mooism

It’s always difficult getting back into the work groove after Christmas, and harder when you’ve spent the holidays coughing, blowing your nose and not eating properly.

It’s 2011, which is a sort of nothing year between Odyssey Two and The End Of All Time. Things will change this year, they always do, but how?

According to the Telegraph:

The Treasury says that, following the spending cuts … [and after] other changes to the tax and benefit system are included, the wealthiest [fifth of Britons] loses more than five per cent of annual earnings over the next four years. The poorest [fifth] loses between three and four per cent. Overall, the average household loses about four per cent.

So, to what extent is this Treasury spin (or Telegraph mischief-making), and to what extent is it true?

No, I refuse to get irate about the spending cuts announced this week.

We have known spending cuts — big spending cuts — have been on the way for a year or two now. Now we know exactly where they fall. That is all.

Anyone claiming life would be so much better if Labour was still in and the Lib Dems / Tories / both were still out is talking bollocks. Labour was promising smaller overall cuts, delayed a little longer, but still cuts that were worse than anything the Tories managed in the 80s. They would have been different cuts — smaller cuts to benefits, perhaps, but they would have slashed the NHS as well, which the current government is not doing. The cuts would still have been on the same sort of scale. And of course they would have refrained from cutting ID cards and (at least) delaying renewing Trident.

Am I happy with the overall pattern of cuts? No, no I’m not: for example, I don’t think exempting the NHS and overseas aid from cuts is sensible; the cuts elsewhere could be less severe if they were not. Do I support the government? In as much as I think it’s the best government that could be formed from the current parliament, yes I do. Beyond that? No, I want a Lib Dem government, or at least a Lib Dem—led coalition.

And am I going to apologise for voting Lib Dem, or for campaigning for the Lib Dems, or being a Lib Dem?

No, I’m not.

Edit: Did I say we know exactly where the cuts are falling? Yes, and I suppose we do. But we don't really understand yet. It will take a while to sink in.

Oh, what gives?

One of our neighbours had a barbecue the other day. And someone was burning lots of stuff over the weekend. This might be why we didn’t immediately realise the TV was emitting magic smoke last night.

TVs aren’t really TVs any more: they’re converged entertainment monitors. So we will mostly suffer withdrawl symptoms from the Wii and Xbox. (TV itself doesn’t need TVs; even if we didn’t have the Myth box, there’d still be iPlayer.) I suppose this is why I keep on hearing about TVs of the next few years running Android: traditional TV will just be a built-in app. There’s already an iPlayer app for the Wii, isn’t there? Not that that’s any use to us right now.

Time for an early lunch. Because I had an early breakfast, which in turn is because I woke up hideously early and gave up on getting back to sleep at about half five.

Today, I keep staring at API docs, barely understanding individual chunks, totally failing to understand how to put them together. Then I get distracted by a cat insisting she is more important than work.

Number of robocalls — 1

Number of people who’ve phoned thinking we’re M+S — 2

I’ll unplug it once we have proper internet.

I would like to build a website (code name: ljdwreader) that provides you with a combined LiveJournal and Dreamwidth friends page. I would find it useful, and I know some of you would find it useful too.

The bit I’m having trouble with right now (I should clarify that I haven’t written a single line of code for it yet, I’m still thinking about the design) is the actual fetching of entries from LJ and DW.

These are ways I’ve thought of possibly doing it:

( Use RSS/Atom, that's what it's for )

( LJ has an API, surely it has something useful? )

( Can't you just grab the friends pages from LJ+DW and combine them somehow? )

Any thoughts?

Given that

• buses are less frequent than trains round here
• the station is not within walking distance
• Streetcar doesn’t exist round here
• I don’t want to own a car

should I learn to ride a bike or to rollerskate?

Or, as Jeni says, I could get a micro-scooter.

Any more arguments one way or the other? Any other thoughts?

(I'm updating this post without annotating my edits, wiki-style.)

I half-remember something about Dreamwidth making it possible to read friends-only LJ posts on your DW reading page.

Did that actually happen, or is my memory deceiving me?

Some ljs (e.g. mine) support OpenID 2

<link rel="openid2.provider" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml" />
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml" />

while others (e.g. simont) only support OpenID 1

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml" />

which strikes me as odd and unhelpful.

(All the DreamWidth journals I checked supported OpenID 1 only.)

Whenever people suggest treating Richard Dawkins as some sort of equal-but-opposite to the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury — however light-heartedly — I can’t help but think of Brian claiming not to be the Messiah, and the crowd in one voice claiming to all be individuals. (“I’m not!”)

I’ve been logged out of LJ and it won’t let me log back in. (But I can still post through a client: interesting.)

Remember Vox? Six Apart is closing it down.

Background: I am double-checking that everything required to build a program is checked in to source control.

So I compile it in a fresh checkout and discover that the resulting executable is byte-for-byte identical to the original save for four separate locations, which all appear to hold the build timestamp.

I wasn’t expecting that.

Twitter is for whingeing about lousy customer service experiences, but this won’t fit into 140 characters. So:

Due to unexpectedly being invited to more of a wedding than we were previously invited to, I wanted to change our outbound tickets so we could travel on an earlier train.

