Category: General

Last weekend I played my first match of polo in Spain.  We won a game, and draw a couple more which got us into the second round where we lost wonderfully.  I really enjoyed it.  It was run a little differently from the matches in Scotland, the obvious difference being it was outside in the sun which I fear would be difficult to recreate in Scotland. Here’s a list of other differences I noticed incase any are useful:

• They are super strict on the rules.  We missed the first match last month because a player dropped out and we could not add a substitute because she wasn’t on the list.  The addition would need to be approved by the other teams on the day and it was too much hassle to go to with a risk that we wouldn’t be able to play.
• They have a nice big timer board which lets you see the current score and current time.
• All the teams need to wear identical coloured uniforms and captains must be clearly identified with an arm band.
• They play the 60 second possession rule, for which there is another big timer display and person on duty to check.  If your team has possession for 40 seconds a bell sounds (which I found confusing and so did other people occationally), and 20 seconds later the refs sound their whistle to give the other team the ball.
• The refereeing is done by 1 team and takes 6 people, 2 on the table, two refing on each side and 2 as linesmen sitting at the ends with flags to signal for clean start, goals and off balls.
• After each match the team captain is given a sheet with goals and penalties and signs off as an accurate record (or puts in a protest).
• The goals a hung from a line across the pool but with an additional tail from the goal to the end of the pool behind it which stops a lot of the swaying
• Parking cones on the side mark the half way and 6 metre lines
• The weekend is done as a weekend tournament rather than a series of league days with 3 rounds including a final winner.  It means 1 poor team goes home after the first day which is pretty unsatisfying (and this is Spain wide which is geographically and politically similar to having UK wide matches which is a heck of a long drive in most cases, this is because the crisis has ment there’s only enough teams for 2 leagues).
• People like to moan about the SCA being bad at communication but as long as you find the Facebook page the polo stuff is pretty well communicated.  With the Real Federación Española de Piragüismo there’s no information anywhere online and no groups to discuss anything in.
• Loudspeakers are up so announcements can be made
• A printer seems to be somewhere around so current scores are printed off a couple times a day
• There are 4 weekends in the year and they are all at different locations. The organisation is done by a club rather than the federation committee, this is because there are enough clubs with the complete facilities available.  Clubs get a bit grumpy at having to give the proceeds to the federation.

Many years ago in a move I’m very proud of him for my dad worked with some useful people and organised the dredging of Lochrin Basin at the end of the union canal in Edinburgh.  That then became the home of Forth Canoe club for twenty years during which time hundreds of people were introduced to this fun sport and we made world champion paddlers and Olympiads. After 20 years the rest of the world caught up to the idea that canal regeneration might be a nice idea which would improve the space people live and play in and the millenium project dredged the canal from Edinburgh to Glasgow.  To pay for this British Waterways kicked Forth Canoe Club out of its buildings and replaced one of the best community assets in Edinburgh with tall ugly buildings.

Forth CC’s buildings bulldozed and tall soulless buildings bring constructed.

BW gave Forth a shed further along the canal at Harrison Park.  It’s very picturesque but it’s 1/5th the size we had before and incredibly they built a wall in the middle of the building along its length to take away a further 2/5ths of that building.  No explanation was given for it but it might have been a walkway to let narrow boaters walk through or it might have been because the wall behind the building was collapsing and BW didn’t want the hassle of fixing it.

Back in 2011 (I think) the city council had a couple of employees who organised a meeting about a canal strategy. It’s the sort of well meaning but mostly unhelpful exercise.  The one ended up with an over-designed PDF that is was large to put on their CMS for several weeks and is now too large for me to want to download and read through.  The consultation was limited to a few meetings which were not well advertised and didn’t use any modern tools like web forums to allow a longer discussion to happen.  Ultimately there’s no money for anything so any nice ideas that did come out of it didn’t happen.

Anyway at this meeting I did manage to ask staff of what was to become a rebranded and devolved quango Scottish Canals whyever they blocked off two fifths of our boathouse.  They came and looked at the boathouse and wondered themselves whyever this happened, clearly whatever original purpose the internal wall had was long since forgotten as civil service office staff move around. A further meeting happened where I was given keys to the corridor but it turned out it was being used as a storage dump by our next door neighbour.  We could share the space the civil servants suggested.  I spent the next few months doing up the corridor around the neighbour’s old rowing boat.  I was told off for moving the rowing boat out of the corridor even though I needed to do this to fix the damage that had been caused by Scottish Canals’ neglect.  One day a lease arrived without warning or explanation in the post. Someone in Scottish Canals had presumably worked out they should support a nice community group making use of the canal not a neighbour who didn’t.  A victory.  But the building is still too small to do what we used to do.

