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.

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…

Frustrated with the lack of progress from gentle dialogue with the parliamentary authorities, those marvellous chaps at mySociety have launched their Free Our Bills campaign, which I’ve just signed up to support.

They want to see Parliament publishing bills in an improved electronic form that will allow more automated processing by services like TheyWorkForYou (which helps power the LibDems’ new Iraq site, Hold Them to Account), making the issues being debated by MPs and peers more accessible to normal people like you and me.

mySociety estimate the programming work required would cost around £10,000, so it only needs one MP to sacrifice a new kitchen to pay for it.

You can register your support for the campaign on the Free Our Bills website.

As referendums are in the news of late, I thought this excerpt from The Times of March 1911, which I stumbled upon yesterday (as you do), might be of interest:

With regard to Lord Balfour’s Reference to the People Bill, it is expected that at least two days will be occupied by the second reading debate. It is probable that in Committee amendments will be moved limiting the scope of the measure, which as it stands would not only allow either House to demand a Referendum on any legislative proposal, but also gives that privilege to a minority of 200 members in the House of Commons. Some Unionists think that the purpose of the Bill will be served if it is confined to the setting up of the machinery for the Referendum, leaving for definition in further legislation the occasions on which it is to be resorted to.

There’s a long preview of Brian Paddick’s autobiography Line of Fire in today’s Mail on Sunday. The book will, the article says, “offer an insight into police culture and practice - from the era of Life On Mars to the era of the suicide bomber.”

Paddick is, of course, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor in May’s London elections. His thirty years in the police force make him the ideal person to lead the fight against crime in London, and those three decades of experience are charted in his book, from the Brixton riots to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Here’s a morsel from the Mail:

Whenever I went out on night patrol with one particular pandacar driver, the first stop was the “tube station” - the off-licence.

We would buy a couple of “tubes” of Foster’s lager which we stowed under the front passenger seat. We would wait for a lull, go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and then sit in the car eating and drinking lager.

In those days the unofficial policy was to try to avoid arresting people for drink-driving - because police were drink-driving themselves.

Line of Fire is released on March 25th.

In a story about two British men trying to get their DNA removed from the national database, the BBC has reiterated one of Home Officer minister Tony McNulty’s arguments against having a mandatory DNA database of the whole population:

“How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing. Doing that for 60m people is another,” he added.

Excellent point, Tony. And guess what - it applies exactly as much to ID cards as it does to DNA.

Readers may be interested to know (and I’m going to plug it regardless) that since December I’ve been writing a regular weekend column for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Something for the Weekend is a light-hearted (I wouldn’t go so far as “humorous”) review of the week, and today’s post - written in Llandudno, from where I’m typing into your internets right now - is now up.

Today is Brian’s Facebook Friday, during which supporters of Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor of London, are being asked to sign up as fans on his Facebook page, and to encourage other Londoners on Facebook to do the same.

Signing up as a supporter is a good way of keeping in touch with Brian’s campaign and of publicly showing your support - it also gives you a tasteful little Brian Paddick icon on your Facebook profile. If you want to see Brian elected Mayor of London in May and you haven’t done so already, please register as a fan on Facebook now.

And, if you haven’t yet signed up for Facebook, it’s a great opportunity to do so!

Satires on taxation, global capitalism and Section 28 aren’t perhaps the usual fare of television aimed at children, but, produced as it was by the BBC’s drama department, Doctor Who often aimed squarely at the family audience, ensuring that there was a something in its stories to appeal to adults while the kids were hiding behind the sofa.

As part of my exceptionally slow progress through all the Doctor Who ever made, I recently reached The Sun Makers, a Tom Baker story from 1977 in which political satire is pushed front and centre - arguably at the expense of younger audiences.

The central conceit is relatively simple: the Doctor and Leela arrive on Pluto, where what’s left of the human race are living, enslaved by compulsory work for the Company and punitive tax rates. The Doctor’s task within four episodes is to overthrow the Company and free the people.

(more…)

This year the clocks go forward to British Summer Time on Sunday 30th March, and back to GMT on October 26th - put those in your diary now. (Or your Outlook Calendar at least - if you have a diary, they probably come printed in already.)

I’ve been perusing some information about the system for deciding when the clocks change on the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform website (as you do). Nowadays, it’s always the last Sunday in March and the last in October. It’s the same in all European Union member states and has been set down via EC Directive since way back when (i.e, 1981).

Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 January 2001 on summer-time arrangements sayeth in particular:

(2) Given that the Member States apply summer-time arrangements, it is important for the functioning of the internal market that a common date and time for the beginning and end of the summer-time period be fixed throughout the Community.

(3) Since the summer-time period considered most appropriate by the Member States runs from the end of March to the end of October, it is appropriate that that period therefore be maintained.

As directives have to be implemented into British law to take effect, this is done through Orders in Council under the European Communities Act 1972. The 1972 Summer Time Act (it was all go in 1972) is amended by the Order to enact the change.

The current arrangement settling on the last Sundays in March and October was introduced via the 9th Directive, which came into force through the Summer Time Order 2002. The main effect, as we already used roughly the same system, was to remove the previous contingency the moved the switch to BST earlier by a week if it would have fallen on Easter Sunday. I note that in the original 1972 arrangements, the changes happened at 2am GMT - now they happen at 1am.

Here endeth the lesson.

Not that I have a vote, of course, but skipping past that… Via Doctorvee comes a quiz which identifies Democrat Mike Gravel (who he? 77-year-old former senator for Alaska apparently) as my best pick for US President:

77% Mike Gravel
75% Dennis Kucinich
74% Bill Richardson
73% Barack Obama
73% Chris Dodd
69% Hillary Clinton
68% John Edwards
67% Joe Biden
45% Rudy Giuliani
41% Ron Paul
40% John McCain
33% Mitt Romney
31% Mike Huckabee
25% Tom Tancredo
19% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Obama comes out top of the big hitters, with all of the Republicans trailing the Democrats. Apply the usual health warnings with these sorts of quizzes - they depend on the questions, candidates’ positions will have been estimated, etc.

I’ve also tried another survey which Duncan tried a few months ago. That one also matched me with Gravel, but ordered the big three Democrats with Edwards first, then Obama, then Clinton. Which demonstrates my point about health warnings.

I have a couple of meme tags still outstanding, one of which needs addressing before midnight and so I’d best get it done.

Jo off of Jo’s Jottings tagged me with Iain Dale’s Eight for 2008 meme. So with world peace and Prime Minister Nick Clegg taken as read, here are my 8 wishes for next year:

1. That the fourth series of <DOCTOR.WHO> will be at least as good as the third; that the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures will be at least as good as the first; and that the new series of Torchwood will be better than the first (and I’m sure it will).

2. That the Lib Dems get good results in the London elections and the English and Welsh local elections in May.

3. That I’m able to find enough spare time to make some progress on various projects currently sitting on the back burner.

4. That in the light of its inability to handle personal data securely the Government abandons the illiberal, costly, and technically monstrous identity database.

5. That I maintain a reasonable record playing Scrabulous on Facebook and at some point win a game of Settlers of Catan.

6. That the majority of my commuter trains into London are on time (December’s score: 0%).

7. That a sensible Democrat wins the US Presidency.

8. That I lose some more weight, although ideally not through amputation, decapitation or any sort of wasting disease.

Given that it’s December 31st, I’ll not tag on. Happy New Year!