Monday, November 26, 2007
Gordon Brown's Vision
The introduction of internment without trial and the suspension of habeas corpus.
The plans to introduce the National ID register and ID card scheme.
The introduction of biometric passports and government interrogation centres to be attended in order to get a passport, only to be forced to answer 53 questions before being allowed to leave the UK.
HOME
The plans to introduce the National ID register and ID card scheme.
The introduction of biometric passports and government interrogation centres to be attended in order to get a passport, only to be forced to answer 53 questions before being allowed to leave the UK.
HOME
Labels: Brown, Freedom, Labour, Liberty, Surveillance
Sunday, November 25, 2007
We All Have Something To Hide
The mantra of this Labour government under Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair before him, that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear sounds, on the face of it, a reasonable argument to a public who don't think past the words and fail to realise just how stupid and innacurate that slogan is, for that is all it is - a meaningless slogan.
We all have something to hide, and not only our bank account passwords and PIN numbers.
How many people would be so happy to repeat out loud that they have nothing to hide and nothing to fear if they knew their National Health Service records were to be accessible by over 300,000 people at the click of a mouse. How many would say they have nothing to fear if that information was to be accessed by, say, the company who they would like to get life insurance cover from, or insure their car with and, if they stopped and thought for a moment, could they be confident that, out of that 300,000 people who might take a quiet peek at the health problems of the nation, not one would be so dishonest as to sell information to interested parties?
Our drinking habits, sexual history [and diseases] and drug problems, our family troubles and the ailments and diseases that run in our families, our mental conditions. My goodness, how 300,000 nosey parkers would laugh at some of the things recorded on that database, and how even a small handfull of dishonest ones would laugh at the sheer size of the gift in their hands.
Of course the medical records of the nation are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what this government want to know about us. They want to know where we are going, where we have been, who we have talked to on our phones and in our Email. They want to know what our children are eating, what they say about their parents, and they want their fingerprints and a sample of their DNA. Just in case, you understand.
The government want to have us all present and correct on their database, and carrying our chipped identity cards, so that the police can ask us to produce that card any time, for any reason or no reason, all the better for adding every byte of data about us, to add to the story of our lives from birth to death and beyond, to sit on the database alongside our sample of DNA, set of fingerprints and the scans of our irises.
The ID cards we will be forced to carry will not be owned by us, but by the state, and the Home Secretary will be able to revoke an individual's card any time, rendering him or her a non-person, cut off from work, state benefit, health care, all the things we take for granted in a free society.
In other words, the government will have complete knowledge over everyone's life, and complete control over everyone's life.
Even for anyone who still insists they have nothing to hide, one thing is certain, whether they know it or not, they certainly have everything to fear.
HOME
We all have something to hide, and not only our bank account passwords and PIN numbers.
How many people would be so happy to repeat out loud that they have nothing to hide and nothing to fear if they knew their National Health Service records were to be accessible by over 300,000 people at the click of a mouse. How many would say they have nothing to fear if that information was to be accessed by, say, the company who they would like to get life insurance cover from, or insure their car with and, if they stopped and thought for a moment, could they be confident that, out of that 300,000 people who might take a quiet peek at the health problems of the nation, not one would be so dishonest as to sell information to interested parties?
Our drinking habits, sexual history [and diseases] and drug problems, our family troubles and the ailments and diseases that run in our families, our mental conditions. My goodness, how 300,000 nosey parkers would laugh at some of the things recorded on that database, and how even a small handfull of dishonest ones would laugh at the sheer size of the gift in their hands.
Of course the medical records of the nation are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what this government want to know about us. They want to know where we are going, where we have been, who we have talked to on our phones and in our Email. They want to know what our children are eating, what they say about their parents, and they want their fingerprints and a sample of their DNA. Just in case, you understand.
The government want to have us all present and correct on their database, and carrying our chipped identity cards, so that the police can ask us to produce that card any time, for any reason or no reason, all the better for adding every byte of data about us, to add to the story of our lives from birth to death and beyond, to sit on the database alongside our sample of DNA, set of fingerprints and the scans of our irises.
The ID cards we will be forced to carry will not be owned by us, but by the state, and the Home Secretary will be able to revoke an individual's card any time, rendering him or her a non-person, cut off from work, state benefit, health care, all the things we take for granted in a free society.
In other words, the government will have complete knowledge over everyone's life, and complete control over everyone's life.
Even for anyone who still insists they have nothing to hide, one thing is certain, whether they know it or not, they certainly have everything to fear.
HOME
Labels: Brown, Civil Liberties, Freedom, Labour, State
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Jellyfish Invasion Of Salmon Farm Is Todays Good news
The widely reported invasion of a Northern Ireland salmon farm by billions of small jellyfish known as stingers may be bad news for the twelve workers who may lose their jobs as a result of the deaths of the 100,000 fish involved, but it's good news as far as I'm concerned, and I cordially invite the wee stinging creatures to Visit Scotland, especially the West Coast, where 100,000 victims would be, pun intended, just a drop in the ocean.
