Time they started earning their salaries?

We taxpayers have been funding the Northern Ireland Assembly since it was suspended in 2002. That's quite a lot of salary for doing nothing.

While some MLAs may have been keeping busy, and might even have asked the odd difficult question of the government, they have not been doing the job we pay them for -- or the job we elected them to do, in most cases (I know some of the DUP feel it is their mandate to do nothing until... well that bit's not clear). Still, we have hardly had value for money from any of them!

But on Monday the Lords approved plans to recall the Assembly and give them a chance to elect an executive, or otherwise get on with governing.

It ought not to be too difficult to do a better job than the Blair administration... but I'm not going to make any rash predictions. Our underperforming politicians could fail to meet even this unchallenging target.

Time will tell.

At least this way, if they refuse to find a way to get on with the job, we'll stop paying for them in November.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The United Nations Human Rights Commission was criticised for, among its many failings, being composed of countries with truly dreadful records on human rights. It was almost as though they were there to prevent their records from being scrutinised.

So now there is a United Nations Human Rights Council instead. A completely different organisation. Except that it includes China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. OK, a slightly different organisation. It's got a different name, at least.

We should be grateful that Sudan, Zimbabwe and Syria did not stand. And presumably the United States government was keen to avoid further international scrutiny of its human rights blind spot in Guantanamo Bay and the rest of its counter-terrorist "Gulag".

But maybe it will do better than its predecessor. We can always hope... Certainly we should watch!

Dr Aristophanes and Dr Dido

It seems that congratulations are in order for the furry philosophers who, according to their minder, seem to do an awful lot of her writing.

After years of helping with her research, it appears that they were even smuggled into the Viva to defend their Thesis. They must have communicated enough of the subtleties of their conclusions (through the bag they were hiding in) to their guardian to convince the authorities that she really did know all about Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Monty Python and other important works from the past few decades.

Congratulations as well to their minder, who gave them the audience and recognition they might have been, so unfairly, denied! So well done! Congratulations!

A Doctorate for a few years of reading science fiction and fantasy, and watching Monty Python. How cool is that ;-)

This is not my garden

My mother wanted some pictures of her flowers while I was down over Easter. Unfortunately there were only a couple of minutes of battery life left in the camera, so these were a bit rushed. Still, I like the colours.

Categorical denial

They said there were no categories on Blogger... (and they were right). So I had a wee think about it, and now there are! Sort of, anyway!

I thought about writing special index pages of my own, neatly categorised. I wasn't sure where I'd host them though. Then I had a better idea - why not add categories to the main page by messing with the template? I could use css styles (like "display:none") to hide the "irrelevant" articles from the categories that are not required, and JavaScript to change the styles around when the blog mode changes.

So I messed a bit with the template, and now you can pick the category of blog you wished I'd write, and ignore all the rubbish I write on other subjects. I've even used cookies to remember from one visit to the next what you want to see, and what you'd rather ignore.

Assigning a category to a new article is still manual, but I'm thinking about that too...

For now, if you want to know how it works, RTFS (read the source, Luke).

April Fool

This passed me by completely. Fortunately, a visiting (and very evil) friend of mine also forgot about it, so I escaped. So far. Of course, now that I've written this, I expect I'll be made to suffer ;-)

I may have forgotten, but lots of other people remembered!

quick plug

I've ben asked to plug this event (I'm a bit late - it's on today): it's a mini bible school (mini-school, not mini-bible) about the second coming (of Christ). No idea what sort of pre-inter-post-anti millennial line they take, but if you go, you'll hear at least one view explained.

There are 4 talks over the two evenings.

The Abolition of Parliament Bill

Any time I tell myself that things can't get much worse, they usually do.

Under the guise of removing red tape and streamlining procedures, Tony Blair wants to give himself sweeping powers without precedent in Britain since our constitutional monarchy was established.

The tiny four-page bill now working its way through parliament allows ministers to

• Abolish any law they don't like.
• Change any existing or new law they want to, in almost any way at all.
• Introduce new laws based on proposals by a Law Commission, with almost any changes they feel like.

These sweeping powers are not to be scrutinised or debated by parliament - there will just be a single chance for parliament to notice whatever is in the small print (while the Prime Minister intones "minor procedural changes - nothing to see here") , and veto it - otherwise a set of completely unscrutinised changes, of a scope which is impossible to predict, will suddenly be part of the laws of the United Kingdom.

