My Manifesto

Since its all the rage at present, here is my manifesto should I get elected on May the 6th that I will try to adhere too for the coming years:

  • Start micro-generation of power
  • Grow ALL my own vegetables

    More to come

  • Conservative Contract

    This isn’t necessarily an indication of which way I’m going to vote, I just want some record to stand in case the Conservatives get into power.

    This is what Dave says they will do in the “Conservative Contract”:

    We will change politics

    Our political system needs to change. Politicians must be made more accountable, and we must take power away from Westminster and put it in the hands of people – individuals, families and neighbourhoods.

    If you elect a Conservative government on 6 May, we will:

    1. Give you the right to sack your MP, so you don’t have to wait for an election to get rid of politicians who are guilty of misconduct.
    2. Cut the number of MPs by ten per cent, and cut the subsidies and perks for politicians.
    3. Cut ministers’ pay by five per cent, and freeze it for five years.
    4. Give local communities the power to take charge of the local planning system and vote on excessive council tax rises.
    5. Make government transparent, publishing every item of government spending over £25,000, all government contracts, and all local council spending over £500.

    We will change the economy

    Gordon Brown’s economic incompetence has doubled the national debt, given us record youth unemployment, and widened the gap between rich and poor.

    Unemployment is still rising, and this year we will spend more on debt interest than on schools. We need to get our economy moving.

    If you elect a Conservative government on 6 May, we will:

    1. Cut wasteful government spending so we can stop Labour’s jobs tax, which would kill the recovery.
    2. Act now on the national debt, so we can keep mortgage rates lower for longer.
    3. Reduce emissions and build a greener economy, with thousands of new jobs in green industries and advanced manufacturing.
    4. Get Britain working by giving unemployed people support to get work, creating 400,000 new apprenticeships and training places over two years, and cutting benefits for those who refuse work.
    5. Control immigration, reducing it to the levels of the 1990s – meaning tens of thousands a year, instead of the hundreds of thousands a year under Labour.

    We will change society

    We face big social problems in this country: family breakdown, educational failure, crime and deep poverty. Labour’s big government has failed; we will help build a Big Society where everyone plays their part in mending our broken society.

    If you elect a Conservative government on 6 May, we will:

    1. Increase spending on health every year, while cutting waste in the NHS, so that more goes to nurses and doctors on the frontline, and make sure you get access to the cancer drugs you need.
    2. Support families, by giving married couples and civil partners a tax break, giving more people the right to request flexible working and helping young families with extra Sure Start health visitors.
    3. Raise standards in schools, by giving teachers the power to restore discipline and by giving parents, charities and voluntary groups the power to start new smaller schools.
    4. Increase the basic state pension, by relinking it to earnings, and protect the winter fuel allowance, free TV licences, free bus travel and other key benefits for older people.
    5. Fight back against crime, cut paperwork to get police officers on the street, and make sure criminals serve the sentence given to them in court.
    6. Create National Citizen Service for every 16 year old, to help bring the country together.

    The Digital Economy Bill

    There are several worrying aspects to this soon-to-be-legislation that I could comment on. The fact that the Bill has been “washed-up” – parliament parlance for pushed through without proper consultation – is both dangerous and worrying to begin with: the fact that the government didn’t try to push this through earlier should ring alarm bells as to why they considered a period where proper consultation doesn’t take place (with parliament being dissolved) the necessary time to have it read.

    The ever-unpopular Landline Tax has been shifted to the Finance Bill, so we are still paying. Powers given to Ofcom are again dangerous and worrying, considering nationalisation of Nominet is a terrible, terrible idea.

    I’m not going to go into much detail because I’ve exhausted my thoughts on this in several places, but what sickens me the most about the whole thing, is that 40 Members of Parliament turned up to vote on the second reading.

    Forty people from our collective body who are supposed to represent us. I wrote to my MP, David Howarth, asking him why he felt it unimportant to be present at the second reading. A reply from my MP’s secretary (or whoever it is that actually replies to us mugs on these occasions) wrote a nice letter about how Mr Howarth MP opposed the DEB and had voted accordingly.

    Well first off, I appreciate him voting against it, but secondly it didn’t answer my question. I wanted to know why my MP (and by proxy hopefully why so few MPs) considered it not important to be at the second reading. That is the failing in democracy for me: our politicians – our elected representatives – do not give a damn about what we actually want.

    There is time for pain tomorrow™

    If I ever realise one of my goals of opening a running shop, I’ll create a sideline in clothing with this catch phrase. I was thinking this running last night. Coming off a slight back niggle, about 4 miles into the run I was considering stopping because my back felt sore. Sensible in many cases, but I am not sensible. So I did what I’ve done many a time – told myself that I could worry about it hurting later, and took it easy for the next mile. I think that this is the only way – within reason – I’ll achieve my goal of having an injury free year.