The farm salmon is an artificial fish, and the salmon farming industry is a disaster for the marine environment, with diseases and parasites such as sea-lice and escapes of farmed salmon damaging wild salmon and sea-trout populations in the West Highlands and Islands.
Hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon escape from their cages every year, and compete with wild salmon for finite food and spawning resources. In a few generations escaped farm salmon out compete and replace wild salmon.
While sea-lice occur naturally in the sea, they are not a problem when they attach themselves to wild salmon, and die when the host fish enters fresh water. Farmed salmon never enter fresh water, and after smolting are confined in the sea for the whole of their lives.
Farm cages are a magnet for sea lice, and they breed there in their billions. They are free-swimming and move on tidal currents. As wild fish pass the cages they are confronted with clouds of lice which attach themselves. Twenty sea lice can kill a wild fish.
It is the Sea-trout which is at greater risk because they do not migrate far, and tend to stay close to shore and near the rivers they were born in. They experience constant sea lice attack from cages in the vicinity.
Farmed salmon are fed a colorant in their food to make their flesh pink like 'real' salmon, and are treated throughout their lives with a cocktail of chemicals to protect them against disease. Small salmon are fed mashed up fish procured by industrial fishing, and it takes some three tonnes of small fish to feed one tonne of farm salmon.
Hardly surprising then that sea birds are failing to breed due to a shortage of food.
Apart from the environmental concerns, farm salmon taste awful compared to the real thing, and heaven knows what chemicals are mixed in there but one thing certain is they can't be good for you.
I would rather the jellyfish got the lot.
The wild salmon below were in a tank as part of a breeding programme before being released back into the wild.
HOME
The farm salmon is an artificial fish, and the salmon farming industry is a disaster for the marine environment, with diseases and parasites such as sea-lice and escapes of farmed salmon damaging wild salmon and sea-trout populations in the West Highlands and Islands.
Hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon escape from their cages every year, and compete with wild salmon for finite food and spawning resources. In a few generations escaped farm salmon out compete and replace wild salmon.
While sea-lice occur naturally in the sea, they are not a problem when they attach themselves to wild salmon, and die when the host fish enters fresh water. Farmed salmon never enter fresh water, and after smolting are confined in the sea for the whole of their lives.
Farm cages are a magnet for sea lice, and they breed there in their billions. They are free-swimming and move on tidal currents. As wild fish pass the cages they are confronted with clouds of lice which attach themselves. Twenty sea lice can kill a wild fish.
It is the Sea-trout which is at greater risk because they do not migrate far, and tend to stay close to shore and near the rivers they were born in. They experience constant sea lice attack from cages in the vicinity.
Farmed salmon are fed a colorant in their food to make their flesh pink like 'real' salmon, and are treated throughout their lives with a cocktail of chemicals to protect them against disease. Small salmon are fed mashed up fish procured by industrial fishing, and it takes some three tonnes of small fish to feed one tonne of farm salmon.
Hardly surprising then that sea birds are failing to breed due to a shortage of food.
Apart from the environmental concerns, farm salmon taste awful compared to the real thing, and heaven knows what chemicals are mixed in there but one thing certain is they can't be good for you.
I would rather the jellyfish got the lot.
--------------------------
The wild salmon below were in a tank as part of a breeding programme before being released back into the wild.
Colcam.Image
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Labels: Environment, Scotland
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Beginning Of The End For Identity Cards?
25 million peoples identities on the loose.
Names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details, stuffed unencrypted onto two CD's by a junior official in a government department and lost in the post.
I can, and do, encrypt the files on my Mac with a click of a mouse but officials dealing with valuable and sensitive data, our data, don't even bother to do that.
Government assurances on the safety and confidentiality of the public's most private details will, finally if belatedly, surely wake up those complacent sleepy sheep who constantly bleat: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear."
Whether you've got anything to hide or not, you've got everything to fear.
Government assurances that our bank details are safe are a red herring diverting attention away from the most dangerous aspect of this incredible fiasco. Every parent should be gravely concerned not by the possible loss of their cash from a bank account, which can be averted by the simple means of changing passwords and monitoring accounts or, for the really paranoid, changing accounts, but the more dangerous and long-term implications of their children's names and dates of birth possibly falling into the wrong hands.
It is not so easy to change the names and dates of birth of our children, and while details of bank accounts may become obsolete fairly quickly, our kid's details will not, and could easily be sat on for months and years before being used for criminal means.
As for the assurances from government that this could never happen to data gathered for the National Identity Register, the heart of the ID card scheme, surely anyone who believes that must be extremely simple, to the extent of not being merely a sheep, but a dead sheep.
This incident is a grim insight to the realities and costs of living in a surveillance state, whose government and officials are obsessed with the collection of data concerning every aspect of the individual citizen's life not, as they would have us believe, for our benefit and safety, but to better control our lives.
HOME
Names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details, stuffed unencrypted onto two CD's by a junior official in a government department and lost in the post.