Every time I met with Scottish Canals they wondered if we could move the canoe club to be with the rowing club at Meggetland or maybe at Wester Hails.  I was interested in the idea of a new building with the rowing club at Meggetland and had a few meetings with them about it but the canal is barely wide enough for one rowing boat never mind rowing boats with canoes circling around them so I decided to drop the idea.  I told Scottish Canals I was never interested in moving to Wester Hails at the edge of town, Forth CC works as well as it does because we’re close to the city centre where everyone can get to.  At the launch of the canal strategy, which despite starting canal redevelopment Forth was never invited to, Scottish Canals gave away why they were so interested in us moving out of town.  STV covered them in January 2012 saying

“At Harrison Park, if the Forth Canoe Club relocate to Hailes Park, Harrison Park could become a new focus for residential moorings.”

So for the second time Forth had the prospect of having its buildings bulldozed, quite galling considering what we have done to bring life to the area.  I told them we were not going to move out of the city centre and told the “canal champion” Tim McKay the same and the idea of barges at Harrison Park was quietly dropped.

In February 2012 I went to a meeting of a new community group.  The old brewery at Fountainbridge had been sold to the Bank of Scotland to make a soulless headquarters but the financial crash stopped that happening and a large brownfield site was then bought by the City Council for a new buliding for Boroughmuir school. The Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative was a group of people who thought they should come up with ideas for what to build on the rest of the land before developers come along with more soulless ideas.

I noticed a plot at one end of the site which seemed to be going spare, I wondered if it would be suitable for a new boathouse for Forth which would give us the space we badly needed.

So I set about searching for politicians to help find out if it was a good idea.  Lib Dem councillor Jim Lowrie invited me into his plush office in the City Chambers in the High Street and seemed very interested in the idea.  He said to give him a couple weeks and he’d set up a meeting with the relevant civil servants.  This guy was the planning convener as well as councillor for Fountainbridge so he should know about the plot.  Weeks went by and e-mails I sent went unanswered.  Then an election was on and his leaflets included that he had canal improvements on track including “new premises for Forth Canoe Club”.  Except he was the one blocking any progress by not organising the meeting he had promised me.  I think the real reason for the downfall of the Lib Dems isn’t Nick Clegg but is Jim Lowrie, the other points mentioned on this leaflet weren’t true either.

Jim Lowrie lies about helping Forth Canoe Club. A Google search for his name says “Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe” which makes me wonder what else he is hiding.

After the election there was a new bunch of councillors to deal with.  But councillors have surgeries where they sit around in a library for an hour hoping someone turns up.  If someone does it’s usually somebody moaning about life.  They’re usually very happy to have someone turn up who had a helpful and realistic idea.  Except for some reason the councillors with the weird title of “canal champion”.  Tim McKey is in the election leaflet above and when I went to see him he kept saying I should go back to my local councillor, but I’m sure Scottish Canals don’t have to go to their local councillor.  I went to see Gordon Munro who got the title after the election but he had a ward in Leith many miles away from the canal and only said he “believed he had that remit” which seems like a failed setup by someone.

However Andrew Burns is my local councillor and also leader of the council.  He did organise a meeting with the relevant civil servants from sports and the education department who owned the land.  At the meeting the education dept said they were going to build part of the school on the land and were puzzled why we thought we could use it. They said there might be scope to get the building designed with a canoe club in it if we paid millions of pounds for the privilege.  There was no consideration that the school, despite being 1.5 hectares under the regulation size and wouldn’t have enough space for decent sports facilities would want to use the obvious facility on their doorstep, the canal.  Lesson being: politicians talk the talk but for results get to the civil servants fast to work out what’s really going on.  So the end of that idea. Or was it?

By 2013 there was a meeting set up called the Canal Sounding Board to discuss plans for the old brewery site at Fountainbridge which had land-owners, Scottish Canals, the local community group Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative, politicians and civil servants there.  The plans for the school had changed and the plot was no longer going to be used for a school building.  Could Forth get a building on there instead?  I sounded out some councillors and it seemed a possibility with initial plans for the school now showing a pavilion building on the land I had in mind.  Some queried where the money would come from and I said I hadn’t thought about it since I didn’t even know if the idea was at all possible but we had a track record of getting grants.  There was a consultation on plans for the school and parents who were in the club pointed out that using the canal as a sports facility seemed the obvious thing to do on a site short of sports facilities.  At the next sounding board meeting the plans for the school were revealed.  They included an enlarged playground with a garden area in it.  To compensate the proposed pavilion building in the public park was taken away.  The desire to support canoeing at the school was not relevant as it wasn’t on the syllabus said the plan.

