Author: Richard

Gran Hermano

| Richard

So it has been revealed that BAA, owned by Spanish construction company Ferrovial, plans to fingerprint all passengers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

Why?

Well apparently:

“Under the security measure, prints will be checked at the gate to try to ensure the person who checked in is the same person who is boarding the aircraft.”

I would have thought the person’s passport would do this just fine, wouldn’t you?

So why are they doing this? Who knows: maybe it’s just a commerical decision to push their miSense product following their earlier trials. Certainly the Home Office is quoted as saying there’s no requirement in terms of security for fingerprinting to take place and the Information Commissioner is apparently looking into it. There’s also the question as to transmission of the biometric data within the EU (and who knows where else).

The trouble for someone who wants to travel by air on international as well as domestic flights is that with BAA in such a dominant position in terms of airport ownership, you may effectively be forced to be added to a database. Once on there, who knows how long the information will be held and by whom.

What’s the next step? RFID tagging for everyone?

“The offences do not relate to his role as a police officer”

| Richard

From the “do as I say, not as I do” department comes news of one of Norfolk’s finest’s behaviour:

“A police sergeant has been charged with assault, harassment and possessing a knife in a public place.

Mark Murphy, 39, is also charged with failing to provide a breath specimen for analysis and possession of firearm ammunition without a certificate.”

Well that’s all bad enough, but what planet are Norfolk Police on?

A force spokesman said: “We can confirm that a Norfolk officer has been charged with a number of offences and is remanded in custody pending a preliminary court hearing.

“The offences do not relate to his role as a police officer.

“The officer is currently suspended from duty pending the outcome of criminal and disciplinary proceedings.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while proceedings remain active.”

Excuse me? I thought that policemen were supposed to always be on duty and set an example to us all? Well, unless they’re killing their families whilst on bail for murder, I suppose.

The Trials of Trustees

| Richard

It appears that this October I shall be required to attend a couple of meetings here at Sabah in Malaysia. I’ve yet to find out of we’ll be insisting on business class travel or choosing to travel economy for the benefit of the members…

Now to me, that looks like a little bit of paradise, but I will be mainly sitting in some conference room or attending some semi-formal dinners whilst I’m there. It might be nice to share the trip with my partner, but it may well be a tad expensive for a short break… Still, at least they’d be able to relax in luxury, so we’ll see.

I Love Angelina Jolie!

| Richard

Well! Who could resist yelling that (from Red vs Blue: Real Life vs Internet) in relation to any story concerning Angelina Jolie and that lucky bastard Brad Pitt.

Yes, it turns out that Brad and Angelina have decided to buy a $20M dollar house in Provence after they managed to get consent to build Brad his own personal motorcycle race circuit in the garden.

Bastard!

Now let’s all go home and masturbate!

Pretty in Pink

| Richard

The problem with having a girlfriend who likes the colour pink is that when you have to borrow her car – and she owns a white Golf with pink pinstriping – you’ll look absolutely fabulous driving it to work, like the bloke I saw this morning. Not one for guys who aren’t secure with their own sexuality…

Stand By Your Man

| Richard

…and look ridiculous! New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced his his resignation over an allegation – supposedly taped – saying he would “leave public life” two days after he was identified as Client 9 in a $5,500-an-hour international call-girl ring.

“A wiretap found a client, later allegedly identified as the governor, arranging to meet a $1,000-an-hour prostitute named Kristen. Reports say he paid more than $4,000 for her services.”

His news conference featured his doting wife by his side. Why? “Oh sorry, honey, I had the occasional quickie with you when I felt like it but gave Kristen four grand ‘cos she’s worth it!” Why do cheated politician wives stand by their men?

Foot Shooting

| Richard

Almost two years ago, I posted about the big push by Yuku staff to get users to switch browsers to Firefox so they could enjoy the best Yuku “experience”, i.e. fewer crashes and failures, because they didn’t appear to be testing on the most popular browser out there. They also wrote a Firefox extension to encourage people (though guess what - they’ve forgotten to make the latest version widely available…)

The problem is that Firefox can run a number of extensions including those that block the precious advertising they rely on so much… Oops!

Of course, the fact that it still isn’t cross-browser and cross-platform compatible even after all this time doesn’t help their cause - see this recent thread on issues with Safari on the Mac.

Norfolk Police Authority

| Richard

Le plus ça change…

According to the Office for National Statistics, inflation is running at 2.2%. Clearly no-one told South Norfolk District Council about this as our new council tax demand is up 4.0% on last year.

Talking of last year, do you remember how last year Norfolk Police Authority couldn’t keep to any sort of budgeting and raised their bill by 6.9%?

Well this year, they’ve surpassed themselves and increased it by 8.3%! Clearly proper business governance is anathema to Norfolk Police Authority/Norfolk Constabulary. They say:

“Budget Issues
Norfolk Constabulary has suffered from successive years of under-funding by Government to the point where we regularly had to dip into our reserves. We can no longer afford to keep doing that.”

Erm, isn’t that what reserves are for? And yes, we know you claim to have suffered in previous years: you’ve been more than happy to share your pain with us by never living within inflation-matching rises and instead passing it on to us.

Oh and they also say that they are “Performing Well”:

“…our detection rate rose to 32% - the highest we have ever achieved…”

Which means they didn’t detect 68% of reported crime. Still, as long as they detect those heinous speeding motorists on the main trunk roads, eh… Yes, they’ve decided to increase transport costs from £3.33M to £4.03M this year, that’s a 21% increase!

Then when you look at South Norfolk Council’s budget, it’s good to see that they intend spending over £28M (out of £50M) on “Finance, Staffing and Property, including Revenues & Benefits, Human Resources, IT Services”. That’s not housing by the way. Nice little earner and a cushy job if you can get it.

1&1 Internet Again

| Richard

Yes, this self-proclaimed “World’s No.1 Webhost” are showing that they are in fact the world’s no. 1 useless bunch of tossers.

All the websites we host with them that rely on databases to function are down. Their new premium rate customer services number allows you to call them, start racking up the charges and then after being put on hold they tell you that all their advisers are busy, goodbye and insist you hang up.

Nice little earner for them, eh?