The Snoopers Charter - Why?

The recent horrific murder of a soldier in London has caused our politicians in the UK to have a knee jerk reaction.

The Communications Data Bill (or Snoopers Charter) was previously knocked back because of fears of invasion of privacy.

In essence it means that communications providers (ISPs, telecomms providers) would have to keep records of the detailed activities of their customers.  These details could be requested by certain authorities without requiring a warrant, though this would still be required for the content of the communications.

Therefore your ISP will keep records of your web searches and pages viewed, Skype will keep details of your calls, mobile phone providers will keep records of your calls and texts, the list goes on.

By stating that a warrant will be required to access content it is clear that this must also be retained.  Your every move is effectively tracked (for example the location of your mobile when you make or receive a call).  Big Brother really will be watching you!

Now it seems that they want to dust it off and bring it back.

What is the point however?  All of this data retention and indexing will cost money, and ultimately it will be us that pays.  Those of us who are innocent will be monitored.

Those with something to hide, those criminals or terrorists that the bill is intended to track, will however find a way around it.  It is already very easy to buy a Pay As You Go mobile for cash without supplying any details.  Likewise internet access 'dongles' which enable browsing, web mail products and so on.

There are also likely to be 'underground' internet systems with ISPs who perhaps don't believe in government edicts, and what about foreign ISPs?

The proposal is full of holes and will only result in the innocent being even more put upon.

What if I use a taxi firm which turns out to have a driver with criminal connections, will my phone links to them result in me being monitored?  Or perhaps a friend of a friend on a social networking site turns out to be a drug user, is my name blackened by association?

I think this bill will be an expensive waste of time and should be stopped.  It is in many ways similar to the National ID scheme launched by the previous administration - supposedly to prevent terrorism but in the Madrid train bombings I believe all the terrorists had their ID cards, it didn't prevent the attack though.

I shall be writing to my MP, I suggest you think about this and if you agree then please write to your MP.

Recycling - Taxation by another name

For some years here in Derby we have dutifully been recycling our waste, with one of our bins being a brown bin for garden waste and food leftovers.

Derby City Council have now had a rethink on the process and in a leaflet that was delivered with our new larger blue bins (more below) they dropped in a small section about the brown bin collection.

They tell us that next year they will charge for collection of the brown bin.  Of course they blame the government, to quote the leaflet

'This is because of government cuts to our budget which means we have no choice but to stop providing some services for free. This will allow us to protect other services such as children's centres, care homes and libraries'

I have two objections to the above statement:

Firstly they were not providing the service for free, waste collection is part of what I pay my council tax for.  I won't see a reduction in the council tax but an additional charge for a service I have already paid for!

Secondly they are still cutting the services they claim this charge is to protect - work that one out.

It gets better however.  If I don't want to pay the charge I can opt out of having my bin collected - I am sure the administrative costs there will not be trivial, and if say 50% of households do so across the city then it is likely there will be no cost savings as the bin wagons and their crews will still be needed for the other 50%.  Furthermore I am told that if I don't want my bin collecting I can put the waste I presently recycle in with the non recyclable waste so it can go to landfill - where is the sense in that?

There also seems to be a retrograde step with the blue bins.  To date we have had a small blue bin for plastics, glass and cans.  This has now been replaced with a larger bin into which we can also add the paper and card previously collected in a blue bag and orange bag respectively.  I hope this is because it is more cost effective to sort it at the depot but nothing has been said.  Is there some other reason?  Is it being recycled at all?

This also leaves us with our old small blue bin.  These are to be collected in or we can do a bit of 'Blue Peter' and turn them into composing bins!  I trust if collected in they will be recycled but once again I have my doubts.

There appears to be no coherent approach to recycling - but a very clear plan to extract yet more money from the captive taxpayer!

How Not To... Run A Hotel

This is the second in my ad-hoc series reporting bad experiences I have encountered.

This relates to a recent stay in an Ibis hotel in London.

