Paul Goggins MP

Any long term reader of this weblog - if such a creature exists - will know that the Government's proposals to enact laws against "Incitement to Religious Hatred", are a particular bete noire of mine and that I have had a couple of exchanges about it with my MP.

I got a letter from her this morning however which said:

I am writing to invite you and a guest to meet the Government Minister responsible for a new law to outlaw religious hatred, Paul Goggins MP. This is an important subject, and I want to thank you for drawing your concerns to my attention. I have organised this special event in the House of Commons to give you a chance to raise your concerns about the new law directly with him, and to listen to his reasons for thinking it is so important to press ahead.

The meeting is later this month and I have replied accepting with alacrity, but I can see I will have to do some preparation over the next week or so.

This is a development I wasn't expecting. It does seem a very positive feature of a parliamentary system.

More later.

Bookends

It is strange and disturbing that the day following Armistice Day is the anniversary of the 1938 meeting where Herman Goering announced:

I have received a letter written on the Fuhrer's orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another... I should not want to leave any doubt, gentlemen, as to the aim of today's meeting. We have not come together merely to talk again, but to make decisions, and I implore competent agencies to take all measures for the elimination of the Jew from the German economy, and to submit them to me.

This was to be the Final Solution. It is indeed salutary and sad to note that Armistice Day is bookended by Goering's exhortation of 'competent agencies' and the preliminary horror of Kristallnacht on the 9/10 November.

When I was younger these events seemed impossibly distant, but now I remember that in 1938 my father was was five years old. That is the same age that my son is in 2005. For some reason that strange symmetry brings the Nazi horror into my compass in a way it has never been before.

swords to help combat violent crime

According to their website and RSS feed:

Cleveland Police are launching a two-week Weapons Amnesty to encourage people to surrender firearms, ammunition, knives and swords to help combat violent crime.

I know times are hard but you really would think that the police would be able to buy their own weapons rather than rely on donations.

Epitaphs of the War

It is Armistice Day today. 87 years since the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front that ended the Great War.

Try reading Kipling's Epitaphs of the War.

I often think of the bleak 'Common Form'.

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

It is difficult to read the heartbreaking 'A Son', knowing that Kipling lost his own boy in the trenches.

My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

I read that Hilaire Belloc lost a son, Louis, in the First World War and then another, Peter, in the Second. which led him to quote Herodotus.

In peace sons bury their fathers; in war fathers bury their sons.

Finger-tips

Woody Allen once said,

If I were to come back in another life, I would like to be Warren Beatty's finger-tips.

Well, 'The Melody at Night With You' has finally arrived from Amazon. It is indeed as sublime as I hoped, so if I were to come back in another life, I would like to be Keith Jarrett's finger-tips.

I've read somewhere that Warren Beatty is a competent piano player, so perhaps - as a compromise - I could come back as his left hand and Jarret's right.

Laughter in the Dark Part II

Now that Tony Blair has been defeated over proposals to extend the time that the police could detain terror suspects without charge from a fortnight to three months, it may be a good time to tell a story about a terror suspect who turned out to be innocent.

Apparently after Jean Charles de Menezes had been gunned down in Stockwell tube station, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police phoned the Home Secretary.

"Terrible news," he said. "We've shot a Brazilian at a tube station".

"Oh no," answered the Home Secretary. "How many is a brazzillion?"

Consider the horror

Christopher Hitchens writing in Slate quotes Johann Hari:

At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem - it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill.

Then, in his last paragraph he nails it.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. Our policy in Darfur has not just failed to rescue a stricken black African population: It has actually assisted the Sudanese Islamists in completing their policy of racist murder. Thank heaven that we are tough enough to bear the shame of this, and strong enough to forgive ourselves.

Something so evil has gone on quietly yet unabashed while the guitars were strummed at Live8 and the UN shmoozed Mugabe, that in a strange way black humour - the laughter in the dark epitomised by words like Hari's - is, perhaps the only way to approach the horror without abandoning faith in the human race.

"Sudan Must've Worked Itself Out", The Onion laughed through the tears in June. I smirked that "Sudan and Wales Protest" back in March, but now I feel ashamed.

I read and researched and concluded that nothing had changed.

Sometimes I just feel like I want to dig a hole in the garden and bury my heart in it.

