't think that's what they're going for here.

Gmail Ads

2005-07-02T11:10:00.000+01:00

I use Gmail for most of my email and, as you may be aware, when you read mail in Gmail you get a few relevant text ads off to one side of the page, that's how the service is funded. Whilst they're easy to ignore occasionally one does catch my eye or I deliberately check them just to see what ads Google has come up with relevant to that mail.

Today I got a news mail about OSHA and US congress being held accountable for the deaths of 4 workers at the Toledo I-280 bridge.

The two ads Google chose to show me were:

Hasta La Vista Arnie in 2006.
Mark Warner for President 2008.

Just struck me as interesting.

So, who is this Mark Warner person?

UNISON and Climate Change

2005-06-25T23:05:00.000+01:00

For the past week (last Saturday to today, inlcuding travelling) ) I'm been at UNISON conference (2 days at Local Governement Service group then 4 days at National). Whilst I was there I drafted an article on climate change for the West Midlands region news letter, an article calling for a motion on climate change to be prioritised and passed. The article didn't get published (largely because it's crap and the fact that a much better one on the same subject was also submitted). I'm planning on rewriting it, to improve it and to take account of the fact that the motion was prioritised and passed, but for now it's below:

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - will you be going to work on a snowplough?
(Stephen Booth, Birmingham Branch)

Climate change, we've all heard about it. Some of us first heard about it on Blue Peter back in the 1970s and 80s, others more recently on the news or in the publicity relating to films such as "The day after tomorrow", some even heard about it in 1954 when an observatory in Hawaii first started to collect world temperature on a regular basis. Whilst many of us will also recall being told that global warming was a myth, all authorities not funded by the multinational oil companies now agree that it is happening, anyone who has looked out of a window in the last decade can see for them selves that the climate has changed. Even the US National Academy of Science, a body currently funded by the Bush government, are talking about it.

Whilst estimates on how much the global average temperature will rise by 2100 (a year that some of the younger delegates could realistically expect to see, a year that many of the children currently sitting in the SECC crèche could certainly expect to see), it is agreed that it will rise by between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius. To put that in context, the last time the worldwide average temperature rose by 6 degrees 95% of the species on the globe went extinct.

Researchers drilling cores from the Greenland and Antarctic have found conclusive proof that rises in global temperature always go hand in hand with rises in atmospheric carbon, not just once or twice but dozens of times in samples they have so far extracted. The evidence points to the fact that whilst we're looking at a change over a very long period it is very probable that most of the change will occur over a much shorter period, a few years at most. It could start in 50 years times, it could start in 20 years time, it could have started yesterday, we don't know. Suddenly an issue that we thought our children and grandchildren might have to face becomes one that we ourselves will probably have to face!

So, what can we do? Many politicians would have you turning turning off your TV over night rather than leave it on standby and switch to low energy light bulbs. Undoubtedly that will help, I reduced my electricity bill by a bout 25% through such measures, but that would just remove a pebble or two from the landslide of climate change. Massive changes are needed to solve this problem, massive changes but ones that will have little effect on our standard of living although they will result in many more public sector jobs. Hmmmm, more public sector jobs. Well, we're UNISON, we like that.

About a third of carbon being put into the atmosphere is from transport, largely private cars and airplanes. Improvements in public transport, both road and rail, are necessary so that where ever you are and where ever you need to go there is a clean, safe, coordinated and integrated system to get you there whether you're traveling at 8am on Monday to work, 3am on Sunday to get home from a club or half way around the world to a conference or demo. Public transport means public jobs to build and maintain the infrastructure, build and maintain the vehicles, staff the stations and drive the vehicles.

Much of the rest of the carbon released is due to wasted heat from homes and businesses. The solution here is a widespread and comprehensive public works scheme to insulate not just new build houses but also to refit older houses to insulate them and reduce drafts (something which my landlord resolutely refuses to do, how about yours?).

