In the current world climate is Islamophibia the new anti-Semitism?
This is an article that everyone should read. It's safe for work and very interesting, if a little uncomfortable.
Back to revision for me I have a wad of posts waiting to be written up once I finish on Friday
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Monday, 4 January 2010
Beginning of the end; or how the election campaign was started
Right first actual post. I've had a fun morning, suffering from jet lag means I'm actually inhabiting a normal sleep pattern for the moment so I was up early enough to see the un-official start of this years UK government election campaigns.
It would appear that Labour spent their Christmas trying to figure out how much the Torys want to spend, while the Torys spent it coming up with ways of changing the NHS. I'm not sure which route will score them the most points in the end but I think Labour will edge ahead on this one.
I think this for several reasons: reporting that there is a £34bn hole in the Tory's plan will be a hard idea to budge, a lot of what the Torys are saying about the NHS will be old hat to most voters and Labour have cunningly left the Torys little to attack in return.
Hole's in their accounts seem to be a running theme for the Torys: all parties use it as a standard cheap stab "how are you going to pay for X" but it seems to often cause the Torys the most problems. In addition ringfencing the NHS will be hard to achieve, even without spending more on it above inflation it accounts for a huge proportion of the yearly budget.
The points the Torys have made about the NHS will sound good but I think a lot of the will suffer from being a secondary worry to the economy and cuts in general. When Labour took power they did so by highlighting what were major problems in the NHS of the time, trying the same trick when Labour have managed to deal with a lot of the problems facing the NHS will be a hard to pull (there are problems but saying that league tables are a poor measure isn't like saying that people wait up to 10 hours in A&E which was the case when the Torys lost).
As for leaving the Torys little to attack I hope Labour will hold off publishing a manifesto for a while. If nothing else it will damage politics in the UK to have a 5 month election campaign as it will be boring and kill debate.
Of course if the Torys are cunning they may be able to turn this about and use the early attack by Labour to unfoot them and then set the pace with their manifesto, drafts of which they are cunningly publishing over the next few months.
Anyway that was pretty boring but engaged me for the morning so enjoy!
It would appear that Labour spent their Christmas trying to figure out how much the Torys want to spend, while the Torys spent it coming up with ways of changing the NHS. I'm not sure which route will score them the most points in the end but I think Labour will edge ahead on this one.
I think this for several reasons: reporting that there is a £34bn hole in the Tory's plan will be a hard idea to budge, a lot of what the Torys are saying about the NHS will be old hat to most voters and Labour have cunningly left the Torys little to attack in return.
Hole's in their accounts seem to be a running theme for the Torys: all parties use it as a standard cheap stab "how are you going to pay for X" but it seems to often cause the Torys the most problems. In addition ringfencing the NHS will be hard to achieve, even without spending more on it above inflation it accounts for a huge proportion of the yearly budget.
The points the Torys have made about the NHS will sound good but I think a lot of the will suffer from being a secondary worry to the economy and cuts in general. When Labour took power they did so by highlighting what were major problems in the NHS of the time, trying the same trick when Labour have managed to deal with a lot of the problems facing the NHS will be a hard to pull (there are problems but saying that league tables are a poor measure isn't like saying that people wait up to 10 hours in A&E which was the case when the Torys lost).
As for leaving the Torys little to attack I hope Labour will hold off publishing a manifesto for a while. If nothing else it will damage politics in the UK to have a 5 month election campaign as it will be boring and kill debate.
Of course if the Torys are cunning they may be able to turn this about and use the early attack by Labour to unfoot them and then set the pace with their manifesto, drafts of which they are cunningly publishing over the next few months.
Anyway that was pretty boring but engaged me for the morning so enjoy!
Monday, 11 May 2009
i recommend that you sign this
Who ever it is that actually reads this I suggest you sign this as woman should be well represented in politics.
back to revision with all its joys
back to revision with all its joys
Monday, 27 April 2009
More government optimism
Well looks like the government is shelving the database of all our communications idea (at last!) in preference of asking Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to log who connects to what and how - ie if you access Facebook from your iphone or similar. This seems to be an extension of the existing laws regarding telephone logs that allow the police and security services to see who called who when.
