Wonko's World | Vox clamantis in Anglia

Domestic Violence and the presumption of guilt

November 28, 2010 wonkotsane Police State 3 comments

This week West Mercia Police started a trial of new powers to allow them to temporarily ban domestic violence suspects from their homes.

On the face of it this seems perfectly acceptable – thousands of men and women have their lives destroyed by domestic violence and the consequences of their abuse stay with them for the rest of their lives – but try and detach yourself from the emotion of it and think about it again.

Real men don't hit women The powers are for the police to ban suspects from their homes. Suspects, not people who have been proven to be guilty of domestic abuse. The powers are intended to be used where there is (or is thought to be) insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. So not only are the powers to be used against people who haven’t been found guilty of committing a crime but they are to be used when there is a lack of evidence that any crime has been committed.

The constitution says that you can’t deprive someone of their liberty or property unless they’ve been convicted of a crime. The constitution is the law. For the police to require someone to forfeit their home – even temporarily – without the lawful judgement of the courts and before a jury if requested, is unconstitutional and illegal. To punish someone accused of a crime but not tried or convicted of it is unconstitutional and illegal.

Something clearly needs to be done to help people in abusive relationships escape from their abusers. It’s a hard thing to do – the victims are invariably broken down mentally and bullied into thinking they can’t or shouldn’t escape the abuse. You can’t pass a law to make victims of domestic abuse want to or feel able to escape their abuser but a big part of the problem is that there isn’t enough support for the victims if they do pluck up the courage to try and escape and it is this that has to be fixed.

Someone who has been subjected to domestic abuse is already in a fragile state without the soul destroying prospect of ending up in a hostel full of people with god knows what personal problems or a poky little flat with a couple of kids. The onus is on the victim to go to court and protect themselves, relying on someone who is probably scared to go out in public on their own to face their abuser in court and accuse them in person. ake it easier for people to get away from their abusers and make the temporary accommodation better. Don’t force victims to face their abusers and make the punishment fit the crime when they’re convicted. This is what needs changing, not giving the police permission to break the law and doing away with the presumption of innocence that has underpinned English law for centuries.

London student protest pictures and videos

November 25, 2010 wonkotsane Protests 2 comments

I caught the train down to London yesterday for the AGM of the Campaign for an English Parliament and ended up getting caught up in the student protests after they chose the exact moment the bus taking us from the station to Parliament Square was at the top of Parliament Street to make their way to the House of Commons forcing us to get off and walk alongside them!

The protesters were pretty good natured at first, smiling and pulling faces but then someone let off a firework and that seemed to be a signal for the troublemakers to start winding people up. You could tell who the troublemakers were before they even did anything – dirty clothes, dreadlocks, hoodies, faces covered.

The CEP’s AGM was a couple of streets away so I popped back a few times to see what was going on and took a few photos and videos.

Lest the BBC forget …

November 12, 2010 wonkotsane BBC Bias, Traitors 9 comments

Yesterday, while the country was observing a 2 minute silence to remember our war dead, a group of muslim extremists calling themselves Muslims Against Crusades were burning poppies and shouting “British soldiers burn in hell”.

Muslims Against Crusades inciting hatred Not that you would have known this yesterday if you relied on the BBC News website for your news – until lunchtime today the story was censored by the BBC and it’s only been mentioned today because the BBC have been able to bury it in a story about the English Defence League.

Only one line in the middle of the story “EDL founder charged with Muslims poppy protest assault” – mentioned almost as an aside – is about the disgusting behaviour by Muslims Against Crusades yesterday. The rest of the story is about six members of the English Defence League (including their leader) being arrested for affray after shouting abuse at the scum inciting hatred against our soldiers. The fact that two Muslims Against Crusades scum were arrested is mentioned as an afterthought, almost as if it’s a vaguely related bit of information that doesn’t really matter.

The Muslims Against Crusades scum are entitled to their opinions and to voice those opinions provided that they don’t cause a public disorder when they’re doing it. We still have some semblance of free speech in this country which is why they’re here in the first place rather than some disease-ridden, oppressive shithole muslim country. But the EDL also have a right to their opinions and to voice their opinions and they’re also entitled to fair and unbiased reporting by the BBC but they certainly haven’t got it.

The BBC is legally obliged, under its charter, to be fair, honest and impartial. They censored a front page news story because it was about muslims behaving like animals and then when they eventually reported on it a day later it wasn’t about their behaviour, it was about the EDL kicking off at them. Not fair, not honest and not impartial.

I have Three. Yay!

November 4, 2010 wonkotsane Technology No comments

Talking to a colleague at work about his problems with Orange (pretty much the same we’re having at Chez Wonko), I decided to phone Orange again to see what the score was following my phone call on Saturday. The person I spoke to actually seemed to be doing something so thinking I was on a roll I decided to phone Three again.

The colleague in question had sent me a link to a website that said Three were opting out of network sharing with Orange in areas where they had good coverage. Three think they have good coverage here which is why they turned a mast off so maybe they’d opted out of network sharing where I live? They haven’t but the person I spoke to said “we don’t want you to leave us, let me see if we can fix your problem”.

What have I got to lose? I’m waiting for Mrs Sane to sort out Orange so we can change networks together and like I said on Saturday, if Orange sort out their problem I don’t necessarily need to change networks.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at my phone this morning and it was on Three. Not only was it on Three, it had a full signal. They phoned me today and said they’d changed something at the mast so that I would get coverage while they sorted out another mast for the area which should be operational in about 3-4 months time.

