Monthly Archives: January 2007

Breaking news?

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Right, just to qualify the headline, this isn’t breaking news in terms of it just happened. Neither is it in terms of those in the know in Walsall. However, there’s a real reason I thought it important that this information be more readily available.
Is this some major scandal that will rock the foundations of the Council, no it isn’t so sorry to disappoint. However, it does say something about the relationship between what’s going on, what gets reported and what is perceived to be of importance.
We’re going back to the Peter Francis affair which I’ve commented on before. Now on this occassion I’m not going to go down the route of using this situation to embarrass the Tories or try and score points, I’m purely interested in the way in which openness is afforded to the public through both this particular local authority and the media. I’m also going to abandon my partisan position and be completely fair to the different parties involved. So here goes, this letter, originally dated 8th January was sent to all the Councillors in Walsall by Peter Francis:

Dear Councillor,

After a lot of deliberation, I have decided to write to each elected member in order to correct a number of inaccuracies regarding my case against Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council which has been widely reported.
I wrote an open letter to the Leader of the Council, Councillor Tom Ansell on 6th December 2006 which I copied to the local press. In the letter I said that I was astonished to read his statement posted on the Council’s website on 5th December 2006 (which still remains on the website) because it is misleading and inaccurate. I challenged Councillor Ansell to retract the statement because I was saddened that my case continued to be the subject of spin and political posturing.
Councillor Ansell, as was his prerogative, decided not to make a public reply but in his personal reply to me on 8th December, he made further inaccurate statements. For example he claimed that in May 2006 I asked for a lump sum of

Is something afoot?

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It could simply be paranoia taking over but I had a stroll through my stats today and there is for some reason an inordinate number of visitors over the last 24 hours that have found my site via the search terms either “Walsall MBC” or “Peter Francis”. (Note, I don’t think Walsall Council are going to be too happy that my site comes third on Google for the aforementioned search term, up from fifth yesterday).
It could of course just be me but if what has passed my way today in terms of information turns out to be true then there could well be some of the proverbial brown stuff colliding with a rotary powered piece of machinery.
That’s a teaser by the way, check back tomorrow, as in Friday, probably late evening to see how things pan out.

I is an open sourcer

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Another one from the list of things I meant to write about but haven’t. I was prompted to cover this issue tonight by a report from the BBC.
A welcome bit of news from the oh so evil we want to detroy everything that is British, EU. The European Commission is looking into the use of Open Source software and the benefits that it can provide to businesses and the public sector. I have to admit from a personal perspective that this is overdue and very welcome news.
Now a word of warning. I know a fair number of the people who view my site and their relative backgrounds when it comes to IT stuff. So for people like my mate Dave from Smethwick, forget this article, I’m not going to get too techie for it to be of much interest to you as I’m aiming at a bit of gentle introduction to the concepts and issues which you already know. Equally to my other mate Dave in Wolverhampton, try to read this, I know most of it will go over your head as you’re a daft muppet slave of the Microsoft Corporation but you might learn something.
So, where to start, because this one’s a biggy of a topic. Probably a few definitions are useful. Open Source, what is it? Well, ‘Source’ refers to programming. Everything that is run on a computer is a programme, be it the operating system like Windows, Linux or OSX. Equally things like word processors, web browsers, spreadsheets, games, again, all programmes. ‘Source’ comes pretty much in two varieties (yes Dave, if you did decide to read I know there’s more but I’m trying to keep it simple). There’s ‘Open Source’ and ‘Closed Source’. Now ‘Source’ is the code that tells the programme what to do. Think of the film The Matrix, we’re talking about all that green moving shit. (note, code never moves, it would be impossible to understand if it did, that’s just how it appears in films).
Here’s a few examples of ‘Open Source’ programmes: Any Linux operating system from Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu through to the smaller distributions. Server and database stuff like Apache, Unix and MySql. OpenOffice.org, Firefox web browser and Thunderbird mail client. Some you’ll probably have at least heard of, others you probably won’t have.
Here’s some examples of ‘Closed Source’ programmes: Anything from Microsoft, Windows operating systems, Office, Publisher, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Nero and Norton Internet Security.
The difference being that the programming behind ‘Open Source’ software is freely available to anyone and as long as you acredit the original author you’re pretty much free to change it, play around and derive new programmes and functions from it. It gets pretty complex when it comes to licensing but as a rule, most is covered by the GNU/GPL license. ‘Closed Source’ on the other hand comes with nice little licenses, you’ll know these, they always pop up when you try and install something and you have to click yes to agree before the software works. Again, there’s different types but pretty much they all say something like, “I will not copy this software to my mates and it’s only for me to use because I paid for and registered it.” You are also not able to access the source code on what the programme is built, change or amend it and pretty much what you see is what you get. (WYSIWYG)
Now just a note, ‘Closed Source’ software with few exceptions tends to also be proprietary software meaning that it is owned, not actually by you as you might think as you may have forked out hundreds of quid for the latest version of Microsoft office or Windows. They are, owned by Micorsoft, you might have a little CD with it on but actually you’re not buying the programme, all you are buying is the License to use it, an interesting legal definition but the important thing to note is that with very few exceptions, you’re going to have to pay for this stuff.
‘Open Source’ on the other hand, although there are again some exceptions, tends to be free or at least very cheap compared to it’s ‘Closed Source’ rivals. If anything, the money made from ‘Open Source’ in a business sense is derived from support packages and technical help.
I think it’s time for a bit of a comparison between the two models, and who knows, this might just save you a bit of wonga if you take heed.
There are programmes that pretty much everyone uses who has a computer. A staple of this is the ‘Office’ package. Usually comprising of a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, a database programme, one for doing presentaions on projectors and maybe a box standard graphics programme.
So, in the Blue corner, we have Microsoft Office, it’s got all these bits and the last time I looked, it cost