    Please do not vote Labour back in

    Whilst there is scant choice within the British political system, a few notes of Labour’s reign will hopefully convince people not to vote for them.

    Here is a few of Labour’s achievements from their last few terms in government:

    • University Top-up Fees, huge student loans, debt and low job prospects
    • Gap between rich and poor biggest since the war
    • Lies on the EU constitution/treaty and refusal to offer a referendum
    • Immigration uncontrolled intentionally for political purposes
    • Bailing out the banks whilst they stick two fingers up with their continued bonuses
    • PFI finance schemes
    • Private pensions wrecked
    • Selling our gold when it was at the lowest price for 20 years costing £2bn, it has since trebled
    • Out of control burgeoning public sector and public pensions
    • Over officious local councils and council tax rises over the rate inflation, doubling since 1997
    • Scrapping of the 10p Tax band hitting the poor, claiming it to be a good thing before changing it back
    • DNA database
    • ID cards
    • Selling of DVLA data to anyone who will pay
    • Peter Mandelson back after being booted out twice for wrong doing and given the title ‘Lord’
    • Impending energy crisis by dithering on new power stations
    • Failure to build more prisons, deciding to release prisoners early instead
    • Poverty at a nine year high
    • Quangos
    • NHS superbugs and dirty hospitals
    • Carelessness over vital personal data being lost on numerous occasions, HMRC, housing benefit, criminals and so on
    • Over use of CCTV and speed cameras used as cash generators rather than safety tools
    • Billions wasted on NHS computer system
    • Record numbers of young people not in employment, education or training
    • Nations credit rating downgraded, making our massive debts even more expensive
    • “Positive” Discrimination
    • FTSE returns down as they have for every single Labour government since the war
    • Longest and deepest recession since the 1930s
    • 9 out of 10 cars bought under the car scrappage made abroad
    • An Illegal war and insufficient equipment for our soldiers
    • National road pricing scheme plans and “pay as you drive”, on top of existing fuel duties.
    • Unaffordable housing, and failure to meet house building targets leaving those under 30 struggling to find a home of their own

    Not to forget the countless sound bites driven by a corrupted media team, a few choice ones being:

    “No more boom and bust”
    The biggest bust since the war, needs no further explanation.

    “British jobs for British workers”
    A hollow sound bite. Uncontrolled immigration taking up low paid unskilled work whilst the welfare system encourages people to stay on benefits.

    “Education, Education, Education”
    Record numbers of young not employed, in education or training. Spiralling student debt, top-up fees and low job prospects.

    “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”
    Prisoners sentences cut short due to a lack of prison places. PCSO plastic police and police investigation little more than handing out a crime reference number for insurance purposes. The re-offending rate among young prisoners is close to 90%.

    “Best placed internationally to weather the economic storm”
    One of the first in and last out of the deepest recession since the war whilst increasing our debt significantly in the process.

    We don’t have any great alternatives, but none of the parties in opposition can be worse then this travesty of a government.

    Etiquette and the modern man, or, A breakdown of society as evidenced by the lack of proper waistcoats in Cambridge

    I’ve often been told that I’m an old man trapped in a young man’s body. This is mostly true, except for the young man’s body bit as that is getting increasingly age weary..

    Anyway. Having lived, studied, worked and socialised in Cambridge for several years now I would like to think I have something of an understanding of etiquette. In particular, the good old fashioned waistcoat. Why we don’t really wear these any more I’m not sure, and the Edwardian in me somewhat laments the loss of this garment of clothing.

    Worse however is, I find, the lack of proper waistcoats seemingly anywhere, but worse – in the hive of evening wear etiquette and culture that is Cambridge. Black-tie is formal wear of a seemingly failing age. No one I’ve spoken to seems to know the proper etiquette of Black-tie wear. Cummerbunds are all well and good for friendly formal dinners, but for the most formal of occasions they simply are not done. The correct dress is a waistcoat. Wide open in a sort of u-shape to three, or four if you are feeling sufficiently flamboyant, buttons; to allow the shirt to be properly seen.

    The only waistcoats available in Cambridge are morning waistcoats, high-breasted, oft-six buttoned garments which in many cases where lovely items, but not for formal dinner wear. Extensive searching found what I was after on-line, but given the cost I’d much rather just get one tailored.

    Of all places, I had expected Cambridge to maintain an observation of proper etiquette, but as most suit shops there now seem to stock American style tuxedos, I suppose I have to concede that perhaps I was born about a hundred years too late.

