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I rarely post about computer toys and goodies, but I have been using ecto as my blogging client for ages now and I just suddenly wondered tonight how things were going with the upgrade to ecto version 3. And lo and behold I found that this very day Adriaan has put out an alpha release of version 3 for Mac OS X.

I'm a techie, and I don't mind playing around with alpha software, though it's not for everyone, but I've downloaded it and at first site it looks great. A real improvement on an already very good tool. And this is the first post with ecto 3.

extended

The Observer today reports that Gordon Brown is already taking advice on how to expand ID cards into the private sector, such as plans to let shops share ID card data.

We predicted it wouldn't take long to extend ID cards into every area of our lives, but I want to confess that when we had our Civil Liberties policy working party, on which I served, if not very well, I did put forward a sort of alternative idea for ID cards. Only mine weren't fascist-state centered things keeping a track of our every movement.

No, mine were intended to be a sort of a "nuclear trigger" by which no organisation, particularly the apparatus of state but eventually possibly businesses, could store or access data about individuals without that individual's explicit consent. A sort of a key chain that each individual would be entitled to that would keep prying eyes of prurient civil servants away from any data they held about us. If someone wanted to access your data, they'd have to call you, tell you why, and get you to authorize it like you authorize phone banking call centre staff to access your information.

Now our working party was set against the background not of a fully enunciated if shambolically designed scheme for ID cards, but, if you remember, it was the time when the government were talking about allowing it seemed anyone from the dustman upwards in all sorts of public sector organisations access to our telecommunications data that phone companies and ISPs were forced to start keeping.

But now that we are faced with whoever wants to pay a fee getting access to some of the national ID database, maybe my idea's time has come.

I've blogged before about how the state will need to interfere ever more in our personal dealings simply in order to be able to collect taxes in a more globalised world, but I rather thought we had a few decades to plan action to prevent it.

Thanks to James Robertson for pointing me to this site in response to a call for fresh thinking on how to fund the EU after 2008. I'll no doubt return to this in the future but for now just have a look. How we can finance the EU and get a dividend back.

Technorati Tags: EU, monetary reform

I noticed this in the Oxford Mail the other day:

Get Rid Of Gravestones Says Councillor (from thisisoxfordshire):

UNSTABLE gravestones in Bicester's cemetery have been laid flat and could be thrown away if not claimed by relatives within two years.

In the past, Bicester Town Council has repaired unsafe headstones, but councillors say it is simply becoming too expensive.

A total of 28 unsafe memorials, whose owners cannot be traced, have been laid flat or cordoned off in the cemetery.

At a meeting last week, town councillor Carol Steward said the council needed to adopt a firm policy for the future.

She told fellow councillors she believed unsafe memorials should be removed, stored for two years and then disposed of if relatives had still not come forward.

She said: "People could miss an anniversary or Christmas for two years. Any less and I think we would be doing the families a disservice.

"This is the only way the council can afford to go forward. It is a very, very costly item for which we are not actually responsible we have been doing it to be fair to everyone. We have to draw the line somewhere."

Now, it may be a bit morbid, but these stones are our future's history. Whether they leave people behind to look after them or not, are the memories of those people simply to be erased after two years? There are odd rules governing management of cemeteries in this country for a very good reason. We have municipal and church owned graveyards. When a church one gets full, it is "closed" and responsibility for managing it in perpetuity falls on the local council.

Now I realise Bicester is looking more and more like some anonymous "new town" as a result of housing policies. But that does not mean the people there should have their memorials and memories wiped out so presumptuously.

How much will rebuilding the Garth cost compared with this saving, by the way?

When you get a number of friends emailing to find out if you're okay because you haven't blogged for a couple of weeks it's maybe time to start paying the old thing some attention again. Although I do have a subscription to one of these blog stats packages and I keep an eye on it, I never seem to be getting as many hits as many younger blogs report in their early days. So I do often wonder if it's worth it all sometimes.

But yesterday I was on the platform for a debate/discussion on the subject of "Planning to win?" at the Lib Dems' South Central Regional Conference held here at Oxford Brookes University and the chair of the session had clearly got most of her information about me from this blog, so I guess it does get noticed once in a while.

But you know how it goes, it's not that I've not had any opinions over the past couple of weeks; far from it, I seem to have unfinished blog posts on a dozen different topics. But with being the only one in at work for much of last week and having had evening meetings on every night I wasn't on duty (and one on one that I was on duty for!) everything else gets behind a little. And soon my RSS feed reader is showing upwards of four thousand unread items and it all gets a bit much.

Some other projects must come ahead in my priorities over blogging; projects that promise in more practical ways to get across my core ideals:

• Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts where I've had two meetings in the past week explaining how to create community led affordable housing in two rural communities
• the "Liberal ALTERnative" book project aiming to get a book on radical liberal economics out before the autumn conference season
• the Oxfordshire Social Enterprise Forum's replacement website which we hope will better support and help grow the social enterprise sector in Oxfordshire
• and most of all, the run up to election campaigning for a seat on Oxford City Council again in May - where I think our agent would get upset if I blogged all my spare time while telling him I didn't have much of that precious commodity for campaigning!

Add to that obligations such as being the staff side elected governor here at Brookes, and we've had a few board and committee meetings in the past couple of weeks and you'll maybe see why I haven't got round to blogging much. I'm also still not really happy with the design, not happy that it actually has the effect I want of being simple but of steering readers to related posts and links and getting them to stick around a bit more to read the "back issues". But I'll live with the design while I cannot carve out any more time to work on it!

So, it might still be "blogging lite" for a while, but I will try and better choose my subjects so I don't end up writing nothing as a result of having too much to write about!