Political Penguin

I’ve not posted much for the last few days. Actually nothing as I’ve been doing a few other things so I thought I’d do a little bit of a round up of events/issues.

On Tuesday the Penguin household braved the border patrols and sneaked into the Sandwell Borough to attend the launch of the Jon Cruddas Deputy Leadership campaign. Bob Piper did a good summing up of the event and in truly photographic genius style, managed to get the backs of the whole Penguin household in the frame. I learned one thing from that; I need a hair cut.

On the serious side it was refreshing to see Cruddas talk about issues that seem to have not got the attention they deserve in recent years, primarily that of social housing. The problems have been brewing for a generation but even if the debate is finally up there where it belongs, then perhaps we can start address an issue that affects many on lower incomes.

Following on from that, and it does beg the question: “where do we get these people from”, the comments made by Margaret Hodge. Short of making a play for the Leadership of the BNP, it makes you wonder how some people get to where they are on the basis of such awful political nouse. Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination but her comments have been rightfully condemned by many as they should. If she is concerned about the gains made by the BNP in her own constituency, not helped of course by her own last rash of daft comments then she should learn at least one thing of which I would have thought someone who has got the position of being an MP should already know.

You cannot win on the basis of using the argument of the opposition. Especially when that opposition are the horrid bunch of toe-rags that the BNP are. You cannot appropriate the blame for a lack of social housing by accepting the arguments from the far-right that it’s all these naughty East Europeans invading the country. She should know, unless Barking is a very strange place indeed that migrants rarely end up in council houses. The vast majority end up in low quality private sector accommodation or the equivalent of shared dorms of workers. They’re not holed up in nice 3 and 4 bedroom council semi’s because although if they are in the UK, earning and paying tax then they should be entitled, there’s a shitload more people ahead of them on the waiting lists who’ve been there for years and short of a very exceptional circumstance, they ain’t going to be able to jump the queues.

She would have been far more productive in addressing the reasons for this lack of housing and it’s underlying causes, rather than effectively writing the BNP’s next leaflet campaign in Barking for them.

I spotted this during the week too. I just have a few thoughts on this, none of them complimentary towards Microsoft as regular readers will have probably guessed. So here’s the scenario, Microsoft want there to be a professional body for IT people in the UK because there’s too many out there doing dodgy fixes or bodged jobs on systems.

First point being that this is a bit rich given the output of Microsoft in terms of ‘good’ programming is laughable. They release software with bugs in them, highly unsecure systems and quite frankly are not the people to lecture others about high levels of competence.

Secondly, they’ve helpfully inferred that their own Microsoft accreditation programme would be very useful in assessing and registering IT ‘professionals’. Well, no it woudn’t, it would tell people that they know how to use one of a myriad of different systems available, and the poorest of those to boot. Are they seriously thinking that the UK Government would fall for what is patently an attempt to sew up the market by being supplier and effective registrar of those who work in the industry. Come on, no Government Minister is going to fall for that one. On the other hand this is IT so it’s always possible, but thankfully it appears the Government is very cool to this idea of a professional body anyway.

Thirdly, and finally, I’ll admit it, I’m a bodger. Not so much these days but in a past life of being surrounded by Microsoft’s products at work. There’s two reasons you have to bodge around with systems. It has nothing to do with your level of expertise and everything to do with Microsoft. Apart from the software they produce being unstable and a complete security nightmare at times (yes I do remember manually having to hack a rather pernicious virus of computers across the UK via remote access and manually having to do every machines registry system because none of the tools that were supposed to work did, or they allowed the machines to re-infect each other before you could isolate them) but as with everything with Microsoft, you never 100% know what you’re dealing with. I can happily mess about the registry of a system, that thing they tell you never to touch because a character in the wrong place can happily kill a machine but despite this knowledge, I still don’t know exactly how Windows works. Why? Well, because they don’t release the code, it’s all secret so at best you’re dealing with educated guesswork or previous experience. You can never know exactly what’s going on because it doesn’t get outside of a building in Redmond.

