Taking Out The Trash

Chalk up a victory

Supporters of a student arrested for writing slogans about liberty in chalk on a pavement celebrated the CPS dropping charges today....by writing slogans about liberty in chalk on the pavement outside court.
Paul Saville and supporters handiwork can be seen here and Paul's blog is here.
The Bristol Evening Post report on the charges being dropped has all the detail and you can hear the man himself being interviewed on Jones The News.

Hello to Felix

Welcome to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, a new blog about, well, let's here what 'Felix' says:

"I thought it would be interesting to get lots of informed people talking about the future of news reporting in Bristol, so I’ve started this blog. In coming weeks I plan to post a series of short articles addressing various questions and hopefully will get some debate going. It might be a complete waste of time, or it could fire some really interesting ideas. We might even create some wonderful new media models for other cities to emulate.

"I am a Bristol-based freelance journalist, working for local and national organisations, mostly in print. I am not an employee of any media firm and have no ulterior or financial motives in doing this. It’s simply that the future of news is something that colleagues and I discuss constantly in the pub and something which we all assume, rightly or wrongly, is an important issue. So let's open the debate up beyond the pub."

Can't argue with that - let the debate begin.

And perhaps we can look a little beyond Bristol to take in the hinterlands of Bath, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset as we're all suffering the same problems. However, while Bristol is supplemented by a healthy blogging community, the same cannot be said for my local area of Bath and Wiltshire.

G20 death

This video from the Guardian shows the police have some very serious questions to answer regarding the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests.
It's pretty shocking in its casual brutality and gives the lie to the smears which some media put about in the immediate aftermath of the death.
Shortly after the events on this video Tomlinson, who was walking home from work and not part of the protests, suffered a heart attack and died.

Update: Bob Piper pretty much nails it and while Iain Dale makes a very reasoned statement some of the comments this sparks have to be read to be believed.

Olympic firms caught up in blacklisting scandal

Not being a regular visitor to t'capital I've only just picked up the report from Thursday's London Evening Standard pointing out that several firms named as having paid a firm providing blacklisting services have won contracts from the Olympic Delivery Authority.

When I spoke with an ICO investigator last year as they were about to start their probe it was specifically the prospect that the publicly funded Olympic projects could be ensared in blacklisting practices that sparked their interest.

You need the info to name and shame

The TUC sent me a press release welcoming a register naming and shaming those employers who refuse to cough up after being found guilty at employment tribunals.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

"Too many people are still hit by the double whammy of employers acting illegally and then refusing to pay when they are caught."

Except the naming and shaming bit isn't that straightforward.

I've just got round to reading the official government announcement. The Department of Justice says that:

"People who fail to pay awards made by employment tribunals will be publicly named and shamed from today, as the government clamps down hard on employers who disregard tribunal rulings.

"Justice Minister Bridget Prentice said offending individuals or companies who have been taken to court to enforce the award will now be entered onto the Register of Judgments, which can be searched by members of the public and credit reference agencies."

Oh look, there is that public naming and shaming bit again. Except the register can only be search for a fee and is generally used only by companies looking to carry out credit checks.

Sure it's good that this information is entered on a public database but the fees are prohibitive -far more so than on other databases such as those held by Companies House. If the purpose is naming and shaming then it should be far easier to get the info.

And finally: Unless I missed it, this story has been barely covered by any media despite the fact that it signals a large and deliberate attempt by businesses to dodge their financial punishments.

Maybe, considering the date it was announced, they thought it was an April Fool?

CPS drop charges against student chalker

I wrote previously about Bristol student Paul Saville who was arrested for criminal damage for writing a poem about liberty on the pavement  - in chalk.
Paul was due to appear before magistrates in Bristol this week but received a letter at the weekend telling him the CPS have dropped the charges.
Which is obviously a sensible conclusion to what would have been a colossal waste of time and money against someone exercising their right to free speech.
Paul's case was widely reported and united civil libertarians on the left and right. I'm not aware of anyone else getting the Guardian civil liberty hero of the week award and the conservative Young Britons' Foundation's hero of the week award.
However, Paul still has a DNA sample taken from a first arrest for chalking on a pavement where he was given a caution and that remains on file. Comedian and activist Mark Thomas explains in this video how you might go about clearing your DNA file from the national database.
I understand Paul still plans to have a gathering of his supporters outside Bristol Magistrates Court at 9.45am this Wednesday to protest against the way he has been treated and highlight some of the civil liberty questions his case throws up

Angry MPs urge Government to act now to end blacklist shame

Tribune this week carries my story on the latest debate in Parliament over the blacklisting of trade union workers - an issue reported on by  The Guardian and exposed through an ICO investigation.

LABOUR MPs angry at the construction industry blacklist designed to prevent union activists from getting work on building sites in Britain have condemned the Government response and suggested firms might end up on a blacklist of their own.

The idea is that companies which subscribed to the controversial blacklist – supplied by consultant Ian Kerr to more than 40 firms including Balfour Beatty, Costain and McAlpine – should not get public sector work.

Michael Clapham, MP for Barnsley West & Penistone, said: “The fact that the public sector was the client in just over 31 per cent of construction output in 2006, making it the industry’s largest customer, suggests that the government, as a major client, has some responsibility to use the powerful lever that exists to ensure that companies who use blacklists are not engaged on projects.”

You can read the rest here.

There is an excellent background piece on the ICO investigation in Building magazine which I've only just picked up on.

This debate in the House of Lords yesterday (Thursday April 2) touches on the issue.

Operation Atalanta

Further to my previous post; I'm sticking up a copy of the interview I did with Rear Admiral Philip Jones (left) who is in charge of the EU's Operation Atalanta.

This is the naval taskforce aimed at securing food convoys to Somalia and (the bit everyone is really interested in) deterring pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden.

As well as the EU forces, the Indian, Russian and American navies all have ships out there keeping a presence in a key sphere of influence.

After all, this is where around a fifth of all commercial sea traffic passes through.

Operation Atalanta is run out of Northwood from a room on the ground floor called the Joint Operations Centre (my picture of it right). Actually it's called the JOC because everyone speaks in three-letter acronyms at Northwood.  Half a dozen EU warships, three times that from other countries, a million square miles of sea and tens of thousands of commercial shipping movements - all being tracked from there.

You can listen to the ten minute interview here: I was told I had ten minutes with the Rear Admiral and you'll note the interview stops at 10min 2 secs. Got to love that naval efficiency.

Learning from nature

The Institution of Engineering and Technology's E&T magazine has just published a piece I wrote on how biomineralists are trying to replicate things such as squid sucker rings and gecko feet to create new products.

Invertebrate zoologist James Weaver was out on a fishing trip collecting specimens when a Humboldt squid latched on to his arm and secured itself with its powerful tentacles.

While the first thought of most of us would have been the pain, Weaver began to wonder how it was that the squid could generate such enormous power through the soft tissue of the suckers which line the tentacles.

His curiosity could lead toward a new generation of stronger and more abrasion-resistant materials. It’s also just one example of how multidisciplinary teams are looking at proteins as potentially very important structural materials. Bio engineers believe they could produce strong, light material cheaply using proteins or mimicking their structures.

The full piece is here.

Just filed copy for the IET's Flipside magazine on anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. Those nice folk at Northwood invited me over to Djibouti to get a close view of Operation Atalanta - the EU naval task force protecting - shipping and food convoys - but I just couldn't justify the time or expense. Maybe next time....