1. Why did this have to take 20mins on the phone instead of a few minutes on the web? I originally ordered the tickets online.

2. Could the on-hold soundtrack perhaps tell me how long I can expect to wait? And not sound like the line’s just gone dead? Yes, yes it could. But it doesn’t.

3. Why did I need to read my credit card details over the phone? FGW already have them from when I ordered the tickets originally. If FGW thinks I am fraudulently using my credit card, why don’t they think I am fraudulently changing my itinerary?

4. Why do I need to post the tickets I won’t be using to FGW to get a refund? I haven’t collected them from a ticket machine yet.

5. Why can’t I collect the new tickets using the same code I use to collect the old tickets? That’s twice as many typing mistakes. People will be waiting twice as long in the queue behind me.

6. And why did I have to copy down that code over the phone when it was going to be in the confirmation e-mail anyway?

7. Oh, and getting the details of my tickets put on the customer service operator’s screen? Should not take so long I get put on hold.

(But actually the day itself will be lovely, and I’m starting to believe my life will be relatively stress-free again by Friday.)

Spending my days pushing electrons around, eventually magnetising and demagnetising small areas of metal, is so much more fulfilling than all that tedious trying to acquire as many small green pieces of paper as possible.

Got to sleep at about 4:15-4:30am. Sadly not due to a night of raucous clubbing, but due to insomnia.

While taking refuge from the insomnia, I discovered it is possible to use a wiimote as a mythtv controller.

Time today does not feel like a confident onward march, nor even like being dragged backwards through a hedge; it feels like uncontrolled tumbling.

If I had a phone with GPS, it could learn how fast I walked. And it could work out which station or bus stop I was waiting at, which train or bus stop I was sitting on. When a train was cancelled or a bus diverted it could tell me alternative ways of getting to my destination.

Real time public transport data is not perfectly accurate. So it would need to assess how reliable the information was.

Does this app already exist? On any smartphone? How good is it?

I wish my London A-Z covered the whole of Greater London. Alternatively, I wish my brother lived in a part of London that was covered by my A-Z.

I wish my printer Just Worked. It did Just Work, the first time, but every time since then whenever I have tried to print it has not worked and I have had to reconfigure it or install more software or something. This is not reasonable.

I wish Firefox would use the default size of paper for my printer by default, or failing that at least provide A4 as an option and not grey out the paper size list.

I wish I printed stuff more often, so that I got more use out of my printer for the effort I put into tending it, or that I never needed to print anything at all, so that I could do without.

I wish the various parts of the print system would agree on which print jobs had been cancelled.

HP Deskjet D1660 on Ubuntu 10.04.

I hate printers.

I wish I had GPS on my phone.

Work, Friday afternoon: was on fire, but accidentally left early after confusing five to five with 5:55. Made it as far as the train before realising my mistake.

Work, Monday morning: head feels like cheese.

Suspect I would have got more done in that missed hour on Friday than I will get done today :-(

Any idea what evidence there is to suggest that ideally we should (or shouldn’t) all be eating 5 portions of fruit and veg per day? As opposed to, say, 3 per day, or 8?

Spent weekend in a field having fun. Did not get ill or sunburnt (although other people did). Got sunburnt on the bus home from the train station, and then got ( TMI ).

I gather that in the fake world, Uruguay became the most hated nation in football, Argentina turned out to be worse at playing Germany than even England, and Andy Murray became Scottish again.

I returned to find my netbook (Acer Aspire One) had mysteriously broken while being switched off in a quiet corner. When I switch it on the fan starts up, but nothing else comes on. Any ideas? I’ve already tried taking the battery out for half an hour, it didn’t help.

As there seems to be no website dedicated to cataloguing Windows- and Mac-free laptops, I have a madcap plan to devise my own. But we all know how far my madcap plans get (nowhere). I came up with it while waiting 45mins for a heavily delayed train this morning.

I have placed the results I expect to occur towards the top and left of the table.

Stark has taken to washing me, in the same way that he washes the other cats.

Faulty things include:

• my left wrist (ow, etc)

Non-faulty things include:

• my nose (working as designed)

Someone ran into me at Elephant. And then, as I was picking myself up, I tripped up another runner.

My lips have been stained by red wine.

Spent Saturday evening enjoying pleasant company at a barbecue on a beach in Blackpool.

Was therefore not watching England -v- USA. But we were nonetheless kept fully informed by text messages from our friends, telling us of the goal, the other goal, and ITV’s excerable self-parodying commentary.

England -v- Algeria is on Friday evening. As I have no other plans, will anyone be watching it in a safe place (i.e. not a pub) and happy to share my company?

I’m wondering how many Lib Dem but non-coalition policies Labour will steal adopt once they have a new leader, and how I’ll feel about it when they do. Or don’t.

Probably frustrated.

What’s the reasoning behind the assertion that he could have claimed more money on his MP expenses if he’d declared his relationship (and that he’s being punished for wanting to stay in the closet)?

I wish I knew whose stupid idea it was to try to force Alastair Campbell off Question Time last night, and when that failed, to not have a government representative show up.

