Had enough of this blogging lark, decided to pack it all in.

Nah, not really only kidding although I am off for a bit. The Penguins are making their yearly migration to the wilds of Antartica so see you all in the New Year.

I’m afraid I’ll be invoking full moderation for the duration, just in case some spam gets through. Feel free to comment although don’t expect it to pop up on the site until early January. I’m leaving it un-moderated until about 3.00pm this afternoon so feel free to post before then.

There’s an outside chance I might happen upon a net connection and if I do will of course approve all non-spammy comments. I’m also planning on doing a bit of writing while I’m away so expect to be deluged on my return.

All the best, happy Winterval (that’s to piss off the Daily Mail readers), again, only kidding, nah, happy Christmas if that’s your thing or Yule, (Pagan Festival) or Saturn worshippers or even those who are just thankful for a bit of time with the family.

This morning my parents dropped off one of Little Penguin’s Christmas presents. Here it is:

Now my parents know nothing of all this Penguin stuff, so please tell me what posessed them to buy a two foot tall stuffed penguin?

I haven’t really commented on the situation surrounding last weeks completely blown out of all proportion fained horror by the oh so sensitive Tories who saw fit to use an image placed on Bob Piper’s website to do a bit of political point scoring.

There were also those out there in the blogosphere who hinted at Bob being a racist although I’m yet to spot one who was actually stupid enough to say so.

That is, until tonight when this dropped my way.

This is Colin. He’s a LibDem. You can find out a lot about him on his website. He likes to travel, he urges you to contibute to the LibDems on his site, he’s a training officer for the LibDems in the West Midlands and he used to work for the RSPB until he took up his current job, but for some reason he doesn’t seem too keen to mention what that job is.

But first, let’s deal with what he wrote. If you can’t be arsed to click the link, here it is:

“Racism is not funny Bob!

Thankfully he has taken it down now, he has also stated that he will be taking a break from blogging. However it’s not enough he should stand down from public office and Labour should have the guts to throw him out of the party. Believe me if this was a Liberal Democrat I would be urging that course of action.”

Now from the title of this article, I’m going to stick my neck out and accuse Mr Ross of calling Bob Piper a racist. What factual evidence he has for this I’m unsure but I’m sure he must have the evidence otherwise he wouldn’t be so stupid to write it. He also states that the post on Bob’s site that caused all the nonsense last week contained a:

“whole load of negative comments about BME people”

Here’s a bit of advice for Colin, as no doubt he’s going to end up at this site very soon. When commenting on things, it’s handy to have read them in the first place. I did read the original post by Bob and there was not one single word mentioned that could possibly be construed as being negative towards BME people.

So here’s the question. Will we be seeing the same kind of furore over a LibDem training officer calling an elected Councillor a racist? We will see.

Oh, yes, almost forgot to mention. Colin’s job. The one he doesn’t seem too keen on mentioning on his website. He’s the assistant to the LibDem group and Ian Shires the Leader of the LibDems on Walsall Council.

You know, it’s funny, because these jobs that by the way are paid for by the council tax payer tend to be politically restricted. Meaning that those employed in these roles by a local authority are not allowed to actively campaign for a political party. However Colin sees fit to fundraise, train and campaign for the LibDems. Word has it he’s been very busy in Tettenhall lately. He was also the LibDem candidate for Wolverhampton South West in the 2005 General Election. Me thinks there should be some questions asked up at the town hall.

I’ll leave on this note and this ones just for Colin when he finds his way to my site. Please don’t try and be a smart arse and delete your article and claim I’m trying to slander you in any way. I’ve got the original screenshot safely stored should you muppets threaten me with legal action. Have a nice day.

Back to a report from the BBC again today. The news that Ruth Kelly has announced that there will be changes in building regulations and planning so that all houses built after 2016 will be ‘zero carbon’.
It is curious, at least for someone who’s been interested in this field for a fair few years now that 2006 very much, if nothing else, marks the year of ‘environmental issues’ beginning to get the real attention by Government and politicians that it deserves.

Probably too late in all honesty as we should have been doing all this 10 years ago but never mind, better late than never.