Sorted!

Orange admits to 69.5% failure rate on mobile phone mast

October 30, 2010 wonkotsane Technology 8 comments

The Orange rip-off saga continues unabated. I eventually got Orange to disconnect my phone after a prolonged battle with customer services eventually got me talking to their network support people. But I haven’t escaped Orange yet.

When I left Orange I changed to Three and it all went well for a couple of months until Three decommissioned a mobile phone mast near my house and left me unable to get a Three signal in my house. And when you can’t get a Three signal, your phone roams onto Orange. Same shit service at home, different name on the bill.

Orange, in their infinite wisdom, decided to turn off one of their masts a week later even though they’d already acknowledged a few months earlier that the network was congested. If your car is running on 3 cylinders, you don’t take another spark plug out … unless you’re Orange.

Mrs Sane is still on Orange and tearing her hair out since they turned the mast off. Since that weekend the pattern is the same – about lunchtime on a Friday you can’t make and receive phone calls or send and receive texts with any degree of reliability. Most of the time it’s not possible to use the phone as a phone which is a bit inconvenient. This goes on until Monday morning.

Mrs Sane complained to Orange and they agreed to release her from her contract if she wrote in to their head office. She wrote in to their head office and I put a letter in the same envelope for #1 son’s phone which is also on Orange. I haven’t had a reply but Mrs Sane got one denying there was a problem and insisting that their networks people said there is no problem.

The level of service is unacceptable. I provide 24 hour cover for work every other week and the on-call phone is on Orange. The last two times I’ve been on call I’ve had to give my house phone number to my employer because the mobile phone doesn’t work. Mrs Sane can’t use her phone and neither can #1 son. I can’t use my Three phone because roaming connections are dropped off first and neither can #2 son who’s also on Three. My brother-in-law says that whenever he comes to Telford – and particularly where we live – he has the same problem.

Things came to a head today when Mrs Sane and I were trying to call each other this morning and couldn’t so I phoned Orange to complain again. Five times. It took about 30 or 40 attempts to make the five calls. The first time a supervisor was going to call me but didn’t. The second and third times I got cut off while I was on hold. The fourth time I asked to be called straight back on my landline because I kept getting cut off but nobody called. The fifth time I asked to be called back on my landline while I waited on the mobile and when they called me I didn’t bother wasting time explaining myself again and insisted on being put through to a network support person.

To my surprise I was put through to a network support person who was very helpful. He checked the repeater mast at the end of our road and found that it was a bit poorly. Well, when I say a bit poorly, what I mean is absolutely buggered. The connection failure rate on that mast yesterday was 69.5%. You haven’t read that wrong – 7 out of 10 attempts to connect to the network to make or receive calls, send or receive texts or use data resulted in a failure. That is amazingly bad – a critical failure rate according to the networks person at Orange. But according to Orange head office, there’s nothing wrong!

The nice networks man raised a ticket for an engineer to go and check it out next week. He said it’s a line of sight repeated and it may have lost sight of a proper mast (the one they’ve turned off perhaps?) or just not be up to the job and needs cabling up instead.

It’s understandable that the first line support people don’t have access to that sort of information because they wouldn’t know what to do with it but it shouldn’t be so damn hard to get through to someone who can check out that sort of thing and deal with the problem accordingly. I really hope they can sort the problem out because if I can get a reliable Orange connection at home, that means I don’t have to change from Three who I’m still really happy with, lack of connectivity at home notwithstanding.

Orange should have known there was a problem because that level of failure is just ridiculous but the big problem is people just accepting shit service and not reporting it. If everyone who had a problem – and there are a lot of them – reported it they would have been more likely to have spotted a problem before now.

I’m not convinced that they’re going to fix the problem – certainly not in the short term – but let’s see what they say next week. I am assured that I will have a phone call by Thursday at the latest to give me an update.

I need an Octeday

October 22, 2010 wonkotsane General One comment

It’s been over 2 weeks since I last posted, I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit recently.

So what’s been happening in the last couple of weeks? Well, I went to the UKIP leadership hustings in Birmingham last week. I’m backing Nigel Farage for leader of course, he’s the best candidate by far. The second placed candidate, David Campbell Bannerman, is going down in my estimation every time he says or does something and I’m not the only one – I’ve had DCB supporters get in touch to tell me they’re switching allegiances since he got Farage pulled from BBC Question Time.

I’ve somehow found myself standing in for the Chairman of Brookside Improvement Group, my local residents’ group, while the Chairman recovers from illness.

The Campaign for an English Parliament’s new website is up and running. We’re still tinkering around the edges but it’s there or thereabouts. The latest feature to be added is a supporters mailing list.

There are a few hours left to take part in the competition over at Bloggers4UKIP. Nigel Farage will be judging the best post published on Bloggers4UKIP by close of play today (October 22nd) and the winner will receive a signed copy of his book, Fighting Bull. Anyone interested in taking part, use the contact form on Bloggers4UKIP.

David Wright has finally replied to me on the 500 RBS redundancies in Telford but fails to explain why he did nothing to stop the RBS policy of English Jobs for Scottish People when he was working in the British Treasury. I asked for a meeting between him and the CEP, he’s told me to speak to his secretary to find out details of his open surgeries. If he wants to play games, I’m happy to play along.