Attending a trade exhibition in London ExCel I needed accommodation close to the venue and my usual choice of hotel was fully booked.  I therefore booked a nearby Ibis hotel.  So far so good.

Upon arrival I checked in, and apart from reception being rather chaotic the check in process went well.  I was asked for a swipe of my credit card for a guarantee of the payment of my bill and a figure was quoted which was about eighty percent of the total bill so I was happy with this.  Fairly standard practice and one which had never caused me any problems before.

Whilst my wife and I were checking in to our room, a colleague who was down in reception overheard an argument between a guest trying to check in and the receptionist.  The short story was that although they had made a reservation there was no room available for them and they were sent to another hotel in the chain.  This scenario was repeated more than once so I am intrigued as to what the point of making a reservation is!

The room itself was clean and functional but clearly the focus was on reducing costs as guests were only provided with one towel each, nominally called a bath towel but rather smaller than any bath towel you would buy.  No hand towel was provided.  Toiletries were also limited with just a fixed liquid soap dispenser in the shower and a tiny bar of soap by the washbasin.

Going to the restaurant for dinner was interesting.  They had a rather limited and exceedingly expensive (even for London) menu of average quality food.  There was no draught beer at all and only a few of the bottled beers on the menu were available..  Suffice to say that on subsequent evenings we had a much better, much cheaper, meal in a hotel just a few yards away.

Breakfast was an all you can eat buffet.  The quality of the food was better but the selection was somewhat limited, and if you wanted eggs for breakfast you had better like them scrambled as that was the only choice.  The hash browns had a good flavour but due to the manner of serving they were soggy.

When retuning to the hotel for our third and final night we found that neither my keycard or my wife's would open the door to the room.  This meant a trek back to reception (we were on a high floor) where the reaction of the receptionist suggested this was a common occurrence.  They were reprogrammed and all was well.

With a mind to expediting check out the following day I also took this opportunity to settle my bill.  There was some confusion over the correct amount but finally they got it right and charged my card accordingly.

I thought that was the end of it until two days later when I checked my credit card account on line.  It was showing that I was exceeding my credit limit.  Straight away I rang the card company for clarification as the online account made an allowance for pending transactions which were not yet detailed.  They were able to tell me that in addition to the guarantee amount I had agreed to at check in a further guarantee charge had been applied the same day for the first night's stay - this equated to about thirty seven percent of the total bill so I had now got guarantee charges for almost twenty percent more than the total bill, still on my account, and also the actual payment of the bill which I would expect would have released the guarantee hold.

Calling the hotel they were apologetic but could offer no explanation.  The guarantee charge was released some two working days after I had settled my bill in full.  Clearly not acceptable.

I have now written to the hotel and will update this post if I get anything of note from them.

For now however my advice is clear - if using an Ibis hotel make sure it is very clear how much they are holding in guarantee against your credit card and make sure they release this promptly when you settle your bill.

For the record, Ibis is seen as a budget chain - however given that they were advertising room rates of £219 per night, room only, at one point during my stay you would expect a lot more than you receive!

Update !!

I received no reply to my letter to the hotel so I posted a review on TripAdvisor - it seems they do read that.  The manager posted a comment asking me to email a copy of my letter to him, which I did.  After acknowledging receipt I then heard nothing for a while.

I followed this up with another email direct to the manager asking for an update and received a response.  He promised that changes were being made and also some financial compensation for myself.  Although the compensation did take some time to arrive it did so eventually.

Whilst the manager has promised various changes, I will keep an interested eye on TripAdvisor to see if their feedback gets better or if people continue to raise the sorts of issues I had.

Watch this space!

Police and Crime Commissioners

Here in the UK we are being asked to vote for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) to oversee the police forces.

As far as I can see this is just another figurehead post whereby the appointed person will receive a lot of our money but offer nothing in return. 