The so-called safeguards are weak, and don't affect the central fundamental change to the constitution. The government have only to convince themselves that they are being balanced, and that they really need to change the rules this way, rather than through parliament. They can't raise new taxes this way, and there is a maximum sentence for any new crimes they invent. And they can only remove freedom where they think it is "reasonable". But that's about it, for safeguards. And most of these safeguards vanish if they are just "clarifying" existing law, or if a Law Commission thinks it might be a good idea!

There are precedents, of course. Before the power of the Crown was curtailed by Parliament, the King could rule by decree. And Adolf Hitler had an Enabling Act that allowed him to rule like a dictator. But in a modern democracy, to attempt to abolish parliamentary scrutiny is shocking.

No doubt Blair will offer minor concessions and further insignificant "safeguards". This is not enough. The problem is not the dearth of safeguards (though that in itself is horrific).

No - the problem here is the power to rewrite the laws of a democracy on demand.

Its official and innocuous title is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, but it has been called the Abolition of Parliament Bill (see Hansard) - Quite simply, granting that much power to the current and all future governments could deliver a fatal wound to our democracy.

Speak out now, while there is time - tell your MP though http://theyworkforyou.com/

What sort of madness has seized the mind of Her Majesty's Prime Minister, Anthony Blair, that he even imagines this is a good idea?

Credit to Old Mother Chaos and Martin from the BLUG list for pointing this out.

What, no life?

It's starting to look like I'm giving up my social life for Lent! I have too much work and too little time. The good news is that it'll all be over in a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to sleep again, and have time off and stuff.

At least my parents were passing through this evening, so I got some time off to drop them at the airport, which was nice...

Who said there are no free lunches?

There's an interesting event on in Belfast next week! Two major international figures, Richard Stallman (see Wikipedia article) and Bruce Perens (see his site) are coming to the FOSS Means Business conference on Thursday 16th March, in Spires Conference Centre.

In the software and business worlds, this is big!

The conference is on why business and government can and should use Free / Open Source software to meet their needs and save money, where it might be appropriate, and how they might successfully and profitably do that. It's not a sales event - these speakers are not trying to sell you their products. It's more of an explanation of what this free stuff is, how it has already been widely deployed, and how it can help bring wider success in the real, commercial world.

And it's not just anybody talking about it - two of the main figures in the Open Source community are travelling to Belfast, and their complimentary perspectives on Free and Open Source will make for compelling listening for anyone with a business interest - or an interest in the software itself - or even an interest in the ethical and technical challenges that the Open Source movement presents!

If that's not enough, there are speakers from Google, Oracle, the Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Open Source Academy too, to add their perspectives on how it has worked for them, what they plan to do with Free and Open Source, and some of the range of resources available to help.

But what's that about free lunches? Perhaps it's symbolic of the whole free software movement ("Free, as in Speech!", they sometimes say, and also "Free, as in Beer!"). But for registered attendees, there will be a Free Lunch! And due to the unique way this whole Open Source and Free Software community works, registration is free too!

Get on over there - http://foss-means-business.org

Free, as in Lunch!

Thursday 16th March, Belfast. Be there!

And why was I in Budapest?

No - none of these are of me ;-)

The day was an interesting fusion of traditions from Ireland and Hungary. The excellent translations helped enormously, since I still only have about five words of Hungarian: Hi, Yes, No, Coffee, and I love you (and some of these are more useful than others)!




Allegedly it's a tradition that if the bride holds a baby, she'll have lots of them! I wonder if anyone warned David?



There was food and drink, there were speeches (in which David got off remarkably lightly), and there was music and dancing.




Judging by David's expression, cutting cakes must be much harder than it looks!

David and Zita lasted very well, considering they'd been up late the night before sorting out the seating plan (or so we were told).



All in all, a good trip!

More wanderings in the East

So Zita and David assure me Budapest is Central Europe, but it's still east of here. Anyway, off I went last week, after a mere two days back at work. (Don't ever go back to work for just two days, if you can help it. It's not long enough to get anything useful done, but still long enough to attract lots more work!)





The parliament building is spectacular, and one of the biggest in the world. Like that other large parliament building, the Palace of Westminster, it doesn't have enough office space.




There are still Trabants around. It's nice that they have not been regulated out of existence yet.

Wheeeeeeeee!

It was great to get skiing again - though it's amazing how much you can forget about how to ski ;-) But the scenery was amazing...



You need snow every so often to make the slopes more fun. It's quite interesting skiing while the snow is still falling though!

I'm back!

Just been off for a wee bit of skiing. Great fun! There was a big fall of fresh snow towards the end of the holiday. It was "interesting" skiing through it while it was still falling, but the new snow on the slopes was worth it!