Off Playing

Not like this, obviously. But away to Snape Maltings for a few days

Mobile Highways

Sorry if today it seems like I’m putting the world to rights today. I promise tomorrow I’ll stop ranting.

I make no apologies for the fact that I hate speed cameras. Most people immediately reply to that comment with something along the lines of, “ah yes, but weren’t you caught speeding once?”. Yes, four years ago. Although I never understood why a dual carraigeway with a usual limist of 70 had been reduced to 30 for roadworks (other than to generate revenue for Gwent Police), I held my hands up and said, yes I was doing 41, fair cop (although I filled in the Welsh version of the form to be obtuse). It slowed me down. The system worked. It’s just the constant persecution of motorists I don’t like. The hidden cameras placed in stupid speed limit areas designed purely to catch people out.

The trouble is, my argument isn’t in favour of less cameras, it’s in favour of more police officers. Speeding is by no means the only traffic offence. Today I drove 88 miles along the M4. In those 88 miles I saw 13 people using their mobile phones without handsfree sets, and 3 people not wearing seatbelts. I wasn’t deliberately looking out for it – I did have to keep one eye on where I was driving. Each of those offences is illegal, carrying a minimum £60 fine up to 6 penalty points and £1000. Arguably, they are more dangerous than a motorist travelling at 77mph on the motorway instead of 70.

Imagine a police car patroling that section of motorway. By my statistics that’s one offence less than every 7 miles, and less than every ten minutes. Surely that’s worth putting a couple of patrol cars out there on the M4? Ah, but why bother with that when you can put a camera van on a motorway bridge, catching those travelling at 77mph, and a few Highways Agency vehicles along the motorway to clear-up the carnage caused by those with only one hand and 50% of a a brain left to control their cars whilst their brain is slowly microwaved by their Nokia or Samsung?

Me? Cynical? Never.

Music Manifesto Reappears

Remember a few years ago when the government, various Youth Music groups and some famous musicians (Julian Lloyd Webber & Co.) all came up in public and patted themselves on the back for promoting music in schools? At the core was the promise that every child in primary school would be given the opportuniy to learn a musical instrument. There was going to be standardisation across the country for music provision. There would be more funding, more teachers, better provision, more instruments. Then it all went away, disappearing under the surface?

Well, today it’s back. Sort of. Only now it’s saying that some areas of the country are excellent and others aren’t. Why might that be? They cite the Tory cactchphrase ‘postcode lottery’, which isn’t exactly true. The core problem is this: The money that was going to music was given to education authorities and local councils. Yes it was earmarked for music but there’s a problem: someone forgot to do their homework – some music services are not part of the education authority, and of those who are, some are given no funding from their local authority at all. The end result? For those music services there was no change at all.

So today the music manifesto reappears, and wants to solve that problem – which, arguably it created. More worrying still is the amazing place given to singing. We should all be singing. Children should all be singing. Yes, okay, the voice is an instrument, but is that how we’re going to achieve ‘music tuition to all’? Excellent, we’ll solve the postcode lottery thing, and then create a new problem – certain areas of the country will still teach violin and trumpet, whereas huge sections of the nation will have no instruments but millions of choirs…

…excellent. My prophecy: Come back in 2 years, when the music manifesto people will say “Postcode lottery solved. Now we need to promote instruments – they’re all singing!”

BBC Article on Music Manifesto

Postcards from a lava rock

I was going to write something, but I’ve been sidetracked by a site linked to by IcelandEyes – Antoine in Iceland. It’s one North American’s 4 week journal of his time in Iceland in August (when I was there!). It’s much more jolly than it sounds – fully-blown travelblogs can sometimes get a bit wordy, but this is brief and to the point – with some absolutely lovely photos! Go see for yourself.

Panorama

Some nice panoramic shots of Iceland to help everybody relax.

I’ll have the salad

Not usually one of my favourite ways to spend a day, I spent 5 hours in Bristol’s Cribbs Causeway shopping ‘Mall’ today. More in character was the DVD bargain hunting (Bill Murray’s ‘Broken Flowers‘, Nicholson’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, and De Niro’s ‘Taxi Driver’ in case you’re wondering), and the gadget browsing (PDA’s and Ericsson Blue Tooth headsets).

As inevitable as the ‘Hi, How are you today?’ from the chirpy Disney Store greeter, lunch had to be had in the Food Hall. Now this was fascinating. In Soho Coffee there was a divide of the sexes going on. Read the rest of this entry »

Ali G, MP(Lab)

Well, not quite. A Labour MP has today shown something lacking of late – a sense of humour. Sion Simon, the Labour MP, has been posting on YouTube. Better still, he’s been spoofing the cringeworthy offerings of webCameron. Sporting a delightful baseball cap, Simon decided to follow Cameron’s policy of late of being all things to all people, using ‘street talk’ and appealing to voters on a personal, imformal level. It’s well worth a look here.

The debate on the BBC News 24 was exploring the way politics has taken to blogs and MP’s personal sites. All well and good, but I can’t see it working for long – few public figures write on their online presence in the same way they would speak in public. Let’s be honest here, few public figures probably write their online efforts themselves – I can just see David Cameron spending an evening with his desk lamp shining down on his computer monitor, working away at his latest WordPress Theme and reorganising the categories, asking “‘Arial’ or ‘Verdana’ for the Title dear?”

I think it’s probably more telling about the kind of people becoming MP’s these days. In one of history’s firsts, none of the current cabinet has served in one of the armed forces. Fellow cynics will have known for years no one writes in their school book, “when I grow up I want to be an MP”, with pictures of Thatcher and Widdecombe on their bedroom walls.

But what of Sion Simon? I suggest whiling away a few spare minutes at TheyWorkForYou.com, a webwatch of MP’s if you don’t already know it. It suggests the MP’s speeches are pitched at the level of an 18 year old. He’s asked the most questions about the National Lottery, Export Licences and the Royal Mint. He’s average on his contribution to debate, below average on replying to public questions, and receives below average numbers of replies to his input in parliament. So he’s generally below average, and yet he has cost us in the last year a very respectable, above average, £122k in expenses – £1858 in computer equipment alone. At least we know we’re funding his YouTube habit…

Photos of Interest/Iceland

Well, as part of my ‘avoiding work by doing other internet type things’ approach to my Tuesday, I’ve done something with one of my photos. I’ve entered it in a travel-theme competition on a photography magazine/website. If you like it, click on that button down on the bottom right and give it a vote. 

Have a Biscuit

Just stumbled across this site – well, it made me laugh…

Newsbiscuit

Alternative Places To Be

It’s Tuesday. It’s Autumnal outside and I have nothing to do. It’s great how the mind wanders. Suddenly that catalogue of things I had set out this morning to do, in order to make today have a purpose, has gently melted away and I have been looking again at my pictures of Iceland. My web surfing, which began as a determined effort to promote my new site and my quartet’s site, has become a merry afternoon scanning the web for exciting places to go and visit in Iceland, with mock itineraies and such.

The truth is though, right now, this exact second, I’d love to be floating around the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. With it’s amazing geothermal pool/spa generated by the geothermal electricity plant nearby. It’s amazing blue water…