One PCC will represent a whole county and therefore has an awful lot of people's views to take into consideration.  These views may well be conflicting with priorities in rural areas being totally different from those in inner city locations.

Furthermore, although the PCCs are elected, if they don't perform we have to wait until the next election for the job in order to try and change them so in reality they are unlikely to truly represent the population of the county and are more likely to follow their own agenda, just as other politicians do.

I say other politicians - aren't they supposed to neutral.  According to the website explaining all of this http://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/about-pccs/ they swear an oath of impartiality and are not supposed to represent any political party.  In Derbyshire we have candidates from the Labour party, Conservative party and UKIP.  This does not sound independent to me, why do they need to mention their politics if it is to have no effect? 

There was to be an Independent but he left the registration process to the last minute and when his payment was delayed in traffic he missed the deadline.  Something tells me he would not be any good for the job with management skills like that!

So far I have not seen any information from the candidates about why we should vote for them, sure it is available on the website but for those who don't have access or don't go looking then they are being asked to vote in an election they know nothing about.  Perhaps I will now be deluged with leaflets, who knows, but the election is approaching in just over two weeks.

We all know however that pre-election manifestos are all about telling the public what they want to hear.  As soon as elected the personal agendas of the PCCs will come in to play and may well reflect their party political views despite their oath of impartiality.  We see this all the time in government and opposition.

So why vote?  I am not sure I will.  Normally I am not part of the apathy section of voters but in this case I am struggling.  I am not prepared to select a candidate based on political alignment and cannot select a candidate given the limited information I have seen so far from them.

I think I will make my stand for the environment and not travel to the polling station (OK, so I would have walked but that is not the point!)

This is yet another instance of the state pretending that the public actually have any say in how things are run and I for one am getting fed up.

Prince Charles and the Black Spider letters

Here in the UK there is much fuss about the letters that Prince Charles has written to the government expressing his views on a number of matters.  These are known as the 'black spider' letters due to the appearance of his handwriting.

Whilst the content of many of them is known about, a number have been kept secret on the premise that the content may harm Charles' position when he becomes King.

This is presently being fought over with a judicial decision that they should be published being overturned by the government.  Clearly they contain something significant that would be embarrassing or at least highly controversial.

Personally I believe these letters should be published in the public domain.  After all it cannot be a surprise to Charles that he is first in line to the throne and therefore should have himself moderated his actions so that there would be no possibility of anything that threatened his position.

There is no problem with him holding political views and although the monarchy is supposedly independent of party politics I don't think we should deny him the right to express his views.  The problem arises because what he writes is being kept secret.

Like many people the world over I express my views via social media, and directly to MPs by means of letter.  The content of my letters and my social media posts however isn't secret, and often I precis my letters and the responses to them in my blogposts. 

Prince Charles and indeed other members of the Royal Family should work within the same constraints and their letters be made available for scrutiny upon request.

This is yet another case where the Freedom of Information legislation is being abused.  FoI is fully supported by the government of the day, regardless of their political persuasion, as long as it doesn't contain that which they wish to censor for their own reasons.

Freedom - what Freedom?

Tanker Drivers Strike

No one can have missed the news now that the tanker drivers are planning strike action to disrupt the other hardworking people in this country.  I find their reasons unacceptable as they seem to have ignored the fact that this country and indeed many others are in a financial downturn.

The key complaint appears to be that their employment package is being attacked, and I think most of this boils down to the pensions.  They should get real and recognise that the high paying pensions they were on are unsustainable in the present economic climate and are these schemes are being closed down. 

I was in a final salary scheme in my previous employment, and that was closed down over six years ago.  The company just could not afford it.  Initially it was closed to new employees but it was then closed to all.  We were transferred on to stock market based pensions, which from my annual updates are doing very badly.

No one was happy, but to have taken action would have been counterproductive as the company would have even less money available to support the pension, and there was no way it could be re-instated.

The tanker drivers are just being asked to join many others in the private sector, with the prospect of having to work longer before they can afford to retire.

