Category: Uncategorized

I love music and I’m always interested in hearing new singers. I was watching some of my backlog of recordings of “Later with Jools Holland” over the Christmas break and saw this performance by two singers I’d not heard of before.

Both very different voices, but both destined for long careers I think. In no particular order.

Duffy sings Rockferry…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/player-e.swf?series=30&episode=4&clip=2

Laura Marling performs My Manic and I…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/player-e.swf?series=30&episode=1&clip=4

It seems that European governments have at last sorted out their differences and have finally agreed full funding for completion of the European Galileo Global Positioning System (GPS).

Despite reservations by some UK MP’s, the UK is one of manufactures of key components of the system and will benefit from the increased funding.

The Galileo system when complete, will deliver total independence from the current US controlled GPS satellites that we have all come to love (or hate) in our many GPS enabled products.

That does of course raise some questions about compatibility of receiving devices, lets hope that we’re not in for another Betamax vs VHS like battle of the GPS’s!

Of course the US is not too happy that another system is being launched; always a champion of ‘free’ trade, it seems that this time the US does not like the idea that there will now be a rival to their original GPS system that they cannot control. Incidentally both Russia and China are developing their own GPS versions, so the US has a few other areas to worry about as well.

Where did GPS come from? It was a British invention of course.

Decca Navigator – A British WWII invention that went on to be used for over 50 years till the advent of GPS. Many a Fishermen and North Sea oil rig workers to name just two have benefited greatly from Decca Navigator over the years. Installed in a number of places around the world, it was switched off in mid 2000.

Loran – a US development of the British invented GEE system, this worked on a lower frequency band allow for longer distance to be covered.

However, again with the advent of GPS, this system has also fallen into low usage.

It seems that some common sense is starting to take hold in the debate about over packaging of many items that we buy from food to consumer goods.

Dating back to 1960’s legislation which is still in place today governing a wide variety of foods including cereal, butter, sugar and rice to be packaged in specified quantities, new legislation will allow consumers to benefit on many fronts. For once it seems that we, the consumer will be benefit from food suppliers abilities to package goods in much more sensibly sized packaging. with out the need to standardize on previously required sizes.

However, this new legislation has to be welcomed with some degree of concern as this may add to increased packaging!! With that in mind over 180 MP’s have signed a commons motion condemning the ‘over use of packaging by manufactures and retailers”, and Lib Demo MP Joe Swinson has proposed a Bill to force supermarkets to provide waste bins for shoppers to leave behind all the surplus packaging before they return home!

I wonder how the supermarkets will react to this, coupled with the potential ban on supermarket plastic bags it looks like we are starting to head towards a less wasteful future and a small contribution to saving the earths dwindling resources.

New technologies always fascinates me. My ISP was recently having problems with its email server where it was stripping very large file attachments from my sent emails!

I was then told about YouSendIt, this is a site where you can send your  files to its FTP server which then sends an email message to the distant party for them to then download the file(s). Basic functions are free to use, but more is offered if you sign up for an account.

Although my ISP is now back in full operation, I will keep this as it saves me having to set-up an FTP server which I would not use very often.

Another good example of Web-Services or Software as a Service (SaaS) as these type of sites are now becoming known.

Based on the Passenger Name Record (PNR) – the information that is collected on every passenger that travels to the USA – did you know that? The UK government recently announced that from 2009 – less than 14 months away – all UK residents will now have to supply 54 items of information before they will be allowed to travel out of the UK!

As part of the Labour governments e-Borders initiative and probably to be known as the Passenger Exit Record (PER), this information collection, some of which will likely contravene current Data Protection Act legislation is another example of this Labour governments seemingly over obsession with peering into our personal lives.

Yes there is a need to protect our population against the various threats that exist in our current society. However, society itself will only put up with a certain amount of intrusion into its lives.

Already with the highest number of CCTV camera per head of population in the world and coupled with the intention to launch a National ID Card, the PER is yet another example of the UK’s slow march into an Orwellian world of mass population monitoring and mass travel control, perhaps even monitoring our train and cars journeys in the future. Sounds like the sort of controls that the Soviet Union had before its own collapse.

Write to your MP objecting to this as soon as possible. Sign up here if you’re against National ID Cards.

I have set out the different fields of the PER below with some comments, of course I’d welcome any feedback if you have additional information that I can add to these fields.

It seems that they’ve slipped back into their old ways, only this time its not ‘cash for honours’ it’s ‘donations for development’ or so it might seems.

Here’s the BBC’s take on it.

I suppose it’s one way of getting your planning permission!!

I wonder which carpet this lot will be swept under this time? They will soon be running out of spare corners! Northern Rock, Child Benefit Records, ‘Donations for Development’ only one corner left!

Working as I do on the technical side of Publishing, I’m still amazed at the increasing speed of technical change and the various predictions about where the direction of publishing is heading.

We’ve all become publishers of some kind, posting our musings and opinions in Blogs, uploading our pictures to image sites, sending in our comments to ‘have your say’ news and media sites.

