Hmm, working in Westminster for the last two years, my view on the actions of Brian Haw have changed.
I have no problem with people protesting in Parliament Square, whether they be Anti-War, Pro Fox Hunting, Women’s Global Strike, Anti-Fees.
However I believe that Brian Haw is slightly different.
Firstly, Westminster City Council are always cracking down on people sleeping rough, including those behind Army & Navy on Victoria Street, so how Brian Haw is different I don’t know.
Secondly, if I was to hold a demonstration outside Westminster, and then leave my placards behind, I would expect Westminster City Council to remove them, but again it’s different for Brian Haw. How signs and placards which litter Parliament Square can be seen as “his property” I’m not sure.
I believe that he has to go, although I have no problems with him catching the bus everyday to Parliament Square, to stand out side and to shout through his megaphone, whilst holding his placard, but any more signs and the sleeping rough must stop.
All posts by Ryan Cullen
Young Dems’ sick Blunkett Stunt
Now whilst I think that I might have been called sick once before, a national newspaper is a first for me (and on page 2!).
Chris Bryant MP seems to think that an item which I designed and sent out to student branches 15 months ago is newsworthy. Now I can understand why people might think that I’m “poking fun at David Blunkett’s blindness”, but I wasn’t.
I spent ages researching what an ID Card would look like and a year ago these were the stories that were on the BBC Website Plans for ‘£40 ID cards’ and Blunkett pushes ID cards debate. Back then, we were all led to believe that ID Cards would be an all-in-one card, which would replace your passport and driving license.
Now as we have EU standardised driving licenses, the belief was that ID cards would look similar, but would differentiate between those who could drive, those with a provisional license and those who can not drive.
Early examples of designs for ID Cards across a variety of sources all had the words “This card is not valid for driving”
However since Blunkett changed his mind last week, and now you’ll need a driving license, a bio-metric passport and a bio-metric ID card, I’m guessing that the design will be slightly different.
On another note, I like the fact that Chris Bryant said “Everyone knows the young Lib Dems want to legalise drugs and Kennedy hasn’t the spine to take them on.” I was under the impression that we lived in a democracy, and one of the great things about the Liberal Democrats, is that it lets it’s members, local parties and the youth wing make policy. In fact this is exactly what Peter Hain was calling for in the Guardian back in March.
Although I have to say that I do like Chris Bryant’s idea of calling LDYS “Lib Demlets”
Please note, that I DO NOT grant permission to anybody, to use the images included in this post, please contact me first
A Second Style
Whilst wandering around the Opera website, I discovered the style setting handheld.
So I’ve knocked together a style sheet for mobile/pda devices which use Opera.
To add your own, you’re best off hosting your style sheets in a separate file, and not in the blogger template.
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”https://blog.artesea.co.uk/blog_style.css” media=”screen”>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”https://blog.artesea.co.uk/handheld_style.css” media=”handheld”>
Will probably play about with it some more over the next few days, but if you want to have a look at how it appears, you’ll can download normal Opera, and then press Shift+F11 to get it to convert into SSR.
Adjudications: Vodafone Ltd 27th October 2004
Families on Trains
Another thing to add to my illiberal list of things to ban is Families on Trains (well on work days anyway).
Whilst most workers love half-term as the roads become empty, those of us who travel by train have a worse journey. All the parents in the home-counties, plus 2-4 children and a buggy each want to visit London for the day. And thus the train carriages fill pretty quickly.
Not only that, but instead of having the rather peaceful journey every day to and from work, in which I read, we now have 30-40 kids making a noise, and the one next to you can never sit still, and continues to kick you all the way home.
Now I know this only really lasts for a week, and that this half-term is the worst of the holidays, but if parents want to go to London, they should catch trains after 10am and return before 4pm.
Gambling law shake-up is unveiled
Whilst this is old news, and I don’t normally like to name and shame, I saw this mini-cab office yesterday in Ruislip, and 6 kids, no older than 15 walked in and started playing on the machines.
From the look of the ladies face, behind the counter, it seemed that this happened all the time.
Google Desktop Search
I’ve recently installed the Google Desktop Search software to my home computer, whilst I have only played about with it for a few minutes, it does look promising.
However I am waiting for support for PDF files and Mozilla web pages, which are the more tricky to find ones.
Stories in the media: BBC, Guardian*
New Car
This weekend I bought myself a new car.
Keeping in the tradition of buying cars from relatives, this one came from my Aunt.
However unlike the previous cars (Vauxhall Nova and Rover Metro), this one is in a good condition, and has air conditioning, leather seats and a cd multi-changer in the boot.
Labour accused of lottery larceny
Mr Major, who set up the lottery, said money meant for traditionally under-funded areas like art, sport and heritage was being siphoned off.
“This is now being used as substituted government funding, that is not what it was intended for,” he told the BBC.
I think John Major is right here, and the problem I have with Tessa Jowells “citizens’ panels”, is that either items which should be paid for out of general taxation (eg Cancer Scanner), or items which already receive large charity donations (eg Dogs Homes) will get the money, whilst those underfunded never-gonna-get-a-penny-of-public-money causes will lose out.
Promoters fight poster crackdown
“The council estimated that dealing with illegal fly-posting costs borough taxpayers £250,000 a year.
Earlier this month Luton Borough Council put ‘cancelled’ stickers over music promoters’ posters that had been placed on lampposts without permission.”
Whilst I can’t give Luton much credit for anything, the ‘cancelled’ stickers are brilliant.