So on that basis I really do welcome the noises eminating from Westminster and indeed across the country from various local authorities that these issues are finally being taken seriously.

Right, that’s the nice bit over with, let’s get into the real nitty gritty of the issue. Now just for the record I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on ‘carbon neutrality’ for a while now, mainly in conjunction with and contributing towards the debate in the Co-operative Party. I also reckon that although many speak out on the issue, there’s actually a very weak understanding amongst both the general public but more worryingly, amongst those actually making the decisions about this issue.

I’ll reserve other areas of the discussion for another time and only concentrate on housing today as that seems to be the focus from my best mate Ruth Kelly.

We should start by defining carbon-neutrality, it’s a term bandied about quite a lot in the media and political circles but it’s bloody amazing how many people don’t actually get it. It is that through a process whatever it may be, the amount of carbon emitted into the environment equals the amount of carbon consumed at the start and throughout the process involved. That’s a bit abstract I know so here’s an examples.

A tree. Trees are primarily made out of carbon, they are probably the best example of a carbon neutral cycle. When the tree grows, it absorbs carbon from it’s surroundings to form its structure. Now this is a bit for all those muppets who think we can solve global warming by planting lots of trees. Tree lifecylces are carbon neutral, not a true form of carbon capture, at least in any real long term sense, I’m meaning more than a couple hundred years here just for clarification as that’s the general lifespan of a tree. When a tree dies, the carbon it absorbed throughout its life is released back into the environment. This is primarily in one of two ways. Either it rots naturally or someone comes along and burns it. This is one of those ironic situations, at least for the casual viewer, that using wood as a source of heating by burning it is actually quite an environmentally friendly thing to do. The tree absorbed the carbon through it’s lifecycle, which is then released through burning with the possible by-product of producing warmth to heat a house. I’ll come back to wood burning stoves later.

Now carbon-neutral is the buzz word at the moment, although today’s announcement is using the term carbon-zero and the article has a nifty little deinition for us.
“A zero carbon house is defined as a property with “zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from all energy use in the home”.

This is a clever phrase because it only relates to the input and output of energy for the house, not transport pollution or other associated environmental or carbon issues, you’ll see what I mean later. And for those who can do this, there won’t be any Stamp Duty to pay which is nice. Apart from one thing. It’s near on bloody impossible to achieve this situation. And here’s why.

A good look at the lovely pie chart in the BBC article is advised at this point which shows the proportion of energy used within a household. This chart has been around for a while and is as pretty good a guide as any bit of statistical data ever can be. Let’s do the little things first.

Cold appliances, fridges and freezers. There’s not a lot you can do here except buy the most efficient models, they’re pretty much an essential to modern living short of going back to the old cold slab under the stairs approach of the Victorians and that ain’t going to keep the frozen pizza frozen for very long. Sadly there’s not much available in terms of doing much about this energy being used apart from the continued increases in efficiency from the industry.

Consumer electricals, all those lovely things like TV’s, computers, hifi’s etc that make life wonderful, or not, depending on your perspective. Again, there’s a lot that can be done in terms of efficiency here and even good practice like not leaving them on standby, although see my other article on this subject to get a better understanding, it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be as a method of saving the planet. Again industry is bringing out more efficient models and even now seems to be getting the hint that on/off switches are quite a good idea. One bit of advice for the ‘lads’ out there who pine after Plasma screens. Next time you have a look at one in a shop, feel the heat it gives off. They consume a hell of a lot of electricity and should be avoided by those who are watching their electricity bills.

Cooking. Here it gets a bit more complicated. Let’s take an electric cooker for starters. Now in most cases of electrical products, heat is an unfortunate by-product that isn’t required and represents a level of inneficiency in the product. However, in cooking, it’s actually the heat that we’re after. Cookers come with efficiency ratings like most products but pretty much they’re not as important a guide as efficiency in turning electricity into heat doesn’t vary much. This also poses a dilemma for those seeking to make a positive contribution to our planets environment that I will come back to in a bit, but electricity is a very inneficient way of producing heat compared to something like a gas cooker. However gas is a fossil fuel so that’s a big no no if we’re taking about trying to achieve a carbon-zero household.

