Some bright spark running his franchise of Budgens thought it might be a good idea to pander to neo-labour’s crusade against drinking. Perhaps they hoped to receive some accolade for finding a new way to infringe civil liberties on a whimsical excuse. You can imagine now his smug joy at installing an expensive facial biometric scanning system. Soon they would be happily scanning customers that brought booze and sending their details off to Charton Ltd to be stored on a massive database. The the system would be beeping away, picking out young un’s and allowing adults to prove their age… or so he thought.. of course the only problem was it’s illegal. It might have been obvious that collecting information from minors’ without their permission breached the Data Protection Act, but in their zealous joy to stamp out the evil under age drinking they were blinded. Well my scoop is that following numerous complaints the Franchise that runs Budgens have now distanced themselves:

“The facial recognition equipment recently installed in this Budgens store was in no way commissioned by Musgrave Retail Partners GB but was put into place by the owner of the store.

He has agreed to remove his equipment.”

So it’s a small victory for civil liberties, and the common sense of those that run the Budgens franchise to pull this indivdual owner into line!

Well Carrot day is nearly upon us, i’ve been ticking off the days on my calander. Judging by the search engine hits there is a fair amount of interest in this fantastic day. Unfortunately I’ll be at work at 2pm so I’ll have to buy my carrots when I clock off. So save some for me! I’m getting in a large tub of hummus to dip my carrots in. Man this is going to be great.

Ok for sometime now I’ve been meaning to mention the Popular Front for the People’s Liberation of Discordia. This sketchy organization operates out of a nearby blog, yes the blogsphere does actually can be measured in geographical distances (although it’s yet to move over to the metric system). It is around 22 1/3 fathoms away, going deeper down. Not a surface feeder, on our pond. You’ve heard of pyschonaught (if you have lived well thus far), well this is the pyschodiver. This particular pyschodiver is liberating Discordia but from what or whom. Are evil forces afoot? Of course I’m far too disillusioned to care anymore. Maybe we will find out next week?

There was an interesting article in the independent this weekend about how a Morris side has been reinventing the tradition in the pagan style. This interests me not only because I dance Border Morris, but also because I have an interest in what some call Paganism. Anyone who studies Paganism will be aware that it comes from the Latin Paganus, meaning country dweller, rustic, which is ironic when you consider this side admits to having quite an ‘urban’ style. In effect what they are really doing is dancing in a neo-pagan style. Wiccan is perhaps the most prominent of neo-pagan traditions, it’s really become more of a religion or fashion statement. Its history dates back only the C20th and the likes of Gerald Gardner. The claim is that it’s a recreation of an unbroken pagan tradition dating back to the likes of the Celtic Druids. Unfortunately there is scant evidence of this claim of a lost goddess based spiritualism. Like the legend of Arthur it’s more romance than realty.

Morris dancing is in a similar situation. Most of the modern dancers were collected by a few Victorian collects such as Cecil Sharp, who painted their own particular brand of the tradition. Border Morris’ tradition is even more flakey, it largely being an invention of the 1970s folk revival. What we are able to claim is that across rural Britain there have always been different folk dances of different regional styles and traditions. There are other border sides such as the Widders, Wharfedale Wazygoose and Stone the Crows which are a lot less overtly Neo- Pagan, although they could be described as Paganus. From Cotwold to Northwest from Border to Rapper. The goth sides are nothing new with the Witchmen having danced in this style since the 80s. All stories grow and change as do all traditions and languages.

Modern Britain is a mixing pot of culture and I think it’s great that people are going out there and creating their own new styles. The danger is that you may end up with something along the lines of nu-rave, or as the Might Boosh say “Taking elements of the past, with elements of the future, to make something not quite as good as either”. Of course the excellent imagines village project shows that a new mix can produce fantastic results, Not having seen this team dance I couldn’t comment, the Witchmen however are excellent dancers!

Drawing deeply on the well of inspiration that is the featured items on Yahoo’s homepage… actually my sense of the world is becoming strangely affected by this site. Yahooification if you will. Well some bright spark has come up with a guide to describe us brits. It’s summation is uncannily accurate

“As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts,” it says.