We’ve been doing the tour of the secondary schools again, #2 son is leaving primary school next year. Hopefully he’ll get his first choice because it’s going to be a logistical nightmare (not to mention, expensive) if he doesn’t.

Orange are still pissing me off. Unbelievably, a week after Three turned off their mast near my house resulting in me not being able to get a Three signal in my street, Orange did the same thing. It hasn’t affected signal strength all that much but the already overloaded network is now worse than ever – from Friday afternoon to Monday morning, Mrs Sane can’t make or receive calls or send and receive text messages and my Three phone won’t roam onto Orange for most of the weekend because Orange cut off roaming partners when they’re overloaded. It wouldn’t be so bad but I provide 24 hour cover for work every other week and for the second weekend in a row I’ve had to give my home phone number to work because the Orange mobile they’ve given me is useless. Orange are now refusing to accept – despite having already admitted to me, terminated my contract early and paid me a considerable amount of compensation for refusing to admit their fault for months – that there is a problem with their network!

It’s been a busy few weeks … in fact, it’s been a busy few months. I really must make an effort to blog more. If anyone knows a way of slotting an extra day in the week I’m all ears. Terry Pratchett has the right idea – I could get loads done on Octeday.

Help me choose: O2 or Vodafone

October 4, 2010 wonkotsane Technology 8 comments

I’m beginning to think we’re jinxed when it comes to mobile phones.

Last week I posted about the dilemma I have now that Three have turned off the mast closest to my house. I left Orange because it was so unreliable so staying on Three when I can only pick up Orange on my Three phone is no good and T-Mobile doesn’t work in my house.

Well now it’s becoming more of a pressing issue because Orange have also just switched off a mast and you’ve guessed it, it’s the mast nearest my house. Getting an Orange signal isn’t a problem but making and receiving calls and sending and receiving texts is a problem and data connections are a rarity because the already overloaded Orange network is now maxed out all the time.

So in a nutshell, I’ve got a choice between O2 and Vodafone. I’ve been asking on Twitter and Facebook and so far pretty much everyone has said Vodafone. O2 are apparently having the same capacity problems as Orange and T-Mobile. But what about Vodafone? Everyone can’t be happy with Vodafone otherwise there’d be nobody on the other 4 networks! Their data allowances are rubbish, as are their upgrades but what about the network?

The coverage checkers for O2 and Vodafone both show reasonable coverage for where I live – not as good as Orange, T-Mobile or Three – but there’s not much difference between the two. So it’s just down to reliability, customer service and value for money but which one should I choose? O2 or Vodafone?

Who’s a clever boy then?

October 4, 2010 wonkotsane Economy, Tories 3 comments

Osbourne and Cameron

Well, isn’t little Georgy Porgey Osborne a clever boy? He’s decided to means test for family allowance to stop the well off from getting money they don’t need but being the clever boy that he is, he’s dropped a bit of a bollock.

The means testing is being done by taking family allowance off anyone who is in the higher tax bracket. This means that if either parent earns over £44k they won’t qualify for family allowance. And rightly so, there’s no need for someone earning £44k to have family allowance.

But here’s the clever bit: if two parents earn £43,999.99 each – a combined household income of £87,999.98 – they will still be paid family allowance.

Genius.

Penalising parents for exercising their rights?

September 27, 2010 wonkotsane Education 10 comments

#2 son is due to start secondary school next year and we’ve just put in his application for the same school #1 goes to and his preferences for the LEA-controlled schools.

#1 son goes to an excellent independent school (top performing state secondary in England) and #2 son wants to go there as well but the school is badly over-subscribed – they turn down over 1,000 applicants every year – so the odds are stacked against him getting there.

For his LEA preferences, we haven’t chosen the nearest school to home because it’s rubbish which presents us with a bit of a problem – if he doesn’t get into the same school as #1, how is he going to get there?

I drop #1 son off at school in the morning on my way to work as it’s in vaguely the same direction as the office but the other two schools on #2’s list are in the opposite direction. What we need is for one of them to be able to go to school by bus but there’s a problem: none of the schools is more than 3 miles from home and a weekly bus pass for a child is £10 – taking off school holidays, that’s about £400 a year!

The 3 mile rule is what the British government says is the maximum distance a child of secondary school age in England can be expected to walk to school. There are exceptions for children with medical conditions of course and #2 has a heart problem so he fits the criteria for getting a free bus pass … but only if he goes to the local, rubbish school.

You can get a free school bus pass for your children if you meet the usual criteria and it’s this that has annoyed me. If you’re unemployed your children can have a free school bus pass. If you’re an asylum seeker your children can have a free school bus pass. If your household income is below a certain level your children can have a free bus pass.

It may surprise my regular readers to know that it’s not the freebies for the workshy or asylum seekers that irritates me, it’s the latter. I work, I earn an above average wage but I have 4 children. Someone on minimum wage with 1 child getting income support, housing benefit, etc., will have as much, if not more, disposable income than me but the household income criteria is an arbitrary threshold, it doesn’t go up if you have more children to pay for.

Ok, so it’s my choice to have 4 children (although I did inherit 2 stepsons) but if the system offers help for parents – which my taxes pay for – then it should do so fairly. And if the system purports to offer parents the right to choose which school they want (or need) their children to go to, it shouldn’t penalise them for exercising that right.

