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April 30, 2008

Paul "Pot" Staines, meet Mr Kettle

A brief selections of Paul Staines' many posts related to politicians and public figures who suffer from drink problems...

www.order-order.com - Hilary Armstrong : "Three MPs Drank Themselves to Death"

Ex-chief whip Hilary Armstrong has gone on the record to the Whitehall & Westminster newsletter with a candid admission that many MPs are drunks.

www.order-order.com - Charlie Denies Drink Problem

www.order-order.com - Whisky Business at the GLA

www.order-order.com - Des Smith Hits the bottle

Des Smith hit the bottle hard last week under the pressure of the police inquiry into the cash for honours scam. He broke down in tears yesterday in court as he was sentenced for drink driving at Redbridge magistrates. The police evidence to the court was that he was three times over the maximum limit.

www.order-order.com - LibDems Support Tots for Tots

Guido's mother used to dip his soother in rum, never did Guido any harm...

www.order-order.com - Euan is Unwell

What kind of drunken example is he setting? Hospital is for sissys.

There's an exquisite irony in those last two posts, given this little item in the Indie.

The Independent - Pandora: Blogger 'Guido Fawkes' is led off to the Tower

Lobbyists, aides and parliamentarians from all sides of the Houses – particularly those with something to hide – will be delighted to learn that the famously thirsty troublemaker, real name Paul Staines, was up before the beak at Tower Bridge Magistrates Court last Thursday.

He admitted driving while under the influence and without insurance after being stopped by the Plod in the small hours of 17 April, driving his wife's Volkswagen fast and swerving across lanes in south London. He was breathalysed and found to be almost twice the legal limit. Asked by District Judge Timothy Stone whether he had an alcohol problem, Staines said: "Possibly."

Sentencing is on 15 May. It is his fourth alcohol-related offence and second drink-driving reprimand – he was banned for 12 months in 2002 – requiring the judge to consider a jail sentence.

I wonder what odds I'd get on Paul trying to pretend it never happened? I doubt any reference will be allowed to appear in the comments on his blog. Still, if he does have an alcohol problem (and on the evidence that would appear to be the case), then the first step is to admit to the problem. Once he comes out of a state of denial, then he can begin the process of recovery. He owes it to his wife and children to sort himself out.

With his track record of putting the boot into others with similar problems, he's not going to find much sympathy to his plight in the blogging world. Still, even Libertarians can't scoff at laws designed to protect others. If he wants to drink himself into an early grave then that's a matter for him and his family. But taking his alcohol problem behind the wheel of a car and onto the public highway is another matter altogether. If it takes a custodial sentence to bring him back to reality then so be it.

And after all those predictions that Lord Levy would be doing bird, it looks like Guido might beat him to the Scrubs. He'd better be careful in the showers or he'll be well and truly fawked.

Posted by Clive at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 29, 2008

Gordon and Frank

What is it with Gordon Brown and GMTV? HAs he got the hots for Fiona Phillips something. Anyway, today he was lounging on the eponymous sofa, babbling on about lethal skunk.

BBC - PM 'to send message' on cannabis

"I think people know my view about cannabis and particularly about this lethal version of it, skunk."

Woa! Wtf is lethal skunk? Is it some killer strain of cannabis; are we going to be treated to the sight of dead stoners laying face down in half-eaten pizzas, killed by deadly sativa?

Now the LD50 of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is 1270 mg/kg which is pretty low toxicity. In fact, you could smoke your way through more than a kilo of cannabis and still not receive a lethal dose. before you got anywhere near that sort of intake, the munchies would have kicked in big time, and you'd be off for pizza or a kebab.

So talk of lethality is total bollocks on the part of Brown. What he his talking about is how mention of the legality of cannabis induces near-fatal apoplexy on the part of Daily Mail readers who he seems to spend so much time sucking up to these days.

A final report by the group, which plays a key role in setting Britain's drugs policy, was delivered to the Home Office on Monday and it is expected to recommend cannabis remain in the lowest category.

But Downing Street has already indicated that Mr Brown remains determined to tighten the law, against the advice.

And there you have it. Sod the science, damn the dictionary, onward with despotic disregard for facts. Why did Brown even bother commissioning the report given that he'd already made his mind up? Perhaps he ought to talk to Frank first and stop talking out of his arse.

Posted by Clive at 1:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 23, 2008

Flying Pork

Somehow I can't help thinking the Telegraph missed an opportunity to dish some dirt with this story about the loss of one of the 3 Reaper UAVs operating in Afghanistan.

