Keep your pants on!

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Judge cleared of rush-hour flashing
Sir Stephen Richards, 56, who sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Richards, left the City of Westminster Magistrates' court a free man after being cleared of intentionally exposing himself to a fellow commuter twice on trains in south London last year. A panel of three magistrates, made up of Timothy Workman, the senior district judge for England and Wales and two women lay magistrates, ruled there was no independent evidence to identify him as the guilty man. Mr Workman also criticised the British Transport Police for failing to carry out a thorough investigation.
This is disturbing. The defendant was charged purely on the basis of identification evidence uncorroborated by video or any by any other witness. In addition, this woman cannot be identified, even now. Indeed she can never be identified. Had she been stabbed, kicked, and half beaten to death however she would not have been able to keep her identity a secret. Go figure.

There is a running gag in my household that if my wife is ever called to give identification evidence for the prosecution I will immediately offer myself as a witness for the defence.

I know this is sexist but fuck it, lives are at stake! Sirs, if you have ever watched a complex thriller with your wife or girlfriend aks yourself honestly. How many times will she say something like: 'But I thought he was dead'? or "He was the chief of police a minute ago, now he's the murderer' And so on. My ex-wife was convinced that a dustmen in an action movie was Paul Newman. 'But he's not in the film', I said, and if he was he wouldn't be playing a dustman would he?'.  She remained adamant. Jeeez.

See also: The judge, his briefs and the idiocy that now pervades this country



Another article tossed off

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The creepy populism surrounding Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby. - By Christopher Hitchens
I don't mind admitting that I, too, have watched Hilton undergoing the sexual act. I phrase it as crudely as that because it was one of the least erotic such sequences I have ever seen. She seemed to know what was expected of her and to manifest some hard-won expertise, but I could almost have believed that she was drugged. At no point did her facial expression match even the simulacrum of lovemaking. (Kingsley Amis, a genius in these matters and certainly no Puritan, once captured the combined experience of the sordid and the illicit by saying that, even as he wanted a certain spectacle to go on, he also wanted it to stop.)
I suppose if the only sex you get is an occasional hand shandy (when you stay off the booze long enough to avoid brewer's droop) why not watch Paris Hilton getting back-scuttled if it helps you on your way. Personally, I haven't seen Hilton getting shagged and I have no desire to do so. I gave up watching porn years ago. I prefer the real thing, with a real woman, not watching some bimbo with her legs around her neck, in glorious Minge-O-Rama.
So now, a young woman knows that, everywhere she goes, this is what people are visualizing, and giggling about. She hasn't a rag of privacy to her name.
Yep. How did that happen?

And now, a middle aged wanker knows that, everywhere he goes, this is what people are visualizing, and giggling about.

Yep. How did that happen?


Spirited defence of The Independent

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Peter Kellner robustly defends his paper against Blair's attack.


Simon Kelner: Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?
As the only representative of the multifarious British media mentioned by name, it's hard not to be flattered. Or, indeed, vindicated - our principled opposition to his policy on Iraq (or the Middle East as he quaintly put it: note he couldn't refer to Iraq by name) has clearly exasperated him. But that misses the point. We are unabashed about the way in which The Independent has evolved, although we would point out that this newspaper was not established as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views, but as an antidote to proprietorial influence and narrow political allegiance.
And Simon Carr adds his rejection of Blair's thesis:
There were quite a number of questionable assertions in his argument. This cynicism, for instance, where does that come from? The media? Or from politicians themselves? Fiddled statistics, waste, partisan abuse, mutual blame, twisting of facts and quotes, deceptions, disasters and dishonesties. That's what they say about each other in any representative day in Parliament.And why is Parliament not considered more important, he asked. His answer: because of "the way it is reported. Or not reported".

There are many reasons why Parliament is not considered more important, but reporting is not one of them. If he were right, the Parliament channel would attract more viewers than the 68 misfits and obsessives who tune in to it.For 90 per cent of the time they are open for business, the debating chambers of the Commons are 90 per cent empty. MPs aren't interested in what goes on in Parliament; isn't that more significant than how the media present it? And why are they not interested? Maybe it's the junk legislation that fills the days and nights in the House. So many laws pass through like sewage through the system in order to "send a message" to society (a novel interpretation of what laws are).
'Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible' says Blair. It would make a fine epitaph.


Leaner, quicker and undistorted

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I've had to take out the accordion on the sidebar and I've removed pretty well everything else as well for the moment until I can be sure which piece of code is causing rendering problems. The problem only shows up in IE, naturally. Firefox, Safari, Omniweb, Opera and Camino are all fine. It's just Gates's poxy browser that chokes on the page.

It's a blessing in disguise though. Clearing out some of this crap will speed page loading. And the page looks better too. I hate those cluttered pages full of buttons, clashing icons, and adverts. All that careful work selecting the right colours and font sizes goes out of the window when some ugly banner gets planted amongst it all.

