I got a place

My previous post (I'm not very good at keeping these up am I???) talked about my uni application. Well I had an interview, which went great, and they offered me a place there and then! So I am very pleased, I start in September. Any sponsors?

I got a place

My previous post (I'm not very good at keeping these up am I???) talked about my uni application. Well I had an interview, which went great, and they offered me a place there and then! So I am very pleased, I start in September. Any sponsors?

I got in!!!

My previous post (I'm not very good at keeping these up am I???) talked about my uni application. Well I had an interview, which went great, and they offered me a place there and then! So I am very pleased, I start in September. Any sponsors?

I'm applying to uni!

Yup, check me out. University, again. But this time I feel so good about it. It's a course in Media Production BA (Hons) at Staffordshire University.

The course is based on developing your self-confidence, creative ability and technical competence, to enable you to communicate effectively and creatively.

The course has an emphasis on producing creative programming in the form of video production in the areas of drama, documentary and experimental filmmaking. You will explore all aspects of programme production with an emphasis on ideas generation and creative problem solving. At Levels 1 and 2, students develop an understanding of the production process and learn to work in the technical and creative roles of a production crew.

Well, I've nearly finnished my appliation online through UCAS and I am so excited!

Bus Lane Update

This morning I recieved a letter from Camden Council telling me that I will NOT have to pay the fine as there "was not enough evidence to to satisfy [the investigations officer] that the Penalty Charge Notice was correctly issued".

A success for democracy? Let me know what you think.

Original blog entry: Bus lane camera in Bloomsbury Street, London

The Return of the Window Tax

Just when you thought it was safe to do your budgeting for another year, a suprise addition to council tax has suddenly popped out of the wood work. The Patio Tax.

At 4.33pm on Monday the 7th of November, Mr. Eric Pickles MP for Brentwood and Ongar (Con) stood in the House of Commons and blew the whistle on this apauling proposal.

Turning to the dwelling house codes, I took it from what the Minister of Communities and Local Government said earlier that the patio tax will be worked out in readiness for the revaluation.
The new dwelling house codes include:

• number of bedrooms
• number of floors
• lowest floor level
• conservatory type and area
• outbuildings
• a new system to count the number of garage spaces and parking spaces.

They include the introduction of new value significant codes, which in January 2005 were expanded to cover 66 different property features, such as:

• balconies
• near a golf course
• in a conservation area
• large garden
• large patio
• roof terrace
• sea views and views of hills or lakes
• gated estates.

In other words, someone who has worked hard to manage and improve their home will be penalised and taxed more.

The council tax of a low-paid agricultural worker living on their own in a modest home overlooking Lake Coniston will rocket.

Pensioners who have retired to little bungalows by the sea had better watch out.

Under new Labour, only the rich can afford to enjoy a view or a well-placed patio. The result is that the codes ensure that properties with these indicators are pushed into a higher council tax band. In short, the patio tax becomes a new window tax. As The Sunday Telegraph commented yesterday in its editorial entitled, “Pay per view homes”:

“The plan will allow ministers to increase council tax with a minimum of Parliamentary debate. It is true that they have not found a way of taxing happiness directly. But just give them time—they will.”

We should be grateful for this important lesson in life under new Labour. As a gentle summer light caresses patios and plant pots around this sceptred isle, as hollyhocks and forget-me-nots bob in the warm breeze in this green and pleasant land, we should console ourselves with the thought that this is the clearest example of there being no such thing as a free view or a peaceful garden—all must be taxed and all pleasures must be stamped out.

That is the logical conclusion for a Government who have selected Northern Ireland as a guinea pig, with so-called discrete capital values that would make the council tax more progressive and target social needs. In plain English, council tax bills in Northern Ireland will soar. It has been selected for yet another experiment that involves a variation in the council tax — the death tax, whereby deferred local tax bills will be paid by pensioners. Vulnerable people must either forfeit their children’s inheritance or face the prospect of bailiffs at the door. Only the Labour party could find ways to pursue poor people beyond the grave.

The Local Government Chronicle has described revaluation as “a ticking time bomb”. All that the Government have done is to wind up the clock and adjust the hands. Revaluation and re-banding will still have a devastating effect. A disaster postponed is not a disaster averted. What seems like clever politics now will seem like cowardice a few years down the road.

