Archive for May, 2010

A Weekend in London

Posted on in Music, My Life, The World, TV.

A Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, so the weather was extremely mixed.

On Friday a bunch of us from work went to the new-ish oriental buffet, Tuli on Tooley Street. It’s underneath the railway arches and has made great use of the space – it’s light and airy and feels modern. The food was decidedly average – exactly what you’d expect from an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet – and didn’t really seem to live up to the image that they were trying to present. Maybe the teppanyaki or sushi options would be more interesting if we ever went back as a smaller group and/or in the evening.

Saturday was the Crystal Palace Overground Festival and Lettice and I braved the drizzle to take a look. Spread out round all three sides of the triangle were stalls selling exactly what you’d expect from the good people of Crystal Palace – cupcakes, handmade greetings cards and antiques. There was also music and kids’ activities going on. With the events spread out both geographically and temporally, coupled with the poor weather, it all seemed a bit difficult to get into the spirit of things. Maybe if it’s sunny next year we’ll make the slightly longer trip up from Croydon.

And then round to [info]miss_newham‘s for the annual Eurovision party. Alcohol, scorecards, yelling at the telly, and some truly dreadful music. I seemed to be the only person who liked the Albanian entry; the winner of our voting was Greece, which matched the winner of the UK phone vote so we must have been in tune with the national psyche. Not sure why the UK bothers entering – everyone hates us and we always enter rubbish songs. Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can would have been a better entry and some sexy nurses would surely have garnered a few votes. ;-)

There’s a new art gallery in West Norwood – The Portico Gallery is very close to us and full of a wide variety of pieces in varied styles and media. I’m rubbish at writing about art (“and everything else,” yells the audience) so there’s not much more to say except that that’s where we were on Sunday afternoon.

And today? Nothing much at all. :-)

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-30

Posted on in Tweets.
  • Getting addicted to wikipediagame.org #fb #
  • Today has been working from home, which means battling with VPN and flakey wi-fi. #fb #
  • How atomic are SVN actions? Windows just crashed mid-update… #
  • New East London Line = Really odd seeing all those people on the middle platforms at Crystal Palace. #fb #
  • New East London Line = my train held at New Cross Gate whilst ELL train goes through. Better stick to the other route home in future. #fb #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-23

Posted on in Tweets.
  • Hey @steam_games I can't register – you don't accept emails with + in them. And I can't contact support because that requires registration! #
  • I really like the names of the Olympic mascots – Wenlock and Mandeville, but slightly tempted to call them Nick and Dave… #fb #
  • I signed the petition to repeal the Digital Economy Act http://bit.ly/deapetition #DEBill #DEAct #GE2010 #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-16

Posted on in Tweets.
  • Electrical inspection on the house we're buying says "Ring circuit is not a ring" ?!? #fb #
  • Woman in Somerfield was buying 50 or 60 individual (not in multipacks) creme eggs. Stocking in up in case the Tories ban them? #
  • I ♥ knockers! (door knockers of course, see last message) #fb #
  • Locked out and wife is on phone with mother. I may be stuck for some time. #fb #
  • Not as upset about our new government as I thought I would be. Odd that. Need to think. #fb #
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A quick, personal and probably inaccurate politics summary

Posted on in My Life, The World.

A week is a long time in politics. On this blog it’s clearly ten days.

The Election

I have never yet voted (in a general election) for a candidate who got elected. This didn’t change. Overall, happy that the Greens got their first MP, happy that Cameron didn’t get a majority, disappointed by mostly everything else.

The Coalition

A Lib-Dem/Labour coalition was clearly not going to work, the numbers, personalities and media. So with the option between a Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition and a Conservative minority government, which would be the lesser of two evils? Considering that neither Labour nor the Lib-Dems can afford to fight another election and that Labour need time to pick a new leader and a new direction, I think that a minority government would have been asking for trouble. So, the Lib-Dem/Conservative might have been the least worst choice, not just for Nick Clegg, but for everyone.

The Government

There are a lot of people in the new cabinet that I don’t like. There are some I grudgingly respect and a few I actually do like. Taking a 5% pay cut is a good sign (but when the company I worked for ten years ago was getting into trouble we took a 10% pay cut…). Other than that it’s all noise and promises so far.

Rewriting the Unwritten Constitution

There seems to be a lot of confusion between the ability to bring down the government and the ability to dissolve parliament. As I see it the proposal (which currently lacks a lot of detail) will change things like this:

Currently Proposed
The Prime Minister has the right to dissolve parliament and call an election at any point, and must call one after five years The Prime Minister has no right to dissolve parliament and call an election. An election will take place automatically after five years.
MPs may force the resignation of the Prime Minister if more than 50% vote for a motion of no confidence. MPs may force the resignation of the Prime Minister if more than 50% vote for a motion of no confidence.
MPs have no way to dissolve parliament. MPs may dissolve parliament if more 55% vote in favour.

