Dear Meg Hillier, 

I am concerned by the great potential for misuse presented by the anti-terrorism legislation introduced in recent years. It is an issue that has worried me for some time but I have been moved to write to you now after hearing the topic raised in parliament today.

The latest cause for concern is the use of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 in restricting the public’s freedom to take photographs featuring police constables. The act contains the clause “[photographs] of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” and yet, after barely a month of the law being in force, there are already reports of abuse. One such report involves an elderly man being intimidated into deleting an image in which a police car was visible parked on double-yellow lines.

But the larger issue is the multitude of wide-reaching powers being granted to the police force under the banner of anti-terrorism in what I believe to be a climate of fear and unwarranted hysteria. One such power is the much publicised 28 day detention without charge but there are many others of equally questionable validity. Not only am I vehemently opposed to any extension of the 28 day period but I believe that 28 days is already too long and must be reduced. We are assured that these laws are necessary for our safety and will only be used against extremists, yet time and again we see the same laws being abused and misused.

During the Heathrow Climate Camp in August 2007, for example, it was widely reported in the media that police had been briefed to use laws introduced under the Terrorism Act 2006 against the protesters. The attempts to justify this by claiming that the assembled environmentalists presented a terrorist threat were laughable.

It is not possible to introduce legislation to be “used only against terrorists”. The police, by definition, do not know if a suspect is a terrorist at the time he or she is detained, or else an extended detention period would not be required. So who gets to decide when counter terrorism laws are applicable? It’s only a small leap of the imagination from here to an Orwellian reality in which losing your freedom is just one wrong thought away.

I am sympathetic to the police’s cause and I understand that investigators want more time in order to do their work to the best of their abilities. But I challenge you to show me any professional who does not believe they could do a better job if only they were given more time in which to do it.

While the events of 7th July 2005 were undeniably tragic for the friends & relatives of those who lost their lives, it is worth keeping a sense of perspective. In the UK, more people are killed in traffic accidents every week than have died in terrorist related incidents in the past 10 years. If we, as a society, are not willing to give up the convenience that cars afford us, then how can we justify giving up our human right to freedom?

Yours sincerely,

Tamlyn Rhodes.

This is probably the political issue I feel strongest about right now. These laws scare me far more than the terrorism they are meant to protect me from. And yet i feel pretty powerless to do anything about it.

For now, writing to my MP will have to do.

Dear Ms Rhodes

Thank you for writing to us on 13 November 2008. We realise how important it is to provide a quick response, particularly if you have had a bad experience.

Although we aim to respond in 5 working days, you will definitely receive a full response within 20 working days of us receiving your letter.

Yours sincerely

Carol Payne

I was mentally composing a response along the lines of:

Dear Mr Payne

I am writing to you to confirm that I have received your letter confirming that you have received my letter. Although I aim to respond in 5 working days, your letter appears to be a waste of everyone’s time and, as such, not deserving of a response.

However this morning I received 4 vouchers for £5, £10, £5 and £1 so I probably won’t bother.

National Express, on the other hand, have yet to reply to any of my letters.

It’s essentially a notice of price increases but instead of simply stating the new unit price, Dale Vince (Managing Director of Ecotricity) attempts to explain the global economic forces behind the increase. After mentioning the growing demand for fossil fuels from the developing world and how the rising prices are exacerbated by the futures markets, he explains why a green energy supplier should be affected at all:

I know that it can seem counter intuitive to some of our customers, that we should be affected by rising prices for fossil fuels. But until we generate the majority of our own power from green sources we will remain affected by the ‘market’ and the same is true of the UK as a whole.

The tone of the letter is really honest, and does not shy away from admitting the company’s weakness:

Our policy, indeed our promise, is to match exactly the price of the Big Six in each area, and so we need to raise our own prices. But this is not just a matter of policy and we won’t be adding to our profits from this. It’s a matter of necessity that we raise prices to match our increased costs.

For the last few months we have been absorbing significantly higher costs. Following EDF’s price increase now will allow us to restore our position. Quite honestly, we could not have gone for many more weeks without raising prices, even if EDF had not.

It’s stuff like this that makes me love my electricity supplier – and that’s probably not a phrase you’re likely to hear very often!

• A copy of Grazia from 2007
• An A1 size poster for Prison Break
• A sock
  
• A piece of wood
• One and a half UK road atlases
• An empty bottle of Ribena
• A 33cl bottle of Vittel
• A jar of Sainsbury’s sugocasa best before August 2008
• Three golf clubs (wedge, 9-iron, putter)
• Four golf balls
• Three and a half golf tees
• A tent peg
• A toothbrush
• Two pairs of sun glasses
• An old-style Nokia charger (the cigarette lighter socket was stolen with the CD player)
• Various vacuum cleaner attachments (but no vacuum cleaner)
• A camping stove
• The lock from someone’s front door
• A key (which doesn’t fit the lock)
• A 50 drachma coin
• Some kind of sherbert in a lemon-shaped plastic container
• A scarf
• A blanket
• A picnic blanket
• Duran Duran collectors edition CD (free with the Daily Mail)
• A plastic foot

But, just for fun, lets look at those stats a little closer…

The first thing you’ll notice is that it isn’t to scale. The 10% arrow is much thicker than 5 of the 2% arrows and the 32% one is only a little wider than the 10% arrow.

The numbers from the six categories add up to 100% implying that those six icons represent all greenhouse gas emissions. So the car presumably means all road transport (what about trains & boats?) The factory must represent industry? The trees are deforestation and forest fires and the like (does that include farming?). The plug is power generation. And the cloud is… fuck knows. Miscellaneous? The weather? Bad thoughts? In that context, 2% of global emissions coming from a single industry suddenly seems like quite a lot. Indeed, it is about as much as that generated by all human activity in Africa!

It appears that the 2% figure quoted comes from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which is undeniably a reliable source. However that report is from 16 years ago during which time the volume of flights has skyrocketed (no pun intended).

Also very importantly it doesn’t take into account the fact that because the greenhouse gases from flying are released high in the atmosphere, they are 2 to 4 times more damaging than the same gases released at ground level. Nor does it consider that the water vapour produced by aircraft leads to the formation of cirrus clouds that also contribute to global warming. Indeed, carbon dioxide accounts for only a third of aviation’s impact on the atmosphere.

But in the end, even if aviation’s impact on global warming really was that small, why is that a reason not to try and reduce it?

• Festo AirJelly – a flying jellyfish airship thing. Very calming.
• Clock Sculpture – 150 separate hands that rotate to spell out the name of the current hour
• One Day Poem Pavillion – holes drilled in the ‘pavillion’ form patterns on the floor which spell out a different poem every hour
• Do web sites need to look exactly the same in everybrowser? – unambiguously answers one question
• Lip Dub Stars – turn up the volume for this one!

from xkcd, see also Lolcats if you need an explanation

Work is good.

Play is good. 

Life is good.

• Last.fm – personalised online radio and music community
• del.icio.us – social bookmarking of websites
• digg – collaborative news
• 43things – things people want to do
• 43places – places people want to visit
• 43people – people people want to meet
• Consumating – tag based dating
• StumbleUpon – find interesting websites

You have been warned…