Where can you go from here? Raise this issue at your branch, get it on the agenda and get them to inform the membership. Prioritise Motion 92, if you don't, and Bournemouth and Brighton disappear under the sea, we might have to meet in Scotland every year. And I'm talking Ben Nevis, not Glasgow.

PostScript: It would appear that John Hemming, MP (Yardley, LibDem), has had some direct experience of climate change. we can but hope that he and his fellows in the chamber can take positive action to halt the changes and reduce carbon emmissions.

PostPostScript: One very worrying thing I've heard is that a number of multinational companies have been meeting recently to discuss climate change, not to discuss how to stop or at least slow the changes but rather to work out how to survive and even profit from the changes. For example insurance companies have, apparently, been co-ordinating efforts to remove flood and extreme weather cover from their policies as such events are becoming common and resulting in payouts.

It seems that what we may be looking at is much of northern Europe, Asia and America being frigid beneath an ice sheet (similarly for similar lattitudes in the southern hemisphere) whilst equatorial regions are parched. The fertile zone is due to be reduced to a narrow band bordered by fire and ice.

Lin Homer quits

2005-06-07T07:16:00.000+01:00

It was announced in yesterday's Evening Mail that Lin Homer, Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, has decided to quit her post and join the Home Office to deal with Asylum Seekers. Ms Homer joined the council after a long search for a new chief exec following the exit of Sir Michael Lyons. She has been in the firing line on a number problems such as reports of poor performance in the city's Social Care and Health department and the recent postal vote issues. When Ms Homer joined the council her coming was heralded by fears generated by her record of outsourcing public services.

Councillor John Hemming (now John Hemming, MP) was reported as pleased for Ms Homer and wished her well in her new post.

Careful who you link to

2005-06-04T14:53:00.000+01:00

Just found this (WARNING: page contains banner ads which include partial nudity and mild sexual content) whilst checking out referers to some of my web pages (someone who linked to one of my pages also linked to this article). Basically the US congress seems to have passed a regulation that adult content sites that feature content from or link to other such sites must ensure that models on those sites are of legal age.

Whilst there may be issues around the practicalities of this (e.g. what if a linked site features a new model without notifying sites that link to them, what constitutes a link (would an aggregated RSS feed count as a link) &c) the principle does seem reasonable. To take an analogy, if I own a bar and one of the staff knowingly serves an underage person with alcohol or sells a person who is of age with an alcolholic drink knowing that they intend to pass it to an underage person then I would be legally responsible and could be fined.

Is this an exercise in irony?

2005-05-29T18:43:00.000+01:00

The BBC is reporting that the Respect Coalition candidate for Sparkbrook, Birmingham, in the recent elections is mounting a challenge to the results. She claims that some people were prevented from voting. Given the past behaviour of some of the parties in the Respect coalition in that same constituency the phrase "That's rich" comes to mind.

I live in that constituency. The Respect coalition campaigners (especially the JFK (Justice for Kashmir party, now renamed People's Justice party), a party who campaign mainly on the issue of handing the Kashmir region of India over to Pakistan) would routinely harrass voters outside the polling station (usually targeting white voters, the area is majority Asian) and follow them into the polling station, right up to the pollbooth, to continue to harrass them. Complaints to the officials in the polling station would result in a shrug from them and accusations of racism from the from the campaigners.

This year I avoided the harrassment by getting to the polling station before the campaigners were organised.

One more step towards gender equality

2005-05-20T07:19:00.001+01:00

It's just been on the BBC breakfast news that 42% of bankrupts are now women. Appartently the root cause is that now women are more likley to take out debts in their own name (either because they are staying single or they are just doing it for themselves) rather than making/letting their husband taking on the responsibility for the debt.

