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New Labour lose benefit records in the post

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There’s no need to post BBC News links about this, everyone already knows about it. This “data protection” government have lost the benefit records of 25,000,000 people (nearly half the population) in the post, because someone at HMRC burnt them onto a CD-ROM and sent them in the mail, unrecorded and unregistered. They’ve now gone missing and could be absolutely anywhere.

Despite the obvious stupidity of this “blunder”, Alistair Darling has made some fucking stupid statements that, in my opinion, further highlight just how much he’s in over his head with his job:

“The police tell me that they have no reason to believe that this data has found its way into the wrong hands.”

Yes, Darling, but you (they) also conversely do not have a shred of evidence to suggest that they haven’t fallen into “the wrong hands” (an ironic term when used by the government that lost the records in the first place), due to their quite obvious and undeniable “lost” status. You can’t hope that people will find that reassuring when you still don’t know where they fucking are.

Mr Darling said people should monitor their accounts “for any unusual activity”.

What, that’s your official fraud prevention measure following on from this monumental, awesome fuckup? Keep an eye on our bank statements? I’m sure glad we’ve got someone as sensible and as clued up as you in charge of our economy! Still I don’t suppose you can be any worse than your wretched fucking predecessor.

As it’s been pointed out over and over again over the past couple of days, this is the same government that wants to introduce super secure ID cards for everyone to protect us from the nasty terrorists. Who apparently will be able to just download our information off Bittorrent.

More people need to lose their jobs over this. Having some no-name in HMRC resign simply isn’t enough, no matter how senior he is. The government also need to put their house in order regarding data protection laws. The private sector face very stiff penalties if they violate the Data Protection Act, with the most serious offences potentially leading to company directors being imprisoned. I don’t imagine Alistair Darling or any of his wretched New Labour cronies visiting Strangeways any time soon. One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

I’m just glad I don’t claim any benefit (for once).

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Mac Mini Memory Mayhem

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I’ve just spent the last hour and a half attempting to upgrade the memory in my Mac Mini from 1280Mb to 2Gb by replacing the remaining 256Mb module with a second 1Gb module. The new 1Gb module works fine, but in the process of upgrading I’ve somehow managed the fry the first 1Gb module; it no longer functions. If you didn’t know, taking the Mac Mini apart to upgrade the RAM is not for the faint hearted, requiring an odd assortment of tools including a putty knife, a 1p coin and some post-it notes, so having a net end result of zero is not really what I wanted!

The bust DIMM is still in warranty, in that I bought it less than 12 months ago, so I shall see if they’ll replace it. It would be easier in this situation if it was the new one that had broken, but they might find it a little suspect that the old one stopped working during the upgrade procedure that put the new one in. At the end of the day it would only be another £15 to replace, but still, it’d be a waste.

I’ve also Leopardized the five Macs that Chris and I use between us using the stonking “family pack” that Apple offer, whereby if you want to install Leopard on five computers then you only pay £130 instead of £80 x 5 = £400, which is what Microsoft would make you do, except the £80 would be £240 in their case. I don’t mind paying for software if it’s reasonably priced, but £240 for Microsoft Windows is just fucking ridiculous and I’m glad that I’m no longer subjected to the Microsoft upgrade path.

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Zurückgegangen VON Boston

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Yeah, so I spent exactly four days and four hours traveling to Boston, being in Boston and travelling back from Boston this week. It’s kind of a surreal feeling; I feel as if I should be totally overwhelmed by such an intense trip but I’m not, I’m really chilled out about it and it feels like Boston is no further away than London rather than being five timezones away over the Atlantic. Each journey and each day went off without a hitch; never before have I had such a relaxed and straightforward trip abroad. Would that all our holidays were the same!

The conference itself, Fall VON, was very interesting and I truly immersed myself in the IP communications world for two whole days, meeting some very clever people and some notable industry names. I’ve gathered a wealth of information that will prove to be very useful for my current project at work and so the trip was well worth it from a commercial point of view. A couple of the talks were by people who had used the technology with which I specialise in specific applications and while these applications were reasonable clever they weren’t on the sort of scale that my current project is going to be, so I’m going to see if it’s reasonable and feasible for me to do a talk myself at next year’s event once my project is finished.

Boston is a marvellous place. My favourite city in the United States is of course New York, but Boston comes a very close second. Its relative age combined with its New England environs, cleanliness, friendly inhabitants and functional transportation systems make it a pleasure to be in. Manchester, Boston and New York are the three places in the world where I really feel at home, more-so even than my birthplace. The only thing it’s really lacking is the sort of gay scene that I’m used to in Manchester, but then I’m willing to admit that my standards have been set pretty high in that regard. Not even New York comes close to Manchester, mostly thanks to the Republican Party, but that’s a different story.

