It’s hard to forget quite the level of betrayal I felt over the pledge-breaking tuition fees vote (admittedly one that does not affect us in Scotland). They signed a single campaign pledge in front of invited media attention, waved around that pledge all through that campaign, used it to court the student and academic vote by signing this pledge on a policy they had already supported for years. Unsurprising, their supporters didn’t take too kindly towards them not voting against, not abstaining, not quietly supporting but actively promoting the breaking of their pledge as something good for the country. This made me not want to vote Lib Dem for 10 years (if not more). People may accuse me (and others) of focusing on a single issue but, then again, the Lib Dems were practically doing that too.

Is it better for them to be in coalition than not in government? The political types and within their own party said it was. The voters have shown them in the Scottish and council elections that it was not. Many (former) members of the party are so fundamentally opposed to these cuts that the Lib Dem “moderating influence” and “compromises” feel like a “compromise” of supplying wine rather than vodka to an alcoholic bent on self-destruction (in this case, the Conservatives are bent on destruction of our public sector). The Lib Dems could have blocked these cuts. Instead all their principles seem to have been sold down the river in favour of an AV vote which has dramatically failed. Nice work Clegg (and the Lib Dem leadership); you’ve killed the party, possibly killed any chance at Commons voting reform, saddled the next generation of students with huge amounts of debt and been narrowly stopped in your first steps in privatising the NHS.

I honestly think the best thing now is to let the Conservatives form a minority government and support them on an issue-to-issue basis. They’ve hung the Lib Dems out to dry in English council elections and with the AV vote. This won’t happen, however. Power corrupts and the Lib Dem leadership will remain in denial until they are absolutely destroyed at the next election and wonder out loud where it all went wrong whilst their former members roll their eyes.

I think they underestimated the sheer extent to which the electorate would care about their pledge breaking. In my (limited) experience the majority of left-leaning voters were split into Lib Dems and Labour and (very generally) the prior have seemed to be more likely to be university educated and the latter (again, very generally) more likely to be working class. Unsurprisingly, academics, students and former graduates who value social mobility view an affordable university education as being somewhat important.

I’d found myself in a situation where I felt I could no longer support the Lib Dems so who to vote for in the Scottish elections? Obviously Conservatives were out so I was (limiting myself to somewhat major parties) choosing between the Greens, SNP and Labour. Labour’s campaign in the run up to the election was a farce. They seemed to focus on entirely why I shouldn’t vote for the SNP and gave me very little reason to vote for them (this is probably why the party leader only held onto his seat by 151 votes) and seemed further right of SNP and Greens with regards to renewable energy and certainly the Westminster party is more in favour with regards to foreign military intervention. This left me with two parties who both supported an independence referendum, both supported renewable investment but only one with a change of winning in my region or constituency (even my MP is an SNP, amusingly married to my MSP).

After voting SNP (choosing over Greens fairly late in the day) I was fairly overjoyed to see Scotland turn yellow on the electoral maps yesterday. We saw them make terrific gains and almost doubling their vote and meeting the magic 65 MSPs needed for a majority to finish with 69. This means they have their chance to show the Scottish electorate what they can do without needing cross-party support. Their last minority administration had very little power to institute any real change with this cross-party support and was denied their independence referendum as a result. The referendum is now on the cards in their next term and will begin a debate far more dramatic and interesting than that of AV or arguably even the Westminster elections: do the Scottish people want an independent Scotland? I do and I’ll elaborate on why in a future post. For now I’m just content with the first good election result since I’ve been able to vote.

I was initially pleased to think that the Lib Dems might provide a balancing influence to the Conservatives cuts and that the Conservatives approach to the deficit and cost-cutting was correct. The more I read and observed however the more I realised that looking through Keynesian economics paints another picture from that painted by Cameron and Osbourne. Seemingly overnight Clegg turned from being someone who has loudly condemned the Conservatives cuts to being the very man who has enabled them to happen. I would obviously prefer the current coalition over a Conservative government but, once all the LibDem flag-waving died down, I realised that this was one of three choices (LibLab coalition, LibCon coalition, minority Con government) and, as I see it today, Clegg chose the option I’m least happy with. The emergency budget and hard cuts simply could not have been made with a minority government and I’m not sure this would be a bad thing. After all, all parties seemed to agree cuts needed to be made, it was just a question of where and by how much.