The salaries paid to them are quite good, and certainly well above the national average.  They are indeed doing a dangerous job of work, but so are our armed forces and their remuneration package is far worse - and they have a far higher chance of losing their lives at work.

The general public should show that they do NOT support this action, in fact it was only put through due to some very interesting accounting in the vote process - certainly it is clear that the majority of those entitled to vote did not vote for a strike.

The panic buying of fuel should also stop - it can only make things worse, particularly if fuel is stored in an unsafe manner.  People doing this risk injury or death by stockpiling (especially petrol which is far more volatile).

If electric cars really were viable, now would be the time they could prove it!  I challenge them to do so.

London Olympics 2012

We hear in the news that yet more of our money may be required for the 2012 London Olympics.

This is a ridiculous waste of public money.

Jobs are being lost in the public sector, services are being reduced, taxation is increasing.  Why are we not capping the spend on the Olympics?  We cannot afford to spend any more and it looks like a number of the promised benefits may well not be realised.

During the Olympics it appears that travel in London will become much more difficult as the public transport system struggles to cope and the roads become more congested, especially in areas where there are the special lanes for competitors and VIPs.

This will have the most impact upon those who live and work in London and is likely to be rather disruptive.

So what benefits will we get:

Increased tourism? Possibly not as many have announced they will not visit due to the expected congestion so we will find the visitors to the games will merely replace those who are no longer comings as tourists.

New facilities? Maybe but the Velodrome is rather specialised, the Aquatic Centre is similar and the main stadium is probably going to be sold or given to a football team and used for little else.  Remember the Millennium Dome, now the O2 Arena, which cost the taxpayer a fortune before being more or less given away.

Improved transport? Better links to an area where many will not wish to go - great!

The London Olympics is just a case of trying to show off to the rest of the world.  We should never have looked to host the Olympics and given that we have no way to back out, we must keep a lid on the costs before it cripples the country.

Jeremy Clarkson on The One Show

It has to be said that Mr Clarkson knows how to upset people.  I know he is normally controversial but this time he has really offended people.

The comment on last night's show about shooting strikers could be considered harsh but is only an opionion.

However I feel we cannot accept his remarks about being delayed in his journey when a person has been hit by a train.  If it was suicide then someone has clearly been in a very bad place in their mind.  Whether suicide or accident there are still those left behind to feel for.

At the time of writing I understand that the BBC has issued an apology but I think Jeremy Clarkson should make a very visible public apology.

Strike Ballots

As we approach the 30th of November when a number of unions in the UK have planned to strike to make their point to the government about pensions I felt it was time to look at the ballots they hold.

A fine example of this is the Unison ballot. 

As a percentage of those voting it seemed that there was a reasonable number of their members who supported the strike action propose by the union.  I believe the figure was in the region of 78% of those who voted.

The problem however lies in the very low turnout for the ballot.  If you take the number of yes votes as a percentage of the total balloted membership then the number voting for action falls to less than 23%.

We have on of two problems here (or perhaps both).  Either members think that by not voting they will be counted as a no, or there is apathy about the result.

One way or another I think it needs to be changed to ensure that a strike cannot be called unless a majority of the total membership express a desire to strike.  Whether this is achieved by making voting mandatory, or setting targets that ensure a higher percentage is required to call a strike if there is a lower turnout.

Neither are likely to be particularly well received, and certainly the latter would have been a problem in the recent ballot as the turnout was in the region of one third of those entitled to vote.

I do believe these people have the right to express their grievances, but it should be decided by a majority and not by a few hardened activists.

Archbishop of Canterbury and the Tobin Tax

The news today reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury backs the introduction of the so called Tobin Tax on financial transactions.

Apart from the fact that I strongly believe that church and state should be totally separate, has he considered the implications of the tax?

I suggest he has not fully thought it through. 