So the PM is giving up power, and MPs will gain a new power. So far so good.

The problem is with what happens after a vote of no confidence brings down the PM. Currently it would likely lead to the defeated PM resigning and calling an election. In the proposed system it would only do the first. So what if more than 50% but less than 55% of MPs hate the current government (e.g. in the current parliament, what happens if the Lib-Dems decide they want to get out of the coalition)? The PM would have to resign and then we’d be back in the same situation we were in after the election – horse trading and squabbling between the parties to form a new coalition or minority government.

If the proposed changes do become law, and if that 55% is, as the critics fear, high enough to prevent parliament being dissolved early, then Gordon Brown’s lasting legacy will be to have set the first Thursday in May as the date for all future elections.

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Legacy? What legacy?

Posted on in The World, WWW.

What is Gordon Brown’s legacy? is a rather damning silence from the BBC.

Or if they’ve fixed it by the time you read this:

BBC web page 'What is Gordon Brown's legacy?'
Very True Mood: (amused) amused
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-09

Posted on in Tweets.
  • Good news from Brighton but otherwise a rather disappointing set of results. #fb #
  • Tomorrow, just go and bloody well vote. Once every four or five years we get to boss the buggers about for a change, why miss out on that? #
  • Was this really the beat evening for @lambeth_council to run a series of test posts? Hours to go until the polls open and all that… #
  • Very briefly met my local Tory candidate today. She's quite cute. Which won't be influencing my vote. #

Election: each to their own

Posted on in My Life, The World, WWW.

My local candidates, assessed on the quality of their web sites.

Tessa Jowell, Labour

http://www.tessajowell.net/

IA and Design: Nice use of YouTube and Google Maps (don’t re-invent the wheel, use the market leaders where suitable). Two equal width content columns means the user doesn’t know which piece of content is more important. Labour Party banner ad at the top looks like a banner ad. Accessibility and Privacy links go to labour.org.uk so how can we tell whether they apply to this site?

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 10 validation errors. Layout breaks in Opera 10.53. Email sign up things doo.doo is a valid domain name and dfsfsfd a valid postcode. JavaScript for TinyMCE and something call admin-interface.tao are loaded on every page – maybe these should only be loaded on admin screens?

Kemi Adegoke, Conservatives

http://kemi.adegoke.com/

IA and Design: Best looking site, not much else to say about it – simple but efficient.

Technical: Based on WordPress. Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 85 validation errors. Kemi claims to “enjoy web development and writing the occasional bit of code”. Layout breaks very slightly in Opera.

Jonathan Mitchell, Liberal Democrats

http://www.jonathanmitchellsblog.com/

IA and Design: It’s a Blogger blog – with commenting disabled. Only been blogging since February apparently. Black text on a mid-green background. All the text is in bold.

Technical: It’s a Blogger blog – claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 363 (!) validation errors.

Shane Collins, Green Party

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://www.greensarecoming.org.uk/ShaneCollins

IA and Design: Video should probably be instead of mugshot instead of tucked away at the bottom. Otherwise clean and efficient, if a bit basic.

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 41 validation errors.

Elizabeth Jones, UKIP

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://candidates.ukip.org/index.php?pg=show&eid=578

IA and Design: Photo looks like it came from MySpace. Nice use of UGC in the Q&A section (but … how can blood sports be “a matter for the individual to decide”?)

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 131 validation errors. URL is terrible from an SEO perspective.

So, we’ve learnt that the big parties spend more on web sites than the little ones; that no candidate can make a site that actually validates; that XHTML is hands down winner over ye olde HTML 4 or bright shiny new HTML5. Not much help in actually deciding to vote for. :-(

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There’s an election on…

Posted on in The World.

Not that you would know round here. This afternoon I walked from West Norwood to Crystal Palace, just over a mile, and I saw two posters in people’s windows (one Labour, one Liberal Democrats) and one phone box poster for the Conservatives. That was all. Wonder what the turnout will be like on Thursday?

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-02

Posted on in Tweets.
  • I was right. http://bit.ly/b0q45X This week was very full of the grumpy. Long weekend can't start soon enough. #fb #
  • Oooo, sugar headache. That wasn't smart. #
  • My wife has never heard of Dodo Pads (http://dodopad.com/) – maybe she isn't really really a middle class child of the 80s after all … ;-) #
  • Need to find spare desk for consultant. We have no one on holiday and two contractors already. Packed office this week. #
  • Richard Parkgate-Hamlin #mytorympname #
  • Based on this morning, this week is going to be very full of the grumpy. #fb #