Arthur's Seat: Thought for the Day

Arthur's Seat: Thought for the Day:

A bear, a lion and a chicken meet.
Bear says: "If I roar in the forests of America the entire forest is shivering with fear."
Lion says: "And if I roar on the great plains of Africa, the entire savannah is afraid of me."
Says the chicken: "Big deal. I only have to cough, and the entire planet wets itself."

You know when you visit a blog regularly, and you assume that you've linked to them because you read them a lot? Occasionally, you realise you've missed them. Arthur, Bookdrunk and Iain Dale all come into this category; read them regularly, but forgot to add the link. Oops.

I will now be listening to Small Gods. I may come back online when I've stopped laughing.

Technorati tags: Bird Flu, blogging

Power to the People!

Did someone mention Wolfie? Sorry. As usual, Monday means I'm in and out again. Just happens to be the day when one of the more interesting stories come out from under the radar; I had no idea this thing was even going on. Anyway...

POWER - An independent inquiry into Britain's democracy:

After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of Power is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years. The cause is not apathy.

The report can be downloaded here (I recommend the executive summary, I'm not sure even a constitutional wonk like me can wade through the full thing easily) and they're organising a conference in London at the end of March; I've put my name down, but whether I can afford to get there is another thing entirely.

Read, digest, discuss. Especially, discuss at Liberty Central (rather good timing really, and complete fluke as well).

Technorati tags: Power, Britain, Constitution, Reform

Great Briton: Joseph Rowntree (1836-1925)

Britain has a long history of succesful, radical philanthropists. In the news today is Joseph Rowntree, founder of the Rowntree confectionary company, now, unfortunately, part of Nestlé:

In 1904, aged 68, Joseph Rowntree endowed the three Joseph Rowntree Trusts, giving “about one-half of my property to [their] establishment.” He believed the way to remedy the injustices of the world was not to relieve their ill-effects, but to strike at their roots. This would be the trusts’ work.

Got lots of money? Give it away to make the world a better place. The trusts all have a long history of reports, investigations and campaigns, nice to see them still going and doing his memory proud.

Technorati tags: Rowntree, Great Briton, People

Liberty Central launched

Ladies and Gentlemen...

It is, currently, a shell. Many (many) thanks to Unity for putting all the work in. This is a project, a start. It needs content.

That's for all of us. Write some. Submit it. Contribute.

Technorati tagsearch: reform, freedom, civil liberties, philosophy, nanny state, theory, constitution, Liberty Central, Coalition

Admin: Blogroll update

I've reorganised and updated the blogroll. Nowhere near finished, but I had nearly 200 in "Newly Discovered", which was a little silly.

Some were tough calls as to where to put them, so if someone thinks they're in the wrong place, holler. I've also set it so that on post pages, a much smaller selection appears; the main blogs for each party, and people I read regularly, alongside any aggregators.

I'm trying to have the main blogroll have every UK political blog. I'm pretty sure I'm nowhere near that yet, and the number grows daily. This is good, and bad. If you're not on the big list, let me know; commenting is best in this case.

Technorati tagsearch: Blogging

Quote of the Day: Healey on Blair

BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair should quit now says Healey:

I think Tony's showing he is losing his grip

See, it's not just me who thinks he's tired.

Coalition update: Things are ticking along in the background, however Unity is in need of content for Liberty Central for when it goes live. At first, we can simply reprint good blog articles. So, tell us where they are...

Technorati tags: Healey, Blair, NuLab

Blair on Liberty? He has no idea

Tony Blair has written up his beliefs on Liberty in today's Observer. I want to give it a good going over, and may do so later, but am busy. In the meantime, Charlie at Perfect is on the case:

The prime minister also seems to believe that liberty is a zero-sum game: you can’t have more of it, you can only shift it around. In his view, it’s all about achieving the right ‘balance’. His rhetoric is, likewise, ‘balanced’, although - in this case - bizarre

Go read, both. If anyone else want's to point out the many obvious flaws in Tired Tony's arguments then feel free to go ahead, I'll try to add links in to any others that appear.

Update: This, by Longrider:

No, it is not, you dissembling poltroon. Organised crime has always been ugly - unless Al Capone was pretty? Or, closer to home, the east end gangs such as the Krays, were sweet boys really? Modernity is not an excuse to sweep away our freedoms - only a charlatan would believe it so. There is nothing new here that was not here before.

