Mark's Blog

Remember everyone that believed the lib dems and there pledges and promises what they actually deliver, basically nothing apart from a vote on AV to try and get them more power. Every other pledge. promise or commitment means nothing to them. Remember at the next election when you get one on the doorstep telling you how progressive they are and how they would oppose any increase in student fees, how the would fight against job losses and huge cuts to public services, remember commitments about not raising VAT, remember all of this and you will see the truth of the lib dem manifesto, its all complete and utter bollocks, its meaningless and not worth the paper its written on. The #libdems have sold out every single ounce of credibility they ever had just so that 21 of them could have a bigger salary and a nice ministerial car, its funny how the government majority was exactly the number of lib dem ministers in the coalition. We then have that complete and utter coward Simon Hughes who doesn’t believe in extra tuition fees and stated he believes it will reduce the number of people from poorer backgrounds going to university, didn’t even have the guts to vote. Given the numbers involved he KNEW that abstaining was as good as voting in favour.

Now in four and a half years time when these same lying toerags turn up on your doorstep REMEMBER! Remember why your children will be 40k in debt before even starting to look for a job if they even bother to goto university at all. Remember the huge cut in public services. Remember the increase in VAT. Now there will be the usual guff about the budget deficit like the country is living on one big VISA card. This is a false analogy, and remember mostly that these cuts are IDEALOGICAL rather than necessary! Remember to take all this into account before you tell them to sling there lying hooks and slam the door in their face.

Now some might say that this took the tories too, well ofc it did but we all knew in advance what they were like. The majority of people in this country did not vote for the tories, they did not vote for 20% VAT, 9K a year tuition fees or an all out assault on the public sector and essential services. Remember in 10 years time when doctors, solicitors and other university trained professionals are in short supply because people no longer bother to goto university. Remember when they are having to put up the immigration cap to let in “essential” workers that the reason we have to let in so many “essential” workers is we sat back and moaned about paying for the education of the next generation of professionals to provide us with healthcare, legal advice, psychiatry and people in industry like engineers and scientists who are essential to business.

We brits are a funny lot about the police we are ever so quick to criticize them all just because of the actions of a few in high profile events, but the minute our car is broken into we or we are attacked we turn to the police for help and assistance. Now providing help and assistance is what the police are there for and whilst we might not be happy when they don’t turn up mob handed for with SOCOs and forensics when someone breaks your window they help when really needed or when they can. I believe that most police officers joined the police force for the right reasons to serve the community they patrol, to help others and if needs be to put themselves in harms way to protect us, and for the vast majority of officers that’s what they do day in day out, often with little thanks from those they help.

I would never support blind obedience or lack of critical oversight of the police, however I think by and large myself included many of us need to give them a break. They are out there day after day dealing with violent and downright nasty people keeping the rest of us safe, I think many do become quite jaded and I can well understand there lack of trust with people giving them all sorts of sob stories as they probably get them everyday.

That does bring us to the other problems of the police and policing. I am going to refer to events as its easier to demonstrate the point. The first incident of recent years which there was a lot of controversy surrounding was the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes. Just to recap for those that aren’t from the UK or those that have already forgotten the case, Jean was a Brazilian living in London on the days after the 07/07 public transport bombings in London who was mistaken for a terrorist and shot on the tube. The Metropolitan police commissioner at the time was Ian Blair who was on TV on the hours after the shooting saying how it was great we got a terrorist, as emerged less than 24 hours later they had gotten the wrong guy what compounds this error is that the commissioner was publically saying that we had got a nasty terrorist even after doubts had been raised as to the identity of the individual concerned. To compound these lies at the inquest into the death of Jean it emerged that there were serious errors in the operation to tail the original target who was someone else living in the same block of flats. The individual who gave the kill order was never disciplined and in fact was promoted. The officers that were in the team that killed Jean were later suspected of lying under oath at the inquest, but this was never investigated.

