i am sparticus: Words

Your Mother's Maiden Name

With the amount of people whose parent's never got married, or whose parents got divorced, or whose parents, for whatever reason, retained their own names, why on earth does anyone still see "what is your mother's maiden name" as a valid security question?

Shorts 2008

Yesterday was the official first shorts day of the year, slightly later than last year, but still keeping in line with the overall increase in warmness. So the run down so far:

• 26th April 2007
• 14th April 2007
• 4th May 2006
• 16th May 2004
• 7th June 2003
• 17th July 2007

(No data from 2005; either I forgot or it was really really cold)

This year though, our budget has been enlarged and our middle-management has only doubled in size, which means we've been able to splash out of proper colour graphics like the important websites have. Behold!

The British National Party London Election Manifesto

Arriving in the post last week was the London Elects "what the candidates stand for" booklet. The nine major candidates get a two page spread each, which means, at some point last week, seven and a half million people got a book through the door telling them the British National Parties Election Manifesto (The BNP, the only party to include the phrase "because it's not racist..." on their manifesto). But don't worry about clicking through to read it because here is it below:

Dear Fellow Londoner

Please read on to find out what I mean by 'Fellow' and by 'Londoner'

Remember London the way it used to be? Clean, friendly and safe. A capital city with a great sense of community - a good place to live and work.

Remember London the way it was in your head? The one that exists if you elide out, the Roman invasions, the Viking invasions,The Norman invasions, The English invasions, London bridge falling down, London bridge pulled down, the rampant overcrowding, the riots, the riots:, the riots, the riots, the riots, the riots, the riots, the riots, the riots, the riots, the crime, the three hundred years of plague, the two years of really intense plague, the fire, the Blitz, the terrorism, and
the terrorism (which we'd encourage you to forget was done by relatively indigenous white people of the British Isles).

If you would like to see London like this again, then support the British National Party - the only party that wants to put real Londoners first.

We can certainly guarantee riots when we get elected.

As Mayor I will make sure that people like you - the real Londoners - are put first. Asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are engulfing London and are put before you when it comes to housing and hospital care, and are given millions of pounds in benefits.

As Mayor I will make sure that people like you - unless you're an illegal immigrant or an asylum seekers, which let's face it, are exactly the same thing - are put first

Enough is enough, I will make sure that the people who have paid into the system are housed before immigrants - it's only fair.

Oh, and also immigrants are the same as illegal immigrants. Did I mention that asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are the same thing too? And everyone knows immigrants don't pay tax.

You and I know the cost of public transport is too high and as Mayor of London I will give all our pensioners 24 hour travel passes... free!

You and I know that the current mayor is offering this if he gets re-elected, as our several other candidates, but I used an ellipsis and bold type and an exclamation mark! And also I wouldn't give it to immigrants.

Isn't it time we put our own people first

Please don't follow that logic if you're not white.

Please use your vote for change, a change for the better - to put our people first and to make London great again.

We're stockpiling plague.

Richard Barnbrook, BNP Mayoral Candidate

I am as high as a kite.

Why Not To Vote For Boris

Charlie Brooker writing in the guardian is fairly insistent that you shouldn't vote for Boris Johnson, because he's the comedy vote, and comedy vote's shouldn't actually win. Unless it's at Christmas and it's going for number one. Well, he doesn't say that, but he should have. Next time Charlie.

Anyway, that's besides the point. The point being that he's entirely right, you shouldn't vote for Boris, because he doesn't seem to know what he's doing, will offend thousands of people, and his election manifesto effectively reads like Ken Livingston's but without any actual figures (actually, all the election manifesto's read like Ken Livingston's, apart from the BNP one that has the extra point 'we should be putting us white people first'.) You want to increase public transport? Great! But as much as I dislike Ken, he's already done that a fair bit. And said he wants to increase policing. And cut red tape. And build cheaper homes. And so on. Your manifesto is lame.

Also, the Evening Standard hates Ken Livingston, which is surely a reason to vote for him?

Finishing What You Started

I neither finished the long essay I started to write (nor got much further than the first four paragraphs) nor read more than half of a Puritan classic on young people while I was away. That said, I did get to go to Brighton, which is a bit nicer than it makes out to be.