Which brought an end to the idea.  It wasn’t a perfect idea anyway, the canal there is too narrow (although it also narrows on our current site) and it’s on the other side so the towpath would be in the way.  And it would have been a lot of work to fundraise and build the building so I wasn’t interested unless all the pieces fell into place.  Here it was just ignored by the people who could have made it happen, the education department.  It’s a small site and they have lots of competing demands just to get the school built but it’s a shame the government’s desire for active schools is ignored here.

And the current boathouse?  A wall fell down elsewhere in Edinburgh killing someone and suddenly Scottish Canals remembered the one they had neglected to have fixed for a decade and their lawyers sent us a letter to leave the building.  That’s a story for another day…

The new Park, no space for a boathouse but somehow an outdoor gym came on the plans, why do civil servants come up with random ideas and not listen to the ones people want?

I made the tars for Plasma 5.2.2 yesterday.  I use releaseme, the nice program by KDE hero Harald Sitter.  Previously this took over 4 hours to make all 35 tars now it takes about 1 hour, lovely.  Most of the time is checking out the translations which, to make life simpler for translators, are in a separate Subversion archive.  The update Harald did now was to allow multiple checkouts, lovely.  And with the docs people helping out too we have translations of documentation, Brazil is far ahead in its translations here.

The result was there was time in the day after running it to ponder improving the Plasma specific parts of the scripts so I added automation of a few bits to ensure consistency and make the process smoother.  Making the announcement webpages for bugfix releases is now mostly automatic.  Updating individual tars when problems are found it too.  I finally got round to scripting updates to the version numbers in Bugzilla, it’s crazy there is no API for this. I borrowed Albert’s script for KDE Applications to make better full changelog pages.  And I added some QA tests so I can check if there’s anything missing which should be there.   It was quite a satisfying afternoon.

Now I just need to automate the announcements and the second half of the process will be easy too 🙂

The amazing Scarlett is busy building them for Kubuntu now

Today I voted in the Catalunya independence voluntary non-binding consultation and I voted Si Si.

I had been unsure what to vote and have spoken to many people to try to work out what is best.  As I said in my previous post on the topic  I was unsure on the question because unlike the Scotland referendum it seemed to be all about national identity and money rather than political differences.  There are very strong passions here on the topic, just read the 20+ comments on my post above and compare it to my post on Scotland  which got zero comments.  Unfortunately most of the comments are again about national identity, quibbing about whether Catalunya was ever independent from Spain or not, which is really just ancient history.

Several people objected, quite rightly, to the comment about Andaluthians working only in the summer and claiming benefits the rest of the year, but this wasn’t my comment it was what several Catalan people had told me when I asked why I should vote Si.  This is the sort of nationalism that is a bit scary and objectionable.  When I asked at the rally before the vote the lady told me the reasons for voting yes were because she could not speak Catalan in school in the 70s and they gave away all the money to the rest of Spain.  There will be some truth in that but that can also an unhealthy sort of nationalism.  And it’s hardly a reason for me to vote yes since I don’t speak Catalan and I don’t pay taxes here.

So why vote yes?  I finally found someone who gave me some political reasons.  The Catalan government wanted to impose a transaction tax on banks to help pay for the crisis they caused, but this was rejected by Madrid.  They wanted to ban electricity companies from cutting off customers who could not pay, also rejected by Madrid.  Catalunya wanted to prevent banks repossessing  your home because you could not pay for your mortgage but that was rejected.  There is a plan for a Mediterranean Railway Corridor which would connect Medierranian ports with the rest of Europe by rail but the Spanish government insists it needs to go to Madrid rather than Barcelona.  Similarly the half public half private company which owns both Barcelona and Madrid airports keeps stopping new Barcelona routes and making them go to Madrid.  And then there are detention centres for immigrants which the Catalan government wanted to shut down but could not.

And the politics of Spain doesn’t get any more friendly.  There are reports of Catalan friendly judges being followed by the central police and the Catalan president is being prosecuted for running the referendum.

And there’s my personal experience of government here, I’ve been welcomed by the Generalitat when I registered to live here but both me and my girlfriend have been completely unable to get an ID number from the bureaucratic Spanish government needed to work and pay taxes.  So I don’t pay taxes to Spain.  No wonder they’re in crisis.