So, most of this stuff will end up on separate pages of their own linked to from the sidebar. Tidier and less likely to distort page layout when  in the main section, even if the code is a bit 'dodgy'.


Traffic shaping

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I'm reasonably pleased with the broadband service I get from BT (BT Vision is, unfortunately, another matter and there are still lots of problems to be ironed out) but it seems increasingly that BT are applying traffic shaping or capping during peak times.  A speed test a few minutes ago showed I was getting around 7.5 Mbs, which is close to the maximum on an 8Mb line. But earlier this evening, during BT's peak period of 6pm to Midnight the speed dropped to under 500Kbs, a drop of over 90%.  And this is happening every evening, although not always quite as severely.

Calling BT doesn't do much good. The response is always a standard list of 'things to do to speed your internet connection'. Everything from not putting your router on a carpeted floor to avoiding halogen lamps and cordless phones. But all of this is irrelevant if you get maximum speeds some of the time and piss-poor performance at peak times with everything exactly the same.

There is a way of checking whether your line speed is just slow or whether you are being capped. During a slow period download the following file (don't worry, you don't need to complete the download or open the file, which is completely harmless anyway).

http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/demos/ig3-demo.exe

Check the download speed in your download manager and then cancel the download. Now download the same file using FTP:

 ftp://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/demos/ig3-demo.exe

Again, check the speed. If there is a substantial difference between the files (that is, if the FTP file is downloading much faster than the HTTP one) then you know that you are being subjected to traffic shaping or capping by your ISP.

You can then confront your ISP and ask them to clarify their policy on shaping. Some ISPs make it clear that you cannot expect more than, say, 2Mb during peak times. If fast speeds in the evening are important to you then you might want to check what's on offer from other ISPs. 

As for me, it will be a phone call to BT technical first thing in the morning, even though I know I will have to listen to crap about my router's feng shui being all wrong or something similar.  But whatever they say I intend to get a better deal from 6pm to midnight than just a paltry 7% of what I'm paying for, take it from me.

UPDATE: I had a long chat with a guy at BT this morning and I was so impressed with the way he handled my enquiry that I spoke to his supervisor and got a promise from him that the guy would get a bottle of wine and some approbation from his superiors. Now, what was the chance of that happening?


You could always deport them to, erm, Northern Ireland?

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I've just spotted this link at An Englishman's Castle

Muslim women abuse soldier at troops hospital
A British Army officer has been abused by Asian women while on a hospital visit to troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Company Sergeant Major Neil Powell was surrounded and heckled by three young women in the unprovoked verbal attack at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. The women, in traditional Asian dress, ranted about the presence of British troops in Muslim countries. The incident took place in a public area of the hospital used by both civilians and military personnel.
I love this piece. Three women -in traditional Muslim dress, mind- shouted at an NCO in a public area of a hospital. He was 'surrounded' and the women 'ranted'. I bet he can't wait to get back to the safety of Iraq and drive around in one of those traditional British inadequately armoured vehicles. The outburst was 'unprovoked' - unless you consider illegal invasion and the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims (not to mention actual murders, torture and rape) - to be provocation that is. It doesn't say whether the CSM was wearing traditional British army dress or traditional British civilian dress, more research needed there, I think.
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer said: "We have reason to be extremely cautious about the security of wounded British soldiers and those who care for them. "Earlier this year, we were told there was a detailed plan to capture a soldier in Birmingham and torture him.
Thankfully, Muslims have not yet managed to capture, torture and murder British soldiers in the UK. That's a feat which has, so far, only been achieved by white British Christians (wearing traditional European funeral dress, I believe).


Breast feed Jack Straw?

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Advice Goddess Blog
A religious scholar, who headed a department that studies the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings at the Foundation of Religion College of Al Azhar University, wrote that there had been instances in the time of the prophet when adult women breast-fed adult men in order to avoid the need for women to wear a veil in front of them. “Breast-feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage,” wrote the scholar, Izat Atiyah. “A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breast-fed.” The ruling was mocked on satellite television shows around the region, and was quickly condemned at home. Mr. Atiyah was suspended from his job, mocked in newspapers and within days issued a retraction, saying it was a “bad interpretation of a particular case.”



You only had to pick up the 'phone

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Blair challenges SNP over bomber
Tony Blair has accused the Scottish Executive of failing to take the initiative in the row over the fate of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. Mr Blair claimed Alex Salmond's office failed to contact Downing Street with their initial concerns on the issue.  Mr Blair said: "Frankly all it would have required was an enquiry from the first minister's office and it would have been cleared up immediately.
This from a British Prime Minister who has still not contacted Alex Salmond a month after he became the Scottish First Minister. What a disgrace this man is. Roll on the 27th June.