Jonathan Riddell's Diary

This isn’t an easy admission to make, but I read the News of the World website. The first thing that’s curious about the site is that even the scant amount of non-celebrity stories in the newspaper are really hard to find on it, it really is all celebrity non-news focused. Eventually I find the story about my MP Nigel Griffiths who has been photographed with a woman in her underwear in the House of Commons. Well, allegedly, the photos are of someone sticking their leg outside a door. He isn’t actually in any of the photos. And even if you were drunk and seduced by a suspiciously keen women wouldn’t you realise something was up when she started sticking her leg outside the office door where a photographer happened to be? It feels a lot like a set up to me but why then would the paper sit on the photos for six months. I don’t understand it.

There’s a European election in a month but from the activity of the parties you would never know it. Alastair Darling sent a constituent communications leaflet round saying he was “determined to do his bit” to help people in these hard times, like giving money handouts to pregnant mothers. Governments handing out money always seems like a desparate attempt to get votes. As Chancellor it would seem he could “do his bit” by fixing the economy, but that wasn’t mentioned. All very strange but not as strange as sending your constituent communications leaflets to the wrong addresses, I live in Nigel Griffiths’ constituency, no wonder the economy is screwed. Oh and no mention of European elections.

SNP sent me a begging letter for money (I’m a party member, they do this frequently) claiming they needed it for the European elections, then go on to give a questionnaire about council matters. Curiously off topic. Lib Dems sent round their newspaper which I usually quite like (as propaganda goes), again minimal reference to European elections. I watched a Tory party election broadcast with David Cameron, entirely about UK issues and barely a mention that there’s an election coming up. It’s like the parties just have nothing to say on the topic.

The only party I have had anything from which is actually about the elctions is UKIP. The usual Europhobic scaremongering with a picture of (Conservative party man) Winston Churchill on it. Just how stupid are these people? Winston Churchill was the first person to suggest a “United States of Europe” and was all for integration. Meanwhile the fascist BNP has voters who don’t exist.

I bought a shares ISA today. This is a horrible gamble. Last year I bought one and of course it’s worth half the price now than I paid for it. But hopefully this means the stock market is at a low and it’ll get better. Or maybe not.

Food is useful stuff, it’s handy to have around. It’s also expensive and quite precious so it’s a good thing to consume it properly. I buy most of my food from Suma a wholesalers who specialise in wholefoods, organic and fairtrade. It’s a vastly cheaper way of buying food because it comes delivered in bulk at wholesale prices. We tend to group together purchases with friends so the minimum order (£250) is easy to reach. The food is mostly simple stuff, grains and pulses but I also get sauces, drink concentrate, chocolate and others. It makes it cheap to buy organic and fairtrade food and although it takes up storage space it does mean much less hassle for going out to the shops every week.

For fresh food I get a vegetable box from East Coast Organics. I get fruit and eggs in it too. I’ve actually no idea how the value compares against supermarkets but it also saves me going to shops, ensure I always have fresh food needing used up and helps the local economy more. The veg mix is often fun and interesting, I’ve never had a brocciflower before using this box scheme for example.

East Coast is a biodynamic farm. I’m reliably told this is a silly Rudolph Steiner thing which is no good whatsoever except for marketing to Steiner School parents. Fairtrade is undoubtably a good thing although I tend to buy local or European in preference to far away. Organic is probably good for biodiversity but it is a deliberately more inefficiant way of farming, so could be said to be quite selfish. I don’t eat meat at home, I consider it a luxury given how much energy and space resources are needed to grow it and only eat it in luxury situations such as restaurants.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court called me up for jury service. This is an important responsibility, but because you are not allowed to discuss the trial as a juror there’s no information out on the internets about what happens and no guidance about how you should come to a decision. I turned up and was surprised to find the viewing seats were full. Scotland has a (large) jury of 15 but the pool they are picked from on the day was about 50, I didn’t work out why there needs to be a large pool to pick from since we are already picked from the electoral register at random. We shuffled in and I was surprised we were amongst the accused, the claimant and both their families. Fiscal and lawyer and clerk muttered in hushed tones to each other in turn and wandered in and out the room. We were dismissed and told to come back later. We came back for more of the same and were dismissed again.