But where is it all heading? Who will be the dominant companies in 30-40 years time? Here’s an interesting video that I came across when searching for some background information for a client. It paints an interesting picture of the future, with some interesting twists. Have patience, it’s worth watching the whole video – 6 minutes.

After over 254 years (it took its first patient in on 23 October 1753) of treating patients, the old Royal Naval hospital at Haslar in Gosport Hampshire is to close! So says a reply posted on the 10 Downing Street petition site.

This will be a great disappointment not only to the many service people who have used the Haslar facilities over the many years, but also to current local community that have come to depend on the medical services that Haslar provides today.

Here is the reply in full from the Petition web site…

The Government’s priority is to ensure that injured personnel receive the best possible treatment that is available. This requires them to be placed in the most appropriate specialist environment, with associated equipment and trained personnel who have the necessary specialist clinical expertise. For many years Haslar has had nothing like the range of medical facilities and expertise that are found at a major trauma Trust hospital such as Selly Oak. In addition, Selly Oak offers much better links to the military airhead at Brize Norton, and a regional civilian airport that can handle our largest aircraft within easy reach of the receiving hospital. That is why Selly Oak Hospital now serves as the primary receiver of our overseas casualties. This is why the Government sees no need to retain services at the Royal hospital Haslar after planned closure date late 2009.

When the 1994 Defence Costs Study led to the closure of most of the UK’s military hospitals, it was originally intended to retain Haslar, primarily to train military medical personnel for their operational role. But the required number and range of cases did not occur, and in December 1998 the Government announced its decision to phase out Haslar and consolidate training within the NHS, building on the establishment of the Ministry of Defence Hospital Units (MDHUs).

Since then, the hospital has undoubtedly provided services for the local community. The majority of its patients have always been civilian, but the medical needs of the Armed Forces are best served through access to facilities and training in a busy acute care hospital that is managing severe trauma on a daily basis.

Although it ceased to be a military unit on 31 March 2007, Haslar is still owned by the MOD and will continue to function, under the existing partnership arrangement with the Portsmouth NHS Hospitals Trust, until late 2009, when most clinical services, along with both NHS and some military staff, will transfer to the redeveloped Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, Portsmouth. Other military tasks currently retained at Haslar will be transferred to the RCDM and elsewhere. Until the hospital’s closure, military doctors and nurses will continue to serve at Haslar, many of them as part of the Portsmouth MDHU. The MDHU will continue to play a major role for the foreseeable future in providing training for our medical people, as well as providing healthcare for both military and civilian patients.

I was out driving to an appointment this morning listening to that great BBC Radio 4 program Today and heard the lead item about Fish Discards!

I first posted on this back on 26th September 2007, after listening to a BBC Radio 4 Costing the Earth program about the state of the English fishing industry during which is talked about the amount of discards involved in the process of commercial fishing.

I posted again on the 3rd October 2007 about fish discards being discussed in the raised its head again over the weekend in this Sunday Telegraph article.

Now it seems that the whole of the BBC has woken up to the story!

It was interesting to listen to Fisheries minister Jonathan Shaw suggested calls to this unbelievable waste of such an important resource to increase the UK Cod landing quotas to solve the problems of discards! Surely if we are to save/manage fish resources successfully, it is more logical to reduce the number of days that fishing boats are allowed out to catch fish, but when they do go out, let them land whatever they catch in their nets and get that to market instead of letting this obscene practice of valuable fish being dumped dead back into the water. It will also allow more fish on to the market to help keep the cost down, that is of course if the Supermarkets pass on those savings to us!

Cod Prices today: ASDA £13.48 per Kg, TESCO: £13:74 per Kg.

What a mess the EU has become, Farmers paid to grow nothing; Fishermen paid to dump fish back into the water, perhaps the EU could pay me not to work!

As another UK Remembrance weekend is upon us, I have been amazed at the dwindling number of Poppy sellers around.

I was in London this week for meetings and the only one’s that I came across were at Paddington mainline railway station.

I was surprised not to see any at London Underground station entrances. Plenty of ‘Free’ newspapers, but no poppies for sale! I wonder if this is affecting the fund raising of the Royal British Legion?

As a reminder and as part of their Never Say Die Remembrance Day series, BBC Two broadcast last night the story of the daughter of a former Far-East prisoner of war who was trying to prove that an anonymous wartime picture was of her father.

It was pretty tough viewing, but in the end Pat Bienkowski was able to prove that the emaciated person in the photo was in-deed her father. Sadly he died after coming back from the Far-East, clearly never fully recovering from his experiences.  Anyone who watched the program cannot have been moved by hers and many of the Far-East WW II veterans stories.

Much has been written about the atrocities of war in general and about the horrors of the Holocaust, but I think more needs to be documented about the inhumane suffering that many Allied service people and their families went through during and well after the conflict was over.

Some additional links of interest.

• Far East Prisoners of War Community
• Children of Far East Prisoners of War
• WW2 Peoples War – Lieutenant AV Kent’s story

I do hope that you purchased your poppy and gave a reasonable donation.