I would like to be able to vote that we should intervene; intervene directly and militarily. Does that sound naive or even neo colonialist? Who cares?

Another No

I left a comment over at the Another Constable blog yesterday, pointing to some of my old ideas about how the Police could take advantage of RSS feeds.

He's not convinced and says:

Nice idea, but in practice, police IT is so far in the past, I bet nobody that matters in the procurement game has even heard of RSS. We're still using Windows NT4 with products designed years and years ago running on it (some of them still have the windows furniture from version 3). Coming from an IT background myself, I'm shocked at the state of our IT. Our new Chief is more forward thinking on IT (giving us mobile data terminals in all vehicles to access PNC, is very pro ANPR, etc) so hopefully things will improve.

I'm still hopeful. I've noticed that Wiltshire, Cleveland and ACPO all have feeds on their sites now. The latter courtesy of us.

Avian Flu Evolution

I found what I think may be a good overview Avian flu and the possibility of a pandemic, or maybe I'm just reasssured that the guy who wrote it thinks the pandemic unlikely.

Here's part of the section on evolution of new strains of flu. Avian flu is an example of Type A influenza. Type A has the potential to be so very deadly because it can mutate in a host through an astonishing process called genetic reassortment.

If a cell is simultaneously infected by two different strains of type A influenza, the offspring virions may contain mixtures of each parents' genes!

...........

These newly created mixed genomes are very different from their parents and (probably) have never been "seen" by your immune system - or for that matter, anyone else's. This form of viral evolution is called antigenic shift, to differentiate it from antigenic drift (which occurs slowly and without a change in the gene associations). These new combinations present us with such a unique strain of virus that our immune system has to start all over to make new antibodies to combat it.

As if that weren't amazing enough, influenza A can infect other mammals (other than humans) and even birds! It's VERY unusual for a virus to have such a wide host range, but influenza A somehow manages this trick. It probably has to do with the fact that the virus gains entry using receptors common to many species. That means a strain of influenza A may worry one species for decades and then suddenly jump to a new species! This sudden jump, due to antigenic shift, can produce a very serious epidemic. For example, about a decade ago many seals washed up on the eastern seaboard of the USA dying from a strain of influenza A that, until then, had only been found in birds! Horse and swine influenza A have turned up in humans. Influenza A is the nightmare of science fiction - a virus that normally causes only a slight illness, undergoes genetic recombination with other species and comes back as a killer virus! Fact is, influenza A has been conducting random, unlicensed recombinant genetics "experiments" for centuries and will continue to do so regardless of our feelings on the subject.

From the Tup Stammtisch

We made it to the Tup, so I'm, posting this over a lager while waiting for my Chilli burger.

We've got 48Mbs over the free wireless connection and I can get onto the office VPN and access Terminal Services. In essence no ports seem to be blocked, so I could work from here if my liver could stand the strain.

Thus, on a local note, I have read that the sale of Colliers Wood community centre has been discussed by Merton Council. No details about selling it to Cynthia Payne or Max Clifford though.

Amazon

I've had yet another purchase on Amazon from this site. I'm pretty sure it was my brother buying Shoalin Soccer.

Amazon provide an online wizard that you can use to build Associate links to their site, but it is a bit of a rigmarole so I have been doing a bit of research on making it easier and there is a much simpler method.

If I search Amazon for Shoalin Soccer, the full URL that I get is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006M4S28/qid=1131354446/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/026-5100187-6109208


If I remove the session ID and ref tags that follow the ASIN number I am left with just:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006M4S28/.

All I need to do then is to append my ID to give:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006M4S28/awelshbornico-21

The link above takes me to a purchase page. I can go to the exact original page that I started with by adding ref=nosim after the ASIN number to give:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006M4S28/ref=nosim/awelshbornico-21.

I turns out then that all I have to do to get a link is navigate to the product and replace the portion of the URL after the ASIN number with:
ref=nosim/awelshbornico-21

Couldn't be easier.

Stammtisch Table

I've stumbled on a great new - or at least new to me - German word in, of all places, the print version of Time Out; Stammtisch.

Stammtisch is a 'regular's table' where people meet week after week after week and discuss what's going on in the world. Apparently, most large bars and restaurants in Germany even have a Stammtisch Table with a 'Stammtisch' sign on it for the regulars. The word 'Stamm' is very old, it means tribe or clan. One could say tribe's table or clan's table.