After some lunch we reconvened and were told he had decided to plead guilty to some of the accusations and the crown had accepted the plea and this was the reason for the delays. The Procurator Fiscal read out to the judge who the accused was, a gent who lived with a woman and acted as father to her children over about 15 years. She read out his various sexual abuse acts in technical detail to the Sheriff all of which was very uncomfortable to sit through. A woman stormed out shouting “burn in hell”. The claimant ran out in tears. The accused had originally said he didn’t remember any of the incidents and suffered from blackouts after drinking. To some of the questions he had given no response. If he had continued to insist on his innocence and I don’t know what the correct way to make a decision would have been. The circumstances seemed to point to guilt but how could I say which of the particular incidents with no evidence and no witnesses except the claimant did or didn’t happen without letting prejudices (fat skinhead paedophile) get in the way?

The Sheriff called for reports from social services for guidance in sentencing, she said he may get a prison sentence for these serious crimes. I wonder if the claimant will find justice to be served and I wonder if the accused will get help for his problem, I suspect neither is possible. Justice is hard to get right and I’m a bit relieved not to have had to make such a decision without any guidance.

It’s nice to be popular, my blog’s traffic has increased from about 150 readers yesterday to 100 times that today. Amongst the people looking to my blog for gossip on poor old Yvette Bettley the polis woman who is illegally a member of the BNP are someone at the Scottish Parliament (they got in first) followed by someone at gsi.gov.uk (could be any government department). First press on her case was from Trinity Mirror Group with the Torygraph later in the day (who have now published the article talking about “helpful bloggers” but sadly also making the defaming comment that Quakers are typical BNP members, grr).

People have also been searching for other names on the list, including the pagan chap and the witch. I wonder if any of them are vanity searches of people checking how far their new reputation has spread.

There’s a real danger of these poor innocent racists being harrassed unfairly, so I’ve gone out of my way to ensure that the local ones won’t be.

They are still people!

The excellent Wikileaks got hold of a list of BNP members. Is there a racist in your street? Now you can know.

The well informed Lancaster Unity blog has some (occationally over optimistic sounding) coverage.

Out of about 12000 records, a depressing 56 members in the EH area, including a chap called Roderick E. Riddell living in Maxwell Street not far from me. No relation fortunately.

An A.R. Williams from Devizes is listed as “Hobbies: amateur radio & ‘church-crawling’. Quaker attender”. Creepy. I e-mailed his meeting suggesting they have a chat to him about the equality testimony.

There’s a polis woman Yvette Bettley listed as “Discretion required re. employment concerns” (Police are banned from BNP membership), the same comment is by a couple of others.

More comedy is Rod Chapman from Dereham listed as “Window cleaner. Former pig farmer. Pagan prison chaplain. Hobbies: growing mistletoe, rune making (wood).” I wonder how one gets to be a Pagan prison chaplain, hopefully the prison will kick him out. Jason Cotterill-Attaway from Nottingham is listed as “Interested in disabiity rights and setting up a British Pagan group” and there I was thinking pagans would be all happy and inclusive. Paul Shaddick “describes himself as a witch: potential embarrassment if active”.

Matthew Jenkins of Ilminster was apparantly “embarrassed by revelations in Private Eye re. councillors”, I wonder what that was.

While it’s fun to look for the interesting characters on this list, most of them will be “skinhead oiks” (I know, I lived over the road from them for some time) Hopefully this leak will stop some of these racists paying their membership next year.

Update: this blog post has been pleasingly popular, thanks Google. Wikileaks got a bit overloaded so you can find the list here or from this torrent. More fun is a map of BNP members near me.

My previous posts on the BNP Tipton: vote against racism, Racism at Westmorland Teebay, BNP out of Princes End, Tipton, Sandwell and Facist Pub Burned Down.

Went to see Hilary Benn in Leith last night. It’s always great to see politicians, especially senior ones like him, come and meet the public in ways which aren’t primarily for press coverage. The turnout was maybe 100 people which I think was disappointingly small. It was a question and answer session about the environment. He started with a short introduction to the issue, and he’s obviously a good speaker as you would expect from a top politician, almost too good and sometimes spoke so loud and strictly I felt a bit uncomfortable in my seat.