None of this matters much, most people didn’t even know the vote was ongoing (finishes tonight, 25th November).  And I nearly voted no at the last minute when a TV crew interviewed me to ask why I was voting when I wasn’t Catalunyan.  So I voted yes in the hope of becoming a Catalan in a new state.  Good luck.

Copied over from the previous version of my website..

According to Google, there is no reference to Ratchet Screwdriver,
the legendary game played by young
Quakers the world over (and, as far as I can tell, nobody else).
How it can be that Quakers from Edinburgh to California all play the
same game without ever having met is a remarkable achievement of
nature of proportions similar to the the near identical shapes of
sharks and dolphins despite their evolutionary separation.

Some people mistake Ratchet Screwdriver as being violent. Some
people mistake it as being rather too intimate. Technically it is
both of these but mostly it’s just great fun.

Ratchet Screwdriver was banned by BYM’s Children’s and Young
Person’s Committee. There is no way of knowing when this happened or
who was consulted about the forced destruction of our heritage because
BYM’s committees do not make their minutes generally available.
However an explanation can be found at this
thread on u19s qboard (search for `co-clerks’). An anonymous reply explains the fault in
their logic:

Unfortunately what you have done is to drive it underground, to make
it more popular than ever. Meaning it now happens without proper
supervision, it has become something cooler.

The first rule of Ratchet Screwdriver is: don’t talk about
Ratchet Screwdriver.

The Game

First, remove all footwear, jewelry, watches, and especially
glasses. I’ve never known a pair of glasses to come out of Ratchet
Screwdriver intact.

Ratchet Screwdriver requires an odd number of people to play,
usually numbering at least 11. One person sits on their own while the others
pair up and sit in a circle one member of the pair behind the other.
Those sitting behind their partner may not touch the person infront,
but can otherwise sit as closely as possible.

One player sits on their own, the others sit in pairs one behind the
other

The odd one out calls the names of two people sitting in the front,
and those two people must compete to be the first to kiss the odd one
out. The partners of the two that were called have to hold them
back.

The one who kisses the caller first is the winner and now sits
behind the person they managed to reach, the partner they left behind
becomes the new odd one out. The other pair swap places to let the
person at the back have a chance at the front.

Oh the questions

But where did this game come from? Why is it thus called Will CYPC
see the error of their ways? If you have the answers to any of these,
any more interesting nuggets of information or tales of Ratchet
Screwdriver please do e-mail me.

And apparently some of them call it wink. That
page explains it quite well.

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Marc Van Der HS (or as I like to call him, Marco Polo, because everyone here is called either Marc or Jordi) in Barcelona. Despite this being a prosperous city on the sea front where people do a range of sports from bike polo to long boarding there’s only him doing canoe polo. So we do training a couple of times a week in Port Olympic. There’s a limited amount you can do with two people and no goals in what should be a game with two teams of five people but Marc has found a range of useful exercises to do. Here’s some of them for my own notes and anyone else who’s interested.

Warm up:

• Paddle forwards over a length about 50m long
• Paddle backwards over the length
• Paddle forwards dipping the nose on each paddle stroke
• Paddle touching your blade onto the sterm of your boat with each stroke
• Paddle with a bow rudder on each stroke so you zig-zag
• Slide the paddle so your hands are at the extreme left and right of the shaft and you are paddling with an extended shaft on each stroke

Ball thowing on the move, paddle side-by-side over a length of about 50m

• Throw a ball to each other while paddling infront of the partner’s boat
• Throw a ball to your partner’s body
• Throw ball to the front of your partner’s boat so they can bat it forwards with their paddle blade
• Before each throw do a fake throw forwards, for bonus points don’t look at your partner

Passing between two people

• Pass with two hands facing each other
• Pass with two hands throwing the ball up in the air, the thrower should keep eye contact on the person they are throwing to
• Pass with 1 hand from right hand to right hand or left hand to left hand, the elbow should be kept high and the ball should be thrown above the head, use the middle and ring finger to throw, rotate the shoulder backwards
• Same thing up in the air
• Passing over a long distance
• Passing sideways while boats are parallel to each other
• Pass to your partner’s paddle blade on the left and right sides
• Pass above your partner’s head to catch with paddle blade
• Pass to the front of your partner’s boat to be caught with paddle blade

Series

• Paddle forward gently, one person shouting “go” means you do two paddle strokes forward hard
• Ten strong strokes followed by ten short strokes

Other Bits

• timed races zig-zagging over a floating chain
• piggy in the middle with one person in the middle and three others all of who’s boats must touch the centre boat
• with helmets: two boats next to each other parallel, one person uses a strong reverse sweet and edge to slide the tail of their boat under their partner’s then paddle back some strokes
• play defence/attack where one person tries to get the ball from another person
• do short laps with a 180 degree turn at each end, on the turn move both hands to the end of the paddle blade so you have an extended paddle shaft, use a reverse sweet and edge away from the paddle side to raise the front of the boat

Next month Scotland has a referendum in whether to be an independent country. Here are the main reasons why I expect to vote Yes..