Lighting. OK, it’s only 3% of energy use but here it is quite easy to switch to a more efficent system and as an example, the Penguin house has nine light fixtures. Seven of these run on energy efficient bulbs. The other two are nice spots that Mrs Penguin won’t let me take down, although there are new energy saving spot bulbs emerging on to the market but the prices are a bit prohibitive at the moment and the LED technology isn’t quite there yet. Yes, we can make a difference here but it’s still only a tiny proportion of all household energy use.

Wet appliances. Short of doing the washing by hand, a washing machine is another one of those essentials, again, it’s getting the most efficient model to cut down on energy that’s the order of the day here. Then there’s a dishwasher. This is another one of those problems because doing the dishes by hand doesn’t use electricity. However it does mean using more water than the modern highly efficient dishwashers, and water needs heating. So if you’re heating more water and thus using more energy to do that, does it conterbalance the electricity used by the dishwasher? I haven’t found a single study on this one, although there’s plenty on comparisions between the two when it comes to water conservation but that’s another issue although the dishwasher wins hands down on that one.

Right, now we’re on to the biggies and thus where things are really going to make a difference.

Water heating at 24% of domestic energy consumption. The vast majority of people heat their water by only a couple of different methods. Either by electric or a fossil fuel (mainly gas). Now if we’re talking ‘zero-carbon’ then the fossil fuel option is out of the window again, despite as in our house, a gas combi-boiler system being the most efficient method of heating water (it only heats water on demand and not to a storage tank). Electricity, again, a bloody inneficient way to heat water but if we’re talking ‘zero-carbon’ then it’s going to have to factor somewhere as one of the only source of heating water to a sufficient temperature for it to be usuable for things like baths, showers, washing up etc.

Back to wood burning stoves again as promised. Now these can achieve the temperatures desired, as indeed can pellet systems which have the ability to be hopper fed and automated so no getting up to a cold morning to heat up the boiler. There’s also systems that work on bio-fuels which are all carbon-neutral.

So can we do it here?

Yes we can. However, these fuels, short of having lots of land to grow the stuff yourself have to be transported and stored on site. Which requires space and transport costs, which innevitably means more traffic and a shifting of carbon emmissions from the household to transport. Not to mention that they require industrial processes that consume energy and shitloads of land to grow the stuff in the first place. At best, it’s not very efficient, at worst, all we’d be doing is shifting the carbon-emission problem from one area to another. Probably not a bad idea if you live in the countryside and can grow the stuff yourself, but in a highly urbanised country such as Britain it’s not a viable approach for the majority of households, especially not flats. (storage)

There are however a few other options available, that don’t heat the water to sufficient temperature for use but heat it enough to then be given a top up of heat by another system. These are solar and geothermic.

Solar systems aren’t that expensive taking into account the general expense expected for a household heating system. There’s also Government grants available which is nice too. These involve a simple system stuck on the roof which pumps water through the panels, usually a solar powered pump, the sun heats the water up a bit and it’s fed back down into the the storage tank and the heat is topped up by a more conventional heating method. Basically it increases the efficiency of the system, it doesn’t replace it. It is however geared up to a storage tank system where there is a constant, or timed hot water store and therefore isn’t necessarily more efficent than a combi-boiler system. They can be made to work with a combi-boiler system but the prices are prohibitive as you can quite happily add £1,400 - £3,000 on top depending on what kind of combi-boiler you’ve got.

Then there’s geothermic energy. This works by passing some sort of pipe system through the ground at a suitable depth whereby it can absorb the natural heat of the earth. It’s then pumped back up into the water heating system and all the arguments about solar systems apply to this. Apart from, it’s more efficient and can provide a greater KWatt output and it’s obviously more constant and not prone to seasonal differences that a solar system. However, it requires a significantly higher capital investment and a large area of land to work. There are systems that work by drilling a spirral coil into a borehole which takes up less land but these are really pricey.