A Welsh Born Icon was originally subtitled 'Nick Browne's Commonplace Book' then, earlier this year, it became 'Nick Browne's Spindrift Pages' in homage to Dylan Thomas.

Lately its become a much more social space. Comments, trackbacks and links from elsewhere are much more frequent, Simon Brunning is proposing that the Colliers Wood blogger's meet up, and the blog has even turned up on Norman Geras' blogroll (honest, it is there between Welcome to the Breakdown Lane, and What is Liberalism).

In honour of this I have decided to change its subtitle - at least for a while - to 'Nick Browne's Stammtisch Table', a change I intend to launch officially by posting from the Collier's Tup lunchtime tomorrow.

PS I suppose it is worth reiterating that 'A Welsh Born Icon' is an anagram of Nicholas Browne rather than incipient megalomania.

Penny for the Guy

I'm taking my five year old to the firework display at Morden Park later. A prospect which has inspired a curmudgenly meditation on why it is that "Trick or Treating" on Halloween - an American import unknown when I was a boy, has replaced "Penny for the Guy", the more venerable British tradition for kids putting the bite on adults at this time of year.

It used to be that we would make make a Guy by stuffing some old clothes with newspapers, craft a head out of material, and either draw a face on it or buy a special cardboard Guy Fawkes mask and then push it around in a pram or pushchair demanding a "a penny for the guy" from passers by. The pennies were spent on bangers. Ordnance that is now illegal I think, never mind banned from sale to kids.

(I remember my father saying that when they were boys they dressed my Uncle Joseph up as they guy to save assembly time and some bloke started poking him with a stick claiming such a poor Guy wasn't worth a penny.)

The British have been burning effigies to mark Guy Fawkes' treason for almost 400 years. The tradition started in 1606, the year after the Gunpowder plot failed. In these first bonfires, called 'bone fires' at the time, it wasn't an effigy of Guy Fawkes that was burned, but one of the Pope. It was not until 1806, two centuries later, that the people started burning effigies of Guy Fawkes instead. Even as a cradle Catholic, I do hope that they burn a Guy at Mordern rather than defer to some imaginary sensibilities. I never met a Catholic who could give a monkey's about it, never mind get offended or mount a high horse.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.

By god's mercy he was catch'd
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.

And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!

The only thing I can grudgingly say in favour of the shake down custom imported from our cousins in the US is that - much to my delight - Raybs used to think it was called "Trickle Treat".

The Melody at Night With You

I turned on the radio when I was out in the car on Wednesday night and caught the last thirty seconds or so of a very beautiful understated version of 'Someone to Watch Over Me' on SmoothFM. When it finished I was surprised to hear that it was by Keith Jarrett, someone to whom I have never paid much attention as I associated him with long complex modern jazz improvisations. Not that I ever heard such a workout, I just can't remember experiencing any 'difficult' music ever without wishing it was impossible.

With Google and the internet it was the work of moments to find that the track was from a solo piano album he made album called, 'The Melody at Night With You'. I couldn't get it on Napster so it is winging its way to me from Amazon.

In Jarrett's Wikipedia entry it says:

In the late 1990s, Jarrett was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and was confined to his home for long periods of time. During this period, he recorded The Melody at Night, With You, a solo piano record consisting of jazz standards presented with very little of the reinterpretation in which he usually engages. The album had originally been a Christmas gift to his wife.

That's a bittersweet but uplifitng story, especially if the music is as good as I am expecting it to be.

A few 'lessons' struck me.

Before the internet, I don't think I would really have had the time or inclination to track the music down. (I remember a traumatic episode at the HMV in Hammermsith when I tried, and failed, to identify Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings by humming the tune to the guy behind the counter, not an experience I - or I imagine he - would be keen to repeat.)

Regardless of corporate hype the internet is bound ultimately to be good for music and artists if not for record companies. The overheads in recording a solo piano album at home and distributing it digitally would be close to zero.

