The Day of the Breakfast

On Saturday <3 and I drove the 200 miles to a little village on the Pembrokeshire coast to take part in a Lord of the Rings themed banquet comprising three returns (or breakfasts as they had become labelled) of three courses plus a subtlety. That's an aweful lot of food, folks -- and it was fantastic, washed down with plenty of ale and mead. Under normal circumstances I would be raving on about how tender and tasty the venison was (which it was), but this time the cooks outclassed themselves with the "bear" (or rather beef cooked like bear -- a C14th recipe which apparently makes a beef joint taste rather more ferocious -- and boy was it good!).

The banquet was graced with a number of hobbits (one of whom had brought a to-scale pint tankard which, we later discovered, held three pints!), a ringwraith, the ghost of Boromir, a few returning entwives, and various other personages both mentioned and unmentioned in the books.

The two of us provided some of the entertainment with (between us) songs, dancing, juggling, clowning, and interactive stuff which didn't require a red button at all. That was fun too.

[Thanks to Nicky for the photo.]

Regency

When <3 and I moved to Wantage earlier this year there was a small cinema, hidden above some shops, accessed through an unassuming doorway in the corner of the market square. The cinema had two screens, was a bit tatty and run down, and didn't sell tickets in advance. However, it was cheaper than most other cinemas, showed most of the films we wanted to see and had a certain charm and individuality. For the last few years (while we were living in the next town along to the East) we used this cinema as our main movie-going destination. This was even better when we moved to within walking distance.

This summer, the cinema closed down. This had been on the cards for some time, with falling attendance and increasing competition from bigger chain cinemas within a 30-minute drive. It was not unexpected, but it was sad.

A couple of evenings ago there was a public meeting at the civic centre, with all and sundry invited to discuss the possible ways to get a cinema back in the community. I went along.

The meeting was being held in a reasonable sized room which was already half full when I arrived. More people arrived and when the numbers passed 100, with many more queuing outside, we were moved upstairs to the main hall. By the time the meeting began, that hall was also full -- I estimate over 300 people in all, of all ages and from all sectors of the community. Clearly there was a lot of feeling in the town about this -- apparently this was a bigger turnout than the "Save The Hospital" meeting had received!

After a number of people had had their say, one of the town councillors in attendance encouraged a committee to be formed, with the intention of handing all future action and discussion to them. A good number of people volunteered and a chair was selected: a woman who had already been working hard to build up support for a community cinema of some sort. Unfortunately, from there on things kind of dissolved. There seemed to be numerous ad hoc subcommittees of friends who had the whole situation solved in their minds and were busy deciding how they would proceed with marketing, etc. Meanwhile voices from the floor kept making points, unlistened to by the new committee, who were otherwise engaged.

What this situation needs is strong leadership: someone who can hold a varied group of people together, get their ideas out and discussed then help the committee make some decisions without alienating half of its members. I'm hoping the chairwoman can provide this leadership, but only time will tell. I volunteered to help on the committee and left my contact details, then went home to save my own sanity. I really home a committee meeting is organised: I will attend if at all possible and will do what I can to aid the cause, but it is important to decide what the cause actually is. At the moment there is no such focus.

Heat

On Friday, a Bradford policewoman was shot and killed, and another wounded, while attending a robbery taking place in a travel agent's shop. Since then the media hasbeen buzzing with calls for the police to be allowed to carry firearms as a matter of course.

In July, a young Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot and killed by police in what looks like a massive error of judgement by the firearms officers responsible. In the weeks following the incident, the media was buzzing for controls on police use of firearms and decrying the "shoot to kill" policy allegedly in place.

I have struggled to come up with solid references, but I have heard it suggested a number of times that police injured in firearms incidents are very often injured by their own weapon.

If police officers always carry firearms then the number of incidents where there are guns present will increase from the current low level in the UK to near 100% of those attended by police. I think we can postulate a number of rules here...

• Where there are no guns, nobody will get shot.
• If the good guys have guns, someone might get shot, and that someone might be a criminal, a police officer or an innocent 3rd party (the last two due to an accident or the theft of a gun).
• If the bad guys have guns, someone might get shot, and that someone might be a criminal, a police officer or an innocent 3rd party.
• If both the police and the criminals have guns, the chances of someone getting shot will certainly increase.
• If all police carry firearms, there will be an increased chance of someone like Menezes being mistakenly shot.

Furthermore...

• The UK does not employ capital punishment (although there is currently some talk of the death penalty for "cop killers") and opposes it in other countries (though rather weakly in the case of the USA).
• The UK believes in the court system and the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty" — even if someone has a smoking gun in their hand and a corpse at their feet, they must be tried. This is important. Our "killer" may have (foolishly) picked up the gun of a suicide, be acting inself defence (though possibly using undue force) or, indeed, be a cold-blooded murderer.
• The police are there to protect the public.

