Ant Ramblings

I really have to be a bit more organised about this! But in the meantime we have an election!

Well, it’s election time here for the next four weeks (May 6th is the big day). So, for those of you who aren’t familiar with out political system, here’s a chance to get a completely frank and un-biased perspective (ish).

Just as most democracies we have a two-tier system:

The Upper House - called the House of Lords (and interestingly only ever referred to in parliament as the other place). The House of Lords is populated by the Lords Spiritual and the Lords Temporal. 

The Lords Temporal are several holders of high office in the Church (various Archbishops, and a few long serving Bishops). The Lords Temporal are hereditary and life Peers of the Realm. Members of the House of Lords may support (or be members of) a political party or not (non-partisan Lords are referred to a cross-benchers).

Since 1999 the number of hereditary peers has been limited, and the majority are not life peers (they are appointed by the Lower House and their peerages are not hereditary).

Put another way… THEY’RE UNELECTED! (personal note of disgust).

We then also have the Lower House - this one IS elected - also called The House of Commons.

The House of Commons consists of 646 elected MPs (Members of Parliament). Of the 646 seats, 529 represent constituencies in England, 40 in Wales, 59 in Scotland, and 18 in Northern Ireland. (Oh, we also have regional governments in Scotland and Wales, and sometimes in Northern Ireland too but they’re separate… ish)

MPs generally belong to a political party (I’m not sure if there are any independants at the moment). There are three principal political parties represented -

• Labour Party (left of center)
• Liberal Democrats (centre)
• Conservative (right of centre)

Interesting to note also, that among all of this… we don’t elect our Head of State either (it’s the Queen), but then neither does our Head of State have any political power (we even decapitated a King over this once!).

The person most often seen representing the UK (or Great Britain) is the Prime Minister. And guess what - strictly speaking we don’t get to vote on who that is either! The Prime Minister is simply the “head of the leading political party” in the House of Commons, although they are actually elected as an MP by their constituents.

So, there’s the basics… we now have four weeks of unwanted knocks on the door, extra junk mail dropping through the door and the site of smarmy politicians randomly kissing babies in our streets. Oh, and this year, for the first time there’s going to be a series of three televised debates between the three principal part leaders! Wonderful, the cult of personality surfaces, alive and well in the UK!

I’ll post “Election Updates” from time to time, but… if you want to know anything particular about our election, or our political system, or stuff like that… then ASK ME!

Imagine a world where cars didn’t have some simple and sensible common standards. I don’t mean any complicated stuff, just simple stuff like the arrangement of the pedals (or even all using pedals instead of levers or knobs), or a simple straightforward choice of fuels, the fact they all take standard sized fuel nozzles (depending on the type of fuel), that sort of thing.

To say life would be a bit complicated by this is an understatement. The same goes for many other things we now take for granted. Nearly all of you will have a different style of electrical plug/socket (and quite possibly voltage too), but in your country at least, its a standard.

We can see the same standardisation all around us in our daily lives, and it’s a good thing! It makes out lives simpler, less cluttered, reduces costs and keeps us safe. To be sure, this standardisation is often an evolution in the early years of the technology, but it happens because everyone recognises its value for all concerned.

So welcome to the world of web browsers. I’ve worked in the IT industry for a long time now (a lot longer than web browsers have been around), and standards have always been a contentious issue, though usually one that gets resolved in the end.

So what is it with the people who produce browsers, and claim to implement agreed standards? Mostly we don’t see this problem because some poor soul has sweated for hour to make his page look and work the same in all browsers, but that in itself is the problem. It’s not like the standards don’t exist, they do (for better or worse). But sadly, different interpretations of these standards mean that things just aren’t common.

So my message to browser makers… Get your damn act together, you’re a complete and total disgrace. I don’t give a flying fuck what the right interpretation is of any standard, but if there’s doubt or confusion, then get together and agree. I’ve seen more mature attitudes to conflict resolution in nursery school.

Oh, and while I think of it, agreeing to differ is NOT acceptable!

Sometimes I’m not sure whether to scream at me, or the people who make browsers.

It works just fine in Chrome! But sadly at the moment Tumbline seems to break in Internet Explorer (in an ugly looking way), and Firefox (it just fails but the layout is ok).

Well, I’ll get on and fix that! And see about getting “check it in all browsers” tatooed on my arm!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What am I talking about?

Healthcare! There it was on the news this morning, and it turned today from “just Monday” into a day to remember.

Just to be clear, I’m not a U.S. Citizen, this change has no direct impact on me personally, but it gives to 32 million more Americans what they were promised, almost two and a half centuries ago, by the Declaration of Independence.

I’m lucky, we have a healthcare system - free at the point of delivery for everyone. Yes, it’s imperfect, and sometimes it fails, but that’s for us to strive to change, to improve. It’s not a reason to give in, simply to make life “tidier”.

Someone asked me the other day, “what are you most grateful for?”. I don’t even need to think to answer, it’s not my personal health, my personal good fortune, my family, my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for all these things and much more besides, but I’d forego every one of them for a healthcare system that provides without discrimination, without let or hindrance, for the EVERYONE.

We owe our good fortune to a man named Aneurin Bevan, who was instrumental in forming our National Health Service in 1948.

The collective principle asserts that… no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.—Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, p100

Certainly, Bevan was a man with failings, but he was also a man of great commitment and we, the British people, owe him a debt for his tireless efforts and his ultimate success in leaving us this legacy.
I hope today marks a sea-change for the USA with regard to health care. I hope people remember Barak Obama in years to come for his courage and commitment in beginning this process. Yes it will be imperfect. Yes, it is only a beginning. But of one thing I am certain, simply because we cannot reach our destination in one stride we should never hesitate to take each small step toward that goal. What is right is not a question of “fiscal viability”, it is simply “right”. We diminish ourselves by not striving for these things.