Update 2: D-Notice (who happens to be a lawyer by trade) here:

He doesn’t mention the Government and other public bodies cannot be stopped from using laws that breach the HRA and that if a law is declared to be “incompatible” with the HRA then it’s up to Parliament to decide whether to amend the law; if so, good; if not, tough!

Update 3: Blairwatch:

IRA terrorism was different in nature and scale... there was a hell of a lot more of it. No muslim group has set off as many bombs as the IRA did, or killed as many people as the Loyalists did. But Tony's trying to change the subject. Notice how he says it's not about civil liberties but about modernity. Utter guff.

Update 4: Garry at Curious Hamster:

What's possibly more worrying is that, while I'm almost certain that Blair doesn't realise it, there are distinct facist undertones here. The state will guarantee your liberty to live your life in the way that the state demands. For the good of the nation.

Blair isn't a facist. He is, I suspect, ignorant as to exactly what facism is. He certainly doesn't understand that a government official with unrestricted power poses a greater danger to our society than a disaffected youth in a hoodie or a terrorist.

That'll be me last update; any more, see comments, etc; if anyone's interested, more will likely pop up in the Bloglines Citations. Update 5: I lied, so sue me. Tim and Tim have more, both rather good, so worth a look as well.

Technorati tags: Blair, NuLab, Liberty, Freedom

Nick Barlow - 404 Not Found

Email from Nick Barlow, his site (What you can get away with) is down due to circumstances beyond his control, he hopes to get it back up Monday.

Technorati tags: Blogging

Lib Dems- internet improvement?

At the beginning of the Lib Dem leadership contest, I wrote a review (well, more of a rant) about the websites of the respective campaigns. I still get a few people reading it, (mostly coming from the Campbell Campaign blog) so I thought I'd do a follow up, as there has been a remarkable improvement in many ways.

At the time, I ranked them as follows:

1. Ming- nice, elegent, functional, not trying to reinvent the wheel
2. Huhne- it's there, it works, it doesn't piss me off
3. Oaten- it's not even there yet, but his personal page isn't ugly
4. Hughes- It's flash driven, I can't link to individual pages, I can copy and paste text but I then can't source it, it annoys me, it's not standards complaint, it won't work in a text browser or on my phone browser (I just checked, Opera Mini, it reads this site and Europhobia fine, has a bit of problem with DK's graphics and loves the Guardian news site), it's just wrong.

So, obviously, Oaten's site was never there.

Ming Campbell

Improved layout and appearance from then, most of it good. Good information out there, and nice use of different sections. On a purely personal level, an article written by Paddy Ashdown was always going to appeal to me, best PM we've never had and all that.

It has flaws; my flashblock tells me the title bar had a flash element (it's designed well enough to have a default alternative for those without flash installed), which, while pretty, adds very little in impact, especially as to read the site you need to scroll down so it disappears. The picture of Ming looks a bit grainy and, to me, is weirdly posed. But overall, an improvement on what was before, kudos to the webteam there.

Chris Huhne

I said it was ugly and looked dated. No longer the case, now redesigned and has a much more graphical web feel. Nice use of "podcasting", a newsfeed, Blog aggregator of supporters, etc. Utility issues, the top logo doesn't link to the homepage when you're on a sub page, and the navigation menu is to the far right, which goes against user expectations, but a masive improvement on what was before, and a good use of technology. Oh, he's changed the acronym so he's not telling a LIE as well.

Simon Hughes

I said: Awful. My new rating: Poor. The content is substantially improved, the look is better, there's no ugly flash to get passed. There's a campaign blog, which currently has this picture of him near the top, um, not the best publicity shot ever, who's he going to hit? So, overall, it should be OK? No, sorry. One, very simple, and so easy to fix technical problem.

No page titles, no site title

In this post, I outlines simple techniques that can improve your sites usability and search engine presence. If I run a site search, the page title tells me what I've found. But if you don't have any page titles?

So, a significant improvement to Simon's site. But that's going from being rated worse than non-existent to merely being poor.

The winner is

I think, overall, that Ming scrapes a win over Huhne on the site front. Just. Both good, Huhne has a bespoke site that works, Ming has a customised Wordpress site that look good. Simon's site is adequate, but isn't actually helping his web presence. If you want a website, it's to get web presence. If you don't help search engines and users of search engines, you may as well not bother.

Still, if the polls are right, it's neck and neck between Huhne and Campbell. I've already said that I'd prefer Huhne to win, so Simon having a poor site doesn't, really, bother me.

