By way of a break from the endless parade of bad legislation and scandal here’s some good news. Scientists at Innsbruck Medical University have published results which point to beer reducing the danger of heart disease. Apparently alcohol free beer also has beneficial effects but..y’know..what’s the point? Being fond of an occasional pint it’s a relief to know that I’ll have time to see my liver fail before I’m struck down by heart failure.
Proper science here.
The House of Lords are going into bat for civil liberties again this week as they make a renewed attempt to make the government’s proposed ID card voluntary. Ministers are still claiming that the cards are voluntary (which was a manifesto pledge), a claim described by Lord Phillips of Sudbury as “[stretching] the English language to breaking point”. As has been pointed out here making the card on it’s own voluntary but issuing it with every other form of ID doesn’t exactly jibe with the government’s current fondness for choice in all things.
The Lords have dropped their request to see a full budget for the ID scheme before allowing it to move forward which is a pity seen as the huge cost will be a hard pill for voters to swallow. However, the likelihood that any stated budget will widely undershoot the actual cost means that this probably isn’t such a bad thing to give up on.
Whilst this scrutiny is certainly a good thing, the last round of parliamentary voting showed that the government is able to retain a majority on the issue in spite of rebellion in the back benches. The upshot of that is that whatever changes the Lords make will be worthless unless more Labour MPs choose to defy the whips and stop legislation that sends us closer to an Orwellian future.
More at the BBC.
Maybe we should introduce this to Wales this country. Make people think twice before they do ‘their nonsense’ on animals.
So let me get this right….the Napoleonic Christ of politics, Berlusconi, is losing the Italian Presidential election against old Euro buddy Prodi. So what does Berlusconi do? Do more interview on all those TV channels his media company owns? Get on his soap box? Perhaps point out the disadvantages of the Euro? No he decides to bolster his support by visiting that really popular person President George Bush. Ok so appearing next to the most powerful man in the world might improve your kudos, but really how popular is that going to be? It reminds all those Italian voters about their man who took them into Iraq!
Not only did Berlusconi get to meet with Bush, but he also won a prestigious reward; for his“intrepid defence of liberty.” The only freedoms he’s been defending have been his own (who can forget the Mills/ Jowell fiasco). I suppose the only popular thing Berlusconi did was blame all Europe’s problems on the French in his speech to a joint session of Congress. That always goes down well!!!
Today’s Guardian has an article by Adam Webb on the state of DRM protection in the UK. There was rightly outrage when Sony BMG used a rootkit-based system to enforce copy protection on a number of CDs. Thankfully the record labels have yet to make much use of DRM on CDs for sale in the UK. The article doesn’t manage to come to a clear conclusion as to why this might be. The labels are certainly unforthcoming but will say that they have been testing the technology. Hopefully the backlash caused by Sony BMG’s action has caused them to have a bit of a rethink and finally reach the conclusion that DRM only serves to make things difficult for people who are trying to do the right thing by paying for music.
Sir Menzies Campbell was elected today as the new leader of the Liberal Democrats. Simon Hughes was defeated in the first round of the voting process, Chris Huhne took second place. Sir Menzies eventually took 57% percent of the vote.
In the end it wasn’t exactly The Sun wot won it, but a whirlwind of tabloid allegations around the other candidates allowed Sir Menzies to regain support he lost after a disasterous apperance at PMQs in his role as caretaker leader after Charles Kennedy’s departure. The new leader said he will:
“…build a strong, effective powerful Liberal Democrat party with the objective to ensuring a greener, fairer, decentralised and democratic Britain, a Britain at peace with itself at home and admired abroad.”
Certainly a laudable goal but the first thing on the agenda will undoubtedly be to rebuild the party’s badly tarnished reputation. The other candidates pledged their support to the new leader which should at least put an end to the back-stabbing of recent weeks.
Headline writers everywhere will be looking forward to the next election which could see Ming take on Flash Gordon. It just needs the Tories to elect Brian Blessed as leader and we’ll have the set.
More quotes and numbers at the BBC.
Imagine for a minute you’re an MP …ok, cold sweat over… With no general elections on the horizon and Tessa Jowell hogging all the scandal for herself what are you going to do to exercise your unscupulous urges? How about getting in on this “Internet” malarky. That seems to have been the line of thinking taken by Ian Liddell-Grainger the MP for Bridgwater who has been caught sending himself messages through the WriteToThem.com website (the successor to FaxYourMP.com). During 2005 he sent himself a number of messages apparently to improve his responsiveness rating which an opponent was using as a tool against him. WriteToThem noticed this and responded by removing Liddell-Grainger’s entry from their ranking tables. The MP subsequently claimed that his actions were part of an experiment to see how easy it would be to alter the rankings but has failed to explain why messages continued to be sent after the experiment delivered a result. Whilst it’s a pleasure to see MPs getting more involved in the effort to get back in touch with apathetic voters this clearly isn’t ideal.
More at mySociety.org.