No geek
is an island

Last Friday, the morning after the local elections, I was returning to work late in the morning (having got home towards 5am). I’d foolishly forgotten my iPod, so I could hear the voices of the commuters I passed on the Jubilee Line platform. One was very nasal and very familiar. I turned and saw Ken Livingstone waiting for the next train, newspaper in hand.

So I went and said hello. He seemed fairly dispirited and not optimistic about the mayoral election result. Turns out he was right.

In the week since taking office, Boris Johnson has launched one deliberately eye-catching initiative: to ban alcohol on London’s public transport network. So much for selling yourself as a liberal when your first act is to ban something. I wonder why he didn’t make more of this plan during the election - did he make it up in two seconds after getting elected, or was he afraid some of the more, let’s say, light-hearted of his supporters might have been put off?

Anyhoo, the ban takes effect on June 1st. Quite aside from whether it’s liberal or not, will it make a difference? Drunks are probably the least likely to take notice of it. The law-abiding majority who had the odd drink on the Tube will stop, and be slightly less free and enjoy their evenings slightly less.

And who does drinking on public transport actually harm, as long as it’s not the driver doing it? Drunkenness can be a problem, but Boris hasn’t banned drunk people from public transport (as Chris points out, the night bus network would be unsustainable if you did). He isn’t introducing more staff to enforce the ban and he isn’t clamping down on anti-social behaviour generally. The ban might succeed in reducing litter on public transport very slightly but that’s about it.

So a policy that grabs headlines but costs virtually nothing to implement (the politician’s favourite), that inconveniences some people while not noticeably increasing quality of life for anyone else, that misses the real target, but which, in true New Labour style, Sends A Message. Unfortunately, that message is that if you reach your tube station with a half drunk can of beer (or M&S G+T if that’s your preference), you should down the rest before trying to catch a train.

Three marriage certificates I ordered online last weekend popped through my letterbox this morning, and all three were curious in their own way.

The first recorded the marriage of my great-great-great-grandfather Henry Beard to my g-g-g-grandmother Sarah Payne in Reading in 1843. I didn’t know the names of Henry and Sarah’s parents, so I was particularly interested in the “Father’s Name and Surname” column on the certificate for each of them. This showed Sarah’s father as James Payne (although gave no occupation), but this box was crossed through for Henry.

A missing father’s name can often indicate illegitimacy. I don’t mind if that’s the case, but the missing father’s name doesn’t help my research.

I moved on to the second certificate, which recorded the marriage two years later of Joseph Gibbs and Eliza Alleway, who were also two of my g-g-g-grandparents. I was surprised to see that Eliza’s father’s name was missing from this certificate. Two illegitimate ancestors in one morning seemed a bit of a coincidence. Although Joseph’s father, James, was recorded, his occupation was again not recorded.

It turns out that both couples were married in the same church - St Laurence’s (recorded as St Lawrence’s) - and both by the same vicar, John Ball. As the early 1940s were the first days of civil marriage registration, my suspicion is that this may have been a case of the vicar having a particular approach to recording the registrants’ parents: he didn’t record fathers’ occupations, and he left off fathers’ names if they had died - as opposed to the usual practice of putting “(Deceased)” after the name.

That practice was demonstrated on the third marriage certificate that came today, from 1902 (and soon enough after the turn of the century that the registrar was still using “18__” cetificate with the 8 crossed out). This records the marriage of my great-great-uncle Frederick Pinnock to Annie Batttison. My previous research suggested that Frederick was born to my g-g-g-grandmother Harriet Pinnock five or six years after the death of her husband Thomas, so I was interested to see who Frederick recorded as his father.

This time, there was a father shown: “Thomas Pinnock (Deceased)”. Frederick’s age is given as 32, which confirms census evidence that he was born in 1869 or 1870. But I have Thomas Pinnock’s death certificate and he definitely died in 1864. Maybe Frederick never knew, but that would mean that none of his eleven older siblings ever spilt the beans.

Next task then is to try to find the four ancestors from the 1840s on the 1841 census - but that may have to wait until after the local elections…

An email has zoomed around the world and popped into my inbox - which admittedly would be more impressive if it hadn’t been sent by the person sitting next to me.

It links to a clip on YouTube featuring yesterday’s debate between London mayoral candidates Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick on the BBC Asian Network (pop fact: I went to primary school with one of the Asian Network’s presenters).

Boris tries to label Brian (who has three decades’ experience in the police force) as soft on crime - only to have to eat his words once challenged.