However, it is my understanding that as President it's his remit to cover the party website? If so, someone kick him, the Conservative website has been significantly revamped recently, very well done to whoever did that, the Lib Dems need to play catch up there. When the hurly burly's done, Simon goes back to being President, which, from those activists I've heard from, he's considered to be doing a good job. But he needs someone who gets how to use the web properly.

Technorati tags: LibDems, Parties, Leadership, Hughes, Campbell, Huhne, Blogging, Political Weblog Project

Quote of the Day

We are giving the authorities an open invitation to abuse their power:

"In a democracy, personal liberties are rarely diminished overnight. Rather, they are lost gradually, by acts of well-meaning people, with good intentions, amid public approval. But the subtle loss of freedom is never recognised until the crisis is over and we look back in horror. And then it is too late."

-Andrew Napolitano, American judge, just after 9/11

(via)

Technorati tags: Freedom, liberty, NuLab, liberty central, coalition

Belarus: the last European dictatorship?

Sometimes, it's worth remembering that while Blair/Brown/Blears et al may be destroying the freedoms we're rightly proud of in this country, at least they're there to be destroyed.

United 4 Belarus - Home

Technorati tags: Belarus, Freedom, Europe

Samizdata quote of the day | Samizdata.net

Message for the tired man:

Whoever said "there is no such thing as bad publicity" obviously never had their career "Dan Rather'ed" into tiny pieces by the twenty thousand bloggers.

We're coming for you Tony.

Technorati tags: quote, blogging, Blair

E-democracy: tied up in red tape

Or, why politicians should blog

Does it come as a surprise to anyone that I think our elected representatives should use modern technology to engage with their electorate directly? As a strong supporter of the principles of representative, Parliamentary democracy, and also of local democracy and local councils, reading this in the Guardian is disheartening:

Paul Evans, head of the Councillor.info scheme to provide elected members with a web presence, says only a tiny percentage of councillors use their sites to do anything more than list contact details.

Hmm. Paul Evans. I think I know what the problem here is. Councillors know that you should Never Trust a Hippy.

Engagement with the electorate is increasingly needed.

Some politicians do a much better job than others. Some have a very strong web presence, and are learning to use it effectively. Others? Well, improvements could be made. Not, necessarily, by blogging (although I think some sort of 'blog', whether updated daily, weekly, or monthly is good, not least for RSS feeds and similar), but definately by improving the layout and structure of their site.

Very basic web optimisation techniques, correct page titling, the use of Header tags, article pages rather than archive pages, etc. It's important to write for the web and, if republishing newspaper articles, edit them (or get a member of the team/a volunteer) to reformat them to be web friendly. For example, I've just written a dull paragraph about techniques, right?

• Optimise your site for search engines and users
• Ensure each page has full title tags at the top,
• Break the text up using Header tags and ordered lists
• Put every article on a separate page, don't just archive them all on one page
• If republishing print articles from, for example, the local press, reformat them for the web, don't just print big chunks of text

Big chunks of text are dull and lose reader attention

See? Wasn't that better to read?

Most traffic to a website comes from search engines.

Search engine headlines are generated by the title tags at the top of the page. Ergo, every page should have a descriptive title tag to make the site more appealing to a potential visitor. This is especially important for news and opinion articles; search engines (let's be honest, we're talking Google here, the rest don't matter - at the moment) pay attention to header tags, title tags and page structure. Vary basic techniques can make your site and your opinion pieces much more search engine friendly.

By default, it also makes you more user friendly. I want to have a reason to visit your site regularly. You want me to come back regularly, else why have a site? The best bit of all of this? All of the things you need to do to make your site media, search and user friendly is pretty much the default in decent blogging software.

In addition, if you keep the site up to date and approachable, maybe you can cut back on the number of emails you receive asking the same question again and again.

Instead, you'll have a whole lot of new questions, mostly for clarifications.

Hostage to fortune?

Yes, there's a chance something you write can come back and bite you. Yes, there's a chance you can be quoted out of context. But then, you have that with any media.

• "Did you threaten to overrule him?"
• Mr Redwood, would you care to sing a nice anthem?
• Is that an egg in the face
• "Pauline had done her hair"

Every new media, every traditional media, even your choice of car ownership opens you up to attack.

But if people are used to going to your site, seeing your opinions, you can use that as a right of reply. Instantly, if you so wish.

You don't need to publish daily. You don't even need to publish regularly, although that does help. Promote the use of RSS feedreading software, email the updates out, or, better, just email links to the update. Engage in a debate with your voters.