They also talked about how women are more likely to take career breaks and to stay in a lower salary job because the employer has 'family friendly' policies. On a related note I remember at a recent UNISON education one day conference it was stated that women are far less likely to attempt to negotiate a higher salary or request training that will allow them to advance to higher paying jobs. One of the speakers (a woman) said that she had found that often female workers saw requesting/organising training was something that was done for/to them where as male workers saw it as something they do for themselves. I suspect that this has a lot to do with early life training and parental expectations (girls were expected to be pretty and play nicely whilst boys were expected to go out and have adventures).

Discipline in school found to improve exam results

2005-05-15T22:16:00.000+01:00

A Birmingham head teacher inproved exam results 12 fold by introducing isolation rooms for disruptive pupils. Basically kids are 4 warnings then they get put in the rooms during the school day for upto 3 days. The school in questioin (Ninestyles) was always known for being very rough and a bit of a dumping ground for problem pupils. When I was in school at Langley (not far from Ninestyles), 1985-87, it was widely known (or at least believed) that a Ninestyles pupil had a far better chance of going to jail than to 6th form, let alone university.

The isolation rooms sound a lot like the pindown rooms that were briefly used in the 1980s before they were banned.

Keeping the policians honest and dealing with voter apathy

2005-05-08T12:42:00.000+01:00

On one of the communities I frequent someone posted an entry asking for ideas on the perenial problem of how to keep politicians focused on representing their constituents and dealing with voter apathy.

Here's my response:

Unfortunately the only things I can think of are long term things and require the people to actually get off their arses and engage with the system.

Hold you representive accountable. Go to surgeries/advice sessions, tell them what you need/want done and what you think they should be doing. Write to them using FaxyourMP.com or WriteToThem.com so that their responsiveness will be tracked and look at their past record using TheyWorkForYou.com. Find out if they have a blog or journal (for example John Hemming, the new MP for Yardley in Birmingham, has one on blogspot). Read it and comment as appropriate.
Before the next election write them and tell them what you think of them and if you will be voting for or against them and why. Further, write to them at least once a year to tell them what you think of what they've done over the past year or what they did over a particular issue.
Get active. Communicate with others in the area. Campaign on the issues important to you. Wave placards, distribute leaflets, join a union or pressure group, put up posters, write to the local newspaper &c.

I really believe that the voters need to engage with the political system and keep contact with their representatives. If enough of us ask questions and challenge the waffle and untruths then maybe we can keep our politicians honest. Also, maybe, if people make themselves aware of the local issues they can campaign on the things that are important, not just whatever the person with the megaphone is ranting about.

Blogging for business

2005-05-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

After months of negative stories about companies firing bloggers for the contents of their online journal, BusinessWeek magazine are telling business to harness the power of blogging. Rather than seeing blogs as just a source of leaks and employee griping, companies should encourage positive blogging.

Blogs can be a useful as a grass roots tool for raising awareness. The frequent interlinking between blogs means that the readership of a comparatively minor blog can jump quickly as links to it spread and that blog posts frequently get Google PageRank scores that, so called, Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) can only dream of. Indeed the comment spamming that any of us that have had a popular blog for some time have seen often comes from SEOs trying to promote the sites they have been paid to 'optimize'.

The article suggests that businesses leverage blogs to promote their company. No doubt the marketing departments will quickly grasp on to this and start producing hundreds of blogs loaded with advertising. They always do miss the point like that. Who do you think invented spam? Yeah, that's right. Marketeers. It was the marketing department of a large law firm.

So, what will be sucessful corporate blogging?

I think somethin that shows a degree of sincerity. Not something loaded with adverts and product promotions, something containing real information about the company that doesn't look like it was passed through some marketing droid for spin and polish. Look at the the blogs of the likes of Jonathan Schwartz (of Sun Microsystems), Simon Phipps (also of Sun Microsystems), James Gosling (Sun Microsystems but the Java side of the business), GoogleBlog (Google, a digest from the personal blogs of many Google employees) or even Chris Pratley. All the blogs I've mentioned are from techie people because I'm a techie person and so I'm interested in what they have to say (I also read Wil Wheaton dot Net and many others (look to the right hand side of this page for somemore)). None could be considered advertising or marketing department driven, that's a big plus for me.. Pratley is just talking about the project he's working on. Schwartz talks about new things Sun is doing, similarly for the others talk about their work and the projects or products they're involved with. But in amongst the company stuff is the people interest stuff that puts a human face on the technology. That brings readers in and keeps them coming back.