And the winner is …

September 25, 2010 wonkotsane Labour 4 comments

Harriden Harperson, the fascist man-hating bitch of an Acting Leader, has finished her speech and some scary looking woman (it has to be a woman of course) has announced the winner of the deckchair rearranging competition on the SS New Liebour and the winner, with xx% of the vote, is …

Ed the Milibeast

Ed the Millibeast

Right, now the excitement’s all over I’m going to go and find some paint I can watch drying.

A Dilemma

September 25, 2010 wonkotsane Customer Services, Technology 3 comments

A couple of months ago I achieved a small personal victory against Orange who finally admitted that their network is struggling and terminated my contract early. They’ve since agreed to pay me a quite reasonable amount of compensation for unreasonably keeping me in contract when they knew they couldn’t provide me with the service I was paying for.

So I changed to Three for a number of reasons, foremost of which was the value for money and the superior coverage. For £32 per month I get a free network unlocked HTC Desire, 500 minutes of any network calls, 1000 minutes of Three to Three calls, 1000 texts, 120 MMS messages and 1gb of data. On the coverage front, I get Three’s network which provides relatively patchy coverage nationally (but fine in the places I frequent regularly) and roaming access to voice and data on Orange – the largest combined coverage of any UK mobile network.

I have been more than happy with Three right up until last Saturday when my phone would no longer connect to Three and was stuck on roaming. I assumed it was a local problem and after a few hours called Three to confirm they were aware of the problem. They said there was no problem, it must be the phone and I should turn it off and take out the sim card, leave it for a few minutes and try again. I left it overnight to see if the problem went away by itself but it didn’t so I tried what I was advised to do and that failed to fix the problem.

So I called again and was told it must be my phone and that there is a known problem with the HTC Desire that can cause it to latch onto a roaming network and be reluctant to move back to the home network. I was told to take my phone to a Three or Carphone Warehouse shop and get it flashed to the latest version of the software under warranty. The phone had updated that morning so I knew it was up-to-date but I reluctantly agreed to do as they said. But later that day I went to a relative’s house and as soon as I travelled away from home, the phone picked up Three again. “Ah-ha”, I thought, “that proves it’s the network”.

So when I got home I checked #2 son’s phone which is also on Three and his had the same problem. I manually scanned for networks and it would only pick up Three on 2G – scanning with the phone set to 3G wouldn’t pick up Three at all. So it’s definitely the network, without a doubt and I phoned Three back up again. The person I spoke to this time told me that the mast by my house had been decommissioned and that they were currently working on the next nearest to upgrade it to take up the slack from the decommissioned mast. This would take a couple of days, he told me.

Being a naturally suspicious person, I decided to go to the Three shop in town and check it out the following day. I went, they checked and confirmed that what I was told was correct. Brilliant, it’s not my phone and I just need to sit tight for a few days and it’ll be sorted. Except it isn’t sorted because my phone still roams onto Orange as soon as I turn into my street and it’s been a week. I called Three today to find out if the upgrade had been finished on the other mast – yes it has and there are no problems with any of the masts in my area. You know what’s coming next don’t you? I did and I sighed.

The handset faults person asked me for my software versions again and told me that I didn’t have the latest version. I disagreed. So did he. He told me it was my phone and I needed to get it flashed. I told him it wasn’t my phone and explained all the above again and asked him if he genuinely thought that it was all a co-incidence and that two different models of phone had spontaneously developed the same fault which only manifests itself in my street and started when they turned off the mast near my house? He said it could be. Clearly it isn’t. This is what I do for a job – I diagnose and fix application infrastructure faults for a multinational IT company.

The aforementioned handset faults person got his supervisor to phone me back and we went through it all again. He didn’t try and blag me the like his colleague did though and agreed that it was Three’s fault. He offered me a different handset or to terminate my contract without charge. As I’ve already proven it’s not the handset with #2 son’s phone, the only option is to terminate the contract and go elsewhere.

But here’s the dilemma: my phone works in the house, it just can’t get a Three signal so it roams onto Orange. If I’m on a call when I turn into the street it invariably cuts me off as it tries to keep the Three signal for as long as possible and ends up cutting me off because it’s too late to switch the call to Orange. And I came off Orange for a reason – the network is overloaded and unreliable. But I won’t get the deal I’ve got from Three if I go to another network – I won’t get the data, the free calls or the coverage.

Obviously Orange is out of the question so that leaves me with T-Mobile, O2 or Vodafone. We’ve dabbled with T-Mobile and it was nothing special and then they built a new mast at the end of the road and the signal nosedived to the extent that it often wouldn’t work indoors. So that leaves O2 or Vodafone. Having worked for a mobile phone dealer, I know that Vodafone’s upgrades are shit – you have to spend quite a lot of money with them to get a decent upgrade when your contract is up so that leaves O2. But O2 have overloaded their network with free data packages to the extent that their network in London was pretty much knocked out earlier this year for weeks.

So now you see my dilemma, what should I do?

Brookside’s Burning

September 22, 2010 wonkotsane Telford One comment

Well, not quite but there was a fire a short time ago in a block of flats in the next street to me.

Seven police cars, two fire engines, a paramedic car and two ambulances – the most exciting thing to happen to Brookside since … a fortnight ago when serial arsonists were lighting fires around South Telford every day and the fire brigade was patrolling the estate every night.

Here are some pictures …

No restrictions on using the pictures for personal use, for non-personal use please ask.

