I might be missing something here and please don’t let it get in the way of any Tories popping up with the usual ’shows the rank incompetence of the government’ line but there seems to be a glaring point that’s being missed and indeed with other cases of illegal immigrants working for various Governmental departments.

That of them cropping up as having worked for a contractor (cleaning agencies being popular). This isn’t as much as the Tories would like to portray it a failure of Government or even individual departments but is symptomatic of the failure of the private sector and the curiously fetishistic obsession we have in the UK of outsourcing our public services to private contractors who are obviously bloody useless at doing the proper checks.

One hopes that somewhere along the line someone thought to insert a bit in the contractual agreement that if said contractor screws up big time or employs someone who isn’t even supposed to be in the country then it’s tough chum, end of contract see you later, or not as the case may be. I think I’m probably hoping a bit too much there.

Your humble Penguin is taking a little break to do family things at the moment but those in need of a thoroughly good read should drop by Unity’s place at MoT for a rather good expose of the Centre for Dopey Conservative Future Students, AKA the Centre for Open Politics.

A bit of linky love for tonight but given all the insinuations about the Smith Institute bandied about on the right of the political blogosphere isn’t it ever so ironic that another Tory front operation should crop up, duly exposed by Unity over at MoT.

I’m sure the forces of light with be whipping themselves into action over this one. Or maybe not.

Bit of fun, but if you’re trying to flog people computers with all the latest and greatest Vista operating system, here’s probably not how you should do it:

Location, Curry’s Wolverhampton. In case anyone was wondering.

Following on from the follow-up post to my original post on rainwater diverters and honest, the site hasn’t turned into some kind of pseudo green DIY forum I’d just for information’s sake like to put up the results of my inquiry to Marley.

Marley unfortunately at this time don’t sell anything in the UK comparable to the DN75 that they sell in Germany and this of course doesn’t fit to British Standard UK downpipes. (Mine was a funny size that it actually fitted quite well)

However they point me in the direction of another company called 3P Technik UK Ltd based in Cardigan, Wales, who appear to ironically be a German company that makes diverters that seem to fit UK downpipes.

They have two diverter type models as far as I can see. The ‘Rain Collector’ model and the ‘Filter Collector’ model.

The sizes aren’t clear on the Rain Collector but the Filter Collector does specify the size of a normal UK downpipe and I may look into this further for my own uses.

So there you go, hopefully that helps a few people although I’d certainly drop them a line beforehand to check out any specifications that anyone might require. That’s my bit of public information for today.

Hey, promised we’d get back to a bit of politics didn’t I?

Our subject for today is Georgie ‘I is a greenie and I’m going to bung you some wonga in the process’ Osbourne.

OK, first lesson in recycling for George. In almost all cases there is no financial incentive in recycling. Sorry but there isn’t. One would hope that the bloke who wants to take over the country’s finances would be able to get his head around this.

Whether you like it or not, our economic structure is based on capitalism (yes, you don’t hear that word very often these days). Its driving principle is the creation of profit and that’s, well about it. There is no profit in recycling because when everything is reduced down to the hideously crude and simplistic concept of price, then barring a few odds and sods like some metals it’s simply easier (cheaper) to get new materials than it is to recycle old.

All ‘incentives’ to recycle are in fact sticks somewhere along the line. It doesn’t matter if you dress it up as we’re going to bung you some dosh to recycle because the premise on which that scheme is based is to creation of a false economy through regulation and or taxation.

In this case we’re dealing with landfill taxes on local authorities which is a pan-European scheme set up by the EU to encourage/force (choose whichever you fancy) member states to up their recycling rates because it’s been decided at a political level that reducing the amount of waste we as human beings produce is probably a good idea.

There’s nothing wrong with the introduction of targeted taxation to attempt to change societal behaviour as long as you can justify it with sound reasoning and preferably a lot of evidece to support your position too.

In the case of landfill, it’s fair to say you’d be hard pressed to find many people who think that reducing the amount of rubbish we chuck on tips is a bad idea although when you mention they might actually have to do something about it themselves or cough up a few bob then for some reason perspectives suddenly start to change a bit.

So we’re here, Osbourne’s little carrot is actually nothing more than the product of a very large EU stick that has created certain market conditions in the first place.

That of course leads us nicely on to the whole civil liberties malarky that seems to be doing the rounds of late.

The US company in question that Osbourne has so fallen in love with is RecycleBank and there’s two very interesting elements to their operation. The first being their use of ‘chipped’ bins. Yes folks we’re back to putting little bits a silicon chips in the bins to monitor how much waste we throw out.