Back

I had a dream last night that, panic, I had lots of photographs I needed to upload to flickr before I could upload the photographs of the event I had just dramatically witnessed. This however, was a dream. In trying to interpret it, the only conclusion I could come up with is that I was having a lame dream.

So, in conclusion, hello internet, I'm back.

A prettier notice

Away

I'm off internet all week. Apart from today. And tomorrow when I replace this with a prettier notice.

Apples of Gold

Behold! I present to you, all neatly sorted out and organised, Thomas Brooks' (1608-1680) classic (possibly) sermon series to young people:

• Apples of Gold as a pdf document
• Apples of Gold as a Word document

I haven't actually read it yet, so I'll restrain making any comment other than what has already been said below.

The Optimum Range of Pub Snacks

• KP nuts (of which Salted, Dry Roasted, and Honey Roasted are all required)
• Pork Scratchings (of which only MS Traditional Pork Scratchings and Mr Porky are considered orthodox, all others are heretical and should be banned)
• McCoy's crisps (of which only Salt and Malt Vinegar, Ready Salted, Cheese and Onion, and Steak are accepted as canonical)
• Twiglets
• Smith's Bacon Fries, Scampi Fries, and Cheese Moments (for paulo's sake; Bacon Fries, often know as Bacon Frazzles after the corner shop version, are fried corn snacks that taste of bacon and ingeniously, look like rashers of bacon due to clever use of red food colouring).

Special allowances will be given to Walker's crisps, but only if they are the packets that contain one magically large crisp that's somehow bigger than the largest potato ever know to man.

Any bar snack that does not come in a foil or plastic package that can be easily opened out into a rectangle for all to access is abhorrent and will not be tolerated. The same goes for all crisps that aren't made from either corn or potatoes¹.

¹ Apart from Twiglets, no-one knows what Twiglets are made of. Possibly pixies. Or twigs.

Things We Can Learn From Dead Puritans Writing About Young People

• People are more likely to become Christians when they are younger ("Because it is ten to one, if ever they are converted--they will be converted when they are young").
• Lacking self-esteem was not in the top 7 sins of youth in those days.
• It's perfectly acceptable in a series of sermons aiming at young people to riff off into a discussion as to whether or not Christians are judged on the day of judgement.

School Boy Error

Memo to self: next time, open notepad before buying.

Nicked

In very sad but unsurprisingly considering I live in London, my bike was nicked yesterday evening from where it was chained up to the communal balcony. Someone must have snuck in through the shared door downstairs, cut the lock and run off with it. I'm currently looking on Gumtree for a new bike, but also on the off chance my old bike will turn up there too. I'm a bit annoyed I just bought a new chain for the bike, but slightly happier at the though that in putting the chain on, I removed the front derailer, replacing of which will almost cost them as much as selling it will get them.

I'd Rather Be a Youth Worker Than a Nail

Ian has information about the future rolling out of the ISA "register if you want to work with children" scheme. From the Q&A doc online, this is what the ISA do:

The ISA will assess relevant information on individual applicants and, where they believe this indicates that the individual poses a risk, bar them from working in regulated activity with children and/or vulnerable adults. However, it is important to understand that in carrying out this function the ISA will not be barring every single individual with any kind of criminal conviction or based on other information known about them. Only those who pose an obvious risk will be barred. To gain a full picture of an individual's record employers will need to obtain a CRB check.

So to clarify, after 12th October 2009 if you want to work with young people you'll have to register yourself with the ISA, this is not a qualification and requires no training, rather it's just registering you on a system. If you then commits a serious crime that results in you being unregistered, they'll then notify everyone who you work with telling them this. So if you are an employer, you'll probably need to start registering new employees from the 12th October 2009 and getting your old ones through the system in the five years after that. IF you are an employee then once you're registered you're registered, and you shouldn't have to worry about it again and, unlike CRB's, shouldn't have to go through the process again and again (though they don't replace CRB's, CRB's will still be the only way to get all their criminal record as opposed to just a straight "yes or no" if they can work with kids).There's a super useful document online with questions and answers, but it's only in a word doc format, so I've copied it and saved it as an html file here