Burn the Quran Day

September 8, 2010 wonkotsane Come the revolution, Free Speech, Terrorism 30 comments

A church in Florida plans to hold a “Burn the Quran Day” on September the 11th, despite universal condemnation both at home and abroad.

The church preaches that “Islam is of the devil”.

Back in 2005, the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, published cartoons depicting the muslim prophet, Mohammed. The newspaper was threatened with bombings and the cartoonist received death threats.

The response from the “international community”? Calls for moderation and criticism of the newspaper and cartoonist for offending muslims.

And in 2006, three boys were expelled from an Islamic school in Australia after they were caught pissing on bibles and burning bible pages.

The response from the “international community”? Well I don’t remember seeing it on the news or in any newspapers over here. There were no spontaneous protests from christians calling for the boys to be beheaded. The boy’s father blamed the school.

Still in 2006, muslims protesting in London about the newspaper in Denmark publishing Mohammed cartoons waved placards calling the murder of people who insult Islam and other “anti-British slogans”.

The response from the “international community”? Calls for moderation and criticism of the newspaper and cartoonist for offending muslims.

And a regular sight at any anti-American or anti-west protest by muslims, the burning of the Stars & Stripes:

The response from the “international community”? I think you know the answer already. The Stars & Stripes is second only to the bible in the list of revered objects in the USA but the “international community” seems to think it’s ok to desecrate it if you’re a muslim.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Brookside Health & Harmony

September 4, 2010 wonkotsane Telford One comment

I’ve not long got back from stewarding a community event in Brookside, Telford called “Health & Harmony”.

I’m still none the wiser at where “Harmony” comes into it but the “Health” bit was covered off by the free fruit smoothies that were given out, the healthy eating advice and the demonstrations by Telford Thai Boxing club.

The event was organised by Brookside Improvement Group, which I’m a member of. As the officially recognised residents group for, it’s important to get feedback from as many residents as possible and this event was used as an opportunity to get some feedback from residents. There were some excellent suggestions such as a community garden and improving playgrounds. One of the best suggestions was simply putting a cigarette bin outside the shopping arcade so smokers have no excuse for dropping their cigarette butts on the floor outside – it’s cheap and has an immediate benefit.

Of particular benefit, I think, was getting feedback from the locals that congregate outside the shopping arcade drinking. They don’t look particularly nice and they discourage some people from using the shops but what most people don’t realise is that they clean up around the shops and see off the younger drinkers that cause trouble. Most of these people don’t have jobs and want something to do with their time – just like the local kids. They want organised activities, something to do during the day other than sitting around drinking.

Most people were critical of the estate and for the same reasons – it looks old and tired, there’s too much rubbish around – the same criticisms you’ll hear about any 40 year old housing estate. But most people also had something positive to say – the sense of community where they live, the greenery and one woman who had moved away for 15 years before coming back said “it felt like coming home”.

One of the main attractions was the Brookside’s Got Talent competition. Two of my kids (the youngest two) did a dance they learnt at Telford Academy of Performing Arts and came in second place. There was almost no talent contest after the person who promised to provide a karaoke machine let us down but luckily a local DJ stepped in at the last minute and gave a couple of hours of his time for the event.

Special thanks is also due to Tesco in Madeley and the Co-Op in Stirchley, both of which provided the ingredients for the smoothies and to the supermarket in Brookside that donated bottled water, tea, coffee, milk, sugar, squash and other essential supplies to the event.

Stop buggering about with my internet!

August 29, 2010 wonkotsane Customer Services, Technology No comments

Bloody buggering Sky, I swear there’s a conspiracy to piss me off.

Two months ago they buggered up my internet connection and then buggered up my phone fixing my broadband. Cartman Pissed Off I spent several days arguing with them over the phone that the problem was at the exchange, not my equipment or my phone, the micro filter or the socket. Eventually I got through to someone sensible in their higher level support department who did the unthinkable and didn’t follow the step by step instructions that clearly had no relevance at all to the problem I had and eventually got the problem sorted at the exchange. I managed to figure out the problem despite being in a hotel on a training course but it took several days of phone calls for Sky to catch up with all their gadgetry.

So they fixed my broadband by moving my line from one switch to another and in the process paired my phone up to god knows where, but it wasn’t my phone line! As compensation fro dicking me around entirely unnecessarily, ballsing things up twice and costing me quite a lot of money in phone calls they knocked a fiver a month off my bill for a year. Which they also cocked up, resulting in my getting billed for two half price phone lines instead of one.

Anyway, they sorted all that out and everything was fine until yesterday when we got back from a week’s holiday to find that the internet wasn’t working. There was no heartbeat light on the micro filter (I bought an expensive filter a while ago which tells me when it’s connected to the exchange) and the data light on the router was red which kind of suggests that there was no connection to the exchange. So I did some tests, including trying a spare router which they sent me when there was nothing wrong with my router two months ago.

Eventually they figured out that there was a problem and phoned me back to tell me they’d fixed it. So I asked what was wrong and what they’d done to fix it. There was a pause and a reluctant explanation: they’d done some tests on the line and discovered that it will only support 10mbit/sec so they’d reduced the connection to 10mbit.