Now on to space heating at 60% of all energy use and the most difficult one to crack. A large percentage of households have central heating, based on a hot water pumped system. So all the stuff about heating water applies here. Equally wood burning stoves are again quite good at this especially if they have back boilers but again I’ve already laid out the problems with that system. There is of course direct electrical storage heating, underfloor heating and various other systems but as we’ve learnt already, electricity is a piss poor inneficient way of producing heat.

That pretty much leaves us with only one other option for heating our living space. Passive solar. You’ve probably seem ‘eco-homes’. Often they feature a bloody big glass frontage or roof on a generally south facing side. Good idea, works well, only problem being that the sun is a bit crappy when you actually need it, ie, in the depths of winter and at night.

So is it possible to have a ‘zero-carbon’ house. Well, yes, however there are a lot of buts. ‘Zero-carbon’ means almost by default that we can’t touch fossil fuels although it doesn’t actually because if we could produce excess energy to offset the carbon used then it still counts. Only problem being that producing excess energy is extremely unlikely to the extent of being impossible. There’s plenty of options out there for heating water or living space, because basically that’s the area we’re most concerned about. Many mean a combination of systems but all require at the very least either the use of electricity or the burning of wood or bio-fuels. Wood or bio-fuels simply aren’t going to cut the mustard for the majority and we simply don’t have enough land to grow sufficient amounts of the stuff to meet our demands. Yes, we know it’s probably the most inefficient method but looks like we’re stuck with electricity. However, we need to be ‘zero-carbon’ on this so short of this all being a big fiddle and implying that we can all happily use nuclear energy which of course would require rather a big building programme to offset the non-use of fossil fuels then we’re looking at generating the stuff ourselves.

Right, micro-generation. Pretty much we’ve got two options, wind and solar unless you live next to a waterfall which I’d hazard a guess most people don’t. Domestic wind turbines, despite what Mr Cameron wishes to imply by having one himself actually produce bugger all electricity, at least in the quanitities that we’re talking about. A good example would be that to get a reasonable amount of electricity out of wind, you’d need something akin to those you see in films set in the Australian outback. Sorry, but can’t see that one getting past the local LibDem controlled planning committee.

So we are left with solar. Again, it’s a very inneficient method of generation. Although it does have advantages in that it is the only method available that requires no moving mechanical parts which pretty much eliminates maintenance and they tend to come with 20 year guarantees on performance. Indeed many of the early solar systems are still in use today and churning out the leckie.

What however do they require?

Well for one, a south facing roof at the right ellevation, this varies depending on where in the country you live.

How much space do you need?

I investigated this given that the Penguins are blessed with a south facing roof. I measured ours to twenty square metres. I contacted a reputable firm (Solar Century, the people who did the CIS Tower in Manchester) and if I were to clad the whole roof it would generate around 4KWatts at peak. A good factor to intruduce is to knock 25% off to take into account that the system isn’t hardly ever going to run at 100% of it’s output capability. Now most estimates out there put the average house at a running cost of 6KWatts or energy. So even if I clad the whole roof in solar panels I couldn’t generate enough energy and don’t forget, 6KWatts is based on the use of more efficient fossil fuel methods of heating, electricity is less efficient so actually you would require more energy overall.

What’s it going to cost?

Well, with a Government grant paying 50% of the costs, for my twenty square metres it would still set me back £6,000 which I can’t afford being poor as I am. And lets not forget we’re probably going to need nearly twice the capacity of that system to go completely ‘zero-carbon’. So for a new build, we’re looking at £24,000 a property actual cost excluding grants and assuming there’s a big enough roof space available which if round here is anything to go by, the philosophy of developers is to stick as many shoeboxes on a plot as they can get away with to maximise their profits and these places don’t tend to have forty square metre south facing roofs.

So what have we learned so far?

