Author: Mike

As we continue to wait for the announcement of the Zimbabwe electoral commission that the MDC have won the election, Australia has announced that it is supporting calls for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.

It’s good that countries are now facing up to their responsibilities to help Zimbabwe get back on track. I wonder if China will join in?

At the same time it seems that Barclays bank may have been caught with its finger in Mugabe’s regime coffers, apparently its been aiding the finances of Mugabe family members for many years. Seems that there’s no ethics when high finance comes into play.

If they have been doing this, there must be some government legislation that can be used to punish them for this.

With just four days to go to the local elections, the Joseph Rowntree Trust has issued a report that asks many questions about the security of the UK postal voting system – more info here.

Many cases over the years have made the headlines about Electoral fraud, one case in Birmingham in 2005 showed that over 1,500 votes had been involved in postal fraud.

The judge at the subsequent trial said there was evidence of “massive, systematic and organised fraud” and that the campaign had made a mockery of the election. No one has been charged over this fraud!

In another case in Slough, Eshaq Khan was elected using fraudulent votes, subsequently four men have now been arrested and await charging with electoral fraud.

The UK Electoral Commission has repeatedly demanded tough laws to stamp out votes rigging and the even the Council of Europe has said that British elections had become “childishly simple” to rig – how embarrassing!.

I wonder if my postal vote is safe and will it count in the final tally? It seems that the UK has a lot to do before it can claim to have a more secure postal electoral voting system that some of the Third-World countries that it chooses to criticise.

In a previous post I found out that our personal data was been given to overseas governments for investigation under a special ‘degree’ by Jackie Smith the Home Secretary.

I thought that  I would see if I could find out how many of these incidents had occurred in the past by submitting a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Home Office via My Society’s  What Do They Know FOI web site.

My question…

Dear Sir or Madam,
With reference to all the current legislation and special certificates in force please tell me how many instances there have been where an individuals personal identification information/data has been exported to any world-wide security/law enforcement agencies for review by their staff.

The reply? A refusal notice using the £600.00 expenses excuse. See the detailed response below.

I have come across the £600.00 rule before when the FOI first came out. But have not had it used in a reply to one of my FOI requests before.

What next, well I refine the question and send a copy of this to my MP – John Redwood using another of My Society’s web sites – Write To Them. Perhaps he might be able to find out more.

Stay tuned for more updates in a few days.

One the many interesting facts that I can come across when reading some of the articles written so far in the Ineos/Unite dispute is that Ineos manufactures most of the UK’s supply of Chlorine. It also appears that if anything happened to the Ineos Runcorn plant where the Chlorine is made, the UK would run out of safe drinking water in 3 days!

I find it quite disturbing that the UK is again dependant on one single supplier of chlorine and to me is another good example of how successive UK  governments have let the infrastructure of UK disintegrate to the state it’s in today. I’m not saying that everything should be nationalised, but certain major UK infrastructures need to be in Public Ownership.

I don’t think that there is any major UK infrastructure, such as Electric, Water, Transport etc.  that remains in public ownership. What a shambles.

Humphrey Lyttelton has died aged 86!

What a great loss! I’ve managed to see him and Cleo Lane a number of time over the years at various concerts the last being at the Anvil in Basingstoke the year before last.

I shall miss his voice on I haven’t a clue and his other radio programs that that he made. I’ll have to get his CD’s out tomorrow and reminisce.

With all the news coverage about Zimbabwe (which is still teetering on catastrophe) the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip seems to have fallen off the front pages.

Today, it’s back with a vengeance as the UN has had to halt badly needed food aid due to fuel shortages as a result of Israeli blockade actions, supposedly in reaction  to Rocket attacks by militants on Israeli settlements.

I don’t begin to understand all of the nuances of this conflict, but I can see that unless the Israelis start to treat the ordinary Palestinians with some degree of humanitarianism, they are only going to prolong the whole crisis.

Surely the Israeli’s, from their own history, can understand what it is like to be an oppressed people and that this ongoing conflict only generates further bad feelings toward them from the Palestinians. That is not to say, that Hamas and the other political groups can escape blame for this terrible situation forced on their own people.

The West must put more pressure on the Israeli’s to first sort out the fuel issue and then redouble their efforts to get Israel to the peace table again.

I was amazed to see reports today that a number of discount food stores in the USA are starting to ration its shoppers as to how much rice they can buy on a visit to their shops.

A Wal-Mart subsidiary and CostCo are the first stores in the ‘western’ world that have done this. I wonder if this will have any impact on UK stores? I certainly have noticed an increase in the price of Rice and a big hike in the cost of Pasta (a 2.5 Kg bag that was a £1.00 a year ago is  now £2.98!)

What is going on in the world? We now throw away more food than ever before and seem more interested is using food for car fuel than human fuel.

Seems completely perverse to me.

Microsoft has decided to the MSN Music Digital Rights Management (DRM) license servers at the end of August this year.  What does that mean?

Well for customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store they will have to commit to which computers (and OS) they want to run their purchased music on forever; or give up access to the music they have already paid for, forever!

However, Microsoft has come up with a solution to get around this, users can burn all of their music to audio CD’s and then re-rip them back to their computer as MP3s, without DRM! Great job Microsoft!

For me, I’ll still keep buying CD’s (though I have downloaded some individual tracks in the past) and although some do have on board music protection, you can still play them where and when you want. Of course I may loose a CD (but I can go out and buy another one) but I won’t loose any music if some company decides to switch off some server somewhere!

According to Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission it appears that Robert Mugabe has retained his seat, one that the opposition MDC had claimed that it had won. I don’t believe it! to coin a phrase.

And the position of the Arms shipment on board the An Yue Jiang? It now seems that all of Zimbabwe’s neighbours have finally banned the ship from docking at any of their ports.

Meanwhile China, that peaceful host of the next Olympics – the IOC must be ringing its hands by now – has defended the shipment as perfectly normal trade! But it is hinting that it may have to recall the An Yue Jiang if it can’t deliver it’s cargo. Unless of course, it finds another dictator close by to take them!

It seems that confusion surrounds the where about’s of the Chinese arms ship that tried to unload its cargo of Zimbabwe bound ammunition and rockets  in Durban, South Africa a few days ago.

Apparently a German bank tried to seize the ship while it was in Durban last week. The Lloyd’s Maritime Intelligence Unit web site listed a ship by the same name, An Yue Jingo, as having sunk off the coast of East Africa last Sunday – latest update here.

Now it appears that the An Yue Jingo has applied to take on fuel at Walvis Bay in Namibia. Although it may be heading to dock at Luanda in Angola.

Will it be stopped from discharging its cargo? It is not sure at the moment, but it seems that Zimbabwe’s neighbours and the international community are slowing waking up to stopping this Chinese ship from docking and its cargo getting to Zimbabwe.