Political correctness gone mad?

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This little news story passed my way today. Sorry, no links, haven’t been able to find it on the interwebnet, although I haven’t looked thoroughly.
It revolves around a local employer (Albion Saddles), in Walsall actually, being refused to place an advert with the local Job Centre.
The reason for this? They need a fluent language speaker, German to be precise as the company has won a contract with with the Vienna Spanish Riding School. (That’s the really famous one with the white horses that walk sideways for those who didn’t know). Good for local trade, good for exports but a bit of a problem with the local Job Centre it seems.
When the owner tried to place an advert with them, it was rejected under the 1976 Race Relations Act.
Now me being just an ordinary bloke so I could of course be wrong on this one but it seems pretty bloody obvious that this situation would be covered by the 2003 amendment to the 1976 Race Relations Act which introduces the concept of ‘Genuine Occupational Requirement’. This covers areas where it is wholly right to specify that the person required for the position must have certain skills or attributes that can in many respects designate a specific sex or ethnicity. The often vaunted example is of an asian women’s refuse where because of both sexual and ethnic sensitivities, a female asian candidate would be required.
I’m not one to fall into the category of claiming that political correctness is the scourge of our society as is the vogue in many quarters these days. A lot has been done through various Acts of Parliament to drive out prejudice and discrimination in our society and promote equality. However in this case it just seems a bit daft and is probably more down to lack of knowledge of an individual than anything else.
If a company does business with people in Austria, then it’s perfectly entitled to want someone who can speak fluent German. Linguistical skills are afterall skills, if this were to be the case, would schools who advertise for French teachers be breaking the law if they didn’t accept people who could speak only English and say Spanish. Of course not. Note for tomorrow, ask Mrs Penguin as a fluent German speaker if she wants to apply for the job.

An easy thing to miss

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Just before Christmas the Government changed the token system paid to people with children on low incomes. Prior to this they were commonly referred to as milk tokens. However the tokens have been upped in value and now include the ability to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables.
It’s easy to miss these little things, presumably they don’t get the headlines because they’re not sexy but it is good to know our Government gets on with introducing schemes that can make a real difference to people’s lives.

What are we trying to achieve?