Staying United and Reducing Government

All countries need to work with their neighbours, when Europe was a patchwork of protectionist countries that like to have random wars with its neighbours life was tricky. Scotland was poor 300 years ago so when the country finally went bust it took the best opportunity on offer and had a union with England which while still having random wars with its neighbours had its own empire to work with other countries through (either on friendly or less friendly terms). Now life has moved on and we need bigger more fair unions to sort out the boring stuff like free movement of people and trade. That’s the founding purpose of the EU and while it has its problems with lack of accountability and political messups like allowing Greece to join the Euro it has overall succeeded brilliantly. We have no need for a union with Wales, a random corner of Ireland and little Englanders when we can have a much larger union as part of the EU. The UK is simply a layer of government I feel no need of. Best to simplify it by having three layers of government (local, national and international) than four (local, national, another definition of national and international).

An independent Scotland will be more democratic. Where the borders of government are made is arbitrary circles on a map but there is a clear demos in Scotland which we don’t share with England (and even less with Northern Ireland). The two parties that make up the UK government are the least popular parties in Scotland while the majority government in Scotland has a tiny representation in the UK and a whole government department (Scotland Office) with nothing better to do than work against the democratic process of Scotland.

And the scare stories?

What currency will we use? Although it’s not fashionable to say so now I’d like to move to the Euro, it’s been broken by politicians fudging the rules of entry to let in various countries that then messed up. But it seems to be healing and given a cautious approach there’s no reason not to join. Except we can’t because we use Sterling and before any country joins the Euro you’d need to peg your currency with it which the UK doesn’t want to do. Using Sterling makes sense, if the rUK government don’t want to have an agreement to use it then Scotland can just use it anyway just like the Isle of Man or Channel Islands do and just like Ireland did when it became independent, and if rUK insists that it somehow gets rights over Sterling which Scotland doesn’t then fine, they’ll be dumped with the national debt.

Will Scotland be allowed to join Europe? Scotland is already part of Europe so there’s nothing to join, no part of the European treaties allows for European citizens to be kicked out of the EU. There’s again no reason why the rUK gets to claim it is different from Scotland, just because they’re bigger doesn’t mean they get free entry into the EU while Scotland doesn’t. The biggest threat to being in the EU is England’s Tories giving a referendum to leave the EU, now that scares me.

And other issues? How will the BBC be split up? Will Royal Mail continue to operate cross border? Will mobile phones work cross border? Maybe I’d being naive but I trust our MPs at Westminster such as Danny Alexander and Alistair Carmichael to negotiate for their constituents in Scotland and not against their interests. If they negotiate against Scotland’s interests then that in itself is a pretty good argument for dissolving the UK.

Pinkston Watersports Centre is an awesome new facility at the canal basin in the centre of Glasgow. After many years of hard campaigning and fundraising by canoeists around the country Scotland will finally have an artificial whitewater course to canoe on. England and Wales have had these for years but the difference is this one is intended for canoeists and canoe clubs. All the other courses make money by sending down bored office workers on rafts a dozen at a time which is far more profitable. This centre is a charity that runs it for canoe clubs like mine. Lovely. Consequently any club can get people trained up as External Site Operators who will get a key to the place and can run sessions on the flat or moving water. I did that training last night, here’s a few notes to help my memory..

19 May is the grand opening for funders and politicians. Sat 31 May is the grand opening for clubs, I should organise a trip.
Iain is the centre manager and Allan with the funky hair is watersports manager.

Currently bookings are made by phone and e-mail and pumps are turned on manually by staff. Shortly they will have a website booking system. This will come with a centre internal website which controls the whitewater course pumps.

Any club can get people trained as External Site Operator, it’s a simple 3 hour course. Over 18s only. The ESO will have responsibility for the use of the centre by their group. Groups must have liability insurance, SCA affiliated clubs have this for official trips. People overseeing the group must have Foundation Safety and Rescue training for use on flat and Whitewater Safety and Rescue Training for use on the whitewater course. Beyond that it’s up to the club to decide if they need to follow BCU Terms of Reference.

