Testing

Testing, testing...

testing the wind...

Why you should no longer rely on being thought Innocent till proven Guilty.

We can all rely on a basic tenet of English law, that one is innocent until proven guilty. Right?
Wrong ! There are increasing situations where it is clearly not the case in UK, and elsewhere, today.

Terrorism, for one. But that's easy, isn't it ?
The Govt, has to ensure the safety of all by depriving suspects of a chance to deploy bombs or other weapons of terrorism. Even if it means locking up or depriving a few suspect people of their liberty because they *may* be intending to deploy bombs or other weapons of destruction at some unknown point in the future.
Unless, of course, the suspect can *prove* they have no such intentions now, or in the future.

If you ever become a suspect, how do *you* prove you are not going to commit a certain act in the future ? It's a bit like a double negative, only has greater consequences to personal liberty.

Cot Deaths.
How does a grieving parent, *prove* they did not kill their child ?
We have now seen three mothers released from prison, their cases overturned on appeal, up to six years later, for infanticide charges now found to be untrue or the verdicts unsafe.
Another 28 such cases are still under review, pending High Court appeals.
you can read about the latest one here ...

All because, an *expert* medical witness (I could link to reports about Prof. Sir Roy Meadow, but why bother) believed that one cot death case was tragic, two cases were suspicious and three cot deaths in one family just *had* to be murder. He even gave flawed odds of 73 million to one - for two children from one family succumbing to cot death. This *expert* opinion became known as Meadow's Law.

It took outraged medical statisticians, a TV documentary and assorted family lawyers to demonstrate that inherited genes could sadly pre-dispose some children to succumb to cot death.

Not tragic, but slightly worrying....
You can now be stopped at the roadside, by the police, on suspicion of almost anything, and forced to submit to fingerprinting, to determine your identity.
you can read about this here ...
At the moment, this is a police trial in Northampton, but could be launched nationwide in 18 months.

So, don't think it couldn't happen to you, because increasingly, our basic freedoms are slowly being eroded, drip.... by.... drip....

On another topic...
Here's an interesting blog about proxy blogs.
Find out more here.
Can Weblogs Make a Politician Keep a Promise?

Heads Up: If you are in a USA database owned by Reed Elsevier group, be warned...

Data broker LexisNexis has confirmed that personal information may have been stolen on 310,000 U.S. citizens, or nearly 10 times the number found in a data breach announced last month.

The firm's Anglo-Dutch parent Reed Elsevier determined that its databases had been fraudulently breached 59 times using stolen passwords, leading to the possible theft of personal information such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information, LexisNexis said.
Click here to read the rest ...

Tale of our times in 2005 - in three parts.

Prologue.
I started this post thinking about the toe-rags and petty criminals who ruin the lives of ordinary people in little britain today, with their mindless neighbourhood anti-social behaviour, petty crime, car vandalism, house-breaking, mugging, stabbings, drug wars, drive-by shootings.
You know, usual stuff these days.

Then I got to thinking about parenting skills, role models, leadership, civic responsibilities.... and it hit me.
Apart from the usual excuses of teenagers; "...I'm bored", "...nuffink to do rand ere, innit" mentality, lack of job opportunities (that's real enough); we are all shaped by examples around us, aren't we ?

Children have a right to be parented, nurtured, encouraged, praised, listened to; to motivate us to acquire education and life/social skills, which in turn foster aspirations, ambitions and the vision to do something with our lives.

So, arguably, parents (and society) must be failing those children, who see nothing better for themselves than petty crime, ASBO's, petty crimes, violence, drugs, UB40, dole, prison, dole and death.

Here's the thing. Who is motivating our struggling or failing parents and leading by example in our multi culteral little britain today ?
It is clearly not self serving politicians and fat cat tycoons lining their pockets and pensions, is it.
The example here seems to be feather one's own nest and to hell with the rest of you !

Hmmm. I recognise that pattern, don't you ? So, children need stronger role models to succeed.
What about the professionals in society, then.
Teachers, clerics, doctors, lawyers, politicians.... ?

Part One.
Ah, politicians. The thing is, nobody really believes that politicians are truly honest role models these days. Especially, Ministers in the current Govt. Particularly, Anthony Blair, QC, MP, who is Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

What does it say about this society's moral and ethical standards that the Prime Minister, himself a barrister, son of a barrister, and married to a leading barrister; is so easily characterised by his own slippery words as economical with the truth, at best, or a liar at worst, on many of the defining moments in his career ?