Well, Gordon’s not going to be worrying about losing too much money from loss of Stamp Duty revenues because the ‘zero-carbon’ house is nigh on bloody impossible to build. I know it sounds good, and indeed it’s great to see our Government seriously trying to move in a positive direction on this but in reality even some sort of a combined heating/micro-generation system that could achieve almost or even ‘zero-carbon’ status would add such an increase in costs (even when considering economies of scale) that I think it would be hard for the market, especially one such as ours which is already over-inflated to be able to accommodate it. As a first-time buyer myself who was lucky and got a cheap place, (there’s a very good reason) I know my friends of comparable age who just simply wouldn’t even be able to contemplate getting on to the ladder even if it means there’s a payback in ruduced or even zero energy bills.
Overall conclusion; good idea, glad we’re talking about it. I’m really looking forward to seeing the details.

Just come back from a night out in Bilston at the Robin 2 club. Anyone with small kids will know the sheer bliss of a night out after ten months of nappy changing and trying to keep someone happy who can’t speak a coherent sentence. (please, no references to working for an MP thank you)
But it’s been a bloody good night out. I fulfilled a promise I made to myself many years ago that I would at some point in my life get round to seeing Roy Wood play live but events always kept getting in the way. That’s another one of those things to tick off the list of things to do before I die although I think I’ll knock the Land’s End to John ‘o’ Groat’s cycle ride off the list, I’m far too unfit for that one any more.

Last night, this article appeared on the BBC website and by mid-morning today, it was gone again which seems a rather short shelf life by their standards but it raises some interesting points.
Apart from it being a rather poor piece of journalism compared to the usually high standard of the BBC, it begs more questions than it answers, shows none of the usual background information on which it is based and ranks, quite frankly among the kind of crap you’d expect to read in the Daily Mail.
Let’s run through the information that it gives us. £100million spent on translation and interpretting in the UK. Note the UK bit for later reference. Of this, local authorities spend £25million, NHS Trusts £55million and the courts/police, £31million. There’s also a link to another article in the see also section on this page that adds another 0.3million to the courts/police if combined and £8.5million spent by the Immigration and nationality directorate.
Right, quick bit of maths for the Beeb:
£25million
£55million
£31.3million
£8.5million +

= £119.8million

OK, so what have we learned so far? The Beeb’s a bit crap at maths. However, as I started to type this post I only just noticed the inconsistency in their figures and that’s not the reason I started in the first place.
What this article raises is by it’s very inference, the use of quotes used, it is aiming the debate that it seeks to develop in a very certain direction. One that perhaps they might have either deliberately or inadvertently done.
So let’s analyse it. There are four quotes in the article and two examples. First up are the ever wonderful Ruth Kelly and Phil Woolas:
“She [Ruth Kelly] has already made clear that public services need to give far greater priority to promoting social cohesion and shared values rather than supporting separateness and we are examining the issue of translation in this context.”

He added: “But it is essential that we study this issue carefully first as there may be situations, such as access to medical services, where it is important that provision is made in other languages.”

I’m going to come back to this ’social cohesion’ statement a bit later. But pretty much it’s clear that the view of Ruth Kelly that people should learn English should they wish to interract with or use public services.

Next up, a Bangladeshi woman:

Speaking through a translator, a Bangladeshi woman who has lived in the UK for 22 years and does not speak English questioned this spending.

She said: “When you are trying to help us you are actually harming. Even before we ask, all we have to do is say hello, they are here with their interpreters. We just sit here doing nothing and we don’t need to speak in English at all.”

Again, people should learn English.

Finally, there’s Trevor Phillips, saying something reasonably sensible for a change:

The former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, claimed that the cost of translation was simply a feature of globalisation.

He said: “Translation is not a disincentive. It allows them to get access to services while they learn English. Translation is a way of helping people in transition into integrating into our society.”

Then there are the two examples:

The BBC discovered that Peterborough Council translates details of its refuse collection service into 15 languages.

Meanwhile, Islington’s NHS primary care trust in London is providing a Turkish woman who has lived in the UK for five years with one-to-one sessions to help her stop smoking translated into her own language.