Interesting. So my line has supported a connection at over 20mbit/sec for over a year but suddenly, in the space of a week, my line has mysteriously degenerated to the point where it will now only support half the data rate it did before I went on holiday. Is there an explanation? Well, the maximum speed is calculated from the distance from the exchange, the line quality and the quality of the wiring at home. All of which I know and that’s how I know their maths doesn’t add up. According to Kitz, at 900m from the exchange with 13dB downstream attenuation, I should be be able to connect to the exchange at 22mbit/sec with a throughput of just over 20mbit.

As the crow flies I am less than 400m from the exchange so the actual length of cable is probably somewhere between the 0.4km distance from the exchange and the 0.9km they estimate. Regardless, the LLU speeds quoted above are pretty much spot on what I’ve been getting for over a year and nothing has changed. The router is still plugged into the master socket with no extensions and a high quality micro filter.

Anyway, they said that it will take up to 24 hours to put the speed back to 20mbit (5 minutes to reduce it, a day to increase it … hmmm). Needless to say, 24 hours later it’s still connected at 8mbit – not even the 10mbit I was told yesterday that my line could support. Not a happy bunny as you can imagine so I phoned again, went through the same conversations and had another promise to put my connection back to 20mbit.

I pay for 20mbit, my line supports 20mbit, I expect 20mbit! I suspect another battle may be in the offing, let’s see what happens tomorrow.

EDL protest marred by UAF violence

August 29, 2010 wonkotsane Come the revolution, England, Free Speech, Police State, Propaganda 3 comments

The English Defence League (EDL) held a “static protest” in Bradford yesterday which was typically marred by violence.

The original plan was for the EDL to hold a march through Bradford but the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, Sir Norman Bettison, successfully got the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to ban any protest marches in Bradford this weekend so they held a “static protest” instead.

UAF Leader arrested for conspiracy to organise violent disorder in March 2010

But wherever the EDL go, of course, the extreme left wing fascist group, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) follow to wreak havoc. The order to ban the EDL from marching no doubt came from her boss, David “Cast Iron” Cameron who is a supporter of the UAF fascists (the list of MPs supporting the UAF was removed after it was splashed all over the papers but nothing ever disappears forever on the internet).

Yesterday’s EDL protest was met with opposition from both the UAF fascists and The Muslim Community. The two factions – the EDL and the UAF/Muslim Community – were supposed to have been kept at a safe distance from each other but the UAF/Muslim Community protesters mysteriously made it to within a few yards of the EDL protesters. The UAF/Muslim Community gathering place was half a mile away from where the EDL were allowed to protest.

There is a lot about yesterday’s protest that doesn’t add up. Why were the UAF thugs and Muslim Community allowed to get so close to the fenced in EDL protesters? If the EDL were the trouble makers, why did the UAF and the Muslim Community have to be stopped from getting at the EDL protest by a physical blockade of police vans and a line of mounted police? Why have the police told the media that EDL protesters threw a smoke bomb at the UAF/Muslim Community protesters when this video clearly shows the trail of smoke from the smoke bomb being thrown from the UAF/Muslim Community protesters at the EDL protesters?

The media’s coverage of the protests is equally suspect. Sky News provided live coverage which apparently showed the smoke bomb being thrown at the EDL protesters but they continued to report it as being thrown by the EDL. And despite there being two separate protests yards away from each other – the EDL and the UAF/Muslim Community – the rotating banner said “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”, implying that the EDL were the only ones kicking off when clearly they weren’t. Another strapline was “Smoke bombs, bottles & stones thrown during English Defence League demonstration” – but who threw what? It was both sides but the strapline revolving underneath says “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”. Another said “One EDL supporter taken to hospital after injuring his leg” – how did he injure it? Was it an accident or was he hit by a brick or a bottle? There’s no interest from Sky, it’s all part of the “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”. What about the EDL supporter with cuts on the back of his head from what looks like a bottle injury? How was he injured? Again, no interest, it’s part of the “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”.

One of the arguments used by the UAF thugs and The Muslim Community as an excuse to ban the EDL march and whip up anti-EDL hatred in Bradford was that the EDL protest might see a return to the Bradford of 2001 when The Muslim Community and non-muslims rioted after David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, banned a National Front march but allowed a march by the extremist left wing Anti-Nazi League (now merged in the extremist left wing UAF) to go ahead. Sound familiar? The Muslim Community dictates the agenda in Bradford because the authorities can no longer control them.

The EDL have a right to protest, yes, but we must not allow them to provoke us into violence.
– Ratna Lachman, Bradford Women’s Peace Project

I’m surely not the only person who sees something wrong with this comment? If The Muslim Community turns to violence – which they did yesterday and have done at every EDL protest – then it’s because they’ve been provoked into violence. How has this been allowed to happen? Why have the Brits allowed extremism in The Muslim Community in Bradford to reach such epidemic proportions that a protest march by people opposing Islamic extremism could “provoke” them into violence?

We thank people for their patience and support so far and we hope to have protesters removed from the city as soon as possible.
– West Yorkshire Police “spokesman”

Again, I’m sure I’m not the only person to see something wrong with this comment either. It is the job of the police to keep the peace and enforce compliance with the law, not to run people out of town like a wild west sheriff. The EDL have a right to free assembly and peaceful protest. They also have a right not to be harassed or attacked and the police have an obligation to protect those rights. But instead, the objective of West Yorkshire Police was evidently to deny them their rights and to remove them from Bradford as soon as they could in case the EDL’s presence in the city provoked The Muslim Community into violence.

