Campaigning against the Digital Economy Bill

Yesterday I sent an email to my local MP, George Galloway, to encourage him to campaign against the Digital Economy Bill which is rushing through Parliament at alarming speed.

I was surprised to get a response so quickly. Here is his reply to me.

Thank you for your email – I share your very justifiable concerns about the draconian measures contained in the Bill, and I am also angered by the way the government is preparing to rush it through – with the loyal support of the opposition and certain Lib Dem peers it would seem – without any time for proper debate or scrutiny.

I can only see this whole debacle as one last reckless insult to democracy from a regime that should have placed itself before the electorate long ago.

I’ve recently been expressing opposition to the Bill on Twitter and Facebook.

I am also writing to the Speaker to ask for proper Parliamentary time for scrutiny and debate.

Naturally I am in favour of the workers in all the relevant industries receiving fair remuneration, but I do not think that forcing through this Bill, with all its inherent dangers, against the profound misgivings of the public, is the way to go. Given time, and good will, I am sure that mutually acceptable solutions could emerge.

Once again, however, this government is prepared to trample over your human rights in the name of political expediency. Surely the last days of a dying government should have been devoted to more productive matters. What about freeing local councils to directly invest in housing? Or reforming the laws that criminalise photographers and people peacefully protesting? Or agreeing to a Robin Hood tax on the banks?

With best wishes

GG

Apparently George received over 100 similar emails of protest from his constituents (according to his Twitter feed). This is actually the second time that I’ve contacted George – and I must admit, he has replied pretty damn quick on both occasions.

However actions speak louder than words. While it’s good to expression opposition online via Twitter and Facebook, he will get the opportunity to debate and ultimately vote on the bill. Unfortunately, George has one of the worst voting records in the house. I hope that on this occasion he takes action.

Rework

Rework-by-Jason-Fried-and-David-Heinemeier-Hansson-Excerpts

Fish Pie Recipe

My easy fish pie recipe is a variation of this recipe one on BBC Good Food

Ingredients

• 400g white fish fillet – I go for pollock because it’s cheap and plentiful. Frozen is fine.
• 400g smoked haddock fillet – Again fine to use frozen.
• 600ml full-fat milk
• 1 onion, quartered
• 4 cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 eggs
• small bunch parsley , leaves only, chopped
• 100g butter (half for sauce, half for topping)
• 50g plain flour
• pinch freshly grated nutmeg – Preferably shave using micro plan
• 1kg floury potato (preferably King Edward and Maris Piper), wash and cut into even-sized chunks. Peeling is optional.
• 50g cheddar cheese, grated

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Instructions

1. Poach the fish.
   Put the fish in a frying pan and pour over 500ml of the milk. The milk should just cover the fish and therefore allow you to poach it nicely. Stud each onion quarter with a clove, then add to the milk, with the bay leaves. Bring the milk just to the boil – you will see a few small bubbles. Reduce the heat and simmer for 8 mins. Lift the fish onto a plate and strain the milk into a jug to cool. Flake the fish into large pieces in the baking dish. Remove any skin or bones if required.
2. Deal to the eggs.
   There are two approaches to this – either hard boil or just throw them in.
   1. Hard boil method: Bring a small pan of water to a gentle boil, then carefully lower the eggs in with a slotted spoon. Bring the water back to a gentle boil, with just a couple of bubbles rising to the surface. Set the timer for 8 mins, cook, then drain and cool in a bowl of cold water. Peel, slice into quarters and arrange on top of the fish, then scatter over the chopped parsley.
   2. Throw-them-in method: Break the eggs on top of the fish. The eggs will cook and still be a bit goey when you serve – mmm lovely. This approach inspired by Alex.
3. Make the sauce.
   Melt half of the butter in a pan (that’s 50g), make sure it’s well melted and bubbling a little bit. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 min over moderate heat. Take off the heat, pour in a little of the poaching milk from the fish, then stir until blended. Continue to add the milk gradually, mixing well until you have a smooth sauce. Return to the heat, bring to the boil and cook for 5 mins, stirring continually, until it coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, season with salt, pepper and grate in some nutmeg, then pour over the fish.
4. Assemble and bake.
   Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Boil the potatoes for 20 mins. Drain, season and mash with the remaining butter and milk. Use to top the pie, starting at the edge of the dish and working your way in – push the mash right to the edges to seal. Fluff the top with a fork, sprinkle with cheese, then bake for 30 mins. Original recipe says you should make up to a day ahead, chill, then bake for 40 mins – bah to that though!

Enjoy with peas and fine company. Dedicated to Nina!

Coral Princess sinking and boat safety in Egypt

We recently arrived back from Egypt to read reports about an Egyptian dive boat sinking in the Red Sea near Sharm el-Sheikh.

This unfortunate disaster happened the same week that we were in the Sharm el-Sheikh – however the news of the disaster was not widely known within our dive group. A European dive instructor from Camel Dive Centre did mention the incident to another group that we were travelling with, but the conditions seemed so calm that they nearly couldn’t believe that this disaster could happen.

Since this disaster happened so close to us, I feel I should document some of facts that we observed.

