James D. Stallardblog

The London Olympic organisers have decided (dumbly, let face it) to build and then demolish a shooting facility at Woolwich, instead of using the National Shooting Centre at Bisley.

It's a dumb thing to do and without a shadow of doubt the decision was entirely political, rather than remotely sports related.

Olympic shooting disciplines only include Air-Rifle, Air-Pistol, Small Bore Pistol, Small Bore Rifle and Shotgun, at various distances and formats. Bisley is already fitted out for all these types of shooting, because it hosted the shooting sports for the Manchester Commonwealth games a few years ago.

However, this VERY small list of the available shooting disciplines is all catered for at Bisley in perhaps less than 5% of the overall acreage of the site. This means that although Bisley would be a far superior, and far cheaper venue to host the Olympic shooting, the money would only be spent in a relatively small space. Indeed, it is hard to see where the estimated £29m would be spent in actual tangible benefit to the site as a whole.

The BBC recently did a follow up article on the slow recovery of the Mynamar people from a cyclone. The BBC repeatedly referring to the country as Burma, apparently ignoring the change of name in 1989. What concerns is the fact that they interviewed a dozen or so children for the article, every one of which had had it's face smeared with mud, yet were sporting clean clothes, clean hands, clean arms and legs.

Some of the muddy faces had clear adult-sized-finger smear marks on forehead and each cheek.

Other than the clear and terrible squalor these children lived in (for which we must all feel guilt), they appeared well nourished, clean and fully clothed. So, none of the grinding pain of flyblown Ethiopian refugees or corpse-like malnourishment of Bangladeshi flood survivors. So, did the BBC deliberately smear mud on these childrens faces to sex-up their plight, or were they in turn taken in by the local aid agencies?

Have we become so inured to human catastrophe that we have to see bloated stomachs and flies-in-the-faces before we up our donations to charity?

Just upgraded this to the latest version of the excellent BlogX, and in doing so realised that there are precious few of us still hosting and running our own blogs. I still prefer to do it the old way, and while there is a case for outsourcing here, I just can't bring myself to deal with the security holes in the likes of WordPress. This blog runs on a Windows 2008 VM in my house, and there it'll stay for a while yet methinks.

In copying in the entries to the new database, the autonumber values have of course changed and will have killed the old perma-links. Use the search function to find what you were after, or drop me a line if you can't find it. Comments are back on and the usual Googlebomber attacks are expected (and will be stopped), so go for it.

It is often said that the people get the government they deserve. What is not often said is that the government takes it's revenge on the people in ever more Machiavellian ways. New Labour are particularly adept at this sort of thing, having created many thousands of new laws in the 11 years since they came to power.

Gary Glitter is the worst sort of human being, and it is right in every sense that he should have to pay dearly for his crimes. However (and as unpopular as the view may be), he has paid for those crimes and should be allowed to continue his life - albeit on the sex-offenders register. He should not be hounded and should not be prevented from travelling (it is a basic human right to do so) - although I can’t see many countries being interested in his brand of tourism. The problem, as usual with this government is knee-jerk over-reaction...

If we continue to hound Gary Glitter, the government will change the specific law designed to curb the behaviour of travelling football hooligans and impose a travel ban lasting years, not the six months currently on the statute books. Sure, it's a populist move and will look good to the screaming tabloids who will have something to feel satisfied about while they look for the next crusade. However, no one is thinking of the ramifications, and they are unpleasant indeed

For instance, following the Bichard Inquiry into the Soham murders in August 2002, the law was changed to allow Enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks to include information that could never be challenged in court, essentially rumour and hearsay. Further, the list of occupations potentially requiring CRB checks has this year been widened to include around 20% of the UK workforce. As a result, a child or vulnerable person making an unsubstantiated accusation, that later is retracted, unproven or proven to be false will still see that accusation attached to the permanent CRB record of the accused. That accusation will taint the accused's life until they die. The recent case of John Pinnington shows that a previously unblemished character can be trashed by the system, without recourse or defence. The case of Jim McCullough, who slapped his 13yr daughter once for terrorising their neighbours is another excellent example. Mr McCullough is now effectively barred from working with children or the vulnerable and the community has lost their long-term volunteer and football coach because he (justifiably, and with the best intentions) disciplined his daughter for grossly unacceptable behaviour.

All these new laws and yet no fewer children hurt buy their abusers.

The worst example of inappropriately used legislation has to be the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which was brought in ostensibly to combat terrorism. The act allows for the interception and storage of all forms of communication, and has allowed the government to apportion the first of billions of pounds to be spent building a huge data silo where all your communications will be stored, and used against you. Hang on, I'm not a terrorist, why is my communication being stored?

The premise is that because the terrorists don’t play fair, we aren't going to either and we'll now be able to get them. Fine, except that for the most part, it isn’t the police or the secret services using these powers to keep us safe, it's the other 792 (as of 2008) agencies (including all 474 councils) using them to pad out their own databases of dog foulers and fly tippers and sell these details on to wheel clampers and junk mailers for a fast profit. Even worse, these personal details are being lost at the rate of 29,000,000 records a year, again without redress. The Data Protection Act has not been updated to keep pace with this massive proliferation and abuse of personal data, and no one is held to account for it's accuracy, misuse or loss

What we should be concerned with is how the populist reaction over Gary Glitter is going to affect us. Will the mooted five year travel ban be misused in years to come to stop those who haven’t built up enough carbon credits from flying to Majorca? Will the CRB occupations check list grow to include anyone who has access to an internet chatroom at work. Will parents have to be vetted before they are allowed to conceive?

The propensity for government to be driven by the loudest voices has resulted in a society where we are watched and controlled far more than anywhere else in the world, yet the crimes for which these laws were enacted have not reduced, and our fear of crime has only increased.