We're going to hell in a handcart. What's that? £8 congestion charge for the plesure?

Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

Click here for the text of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, as introduced in the House of Commons on 9th June 2005..

All sounds a good idea on the surface doesn't it? The problem is, this government are bringing in more and more laws which don't do what they say on the tin, but rather like a worm virus on a computer open up back doors for authorities to use the law to achieve their ends and aims, not the greater good.

Hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds

Part 3 of the Public Order Act 1986 (c. 64) is amended in accordance with the Schedule to this Act, which—

(a) creates offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on religious grounds, and

(b) amends provisions relating to offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on racial grounds.

Great stuff. People who deliberatly go around stiring up hatred will be sorted by this! Wonderful.

Law's don't have to be broken to come in to effect. Quite the reverse. We British don't like to make a fuss, and it's always best to be on the safe side, right? Ofcourse, that's why Health & Saftey bosses dish out so many rules for their staff: we've got to be extra careful- well, you're best to be on the safe side aren't you? The risk, or theoretical risk of being caught short by the law determins how people think, albeit in a very gradual and almost unconcious way. Laws change our ways of thinking.

So how does this particualar law change our ways of thinking?

Let me quote again from the Bill.

“Meaning of “religious hatred”
In this Part “religious hatred” means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief.”

Those are my highlights added there. So is this about religious belief or is it about lack of religious belief? Here the deffinition is broad as to cover every thing under the sun. From atheists to Christians, Muslims to pagans, 'Jedi' religions to... well actually who is to say what is not covered by that loose definition? No one.

Imagine this situation where the "Faithful Religious Sect of the Mass Salughter Worshipers" has been preaching it's message of tollerance towards it's cause. Yes, a few of these people go to prision for their beliefs too for obvioulsy breaking the law of murder. To others it's just a Friday ritual.

So Mr & Mrs Protest get quite a few people together from the local community at a local rally. Their stiring speech to the families of victims, the frightened, the pillaged, raises are real cry of unity. Their leaflets, videos and presentations about the workings of this sect get people stired up to action. So protests are organised, demonstrations out side the known places of worship. Mrs Protest and her neighbour are on TV and radio, "This is aweful. This religious group are murderers and we want nothing to do with them."

In other words, hattred is stired up against this group. Suddenly the police are called in, and all protestors and arrested under the religious hate law. A complaint has been put in by attenders of this sect.

Absurd? Probably, but what is to stop that happening?

Reality is stranger than fiction

In reality it will be a lot more subtle than that. We wont get any extreem enactments like that, rather a steady errosion of our freedom of speech. Rev Tweed will be thinking twice about his bible study at church that night. Christians will be careful about how they present Jesus as "the way, the truth, and the life ... the only way to the father." Drip, drip, drip, it will happen. Why? Well, it's best to be safe isn't it?

Have a read of the Bill yourself, and think what you would be doing to make sure your safe. In a few years time, we will all be programmed quite nicely, very few actual arrests will be made, but we will all think its a great idea. The only thing is, at what expense?

Where are all our freedoms going?

Click here for original blog.

You say you hear the sound of the bell tolling? It's the Labour government, losing its marbles. Maybe it's due to the lame duck status of Tony Blair, who's decided he'll let terrorism define his legacy (or else the terrorists will win), or maybe it's the fact the British, like the sheep they raise, are generally a docile bunch and don't complain over much when their civil liberties are trod upon.

A tale of two attacks: After 9/11, George Bush turned the nation's anger outward, lashing out at one Middle Eastern country after another, often without regard for their actual involvement in the attack. He squandered the goodwill many of the world felt for the US, but the American people loved it.

But Tony Blair, after his own 7/7, turned that anger against his own people, creating what is increasingly looking like a police state, especially if you're a dark skinned Muslim. Or even if you're not.

Police enforcement of the anti-terror laws has created some unintended consequences, including the shooting of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes as he ran to catch a train. Others are just nutty, and the government's proposals to deal with terrorism seem more designed to combat civil liberties than terror.