The Telegraph - RAF destroys £10m spy plane in Afghanistan

The RAF deliberately blew up one of its own £10 million spy planes after it crash landed over Taliban territory in Afghanistan. Faced with the prospect of the technology falling into enemy hands, commanders immediately despatched an elite unit to remove "sensitive items" from the unmanned Reaper spy drone.

Which is all well and good, but the article closes with a simple yet potentially misleading statement.

According to the US Department of Defence Security Cooperation Agency, Britain is looking at buying another 10 Reapers as part of a wider £540 million deal.

If only that were the case. Unfortunately it is nigh on impossible to use the core defence budget to buy imported equipment containing no local input. So any replacement would have to come via the conflict resolution budget, but that source of funding is under pressure from the Treasury.

Which is where the flying portk comes in.

The proposed replacement for the Reaper is the Watchkeeper, a UAV which the Army is touting as an ideal British solution. There're a couple of gotchas that they don't really highlight.

Firstly, the airframe is Israeli, made by Elbit and it also includes a significant amount of French technology. So hardly a real British solution, but maybe all the better for that, considering previous experience with our battlefield tech in Afghanistan.

Secondly, and possibly more important, is the fact that Watchkeeper isn't cheap. Keep in mind that £10million figure for the Reaper.

The Register - UK MoD reveals Watchkeeper spy-drone numbers

Rather refreshingly, the MoD conceded this point, and sources there revealed today that the £800m Watchkeeper project will deliver 54 aircraft to the British Army. In very broad-brush terms, then, each Watchkeeper will cost the taxpayers £15m.

So a 50% surcharge to buy a not-really-British-at-all replacement instead of the American Reaper. And if you look at the spec for the two UAVs, you'll seen that the Watchkeeper is smaller and less capable.

Thus the flying pork analogy, because once again we're going to spend more money than necessary on a less capable weapon system in order to maintain a pretense of buying British.

Posted by Clive at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 21, 2008

10 per cent tax axe

First I'll admit to being as annoyed by the scrapping of the 10% tax band as most, but the question that keeps springing to mind is why anyone is surprised.

Even David Cameron doesn't seem to understand what is going on.

BBC - Cameron vow to 'stop' tax changes

"For a good headline, for one day's newspapers, he was prepared to attack some of the lowest paid people in our country," said Mr Cameron.

Now maybe I'm too cynical, but I always thought the 10p band would be axed at some point. After all, it was introduced by Brown as part of his last Budget as Chancellor, before his uncontested coronation as Prime Minister and Party Leader. I suspect the intention even then was for Brown to hold a snap election once Blair stood down. With that in mind, what better way to boost your public standing than a high profile lower tax band of 10p. The only problem being that such a band was unsustainable in the longer term, given the Government's spending commitments.

Even that wasn't necessarily a problem, as it is unlikely that Brown ever saw being Prime Minister as a long term job; the lure of riches from the private sector most likely proving to be a strong a lure to Brown as they were to Blair. So the simple, election winning plan was for Brown to introduce the 10p tax band, call the snap election, win a 5 year term and then hang his Chancellor out to dry when the band was scrapped.

Unfortunately for Brown, he bottled it and didn't call the election as originally planned. So all the potential goodwill he bought with the 10p band came to nothing. At the end of the day, Brown has had Darling return the poorer off to the status quo ante bellum (in a manner of speaking).

So just remember, the 10p band was a squandered election winner, never intended to be a long-term benefit for poorer tax payers. And Darling was always supposed to be Brown's bitch.

Posted by Clive at 12:51 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 16, 2008

We need your help

Yup, that's right, we (as in myself and Tim Ireland) need your help with a couple of projects. Both are non-partisan (from a political perspective) and more details are available on the projects here. In addition, I'm looking for a list of people prepared to invest some sweat equity into National Service. So, if you have any of the following skills and are willing to help out, please let me know in the comments below this post.

Skills I'm looking for are:

• ASP.Net - Framework 2.0


• C#


• Ajax


• SQL Server - primarily T-SQL

The longer term project is to extend and enhance the National Service back-end, but initially I'd like to take the Labour Election Return project forward, with a port from classic ASP and VBScript to .Net and beef up the search functionality. Hopefully the Election Return project can then be spun off to be run by an organised group of volunteers, and be in a position to not only complete the 2005 return for all the major parties, but also make the next election returns available asap. Think of it as an "It's your money they're spending" public service site. Not only would you be able to see what our elected representatives do for us via TheyWorkForYou.com, but you'd also be able to see what they spent getting there.

Posted by Clive at 8:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 15, 2008

Fasthosts still have customers?

It never ceases to amaze me that Fasthosts still have customers. I'll admit to being more than slightly biased against them, given my experiences last year, but their catalog of calamities just keeps growing:

17 July 2007 - Electrical Outage. I escaped this one and at the time it didn't seem too significant.

23/24 July 2007 - Hit by floods. Again, I had a couple of servers affected, but other servers hosted at a different provider were unaffected. Now remind me again why you shouldn't build a data center by docks next to a river prone to flooding?