So what do we have, a majority saying that people should learn English, two examples involving a council and a PCT in England, one involving a ‘Turkish’ woman. A Bangladeshi woman supporting the learn English brigade, obviously rolled out so it’s a nice ethnic supporting the viewpoint instead of a white member of the public because the Beeb wouldn’t want to be accused of promoting prejudice and intolerance would they?
Now lets put this into context, and perhaps it shows up a little more about those who produce such an article and indeed those who have responded to it by what they omit to clarify and the area they focus on.
Firstly, there’s naughty, always politically correct Islington’s NHS primary care trust who are paying for a translator to help a Turkish woman quit smoking. Note, she’s Turkish. Also note, it doesn’t say she’s got an interpretor on hand during these sessions, merely ‘translated into her own language’ which as anyone who has done these quit smoking sessions knows; everyone has one-to-one sessions and the ‘translation’ could equally be as little as some leaflets or notes.
Then there’s Peterborough Council that translates details of its refuse collection service into 15 languages but doesn’t actually mention which ones. There’s the Bangladeshi woman, note Bangladeshi, who’s chipping in about it.
The reference from Trevor Phillips is skewed towards this being an issue of globalisation, by definition meaning people moving to the UK to work or sponge off benefits depending on whether you’re a Daily Mail reader or not.
Finally, there’s Ruth Kelly banging on about ’social cohesion, shared values and combatting seperateness’, presumably we’re back on to the whole integration of immigrants again. Yes, that’s it, these bloody foreigners coming to our country, can’t speak a word of English and we’re expected to pay through the nose for translators so they can use our services - it’s a Daily Mail journalists wet dream of an article.
Except one thing, and this is the problem with the article. The facts aren’t exactly made clear. Yes, there’s some division into costs for different departments but there’s bugger all to explain which languages exatly we are talking about here. Are we going down the media line of it’s all those bloody Poles coming to our country again?
Or, it’s all those asians and their big families coming over or are already here, want their own communities and don’t want to integrate with the natives? For which the Government line now appears to be, yes Tony’s said it, Ruth’s said it, so it must be policy, that all these minorities have got to ‘integrate’ although ‘integrate’ is a bit of a strong word to use, so we’ll call it ’social cohesion’.
Now just for the record, I personally believe in the multi-cultural society, not as it is sadly seen to be these days as a by-word for segregation thanks to it’s misinterpretation by the media and today’s politicians, but more in the manner in which it was seen in the 1960’s. That we as a society accept that there are cultural differences between people, but that melting pot of ideas when mixed together produces something truly special, which despite it’s detractors, I still think is one of Britain’s true strengths. (a while living abroad makes you appreciate this)
However, and in whatever phraseology is being used, be it ’social cohesion’ or ‘integration’, the road we seem to be heading down is not one of mutual respect and drawing our strengths from our differences but one of, ‘if you want to live in our country then you’re going to have to assimilate to our practices and customs even though we haven’t got a clue what they are in the first place, oh and bloody speak English you thick foreigners’.
Back to the problems with the article, and this leads out of the lack of clarity of the sources used and costs involved. Which languages are we talking about, because, there’s this place, you might have heard of, it’s called Wales. Where they have their own language, unsurprisingly, it’s called Welsh. And you know what? For the last fifty odd years we’ve been promoting this language to the extent of having all the road signs, public documents and a legal right to conduct any business with a public body through the medium of Welsh all to the ends of promoting Welsh culture and identity.
So now I take it that we’ve changed policy on this, forget all the translation and equal status, sorry, all you Welsh have got to learn to use only English now because it’s costing too much. Of course not, and here’s the hypocritical bit.
Only around 200,000 of the whole population of Wales actually speaks that language however it is afforded such high status although in my view rightly so. However when we’re talking about translating stuff into Urdu, Turkish, Polish, or any other language, hang on, that’s different. Which by definition means that there are value judgements at work here which on the one hand seem to imply that some people must learn English as the primary means of interacting with official bodies but at the same time encouraging the promotion of another language for culturally motivated reasons. Oh, and lets not forget other minority celtic languages and Cornish either.
There was a phone-in on the radio last night on this issue, I’m not sure which one as I was in someone elses car at the time, although presumably it was Radio 4 which featured the age old argument that, ‘if people want to come here then they should learn English first’.
Right, let’s have that as a policy, that before you can reside in the UK you must pass an English language test, can’t pass it, then you can piss off.
You see, this is a valid policy, because us Brits are so conscientious about learning the local language before we settle in other countries. Every single ex-pat currently residing in Spain is fully fluent in the language, same goes for those in Greece, France and indeed in every other country that some of our countryfolk decide to move too. No doubt even PragueTory is fluent in Czech.
Oh, bugger, that’s it, the glaring hypocracy in this argument. For all the demands of the usual right-wingnuts for others to learn English before they settle on our island, there’s all those other right-wingnuts planning on buggering off to live in the sun of Spain where they will eat English food, drink English beer in English styled pubs called the George & Crown with other English people. So for those who are banging on about this, how about if Spain, Greece or France decided they’re sick of people coming to their country who can’t speak the language and put a precondition of fluency of the local lingo into residency entitlement?
There is of course, a higher moral issue to this. Are we suggesting that people should be excluded from access to public services on account of a lack of English language knowledge. Yes, English language courses should and indeed are freely available across the country for those who want to learn it. Should we encourage those who come here to learn the language, of course we should, as much as we should encourage our own population to pick up other languages. Learning another language is both intellectually stimulating, culturally enlightening and promotes understanding between people. But hang on, that’s a high moral principal there, forgot that, this is British politics.
This however isn’t just about language, it’s about the whole issue of cultural identity but that can wait for another post.

