Year: 2008

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.