Our first Dive of the trip was at Ras Katty on Monday 16 Nov 2009 aboard President II. The Coral Princess moored beside us during our dive at about 1130. While we were diving we saw an enormous chunk of coral (about 3 metres by 4 metres) that had become snagged on a rope and hanging about 7-8 metres off the bow of the vessel.

Our dive guide, Rudd,  was furious about this, and when we surfaced tried to raise the issue with the crew on board Coral Princess. The crew didn’t seem to care and it wasn’t possible to identify the captain on board either. In my opinion, this suggests that the crew on the Coral Princess were incompetent and negligent of their safety and conservation responsibilities. You don’t just snag your mooring ropes on a reef.

Secondly, we were out at Ras Mohamed on Thursday, the day that the Coral Princess sunk. Initial reports blamed bad weather for the accident.

An Egyptian official was cited as saying that poor weather and high waves had caused the boat to sink.

However we spent the whole day at Ras Mohamed and the weather was fine. There was hardly any wind and very little swell. The current at Ras Mohamed was the strongest I’ve dived in but was still safe. This statement makes me suspicious that Egyptian officials are trying to cover up human error or negligence as a cause of the accident.

The third and final point I want to make is a general one about the boat safety procedures we experienced. Although our dive briefings were very thorough and covered all the necessary safety procedures, there was little mention of boat safety. Most boats that I’ve been on (in other parts of the world) have buoyancy aids and life jackets in highly visible and accessible locations on the boat. However there was none of this on any of the boats that we saw – including those run by Camel. I even mentioned this to my dive buddy on one of the trips but just figured that in the event of an emergency the crew would be able to hand them out – or I could just put on my BCD and float. Plus there are usually many other dive vessels nearby these dive sites. However perhaps this provides a false sense of security.

According to survivor reports, the sad reality for Coral Princess was that the captain was the first to abandon ship. There was also no opportunity to issue a distress signal. This should be a wake up call to all operators in the Red Sea. I hope that proper emergency safety procedures are now taking place.

This has been a sobering experience and I’ll certainly take boat safety a lot more seriously. I feel terribly sorry for the families of the two Spanish tourists who lost their lives. Lastly, I hope that by documenting this Egyptian boat safety will improve and future disasters like this can be prevented.

Zopa MI stats

Some very interesting graphs on the Zopa market

http://www.ljay.org.uk/zopa/summary.html

Rivers vs Howe

Still gotta love the time when Joan Rivers shredded Darcus Howe on Radio 4′s Midweek programme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4360054.stm

Google Apps Mail won't let me view PDFs in browser anymore

Easy to fix when you know how to fix it. In Dec 2008, Google introduced a feature:
Gmail now lets you view PDF attachments right in the browser if you prefer not to download the file to your computer.

The missing bit of information? You need to make sure you’ve got Google Docs added as a service in your Google Apps Domain settings. See Dashboard / Add more services / Select Google Docs.

As Gordon Ramsey would say “PDF viewer in browser… Done.”

Putting Xero through it's paces

I’ve been trying out Xero – an online small business accounts package. I like the idea of SaaS and have been keeping an eye on it’s progress. I absolutely hate Quickbooks, which is what we’re using at the moment. However,choosing a new accounting package is not something that I’m going to jump into.

I’m not going to bother going over Xero’s good bits (as there are far too many to list). That may seem cynical, but Xero is very seductive. It can sometimes be difficult to discover what’s missing until you’re three months into using it. So, here are my notes so far.

• Customer Terms are not memorised
  • My customers don’t have the same agreed terms – they all vary between 30 and 90 days. So when I enter an invoice I have to specify the due date manually. Bit of a pain.
  • Unfortunately this is something that Quickbooks already does.
• Product unit costs limited to two decimal places
  • Some of our products have prices to four decimal places. Xero will only allow unit prices to two decimal places.
• Invoices and statements can’t be emailed in bulk
  • Xero is great because it allows you to invoice customers electronically. This is fine if you send the invoice as soon as it’s entered however…
  • If you’ve just entered 20 invoices you can click print all and get them all in hardcopy, but you can’t select all 20 and tell Xero to email to customers. This would be really handy.
• No stock management
  • Xero doesn’t support any stock management. So if you manufacture or resell product and need to keep track of inventory then this would ahve to be done outside of Xero.
  • QB already does this but we have other systems which are better at managing our stock.

Great websites that promote civic activism

There’s a series of sites produced by a chap called Matthew Somerville (et al) which I think are just great.

• TheyWorkForYou.com – TheyWorkForYou.com is a non-partisan website which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament. Also related to this website is HearFromYourMP , where people give their postcode in order to receive messages from their MP, if their MP should choose to use the service.
• traintimes.org.uk – A useable version of National Rail’s own website – sans Flash and avec deep links and other good bits.
• FixMyStreet – FixMyStreet lets you report local problems such as broken street lights or graffiti to your local council without having to know which council has responsibility for the issue, by locating the problem on Ordnance Survey’s very small scale detailed local maps. A good idea but am not sure how effective it is in execution?

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary ways to sell your flat

One of the owners in my street has taken selling his property into his own hands. Basically he’s offering to sell you his flat on a “rent now buy later” term. He’s been advertising this on a scruffy but intriguing sign. This has now been picked up by The Times.