Author: Mike

I was amazed to hear last week that Nelson Mandela was still on the USA terrorist stop list!

It seems very strange to me that even after all this time that even though Mandela has been recognised as one of the main people who helped end Apartheid that he would be treated this way by the ‘beacon’ of western freedom.

Clearly from this ongoing blacklisting, the USA has shown that they fully supported the Apartheid regime during Mandela’s time in prison instead of supporting him as a ‘Freedom Freighter’.

It still goes to show that one persons freedom fighter is another persons terrorists! I wonder if the USA have An Sang Su Chi on their terrorist stop list? I bet they don’t have Robert Mugabe on it?

I was looking through some links in a tender document that I received on Friday and as you do when presented with one link, you can’t help following it to other links that lead you off into other fascinating sites.

Of course you have to be careful that you don’t spend too much time doing this otherwise the original work gets left behind and before you know it two (or even more) hours have disappeared!

So what did I find?

• Collect Britain – thousands of items from the British Library

• BBC Archive – All things digital at the BBC

• The Peoples Network – Online Services from UK Public Libraries

• Memory Share – A BBC site capturing the every days lives of people

• The Library of the NHS – A resource of information hosted by the NHS

I’ve seen some of these before, but its still worth mentioning them again.

With gun crime still high, why is the Met wasting their time chasing down a Cigar case!

Seems to me that the Labour Party/Government has finally managed to gain political control of the Police to do its bidding against people that it doesn’t take kindly to.

Finally; someone associated with government is talking about the over use of surveillance in this country!

Sir Simon Milton who is the chairman of the Local Government Association, is taking local councils to task over their enthusiasm of the use of surveillance techniques for trivial reasons.

Many people do not realise the powers that have been given to the many UK agencies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

In a  detailed previous post I described how after a discussion with the Home Office I finally received a list of those agencies, here’s a link to the PDF. When I first showed the list to many of my friends, they were horrified at just what this government was doing. In fact if you have read this post, then it is probably likely that this has also been noted by the Government snoops.

Is this the start of a backlash against the UK’s onward march towards a truly Orwellian society? I really hope so, but unfortunately it’s going to take more than just Sir Simon Milton. Perhaps some of the people commenting on the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ page might release what’s been going in the name of their ‘security’ and start to do something about.

Write to your MP, Councillor and complain, refuse to have an ID Card, do something rather than just moaning about it.

I think this carton from Morland of the Daily Telegraph sums up the complete tragedy for Zimbabwe.

Watching some of the press coverage over the weekend, it makes we wonder why someone who seemingly fought against the previous regime in South Africa wants to give Mugabe so much support.

Then of course we have Mr. Miliband pontificating on the situation. It’s funny what few years make to how this Labour government seems to deal with dictators, despots and tyrants. Once upon a time we would have joined forces with that other great supporter of human rights – the USA to solve the problem, but of course I suppose the difference this time is that there is no oil laying under the soil of Zimbabwe!

I may be being a bit cynical here, but can you blame me?

Another steady connection month with BT Internet and also with a steady climb up towards the 4MB download speed. In fact in June I have seen a further increase in speed up to 4.5MB! More on that at the end of the month.

Average speeds this month have been 3.85 MB download and 387Kb upload.

It’s still not anywhere near the promised 8MB, but at a distance of 3.84km from Reading South Exchange I suppose I can’t complain too much!

No I don’t mean Bob Marley! This is about GPS jamming. Although we now have the ability to pretty much find any location (and sometimes the wrong one) using GPS, a big down side of the GPS signal is that it is very susceptible to jamming.

MP’s this week are looking at a 50 plus year old technology to see if it can deliver a low-tech back up system in case of major emergencies using LORAN.

Although its early versions were used by RAF bomber command during WWII, a more up to date version, eLoran is being rolled out for the General Lighthouse Authorities to improve coastal safety around the UK.

Why my interest? I remember working on a early version when I first joined the Royal Navy back in 1964, but I always thought that the Decca Navigator system was much better.

However, I suppose it just goes to show that even though the technology is over 50 years old, a modern day version of LORAN may still provide a fail save option for its modern day, but seemingly susceptible equivalent GPS.

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Jodrell that is. After a number of months when it looked like there was to be a funding cut for the famous radio telescope, the future now looks much more secure after a its STFC ranking in the funding stakes has been increased.

It’s about time that more money was made available for this icon of UK astronomy. To think that anyone would have even considered the original cuts makes me wonder if we have a bunch of saboteurs in charge of UK science.

Lets hope that it really does get the money it deserves to carry on the very important astronomical work that is has been doing since it was first opened.

He may have been in disguise, but I spotted him!

And so it starts! In a startling decision, Sweden is to introduce sweeping changes [2] to its surveillance capabilities. Under new legislation its intelligence agencies will be given free reign to intercept and scan all international calls, faxes and e-mails.

Bringing it into line with other nations including China, Korea and America, UK, Australia using the Echelon system (what words might they be looking for), Sweden will the first western European country to openly admit to its interception abilities.

What next for European freedoms, not much it would appear.