I really don’t want to delve too deeply into the death of Ian Tomlinson as its a fairly recent case, a brief description is that a man unconnected with a demonstration that was going on at the time came into contact with police who were policing that demonstration. One of the officers attacked Ian(I won’t say is alleged to have attacked as the video footage is very conclusive) and it is believed that the injuries that were sustained in that attack were a direct contributory factor into Ian’s death. However due to a series of screw ups with an incompetent pathologist and the CPS taking too long to charge the officer concerned he will face no criminal charges. This is two very serious incidents where officers were directly responsible or were most likely directly responsible for the death of two people going about their everyday lawful business. These were not criminals or protesters just your average Joe going in one case too work and in the other coming home from work. I appreciate that the circumstances around the death of Jean Charles De Menezes were extreme but I hardly think its appropriate to promote someone who was responsible for such a major screw up. I also don’t think its right that a commissioner who was briefing the press with facts he knew were probably inaccurate and besmirching the character of an innocent man killed by his force did not face some sort of censure, in fact this man is now in the House of Lords I noticed earlier.

The final point I wanted to make is that the police tactics around demonstrators including the student demonstrators in London are disgusting and I am not just talking about the kettling either. FIT teams regularly harass people who have committed no crime but who demonstrate their displeasure of government policy or whatever other cause they are supporting. On the whole these are good law abiding people going about their lawful right to protest, they are not violent and just want to demonstrate as they are legally entitled to do. Unfortunately some dubious people use these well intentioned people as a cover to misbehave and smash things up. The organisers and members of the protest by and large hate these people abusing their day of action to cause trouble, however they distrust the police even more because of the intimidation which can include following people to their homes, around shops and work places, and all the while trying to engage them in conversation in such a manner as to intimate, harass and humiliate. These are just ordinary people who believe in something who want to peacefully let their opinions be known, and these are exactly the people the police need to have onside if they want decent intelligence on the troublemakers that turn up only to cause mayhem.

To conclude the police do an amazing and absolutely necessary job dealing with the sorts of people and incidents most of us would never want to have to deal with, I can imagine officers who help victims and investigate rape, child abuse and serious violence could be traumatised by having to deal with it day in and day out and its not something I think I could do. I’d like to be able to help people but I don’t think this is a way that would be easy for anyone. However there are some issues that really need to dealt with otherwise people will continue to lose faith in the integrity and dedication of all police officers. The community as a whole has to trust the police and part of that means that police officers like the the officer who attacked Ian Tomlinson need to be properly investigated and charged like any other member of the public. I can understand that the police have a difficult and no doubt at times frustrating job but any incident of unnecessary violence should be dealt with quickly the people need to see justice being done. As for the case of Jean I am not suggesting that anyone should have been charged criminally over the death, there are a lot of pressures involved with going after terrorists and the immediate aftermath of the July 2005 bombings that pressure must have been extreme, but when an operation screws up as badly as that the person in charge should never have been promoted, in fact I don’t thing a resignation was out of order in that case. Police officers lying under oath is a serious matter however, most criminal charges will involve police officers testifying under oath, if the public gain the impression that lying under oath is a common thing it could seriously undermine the trials of criminal suspects.

But remember if the police stop you that ultimately for most they are just there to protect and serve the public and to keep everyone safe even those that do nothing but complain about them

I don’t want to discuss the wikileaks articles or the ethics of releasing so much information that has been poorly redacted. What disturbs me is that we have an organisation that has never supported violence in any way shape or form, infact it works to uncover violence being labelled a “terrorist organisation”. Now I think some people need to look in the dictionary nobody associated with wikileaks can be described as a terrorist. To even try and paint wikileaks members as terrorists or the organisation itself a terrorist organisation does a huge disservice to all those hurt and killed by terrorist atrocities and there families. Ultimately you could possibly call the organisation an enemy of the US, again I think that label is inaccurate it is only releasing information that it is given, and it doesnt target the US government specifically. But I am starting to go offtopic so back to what was my primary concern about this whole saga….