Here’s the clip:

I like the “Brian Paddick is the only candidate with a proven record of fighting crime” bit at the end - it makes him sound like Batman. Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor…

There was good news this morning when the High Court ruled that the Serious Fraud Office’s decision - under pressure from the Government - to drop its investigation into the Al-Yamamah arms deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia was “unlawful”.

The BBC quotes BAE’s position on the ruling:

“The case was between two campaign groups and the director of the SFO. It concerned the legality of a decision made by the director of the SFO.

“BAE Systems played no part in that decision.”

The same article mentions BAE’s earlier position on the inquiry:

BAE argued that the SFO probe could “jeopardise” both this deal and “seriously affect” relations with the Saudi kingdom.

So they argued that the probe was a bad idea, but “played no part” in the decision to end it.

If I blog that the Government should do something and then they do it, I may or may not have played a part in that decision. If I were to write to the Government and ask they do something and then they do it, I may or may not have played a part in that decision - it certainly increases the likelihood that I have.

Now, given BAE’s closeness to Government, did no-one from BAE ever moan about this probe? It’s possible. But if they did, did they still “play no part” in the decision to drop the inquiry?

They may or may not have done.

You’ll notice an unusual look to the blog today in honour of the annual CSS Naked Day, during which sites are encouraged to show off their <body>

(Hat-tip.)

Update: And now we’re back to normal.

I was so busy thinking about how reprehensible it was of Labour to double the tax rate for low-earners yesterday (which I blogged about last year, including this telling quote from Gordon Brown), I completely failed to notice that it was this blog’s birthday. Happy birthday, blog.

As is now traditional, anniversary day (or, in this case, the day after) is the one day of the year when we do blog stats here. So here we go.

Previous three years’ figures are in brackets, last year’s first.

• 2 (2, 2, 2): number of servers this site has been hosted on
• 2 (2, 2, 2): number of blogging applications used
• 977 (873, 588, 226): total number of posts
• 1,518 (1,350, 774, 444): total number of comments
• 1.55 (1.55, 1.32, 1.96): average number of comments per post
• 269 (259, 192, 119): number of number plates spotted (playing since May 2004 - may be time to give up)
• 96,335 (70,993, 43,016, 6,322): total unique hits (counting since May 2004)

Top seven referring websites (excluding search engines):

• 7 (6): W4MP
• 6 (5): Liberal England
• 5 (4): Bloglines
• 4 (3): BBC News
• 3 (7): Wikipedia
• 2 (2): kakuro.info
• 1 (1): LibDem Blogs

Top nine referring blogs:

• 9 (-): Love and Liberty
• 8 (-): Iain Dale
• 7 (7): A Liberal Goes A Long Way
• 6 (8): Recess Monkey
• 5 (2): Chicken Yoghurt
• 4 (6): Naked Blog
• 3 (9): Liberal Democrat Voice
• 2 (4): Peter Black
• 1 (1): Liberal England

Top ten search terms:

• 10 (7): guardian
• 9 (5): toby
• 8 (6): stephens
• 7 (4): doctor
• 6 (-): eurovision
• 5 (2): kakuro
• 4 (3): who
• 3 (-): forward
• 2 (-): clocks
• 1 (1): sudoku

As these are “all time” rankings, they do run the risk of changing less and less each year. Here then are what Google Analytics reckons are the same rankings for the last year.

Top seven referring websites (excluding search engines):

• 7: Bloglines
• 6: Peter Black
• 5: StumbleUpon
• 4: kakuro.info
• 3: Liberal Democrat Voice
• 2: LibDem Blogs
• 1: Wikipedia

Top nine referring blogs:

• 9: Quaequam Blog!
• 8: Naked Blog
• 7: Chicken Yoghurt
• 6: Adam Teladia
• 5: One Way Pendulum
• 4: Iain Dale
• 3: Liberal England
• 2: Peter Black
• 1: Liberal Democrat Voice

Top ten search terms:

• 10: hut 33
  (a post briefly higher ranked on Google thank the official site)
• 9: doctor who new companion
  (and that was about Martha, not Donna)
• 8: love don’t roam
• 7: when do the clocks go forward
• 6: toby stephens
  (I wrote one post, for goodness’ sake)
• 5: tony lit
  (remember him?)
• 4: who should i vote for president
• 3: eurovision 2007
  (and it’s nearly that time again)
• 2: clocks go forward 2008
• 1: clocks go forward

Phew! Those are probably the measurements to use in future as they’re marginally more interesting (in the way that having your smallest toe amputated is marginally more interesting than losing the fourth one).