The Government is missing out on hiring the skills of some of the top people in the industry, and as a result is being forced to pay up to 5x over the odds for sub-par skills recruited through the mess of inter-related Office of Government Commerce (OGC)/Catalist suppliers.

Why?

In order to work on most Government and related projects, you must have a security clearance, there are various types of clearance, but the most common requirement is SC, which we are told takes up to 6 weeks to obtain (it's actually supposed to be 30 days). You cannot get a clearance, unless you have already had a job requiring clearance and it's impossible to get a job without the clearance first.

The large OGC suppliers have all worked on Government projects and therefore have a large pool of security cleared staff. Never mind that these staff are not necessarily the best for the particular job requirement, they are almost always the only staff that will be recruited (at exhorbitant markups), because no one else has security clearance.

It's more than a year since the cabinet office issued this memo stating that advance clearance was only to be required in cases where the requirement is urgent and the term of the requirement is short. The memo also states that these circumstances should be rare.

I can't tell you who the wrong do-ers are. After all, the agencies will claim to be acting on the instructions of their client (usually another agency or OGC supplier). However, I can tell you that the practice is not only widespread, it is the rule, rather than the exception. Here is an example of yet another agency (in this case Spring, but I have many more) demanding advance clearance before even considering a candidate - clearly in breach of the guidelines issued last year.

Sadly, everything about the Jersey Child Abuse Scandal is typical of the Channel Islands.

It's typical that the abuse went on. Child abuse in the islands is far more common than even the self-righteous middle class howler, the Daily Mail would have us believe. Indeed, I know more than one victim and an old friend and I took pleasure in reporting an abuser ourselves in Guernsey in 1992. After an investigation, he was convicted on three counts of indecent behaviour with a minor (amazingly, not rape) and got three counts of four months - running concurrently. He was out in 12 weeks and we still had to lobby hard to get his PSV license revoked so he couldn't drive a taxi! Of course, it's disgusting that he got away with such a laughingly light sentence, but that's pretty typical - even supposing there had been enough convictions from which to glean meaningful statistics.

I'm prepared to bet big money that the Channel Islands have the lowest conviction rates and jail sentences for child abuse anywhere in the civilised world. In fact, a third conviction for drink-driving or half an ounce of cannabis is likely to get you a much harsher sentence and certainly a far bigger fine than rape of a child.

It's also typical that the Island's politicians tried to cover it up. The Channel Islands are a largely closed society where the major business and political landscape is controlled by a small minority of families. Anything that reflects badly on the islands will be covered up and the people involved will be protected, moved to other posts or at worst pensioned off with a comfy life in the sticks. The chap we went after had many friends and we had to hand the police a raft of evidence before they would even investigate. Even after he came out of prison, he didn't lose his job immediately, but was simple transferred to a desk.

Finally, it's very typical that even such a distasteful subject as child abuse will still attract the local politicians like flies on shit. Once the scandal breaks, there will be ones in power who will scream loudly in solicitous soundbites that a full enquiry must be held and that the people responsible will be brought to justice (while simultaneously quietly working to protect them!). There will be the ones out of power who will crow with equal screaming vigour that this was the fault of him and her in power and wouldn't have happened if THEY'D been elected.

The whole political shitstorm will be veiled in a cloak of semi-secrecy, that hides not the Machiavellian machinations of the ruthlessly efficient, but the blundering incompetence of the terminally inbred.

This scandal will not be covered up and the sole reason is that when the Jersey Police were pressured into a coverup, the Chief Officer did what should have done and called the UK police in, to guarantee impartiality. It's likely that his actions will eventually cost him his career, but he had no other choice.

Wish me luck, I'm migrating a SAN this weekend and resetting all the user and shared data permissions to the way it should be done. The job has taken us about 4 weeks of solid work to design and write the scripts and on the night, we will be re-permissioning over 11,000,000 files and folders and migrating 1300 users in one hit.

Another all-nighter methinks!

Update: Done and dusted, and home by 10 - and a total success with the number of calls to the helpdesk the following day being under 20. Thanks are due to Aron, Jeff and Graham for their hard work and testing.

British Telecoms seems to be taking a leaf out of the "questionable sales drivel" handbook with their latest promotion:

"Upgrade to paper-free billing, at no extra cost!"

So, I save you money in postage, printing and carbon footprint and you reward me by not charging me for the inconvenience of going to a website and remembering yet another sodding password.

As if it's not bad enough that less than 7 days after getting their bill, I get a red reminder and have to feel that if I don't pay IMMEDIATELY, I am a BAD CUSTOMER. I now have to pay by direct debit or they will actually charge me for the convenience of paying them during my monthly accounts cycle, not at their demand. WHAT?

BT ONLY get away with this type of behaviour because they are a virtual monopoly in what's known as the last mile for the old PSTN network. In other words, we have to buy from them, no matter how crap they are, and they clearly know it.

It's interesting to wonder if the second a viable alternative to mass market residential phone lines appears a very large proportion of their customers will simply walk - I will.

It's been a surreal few days...

On Sunday, I went to Hyde Park to see Aerosmith. After standing in the rain for 6 hours, the crowd were getting a bit feisty and few fights broke out. The chap in front of me (presumably seeing this has his cue) pulled out a pot of Houmus and some cheesy biscuits and started handing them around. A few minutes later (while half a dozen of us were contentedly chewing away) he pulled out a carton of cranberry juice and some plastic cups - and again, passed them round.

On the way to work this morning, I was cut up by two lorries; tailgating each other in the outside lane at just over 80Mph. Each lorry was a large, flatbed and was carrying around 200 propane gas bottles.