The local baseball team, the Red Sox, apparently won the “world” series last week, although unclear how much of the rest of the world beyond the United States were invited to participate in this tournament. There was a giant parade through Boston on Tuesday which lasted practically all day. I didn’t see it because I was at the convention centre, but it was apparently enourmous.

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Pendolino Farraday cages

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I’m writing this aboard the 22.05 Virgin Pendolino service from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, so I’ll be actually publishing this when I get back to Manchester. The reason why I can’t publish it straight away is ironically enough the subject of this post.

Virgin’s marvelous new Class 390 “Pendolino” electric multiple units which they use for many of their inter-city services, replacing the HST and Mark 3 hauled stock trains which were perfectly good and had many years of service left in them given a refurbishment programme, have several annoying design flaws which directly affect passengers.

You would be forgiven for assuming that modern rail vehicles such as these would have been designed with the modern rail traveler in mind, given that they were designed since the turn of the century. The modern rail traveler likes to be able to use his mobile phone on the train and, if possible, their laptop connected to the Internet using a wireless Internet connection. But this is not to be.

In order to cut costs and enable them to install cheaper air conditioning systems, the manufacturers of the Pendolino opted to use a special metallic sunscreen on the windows in order to reduce the heat inside the train produced by the sun. However, a side-effect of this sunscreen is that it effectively turns each coach into a Farraday cage when combined with the metal shell of the coach itself, making it impossible for mobile phones inside each coach to connect to their respective networks in any useful way. Genius.

Signal can be obtained in the vestibules at each end of each coach, because the metallic sunscreen has not been applied to the train door windows. This is great, until the train applies its brakes. Then it all goes wrong again.

The Class 390 Pendolino has “regenerative braking“, a technology widely publicised by Virgin, which, when applied, actually returns electricity back to the National Grid. Each Pendolino multiple unit apparently returns enough power each year to supply Birmingham with electricity for a day or something like that, the details aren’t really relevant, but it’s something along the lines of the claim that if everyone gave up toast the electricity saved each day would power Birmingham for a week. Of course, if we just unplugged Birmingham, the rest of us could all have as much fucking toast as we like, but I digress.

So yes, regenerative braking sounds like it’s a good idea, returning power to the National Grid and helping to reduce the rail vehicle’s carbon footprint, all very grand and noble. Except, when applied, these regenerative braking systems create an enormously powerful electromagnetic field which, you guessed it, knocks out your mobile signal, whether you’re in the vestibule or not. Genius.

The same problem has been flummoxing Virgin boffins charged with the design and deployment of wireless Internet connections aboard Virgin trains as successfully implemented by other train operators, namely GNER, on their East Coast Mainline services which use different types of trains (namely HST sets and Class 90 plus Mark 4 stock trains, neither of which have regenerative braking).

So I can’t publish this post right now. Not only is Virgin’s onboard wireless Internet service doomed, but I can’t even get a mobile signal to post it via GPRS. Were I on a train that was designed in the 1970s, as is the case with the HST, I might understand. But the irony is that it would actually work on the HST, in stark contrast to this soulless electric multiple unit designed thirty years later. The terrible locomotive irony.

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What the CWU doesn’t want you to know

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_46586910_008154934-1This wretched postal strike pissed me off even before it started; my feelings on strikes and unions and all the associated irrelevant and redundant attitudes are well known. The posties are claiming the usual shit – they demand absolute and guaranteed job security and a nice fat pension, two things which the vast majority of people in this country haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of enjoying in a modern economy. But oh no, Royal Mail workers are special, just like the train drivers, and public sector workers. They deserve better!

Except they don’t. Today Royal Mail did the dirty on them (via The Daily Telegraph) and told everyone just what sort of unreasonable shit their workers demand of them on a daily basis. Ninety two points were made in total, the twelve most notable of which are as follows:

  1. Two or three hour minimum daily overtime – so if 30 minutes of actual work is required and completed, then between two and three hours’ payment is demanded.
  2. An additional allowance claimed for using particular vehicles – regardless of whether the individual has actually driven the vehicle.
  3. Automatic overtime if mail volumes reach a certain level – regardless of how many ordinary working hours remain that day.
  4. If a delivery round is finished before the end of the paid shift, the employee expects to be able to go straight home. But if it takes 10 minutes longer two to three hours’ over time is claimed.
  5. Set overtime level is claimed at Christmas, even if there is no need for any additional hours and no extra hours are worked.
  6. An additional two hour payment on Easter Saturday – regardless of whether any work required.
  7. No flexibility between different parts of the same sorting office – if an employee sorts letters for a particular postcode, they will not sort for the adjacent postcode, even though both activities are often in the same room.
  8. Signing in and out for a shift on arrival – so that no record of actual hours worked exists.
  9. Collection drivers expect overtime pay for doing collections outside usual route – even if it is done within usual working hours.
  10. Overtime to cover for an absent colleague – a full day is claimed, even if only half day needed and worked.
  11. Ban on any cross functional working, even of similar tasks under the same roof.
  12. Additional meal and grace breaks as custom and practice.