Park and Play sessions, those overseen by centre staff and not an ESO, are for 18+ only as they don’t currently have an AALA licence.

The course is nominally grade 2(3) and the short course is just a big wave.

There are three pumps to choose how much fun you want to have, 1 is mostly for rescue training, 2 is for fun, 3 is for real fun.

No throw lines or slings allowed, if they get dropped they’ll end up back in the pumps which will break.

Any injuries of other incidents should be reported to the BCU and to Pinkston staff. This is to spot problem areas and incase there is legal action years down the line.

You need to bring your own first aid kit.

Importantly, you need to bring your own 19mm spanner to be able to move the door that switches between the short and the long course, and the door which opens onto the car park.

Costs are £30 an hour on the flat and £75 an hour on the moving. Didn’t ask about the Park and Play sessions but the website suggests £7.50 a person, not sure what times these will run. This includes changing rooms.

Clubs can also hire a container.

It’ll be great fun, see you on May 31st 🙂

It’s time to vote for the European Parliament elections which happen next Thursday 22nd May 2014. It’s hard to get excited about European elections because the EU parliament is just a revising chamber, so candidates can’t say “we will create a law on X and spend money on Y” they can only say “we will promote cause X and campaign for Y”. But if you don’t vote, you’re a bad citizen and can’t complain about anything. The media coverage is poor, they mostly seem interested in UKIP for reasons I can’t work out. One week before the elections the Scotsman politics page has one story, and guess what it’s about UKIP. The bastin of quality English liberal journalism The Guardian’s European Elections page has not one story about what the parties have in their manifestos. The only place to see the candidates talk is a three minute clip from a BBC debate which isn’t on iPlayer.

The best place to get a view on what interesting votes have happened in the last 5 years in the EU parliament and to see how your MEPs voted is My Vote 2014.

So firstly the nutters: Britain First are a splinter group from the BNP and their top candidate James Dowson is from Northern Ireland, where I’m guessing he’s been busy fighting the police to keep a Union Flag flying rather than care about anything important. The BNP’s Kenneth McDonald is sadly from Edinburgh although the bottom 4 candidates are all from England. I wonder whatever made him a racist twit in a country with minimal race problems. UKIP are not polling great in Scotland fortunately but the opinion polls show a swing to them, probably due to wall to wall TV and newspaper coverage. Their top candidate is a fat man from London. Then there’s the left wing nutters, no2eu. It’s quite nice to see the left wingers get together and the right wingers get splintered, a change from the historical norm.

Then there’s the discredited mainstream London parties. The Conservative and Unionists stole our free school milk and have never been forgiven. They also want a referendum on being in the EU but want to be in the EU, this makes no sense whatsoever. Scottish Labour don’t even have a manifesto on their website and they invade random countries. The Scottish Lib Dems might claim to be the party of “in” but they also don’t have a manifesto on their website, and their main performance in government at UK and Scottish level is to do nothing.

Which leaves the SNP and Greens. I’m a card carrying member of the SNP: in general they’re the party I feel most aligned to and I think everyone should donate to a political party else it’ll be left to corrupting powerful influences to do so. The SNP launched their manifesto yesterday and it’s full of decent stuff if you want to download the PDF.

But the Greens edge them out in my opinion because they care about the election. They have a dedicated campaign website which clearly shows what they’re interersted in. It includes a page on digital rights which none of the other parties care about at all. Green MSP Patrick Harvie even came to talk at a Falkirk Linux User Group meeting, I can’t imagine the SNP candidate coming to a meeting of 20 geeks. They even have a briefing paper on digital rights which talks about the potential of Free and Open Source Software and how it’s a bad thing to do mass surveillance, none of the other parties mention that at all.

We Promise is a nice website where candidates sign a 10 point charter on digital rights. Maggie from Greens and Alyn from SNP have promised, but nobody else.

While the SNP claim the final place is between a third SNP candidate and a UKIP candidate, the polls show it’s as likely to be a fight between Greens and UKIP (or even Labour) so I don’t follow that.

And then there’s the election broadcast, the SNP election broadcast is about the independence referendun and doesn’t mention the EU elections. It’s illegal and shows a disrespect for the voter. While the Scottish Green Party has a genuinely amusing one slagging off UKIP and LibDems.

So Greens it is, good luck you tree hugging hippies.