Sunshine, Clouds and Wind

After the wet and showery weather of late, it was nice to have a day when it didn't rain, although it wasn't perfect. It was windy and just as you got warmed up by the sunshine the clouds would blow in just to cool you off. All the same we managed to make something of the day and we got out of the house for a while.

The wind of the day before had blown the blossom off one of the trees and the path to the house was covered in pink flowers. It looked rather stunning in the morning sunshine as I set out for the city. The drive was relatively uneventful, the countryside was as stunning as always and the villages beautiful. Soon I was in the city picking up Lucy who spotted me before I even got to the door. It wasn't long before she was in the car and we drove back through the countryside chatting as we went. As always I was glad to leave the city behind. 

Instead of going straight home we first got the shopping for most of the weekend out of the way. We had a fine time in the supermarket and managed to get some nice things to eat and a few extra's to boot. Thankfully it never takes too long to shop and Lucy can be quite helpful, especially helping at the checkout.  Soon we were home and I got on with cooking some nice hot bacon and mushroom crispy rolls. I love them, for breakfast or lunch and they were really yummy. 

After lunch we played in the house, after Lucy ate the healthy pudding she picked from the supermarket. I can't stress how much I love seeing her and it is great fun just having her home again. She is growing up so fast now and I see a real difference every time she come to stay. I miss out on so much of her little life, but I do what I can to see her as much as possible, but I'm getting side tracked. We spent the early part of the afternoon playing, watching a few cartoons of "`Tom and Jerry" and playing on the XBox. I was teaching Lucy to play Crash Nitro Cart Racing. 

Mid afternoon, not long after the schools finished for the day, we headed out to the town to go the park. She had a fine time in the sun playing in the park. There we met up with Emily and her friends after they finished at school and the Lucy had a whale of time with them before we headed back home. I just love the way she interacts with the older girls and they all think she is just adorable, something I agree with most of the time.

When we got home I got on with cooking a roast pork dinner, with some nice yummy pork crackling. Lucy mean while gave a massive hug to Catherine who beat us home and soon the two of them were playing. Until tired from the day Lucy settled down to watch "Wallace and Grommet" until Emily returned home. They played together until dinner was ready and sat down at the table to eat. After dinner the play continued until it was time for Lucy to go to bed. After her stories, kisses, and cuddles she fell straight to sleep. 

With Lucy safe in her bed, the older two girls did their own things. Catherine was a bit under the weather and she took to her bed. She had a headache and was generally feeling run down. Bless her, she really wasn't herself. It is unlike Catherine not to eat and she had hardly touched her dinner earlier. It was interesting to see Emily take on the concerned big sister role. She got her water when she wanted it and gave her comfort as needed. Eventually they both went to bed to and the house fell quiet.

It has been a lovely day, and thankfully one that hasn't been too spoilt by the weather. It might have not been the sort of day you quite expect for time of the year, but it was so much better than the ones that had proceeded it weather wise. The forecast looks reasonable for the coming days, lets hope it fulfils that promise of dry weather.

Britain's Got Talent - Finalists 2012

So here we are at the point when the line up for Saturdays final of Britain's Got Talent and all the live semi finals have been completed.

So without further a do, here are the acts that will see in Saturdays final of the show:

Sundays Semi Final 

Ashleigh and Pudsey (1st) - Probably the best dog act that has ever been on the show.

Only Boys Aloud (2nd) - A welsh male voice choir who specialise in traditional welsh music.

Mondays Semi Final  

Charlotte and Jonathan (1st) - A Opera Deut with big voices that astounded the judges, and probably favourites to win

Kai & Natalia (2nd) - A young ballroom dancing couple who have put a new twist into a dated dance form.

Tuesdays Semi Final 

Loveable Rouges (1st) - A trio of lads with a fresh sound that have added controversy to the show having been talent spotted by the show.

Molly Rainford (2nd) - A eleven year old school girl that wow the judges with her mature sounding voice.

Wednesdays Semi Final  

Sam Kelly (1st) - A singer that claims he us useless at everything but music and that music is his life.

Nu Sxool Dance (2nd) - A group of fun loving kids that formed themselves into a dance group that are fun to watch.

Thursdays Semi Final  

Ryan O'Shaughnessy (1st) - A singer songwriter who failed to win the Irish version of the "The Voice".

Aquabatique (2nd) - Basically a group of failed olympic or retired synchronised swimmers with a giant fish tank. 

Judges Choice

[Still to be announced]

So out of the 10 acts I predicted only six made it through to the final. I was hoping for better, but then I didn't know how they would put the acts up against each other. Last night, for example three of the acts I picked were up against each other. Personally I can't wait to the final on Saturday night,, it is going to be a great show. I loved the programme the first time I watched it still do.

So Much for Freedom

When this Government came to power two years ago it promised action to protect our rights and freedoms but that was all a load of bull. Todays Queens speech introduced a draft bill, if not stopped will allow the Government to know who you are talking and when, where you go on the internet and what sites you visit without any meaningful safeguards. 