I think that’s pretty much it for the weekly review. Apart from Mrs Penguin has nicked my ‘good’ computer, I’ve spent a lot of time enjoying watching my son learn to run and I’m looking forward to my first trip to the cinema to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 since I went to see Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith, from which you can deduce I don’t go to the cinema very often. I’ve also took advantage of the brief bit of good weather to do some of the jobs I haven’t been able to do outside or that require sunshine. Sadly this opportunity seems short-lived as it’s decidedly pissing it down again. Good night to one and all.

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.

I spotted this little gem today in the Guardian. Forget the main section of the article, it’s the bit about the Tories calling for a ‘statement today from the home secretary, John Reid, on the safety of Russian citizens in the UK’.
Now this is presumably in response to the death of Alexander Litvinenko who as far as I can tell isn’t a Russian national, having successfully applied for British citizenship so perhaps there is some other reason for this call for a statement. Perhaps the Tories have turned over a new leaf and are truly concerned about the safety of immigrant groups in the UK. Or, they simply made a slip-up and showed that whether or not you’ve got a British passport then in their eyes you’ll always be a foreigner.
I was then drawn to exactly what was the point in asking for an official statement from the Home Secretary on this subject, and indeed, how exactly a comprehensive response could be formulated. Is there a special arm of the police that deals solely with the protection of Russian citizens, or indeed for every other nationality that resides in the country, fully kitted out with an army of translators, specialists and producing reams of data on how they are protecting foreign nationals in the UK? If this isn’t the case then surely it would seem the Tories think there should be as they seem so concerned over the issue.
This is of course the same party that not to long ago criticised the amount of money spent by Police Authorities to employ translators because of the number of immigrants living in the country, but of course that was just a cheap swipe at johnny foreigner and what a drain on society they are, the Tories are now the huggy feely party of British politics and have obviously changed.
Note: When I first penned this article, the following section was not in the Guardian article: ‘Although police are resisting calling their investigation a murder inquiry, senior MPs are openly using the term. The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said it was unacceptable for any UK citizen to be murdered inside their own country, while the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has reportedly spoken of a naturalised British citizen “murdered on British streets by foreign nationals”.’
Perhaps the Tories spotted their slip-up and had to do a bit backtracking. However the point remains, the Tories asked a silly question not designed to aid understanding or supply information but simply for the point of asking it.
Equally, if their intention was to ask specifically about the case involving Mr Litvinenko then they should come out and say it, not hide behind vague terms. It should be given the response that it deserves, simply, that our legal, judicial and law enforcement agencies are there to protect everyone within their jurisdiction and is not aimed at any one particular group in society and in individual cases as it would presume this is what they are really after, then the response should be; it’s a matter for the police to deal with and investigate, oh and how the hell am I supposed to know if the police and secret services don’t.

OK OK, I lifted the headline direct from Unity over at Ministry of Truth. For one main reason. Apart from it being another excellent article from Unity, there is one area which he touches on, that of the countries Romania and Bulgaria that are due to join the EU at the start of next year but deserves a little more elaboration.
The figures used in his article and indeed by the Express in their pointless headline that Unity takes apart are derived from the workers registration scheme introduced by the government for those East European countries that joined the EU in 2004. At the time I was of the opinion that such a registration system was discriminatory, treated other EU member state’s populations as second-class citizens and I still hold those views today. However when it comes to having such controls and registration in place it is rather useful that such statistics can be derived to prove the myth that the country isn’t indeed flooded full of wasters after our paltry benefits but actually they’re here to work and are contributing financially to our society. Not to mention keeping the buses moving in the West Midlands where I believe 1 in 10 drivers are now Polish.
What is also notable to mention is that when the registration system came in, there were significant numbers who signed up who were already in the UK without proper visa accreditation, presumably working in the black economy without working rights and all the protection that is offered to those officially working.
Now before we start going down the line of naughty foreigners working in the black economy, lets get one thing straight. So far as unregistered work is concerned I’d hazard a good guess that unlike what the Daily Mail et al would like us to believe, it’s not foreigners that are responsible for the vast majority of activity on the black economy but our own indigenous population. From that friend of a friend who’s an electrician who’ll do some wiring work for