Liberal Provocateur

Nice, howies t-shirt of the week : subprime minister

I really liked Nick Cleggs conference speech last week, unfortunately it doesn't match his actions when it comes to things like drugs, prostitution or even reform of parliament.

Last I heard he was still backing the speaker of the house and some other MPs to decide the new rules for expenses, not exactly revolutionary.

I would have thought that expenses rules would be fairly simple - after all we have the ready-made set of expenses rules that apply to the rest of us - HMRC has clear, well documented rules about expenses - they are quite generous enough and the legions of self employed people in the UK manage to (and are required by law) to account for their spending with receipts, etc.

It's not unreasonable to remove perks - outside of London, an MPs salary is almost unattainable, certainly in the top 0.5%, and nationally it's in the top 5%, and given the number of staff MPs can employ at no cost to themselves, the workload isn't unreasonable, nor is the travel to/from westminster.

The 2nd home in london scam is pure profiteering, it's beyond a perk, and in many cases it crosses into blatent fraud and property speculation. A more reasonable alternative would be to provide a minimal allowance, which the MP can "top up" to make rental or mortgage payments, but any mortgage would be held by the state rather than the MP - when the MP no longer requires the property they relinquish it and any financial gains (or losses) are left with the state (which after all paid).

Well thanks Nick Clegg for not sticking with the status quo, and really rocking the boat with your bold leadership on reforming parliament.

I think it's great you're supporting somebody who claimed tens of thousands of quid for his wifes shopping trips and pocket 20 grand more to cover accomodation costs that he didn't have, and best of all - this chap is doing the review of MP expenses, gosh it doesn't look like a corrupt old boys at all.

I'm sure that we as a nation can follow suit and you'd support us if we all decided to fiddle our tax returns and put things like shopping, family travel, lap dancers, etc through our books. I'm sure the Inland revenue wouldn't quibble over a few tens of thousands of pounds for us all, and it certainly wouldn't mean being prosecuted for fraud.

Speaking of bold moves - how is your big push for reform of drugs legislation? Oh. yeah. It doesn't exist. Did you forget about it? Don't be surprised that you will be forgotten too unless you stand out - because right now when people say our party doesn't matter or make a difference, with the notable exception of Vince Cable and some excellent MPs that feels like the truth at the moment.

It was fun shopping in Truro City Centre yesterday - most of the small shops were shut all day, and the larger shops opened their doors at 10am but nobody could purchase anything until 10:30am - utterly bizarre, not only that but because of the shorter day and the proximity to christmas it was havoc in pretty much any significant shop that was open.

As a sole trader in the IT Industry, I've had to work 7 day weeks, or weekends at various times for various reasons - you can't really take down business servers or web servers during the working week, so it has to be done on the weekend or bank holiday. Before I graduated I worked in several jobs, all of them meant working sundays, bank holidays and even new years eve - Bar work, Hospital Cleaner, Hospital Porter, Hotel waiter, Hotel Housekeeping, Hotel Porter.

Let me be totally frank - if you don't want to work, or open your business on a sunday, or christmas day, or easter sunday or a bank holiday - that's entirely up to you - but don't demand that everybody else close their business or not shop, or do whatever they heck they want.

So, as a Liberal party - what's the policy on sunday trading - I mean, how many votes do we really expect to get from narrow minded "christians" and stuck-in-the-70s shop owners? Hardly any - stuff them.

... after nearly 18 months of it being noticed and raised as an issue at our local Linux User Group, and numerous complaints since it still doesn't work in anything apart from internet explorer. (http://www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk/patients/faqs/techissue) - what a complete farce. Apparently it's a good thing that a whole two thirds of UK users can actually use the site! idiots!

I keep on saying that the Liberal Democrats need a minister, or at least spokesperson, for ICT - maybe Nick Clegg really will realise that a role considered essential in every boardroom is missing from his cabinet - but I doubt it, the westminister village is still too distant from the real world where we actually have to make things work to pay the mortgage.

There is more than enough work to justify a minister for ICT, the lack of such a minister in the cabinet of any of our national parties is negligent - all three parties have been very poorly briefed on the technical issues of both RFID Passports, and ID Cards and certainly have no idea at all about who nominet are, let alone have any idea of the simple steps needed to enforce the law when it comes to crime on the internet.

Oh telecoms regulators how I hate thee!

We're ex-directory and registered with TPS. You would think that would mean we avoid the worst abuse of the telephone system, but it doesn't - I regularly get scam and cold calls from dodgy companies who should know better.

The worst part is there is nothing you can do - if a UK business breaks the law or pays another company outside the uk to do the same, there is no way to trace them or take action.

OFCOM fails miserably in regulating cold calls via fax, email and telephone - today I got an automated war-dialling (as they can't have got my number legally) call from "The Information Team", who have a UK call centre, use a UK telephone number, and yet I am unable to do anything to prevent them doing it again - I can't even find out where their UK office is and go around and give them a hard time.

This is crazy - people use UK telephone numbers and .uk domains for illegal scams, and are untouchable - the telephone companies, ISPs, registrars, police and OFCOM all have no interest in taking any action. Utterly pitiful.

links for more information on these scamming scum :
* http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08445592577/2
* http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.telecom/browse_thread/thread/244be21b7a25f91d

Those useless unhelpful muppets :
* http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/nwbnd/prsindex/
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/landline/nuisance/silent/?itemid=284845
* http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

I've tried registering complaints with tps, etc - all of them say upfront they will not confirm anything and probably won't take any action - should you want to bring a civil case you require a private detective and some friends inside the telecoms industry - otherwise you're going to be a victim for as long as it's worthwhile for scammers to cold call and war dial.

It's crazy that I can't find out who these people calling me are and get them to stop, or report them to trading standards (which even when you've done some research is a waste of time).

