Up until yesterday, I was a very active user of Writely. This was no particularly for the collaboration aspect of the service, though that was occasionally handy, it was just for making academic notes, and having the convenience of being able to access and edit them, securely, both at home and at uni. I have occasionally been known to blog from the application. It’s a really useful service, and I find myself using Microsoft Word less and less (though Writely’s not nearly advanced enough to replace some of the more technical and involved Word documents).

But this morning, I woke up to find that I was no longer a Writely user. I’m now a user of Google Docs and Spreadsheets. All the same functionality is there (and, crucially, all of my documents), but it doesn’t look nearly so pretty now the Writely green has been removed – and the amount of screen space taken up by the toolbars has increased. There’s frankly odd changes, too, like the spell checker now highlighting incorrectly spelled words rather than using the familiar wiggly red line, and the fact that you’re no longer prompted for a document title when starting a new document. There’s nothing disastrously wrong with the new setup, but the interface feels like a bit of a retrograde step for some reason.

It’s not so bad that I’m switiching away. But it would have been nice if the new interface had been trialled in a Beta of some kind before being forced upon me, maybe offering both interfaces over a transitional period, or even if I’d been given some warning that this was going to happen in the first place. I realise this is Beta software and liable to change or disappear at any time, but I’m a demanding consumer and expect Beta software (especially from Google, where almost everything is Beta) to evolve, not to wake up one morning and find everything completely different.

Anyway, I just thought all of that was worth ranting about.

An interesting piece of comment from The First Post, today. They point out that two men appeared at Burnley Magistrates’ Court last week, charged with holding “the largest amount of cheimical explosives of this type ever found in this country”. One of the accused was a BNP council candidate, and the other was a local dentist. The dentist was also in possession of a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological protection suit, and the two were accused of “some kind of masterplan”, as yet unknown.

But what is striking about their court appearance (they were remanded until October 23) is the failure of any mainstream newspaper or media outlet to report it at all.

It is not difficult to imagine what the response might have been had two Muslims been involved. There would have been banner headlines, police statements celebrating the prevention of another apocalyptic plot, suggestions of a wider conspiracy with nebulous ‘linkages’ to al-Qaeda. There would have been a collective shudder at another averted outrage, experts holding forth on the dangers of dirty bombs and homemade WMD. There would have been warnings of the ongoing threat to our ‘values’. Above all, there would have been fear, all of it magnified by a credulous media, fed by inside information from nameless intelligence sources.

Instead there was total silence. In a week dominated by Muslim ‘stories’ in which veiled women and an unpleasant taxi driver constituted evidence of the alien, dangerous subculture in our midst, two white men accused of having explosives, a nuclear protection suit and a ‘masterplan’ fell outside the frame of the ‘war on terror’ and therefore did not get mentioned beyond local papers.

It’s quite a difficult argument to counter, given that the only mainstream national media I could find the story in was the Sunday Times – in the ‘News in Brief’ column.

It is quitely burning away in the blogosphere – generally with the same kind of spin The First Post (and, to be fair, I) has given it. We’re talking posts like When it’s a white terrorist, no one notices…, White people are terrorists too!!!!!!, The Wrong Colour Bomb – and this post from The Void, who seems even more cynical than me.

The original article that sparked all this speculation – from the esteemed Burnley Citizen – contains this intriguing line, which may help to explain away some of the lack of media interest:

However Superintendent Neil Smith moved to reassure residents and stressed: “It is not a bomb making factory” and added that it was not related to terrorism.

How does he know? And what exactly was Robert Cottage doing with a huge amount of explosives, a rocket launcher, and a protective suit? And, ultimately, would the same line have been trundled out if Mr Cottage’s skin had been a different colour?

Graham Norton’s in the firing line today, for saying that he’s taken drugs in the past because he, erm, enjoyed taking them:

The only time I took ecstasy was years and years ago. It was absolutely amazing. It was just fantastic – really, really fun.

This put the wind up the National Drug Prevention Alliance:

We’re appalled, it’s absolutely mind-blowing that somebody has said that.

Of course, to suggest people enjoy taking drugs is heresy. Nobody who takes drugs can possibly enjoy it, mainly because they’re all crackheads going nowhere in life who will end up on the streets and probably dead by the age of thirty. Nobody – repeat nobody – could possibly take recreational drugs for enjoyment, so Graham Norton is a big fat irresponsible liar, and his pants are, indeed, flaming.

At least, that’s what I think the National Drug Prevention Alliance must want us all to think.

