Posts by Jamie McCallion

Lib Dems demand niceness, ignore technology

Hm.

Just some of the major political "non-IT" issues that the reg has been concerned with have been the database state, id cards, biometric passports, cctv... All of those are dealt with in the lib-dem manifesto, with the sorts of resolution that the reg has been asking for (ie, regulation and scrapping).

Tax reform is going to be in the form of a local income tax to replace council tax. That certainly qualifies as the largest change for a generation, surely?

Then voting reform, too.

Labour and Tory manifestos also include "detail" steps like curbing violence towards public service staff. And Tory manfiesto includes provision for privatising the NHS and turning it into a medicare-style system with private suppliers vying for publicly-described price-lists, performance-related pay for GPs, etc. Healthcare has also been a theme of some of the reg's work over the past few years, hasn't it?

I don't like the editorial direction that the reg has taken this week with the manifesto launches.

I know I can go and read my technology news & comment elsewhere, and, you know what? Smell you later. Smell you later forever.

MP wants Welsh text on ID cards

Dim Disco Heno

Everyone has the right to be governed in the language they speak- I think that's been a tenet of English law for about 600 years now...

Saying that a language is dead over and over again doesn't make it so- Welsh is still a living language and for a lot of people it's their first or preferred language. It's growing its spoken base now, after years of forced decline at the hands of the English authorities (cf "Welsh Knot"). Children speak it in school and at home, and you can hear it being openly used by people across the country. 38% of under 15s in Wales can speak and understand Welsh, while at least 20% of the population as a whole can (2001 census results published in 2003).

Being a principality doesn't stop somewhere being a country or a nation- it just means it isn't a kingdom or a republic or some other political designation.

I'm looking forward to my children learning Welsh, English, and hopefully more languages- it should serve to make them better adapted to European life.

And those pound notes and coins? Manufactured within Wales (on crown land, apparently) and then exported to England... But you knew that.

Now, ID Cards- they stink, and I told my MP why they stink, and he said that he had to vote for them anyway. Thanks a lot for that Kim- good to know you still have the backbone that you showed during the miners' strike...