I have a lot more respect for a politician who votes against what I want, but explains themselves well, than I do for lobby fodder aparatchiks, even if they're on my side. Talk to us. Engage with us. If you're not sure how to go about it, ask us. We'll, mostly, be happy to help.

Some blogs are written badly. Some are pathetic. Some are rabid attack dogs out for blood. Others are sedate, reserved, windbags. A bit like the mainstream media really. We don't dismiss newspapers across the board because of Rebekah Wade's Sun, or Paul Dacre's Daily Mail.

E-communication is increasingly the norm. When I started in my job, I spent most of my day on the phone, all over the world. Now, my equivalent in that role barely says a word all day, it's all e-mail. A part of me misses ringing Poland every day. But I welcome the ability I, and others, have, to influence opinion and discuss the news with anyone, anywhere in the world.

What's your local representative doing to talk to you

Reading this and don't know? That means they're probably not doing enough, after all, I'm just a lone nut in a small flat. They work for you, don't you think they should talk to you to? Write to them and tell them so. Politely, of course. More on this general ideal here and sometimes at Paulie's site linked above.

G'night all.

Technorati tags: Paulie, blogging, e-democracy, regulatory stupidity, political weblog project

Non-trivial Solutions: Housesitting

Andrew (whose comment I quoted here) comes on board:

Well, the first thing is to lay down partisan arms, and start talking to the enemy. Evil Liberal Democrat Mat over at Not Little England, and evil Labourite Unity at Talk Politics are starting a coalition of the willing with two broad aims - firstly, some kind of tactical voting jiggery pokery to get the authoritarians of all stripes out of power, and secondly, to create a new constitutional settlement for the British people. You have to at least admire their ambition.

Well, fortune favours the bold and all that. Oh, technicalyly not a LibDem, still not got around to rejoining. Besides, as I've said a few times, on the issues that matter to me, I'm closest to the LibDems on 80% of them. That doesn't mean I agree with the LibDems 80% of the time, it's just that on some things, I don't care what the policy is.

I'm in with them, evilness set aside for the common good, so click those links and pledge allegiance. And cash. We need lots of it.

Good. He's right though, any kind of campaign like this needs to break out of the blogosphere and get press coverage and, eventually, people campaigning on the grounds. Expenses will need to be covered, printing paid for, etc.

I remember one of my earliest experiences with electoral politics was aged 17, Charter 88 organised a series of candidates hustings around the country; I had no vote, but I went because I was interested. Signed up to the charter, but the debate held was interesting and informative (and the Natural Law candidate was hilarious, when asked which politician she most admired, she answered with "Rupert Allason" - the MP for the previous two Parliaments and against whom she was standing).

It would be great to organise that sort of thing for 2009/2010. Publicity of all sorts is needed; we may need to coordinate letter writing campaigns, both to MPs and to local/national papers as well. Anyway...

As for me, I may just come out of blogging retirement. Every time I take a break, the government passes yet more authoritarian legislation. Maybe it's my fault?

Well, we've got to blame it on someone mate ;-)

Blog more. Actually, everyone set up a blog. Go on.

Oh, reminder:

Liberty Blog Round Up

I think a nice summary on a fairly regular basis of the on-topic posts would be good, there are loads of them out there now. First one to go up soon, possibly tomorrow, nominations currently to me using a proxy address, libertyroundup@fuzzyduck.org (no mailto:, but also no spaces, etc, that domain got trawled by spammers ages ago unfortunately).

Technorati tags: coalition, liberty central, freedom

Dear Dad (and other new readers),

My lovely, if at times annoying, sister, tells me you want to have a look at what I've been doing with my spare time for the last few months. Fair enough, I've sent her a link to pass on; I've lost your email address directly after one too many computer crashes I'm afraid.

So, I thought I'd write a brief description of the site and how it works for yourself and any other new readers we've picked up recently. But first Dad, a thank you. We never really talked about politics much when I was a kid, you worked with politicians every day, taught me the importance of being impartial and putting your own views aside when doing a job. You did, however (with Mum), teach me to think for myself, read, learn, research and come to my own conclusions; your refusal to have us inducted into the Church is something I remain grateful for, my atheism is so ingrained I have problems with weddings, christenings and funerals same as yourself. I still can't pay bills on time, and I perpetually forget my head, but I can use it when I put my mind to it, and for that I'm very thankful.

So, what have I been up to

Not sure if you met Paul when we shared the house in Exeter, short curly haired bloke from Shropshire, but together we've been writing a lot about politics; we both studied it at Exeter, and we mostly agree on everything (we sometimes worked to find things we disagreed on in order to debate, we both enjoy it). So I decided I'd have a go at this blogging lark, and asked him to both write a bit and keep me going (always did work better as part of a team).

It's a "weblog". Essentially, an online magazine that we write articles for when we feel like it, and each article has its own, built in, letters (comments) page. Some people come to the site regularly to see if we've written something, others subscribe to our "syndication feeds" (all those coloured button links to the right), methods to subscribe to the site and get regular updates via various types of software, and have recently picked up a few more readers than before.

It's fun to write, and getting feedback on your ideas, especially from those that disagree with you, fores you to think about your opinions. I love doing it, and I'm using the subject of my degree, rather than just the skills I picked up doing it as I do at work. It's going rather well at the moment; we've got a lot of regular readers, We've

1. Won an award
2. Been nominated for the weekly BritBlog roundup (I nearly bought you Tim's book for Xmas as it happens)
3. Lots of other people are talking about what we're saying
4. And I've become involved in a new movement to try and effect genuine changes to the constitution in order to control and repeal the actions of the current government.

Running a site like this is easy, and completely free. Haven't made any money yet from the adverts, but the Amazon links are quite good; if you (or anyone) fancy signing up to their DVD rental scheme (which I'm thinking of anyway), then they'll pay me good money at no cost to you!

Oh, if you're still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer to read websites, can I strongly recommend you get Firefox instead? Button links to the right, it's just so much better, and completely free as well (they'll, eventually, pay me money for doing that too!).

I would promise to come visit you and Mum more often, but I always do, and never get around to it. I'll try to. Much more likely to see you when I get roped in to helping darling sis move house, really good news on that one. And yes, I am slightly scared that I'll be an uncle soon.

There's a lot to read on here (and I try not to swear too often), have a look around.

Your ever loving, but unreliable and forgetful, son,
- Matthew.

Technorati tags: blogging, parents, life

John Reid: Idiot

A Big Stick and a Small Carrot: John Reid: Idiot

Technorati tags: john reid, terrorism, idiot

DMOZ Open Directory

Hmmm, to whoever did our listing here, mind if I nick the description for the next tagline?:

Not Little England - A weblog opposing attempts to destroy the civil liberties and open minded ideals that made Britain great.

I assume the listing is new, and definately a few more established blogs missing from it (read: most of the ones I read regularly), never really used DMOZ but it sounds like a good plan.

Technorati tags: dmos, blogging

My hair, my "crowning glory"?

Yes!:

Two High Court judges ruled that people regarded their hair as their "crowning glory" and could be "intrinsic" to their identity.

My understanding from the brief spot on PM is that this sets a precedent, your hair is now part of your person legally, and anyone who cuts it off without your consent is guilty of an assault, right?

Bloody right too. Number of people that "joke" about cutting my hair off, really gets to me, my choice to wear my hair long is a source of humour, a woman's choice to wear it short goes unmentioned. Why? Nice to see that my (mostly) neatly kept hair is now actually considered part of me and the law will now recognise it.

Serious issue? No, but if I can tell people to piss off when they effectively propose ABH and cite this case, then I'm happy.

Off out now, not that anyone cares, but light blogging this evening from me.

Technorati tags: hair, crowning glory, assault

Fears raised on ministers' power

The Legislative and Regulatory Bill is scaring a lot of people online, it's one of the tipping point moments. BBC News has finally covered it:

For the Tories Ken Clarke said it could "sweep away parliamentary procedure and debate on an astonishing scale".

But minister Jim Murphy insisted the bill would have safeguards built in.

And from an anonymous comment, I'm pointed at Rob Knight's post from Sunday, which I must've missed when I was there yesterday. Go read. If nothing else, EU-Serf's comment there about the need for cross-party opposition to this is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

Technorati tags: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, NuLab, leg/reg, freedom, Parliament

Switzerland to help Poland catch up with Europe

Interesting...:

"Switzerland is not EU member but it has close relations with the union," the Swiss minister said. "We have decided to make a contribution to level economic and social differences between the new and the old EU states and to allocate 1 billion Swiss francs for the purpose," she added.

A non EU state thinks it's a good idea to give money to Eastern reconstruction and catch up? Works with the EU Commission to set up a special fund? I have no idea what to make of this one.

Technorati tags: Europe, Switzerland, EU, Poland