Currently under EU and UK  legislation  basic information is stored by Internet Service Providers (ISP's) which can be accessed by police, intelligence agencies or other public bodies simply by a senior official within the organisation signing the request off.  If this wasn't bed enough, given no prior warrant is required, the Government is purposing to strengthening the laws to cover social networking sites, online telephone services, instant messenger, web browsing records and other communication media, in real time. It claims that current legislation is not strong enough.

Concerned about the public backlash the Government say will introduce are a  number of safeguards which they hope will allay fears about the plans. They include: 

• A 12-month limit on how long data can be retained 
• Measures to prevent unauthorised access 
• Strengthening independent oversight 
• Boosting the role of tribunals to consider complaints

They also claim that the content of the communications won't be held, just details of when conversations took place, for how long and where someone was when the communication took place. Intelligence agencies, police  and other public bodies would also have the power to be able to see which websites someone had visited and when, how long they spent on a particular site, and in theory where they were at the time. By linking other surveillance technologies they could even watch you doing it.

Civil liberties groups claim it is a "huge increase" in the level of government surveillance of the general population. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, is reported as saying "People need to be suspected before they're put under surveillance – that's how the law should work, but what the government's saying is: 'Were going to treat you all as suspects, and ask you to trust us not to abuse that data'". He went on to say "These are very dangerous measures – they cross a line, they take us from targeting people that we suspect, to targeting everybody and really lowering the barriers of what the government can find out about you without going through a court."

In a Liberal Democrate Policy Briefing entitled "Your Freedom" it said this about the pervious Governments plans to introduce a internet surveillance law: 

End plans to spy on your email and internet use. Labour want companies to store information about your email and internet use – even storing data about what you do on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. This is a huge waste of money and time, which we will scrap. We will ensure your private data is kept safe.

If they vote for this legislation then they will go against what the party has stood for many year years, the basic freedom of the people not to be spied upon by the state without due reason under law. Their claim that: 

The Liberal Democrats are the only party that believes in a fairer, freer Britain, where everyone gets fair treatment and everyone’s privacy is respected.

This will be meaningless and show them to be no better than the Conservatives that want to turn this country in to a police state which Chinese Government would be proud of. Any self respecting Liberal needs to make sure that this law is stopped or are least watered down and proper safeguards put in place to make sure warrants  are in place before any information is given to any government body or authority. Clearly even allowing this to be debated shows the leadership for what they really are, puppets of the Conservative administration.

The Labour party have to see the errors of their ways and instead of supporting the Government stop this bill in it's tracks and protect people civil liberties and stop the state snooping on people without due cause to the law. Prior warrants should be required before ant interception of communication by the state is allowed and they should push for these if they are to give support for such measures. Better still they will vote against it altogether.

Thankfully there are those in parliament including members of the Conservatives including Boris Johnson and David Davis as well as a number of Liberal Democrat members of parliament. One of the biggest supporters for opposition to the bill is David Davis, a former Shadow Home Secretary and Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has spoken out about bill. He labelled it a snoopers charter and said recently "it will turn us into nation of suspects".

David Davis revealed today in parliament that the Government has already been in talks with the ISP's , and reports in the press claim the Government are planning talks with Facebook, Google and other tech giants to discuss what the bill would do to them, like it is some kind of done deal. David Davis pointed out, in a press interview, a side effect of the bill would be that “there will not be another whistle-blower in this country unless they are on career suicide.” as anyone who thought they would be able to offer up important information anonymously would not be able to do so if the bill was to become law. At the end of the day the implications of this bill are massive.

There is the question will it actually work to catch organised criminals and the terrorists that grab the headlines in the Conservative Press? The fact is, it probably won't as Sir Chris Fox, a former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, pointed out when he said that mass surveillance simply wouldn't work. He pointed out that mistakes would be made and such a system "won't catch top-level criminals and terrorists because they'll stop using that process". There are ways around the system that people will use. So many that it would be hard to plug the gaps.

There are also questions as if the data can be collected without revealing the content of the communication itself. Digital Forensic experts have said that splitting the header information, for example, to whom a communication took place to, would be difficult separate from the contents of the communication itself. This is because many sites use encrypted communications, such as webmail services and even Facebook. In fact the encryption itself make it impossible to look at without massive computing resources use brute force techniques.

The cost of such surveillance could be high. Estimates range in the billions of pounds to the tens of billions of pounds, plus annual running costs running into millions. The question is, is it worth it. In a time when people are losing their jobs in the public sector the is it right the government purpose spending sums of money on trying to catch people that will just find new ways to communicate that gets around the measures in the purposed bill. As Sir Chris Fox, basically said, there will always be terrorist attack and organised crime but you have to balance that against the freedom of the individual. This bill goes to far and will cost too much.