I am very concerned about wikileaks being dropped by various ISPs based on an accusation of illicit activities. Wikileaks and nobody who is part of wikileaks has as of yet been accused of a crime never mind charged or convicted. This goes against the whole basis of modern legal systems which is innocent until proven guilty, and if the US legal system is based on this principle then the actions of the US government would be prejudicial to this principle. What I find most chilling of all is that two companies can effectively block any card transaction to support wikileaks. This covers every country in the world. This to me is very worrying and maybe its time for Europe to look into setting up its own card transaction bureau as we are totally reliant on US companies which could be forced by the government to block individuals or companies processing card transactions.

Again students are demonstrating against the unjustified rise in tuition fees that will bar many people from middle and poorer backgrounds from being able to afford an education and have a life afterwards. The students organising the marches have again worked with the police and are now in the process of being “kettled”, a term for collective punishment and humiliation where people are crowded into small areas and denied access to food, water, toilets or any other basic amenities regardless of age or infirmity. Now at previous demonstrations a small minority have misbehaved and only joined in to cause trouble so instead of the police targeting those people they police have targeted everyone. This is the same lying violent police force that has gotten away with 2 murders, lying to the press, false arrest and false imprisonment to name but a few issues over the last five years.

I really don’t know how anyone can trust the police as an organisation anymore, in fact if I was in the place of the protesters I would in future limit what I tell the police to the bare minimum they have proven time and again to be violent(charging horses at kettled protestors last week and denying it publically, the murder of Ian Tomlinson) and untrustworthy(just look at the “kettling” already happening today when following the approved route). The commissioner of the metropolitan police at the time of the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes by officers of the metropolitan police who later lied at the inquest into the death of Jean, lied himself to the press repeatedly for the 24 hours after the death of Jean. We then have the disgusting tactics used by the police FIT teams who break and bend the law and intimidate political activists who have committed no crime and are not even suspected of breaking the law. To even consider protesting against a government policy such as the war in Iraq or against the construction of weapons of mass destruction in the country(aka nuclear weapons) runs the risk of being stopped under any pretext, being photographed and added to a database of “domestic extremist”

I just wanted to add some comments re my earlier post. I am not anti police they do a difficult job in sometimes very difficult circumstances. Dealing with the nastiest people around including violent and sex offenders. I believe that the vast majority of policemen are there to protect and to serve the public and do the job for the right reasons. However there are bad apples and the police are far too reticent to stand up to them. When senior commanders make huge mistakes like Commander Cresswell did when she ordered an innocent man to be shot there appears to be little or no accountability. For the public to trust the police they need to be honest they need to make sure the bad apples are drummed out. They need to apologise when they screw up. They need to be accountable for there actions see thug who murdered Ian Tomlinson and Commander Cresswell.

If they expect demonstrators to work with them they need to rethink the intimidatory and quite frankly disturbing tactics of the FIT teams. They also need to ensure that riot control is done in a more propionate way, I dont think anyone can claim that kettling thousands of people for the actions of less than a hundred idiots is in any way proportionate. As it stands the police as a group (not as individuals many of who are good people who care about protecting the community and the public) risk further alienating many in the country especially the young. Deal with people proportionately, fairly and honestly and admit your mistakes and ensure those bad apples that you have are punished and reprimanded properly and maybe you will start to earn the trust of many of the people out there who are currently distrustful of the police.

I have to admit I watch the coverage of the latest wikileaks incident with interest. I find it unbelievable that any one person could have gathered this much information from a secret network and then be able to copy if off and walk away with it from a secure location. This is a huge amount of data when you consider the Afghanistan files, the Iraq files and the state department cables.