Another thing that the article talks about is that it gives the company a chance to engage with the customers. Handled right this can be very useful, handled badly (i.e. by the marketing department) it can be a disaster. In her book The Popcorn Report US consumer/business writer Faith Popcorn talks about companies that have handled it right, and those who didn't. The key thing is what happens when things go wrong, when a poorly quality controlled product is shipped or a foodstuff gets contaminated. Companies that handled it badly let the marketing department go on a damage limitation exercise to hide the problem, minimise it, lie about it, say it was just a few isolarted cases. In the long term it hurt those companies badly. Those that handled it well engaged with the customer, admitted there was a problem and then explained how they were doing it. Sure those companies were hurt in the short term but they quickly got back with consumer confidence in them and their products higher than before.

I realize that I've been hard on marketing departments, but it's from years of experience of dealing with them. There's a marketing mindset and it's a bad mindset. It's a mindset that encourages people to place 'position' and spin over actually producing a product that people can use and will want to use.

Tories set to decimate post-16 basic skills training

2005-04-21T07:28:00.000+01:00

The Tories have a statement in thier policy, a deceptively small one, that they are going to cut a large chunk of the funding to post-16 basic skills (e.g. literacy, IT &c) and 'soft skills' (e.g. assertiveness) training. If they get in and go ahead with this The the first effect will be that a large number of people involved in delivering such training will lose their jobs, the longer term effect will be a gradual widening of the educational gap in people over 16. Many people, especially those who went to school under the Thatcher/Major regimes, were failed by the educational system in this country, many now lack training to advance in their careers and the basic skills to get that training (and often their confidence has been so destroyed by the failure of their school education that it is difficult for them to even ask for the training). The long term effect of the Tory policy will be to further marginalise these people and deny them the opportunity to advance and improve their situation.

Political leanings

2005-04-18T20:32:00.000+01:00

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Labour

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 29
Conservative -26
	Liberal Democrat 52
UK Independence Party 0
	Green 52

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

You should vote: Green

The Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

This is worrying, I'm a dedicated Labour supporter. I've only ever voted LibDem where Labour didn't have a chance but a LibDem vote could keep the Tories out.

Choice in healthcare and education

2005-04-18T07:06:00.000+01:00

Once again the Tory party are pushing the idea of offering choice in healthcare and education. I don't have kids so the education side doesn't directly affect me, but lets look at the healthcare. Would you rather be told which hospital you were going into, knowing that they were the best able to treat whatever afflicted you, or have a choice of which MRSA ridden dump to be seen by a junior doctor who hasn't slept more than 3 hours in any given 24 since 8 weeks before their graduation from medical school.

I'll take quality over choice.

School Dinners

2005-04-18T06:59:00.000+01:00

It has just been announced on the local BBC news that a school is to start serving vegetables with school dinners. In my own school days (1974-1987) it was pretty much impossible to avoid vegetables with your school dinner, even burger and chips came with a salad (which included, for some reason, a slice of orange).

MG Rover

2005-04-15T07:58:00.000+01:00

It's just been on the news that should MG Rover go under the company that owns the site are looking to redevelop it, creating around 10,000 jobs (about 50/50 new jobs/relocated jobs). Apparently they have a track record of doing this and have revitalised other areas including former mining communities destroyed by the Tories.

I remember being on a course with some people from MG Rover last year. They were very critical of the management, feeling that there was a gap between what management thought was going on and what was actually going on.

It seemed like more than the normal workers criticism of management.