Perhaps if we were to take a more reasoned approach to drugs and their various uses, then some of the drugs education might actually get through. Perhaps something more along the lines of David J’s story, summarily (but well worth reading the full thing):

I had a great time on drugs. But I’m happy to be clean.

The way we seem to be educating kids about drugs these days is roughly the same as the “Don’t have sex, or you will get pregnant and die” method of sex education. The longer it takes to bring us into the real world, to actually openly discuss the real issues with the kids on the frontline of the “Drugs War”, the longer it will take for the problems to be properly addressed.

One final thought: Perhaps we all just misheard him.

A cure for hiccups has won one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes. It involves fingers and bottoms – and probably funny looks if undertaken on public transport. Read more here.

I have written a lot in the past about the NHS, but rarely have I touched upon the subject of dentistry – mainly because it’s not an area in which I think I have particularly special knowledge. This missive from a reader of Dr Crippen needs no specialist knowledge:

Several years ago I had an NHS dentist. I saw him regularly albeit reluctantly, he used to do his ‘stuff’ and I’d leave, sometimes sore and sometimes not.

Then I moved house.

The area I moved to has few NHS dentists and none of them has vacancies for new NHS patients. I’ve been on four different waiting lists for several years during which I’ve received no dental treatment.

It started with a single filling falling out, shortly followed by another and then within six months nearly every filling in my head ended up in the bin. I rang all the NHS Dentists in the area but I was turned away. I was not registered and, in any case, they had no vacancies. Some of the dental practices didn’t even bother to talk to me. As soon as I mentioned ‘NHS’ and ‘Not Registered’ they just put the phone down on me.

The full story (well worth reading) wants to remind everybody that the Labour government has done little to improve the health service in any meaningful way – an assessment with which the Health Secretary “Mad” Pat agrees.

Let me remind you, for a moment, of Tony Blair’s conference speech of 1999:

…everyone within the next two years will be able once again to see an NHS dentist just by phoning NHS Direct

Seven years later, and NHS dentistry is in a worse state than when Tony Blair made his pledge.

Another broken promise. Another absent apology.

David Cameron has started vlogging, or video-blogging, or YouTubing, or whatever the heck it’s called these days. It really is a masterstroke. Webcameron is an excellent idea.

It’s certainly caused something of a stir in the blogosphere: James O’Malley rather enjoyed it, I think:

The first thing that struck me about this was why is the Leader of the Opposition, a man who earns £127,000 a year, doing the washing up by hand? Surely he owns a dishwasher? Even the proletariat can afford a dishwasher these days! Surely this little piece to camera wasn’t all stage managed?

The other thing that annoyed me about the video was that there was no pay-off. Having watched a lot of videos on the internet, I was expecting it to all build up to something. I thought towards the end he was going to shout “SHUT THE FUCK UP, KIDS!” Disappointing.

Nathan Nelson is possibly even more cynical:

I use Ecover as I am a left-wing Guardian-reading wooly liberal who thinks he can save the planet by buying Ecover products – presumably, I was supposed to see Dave using Ecover and welcome his to my bosom immediately as a kindred spirit.

And Pal makes an even better point:

Crumbs! Dave nearly does the washing up! His hands don’t get wet – he just waves his green washing up liquid around a bit.

But what none of these blogs mention is that they – just like me – are doing exactly what the Conservatives want. We’re talking about them. Whether we think Webcameron is the best idea since sliced bread, or whether we think it’s carefully crafted and stage managed as to mean nothing, the fact is that it’s generating a Conservative buzz. Looking at the Technorati stats, Conservative Party is being blogged a hell of a lot more than Labour Party, and (so the theory goes) if we’re talking about the Conservatives, we’re probably listening to a little of their policy. And maybe even warming to them a little.

It’s exactly where Labour have gone wrong with Dave the Chameleon. That’s a cute character, which at a glance actually makes you think favourably of the Conservatives. Only people who stick around to listen to the full message get the criticism – and few bother. The Conservatives, on the other hand, give a positive impression at first glance – though arguably fall down on policy. But no-one’s listening by that stage anyway.

Cameron is playing a blinder. And I mean Cameron. This is the land of ‘Brand Cameron’. The Webcameron site has no Conservative branding. This is about selling him, not the party, and it’s working. Labour’s playing catch-up. The longer Blair remains as a drag on the Labour party, the bigger the lead Cameron gets. Gordon Brown, or whoever turns out to be the next Labour leader, needs to pull something pretty spectacular out of the bag if they’re to take on Mr Cameron. The next election could be very interesting.