Now for those with short memories, last year the Government was falling in love with the whole hi-tech approach of chipping everyone’s bins and forgive me for being a cynical old sod but wasn’t it all the Tories coming out of the woodwork saying it would be a crap idea (actually I agree with them on this one) and that flytipping would go though the roof.

There were a few pilots done, the first that springs to mind was South Norfolk District Council where it was such a disaster in both the technology breaking down and surprise surprise flytipping going through the roof that when the *ahem Tories took over the council they scrapped it.

Georgie boy might also want to have a word with Eric Pickles their very own local government spokesman because he said ‘they are also an invasion of people’s privacy’ on the issue of chipping people’s bins. Go on, what are the odds on another principled resignation of seat to stand in by-election moment? Nah, didn’t think so either.

To be fair to RecycleBank they seem really good folk and there’s nothing to suggest that they would use any information gleamed from such a system in a bad way. That said, they operate in the States where they have like proper bits of legislation and stuff written down on paper ensuring their citizens rights, not the data-mining free for all we have in the UK, seriously folks, the possibilities are endless.

How’s this for a wicked idea to catch out naughty people burning stuff in the back garden or flytipping. We could hand the service over to Tesco. They could monitor what we buy and if it doesn’t end up in our bin then we could get automatic fines as well, how’s that? Seriously folks, I’m here all week.

What Ozzy boy doesn’t exactly go out of his way to mention is the nature of payments, if indeed we’re taking RecycleBank as our model.

We’re not talking cold hard cash, you know, that stuff that’s readily accepted everywhere, even in the local boozer. No we’re talking tokens, and not the 30p off a box of Daz type (do they still sell Daz? Haven’t seen it for ages).

We’re talking (at least as far as can be ascertained from the information on their website) spend £50 in selected partner store and get £10 off tokens. OK, don’t quote those figures but we all know where we stand, to get the sweetener we’ve got to shell out a larger amount which is all well and good if you’ve got a reasonable income in the first place but if you’re getting by down to the last penny then are you going to have or even want to spend the extra to redeem the token?

What this approach also fails to address is the exact criticism the Tories were laying at the concept of pay as you bin last year. When you introduce a system whereby there is either a financial cost or benefit to putting less in your bin, doesn’t matter which. You will encourage fly-tipping and backyard burning because the financial incentive is there.

Of course what is continually being missed is not the actual desire or lack of from households to recycle, many aspects of the problems we face in the UK arise from the inability to recycle due to either poor facilities or, at least in my opinion poor packaging.

I’ve lived abroad, over a decade ago, seen how they did it back then. I’ve travelled about a bit, observed different recycling practices because it’s an area of personal interest but all came down to one very important factor. The recyclability of the packaging in the first place.

It doesn’t matter whether you try to penalise or incentivise recycling, if consumers can’t recycled the 2 litre bottle of coke they bought from Sainsbury’s then they can’t recycle it. They could if they lived in Finland or Germany but they can’t here. It’s the same product (admittedly produced locally under license) but in the UK it goes in the bin because it’s made of cheaper thinner plastic compared to thicker reusable (after being washed out) plastic abroad. There’s no scheme available to recycle them here, in other countries you just take them back to the supermarket, plonk them in a machine, it prints out a ticket that can be used at the checkout and hey presto, there’s your incentive system, it’s really not that hard and the whole lot doesn’t even have to be done by the public sector, you simply mandate the supermarkets to do it instead. They do after all have extensive distribution networks and it makes sense that after making deliveries they can do a pick up as well rather than driving back empty.

A bit of joined up thinking wouldn’t go amiss here.

I’ll finish on a positive point. It used to be (the last time I looked) impossible to recycle Tetrapak in the UK which is barmy. I was going to write a bit about it in this post but after some research it does appear to be picking up and your humble Penguin is planning a trip to Sandwell in the near future now he knows that he can recycle the milk cartons. Wednesbury to be precise as they apparently have a facility at the Leisure Centre. It’s just a bit sad that the most accessible facility for me is in an entirely different borough, but hey, that’s what you get from living in an area covered by Walsall Council I guess.

My final good deed for this post is a littl link to Tetrapaks recycling locator. I think I should move to Sandwell.

This is a politics blog, honest guv. Not like there’s been much in the way of it of late but I will try and rectify that in the near future as the rather hectic planting season draws to a close and the crops slowly, well grow.

Sometimes it’s a bit strange the posts that get attention. You can write at length about a complex political issue and zip, nothing. You can write about something as obscure as rainwater diverters and bang the inquiries start coming in.

So this is a special post for those who’ve dropped a comment on the blog or who have privately contacted me via the contacts section.