Me + Faith commlal + Simon swaldman are vaguely planning to go to the Pembury on Sunday or Monday afternoon and play board games. We will be bringing Ticket to Ride as well as taking advantage of the games behind the bar.

Anyone interested in joining us?

Any preferences as to Sunday -v- Monday?

Considering going to the Pembury this afternoon with a board game or two. Anyone interested?

Keep having dreams where people (Green supporters? Not all of them) slag off the Lib Dems for having “sold out to the Tories” without getting STV in return.

My dream self tends to reply that the Lib Dems have more policies than just STV.

I don’t know what this says about my subconscious’s political leanings.

• Experimentation reveals you can get me to the pub by saying it’s just a night down the pub, but not by saying it’s a party. Oops (sorry).

• Had a quick play with a Watt meter this afternoon. Observed something drawing 13W when switched off. So just as well it’s rarely switched off, right?

• Champions League Final. On a Saturday. Is Just Wrong.

  I am now an old person who drones on about how much better things were in the olden days when Champions League finals were mid-week. Darn.

  (The reason for the switch? To increase the TV audience. Backfired in my case, but I’m not in America.)

• Etc.

Expanded government coalition agreement now available. Includes online comments!

Not had a chance to read it yet.

We had hoped to have an MP present but were unable to procure one. Hence a lot of the questions asked could not be answered, but they will at least be communicated to the parliamentary party. Hopefully we will get some feedback.

Someone was taking minutes so I didn’t take notes. May post again later in more detail when I receive my copy.

Short version is that if a policy area isn’t mentioned in the agreement, it is well worth lobbying Tories and Lib Dems to advocate that the coalition adopt the Lib Dem / Tory / compromise policy of your choice.

So for example, you might like to sign this petition for repealing parts of the Digital Economy Act. (I think the leadership in both parties want to look at this again, but it’s not clear how soon they will.)

Not clear on the timescale that the final coalition agreement is being put together — might all happen over the next couple of months, might take the rest of the year.

After whingeing about all the Lib Dem policies that aren’t getting into government, half the Tory policies that are, and the absence of certain areas of policy from the current coalition agreement altogether, we voted to back Lib Dem participation in the coalition 27-0.

The coalition agreement will be ratified (or not) at an emergency Lib Dem conference on Sunday, which I am unlikely to attend (I will go if I am invited to substitute for a voting rep who cannot go).

I am going to a meeting for Lambeth Lib Dems on Saturday afternoon, where we can talk about the agreement and question one of our MPs (I don’t know which one) about it.

So I’m trying to think of intelligent questions to ask. So far I have:

• Is this meeting in confidence? Can I talk about it with non-members?

Questions of policy:

• The Digital Economy Act was pushed through the last Parliament during the wash-up period, against the votes of Lib Dem MPs. Will sections 11-18 of the Digital Economy Act (dealing with internet disconnection on allegations of copyright infringement) be repealed? It is not mentioned in the current agreement.

• Is the agreement on AV solely with respect to changing the electoral system for the House of Commons, or is it also for changing the electoral system for English council elections? Is there a chance of STV by the back door for London council elections?

• The Human Rights Act is not mentioned in the agreement, although it is Conservative Party policy to repeal it and replace it with a "British Human Rights Act". But I note that the Justice Secretary, although a Conservative, is on record as supporting the Human Rights Act. Can we conclude that the Human Rights Act will remain untouched?

• Why will only 55% of MPs need to vote for dissolution of Parliament, and not two-thirds, as in Scotland?

Questions of process:

• Over what timescale will the final Coalition Agreement be agreed and made available?

• Will there be a mechanism for including the views of party members and supporters in shaping the final Coalition Agreement?

• Who will be the Minister responsible for piloting the AV referendum bill through Parliament? Nick Clegg as Deputy PM? Ken Clarke as Justice Secretary? Who will be responsible for wording the question? Can we trust it will not be biased in favour of FPTP?

• Does the parliamentary party anticipate it might be more difficult to get access to the media as a result of being in a coalition? For example, might the BBC decline to invite a Lib Dem onto Question Time on the grounds that they have invited a Conservative member of the Government?

• Will there continue to be a Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet? Will members who are not Ministers be able to speak out publicly against Government policy? Will a similar arrangement operate on the Conservative side?

Can you think of any more?

Have any of these questions already been publicly answered? Or are they stupid?

I’m open to suggestions from people who don’t vote Lib Dem, as well as from fellow Liberal Democrats and supporters, but please bear in mind that this is an internal Lib Dem meeting — not a place for cheap political points or rants from hardcore socialists.

I want to come away either reassured that we’re not making a terrible mistake, or persuaded that it’s worse than u-turning and returning to Opposition.

The coalition agreement has gone online. Obviously I don’t agree with all of it, but I can get behind it.

The Heir of Blair exceeds his mentor’s 10-year record of betrayal in just 24 hours — a well right-winger, frothing in the Telegraph.

The comments are rather amusing too.

One of the commentators has realised that if the voting system does change, they will be able to vote for UKIP without damaging the Conservatives relative to Labour. Bless.