I can, and do, encrypt the files on my Mac with a click of a mouse but officials dealing with valuable and sensitive data, our data, don't even bother to do that.
Government assurances on the safety and confidentiality of the public's most private details will, finally if belatedly, surely wake up those complacent sleepy sheep who constantly bleat: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear."
Whether you've got anything to hide or not, you've got everything to fear.
Government assurances that our bank details are safe are a red herring diverting attention away from the most dangerous aspect of this incredible fiasco. Every parent should be gravely concerned not by the possible loss of their cash from a bank account, which can be averted by the simple means of changing passwords and monitoring accounts or, for the really paranoid, changing accounts, but the more dangerous and long-term implications of their children's names and dates of birth possibly falling into the wrong hands.
It is not so easy to change the names and dates of birth of our children, and while details of bank accounts may become obsolete fairly quickly, our kid's details will not, and could easily be sat on for months and years before being used for criminal means.
As for the assurances from government that this could never happen to data gathered for the National Identity Register, the heart of the ID card scheme, surely anyone who believes that must be extremely simple, to the extent of not being merely a sheep, but a dead sheep.
This incident is a grim insight to the realities and costs of living in a surveillance state, whose government and officials are obsessed with the collection of data concerning every aspect of the individual citizen's life not, as they would have us believe, for our benefit and safety, but to better control our lives.
HOME
Labels: Brown, Children, Computer, ID Cards, Labour, Politics, State
Monday, November 19, 2007
Holiday Time
I've only recently got back from taking a wee holiday in England-shire - Morecambe to be precise - or to be even more precise I've come back from there to take a wee holiday here at home!
The plan was to go down to visit my daughter and do some decorating for her, a job I started over a year ago but haven't had time to go back and complete. It'll be enjoyable, thought I, and a nice break away from the Highlands, and I can keep the blog up to date of an evening too.
Me and the Mongrel [my other half] and Kaspy the Collie duly set off, the Mongrel driving, the collie on the back seat with her seat belt harness on, and made it as far as Glencoe where, on a nasty left-hander, the backend of the car slid out, we hit a stone bridge parapet, spun across the road and demolished the crash barrier and, of course, the car.
Nobody hurt, fortunately, and the dog wondered what all the fuss was about.
Not so fortunately the car wasn't ours - we borrowed it from the Mongrel's son because it was more economical in fuel, but with a £500 insurance excess which we felt obliged to pay for him our economy drive wasn't looking so good.
Anyway, after much delay the wreck and ourselves were transported back to where we started, we transferred all our stuff into our own car, and started out again, somewhat nervously.
Morecambe may be beside the sea, and the weather might be beautiful [unlike the Highlands] but none of that was to be enjoyed by me. I spent the whole time plastering and rubbing down walls, swinging a paint roller and getting my head frazzled by two delightful but exhaustingly lively toddlers, not to mention their mother, my daughter, who is worse.
And her very hairy collie, Badger, managed to sit in a full tray, a big tray, of magnolia emulsion.
As for the blog... my Mac notebook couldn't connect to the available router, and in between decorating and cleaning paint off hairy collies I had to reload and configure two Macs belonging to my daughter.
I was too exhausted to blog, especially on a strange computer and, I kid you not, my fingers were bleeding by week two with the sandpaper.
It's nice to be back home for a well earned break.
HOME
The plan was to go down to visit my daughter and do some decorating for her, a job I started over a year ago but haven't had time to go back and complete. It'll be enjoyable, thought I, and a nice break away from the Highlands, and I can keep the blog up to date of an evening too.
Me and the Mongrel [my other half] and Kaspy the Collie duly set off, the Mongrel driving, the collie on the back seat with her seat belt harness on, and made it as far as Glencoe where, on a nasty left-hander, the backend of the car slid out, we hit a stone bridge parapet, spun across the road and demolished the crash barrier and, of course, the car.
Nobody hurt, fortunately, and the dog wondered what all the fuss was about.
Not so fortunately the car wasn't ours - we borrowed it from the Mongrel's son because it was more economical in fuel, but with a £500 insurance excess which we felt obliged to pay for him our economy drive wasn't looking so good.
Anyway, after much delay the wreck and ourselves were transported back to where we started, we transferred all our stuff into our own car, and started out again, somewhat nervously.
Morecambe may be beside the sea, and the weather might be beautiful [unlike the Highlands] but none of that was to be enjoyed by me. I spent the whole time plastering and rubbing down walls, swinging a paint roller and getting my head frazzled by two delightful but exhaustingly lively toddlers, not to mention their mother, my daughter, who is worse.
And her very hairy collie, Badger, managed to sit in a full tray, a big tray, of magnolia emulsion.
As for the blog... my Mac notebook couldn't connect to the available router, and in between decorating and cleaning paint off hairy collies I had to reload and configure two Macs belonging to my daughter.
I was too exhausted to blog, especially on a strange computer and, I kid you not, my fingers were bleeding by week two with the sandpaper.
It's nice to be back home for a well earned break.
HOME
Labels: Animals, Highlands, People
© Colcam 2005-2007