Nope, we’re not talking Apple computers here but my old mate Paul Macmanomy who is back on the blog scene once again.
This officially ends my tenure as the only political blogger in the Walsall borough and indeed in Willenhall as Paul lives up the road but very welcome he is.
So just for you Paul, link to blogroll added here and RSS feed from your site to my newsreader. Let the fun commence.

As one of the local MP’s, John Spellar has brought up the subject of whether we should have a Deputy Leader or not. I thought this an opportune time to put another poll up on the site, which can be found directly below the last one.
Feel free to air your views, personally, although I have a lot of respect for John, I’ll have to disagree with him on this one.
I think it is important to have a Deputy Leader although primarily for the role that they can fulfill within the party. I don’t beleive it should be carried on to the extent of having a Ministerial Department or specific responsibility in Government but sadly, as is sometimes the case, whether in Government or opposition, Leaders can depart suddenly for which I will always have respect for Margaret Beckett in the way she acted in the interim period after the death of John Smith.
I knocked up the poll in a couple of minutes with options that I felt broadly represented the possible reasons for feeling one way or another. If however you think I’ve missed something, you’re welcome to comment and I’ll add another voting option.

The old bastard is dead.

This topic will become a bit of a theme as time goes by but I am very much an open source supporter when it comes to pretty much everything software related.
I use it because it is the best methodology for development in programming and with a few exceptions, it all tends to be free unlike the propriety world of Microsoft.
This site as I mentioned in my very first post, is built entirely utilising open source systems and given that some other poor bugger sat down and wrote the software that I’m using I feel it my duty to pay my thanks by acknowledging the fact.
Now legally speaking you haven’t got to do this, it’s purely one of those ‘netiquette’ things, one of those unwritten codes adherred to by honourable techies. That’s why this really annoys me.
No, not the Express & Star, although there is plenty to annoy me about the crap it produces dressed as journalism. What I’m referring to is that a couple of months ago they completely overhauled their website and from a techie perspective I was quite impressed and decided to have a look at the architecture behind it.
Low and behold I find a very familiar content folder in the sites page source. It is that of a nifty little bit of open source software called WordPress which is basically a blog system. Now I searched high and low for some acknowledgement but for some reason the Express & Star doesn’t feel a need to do so.
If you doubt my words, as indeed you might, then try this link.
Hey presto, their WordPress login page. Now being the curious person that I am, I decided to e-mail the Express & Star on the 25th of October to ask them why they don’t acknowledge the use of WordPress. I am still waiting for a response.
So for those who enjoy playing around, I suggest you look here as some muppet doesn’t know how to use an htaccess file.