What strikes me about this is that it is a £2b scheme that will most likely be futile. Just as cheap pay-as-you-go mobiles have made telephone logging pretty obsolete because it becomes very difficult to log who calls who when the phone isn't registered it is very difficult to glean useful information from the internet when you can send stuff via a proxy and have the information of who your talking to disappear especially when systems like The Onion Router (TOR) exist that helpfully cover who your talking to and where without any real effort.
Basically this seems a lot of money on a system that will achieve next to nothing. If people want to organise via the net there are a hundred ways of doing it that make it near impossible to trace who spoke to who, asking the CSPs to log this information doesn't really help at all especially when you don't even have to route most of your stuff via your ISP - open DNS servers in other countries will allow alot of the useful (to the services) information to by-pass the UK utterly.
What strikes me about this is that it is a £2b scheme that will most likely be futile. Just as cheap pay-as-you-go mobiles have made telephone logging pretty obsolete because it becomes very difficult to log who calls who when the phone isn't registered it is very difficult to glean useful information from the internet when you can send stuff via a proxy and have the information of who your talking to disappear especially when systems like The Onion Router (TOR) exist that helpfully cover who your talking to and where without any real effort.
Basically this seems a lot of money on a system that will achieve next to nothing. If people want to organise via the net there are a hundred ways of doing it that make it near impossible to trace who spoke to who, asking the CSPs to log this information doesn't really help at all especially when you don't even have to route most of your stuff via your ISP - open DNS servers in other countries will allow alot of the useful (to the services) information to by-pass the UK utterly.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Yarr! a pirate's life in Somalia
This is (supposedly) an interview with a Somalian pirate by the bbc.
It's somewhat depressing as unsurprisingly they claim that they have been driven to it by loss of their own sources of income, the claim is illegal fishing and toxic dumping has removed their main employment as fishers. Which makes sense but I can't help but think that mainly it's greed. By the sounds of it the payout for three successful hijackings are significantly better than a lifetime of fishing. That being said given the difference it's a pretty understandable greed.
pah the world sucks
I did like the guys optimism that "Foreign navies can do nothing to stop piracy" having watched the US react to most things I think that sooner or later they will try - even if it just means training crews to kill and leaving escorts around Somalia.
ah well at least they didn't try and make a robin hood story from it.
It's somewhat depressing as unsurprisingly they claim that they have been driven to it by loss of their own sources of income, the claim is illegal fishing and toxic dumping has removed their main employment as fishers. Which makes sense but I can't help but think that mainly it's greed. By the sounds of it the payout for three successful hijackings are significantly better than a lifetime of fishing. That being said given the difference it's a pretty understandable greed.
pah the world sucks
I did like the guys optimism that "Foreign navies can do nothing to stop piracy" having watched the US react to most things I think that sooner or later they will try - even if it just means training crews to kill and leaving escorts around Somalia.
ah well at least they didn't try and make a robin hood story from it.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
How small is the modern world?
Found this linked to on New Scientist. It's a map of how far every point on the surface of the world is from a city (defined as population > 50k). Its pretty cool, firstly as a point of interest, secondly because its been keyed to magma colours so it looks like the earth is on fire.
More generally it is a wonderful description of how the world has accelerated technologically in the recent years, this sort of map 30 years ago would be very different and 100 years ago would be utterly different.
On a related topic this is a wonderful time sink and an amazing way of finding things out/settling disputes. It is a fairly simple but VERY powerful graphing device. Linked to world statistics it allows you to plot along several axis: x & y, point size, colour as well as time.
VERY interesting - although truly depressing in some ways (try watching a time lapse graph of the population of Rwanda).
Both well worth a look and gap minder is an amazing tool.
More generally it is a wonderful description of how the world has accelerated technologically in the recent years, this sort of map 30 years ago would be very different and 100 years ago would be utterly different.
On a related topic this is a wonderful time sink and an amazing way of finding things out/settling disputes. It is a fairly simple but VERY powerful graphing device. Linked to world statistics it allows you to plot along several axis: x & y, point size, colour as well as time.
VERY interesting - although truly depressing in some ways (try watching a time lapse graph of the population of Rwanda).
Both well worth a look and gap minder is an amazing tool.
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