If you felt sorry for them before then I don’t see how you can now. Royal Mail, now a private company fighting for survival since it lost its cushy monopoly, should at this point be firing those on strike in blocks of 100 and rehiring from the pool of migrant workers who are only too happy to work twice as hard and for half as much. Want job security? Don’t fuck over your employer then. How is it difficult to see the logic in that?

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Crossrail gets the green signal

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BBC NEWS | England | London | Crossrail gets the green signal – oh look, Gordon Brown has announced funding for a major public transport project the day before the weekend that he’s tipped to decide whether or not to hold a general election, his party having previously announced it on the eves of both the 2001 and 2005 general elections. Imagine that.

Crossrail, although undoubtedly needed, is however a bit of a red herring. Most of the new route has already been built and has been in use for many decades. For the most part, the new trains will run on existing lines. The part that needs to be built, that will use up most of the £16bn, and will undoubtedly go over time and budget as all the usual suspects (consultants, New Labour cronies, etc.) jump on the gravy train is the tunnel under the centre of London. It really isn’t like they’re building a brand new east to west rail route through London, so the £16bn price tag and the planned timescale (over a decade from now) does seem a bit hefty. One has to wonder how far £16bn would go towards building one of the many shelved proposals to improve the urban motorway network in London, political correctness over climate change notwithstanding.

In any case it isn’t right that a new public transport project, which the commuting public cries out for every day of their lives as they are packed onto their sardine tins on a railway network that hasn’t seen any significant expansion since the second world war, is used as a shiny election badge. New Labour have had ten years to do something about the railway network in this country and they’ve fucked it up at every opportunity, except of course when it suits them.

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Double awards win for Winehouse

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BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Double awards win for Winehouse – okay, let’s ignore the fact that Amy Winehouse, a terrible role model for anyone, clearly isn’t black despite winning two “Mobo” awards, that isn’t the point I wish to make here. What I take issue with is this:

Kanya King, the CEO of the Mobo Awards, read out the names of all of the children under the age of 16 who had been murdered in the UK this year.

“Guns and knives have killed too many of our young people, especially our boys,” she told the hushed audience.

Cry me a river. It’s thanks in part to “music of black origin” that these kids obtain guns and shoot them at each other in the first place. Rap “artists” constantly bang on about their guns and their violence and their money and their “hos”, making obscene videos to accompany their “music” showing them dripping in cash and surrounded by glamorous women and stating that violence and “respect” were the means by which they obtained such trappings. They are hideous role models and it’s frankly small wonder that gun violence is so rife amongst the young black community.

Get your own house in order before making sentimental speeches like that, please.

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Lib Dems back migrant ‘amnesty’

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BBC NEWS | Politics | Lib Dems back migrant ‘amnesty’ – right, so it’s not like the Liberal Democrats are ever going to get into power, so they may as well promise free bubble gum for everyone for all the good it will do them, but this isn’t going to stop me from taking issue with this absurd vote-losing policy.

The Liberal Democrats have said that after ten years of living in the United Kingdom, illegal immigrants should get the right to earn citizenship, which would mean passing language tests, demonstrating a long-term commitment to the UK and having no criminal record. There are two major problems with this that I can see:

  1. How can an illegal immigrant not have an effective criminal record? By their very presence in the country they are committing an offence. Whether that offence is a civil or criminal offence is irrelevant, it is still an offence since they are breaking a law of the land. This creates a paradox with the requirement to not have a criminal record when “earning” citizenship.
  2. On the basis that illegal immigrants are, in fact, inherently and automatically criminals by their very presence in the country, the ten year “amnesty” suggests that as long as they don’t get caught for ten years from the time they enter the country then they’re home and dry and absolved of their offences against the law. Why should this therefore not be applied to all crimes? If I go and rob a bank, or murder someone, and manage to not get caught for ten years, should I then expect to be let off? Why is this different with illegal immigrants?

This policy is about as well thought out as the other recent infamous Liberal Democrat policy of stating that they will raise income tax. If this wasn’ silly enough, they announced this policy before a general election. It’s little wonder that the Liberal Democrats aren’t in power, nor ever will be. Leftie handwringing idiots.

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