If the massive cuts that are being pushed through cause the double-dip recession or society-breaking effect we all fear then it will hard to not look upon Clegg as similar to the main aspect of Blair I loathe: someone who should have been smart enough to avoid legitimising a horrible destruction of our values (Blair in Iraq, Clegg in the budget).

I’m glad the next election won’t be for quite a while as I’m currently conflicted about my Liberal Democrats membership. I doubt I will be renewing my membership this year and my vote could be anywhere from Labour (if Ed Miliband pulls the party left-ward) to the SNP (I believe an independent Scotland would be a more liberal one) to returning to the Lib Dems (if they manage to get some form of PR and the budget doesn’t decimate the services for the needy in society) in the next UK election.

I’m left with the increasing temptation toward apathy. The election was so frustrating in so many ways, particularly that no seat in Scotland changed hands and that the Lib Dems failed to turn brilliant results in the polls into actual parliamentary seats. However, if nothing else, hopefully this coalition signals an end of the Labour-Conservative back-and-forth that we’ve seen for all to long. I think the worse political situation for a country is the US-style two party system where you’re screwed if both parties agree on an issue and you don’t.

I live in hope that people like Johann Hari and the Labour leadership are proved wrong and the coalition don’t inflict huge wounds on our society. For the moment, hoping and staying aware seems all that can really be done.

I read this and felt torn. On one hand the protesters are voicing their complaints against the British Army’s part in death of thousands of civilians. On the other hand they are raising the issue in a hugely polarising way which probably does more damage to their cause than aid it. After this brief pondering I returned to my week.

Over the following days the typical figureheads gave their sound-bites to the media about how awful this was and about how the protesters should be ashamed of themselves. Gordon Brown made one of his stereotypical comments, trying desperately to prove that he can do something right to a increasingly disappointed public. Basically, an fairly expected reaction.

What was unexpected was today’s story about David Davis MP calling for it to become a crime to incite hatred of serving soldiers. “Inciting hatred” is the clever new way to sweeten further restrictions of our free speech in a way the public will seemingly happily accept. David Davis admitted personal concerns about the war but insists that British soldiers are “our finest young men and women, the cream of society“.

Personally, I believe that most soldiers are brave men and women. I don’t think that they are necessarily finer people than the doctors or members of the emergency services who save lives daily but that’s another debate. I’m came pretty close to joining the military myself. I had several successful interviews with the British Army and was one away from a university bursary which would have got me a place in Sandhurst after graduation. Despite my current pacifist leanings I respect the opinion of those disagree and I respect those in the military.

The initial reasons given for the Iraq war have been revealed as mistaken at best and outright deceit at worst. Iraq is turning into a nightmare with thousands upon thousands of civilians displaced or killed. There are several accounts of Iraqis describing Iraq under Saddam as a better place to live. If more of the military had been men like Malcolm Kendall-Smith and Ben Griffin then perhaps we wouldn’t have this disaster our hands.

This is why at the next election I will be voting for a party that campaigned against the Iraq war and is putting forward a bill to repeal some of the laws that have reduced our civil liberties. It’s time to take a stand against these attempts by Labour and the Conservatives to further reduce our freedom and increase their power. It’s time for the government of this country to be led by a party that stands for the rule of international law and respects the rights of the citizens of this country.

In Obama’s autobiography he quotes a friend who used to swear a lot. Obama read’s the audiobook version of his own book.

Hilarity results here.

(I’m not saying swearing is good/bad or that Obama is therefore good/bad because of this. However I’m still childish enough that this makes me giggle like an idiot…)

I can’t say I’m surprised but I am pretty disappointed. When it first emerged on The Register that Phorm had been monitoring the internet communications of BT customers I was a BT employee. When it came out that BT outright lied on to those tech-savvy customers who raised the issue my opinions of my employer had sadly dropped to an all-time low.

I’m not someone who believes in publicly criticising the company I am currently working for (partly because the company I work for currently is awesome) and didn’t want to straight after I left at the risk of seeming bitter or unprofessional but I feel it needs to be publicly stated that I did not at any time agree with the actions that were being taken by my current employer and everything negative I found out second-hand and eventually was part of the reason I left.

I’m not sure what the management of BT that thought that Phorm was a good idea were up to at the time but I feel they may need a little reminding that massively alienating a huge portion of your technical user-base is probably not the best way to run an ISP, considering how much influence we have on our non-geeky friends’ technology choices.

As for their “anonymous” technology, if I’m “anonymous” enough for you to be able to track me across multiple IPs then I’m not “anonymous”!