Basic security measures do not seem to be in place or at least weren’t at the time of the theft. What possible valid reason could there be for an army private to have access to all this state department related data? It appears that the data he collected in many cases wasn’t in any way related to his duties. Where is the basic access control to the data? Where is the oversight from his superior? Surely it would make sense for his superior to be sent a report of everything this analyst was accessing? Why is there no security analysis flagging up how much information this low level individual was accessing? I would have expected some sort of automated log file analysis to flag this unusual usage. Now I know no technical detail of US secret network(I mean how could I being a Brit) but I suspect it will encrypt traffic and run on totally separate and private network, so why put all this level of technical measures when you don’t do the basics of ensuring that people have appropriate access to information.

Then the next point is where is the physical security? This is an army base and a room with access to a secret network, so even when you consider how insecure the access to data is, its just as bad that physical security failed. I can’t believe that the USB ports were left enabled on the terminal that was allegedly used to download the data. Furthermore I can’t believe there was access to a CD/DVD Burner that was so accessible. It then beggars belief that the person alleged to have downloaded the data was able to walk in and out of an area with access to a secret network with a USB and a writeable CD without being stopped.

I suspect before this is over there will be a lot of lessons learned and these measures will be addressed but that’s not exactly a process that can be completed overnight. Additionally I suspect governments and corporations world wide are now starting to think how exactly can we stop our private data being passed to wikileaks? I would be very surprised if there is not more legislation worldwide covering data theft and copyright, although I do hope that this balances the fact there are times when whistle-blowers are needed.

My main concern about these leaks is that it has endangered people around the globe who are named as having helped Americans world wide. Was there any need to publish the documents directly onto the internet why not just pass them to media organisations to extract the informative information without endangering the lives of others. I am really not convinced with the latest release of embassy communications, I don’t so far see any overwhelming public interest. At best there was some slight naughtiness to monitor and spy on UN officials and other foreign dignitaries but I bet that all countries do the same to some extent. The rest just seems to be little more than gossip. The earlier releases of Afghan and Iraq war files there was some disturbing evidence of war crimes and atrocities committed that I really hope are followed up on. War crimes can never be accepted or tolerated and if we expect others to treat us with respect we need to do the same in return.

I do have some other thoughts on wikileaks and its current direction but I will leave those for another post.

As you have no doubt noticed I have made a few changes and added a few plugins for wordpress. The biggest change I have made is to change commenting over to the DISQUS system. I did this as it allows people to make comments without creating an account and you can use whatever form of login is most convenient be it facebook, twitter or openID. Unfortunately this does mean the internal user database is no longer used for comments. You can still comment anonymously for the time being but if spam or abusive comments ever become a problem this will be blocked forcing people to login with an account from facebook, twitter, DISQUS or openID.

Whilst you use facebook or twitter to login and post your comment I have no access to any of your confidential facebook or twitter information. You do not enter your login details to this site but if you have any further questions please check the DISQUS website directly.

As some of you already know I am a huge Harry Potter fan having seen all but the first movie in the cinema, and having read all the books including queuing up in the middle of Crewe at midnight waiting to get a copy from Waterstones on release night. My love of Harry Potter started when I rented the first movie on DVD, I wasn’t expecting much I had pretty much only borrowed it because I didn’t feel right trashing a movie I hadn’t seen. What can I say I loved that movie it was the first movie I had since since a kid which felt magical. Since then I have enjoyed all of the other films in the cinema, although weirdly my favourite book was always book 4(Harry Potter and the goblet of fire) but I didn’t really think much of the movie. Conversely I was never fond of book5(Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix) but up to the recent move that was my favourite of the movies. If you have yet to read and/or see a Harry Potter book and/or film I can thoroughly recommend them.