Since 7/7:

• A 34-year-old woman arrested for walking to work on a bike path, instead of cycling, in an area secretly designated a "designated area" and held under the "anti-terrorism act."
• An 82-year-old man (and a younger man who jumped in to assist him) tossed out of the Labour conference for heckling Jack Straw.
• A French journalist held for hours after wearing a bulky jacket and neglecting to make eye contact.
• My own experience on the DLR, where a tourist was surrounded by police officers after taking videos.
• The government's proposal to increase the length of time a suspected terrorist can be held without charges, from 14 days to three months.
• The establishment of a "no protest" zone which includes a vast swath around Westminster.

(And these are just the incidents I remember; no doubt there are more.)

Why should we worry? The terrorists are out to get us; what's the loss of a few civil liberties? We're all willing to pay a price, aren't we, for security?

Unfortunately, draconian laws don't make us safer: When a young man is arrested for "walking while Muslim" and sent to jail for three months without charges being filed, and his family is visited by Muslim extremists trying to convince them the real enemy is the British government, and his little brother listens to their arguments, and he joins a terrorist cell to "get even"...then we're not safer.

When police are allowed to arrest anyone, anytime, and conveniently mark it up to the anti-terrorism laws, we're all in danger, even if we didn't do the heckling or walk down a path intended for bicyclists.

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, said John Donne, who tried to warn us no man is an island. When the police state arrests your neighbor, it's not a far walk to your house.

Click here for the text of the Terrorism Bill, as ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 11th October 2005.

Thanks to corporations, instead of democracy we get Baywatch

From The Guardian, Tuesday 13th Septembre
Written by: George Monbiot

It was claimed that the internet and satellite TV would topple dictators, but commercial interests are making sure they don't.

'Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head." Thus Gulliver describes his first encounter with the Yahoos. Something similar seems to have happened to democracy.

In April, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". He had passed details of a censorship order to the Asia Democracy Forum and the website Democracy News.

The pressure group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was mystified by the ease with which Mr Tao had been caught. He had sent the message through an anonymous Yahoo! account. But the police had gone straight to his offices and picked him up. How did they know who he was?

Last week RSF obtained a translation of the verdict, and there they found the answer. Mr Tao's account information was "furnished by Yahoo Holdings". Yahoo!, the document says, gave the government his telephone number and the address of his office.

So much for the promise that the internet would liberate the oppressed. This theory was most clearly formulated in 1999 by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argues that two great democratising forces — global communications and global finance — will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic.

"Thanks to satellite dishes, the internet and television," he asserts, "we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every conceivable wall. … no one owns the internet, it is totally decentralised, no one can turn it off … China's going to have a free press … Oh, China's leaders don't know it yet, but they are being pushed straight in that direction." The same thing, he claims, is happening all over the world. In Iran he saw people ogling Baywatch on illegal satellite dishes. As a result, he claims, "within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own … government and the one next door".

He is partly right. The internet at least has helped to promote revolutions of varying degrees of authenticity in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Argentina and Bolivia. But the flaw in Friedman's theory is that he forgets the intermediaries. The technology which runs the internet did not sprout from the ground. It is provided by people with a commercial interest in its development. Their interest will favour freedom in some places and control in others. And they can and do turn it off.

In 2002 Yahoo! signed the Chinese government's pledge of "self-regulation": it promised not to allow "pernicious information that may jeopardise state security" to be posted. Last year Google published a statement admitting that it would not be showing links to material banned by the authorities on computers stationed in China. If Chinese users of Microsoft's internet service MSN try to send a message containing the words "democracy", "liberty" or "human rights", they are warned that "This message includes forbidden language. Please delete the prohibited expression."

A study earlier this year by a group of scholars called the OpenNet Initiative revealed what no one had thought possible: that the Chinese government is succeeding in censoring the net. Its most powerful tool is its control of the routers — the devices through which data is moved from one place to another. With the right filtering systems, these routers can block messages containing forbidden words. Human-rights groups allege that western corporations — in particular Cisco Systems — have provided the tech nology and the expertise. Cisco is repeatedly cited by Thomas Friedman as one of the facilitators of his global revolution.

"We had the dream that the internet would free the world, that all the dictatorships would collapse," says Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders. "We see it was just a dream."