As I mentioned to Betty in the comments section on my original post about rainwater diverters I had a hunch that the manufacturer was actually the same one that produce the one’s sold at B&Q.

I just happened to drop into B&Q in Wednesbury today hunting for shelving which due to the wonders of modern society the helpful staff couldn’t tell me if they had the extra two brackets I needed in stock because the computer system was down.

Side note. I love computers, they’re ace, but if as a species we lose the ability to think ‘hang on I can nip in the stock room and have a look’ without the aid of microprocessors then we’re losing it. Either that or the person I spoke to was just lazy and couldn’t be arsed. They didn’t get a sale and my money went across the road to Ikea instead who were well helpful.

However while I was there I did think about Betty and pop outside to have a look at their drainage stock. The brand in question that they sell which is square and designed to connect to a water butt is produced by a company called Marley.

That rang a bell and I was sure it was the same brand as my German procured system.

A few searches later and I got to this site which is the German arm of Marley. Quite clearly, that’s the system that I’ve got that fits to a round downpipe and has a connector to hook up to a hosepipe as opposed to a water butt. Mines the DN75 btw.

Having a further scoop around I ended up at the main Marley site and it turns out that Markey are a UK company based in Kent which also appears to be their manufacturing base as well which is ironic that to get what I wanted I had to go all the way to Germany when it was banged out of a factory down the road. (Note, that’s one of those perspective remarks. Strictly speaking it would be hard to define Kent as being down the road from Wolverhampton but in contrast to Cottbus in Germany it would be).

So we know they’re made by a British company in Kent. What we don’t know is if they’re available here. I’ve sent off an inquiry to Marley about this to ask if they are available in the UK and I’ll post up their reply when I get it.

Hideously bad form of me not to have done a post about Formula 1 so far this season although it hasn’t been going that well so far.

However, it has to be noted that Lewis Hamilton’s drive in the British Grand Prix, that is now yesterday was something truly special to watch.

I’m stuck for a comparably dominant performance in a wet race but about the best would be Aryton Senna’s drive at the European Grand Prix in 1993 held at Donnigton Park.

Truly something special. Well cheered up my day that has.

On leaving Virgin, they helpfully follow up with another letter which rather nicely explains that they’ll be dropping round on so and so a date to collect their cable set top box, but hey, don’t worry if you don’t have it any more, they’ll just stick £250 on to your final bill.

Ahem, £250 for a Scientific Atlanta 4200 DVB box, not to mention it being second hand and well, second hand when I got it so at least third hand. Not accounting for the fact you can pick the things up for £50 on the net. Here’s a really good tip for Virgin Media. When trying to convince people at the last gasp not to leave you, don’t appear like a bunch of rip-off merchants in the process.

I wouldn’t mind if it was a particularly good bit of kit that didn’t consume more electricity than my desktop PC (which is considerably more useful) or throw out enough heat to warm up a room by a few degrees on its tod but to suggest it has that kind of value is laughable.

Thankfully I didn’t get tempted to bin it but while they’re at it, they can have their ancient Motorola modem back as well and I won’t be taking their advice that I keep it in my house just in case, I have no desire for it to clutter up my house anymore.

Further to my last post, and yes I’ve been somewhat busy of late and not posting; I finally got sick of Virgin Media. It’s been on the cards for a while now but the whole Phorm issue pushed it over the edge.

For the record, here’s why I’ve left Virgin Media:

1. Price. It’s possible to get faster and cheaper packages so they’re not price competitive. I was previously on their 2 for £20 offer in that being the phone line and broadband with free TV. Now I will pay £10.50 for line rental from BT and £7.50 for broadband from O2 because they also happen to be my mobile phone provider. This is for an 8Mbit connection as opposed to a 2Mbit connection from Virgin.

2. Customer service. There are a number of elements to this aspect and I’ll do a direct comparison with my new provider O2. When Virgin Media swallowed up my then provider Telewest who were actually very good, they did a number of things. They outsourced the technical customer services to (presumably India) in an obvious attempt to cut cost. They then changed from the previous free call to a premium rate line in an attempt to further cream off money from customers. I don’t like this. I’ll be the first to admit that as a techie I’ve never called their technical line but there is a principle at stake. I don’t like shifting call centres overseas and as a Trades Unionist and pretty patriotic kind of guy I’d be a hypocrite to not be supporting British based workers as much as can. In contrast O2 have wholly UK based customer and technical services and are actually available all round the clock as I’ve just experienced having needed to get a few settings off them. Oh and they’re customer/technical services are free to call on an 0800 number. I like that.