How to be Top

According to ComingAnarchy.com, the greatest conquerors of all time, in terms of square miles taken are:

1. Genghis Khan (4,860,000) [Mongolia]
2. Alexander the Great (2,180,000) [Macedonia]
3. Tamerlane (2,145,000) [Turkestan]
4. Cyrus the Great (2,090,000) [Persia]
5. Attila the Hun (1,450,000) [Hun Empire]
6. Adolf Hitler (1,370,000) [Germany]
7. Napoleon (720,000) [France]
8. Mahmud of Ghazni (680,000) [Afghanistan]
9. Francisco Pizarro (480,000) [Spain]
10. George W. Bush (423,424) [United States]

They say that the last one is partially tongue in cheek, and point out that someone has commented;

If Bush invades Canada, as I believe he should, he will overtake Alexander the Great, but still be a Napoleon short of Genghis Khan.

How Much?

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

That's not counting the £2 plus that it has earned from Amazon, or the 33 cents I got from messing about with Google's AdSense for search back in February.

TrackBack

As promised, I've started to look at TrackBack. I sent a TrackBack to Another Constable yesterday, and - to be honest - it didn't seem to be any improvement over leaving a comment and using my post's permalink as the home page reference. I can see however that if I had combined both of my first two posts of yesterday I could have used Trackback to link to Brian's Brief Encounters at the same time as Another Constable. It is scarcely mindblowing though.

It turns out that TrackBack was initially developed by Movable Type, the blogging software developers.

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

They also say ...

Although TrackBack's most prevalent use thus far has been as a form of remote commenting, a more exciting use has been emerging: using TrackBack to aggregate content into topic-based repositories. This was actually the original intended use of TrackBack--the remote commenting grew out of a special case of a topic-based repository, the "topic" being a single weblog post.

I can understand that in theory - one way links are a great shortcoming of the web - but it seems to me that - at least for the moment - apart from rare occasions, where one might need to notify many sites at once of a relevant post, the complexity of using trackback rather than a simple comment will render it a tool for a minority.

About last night

I went out for drink or two after work with Paul last night. While he was at the bar in the Standard, I noticed Bob Brunning having a quiet solo pint a couple of tables away so I introduced myself to thank him for all that he does for music in the area with his Blues Club and AbbeyFest. He was very gracious. Noodling around on his website today I found out that he is Simon Brunning's father. Small World.

Paul departed after several million pints and I also treated myself to a take away chicken dhansak, pulao rice and sag aloo. The net result of all this I found out at the gym lunchtime is that I weigh 2.9 pounds more than I did yesterday morning. I wouldn't have thought that was physically possible. The human body is indeed an amazing thing.

Speaking of curry, I was astonished to find that someone has bought yet another copy of Indian Essence: The Fresh Tastes of India's New Cuisine yesterday after following a link to Amazon from this site. That's three I've been instrumental in selling now. Amazing.

A Word To The Wise

I tend to run through my blogroll alphabetically on my aggregator of a morning. So I pick up Brian's Brief Encounters - an unofficial Metropolitan Police fanzine, brought to you from a small corner of the throbbing metropolis - shortly after Another Constable, life through the eyes of a brand new british bobby.

I've blogged about Another Constable's post on case files already this morning so it was interesting to read this piece in Brian's Brief Encounters as I think it explains why the Home Office change the MG Forms every year. It is because they are always collecting different statistics.

When he says ...

Yes, I realise that you may consider yourself to be British but not ‘white’. Like I said, this isn’t one of our questions and you’re only allowed to describe yourself as British if you also describe yourself as ‘white’ because the Home Office says so. Even if your ancestors have been in Britain for multiple generations or you’ve passed the citizenship test.

... he's talking about a taxonomy called '16 Point Self-Determined Ethnic Classification System'. He's right as well. I'd never thought of it that way before.

Here it is in all its glory.

White
British
Irish
Any other White background
Mixed
White and Black Caribbean
White and Black African
White and Asian
Any other mixed background
Asian or Asian British
Indian
Pakistani
Bangladeshi
Any other Asian background
Black or Black British
Caribbean
African
Any other Black background
Chinese or other ethnic group
Chinese
Any other ethnic group

In Brief

It tickled me when I was directed to our Corporate Criminal Justice document on how to properly complete a prosecution case file and found that the link to the document entitled "Getting It Right First Time" was followed by the legend "(revised version)".

This post on the Another Constable weblog made me chuckle. One of our products is a set of Word templates designed to ease the assembly of MG Forms into a case file. It has always bemused me that the Home Office feels the need to tinker with them every year.