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It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings…
Yesterday I wrote about the decline of the New Labour project and what I consider to be the over-riding factor that has driven that decline. I also pointed out that, while I fear it might be over for Labour come the next election, the fat lady has [...]

The Ben Goldacre / Jeni Barnett case about LBC’s attempt to remove a recording of a phone-in from one of their shows from the Internet, after it has been subjected to criticism, rumbles on.

Yesterday - and I haven’t seen anyone noting this - it was used as an example on a excellent “Start the Week” about free expression. Here is the snippet:

[audio:http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/20090210-bbc-radio4-start-the-week-ben-goldacre-censorship.mp3]

Elsewhere, the TechnoLlama has the best legal analysis I have seen anywhere, making roughly the same points as I did more elegantly.

From the Daily Mail this morning, a report of a Foster Carer “struck off” for “allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.” This is the nub of it:

A foster mother has been struck off the register for allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.

The woman, who has looked after more than 80 children in the past ten years, is considering suing the council over the decision.

Although she is a practising Anglican, she said she had put no pressure on the girl who was baptised last year at the age of 16.

She said social workers had also raised no objections to her own attendance at church.

But officials insist she failed in her duty to preserve the girl’s religion and should have tried to stop the baptism.

The foster mother’s removal from the register followed in November.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has launched a legal challenge to the decision with funding from the Christian Institute.

I don’t usually take the Daily Mail as a single source, but this seems to be a sober report. My comments are based on an assumption that the report is accurate. If this has been “Daily Mail”-ed I’ll correct and update.

There’s a lot that could be said about this, but there is one point that I find fascinating: it is established that childen under 18 have a right to self-determination of children where sexuality, marriage or deciding what to do with a baby are concerned, but the denial of that right when it comes to choosing a religion. That does not look consistent.

Labour flat-lining
The polls make painfully hard reading for the Labour party at the moment. Treading water on 28% is not where a government wants to be. It will only take a small fall by a percent or two and Labour will be flat lining, relying solely on their core vote: the sort of [...]

The roundup is a compendium of last week’s outstanding posts in the British Blogosphere. A little late this week, but still delectable.

Hello, I’m Ben Gallagher. I’m new here. I usually blog on my own site - the originally titled BenGallagher.com.
Matt has kindly let me blog here also. I will mostly be posting cartoons of my semi-autobiographical sheep called Gerald. You may have seen him being featured on this site in the past.
I’m also quite open to [...]

With reform of the House of Lords back in the news following the latest scandals over who is in it and how they behave, now seems a good time to provide some background on its political make-up.
Since political parties first emerged in British politics, the then wholly hereditary House of Lords consistently had a very [...]

I had my first fake Paypal payment email this morning, rather than asking me for money it was claiming to be a “receipt” and asking for confirmation.

Unfortunately it was on an account with no Paypal. Ah, well.

From Nightsurfer last year:

Now instead of sending you nonpayment emails they send you payment emails as if you sold something and need to collect your money.
Here is an example of one I got today:

Dear PayPal Member, ((Should be your real name))

This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment of <xyz> to
<email> for an eBay item.

Watch out.

Apropos of not very much, these are the newspaper and media groups we have noticed visitors from in the last few days.

1. Trinity Mirror Group (GB)
2. Associated Newspapers Ltd (GB)
3. British Broadcasting Corporati…
4. Times Supplements Limited (GB)
5. Central Productions Nottingham…
6. TELEGRAPH GROUP LIMITED (GB)
7. Johnston Press (GB)
8. British Sky Broadcasting Ltd. …
9. Reuters Plc (GB)

There have also been around 60 unique visitors from Parliament - which probably means one bloke on 60 computers.

Labour MPs have been ordered to start Twittering. This is a bad thing. Because most MPs - across all parties - are both technologically incompetent, and entirely fail to get “new media” in any of its guises at all. They, at best, see new media as an easy and cheap way to get votes and [...]

This is the last call for nominations for today’s Britblog Roundup.

Send them to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

The cutoff time is 5pm.

There won’t be much from me today as I’m putting together a bigger version of the “Google Profile” article as a report.

So here’s Miss Eclectech with the latest broadside against the National Database White Elephant project: the database rag. Embedding is not allowed so you will have to click through.

She describes it thus:

Mushroom wrote and recorded this fine ditty, inspired by the great Tom Lehrer, about his frustration with the UK government and their urge to watch and record our every move. I turned him into a marmot and added some usual silliness… Jacqui Smith with a hammer and wand, dancing computers and my old timer puppy pianist.

Reality will kill the project or clip its wings in the end. It’s just a pity that those Ministers throwing away billions will not have personal liability and will be able to keep their pensions. I think this case may well warrant such a move.

A number of blogs have come out in support of Ben Goldacre, over the Jeni Barnett and LBC threat of legal action, after Ben posted an excerpt from Jeni’s phone-in show about the MMR vaccine.

This is probably a partial list by now.

What is the place of faith in public life?

3 events this week, which, if you take them on their own, give different answers.

Mugabe Must Go

1. The Archbishops of the Anglican Church, including many African church leaders, have called for Robert Mugabe to step down. Showing more moral courage than many of their political counterparts, the statement pulls no punches in its criticism of Mugabe, and its call for the rule of law and democracy.

I’ve not yet heard anyone criticise the Bishops for this. Maybe its because we all agree with them. If it was something more controversial, you can guarantee that someone would be trotting out the ‘religion and politics don’t mix’ line.

