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There was a way more important by-election today in Oxford for a seat on Oxford City Council vacated by our own Richard Huzzey who is going off to the "Land of the Free" and the alma mater of the simian one.

Congratulations therefore, to Councillor Mark Mills. I see he will be twenty tomorrow, Friday 13th. So happy birthday as well! Do we have any younger principal authority councillors at the moment?

Particularly pleasing was to see Labour, who put in a whole load of work to try to gain the one seat that would have handed them a Town Hall majority beaten into third, and most especially, the Tories' turncoat left unceremoniously back in fourth again in Oxford city! Well done all round everyone!

Except for the miserable bugger porter wanting to sort the students' mail in New College this morning - I've never been spoken to so rudely by a servant of either university, from Chancellors down to porters, as I got from him this morning!

UPDATE:  My glee is somewhat tempered this morning by the news that the City Council had got the votes wrong on the original notice on their web page and in fact the Tories came second and the Greens fourth.  Oh well, you have a Labour run council and that's what you can excpect...:-)

The real shame about the County Council’s loss of parking revenue is that OUR county will not reap the potential benefit.

It is a perfectly reasonable debate as to whether free parking increases companies’ business in affected areas – history shows that it does. But this does not feed through into an increase in rates receipts by the local authorities taking the reduction on parking meter income. Rather it goes straight to Whitehall for redistribution around the country, holding down council taxes elswhere!

Environmental concerns are also overstated. Most evenings many metered parking spaces are empty – the primary exception being St Giles itself. Check out Mansfield Road, Museum Road, Merton Street, Wellington Square, Great Clarendon Street and others. But I also know that to avoid meters people drive further, for example in Jericho’s residential streets, checking the few free non-residents’ spaces first.

Now that services like the Barton to Kidlington bus are gone, even getting from parts of east Oxford to Jericho, let alone from out of town, is a sufficiently awkward journey by bus as to be offputting, especially if you’re going to be late returning in the evening.

...remember when policemen were people you felt you could go up to and ask for directions?

No longer it seems. In fact, if you have anything like a map with you, you could find yourself staying at Belmarsh (warning, watching the whole of this may cause you to damage your computer in anger!):

H/T Tristan

I am so glad Terence was filming this. Everyone should get the chance to see this kind of thing and have a real good think about the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" attitude that is allowing our country to become a fascist state. The ability to stop at random (I was going to say "take to one side", but clearly they're happy to do this in full view of the entire concourse), with no probable cause whatever, and humiliate them in order to show other passengers "look, we're doing something about your security" is utterly obnoxious. I must say, though, I am amazed that he was allowed to continue filming, considering all that has been going on about photography in public places.

Britain, like never before, needs Fourth Amendment rights enshrined in law: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

From ConservativeHome - an update on those grassroots surveys of the social policy paper:

Members divided on tax allowance for same sex couples:

"Only 564 members answered this question compared to the 1,417 who answered the questions highlighted earlier today.  The question was added to the survey a number of hours after the survey had gone live - following David Cameron's suggestion on Channel 4 News that any married couples' allowance would also benefit same sex couples who had entered civil partnerships.

"37% of the respondents agreed with David Cameron that any allowance should benefit such same sex couples but 49% did not agree that gay couples should receive the allowance.  A further 10% of this population of 564 disagreed with any tax allowance for married or same sex couples."

Unless, of course, these are the Tories that wanted to have full-blown marriage for same sex couples as well instead of civil partnerships. But somehow, methinks it's the old majors and blue stockings choking on their Cornflakes at the thought of those queers getting the same treatment as married couples.

I wonder if the answers would be any different if, say, the proposed allowance were only available for couples, of any gender, raising children?

Technorati Tags: conservatives, civil partnerships, tories

I see that the energy review suggests outlawing "standby" buttons on consumer electricals. Good thing too. Because if they're there, as they are in nearly all cases in my little hovel, they are going to get used. I don't know if they really drain as much electricity as they say, but am prepared enough to believe so and feel guilty about having them, however convenient they are when watching "Science Shack" on the TV at 3am to help me sleep (I mean - there's no point really if you have to get out of bed again and wake yourself up to switch the whole thing off, not for the uberlazy like me anyway).

But my TV and Hi-Fi are only a few years old, so they're going to last long after "peak oil" by the looks of it. So I was thinking, what would make it easier for me to do my duty and turn the bloody things off properly.

With computers you can actually turn them right off and still have them turned on remotely if they are on a network using fantastic sounding little things called "magic packets". The network listens passively (yes, I believe it does take a tiny amount of charge, but from the onboard battery rather than the mains if I understand it correctly) and when a magic packet arrives addressed for that particular gizmo it knows to turn the machine on just as surely as if you were pressing the button yourself.

So, for those of us who will have TV and other gadgets with standby buttons on for a good while yet whether they are outlawed or not, could we not have some kind of power plug that works with something similar to these "magic packets". One remote control could do for the whole house with different numbered plugs. Power the thing off at the wall and still be able to roll over in the morning and turn it all back on again without getting out off bed?

Anyone any good with a soldering iron want to have a go at it? Or point me to one someone made earlier?