August 2007 - The Usmanov Affair. Words will never be enough, but the link at the top gives a detailed timeline of incompetant and less than honest service.

October 2007 - Fasthosts accidentally trash numbers of email. This had no impact on me, as I no longer used Fasthosts for hosting.

October 2007 - The infamous "intruder" incident where plain text passwords were compromised. A painful incident further compounded by Fasthosts insisting on posting changed passwords via snail mail! This farce rumbled on through October and November before finally reaching a conclusion just before Christmas.

April 2008 - They're at it again.

The Register - Fasthosts' dedicated servers go titsup

Gaffe-prone web hosting outfit Fasthosts has suffered another major outage today, this time taking down many of its customers' dedicated servers.

Some dedicated server customers may currently find their servers are unavailable at present. Affected customers may not be able to access their server, eRIC or Backup spaces and may also affect the rebuild of deployed servers and the deployment of new servers. Engineers are continuing their investigations as a priority.

An update posted at 11am said the problems were continuing, and that fixing it is the firm's top priority.

As I said at the start, I'm amazed people are prepared to put up with this level of service. I bet 1&1 Internet are really pleased with their investment in "The UK's Number 1 web host. Home to more websites than any other provider."

Posted by Clive at 12:28 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 14, 2008

The Blogger's New Stats

A tale for you, that begins as all good tales do...

Once upon a time there lived a vain Blogger whose only worry in life was to be the biggest and best Political Blogger in the land.

He changed traffic boosting schemes almost every hour and loved to show his blog off to his acolytes and sock puppets.

Word of the Blogger's refined habits spread over the blogosphere and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Blogger's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.

"We are two very good web marketeers and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to boost a blog's traffic, producing numbers so mighty and and powerful that they are unquestionable. As a matter of fact they are questionable only by anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate their quality."

The Chief of the Sock Puppets heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the Wannabe Blog hero. The Wannabe ran to the Blogger and disclosed the incredible news. The Blogger's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.

"Besides being unquestionable, your Highness, these stats will be displayed in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the stats immediately.

"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a PC, the blog password, Google Analytics and Alexa, and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a higher profile in the MSM, he would discover which of his commenters were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the Wannabe, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.

"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Blogger told him, "and come back to let me know."

The Wannabe was welcomed by the two scoundrels.

"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more stats packages. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, see the size of the numbers!" The old man bent over the PC and tried to see the genuine stats that were not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.

"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the Wannabe admitted that he didn't see anything, he would loose his credibility.

"What marvelous numbers" he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Blogger." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More stats were requested to finish the work.

Finally, the Blogger received the announcement that the two marketeers had come to take all the measurements needed to publish the traffic figures.

"Come in," the Blogger ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding a log file analysis.

"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful webstats in the world are ready for you. Look at the colors and see how large the numbers are." Of course the Blogger was nervous about the figures and doubtful. He panicked and felt like fainting.

But luckily the office chair was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not believe the figures, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Blogger didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.

The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began typing madly at keyboards, pretending to compile quality statporn.

"Your Highness, you'll have to publish these new stats." The two scoundrels drafted the post and then let the Blogger admire their post.

"Yes, this is beautiful statporn and it looks very good on me," the Blogger said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."

"Your Majesty," the Wannabe said, "we have a request for you. The people have heard how popular you Blog is, and they are anxious to see your new stats." The Blogger was doubtful showing his dodgy traffic figures to the public, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.

"All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He logged on to Blogger and hit publish. In an instant his glorious new stats were sailing across the internet. On his site, everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the stats were read, comments were posted. And each comment said, "Look at the Blogger's new stats. They're awesome!"

A knowledgable sceptic however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the blog.

"The Stats are wrong!" he said.

"Fool!" the sockpuppets reprimanded, throwing smears after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" They tried to drown out his comments, but he posted the truth on his own site. And the message was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

"He's right! The Stats are dodgy! It's true!"

The Blogger realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue posting under the illusion that anyone who didn't trust his stats was either stupid or incompetent. And he posted abusively on comment threads on other
blogs, while behind him a sock puppet touted his imaginary stats.

The tragedy for Iain is that he is both the vain Emperor and the scoundrels combined. And his sock puppets and acolytes the fawning masses who cannot see him for what he is. Thus is Iain both architect and engineer of his own loss of credibility. Couldn't happen to sadder Tory really, not even worth of kissing Gyles Brandreth's shoes.

Posted by Clive at 7:52 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack