Why must the Labour Party be so easily diverted from the real issues?

Letter to Ed Miliband sent today:

Stop being distracted by the Tories. The Unions founded the Labour party, which used to be the party of the workers now translated in to the "squeezed middle class". There are plenty of curbs already in place to ensure that head office still get the final say to impose "career" politicians on us all. Instead concentrate on the real issues we are all worried about:
The demonisation of the poor and the cuts in welfare
Ditto the unemployed
The reason for the growing use of food banks
This government's failure to get the economy going
Privatisation of our NHS
Privatisation of our Royal Mail
Privatisation of our education services
Unemployment
Abandonment of human rights
Abandoning the EU

I could go on..........................

You know as well as I do that the figures for welfare payments given out by this government persistently include state pensions which is by far the largest portion and is included to scare people into believing how high the benefits bill is and the need to get these feckless poor people ground down.  I never thought I would live to see such total abandonment of social responsibility even by the Tories.

It is these sorts of lies the Labour party should be countermanding. Not faffing about concentrating on picking out bits of fluff from its procedural navel, while the appalling dismantling of this country's social fabric is being carried out by this appalling Tory party of rich neo-con toffs and their Lib Dem poodles.

Get back to being a party in opposition. Stop reacting to every little diversion the Tories and their media mates throw in your path.

I wait in vain to hear a Labour party I can believe is on my side.

Janet Woods
Lifetime Socialist and proud of it.
And now supported by Richard Woods, ditto.

How Tinkerbell fell from grace and Dotty was born

My confession that I had finally fallen for a sat nav indicated that the device was to be known as Tinkerbell. I regret to say that she has fallen from grace and is now known as Dotty.

This is not to say that she is of no value but it also indicates that her predecessor remains the queen of my navigation needs. Indeed I had been happy with my own sat nag for years. Her ability with a map had been honed by practise. Her awareness of motoring conditions were based on her own experiences. And, essentially she knew when shutting up was the only real option. She had even almost lost that strange female ability to say left when she means right. And she no longer sent me into paroxysms of doubt as she turned the map upside down!

For years I have viewed the sat nav as a £200plus solution to a £5 problem. For long have I argued that I have a perfectly good sat nag so why should I have need of an electronic replacement which will lack her charm and sense of humour?

Anyway now you can get one for under £100 we have our first sample from Garmin. She started life as Tinkerbell. True she is absolute crap on rural roads, especially if you know them well. Yes she will fail entirely to observe that the road you are joining is the MAJOR road and you should be stopping or giving way. There are times when her routing can be cranky. I have sorted out some pretty strange result of poor preferences. Since when did 'avoid' mean 'never use under any circumstances'? I reasonably assumed that 'avoid toll road' would mean a simple preference for not paying where possible. Oh no, Tinkerbell got it into her head that a 40 kilometre detour round Rheims was better than four Euros of A-road. Turned that off, I did. Now of course she won't use anything BUT toll roads!

Oh yes and despite the quality of the GPS service, following some of her instructions would have sent our caravan up a cul-de-sac! Given the accuracy of GPS the thing must have seen the extra Impasse right turn BEFORE the right right one? And she has told me to turn right on a main road when what existed was just a Z-bend. It turned out a chalk farm track had caught Tink's attention and caused the bizarre instruction. No mention of the succeeding left hander though!

I thought I had discovered what was wrong with Tinkerbell and that it may not extend to more expensive and therefore more sophisticated systems. Garmin may not be using actual maps to drive its system. Sound odd? Read on.

GPS may be a wonderful thing but in fact the satellite positioning is only the start of the story. All that does is let the device receiving the signals (three usually) to know where it is ON THE PLANET. The reason the US decided to make the system free to users was simple – the users have to do all the hard work and it costs. And by making the service free the US taxpayer was less inclined to argue about the huge cost – this was after all a military system in the first instance.

The device gets the signals and knows where the satellites are so 'it' knows where it is in latitude and longitude terms. The software then compares this with the software map data stored in the device – expensive programming. The data is 'maps' but maps come in many forms and how much detail they contain is highly variable and subject to high copyright costs. Now comes the risk/problem/danger. ONLY if the map contains information can the device tell you about it.

If you use, for reasons of cost, relatively inexpensive 'maps' are used they will be more like atlases, with limited detail and scale. When it come to towns then the detail reduces still further. So here I believe is what can and does happen.

Tinkerbell tells us the route and may even give us the road number (I'll come to that oddity later). The road is subject to priority variations determined for traffic safety and management reasons. What looks like the 'main' road may not be. So the user drives along for X kilometres and Tinks is silent. But twice we have to halt because ours is the minor road. Nothing from Tink. Then she tell us (driving on the right) to 'keep left on the D43'. No we cannot because we are driving on the right and this is actually a left turn across oncoming traffic. Again the system is blind to the priorities on the road if they are not on its map/atlas. Then we arrive at our destination: 'Turn right at Rue de la Republique' stumbles Tink. No such road name is to be seen. We have been on the D43 and she said so. Now we are turning on trust. Our destination is not on the boards, and not on Tink's screen. We turn and she tell us to travel '9 kilometres on Rue de la Republique'. Oh dear, I don't think so. The road is the D79 and not once do we see a sign telling us it is any sort of named Rue. Suddenly she tells us to keep right on the D79. Hooray but hang on, its just a bend in the road not a junction.

At about this point Tinkerbell became Dotty. Part of the cause was our utter amusement at what passes for French pronunciation. But this is made worse by the fact that Dotty wants to call every road by the name it may have on her atlas. So a major road can become the Rue something unrepeatably NOT even Franglais! Worse the name is not on any road sign since even here the French are using the road number. And as for her language! General s a common road name. In French it is a hard g and stressed – thus it sounds like Gay-nay-rarl. In English it is of course Jen-er-al. Dotty makes it Gayen-air-eel. Actual names are even worse – and remember, she is likely to be telling you to turn right at XYZ namer when all the signs will tell you is what you want to know – D999 or whatever. Of course we know this because my sat-nag is monitoring the sat-nav with a MAP! Without I fear what could by now have happened. Dotty she is and Dotty she will remain.

Later I was offered a huge update for the Western Europe maps on my device. When I found a fast enough broadband connection for a TWO GIG download I accepted it on my netbook. It took the thick end of an hour. The screen said THREE! Then, downloaded, it did something Garmin calls 'building'. No time was given but it took over 20 minutes. THEN it said 'installing' and estimated an hour, which would be about right given the download time! I re-booted later and expected Dotty to become Madame Bouverie, get all her pronunciations right and stop calling major road without apparent names by some garbled version of an irrelevance. No such luck. Exactly what was updated \|I shall never know and whit it took three hours is a mystery. Unless of course they were doing it like it used to be in the 90s and loading an entire new up-dated programme and killing the entire old one. As opposed to saving a zipped version as back up and simply overwriting the relevant bits before killing the old prog.

So am I/we using Dotty? The answer is yes but never without a map open and in play. She is great at getting you to specific points in towns and cities (although her knowledge of one-way system can be flawed). She is great at getting you back on course if you divert. She is unreliable in detail – twice she had proudly told us “Arriving at Camp XYZ, on right” and it has been on the LEFT.

My theory is that the system is set up for the UK but is using European maps without fully changing the side of road on which we are driving. This might account for the potentially dangerous “keep left” description. I also think the mapping Garmin are using does not contain enough road priority information.

Dotty would be helpful for anyone driving on their own in the UK but would need to be used with care in Europe.

She is good at finding shops, banks, garages, museums, places of interest etc. And being able to assign as favourites temporarily frequent destinations (e.g. camp sites) is brilliant. They form a sort of 'go home' instruction which is also one of her assets. I hit that button by accident here in the Vaucluse and after a very long time 'calculating' she announced 1,198 kilometres, ETA 16.57 “GO”. Not yet Dotty but your time will come.

Experience does not improve impressions. Dotty demand that St as in Saint be fullt spelt out. As a result it appeared she had no idew of places like St Remy de Provence. Worse in some cases she will refuse to find the place you want or follow the post code she then uses to tell you where a place is. For example however I tried to enter St or Saint Gilbert she refused to find it and offered a place hundred of kilometres away. So I switched to the post code 13150. She refused to recognise it. And then, when I cheated by asking for a place next door she told me the road IN St Gilbert was in post code … you gussed, 13150!

But we had some fun when we detioured to find a special quarry up an impasse – finally she told us – proceed 80 metres and do a u-turn! Hooray!

But not hooray when she continues to identify places on the wrong side of the road! “Arrive at destination X on left” Oh no it not – its one the right! Might account for some collateral damage since the GPS drives bomb and missile targetting. Oops, sorry the arms dump was on the other side to the local school....

Barking at bad dog owners.... and seeking new dog laws

A while since I have been here so let's get on.... First remember, I am a dog lover and owner and have virtually always been. But...
(And here you can see the timeline of change! http://tinyurl.com/cusdmfn )
Dogs: I love them individually. I grew up with them and a for while as a child lived in a breeding environment - three Elkhounds and two Corgis and assorted litters of each and, once, both. Although the first dog I knew was a border collie sent mad by the blitz none of the dogs ever bit anyone. Well not quite Late on and while temporarily out of my ownership a golden retriever snapped at and nicked my grandson and nearly made dog meat for his trouble.
Dogs: I don't trust them. And some breeds I trust far less than others. I have been to scores of dog shows and am not comfortable walking down the pen lines, with dogs snapping and growling across the divide. Chained of course, but accidents happen. My brother was bitten in the lip by a dog (known to us) that was merely leaping to catch treats. So it goes but he was scarred slightly for life.  And when in the 60s I went to Ally Pally in north London for the annual All-England Alsatian Show ( as we then called German shepherd dogs) I was for the first time mildly scared walking the lines.
Dog-owners: We come in many types. Some love their dogs too much, others not enough. Some are control freaks and produce astonishing levels of co-operation. Others are hopeless, and have dogs barely under any sort of control. And, worse too many of these last choose large, difficult breeds and often in significant numbers. One dog is a pet. Two dogs are two pets. Three dogs is the making of a pack and it had better be YOU who is alpha male. Four and I shall not say what I think.
Breeds: Dogs come in many sizes and types of course and all have their own characteristics. All were originally wild dogs, wolves in some cases, and now cross-bred animals. In the mists of time they were bred for characteristics which may be visible (small and  pretty; large and powerful; easy managed)  or in their capabilities (trackers, retrievers, guardians, protectors) and so on. In the process they have also acquired characteristics which may, or may not, be useful, attractive or even desirable. German shepherds are extremely loyal and good with kids but in turn this can mean they are over-protective and potentially risky. King Charles Spaniels may be tiny and cute but their breathing can be difficult and if they panic they can snap. We'd all rather be bitten by a Charlie than a Shepherd but a bite is still a bite. In both cases and many others breed standards have been known to wreak havoc. The shepherd began to be so low in the rear quarters that they could not walk straight and suffered arthritis - that can make for a bad tempered dog. Breeding Charlies to produce a short, snubby nose meant there wasn't room for their breathing apparatus and their brain stem could leak down the spine. Another ill-tempered show dog.
Fashion: It has a lot to answer for but just now in the world of dogs things have got a lot worse. Zoe Williams (another dog lover) writes in the Guardian  today about how fashion got the Bull Terrier breeds into trouble through being identified as dangerous when in fact they were just more common. I fear she is wrong. It was by no means all that common but it did feature in rather too many dog bites stories. As did the rottweiler which I adore and the Doberman which I like less. The pit bull terrier rightly got labelled and so did a variety of other dogs. I fear she is also wrong when she then likens them to AK47s and Kalashnikovs in the US - its people/owners who fire the bullets. Of course but what would be wrong with ensuring anyone who owned such a weapon/dog was properly trained and qualified to do so? And they they were kept securely under lock and key against the failures of others to understand the process. In addition we now live in a world where cross -breeds are amazingly popular. The Labradoodle started out as a reasonably bid to produce a trainable guide dog with reduced allergen risk. The breeder who did this knew that there were risks - the Labrador, so apparently adorable, can be jealous and snappy and the Standard Poodle has been so finely bred that it is capable of being highly strung. But he knew what he was doing and why and bred for tractability and docility with alertness and vigour. Good results are excellent. But we now have all manner of crosses that look a lot less well though out. Zoe Williams (Guardian article above) has a Staffordshire bull terrier crossed with a Rhodesian Ridgeback. The one is good for bull baiting, the other in packs for hunting down large game and protecting stock in Kraals on the veldt. Not surprisingly she tells us (she tells US!) it has bitten twice! In my book the third bite would have been a needle in the dog's neck! One bite maybe; two bite never is a good rule Zoe. (She wrote: "My dog bit my mother. So that was a whole can of Freudian worms, even before he bit my uncle")

But she is writing and I am writing (and I hope someone may be reading) because yet another dreadful, tragic but entirely avoidable killing has taken place and an innocent young girl and her family have paid a wicked price. But it is NOT the price of dog ownership. 

Zoe and others and me demand action but there is too much hand-wringing about what should be done. The answer is NOT to listen to the dog lobby. They are as unreliable and prejudiced as the appalling National Rifle Association in America. We must have a string of severe restraints on all dogs but especially those large enough to take control of their environment. For that is what happens. So the first step is to severely restrict who may have a dog and how many. And since all this will cost we have to ensure that it is us, the dog owners, and the dog industry that pays the price. So here we go...

STEP ONE - LICENSING: To do that we have to return to licensing of dogs as a first step. It is already the law in Northern Ireland so why not here? But not at the footling amount charged over there - £12.50. I would strongly suggest it be £25 per annum. Free for guide dogs and pensioners - for ONE dog. Breeders could register and pay only for each breed animal (they would charge customers of course). Prospective dog owners would have to get the licence BEFORE they buy because it would be necessary for them to visit the RSPCA (or a trust organisation involving them), who would administer the process and be 'approved' as potential dog owners.

STEP TWO - QUALIFYING OWNERS: This would require the owner to fill in a legally binding form in which they stated the condition in which the dog would be kept and that they would arrange neutering and chipping on purchase.

STEP THREE - CHIPPING AND DNA:  It is also the law in Northern Ireland that ALL dogs must be micro-chipped. Excellent. But I would go further and have a DNA sample taken from every dog at the point of chipping. This would be kept by the vet or the RSPCA for the life of the dog and registered with the chip. Any dog bite will be easily traced.

STEP FOUR - REDUCED OWNERSHIP: All the above applies for ONE dog. If an owner wishes to acquire a second they must produce evidence that they have attended an approved dog handling course. This evidence would be annotated on the registration document. No ordinary householder would be permitted more than three dogs. Exceptions would be breeder (registered as such above) and farmers and others with special needs and facilities. The latter is critical - no professional dog handler would expect to be able to manage a group of six or seven hounds or collies or retrievers in anything less than suitable environment. So it should be.

NEW LAW: Finally, we need a new Dog Control Act.
First it would enshrine all the above as statutory requirements. It would establish a sort of OfPet regulator to oversee the activities in dog control areas of vets, breeders and others. It would also establish a body to run the whole show, financed from the fees above and from sums paid as part of chipping, DNA registration etc. There are currently 8m dogs in the UK - that would deliver £200m a year as a minimum.
Second it would set rules about the owners' responsibilities. It would be a prima face criminal act to have any dog (animal?) that inflicts injury on another up to and including manslaughter in the event of death. A bit like car driving laws. Indeed, there could be a points system for some of the other rules I would like to see in place. This would end the inanity that a pack of dogs may savage a child to death and there be no criminal act!
It should be illegal to have any dog not on a leash in the public highway or in an area designated by the local authority (this could include shopping malls and the like).
It should be illegal to have two or more dogs NOT on a leash under the care of a single person. And it should be illegal to ever have three or more dogs not on a leash no matter how many carers there are. It should also be illegal to keep more than one dog in an area which could reasonably be expected to be accessible by anyone else. So an ordinary garden would be OK for one dog but not two running free. But a secure fenced area would be OK so that guard dogs could still be employed (they could in any event be capable of exception where necessary).
This Act would also empower OfPet, in conjunction with the Kennel Club to police the business of dog breeding and especially of dog cross-breeding. It is a startling fact that the source of dogs is so casual in the UK. This chart http://tinyurl.com/cvkfn99 shows that as few as 10% may have come from actual breeders. It is a good rule that if you have not seen the dame and sire of your puppy you can have no idea what it will turn out like. Given the amazing prices demanded for cross breeds, which can by definition have no real pedigree and rarely even a chance to see the parents, this has become far too lucrative a business with far too little regulation, if any. In fact, looking at this site, (http://tinyurl.com/btnf99n)  the time may have come for some regulation anyway. Do they even pay VAT I would ask.

The NHS and broken promises

The coalition is a government of liars. Bad enough that they have no mandate for anything they are doing but on the NHS they actually made explicit promises that no one would be forced to privatise any part of it. They lied. For proof see below.
They are so busy cosying up to all their city mates that they have even lost out to UKIP. I frankly do not care what happens to Tory MPs - oxygen is too good for the majority if not all. But I do care about my family, my kids, my grandchildren - and even yours. So I want the NHS to keep going.
Failings like Staffs are dreadful but happen in all fields from time to time. Until now we would have expected the man in charge to take the flak, even do the decent thing. Instead he is promoted to overall charge of the entire service. We are governed by fools in fancy suits and with unearned wealth to protect them,
Talk to your friends. Tell them what you can read anywhere (except in the corrupt and evil Daily Mail)

If you know the name and address of your MP then please write to him or her. If only the name then mail it to them at the Palace of Westminster.

If it helps this is what I wrote to George Freeman:

Dear George, I know you have sympathies in this area but we are really worried about this. Nine years ago I had three months to live - leukaemia. The NHS here and in Cambridge saved my life. But will they be there and able to do it next time? Or for my kids, my grandchildren - yours? Talk to your colleagues, get them to honour their promises. Save the NHS for future generations.
Please sign up to EDM 1104 to stop the regulations which could force GPs to privatise more of our NHS.
We care enough to have paid for legal advice (funded by members of 38 Degrees). This sets out how the new proposals break promises made by the government last year. Please read it and I would be interested to hear your thoughts:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-section75-legal-advice

You can get an email address for your MP by going here: http://www.writetothem.com/

Private buses but public money for smart cards?

Norfolk is proud today that they have got £2.5m to introduce smart cards on the county's buses. But I am not.
The buses were privatised - not something I favoured in fact. But OK, they are run by private companies, making money. Fair at it goes. They get handsome support for providing some un-profitable services. Fair enough.
But they will be able to run better services, save time, reduce staffing, cut costs by having smart cards - and we are having to pay for it. Why? Times are hard enough, cuts are hurting everyone except the rich. Why this mis-use of our tax monies?
Disgraceful - again. What a bunch of toons we did elect.

Details here: http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/News/NCC120114

Isn't it time to end 'marriage'...

OK that sounds a bit OTT but even if the MPs' vote produced the right result it would be better to have more consensus on this subject.

Frankly I think we need to get this better framed. Increasing numbers of people do not accept any religious faith. So surely the time has come for 'partnership' to replace 'marriage' anyway? 

Why should not everyone regardless of race, gender and orientation have the right to a civil partnership service that involves the same promises and commitments and confers the same rights as 'marriage'? 

I am sure many who are in what they see as common law partnerships would thus be tempted to undertake the new partnership commitment. 

This change would leave it open for anyone of any faith or orientation to add to this a religious marriage blessing. If you think this is a good idea tell people, especially your MP. And especially those who voted against this measure!

For once Dave does look as if he might be being brave...



EDP report is here:

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/poll_how_did_your_mp_vote_in_the_gay_marriage_debate_1_1866074