3. The technical angle. I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as a bandwidth intensive customer for any ISP. I don’t download music or movies and certainly don’t do any illegal file sharing stuff. However as a techie I do on the odd occasion require the ability to download large files. Usually we’re talking an ISO image of a Linux operating system distribution but we’re talking anything from 650MB to 4GB. In such circumstances the use of torrent file sharing technology is handy. Sadly though it is obvious that Virgin Media monitor the nature of their customers traffic and after 5 minutes of so using torrents I’ve had my bandwidth throttled down to below dial-up speeds. Even on a box standard FTP download it’s clear to see throttling going on as speeds a sequentially cut in half until it’s a quarter of the speed I’ve been paying for.

As a bit of a contrast, here’s a little screenshot from an few hours ago of me downloading a few updates:

Yes, that would be 2351 kiloBytes per second which I work out to be around 18.3Mbits per second. After having a chat to the technical guy about an unrelated matter I did mention how impressed I was and was told that for the first day or so it does run un-capped so I shouldn’t get used to that kind of speed but even with their top package being £15 a month, those kinds of speeds are very tempting (don’t tell the missus).

I also deliberately tried a torrent connection (a download of a 3.3GB iso image) and the exact same file took close to 12 hours on Virgin but only took less than 45 minutes today with no drops in speed or throttling in sight.

4. I feel like an adult again. I may be getting old and grumpy but my interpretation of my relationship with my ISP and indeed any other company that I deal with is that they provide a service and I pay for it. They’re not my mate or chum, they’re a company that does (hopefully) what I pay them to do. Equally I am an adult, I’ve not been a teenager for a very long time and I don’t like a company trying to be all hip and trendy talking to me in ‘yoof’ speak. I don’t like reference to terms and conditions as being ‘legal stuff’ and I’m sick and tired of the error screen on my account that provides me with a picture of a young female model who looks like a heroin addict.

In contrast so far I’m impressed with O2. They’re staff are courteous and polite, don’t patronise me but are simply informative and helpful. Oh and they don’t seem to try and mislead you either which brings me on to the next point.

When you quit Virgin there’s a special department that deals with presumably trying to talk you out of it. They ask you why. Strangely enough I mentioned some of the above points and was told there was nothing wrong with my connection speed and they don’t throttle torrents. They also helpfully informed me that I wouldn’t be able to get more than a 2Mbit connection from an ADSL connection. This I thought a bit strange given all these other companies that aren’t cable based are offering much higher speeds than 2Mbit. Then it dawned on me that this was a very crafty bit of not necessarily wrong but rather misleading advice. There are of course different versions of ADSL from the box standard ADSL which yes, is technically only capable of up to 2Mbits but there’s also ADSL Max services which go up to 8Mbits and ADSL2+ which will deliver up to 24Mbits. So in just saying ADSL they’re being technically truthful but given how many other providers office ADSL Max and increasingly ADSL2+ it’s a bit disingenuous and may deter a non-techie from arguing the toss which of course I did.

So for the munchkin at Virgin Media who tried to convince me I wouldn’t get anything faster, please feel free to take another look at the screenshot. Yes, that’s 18.3Mbit/s across an ADSL2+ connection with local loop un-bundling at the exchange which incidentally is a plus given the exchange is less than half a kilometre away.

5. The biggie really, Phorm and this also links into my little experience while trying to leave Virgin and also the nature of what I want from an ISP. It’s pretty simple, I pay for a connection to the internet, that’s where it stops. I don’t want value added, content or targeted advertising I simple want a connection that can exchange packets of data. What a certainly don’t want is miserable little companies that used to bang out spyware intercepting all my packets of data, analysing it to work out what kind of consumer I am to bang up adverts for it although if anyone really wants to know, I’m an incredibly arsie a merciless consumer which probably puts me out of their target audience anyway.

That said, personal information is important to me, this isn’t an episode of The Prisoner, I’m not a number (or bleeding cookie file for that matter) and I don’t appreciate people wanting to profile who I am in an attempt to flog me stuff, not that it would work anyway. The ‘please don’t leave us’ marketing lady did attempt to point me in the direction of a web page outlining all the wonderful benefits of Phorm but for some reason when I decided to start getting into techie details I think just decided to give up on trying to convince me otherwise.

So there we go. One day into being a customer of O2 and I’m very happy so far. I did have trepidations as I’ve been a very happy mobile customer of their’s for over a decade (yes I know technically speaking they weren’t O2 then and yes I still have bills with BT Cellnet on them filed away) but I’d have hated for them to have let me down on the broadband front. So far so good though, one thoroughly contented arsie consumer here at the moment and as long as they stay away from Phorm I may be around as a customer for a very long time.