If you thought that what the News of the World in the phone hacking scandal was wrong that is nothing to what the Government is planning. My position is clear and I agree with Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, who called the plan "a destruction of human rights".  It is an attack on a individuals right to privacy, freedom of communication and association and it is morally wrong. When combined with other surveillance system it has the potential to be the biggest attack on an individuals privacy in British Histroy. What is worse is there are no mention who these other public bodies might be, they could be anyone!

Government's NHS Coverup

For a party that claims believes in transparency they did a good job of covering up a report about the NHS today, despite having order by the Information Tribunal to publish the report. The report in question is the NHS Risk Register which lists the possible risks to services and medical care from any changes to the NHS, and it was written as  Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's made his plans to radically reform the Health Service.

Some of the risks, contained in the leaked draft version of the Risk Register, were the risks of rising costs of GP care, poorer response to health emergencies and the high chance that managers might lose financial control of the NHS. For this reason it was felt by many that this document should be released so that the public has an idea of the risk the Government are taking in restructuring the NHS with such radical reforms.

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said publication was blocked because governments needed a "safe space" to develop policy and he beleieved that the document would be open to "misinterpretation and misuse", however opponents of the move are accusing the Government of a cover up. Claiming they are hiding the risks of the NHS reforms from the general public.

The Information Tribunal, who oversee and adjudicate on freedom of information requests, believe that the public have a right to such information because of the "exceptional" nature of the NHS overhaul. If found that "there is a very strong public interest in transparency and accountability in relation to the risks involved in introducing the NHS reforms,", before going on to argue that it is in public interest to understand and debate the risks involved. The tribunal said it would provided the public "with a far better understanding of the risks to a national institution which millions depended on".

Head of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Peter Carter, commented that the refusal to publish the risk assessment was "astonishing" and that "Despite overwhelming opposition, the government is undertaking the most radical restructure of the NHS at the same time as the service faces severe financial challenges." and he went on to say that "the public are only being presented with a partial picture of the NHS reforms". While the Labour former spokesman, John Healey called the government's latest move a "desperate act", before adding "This decision will only fuel doubts and distrust about the government's NHS plans, as people rightly ask: 'What are they hiding from us?'"

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley continues to claim that the government and his department believe in transparency and that he feels that publishing the report could harm the quality of future advice from civil servants, while the oppersition are claiming that the real reason it publication is being blocked is that the public would never forgive them if they could see the scale of risk they are taking with the NHS. Given the massive opposition from the health care professionals across the board, it would seem that the real reason is more likely to be that the risk register backs up their fears about what the reforms will do to the NHS.

My view is the same as Andy Burnham, the Shadow health secretary, who believes it is a  major step backwards in government transparency and is a step towards  to secrecy and closed government, something Conservative governments and councils are rather good at historically, despite all their fine talk. It is clear that it is in the public interest that the risk register should be published, so the public know what could go wrong with the reforms that are now taking place. Not only it will create a healthy public debate but it will allow health professionals, mangers and processional bodies to know the risks of the reforms and flag up problems early so that action can be taken. 

The fact is, in time like these, we need government that the people can trust, that are open and transparent. Moves like this as well as other recent decisions by the government have made make them look every bit as secretive as past Conservative governments who have pursued have a secret agenda laid out by those have the ear of the Minsters and Prime Minster in private. The government are the servants of the people and they would do well to remember that.

Knowledge is Everything

They say knowledge is everything, but it doesn't make you laugh, however that has all changed thanks to the advances of the Internet into society. A communal project called Uncyclopedia which changeless its rivals by giving an alternative view of facts and places where we live.

It gives a satirical view of subjects and places, for example it claims that Leicester's biggest claim to fame is  that it is one of the most difficult place names to spell having won competitions for it. And when talking about tourism it say's:

No-one actually visits Leicester unless they actually live there, most famous place of visit for tourists is Primark which provides job to third world countries and ensures they have fair pay. Primark also ensure that all Leicestarians look the same by providing them with skimpy clothes all priced less than 1p.

Reading the entries does come with a warning, it is not for the political correct movement, that want us to all to become dull and boring. Some of the humour is a bit edgy and sometimes for the more mature audience as this article fragment on the mating rituals of Essex girls shows: 

The mating ritual of this species is very peculiar indeed. It will often meet up with the alpha males in the group, wearing the traditional courting dress. A denim mini skirt/belt will be worn, with a skimpy top (Bra optional) is worn to show the male how well she can survive the blistering weather of England. After the male has chosen the mate, they will impart a hearty feast, consisting of a donor kebab, purchased at 2 in the morning, washed down with a horn of whitelightning cider. After this, they retire to Rollerworld for a mating ritual known as “Spawning an unwanted pregnancy”.

Sometimes the articles are really funny and sometimes they can be dull, it all depends on the writer, I guess, but on the whole I love the idea of a alternative view of life and facts and I can see this eventually becoming a popular site on the internet. It is worth taking a look at if you find yourself with a few minutes to spare.