Yep we are addicted to binge drinking. In fact we now only binge drink to fuel media stories about binge drinking, such is our depravity. Yahoo has it’s own binge drinking news page where you can keep track of the latest news from the front-line where stuck up neo-labour health ministers who need a decent shagging do battle against the uncouth Viking/Saxon/Celt hordes.

“Reserve is still a key national trait — attempting a conversation with a stranger “can be seen as tantamount to physical assault”, the guide says — and a person’s accent is the equivalent of a consumer brand.”

They obviously have only been to the south east. In Yorkshire you can’t get down the street with out a discussion on the various merits of whippets and pork pies.

“Social inequality is rife, too, as “a tiny aristocracy, who in some cases trace their roots to the Norman Conquest of the eleventh century, still own most of the land” and there is an attack on creeping materialism.”

Yep damn right, mostly european invaders make-up the aristocracy. We even tried a civil war and managed to cut one of the bastards heads off. We ended up with a complete religious nutjob leading us instead. Still Charly boy now does Duchy Originals that has helped absolve him of much ill contempt and Harry occasionaly dresses up as a Nazi which provides a good level of entertainment value

“The guide also rails against “identikit” provincial towns and “overpriced, under-funded public transport”.

Yea thanks for that tesco’s, I actually disagree about the public transport. There are now many first class companies providing dynamic transport solutions in a challenging and ever changing world ….

Foreign tourists are also warned that the English are “the most contradictory people imaginable”.

Aside from leprechauns

But the guide is not entirely negative, reserving a soft spot for the country’s love of animals, generosity to charities, irony, its openness to refugees, thriving arts and culture and the soothing quality of BBC Radio 4.

Soothing quality of Radio 4??? Has this person listened to John Humphreys grilling politicians in the morning? It’s like reality hitting you like a ton of bricks before the warm dreamy feeling has even left. Nietzsche would listen to the today program in a cold bath. The Archers theme music is about the only soothing thing about radio 4, reconnecting us with the joy of folk music.

Having only just recovered from the moral outrage that GTA IV invoked you can imagine the horror invoked by learning that young people who drink and take drugs are having more sex! Whilst this story is most likely designed to trigger outrage, I fear it also provides scientific proof that if you take drugs and drink lots you are more likely to get laid… People should be working to save up for patio extensions instead.

Gordon Brown seems determined to ignore the scientific advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and push for Cannabis to be re-classified as a class B. Instead he feels fit to pass on his critique of such reports by clamming the following:

“I don’t think that the previous studies took into account that so much of the cannabis on the streets is now of a lethal quality and we really have got to send out a message to young people - this is not acceptable.”

This statement contains a lie. Skunk is not of ‘lethal’ quality. A lethal quality is an amount that is by definition lethal. If this report had backed up his assertion which he believes to be particular popular then he would without doubt be heralding the scientific basis for his thinking.

I shall take immense joy in not voting for labour on Thursday, not that I was ever mislead into doing so in the first place.

Yorkshire NO2ID has created it’s own blog, by the look of things it seems to be in it’s early stages. Lets hope that it provides another useful source of information on the campaign to stop ID cards

What an example of our free and democractic society.

Following on from my rant in which I drew attention to the German Hacker group who managed to obtain copies of a German Ministers prints, NO2ID have teamed up with privacy International to offer a reward for anyone who can obtain the prints of Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith. The Government keeps claiming that Biometric technology is a ‘magic bullet’ that will help secure our Identities on the proposed National Identity Register. The sad reality is that fingerprints are easy to get hold of (from glasses, door knobs etc). Although they are unique to each of us, we also leave copies off them whether we go! Anyone can relatively easily create a mold from a print and use this mold to commit identity theft.  Any government minister who stands up and suggests that ID cards will secure our identities because they use biometric technology can now been seen as a complete laughing stock to the rest of the nation. It is reported that Brown’s prints are rumored to be found alongside Blair’s on a dossier for the Iraq war.. first to find it wins the prize.

You can download copies of the poster if you want to put some up yourself from Privacy International