So what now for the EDL? Almost a year ago I wrote about the EDL following their march in Manchester and again in April this year following a protest in Dudley. At both protests the EDL were portrayed as the trouble makers with little mention of the UAF thugs despite the ratio of arrests to protesters being 1 in 250 for UAF and only 1 in 1,333 for the EDL – 3 arrests from 4,000 EDL protesters and 6 arrests from 1,500 UAF thugs.

I said that I had no interest in ethnic nationalism and I still don’t but I wonder if perhaps I’ve misunderstood the EDL? Their website says they’re only interested in opposing Islamic extremism and the creeping influence of Sharia and not race so maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt? Some of their members are clearly more interested in white supremecism than opposing Islamic extremism but then that’s the same of any organisation that is even vaguely involved in any type of nationalism. Even the Campaign for an English Parliament – a group that is extremely defensive of its non-partisan civic nationalism – has had problems with members or supporters who have developed an unhealthy obsession with race politics (we’ve rooted them all out to the best of my knowledge) and the English Democrats have some very unsavoury characters in their ranks despite being a primarily civic nationalist party. The EDL have no control over who chooses to support them and the beliefs those people hold and it’s unreasonable to expect them to filter out the undesirables from the thousands of people that turn up to their protests.

The problem the EDL have is that they are a porous organisation. They have to be to attract the kind of support they get at their protests. The downside of this is that they are open to infiltration from all sides. They have obviously been infiltrated by the likes of the National Front, the BNP and other ethnic nationalists and it is inconceivable that the police and security services haven’t already got people in the EDL chain of command. The trouble that both lots of infiltrators cause at protests is bringing the day the EDL is proscribed closer. One of their protests has been banned now, that sets a precedent for suppressing them. Banning one of their marches establishes them as “wrong”, the next step will be to ban them from having any sort of protest and then to ban the group altogether. The violence at protests will be cited as justification for banning them and the cost to the taxpayer of policing their protests will be used to convince the general public that banning the EDL is a good thing. The UAF fascists and The Muslim Community will be exempt from the bans despite them being the cause of most of the trouble at EDL protests because they’re not “wrong”.

The media has already been mobilised against the EDL – a collective blind eye is turned to the UAF fascists and The Muslim Community whilst the violence and thuggery perpetrated by the extreme left is blamed on the EDL. Despite being apolitical, the EDL are described as “far right” by politicians and the media, following the “right is wrong” mantra that the left have managed to implant into the collective psyche. The left have managed to convince most of the population that the left wing nationalist socialist BNP are “far right” whilst the forces of anti-fascism are exclusively left wing which of course makes right wing bad and left wing good. The truth is that the BNP are a left wing party, fascism is a centrist ideology incorporating both left and right wing ideologies and there are as many – if not more – anti-fascists on the right as there are on the left. Opposing radical Islam and unfettered immigration does not make you a fascist, no matter what the vicious thugs in UAF and failed communists in the Labour Party say.

England is not Britain

Not only are the EDL not “far right” but they are not English nationalists either. English nationalists know the difference between England and Britain. Glaswegian muslims are not English nationalists and they don’t ask “Why are they against the United Kingdom?” England is not Britain and the English Defence League is not English.

So, back to my question a few paragraphs up: should we give the EDL the benefit of the doubt? I am inclined to believe that the core few people that started the EDL and probably the majority of their supporters are not ethnic nationalists. I agree that radical Islam has to be dealt with and I agree that Sharia is a cancer that needs to be excised and most people will agree with the EDL’s stated objectives and raison d’être. What the English people need is a leader – someone in tune with English public feeling and clever enough to take on both the media and the British establishment. The EDL and its leader, Tommy Robinson, have done a lot in a short amount of time but they aren’t going to lead an English revolution because the EDL is a tainted brand and the danger is that the EDL will end up tainting English nationalism as a whole through guilt by association, just as we are starting to win the war against Englishness.

I certainly won’t be supporting the EDL for the simple fact that they are British nationalists and I am an English nationalist and because I have no desire to get my head caved in by some psycho communist or a member of The Muslim Community for being on the “wrong” side of the police line. That said, I would still be interested in observing an EDL protest first hand and if anyone from the EDL wants to arrange that, feel free to get in touch.

Recommended reading on the EDL and UAF:
Nourishing Obscurity
The Anger of a Quiet Man

The English Defence League’s … robust … report on yesterday’s protest is here.

Google UK in Spanish?

August 14, 2010 wonkotsane Technology One comment

Oh dear, looks like the fuck up fairy has visited Google!

Oxfordshire speed camera propaganda

August 10, 2010 wonkotsane Come the revolution, Propaganda, Transport 4 comments

The BBC News website has a non-story about speeding statistics at the site of two switched-off speed cameras in Oxfordshire.

Oxfordshire County Council couldn’t afford to keep the speed cameras going after the British government withdrew central funding for speed cameras in England so they turned them off but Thames Valley Safer Road Partnership – one of the many speed camera quangos producing misleading advertising and lobbying national and local government for more business – continued to monitor two sites for 10 weeks and came up with the startling revelation that people were speeding past the speed cameras that had been turned off.

I’ve said this plenty of times before – speeding isn’t dangerous, driving too fast is. You can break the speed limit and still be safe but you can drive below the speed limit and not be safe. This is where speed cameras fail in their supposed objective of making the roads safer – they don’t catch dangerous drivers, they don’t catch drunk drivers, they don’t catch people that brake sharply at speed cameras and then race off at breakneck speeds as soon as they’re past the lines painted on the road.