Read the first paragraph of this story and see if anything sounds not-quite-right:

Yes, it says “as sure as… Tom follows Jerry”. This must be a brand new TV programme, as I’ve never heard of one called Jerry and Tom.

Does he mean Tom and Jerry, by any chance? I’m sure we’ve all heard of that classic [...]

Mike Rouse is back. After a break Mike will be continuing coverage of technology in the service of politics. He starts with some reflection on fashion, technology and finance.

As a designer and developer in the political arena I have noticed a sudden spike in interest in web technologies in the past few months. All of a sudden politicians from all areas of the spectrum are talking about Twitter, Facebook and blogging (no link needed for blogging round here).

There’s a renewed urgency and pressure to sort these areas out the likes of which I have not seen since last year’s election that never was when candidates were contacting me because they realised that an election might be around the corner and their website looked like something from 1999 or worse still they didn’t have one at all.

There’s another legal threat against a blogger that’s come to light today. I saw it via Richard Bartholomew:

Here’s a blogger who’s come under threat for criticising (UK) Kent County Council’s internet-based Kent TV service. The station, paid for by tax payers in the county, is provided by Bob Geldof’s production company Ten Alps. Private Eye reports (1229, p. 11):

The blogger concerned is Tony Fraig of Bignews Margate, and Eastcliff Richard reproduced the article. It would be fair to call Tony a “persistent critic” of the station, but I can’t see anything that goes beyond the “grumpy and opinionated level”.

It’s the hoary old “shadow-boxing and make’em shiver” trick of stating an opinion in writing that x, y, or z bit of criticism is “defamatory” (shock! horror! critic criticises!) and trying to make it sound like an established fact in the hope of getting someone to do what you want without having to shell out serious money for lawyers.

Click on the title to read the whole article.

Hey ho, here we go again. In this case we have lawyers sending letters to prevent public debate.

Jeni Barnett is a presenter for LBC who did a three hour programme where she had an extended segment about the MMR vaccine, why she had not given it to her children and asking for reasons from members of the public why they had done the same.

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science took exception in strong terms, and posted a 44 minute segment from the broadcast on his blog:

It is my view that in this extended broadcast Jeni exemplifies every single canard ever uttered by the antivaccination movement.

I invite you to document the rest below (the bit about empirical experience is particularly enjoyable) and maybe we can get the full list of canards together for the definitive numbers set of Bad Science Bingo. In fact, if there is an anti-vaxxer canard in existence which is not in this broadcast, I want to know about it, signed copy of some book for the best one.

Jeni Barnett did not like the vigour:

I am interested in the debate not a witch hunt.

Should anybody from BAD SCIENCE read this I urge you to continue the debate, and if it gets too heated there is always the option of turning me off.

But within a day Ben Goldacre received contact from lawyers alleging copyright violation. That doesn’t sound to me to be “interest in the debate”.

You need to click through on the pic to read the slogan.

(Yes, I know that my apostrophe’s are not perfect, but - unlike Birmingham Council - I dont make a policy of getting it wrong.)

Click through on the title for all the papers.

Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.

I quite like this recipe for a reformed House of Lords from Carl Gardner, the Head of Legal, posted at Freelance Intellectual, his “other” blog:

My own recipe for Lords reform would be to have a chamber of 100 members elected by proportional representation under a list system, simply reflecting votes in the last general election. I’d retain the rule that members of the House were barred from standing for the Commons for ever; that way you could ensure the Lords was not yet another breeding-ground for would-be ministers and politicians of the same mould as are found everywhere else where politics is done. I’d also retain appointed Lords, so that experts of all kinds could speak - but I’d take away their right to vote. In fact, it might be an idea to give the appointed experts, elder statesmen and so on a monopoly on speaking (except for set-piece short speeches and questions from front-benchers), and the proportionate placemen a monopoly of voting.

I agree woth most of that, especially the suggestion to keep specialists in the House. The presence of Authorities has been crucial in turning back nonsensical points of legislation under Governments of both parties.

This’ll put the cat among the pigeons:

The Welsh language is proving a bit of a challenge, it seems, for the Home Office. Apparently, when if the cards are brought in, they may not be able to have the Welsh language on the cards, because of the “length of its words”.

This project has been going how long? And they find out now.

I don’t recall Welsh names being that much longer than anybody else’s, so no sympathy there. Or they could use a compressed font. Or dump the damn things in the dustbin where they belong and save us however many tens of billions the project will have wasted by the time as sensible Government cans it. I pity the poor Germans, though.

I’m guessing they will be in English, but I don’t think they’ll use Swahili or Esperanto.

If they can get Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch onto a platform ticket (albeit a big one 6 inches long), the combined might of the New Labour Cabinet should have the brain cells to write an identity card in Welsh?

Click on the title to read the full article.

A cartoon from Indexed.

There have been quite a lot changes in the site design of the Wardman Wire over the last few weeks, and today I’ve put up the last major change onto the magazine version of the site and introduced a new menu bar to make some of the services to find.

If you would like to have a poke around, I would welcome any comments before I put the menu bar onto the blog version of the site.

(Yes, I am aware that I need to move the group of icons above the menu bar, and that a couple of the pages are still awaiting their content).

The first interaction between the UK and the new US administration went ahead yesterday with Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It all went remarkably well with both bandying round compliments about each other and their respective countries like an old couple publically reaffirming their love for each other. [...]