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B4L did an interesting article on road pricing the other night in relation to a petition on the No. 10 website.
It got me thinking about what exactly are we trying to achieve? The problem being that two completely different issues are being lumped together which is something most people commenting on this issue seem to miss.
Being in the West Midlands, there’s been a fair bit of hu ha about this as it looks like we may have some kind of road pricing system tried out here in the not too distant future. This however misses the point of what we are trying to achieve, partly due to the sudden emergence of the environmental debate in British politics in the last twelve months.
When the congestion charge was introduced in London, the clue’s in the name, it was about congestion first and foremost. It was about London being an absolute bloody waste of space to get around in and something had to be done about it. It wasn’t about saving the planet or reducing carbon emissions.
It however becomes apparent that as this debate moves on, the arguments added to the mix increasingly focus on the environmental aspects when the two should be considered as seperate problems to be dealt with.
In the West Midlands, a number of schemes have been proposed which range from some kind of blanket charge to drive per mile, a zones system of some being more expensive than others to drive in or simply asking everyone politely in a typically English fashion not to drive as much please.
B4L is right to recognise that other costs of motoring aren’t factored in to most of the approaches such as disposal of cars, although the EU has gone a long way on this to pass these costs on to the manufacturers and presumably the consumer anyway.
So what are we looking for? Well, if the issue is congestion, then schemes in the fashion of the one implemented in London are about as good as it gets at the moment. The technology works and it has been successful in reducing congestion in the capital. If a town or city finds itself in the situation whereby congestion is a problem then this would seem a wholly reasonable approach to take.
If however we are talking in broader terms about the environmental impact of having a society so dependent on car use. Afterall, despite the whinging about air travel, car use is by far the largest single polluter in terms of transport then it’s very simple. We have to make driving cars less attractive to the alternative of using some form of public transport and in addition to this encourage less polluting cars.
There’s a simply solution, fuel duty on petrol and diesel. Some claim it is too broad an approach but what they advocate in response is merely far more complex methods of achieving the same outcome to make it look like we don’t want to charge motorists more but we actually need to to change habits.
There are of course the arguments that it will cost the poor more because they tend to have older and more inneficient cars. Again, the system is already in place for poorer families. If we can organise a way to pay them milk tokens then why not fuel tokens and although it’s a seperate issue why isn’t this possible for household fuel items to ensure that those less well off in our society don’t slip into energy poverty which is more a reality than many might wish to think in an era of higher gas and electricity prices.
We seem to be obsessed as a government in looking for the most complex and ‘high-tech’ approach when a bit of standing back from the issue and analysing it sensibly might provide some simpler and straight forward answers.
Of course we all know the reasons, the last time we had the fuel price escalator; the issue was hi-jacked by a few sectional interests who wanted to have a dig at the Government.
We simply have a choice, to treat the British people like children and tell them they can have what they want and the problem will be sorted in some other way or to treat them like adults and say that the practices we’ve got used to over the years have simply got to change and if you’re too bloody selfish to accept that then tough.

Did I dream this?

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I haven’t seen this reported anywhere apart from I’m sure it was on one of the BBC television news but there’s no sign of it on their website or anywhere else.
Some school in Wolverhampton had the novel idea of issuing all the kids with PDA to do their work on. Networked them all up so they could share information and research, do homework on and submit it electronically.
The result, dramatic reductions in truancy and bad behaviour (especially from boys), an increase in science learning and contrary to what some might think, none of the PDAs got nicked.
Someone tell me I didn’t dream this. A lack of nicotine in the system can have strange effects on the brain.

Hypocrisy or not hypocrisy?

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As it’s been a week for questioning the actions taken by a certain Labour MP I spotted this on my browse through news.
It got me thinking. Not that this practice goes on, indeed paying for treatment in NHS hospitals is not new. It’s been going on for years to my knowledge and as is often the case, people who go ‘private’ often end up in the same NHS hospitals undergoing surgery by the same NHS doctors, the only difference being able to jump the queue.
So I pose a question to readers. Would it be hypocritical for an elected Labour politician to use their economic power to pay for an operation for a family member allowing them to effectively jump the queue ahead of others waiting for the same treatment. If so, should they face the same calls to resign because they have contradicted the morals that they espouse to others?

A simple post for tonight

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I’m down to my last cigarette. I have been pondering this issue for a few months now. I started smoking about nine years ago at university. I’m not entirely sure why but I did it. A couple of years ago I stopped for nine months but started again.
I am probably not alone in those soon-to-be fathers who intended to stop smoking because of a child coming along but didn’t. I don’t smoke around Little Penguin or in the house at all but still there is an element of guilt involved.
I would like to say that my decision to stop smoking tonight involves some high moral purpose, that I’m doing it for my health, that I recognise the ecological damage that tobacco cash crop harvesting does to the developing world, that I need to be a role model for my son but I’d be a liar.
The simple fact is that it’s purely down to money. Smoking is an unnecessary cost on the Penguin household that isn’t an essential and will free up finances for far more constructive activities and purchases.
So there you go. I’m going to try and quit the evil weed.
Wish me luck.