Thames Valley Safer Road Partnership’s shocking statistics – endorsed by Brake, the government-funded fake charity – show an 88% increase in speeding on Watlington Road, Cowley. That’s an increase from 7 people caught speeding when the speed cameras were on to 62 people not getting caught speeding when the speed cameras are off. 62 people in 10 weeks – that’s less than 1 speeding motorist per day!

But of course the road conditions play a big part in whether it’s safe to exceed the speed limit or not so what’s Warlington Road like? Is it a winding country lane? A narrow street through a busy housing estate? Erm, no. It’s a wide open road, most of which is through open countryside and the rest is past some industrial units. Part of the road is dual carriageway and there are traffic lights dotted at short intervals where the road makes its way past the industrial units.

The other speed camera site is the A44 in Woodstock where the number of people breaking the 30mph speed limit went from 90 to 110. Again, this is over a 10 week period so that’s 2 more speeding motorists per week now the speed cameras are off compared to when they were on. And again, this is a wide open road and it’s actually a bypass for Woodstock and the only hazard nearby is the entrance to Blenheim Palace which has filter lanes to control the traffic and presumably slows the traffic down when the road is busy by virtue of being a tourist attraction and attracting lots of traffic.

One statistic is conspicuously absent from propaganda from Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership – the effect on the accident rate from the speed cameras being switched off. There is no mention whatsoever of the accident rate and that speaks volumes. If there was one extra accident at either of those sites it would have been used as “evidence” that turning off speed cameras is going to kill and maim hundreds of babies and pensioners. But there is no mention at all and that means there has been no increase in accidents, no increase in casualties, no increase in deaths and no justification for turning the speed cameras back on.

The statistics from Swindon have shown that speed cameras on average have no tangible effect on road safety. Inspector Paul Winks from Thames Valley Police said “The consequence is more death and more death is unacceptable”. This is naked propaganda – there is no evidence at all to back up such a ridiculous statement. Thames Valley Police wants more speed cameras because they get a cut of the income generated from the fines and because it means they don’t have to put police on the roads catching dangerous drivers.

The whole legal basis for speed cameras is that they should be a deterrent to inappropriate speeding in danger spots. They are supposed to be brightly coloured and highly visible so that it discourages people from breaking the speed limit, not hidden round corners or behind bushes and road signs to catch people speeding. All speed camera sites in England need to be reviewed by a commission, headed by a judge, to rule on their legality because a great number of them certainly aren’t being used for road safety, they’re being used as roadside tax collectors. An unattended camera on the side of the road is no substitute for a trained police officer.

You can’t fix stupid

August 10, 2010 wonkotsane Telford No comments

I was just getting dinner out of the oven when #1 son came knocking on the kitchen window and presented a crying 6 year old boy.

After talking to him it turned out that his mum had gone shopping and packed him off to his friend’s house. He’d changed his mind halfway to his friend’s house and decided to go back home only to find that his mum had already left. Knowing that his dad didn’t finish work until 8pm he walked to his grandparents’ house which is a few doors away from us but a good 10-15 minutes walk away from where he lives.

His grandparents weren’t in so I got him to take me to his dad and uncle’s house on the off chance but there was nobody in. So next stop was the friend’s house he was meant to have gone to but there was nobody there either!

Dreading the thought of having to phone the police to come and take him away until his mum or dad could be found, I asked him if there was anyone else he could go to nearby. Thankfully there was – an auntie. So he took me to his auntie’s house which co-incidentally happened to be a house I lived in when I was a kid and luckily his cousin was there.

So this lad was returned safely to his family but how different it could have been. A 6 year old shouldn’t be walking around a housing estate by himself – anything could have happened to him. Lucky he ended up here rather than being intercepted by a gang of feral youths or a kiddie fiddler. With all the stories in the news just lately about kids being abused and murdered, what was the lad’s mother thinking leaving a 6 year old to walk to a friend’s house while she went shopping without even checking if the friend was in or that he’d got to where he was meant to be?

I wouldn’t mind being exploited for 6 grand a month

August 3, 2010 wonkotsane General 3 comments

The British government have banned adverts for “the sex industry” in Job Centres because they might lead to exploitation of vulnerable unemployed women.

I’m not an expert in “the sex industry” so I’m happy to be corrected but this all seems a bit daft.

For a start, I’d imagine the kind of strip club or lap dancing club that prostitutes their dancers is unlikely to place adverts in the Job Centre. It therefore follows that if someone was looking for a job as a stripper or a lap dancer that they’d be less likely to be exploited going to a Job Centre than replying to an ad in a free newspaper or a card in a window.

Furthermore, why is lap dancing, stripping or topless waitressing necessarily being exploited? According to this website, a good looking, talented girl can earn £1,500 after “house fees” and before tax per week in one of the top London clubs like Stringfellows or Spearmint Rhino. That’s for a 4 hour shift, 5 or 6 days a week. Four hours a day on minimum wage sitting behind a till in Tesco will earn you £116 per week before tax.

I’m lucky: I have a stress-free job, I work regular hours and I enjoy what I do but I certainly can’t earn 6 grand a month before tax working 37½ hours a week and getting paid for providing round the clock out of hours cover every other week. I’m starting to feel a little exploited myself, I wonder if that nice Mr Grayling will ban adverts for jobs paying less than £75 per hour?

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