Friedman was not the first person to promote these dreams. In 1993 Rupert Murdoch boasted that satellite television was "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere". The Economist had already made the same claim on its cover: "Dictators beware!" The Chinese went berserk, and Murdoch, in response, ensured that the threat did not materialise.

In 1994 he dropped BBC world news from his Star satellite feeds after it broadcast an unflattering portrait of Mao Zedong. In 1997 he ordered his publishing house HarperCollins to drop a book by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong. He slagged off the Dalai Lama and his son James attacked the dissident cult Falun Gong. His grovelling paid off, and in 2002 he was able to start broadcasting into Guangdong. "We won't do programmes that are offensive in China," Murdoch's spokesman Wang Yukui admitted. "If you call this self-censorship then of course we're doing a kind of self-censorship."

I think, if they were as honest as Mr Wang, everyone who works for Rupert Murdoch, or for the corporate media anywhere in the world, would recognise these restraints. To own a national newspaper or a television or radio station you need to be a multimillionaire. What multimillionaires want is what everybody wants: a better world for people like themselves. The job of their journalists is to make it happen. As Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Mirror, confessed, "I've made it a strict rule in life to ingratiate myself with billionaires." They will stay in their jobs for as long as they continue to interpret the interests of the proprietorial class correctly.

What the owners don't enforce, the advertisers do. Over the past few months, AdAge.com reveals, both Morgan Stanley and BP have instructed newspapers and magazines that they must remove their adverts from any edition containing "objectionable editorial coverage". Car, airline and tobacco companies have been doing the same thing. Most publications can't afford to lose these accounts; they lose the offending articles instead. Why are the papers full of glowing profiles of the advertising boss Martin Sorrell? Because they're terrified of him.

So instead of democracy we get Baywatch. They are not the same thing. Aspirational TV might stimulate an appetite for more money or more plastic surgery, and this in turn might encourage people to look, for better or worse, to the political systems that deliver them, but it is just as likely to be counter-democratic. As a result of pressure from both ratings and advertisers, for example, between 1993 and 2003 environmental programmes were cleared from the schedules on BBC TV, ITV and Channel 4. Though three or four documentaries have slipped out since then, the ban has not yet been wholly lifted. To those of us who have been banging our heads against this wall, it feels like censorship.

Indispensable as the internet has become, political debate is still dominated by the mainstream media: a story on the net changes nothing until it finds its way into the newspapers or on to TV. What this means is that while the better networking Friedman celebrates can assist a democratic transition, the democracy it leaves us with is filtered and controlled. Someone else owns the routers.

Bus Lane Camera Fiasco

Road signs are supposed to provide sensible and clear information.

They are not supposed to cause confusion and chaos or lure drivers into a trap.

This is precisely what Camden Council in London are doing every time someone turns left from Bloomsbury Street in to Great Russell Street.

On Sunday 7th August 2005 my car was photographed in a bus lane at this exact location at 10.29am. Through the post they send you a photograph and a web access code so you can "see images of the alleged contravention". I have still not been able to access these images, the website says the code is "not recognised". When the letter came though, I was very confused.

Confirming Signs
I've always been very careful to observe bus lane and I pay careful attention to what the signs say. As I entered Bloomsbury Street, I noticed the bus lane signs said very clearly "Mon - Fri, 11am - 8pm". Great, I thought, and proceeded down the road at around 25-30mph. I kept checking the signs to make sure I was in the clear and eventually saw my left turning into Great Russell Street. I carried on through the bus lane, confident that all the signs were in my favor...

Confusing Signs

Notice on the pictures here they say, "New Bus Lane Times," then, "End of Bus Lane". THEN it has a new "24 hour no entry into bus lane" sign.

Drivers are using the lane to turn left at Gt Russell Street thinking it is a filter lane. Even if they did notice this sign at the last minuet (bearing in mind it is concealed by a confusing multiplex of signage) how could it be safe to suddenly stop or swerve in the correct lane?

Can it really be acceptable to change the times and days a bus lane operates halfway down a street, especially after a driver has passed 6 or more reassuring signs telling him that the bus lane operated from Monday to Friday, 11am to 8pm.

This is nothing more than a trap to make money. We, the democratic public, need to stand up against these unfair and unjust enforcements. Don't just moan, let's stand up TOGETHER and be counted.