..but I am firmly decided that I'm fed up with the cheerleaders and campaigners.

Both candidates have a lot of common and party policies, so it's only on the personality smaller/detailed issues that you can really tell them apart, and this is where the bloggers, campaigners etc just muddy the waters and put everybody off both.

I think that a lot of campaigners need to learn that actually it's how you play that is more important than winning sometimes - particularly in politics - you need to put constituents needs before your party, you need to ensure quality candidates rather than bums on seats in councils, you need to spend money researching policy and getting people involved not printing yet more flyers and leaflets full of fluff and photo ops.

Unfortunately although both candidates are far closer to who I want leading the country than anything offered by the other main parties, I'm still disappointed that they are very conservative in their policies - they haven't taken any major issue or new idea and really sold it or made it part of the news agenda, which they could have done with Drug Liberalisation, Sex Worker liberalisation, EU Reform, Iran, or Palestine.

Domestic flights in the UK used to be convenient, fairly priced and fast. Now they're hugely inconvenient, almost to the point that driving would be quicker and less hassle. Obviously if we had a reasonable Train service from Cornwall to London that would be preferably to flying for more than just the lack of environmental impact.

Anyway here I am at (nowhere near) Newquay Airport at 6 AM and I'm fed up within 10 minutes of getting here - I checked in (no queue, thank Krishna for small mercys), answered some pointless 'security' questions, threw away my obviously safe 500ml bottle of Coke after taking a few mouthfuls (because even if I drank 400ml, it wouldn't be safe because of all the dangerous "Air") of course I could have internally carried any high explosive (complete with anything required) internally and because I'm white and middle class would never (and have never) been fully searched - heck I could have had it strapped around my waist and nobody would have spotted it this morning.

Now I'm "airside" which means that I have no cold drink and the cafe that I asked about before checking in, is naturally unstaffed, I'm very tempted to just help myself to some breakfast and wedge a fiver in the till with a note saying what a pain in the arse they are.

At 7AM the cafe finally opens, and I'm able to get an overpriced vending machine coffee labelled as "Latte" (A Latte is foamed milk and espresso - there is no added water), it's instantly recognisable as the same mix of powdered milk, hot water, more hot water and coffee (certainly not espresso) that I drank huge ammounts of when we lived in the maternity / neonatal ward of Treliske Hospital for a few weeks.

I hate hate hate Travelling to london these days... ah the planes landed time to go.

On the return journey, I discovered even more inconvenience - God I hate gatwick - The 20 minute journey from Train Platforms to the other terminal, the inane posters about how neither 1L, 500ml or 250ml are less than 100ml, even if you remove 99% of the content and how they are a danger to aircraft, and how it's all for our 'security', the simply idiotic x-raying of shoes (Richard Reid had fuses visible on his shoes - if the security guards were doing their jobs he would never have got on the plane, what's more even if the fuse was hidden he was stopped by the people on the plane, 4 words Horse, Door, Bolted, After), the fuss caused when the lady in front of me passing through neglected to seperate her deadly lipstick and make up (not that it was inspected, it could easily have been 250g of C4). Then there was the 5 minute between being my gate being announced and it closing (the gate itself naturally being a 10 minute walk from the terminal), the overpriced food and drink - the way that it's impossible to actually eat a hot meal in any of the restaurants in the terminal if you are travelling on a domestic flight because you have 90 mins from checkin opening til gate closing in which to check in, get through security, find a restaurant, order your food, eat it, pay the bill, and walk 10 to 20 minutes to the gate.

grrrh hate hate hat

All the parties are talking about 'Empowerment and choice', shame none seem to walk the walk when it comes to actually reforming the benefits systems.

As it stands the benefit systems only benefits two sets of people, neither of whom are supposed to be served by it -- DWP Middle Management and Fraudsters, who both game the system for their own ends.

Unemployment benefit (or jobseekers allowance, or whatever name they choose this few years) and job centres are based around anybody who doesn't have job waiting, queuing, and dossing rather than doing anything useful with their time. Training is based on a limited choice of mickey mouse courses, designed to fill low paid and part time work in call centres or stacking shelves.

The whole system is in need of total reworking to suit the needs of people looking for or unable to work.

* unemployment benefit should be about actively seeking work not 'being available for work' - an afternoon a week applying for jobs is better than all week watching jeremy kyle and this morning - you should be able to spend a 'reasonable' ammount of time on education or care or voluntary work without being penalised instead of being limited to 8 hours a week.
* training should be about getting a good job, not call centres - graduates and other experienced or highly skilled jobseekers should be able to get appropriate training, not mickey mouse nvq courses, there are a wide range of fulltime and parttime courses, both onsite and from home - better to send people on the right course than have a hundred more people with the same useless handful of NVQs
* anybody with a disability applying for benefits should be provided with support and help in their application, everybody applying for benefits should receive help and support with their application, preventing fraud comes after delivering the service - not before!
* The job centre should take an active role in helping people who are unemployed, they should be scouting for voluntary work, courses, grants for businesses or projects, etc to help make people either more employable or more useful. Currently this isn't the case at all - I've never seen anybody in a job centre say "I found this that could help you" it's always "well you'll have to do this <insert mickey mouse course, or a job on the checkout in a supermarket>" regardless of qualifications, interests, skills, experience or age.

The MOD is planning to use PFI to privatise some areas of Search & Rescue, apparently because our current Sea Kings are getting a bit old. Hmm... isn't this the same MOD that's blown 4 Billion on two new Giant Aircraft Carriers, but failed to buy the new helicopters required for current campaigns, and er.. search and rescue.

Cornwall County Council is totally against the idea - not surprising given that Falmouth is the vanguard for the atlantic when it comes to shipping problems.