The answers were a bit disappointing though. He started off badly when someone asked about the environmental legacy of the Polaris nuclear weapons submarines which are still at Rosyth and he replying about the tactical justification for a new nuclear submarine system rather than about the environmental nuclear issue it leaves behind. Other questions were answered more directly. Ones which stood out include should we count energy use per person or per country (per person means that a country can’t just move dirty industries abroad), he said no. How can the government reconcile building new airport runways with not destroying the planet? He said people want to fly, that’s fine but then less carbon needs to be emitted elsewhere. What about plans to build new coal power stations? Carbon capture may save us all there.

He was optimistic about the future and told us all to not be so pessimistic. You could easily consider that to be apathy on his part, or more likely the everyday needs of governments to not do things to annoy their voters like tax air travel to the extent that it would make a difference. The other problem to getting stuff like that done is keeping the UK competitive against other countries who’s voters are equally short term minded. I can see why these guys get voted in, but I’m far from convinced it is going to save the world in time.

Walking along the road in Glorious Tipton the other day I smelled smoke. Seems the fascist Lagoon pub was no more.

This newspaper article gives a nice overview of the area. Arson, squatters, stupid Tory councillor, fascist councillor, fascist pub, machete attacks. I wonder who the “they” is who Beatrice Owen says is dumping derelict houses on her ward. I try not to be snobby, but it’s just so hard.

Some of the little pleasures in life I like:

Digital radio. Especially Chill Radio, BBC 7 and BBC World Service.

Amazon Marketplace, helps you get rid of stuff you’ve used and much less hassle than ebay’s time limited method, also cheap things to buy.

A slice of ginger in a glass of water. Very refreshing.

Freshly made home cooked hummus. Nothing nicer.

Cycling to places you wouldn’t otherwise go. Cramond Island and Roslin Glen are a couple of nice examples.

Innocent Smoothies on a hot day.

Wheetos. Top breakfast cereal.

Yann Tiersen and Martyn Bennett, my favourite musicians.

A game of squash. Playing with bouncy balls for grown ups.

Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman.

Utterly bemused by London voting for Boris. Crazyness.

In Glorious Tipton the normally Labour/BNP fight was lost to a Tory.

I can’t work out why people think David Cameron’s party will do anything better than Gordon Brown’s.

Edinburgh Scouts have merged with the surrounding areas to create the all new South East Scotland Scouts. Queue new website complete with Content Management System cleverness. Unfortunately my suggestion to release the site content under a creative commons licence was rejected with “that is not appropriate”. Back when I was a Cub I promised “To help other people” and we tried to follow the law of “Think of others before themselves”, it is sad to see that this has been dropped.

A good number of children will have got their one or two star awards during a summer holiday. I did many years ago. It has always been on my list of things to do before I die to learn some canoe coaching skills. Recently the 4 star award has been overhauled to include leadership for trips, not the same as coaching but just as useful, so I signed up to a course from getafix.com. Here’s my notes as a reminder to myself and incase anyone else finds them useful.

Introduction

• Ask people for their experience
• Do a kit check, look for airbags, buoyancy aids which won’t come off when swimming, ensure people have spare hat and top
• Say that if anyone has medical problems they should let you know (less embarracing than asking for them to tell whole group)
• Show boat manual handling (pick up to vertical from front then put on shoulder, all without bending back). Also you can slide plastic boats quite safely.
• Do a warm up (can be done on the water just as well if flat)
• Agree on signals: all go, one at a time, break out into eddy, stay still, get out
• Show how to swim safely: on back, feet first

Drip feed the above rather than all at once.

When they first get on the water and on the first rapid, watch how everyone paddles and assess their ability.

Notes on leading down a rapid:

• Lead down a group from the front, ensure to keep line of sight, always be looking over your shoulder to keep an eye on everyone, typically follow at two boat lengths
• If you can’t see the full rapid go ahead to first eddy so you can, keeping line of sight with group who stay above. Call them down one at a time or all together as appropriate.
• Watch out for trees, rocks, shallow areas and other hazards people could get pinned on, lead from the back when most likely problem is canoes getting stuck.
• Always be mindful of position of most usefulness for when something goes wrong.
• Eddy hop when you can’t see the full rapid, go to next eddy and call people down one at a time. If can’t fit everyone in the eddy have a chain of eddys and pass message up chain, this needs to be practiced first.
• Go to the outside of corners so you can see around them sooner
• Keep a headcount
• CLAP: Communication, Line of Sight, Avoidance (better than cure), Position of more usefulness

Equipment

• First Aid Kit: bandages, triangular bandage (large, canvas), sterilised water, tea lights, painkillers (asprin for heart attacks), inhailer, dressings, eye pads, scissors, micropore tape, electrical tape, duct tape, steri strips
• Group shelter
• Spare split paddles
• Spare clothes, jacket, leggings, hats
• Hot flasked drink
• Knife
• Throw bag
• Sling with snap on carabina
• Mobile phone
• Spanner, bolts
• Torch

Dry bag(s) for much of the above. First aid kit in sealed container.