Big lies, as in "..why we must invade Iraq, WMD". Little lies, "...I once ran away from home, yer know; slipped aboard a plane bound for Barbados, yeah, from Newcastle !"
Only, Newcastle Airport never ran a service to Barbados, ever, at all.

There are many more lies to chronicle, but they were probably all classified as "spinning the truth".
So, they weren't really lies at all were they.

Part Two.
Well, if regime change in Iraq was not on the agenda and they never did find WMD in Iraq, because they weren't there at the time of invasion; why did we go to war against Iraq again ?

So, why not Iran, N. Korea, Cuba, Libya and Syria, 'cause these are all Geo Bush's hit-list as well .
You can read more here...

I wonder why (not really...) that Burma, Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, and other African despotic states of human genocide and economic misery are not on Blair and Bush's To Do list of countries to invade ?

Part Three.
Now we find that 3 Labour Councillors in Birmingham have been found guilty of creating an illegal postal voting scam worthy of any of the above banana republics.
Read the judges summing up story here...

Apparently, the Govt. has known of these corrupt postal vote scams in B'ham (and Leicester and Bradford - and Pendle before that) for some time, yet chose to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing.

Peter Hain presented a formal parliamentary report with recommendations for stiffening up the postal voting system.
This report, inter alia, identified ways of improving security around the process for registering for postal votes, including stiffer procedures requiring documentary proof of ID prior to postal vote registrations.

Cynically, Ministers read the report, but decided that implementing the key recommendations *might* reduce "voter turn-out", so decided against stiffer postal registration protocols.

Epilogue.
So, exercise your vote on 5th. May. Choose wisely, 'cause we get the Govt. we deserve.
Whichever colour party gets elected, we must make them more accountable, more transparent.
That's probably as much as we can expect from our politicians at this stage.

Meanwhile, it's up to you, and you, and you, and me, to try and be better role models for the next generation.
What ? Yeah, I know, it's all bollocks till the current neighbourhood gangs grow up or die out.

Blair rules London and Toronto. Tomorrow the World !

In his dreams, maybe. But PM (President) Tony Blair is vying for his 3rd. term of office.

Strangely, there are two other significant Blair figures on the up as well.
In UK, we have newly promoted Ian Blair, new Chief Constable of Met police in London.
Plus, in Toronto, the Police Services Board appointed Bill Blair as their new Chief of Police.
you can read the rest here...

So, the Jamie Oliver school dinners programme has had at least two positive effects.
OK, three if you wanted to hear how much Jamie swears. Because he does. A lot.

Meanwhile, back to the other two....

1. 50% of schools provide pupils with a meal costing no more than 37 pence.
2. 75% spend no more than 50 pence on their school meals.

That's 37p for ALL the ingredients on the dinner plate.

If you look at the total supplied price, the main meals provider, Scolarest (part of the Compass group) gets an average of 45p nationally for primary school dinners.

Scolarest, which supplies 1,400 state schools, wants 55p a day per child for food, compared with the average of 45p nationally for primaries.
but so far, the Govt. has not agreed more funds for school dinners.

UPDATE : Suddenly, The Govt. (Tony + a few sofa friends) suddenly found an extra £280million for school dinners. Wow. Fantastic !

Of course, that decision has nothing to do with plans Jamie revealed to the PM - that he was looking at options for standing against Tony Blair in his own constituency of Sedgefield; on a platform of campaigning for better school dinners, of course.

Apparently, these plans acquired authenticity when Martin Bell (ex independant MP, ex seasoned War Reporter) confirmed he had been approached by Jamie's team for advice.

Still, the kids are winners, Jamie is a winner. Tony Blair ?
He will know if he's a winner, come May 5th..........

BBC admits they lied about the Dr Who actor quitting...

It's only a small thing, but indicative of the lack of respect that big corporations (aka bosses with big egos) have no moral scruples regarding their staff, nor viewers who pay for the BBC service.

Even the BBC, whose success is built on its players, not its managers, has spun another web of deceit by the Untruth spider.

The BBC has admitted it failed to speak to actor Christopher Eccleston before revealing he was going to quit Dr Who after the first series.
"Contrary to press statements Christopher did not leave for fear of being typecast or because of the gruelling filming schedule," said Ms Tranter.

Jane Tranter, BBC head of drama commissioning should be ashamed, for herself and for the BBC.

Click this and you can read the rest here...