Maybe it’s just me but when I was 15 I did some very stupid things. Some involved girls, some involved computers and some involved fire. I was a bit of an idiot.

Thankfully I was never in the wrong place at the wrong time and never did anything as stupid as throwing a grenade at an American soldier.

Even if this kid did what it is claimed he did, he was 15 at the time. 15! 3 more years of being a child. 8 more years before he can drink in the US. This Canadian citizen has been held for 6 years now and awaits the potential of life in prison. He is being held in a camp that seems to live outside international law and claims to have been tortured, something I don’t think many would be surprised by, given past reports.

After watching stuff like this I feel physically sick. It genuinely terrifies me that the US feel they have any even slight moral authority over any other regime with this torture camp still running. It sickens me to the core and I’m glad it does too.

Is it just me or should children be cut more slack than grown adults? They screw up and one (albeit huge) screw-up shouldn’t destroy their life.

Residents of the US, I really hope your next leader closes this camp down before the rest of the world becomes more disgusted that we already are at your flagrant abuse of human rights.

What if our “climate chaos” and all the weather changes we are seeing are just the fact that the rotation of the earth is at a slightly different speed so years are now the wrong length! That would explain the whole warmer winters but colder summers!

Disclaimer:
I make every effort to reduce my impact on the environment, this blog post is intended to be humour not a complex rebuttal of common scientific theory. However, I reserve the right to merciless mock the entire scientific community.

I am, like a lot of people in Europe, strangely attracted to the US primaries and the Democratic race in particular (as it is actually still a race).

Hearing Barrack Obama talk is pretty inspirational and I’m not even vaguely a US citizen. He seems one of the few politicians who seems to truly believe in what he says and is capturing the hearts of many of the young voters in the US. Ron Paul was a pretty inspirational guy also and I know the Internet loved him but sadly this doesn’t seem to have actually translated into a huge amount of votes.

Personally, I hope he wins as it would be nice to have a US President with a less aggressive foreign policy.

I leave you with a quote that I think is particularly relevant:

[Obama] said — and I’m going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am — my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it’s going to mean in many parts of the world — parts of the world that we really care about — when I show up as the President of the United States. I’ll be fundamentally changing the world’s perception of what the United States is all about.

Some people seem to be in uproar about this but I can’t really understand why. At the moment many people die waiting for organ transplants. Many people die with perfectly good organs and no problem with organ donation but never got round to getting a card to signify their consent. This is, in my humble opinion, stupid and unjust.

Moving to an opt-out system would save many lives so if people have religious/moral/whatever reasons for not wanting their organs removed on death they can stop it happening. The proposed legislation also says that the family can object and stop the donation going through so I’m surprised by peoples’ opposition. Personally I’d like to be able to still have a donation card so my family can’t object as I don’t think it is their right to do so.

What do other people think? The state over-reaching again or doing something good? This seems to be working in Spain with organ donation up 250%. Does anyone know any more details of the situation there?

Like most people I’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions this year whilst trying to take on a few bits of advice on how to make them and keep them.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Hack more on KDE. I think the combination of starting a new job and not running KDE4 as my desktop (until recently) has made me slack from working on KDE. Once I actually am using it daily then I reckon I’ll be able to do more work and help with KDEPIM for 4.1.
2. Practise my bass more. Playing every two weeks with a bunch of music teachers and session musicians is making me feel a little insecure about my playing! I need to practise more, especially working on my soloing and probably buy a Fake book.
3. Study rather than just reading my Bible. I’m normally alright about reading my Bible regularly but I’ve just been reading it like a novel rather than actually using commentries and then like to properly study the passages. I’ve done this a few times lately and it is far more beneficial, I need to get up earlier and try and do it more often
4. Play less computer games. I do enjoy gaming but it is one of these activities that really benefits no-one except myself so I want to try and divert more time into things like hacking/music where I can benefit others whilst enjoying myself.
5. Be a better friend/boyfriend. Just generally take more of my time to try and focus on others and help them with their problems.
6. Become a better software engineer. Improve my knowledge of my main languages, maybe try and pick up some more and improving my algorithmic math skills.
7. Take more of an interest in politics. Now that Nick Clegg has been elected the leader of the Liberal Democrats I’ve felt myself want to try and get a little more involved and interested in British politics in the gradual run-up to the next UK elections.

I’m sure there are more but that’s all I can think of for now!