Today is one of those wonderful days where an unfortunate confluence of events means that we can see through the government’s spin and political correctness, and gawp at the real decisions being taken in Whitehall.

Today, new legislation comes into force, spun as ‘banning ageism‘:

They make it unlawful to discriminate against workers under the age of 65 on the grounds of age.

The rules will impact on recruitment, training, promotion, redundancy, retirement, pay and pension provision.

Ministers have been popping up here, there, and everywhere over the last week emphasising that not only does this rule out discrimination against older people, it also protects the young from being discriminated against in favour of the old. Which is all fine and dandy, but sadly untrue.

Giving the lie to the spin is another new piece of legislation coming into force today: An increase in the minimum wage. Despite ageism now being illegal, this continues to have three tiers. 16 and 17 year olds receive a minimum of £3.30 per hour, 18 to 21 year olds receive a minimum £4.85, whilst over 21s get £5.35.

Ageism is, apparently, outlawed, but if I were to go and get a proper job today, I could be paid 50p an hour less than somebody less than six-months my senior. From where I’m standing, that smells a lot like ageism.

So it’s fairly clear that the government’s actual target here is the older generation. By preventing employers from retiring people at sixty based on age alone, perhaps the government think that this will become the norm, before they force it to be so by raising the official retirement age. But it’s a bit of a stretch even for Nu Labour to pretend to be discouraging ageism on the same day as retaining an increasing a three-tier minimum wage.

But thank you, Tony, for showing us how to ban ageism whilst simultaneously actively promoting it. I don’t think anyone else could.

Margaret Beckett, Foreign Secretary, Sunday with Adam Boulton (24 September 2006):

Tony Blair said he would not serve a full term through this Parliament.

Peter Hain, N. Ireland Secretary, Sunday with Adam Boulton (24 September 2006):

He (Blair) said he was going to serve a full term.

Good to see that everyone at the Labour Party Conference is singing from the same hymn sheet.

With due credit to More4 News.

Mr Blair’s getting quite good a slapping the Chancellor round the chops, it would seem. On today’s Sunday AM, he’s announced that

the most important thing is that this week we set out an agenda for the future

He wants to talk about the future, whilst avoiding the question of who might be the future leader. He wants to pave his own path, so that he’s telling Gordon what to do from beyond the political grave. Spinner reckons watching Tone’s interview is ‘perfect media training in action’. I call it ‘How to annoy the chancellor without even mentioning his name’.

Is this a brilliant final political play from the man whose career is defined by media-friendly political strategy? That’s up to Gordon. If he’s stupid enough to take the bait and directly challenge Mr Blair, he’ll not succeed. If he remembers that revenge is a dish best served cold (with a side order of cliché), then he can wait until he gets into Number Ten, and undo Mr Blair’s ‘reforms’ stitch by stitch, with the former PM unable to do anything to stop him. How satisfying.

And, when even the uber-loyal (if mad) Health Secretary agrees that your reforms have failed, maybe it would even be good for the country, too. Maybe.

At this year’s Liberal Democrat conference, delegates have been provided with environmentally friendly jute conference bags. They will be expected to use them again next year, rather than being issued with new ones. But reflecting a theme at this year’s conference, the bag scheme has something of a hole. If the Lib Dems are serious about increasing their popularity, surely lots of new people will be at conference next year – without this year’s jute bag. It’s an idea that looks good in principle, but flaws are found with barely five seconds of armchair thought.

In this way, it’s quite similar to “green taxes”, which the Liberal Democrats have voted in favour of today. The first big test of Sir Campbell’s leadership may have been passed with flying colours, but the first big test of logic is failed. Green taxes place the tax burden on polluting activities to discourage them. Yet the moment Green Taxes work, they fail: That is, the moment people are discouraged from polluting activities, there is no tax revenue for public services.

So, effectively, the Green Taxes either have to be stupidly low, so they don’t discourage people, or stupidly high, so that a few pay a lot for a little pollution – which hardly fairly distributes the tax burden, since those who can’t switch to expensive renewable energy sources (the lower socioeconomic classes) pay more. It’s easy for CEO to buy a new non-polluting car, it’s harder for Unemployed Joe who’s driven the same old polluting banger for the last twenty-five years. If anything, it’s the reverse of a LibDem policy.

I was going to write about Charles Kennedy at this point, but I’ve just fallen off my chair with shock. Tony Blair acutally features on the Labour homepage. Admittedly, he’s tiny (much smaller than “Dave the Chameleon”), but it’s a step forward. I think this might be the first time since before the last election. Sadly, nothing to rival the LibDems’ MingCast, but I can dream.