    Mounting a network drive in Linux (Ubuntu)

    This is a very simple thing to do, it isn’t however as simple as one might think if you are coming from a Windows background, and are used to mapping a network drive from the Tools menu. As a note this is a guide for Ubuntu, although I have it working fine on both Ubuntu and Fedora, use the appropriate package manager/command line for Fed and the rest is the same.

    First, we need to make sure that samba is installed:

    sudo apt-get install smbfs

    Next, we need to make a directory to mount the drive too. As an example, I’ve just reinstalled my Ubuntu (and Fedora) distribution, and so want to map the music drive on my server. I chose /media/ as the logical place to stick my network drives:

    sudo mkdir /media/music

    Next we need to tell the file system table where the drives are, and where to mount them. We also need to include our login credentials (will cover this later).

    gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

    Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following:

    #Mounting Network Drives
    //SERVER/SHARE-NAME /MOUNT-POINT smbfs credentials=/credentials-file-location

    To make the above make a bit more sense, here is my configuration:

    //192.168.1.50/Music /media/music smbfs credentials=/home/russell/credentials.smbcredentials
    //192.168.1.50/Videos /media/videos smbfs credentials=/home/russell/credentials.smbcredentials
    //192.168.1.50/Software /media/software smbfs credentials=/home/russell/credentials.smbcredentials

    What this will do is to check within the credentials file (more on this at the bottom) your username and password for your server (I am running a Windows Home Server as an example).

    Next, we need to make the filesystem mount the drive, which we do simply with:

    sudo mount -a

    Finally, we need to make that credentials file. Simply navigate to your chosen directory (I stuck it in my /home/russell directory for ease), create a new file with the following information:

    username=username
    password=password

    And save it with the same filename you gave the /fstab/. Thats it.

    EU Probes Google Antitrust Case

    This is long, long, LONG overdue.

    I was going to write a few things, but this comment on the Times Website succinctly summed it up, so thanks to “I.M. Jolly”.

    The difference between “do no Evil..” Google and Microsoft is, MS are a damn sight less hypocritical about their monopoly postion. And abuse thereof.

    If the simple fact that “Google is rapidly increasing how much it spends on lobbying in the United States..” doesnt tell you anything, I dont know what else will – ok Google fanboys, you can now go back to your Google searches for everything, Your GMail with targeted ads based on the content of your mails and put your head back under the pillow. For the rest of us, I am sure we can agree that some scrutiny of a company which has basically won control of the internet, while gaining a very, very large amount of personal users data and their surfing habits, is entirely overdue.

    Or, maybe, as the Google CEO (Eric Schmidt) himself says, “”If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place..” – unless of course, that knowledge is personal details of his, obtained by CNET Journalists only via Google searches. Google blacklisted CNET for about a year over this, then again, they really do have to the power to be both evil and hypocritical, whenever it suits. The public have somewhat less choice in blacklisting which Information Google collects from them.

    However, Google only use the info they have collected on YOU to sell ads, dont they? No problem there, then.

    Rsync and Bash

    Have had an interesting morning delving into Bash, on MSN with Jasper, which is not something I get to do often enough.

    The upshot was a nice and fairly sophisticated rsync script to backup some files, which I won’t paste here as it’s Jaspers baby.

    However, I did think up a [much] simpler script to enable a quick and dirty backup of any particular folder to any particular media.

    #!/bin/bash
    sudo rsync -av –progress –delete –log-file=/dir/$(date +%Y%m%d)_rsync.log /dir /media/dirBackup

    You can of course exclude certain files from the backup with:

    –exclude “/dir/.jpg”

    Naturally, no one wants to type it out everytime and so lets make it into an executable script:

    sudo chmod +x /path/rsync-backup.sh

    So you now have an executable script you can call whenever you want, or you can of course create a cron job and have it run automatically.


    Here’s a slightly more sophisticated backup script that revolves on a weekly basis, and then clears out any backups that are older then this.

    #!/bin/sh
    # directory to backup
    BDIR=/home/$USER

    # excludes file
    EXCLUDES=$HOME/cron/excludes

    # name of the backup machine
    BSERVER=server

    # password on the backup server
    export RSYNC_PASSWORD=

    # lets get down to it
    BACKUPDIR=`date +%A`
    OPTS=”–force –ignore-errors –delete-excluded –exclude-from=$EXCLUDES
    –delete –backup –backup-dir=/$BACKUPDIR -a”

    export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin

    # the following line clears the last weeks incremental directory
    [ -d $HOME/emptydir ] || mkdir $HOME/emptydir
    rsync –delete -a $HOME/emptydir/ $BSERVER::$USER/$BACKUPDIR/
    rmdir $HOME/emptydir

    # now the actual transfer
    rsync $OPTS $BDIR $BSERVER::$USER/current