Regardless of the other points, this last point is probably the most important. It may be used as justification for providing the police with guns and other new powers. It can also be used as the basis of some cold, heartless number crunching...

IF
    the number of people killed if the police all have guns
IS GREATER THAN
    the number of people killed if the police do not all have guns
THEN
    giving guns to all the police does not protect the public

I suspect that conclusion will, for the next few years at least, be true. And personally, I feel a whole lot safer if the bobbies I see around the place are not packing heat — it tells me that they are not planning to get into a firefight, and that reassures me.

Charge Cards

I am pleased to say that the Home Office have replied to me again, this time putting the text of the reply inside the body of a plain text email — someone showing good sense there. This was from a member of the "ID Cards Programme Team" who gave an interesting response which was very close to what has been released to the media. No problem with that, I hadn't expected a detailed, personal response. I'm actually just happy to get a decent reply.

The crux of the matter is that the government have commissioned an organisation called KPMG (whose objectives, according to their website are "to turn knowledge into value for the benefit of our clients, our people and our capital markets" ... huh?) to conduct an independent study into the costing of the ID card scheme. The results are, funnily enough, that the government has got its figures right and everything is going to be peachy.

The costs being bandied about here are currently an annual amount of £584m for issuing passports and ID cards to UK nationals. That means that if every man, woman and child in the country renews their passport/ID card every 10 years it will cost them in the region of £100 each time, and as there is nothing like a 100% takeup of passports at the moment (it's about 77%) there is no reason to believe that will change, leaving something of a hole in the budgeting. The government is currently saying that the full passport/ID card will be £90, which pretty much tallies with that, but also that there will be a £30 ID card. If there is a serious take-up of the cheaper card (which may well be compulsory), will the cost of administration costs come down or will the missing money be found elsewhere?

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced by the current figures. It reminds me of one of those "independent" studies launched by major software companies which prove that their products are definitely cheaper than free ones. Let's just sit back and watch the numbers increase over the next year or two. Or even better, not sit back at all.

28 Days, Earlier

So, the unthinkable has happened and a government bill, personally endorsed, sponsored and indeed pushed by Tony Blair, has seen one of its provisions defeated by a majority 0f 31, despite a government majority in the Commons of 66 MPs and the recall of Gordon Brown and Jack Straw from missions overseas. Blair says that the police claim 90 days of detention without charge is necessary to deal with the Terrorist Threat (TM) and that anyone who argues otherwise is ignoring the advice of the people who know best and gambling with the lives of the entire country. Parliament, however, has a responsibility to consider more than one angle and weight up the advice, concerns and best interests of everyone, not just the police, and decide accordingly. And yesterday, they did just that.

I'm not entirely convinced about the compromise amendment proposing 28 day detention, which was eventually accepted, was right either, but I do feel that in this case Parliament has done its job and prevented the government simply having its way without question.

Of course, as Blair personally staked so much on this bill, there are a lot of questions being raised about the strength of his leadership. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Unattached

A short while ago I emailed the Home Office with an enquiry about the National ID Card scheme only to have my message bounced as undeliverable. Well, it seems that they did receive my message after all, for today I received a reply...

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 18 October 2005.
A reply is attached.

<Standard disclaimer thingy snipped>

begin 666 ResponseT37499 5.doc^M
MT,\1X*&Q&N$`````````````````````/@`#`/[_"0`&```````````````"
M````& ``````````$ ``(@````$```#^____`````!<```" ````________
M____________________________________________________________
M____________________________________________________________
M____________________________________________________________

<Loads more encoded stuff deleted -- you get the general idea>

Clearly they have written a reply in MS Word, tried to attach the file (why, oh why, can't people simply write an email rather than sending around documents in a proprietory and inefficient format?) and failed horribly somehow. The client I used to read this mail, by the way, was GMail, which I haven't previously experienced having trouble with attachments.

I've tried various tricks to access the file, including running uudecode over the file, but no joy. So I have replied to the reply, requesting the respondent reposts the relevent response (!). We'll see what happens. Watch this space...

Runcible

At the weekend we had a visit from my two sisters and the two offspring of one of them -- always great to see them, especially as the nephew is now well into that comical and entertaining stage of toddlerhood. Very cute.

Sis1 brought with her a tray of quinces as part of a deal whereby she gives me the fruit and some time next year I give her a couple of bottles of quince wine.

So on Sunday I spent a while grating and boiling quince, then last night the part-fermented juice got transferred to a demijohn and put in the cupboard. This morning I remembered that it is generally a good idea to make sure that a demijohn is not completely full for the first few days, and found a fair bit of froth around the place. D'oh! Ah, no damage done and not much liquor lost.

Oh No, Not Again

Hmm, it's 11 months since I noted last time, but it seems that yesterday saw this year's Blunket Season end in another kill.

So, same again next Autumn, then?