Now onto the film itself I really liked it. The acting of all three was superb with some really great scenes from Emma Watson at the beginning. It is very true to the books possibly truer than the other films have been. Now ultimately I don’t want to give any spoilers to either those that have read the book as to where it differs from the book although generally this is only slightly, and neither do I wish to spoil it for those who are following the movies and not the books; so I am very carefully considering how I put this. My biggest gripe is there were a few scenes where Ron is not with Harry and Hermione part way through the film the reason for this I will let you watch the film and see, but the point being there was a hint of something there in these scenes that I did not like. They did not portray the feeling very well and actually hinted at something else in my opinion. Elsewhere solid performances from the other actors, Beatrix by Helena Botham Carter was as usual amazing. A snivelling Mr Malfoy was always going to be a winner and portrayed so well by Jason Isaacs. Tom Felton is developing into a great actor his scenes in this movie just like in the half blood prince were brilliantly done. I have always loved Mr and Mrs Weasley and Mark Williams and Julie Walters have always played them brilliantly. Julie Walters is exactly as in the book a warm loving mother type I dont think they could have found a more natural person for the role.

Now onto the trio itself I have always thought that Rupert Grint as Ron was an amazing match this continues into this film and along with Emma Watson as Hermione they have always been great. I didn’t really think much of Daniel Radcliffe’s acting in the first couple of Harry Potter films always seemed forced and unnatural although admittedly that might have been due to what the director wanted, however in the last few films he has been excellent and I am really looking forward to seeing how he does the final battle in part two, he has possibly the toughest role coming up and judging by his recent performances he is well up to the role.

For me I think this film deserves a 9/10 only spoiled by those few scenes I mentioned earlier otherwise it would have been a 10/10. All in all great fun and really can’t wait for the second part. If you are going to watch bear in mind this is a two and half hour film, and I really started to regret that large diet coke towards the end!

If you want to regularly post comments and want a custom picture of your own then this blog works with gravatar to give you a custom avatar that follows you from site to site. For it to work however you will need to ensure that you sign up with the same email address here as with gravatar. You can feel fairly safe signing up for an account as I would never use your email address inappropriately and would never pass it onto a third party for any reason.

Well I have been having issues with my laptop for a while as I have been unable to use the trackpad. I thought it was just a Linux funny with a rogue update or similar but it wasn’t a really bad problem as I have a trackball that I normally use. As you can imagine this is tedious if just wanting to browse in bed or about the house so thought tonight I am going to fix this problem once and for all. I searched via google tried various solutions I found all to no avail so thought I would just boot to windows for a change. Now I am guessing you can see where this is going…

So windows vista loads…eventually and I try to click on my portrait to login and as you have probably guessed the trackpad wasn’t working. So I finally had the proof that I wasn’t looking for that it wasn’t a Linux problem. My next assumption (you would think by this time I would stop assuming) was that the problem MUST be hardware related(by this time I have given up on windows and snuck of back to Linux) and I dutifully loaded up Google and searched for “Acer aspire 5720 trackpad doesnt work” . I cant remember which link it was in the list now but it was in the top 10 finally gave me the answer, Press Function and F7. It was as simple as that! No need modprobe this that and the other, read device entries or edit half a dozen text files!

It really was a case of Doh! And is a perfect example of why even those of use who consider ourselves to be knowledgeable users and administrators should sometimes look for the easy solution first! Be very careful with your assumptions people you could waste an awful lot of time!

Being a semi regular player of Lord Of The Rings Online(LOTRO) I was glad to see the new teaser trailer for the next Lord Of the Rings Online(LOTRO) expansion!  It should be fun however this is past the release date for SWTOR which I have been looking forward too for the past five years. I just hope SWTOR lives up to the hype as if it does I don’t expect to see much of Rise of Isengard. But I thought that when Age of Conan was released so we will see!

My main concern about this expansion being that turbine have in the past been very good at promising lots of new things and when it comes to release people are disappointed. Case in point the mines of Moria expansion and legendary weapon lottery and the raids that were first promised. The last expansion Siege of Mirkwood was again a big disappointment, Mirkwood consisted of a very small part of Mirkwood and was just dark and rather dreary. Still hopefully the influx of new people with the release of free to play will release additional money to fund the development of a much loved game.