Getting a message through

2005-04-14T18:57:00.000+01:00

I discovered today that at counts the returning officer has to show all spoiled ballots to the candidates or their agents. Therefore if you don't want to vote but would like to get a message to the candidates then if you spoil your ballot and write a message on it it will be seen by them.

Apparently some of the messages that get written are rather rude.

Personally I plan to vote for the candidate that will do me the most good.

Public Transport and Politics

2005-04-03T22:05:00.000+01:00

John Hemming (LibDem), Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, is proposing that the age limit for free travel on public transport be lowered to 60. He has indicated that it is a move to relieve congesation by getting people out of their cars and onto public transport.

I've heard a rumour that he's making another run for MP, perhaps this is part of his strategy?

Whilst I'm very much in favour of enouraging people to use public transport, I feel that the moeny should be spent on improving usability, safety and reliability for all passengers. Not just for those over 60. Plus free travel passes are only usable in off peak times, which are not the problem. It's when everyone is travelling to work/school or home at the end of the day (i.e. the peak times) that are the problem.

For example I have to travel into Birmingham city centre each week day for work. Fortunately I'm on flexitime so can arrive at work anytime between 07:00 and 10:00 and leave anytime between 16:00 and 19:00 (although it's far from unusual for me to have work later). If I leave the house at 09:00 then I generally get into work at around 09:30-09:40. If I leave the house at 08:00 then I generally get into work for about 09:25-09:35. To get the same travel time as at 09:00 (travelling in just after rush hour) I'd have to leave the house before 07:00, not being a morning person I choose the later option.

Similarly at the other end of the day, if I'm not out of the office by 16:15 then I may as well not bother to leave until 18:00 (unless I've got shopping to do). Fortunately that's not often a problem as my managers have perfected the art of dropping big packets of work on me at 15:55 as they head for the door.

FYI Site stealing blog entries

2005-03-29T17:22:00.000+01:00

I discovered today that the site allconsuming.net is copying and publishing entries from peoples blogs to promote sales of books. Basically if you write an entry that mentions a book they copy the entry and publish it on a page that offers the book for sale via Amazon Associates (so they get a cut of the profits). They don't ask permission and, as they publish entire entries, are not covered by fair use. that means they're in breach of international copyright law. It might be worth checking if they've nicked anything of your's, easiest way would be to Google with "site:allconsuming.net [your journal name]".

Contact address is erik@allconsuming.net. The whois record is here.

Permission is explicitly granted to reproduce this entry so long as it is done in it's entirety and a link back to the original is included.

For my UK friends and readers

2005-03-28T21:17:00.000+01:00

I thought it might be interesting to remind everyone that now would be a very good time to FAX your MP if you have anything you want to bring to their attention. An election being on the cards and all.

Redlake Killer teen kept blogs

2005-03-24T17:40:00.000Z

Apparently the 16 year old who shot up his school in Redlake, killing himself and 9 others, was user of LiveJournal, weise, and at least one other blog site. Maybe there was more detail in friends only or personal entries (functionally equivalent as he has no friends listed) but the few pubic entries in there look like typical teen angst.

[I found this via a post to abovetopsecret by theta_wave]

School dinners

2005-03-21T20:30:00.000Z

According to Sunday's Sunday Times, following on from the TV series "Jamie's School Dinners", the average amount spent by a school on the lunches they provide to their pupils is 37p a day. The average amount collected from parents (or claimed from LEA for free school meals where children qualify), however, according to the article and confirmed by some phone calls to parents of school aged children I know is around £1.75-2 per pupil per day. Where's the rest of the cash going? Even if the 37p is purely for the food delivered to the door I find it impossible to believe that they are spending £1.38 per pupil per day on reheating the food, serving it up and washing the utensils afterwards. I know how little those kitchen assistants and lunch supervisors earn, it's a pittance (I know people who work in school kitchens and lunch rooms). I'd be surprised if it cost more than the 38p, so that's a quid, at least, going astray for each pupil each day