For starters, a tax on trading will be payable by the church on all the transactions it carries out in this field.  Those managing the church investment portfolio will perhaps then look to trade in countries which are not subject to the same taxation, which may well be where many of the financial institutions from the City of London decide to relocate also.

Secondly, the proceeds are supposed to go to helping fund social projects and investments.  We have all seen from the lottery that many so called good causes are anything but.

Finally, what will be the cost of administering all this.  I remember in the days of CB radio, the government freely admitted that the cost of issuing and tracking licenses far outweighed the revenue earned from them - hence nowadays CBs are licence free.  Someone somewhere has to pay for another group of bean counters to administer this.

You've guessed it.  The taxpayer will pay but no one will really benefit!

Archbishop of Canterbury - Capitalist?

In the news we read that the Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken out about the so called invasion of St Paul's.  Apparently he backs the protesters.

First I think it is necessary to correct the media, no invasion of the cathedral took place as the protesters were outside the building and were at the time given permission to be on the church land by the chancellor of the church.

Secondly the target was not the cathedral but the nearby London Stock Exchange.

My understanding is that the protest is about capitalism.  So perhaps they do want to target the church.  We have seen in recent days that the church is threatening to withdraw their investment from Internet service providers if they do not address the issue of porn.

I find it commendable that the church wishes to address porn but do think that they ought to address issues in the church before telling the rest of the world what to do.

What does strike me as odd is the fact that the church has so much money invested in this way.  What we are seeing is just one element of a massive financial organisation.  Investing in ISPs is a very roundabout way of supporting the needy (I think that was one of the stated aims of the church).

So is the church just a capitalist organisation just like the others the protesters are attacking?  It seems to me that it is, after all it raises considerable income (including admission charges for cathedrals and profit from trading on Sunday (making people work on Sunday by definition), which it then invests in a variety of portfolios to make profit.

Yet when a church needs a new roof, or the bells need work we see the familiar thermometer on the side of the building and a plea for donations - this should be covered by existing funds.

When there is a disaster in this country, for example the flooding in Cumbria from which many are still recovering, how much input is there from the church?  Not a lot that I have seen, though the community supports itself and often companies offer support to those affected.

I have long since wondered about the openness of the church and it's accounting.  When I was younger and before I recovered from religion I remember two things. 

The first was thinking how much money must be taken in the collection plate, or nowadays by direct debit from the faithful. 

The second was at my wedding - my wife and I had to pay various fees, which I have no problem with, but in cash in envelopes.  Some would say that that was to avoid banking charges but to be fair the charge for banking a cheque is trivial compared to the amounts involved.  So the other possible explanation is that the moneys received were perhaps not accurately recorded and accounted for.

Before anyone gets on their soapbox, I am merely speculating here and not accusing any one of wrongdoing - but the method used leaves itself open to such speculation.

The accounts for the Church of England for 2010 make very interesting reading, both in terms of the amount of assets the church has but also for little nuggets like the fact that seventeen members of staff within the church have emoluments (good word) of between £60,000 and £310,000 with five of them getting over £100,000. 

Clearly doing god's work pays quite well.

As a final humorous note, if the local church went on Dragon's Den to seek investment for roof repairs or the like, the dragons would ask what assets the parent organisation had.  After reviewing this they would all declare themselves out on the grounds that the need should be addressed with existing funds.

Capitalist Church

On Friday the protests in London under the name 'Occupy' led St Paul's Cathedral to close.

I presume the protesters are happy because it would appear that the church were not as focused on the fact that their flock would not be able to worship there but more that they were losing money.  Apparently the takings from the various sources within - including the 'donation' for entry - average at nearly 23,000 pounds per day!

This has uncovers an aspect of the church that it would rather was kept hidden, it's capitalist element.

Why as the protesters ask has it closed now, because any 'risks' were no different on previous days? Surely it must be because the loss of revenue is hitting it hard and if it closes there will be less outlay.  They clearly don't worry about their flock!  But then they can worship their IMF elsewhere.