Organise shuttle runs and don’t forget your car key.

In honour of supermarkets renaming Shrove Tuesday to Pancake Day, I’m renaming Lent to No Pancake Month.

I had mine with Green and Blacks chocolate spread.

Back in Edinburgh for the hogmanay celebrations and it opened with the torchlight procession from the High Street to Carlton Hill and a surprise close up fireworks display which we captured on video for that full blog experience.

Short:

Longer:

The former BNP success story of Tipton has failed to regain their seat they lost due to the previous moronic BNP councillor not bothering to turn up to meetings. Labour won, and the BNP previously only 20 votes behind were beaten by the Conservatives. I knew the class of the area would improve after I moved in.

Saw some Shakespear recently. Jean-Luc Piccard (or Patrick Stewart) played Macbeth and somehow made it much more interesting than it was at school (apologies to Harry Quinn).

Then we saw The Winters Tale which isn’t performed often in Scotland according to the programme. There’s probably a good reason, only Shakespear can get away with an ending along the lines of “oh The Queen hasn’t been dead for 20 years, she’s just been sleeping”.

Finally A Midsummer Nights Dream by The Footsbarn Travelling Theatre which was the best of the three and had masks (it was part of the Stourbridge Mask Festival, amazing things happen in Englandshire). You have to be quite devoted to acting to buy a field in France and set up a travelling theatre company. Even the children weren’t too fidgety, which is impressive for a Shakespear play without an interval.

Having successfully got Labour elected (you won’t hear me say that much) in place of the BNP in Tipton, I was disgusted to see Westmorland’s Tebay motorway services, which I’d always thought to be quite classy, selling the BNP newsletter in their shop. Sent them a grumpy feedback form.

The lengthy named UKTV Gold 2 digital channel has decided that if they are going to have a stupid name they may as well have one that isn’t so long and renamed to Dave. I feel this reflects the meaningfulness of most digital TV channels.

Meanwhile digital radio is great and I look forward to Channel 4’s new multiplex (well, not the station from Closer magazine obviously, or anything with 24 hour big brother coverage). Chill radio is my favourite for ambient background music, although it does lack the handy “ban” button that last.fm sports when it gets too musack.

The BBC meanwhile is not doing its public service duty to support open platforms and access to programming by using proprietary software for its iPlayer. You can’t even control what the iPlayer is doing, and it’ll happily eat up all your bandwidth given a chance. They did put out a press release saying Linux and MacOS users will get a Flash based player, I’ve tried it and it works well if you don’t mind the window being about 600 pixels across. I think I’ll stick to UK Nova.

Tipton has a problem with racism. Racism is not acceptable and as a resident of Tipton you should work to get rid of it. Racist and fascist graffiti is common around Tipton, if you see it you should remove it. But here is something simpler you can do:

There is an election in Sandwell on May 3rd. Last year Labour lost three seats and the xenophobic BNP party won 3 seats. See the BBC results page for Sandwell 2006 election. Use your vote on May 3rd for a party which is not racist. You have until April 18th to register to vote, see aboutmyvote for details.

Sandwell is a key area for the BNP in this years elections. With only 1/3rd of voters taking part in the elections last year it is easy to defeat them by simply using your vote and urging your friends and neighbours to use theirs.

Don’t accept racism in Tipton. Vote on May 3rd.

Not acceptable (and not just because of the spelling)	Much nicer

I joined the SNP today. I don’t agree with all their policies, but I do agree with more of them than any other party and I’ll be voting for them in May. It doesn’t cost much either, a pound a month at a minimum. The political system is important to support and there are falling numbers of members of most parties, leaving them dependent on large donations from businessmen including the Evil Brian Souter. Somebody has to support the parties, so seems to me like every citizens duty to do so.