It turns out that until the 14th of July we we’re living in a Anti-Social dispersal area which ment that the police had the power to give “a direction requiring the persons in the group to disperse” for a group of two or more (i.e anyone). and if you refused you would get

(a) a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale (£2,500), or
(b) imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months,

So as far as i could tell if a police officer stopped Ruth, Daisy and Henry in the street and told them to disperse - there refusal (because they would refuse) would result in either 3 months or £2,500. I’ve read the legistation and I don’t see how you appeal against any of this.Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. really are anit-social.

it should also be noted that it was the 13th July - the last day of the order - when our street was filled with police because people where drunk and throwing vases at each other. arguably the removal of the order has made the area safer,

I’ve found the merseyside police newsletter that tells me about the order although it really doesn’t tell me much, and all that did is got me worked up about that stupid flashing smiling speed sign.

Surely it’s more of a distraction having a flashing face by the side of the road?. We went the Isle of Wight last month and they’ve removed speed bumps / chicanes and replaced them with speed signs - which don’t flash and smile at you - and that works. not smiley happy faces for me to look at while I hit the man on the bike!!!

grrr arggg…

Is it better to:

a) tell them you don’t use electricity

b) say “we’ve got all the electricity we need. we’ve ran out of places to put it”

because saying I don’t care/change on the doorstep/believe you doesn’t work.

We don’t actually shop much in the real ASDA. Daisy is at that age, where keeping her under control in the shops is more that it’s worth; so we do most of the shopping on-line. This week, through the usual reasons of busyness and tiredness, we hadn’t done an on-line shop. So I did a quick ASDA blast yesterday morning.

Now It wasn’t that long ago that we use to take bags to ASDA when we shopped. Trying to persuade the checkout assistant to let you use your own bags took some doing, there was no where to recycle the bags you did use and they would be positively throwing the bags at you as you packed.

Yesterday: Either the policy has totally shifted, or I got a fascist checkout woman. But when I refused to by the 5p bags-for-life, I nearly got thrown out the shop. I didn’t really see the point, we only do a real ASDA shop once every three months, and you can’t use them on-line (where they will happily use a bag per yoghurt).

Then I got told off for not filling a plastic bag enough. I rather foolishly thought it wise not to put fruit and veg in the same bag as raw meat. but apparently if I do insist on destroying the planet I should at least do it with ripped plastic bags and cross contamination of foodstuffs.

Going Green

The world does appare to be changing; where a few years ago we were collecting all our tins in boxes, driving to the back of an empty car-park and resolutely sorting out our glass colours, we can now get the council to do it for us. ASDA (and the others) are reducing the number of bags they use; which can only be seen as a good thing. It’s just we where somewhat bullied out of the recycling habit.

I suppose I should be happy, stop moaning and remember how hard it use to be - It’s my in-built dislike for being told what to do that’s making me upset. Next time I might just unpack all the food on the conveyor belt and carry it back to the car in my hemp ruck sack.

One thing you notice when you work in the public sector, is the love of league tables. If something can be measured then it is (sometime if it can’t we still try). and if you have a measure for something then you can put them all together in a league table.

Being web doesn’t excuse you from this league table obsession, in-fact it’s all automated. thanks to sitemorse - A company who have realised that measuring things is one thing. put them in a league table and you’ve got the public sector hooked, it doesn’t really matter how or what you measure.

Sitemorse measure the accessibility, function, code, performance and something else* of a website, every month they do this for all local goverment websites and make a league table. Liverpool.gov.uk was first once, and then it wasn’t nothing changed but the scores did. Over the last few months it’s been quite low [for us]. Mainly because Sitemorse a company who measure websites, decided that the way MessageLabs a company who handle email didn’t do it they way they thought they should- this ment our website had poor performance.

We talked to Sitemorse, and we talked to MessageLabs and came to the conclusion that changing the email system for a league table is silly - so we didn’t.

This month liverpool.gov.uk is 32nd. We haven’t changed anything. infact according to sitemorse it’s worse than last month, but we’ve gone up. It’s all very odd and it might sound like sour-grapes; but we (the webteam) don’t care any more about this league table.

We care about the quality of the site. but not about how it performed for a few hours one day at some point in the month (you get marked down if sites you link to are down during the test… a bit hard to control).

Of course a lot of this highlights the silliness of league tables and the supposed choice they offer people, but if you live in Liverpool, what use is it for you to go to South Bedfordshire website to find out about your leisure centres?

“so that’s why Liverpool got slated by the audit commission“

Sitemorse have recently started branching out and now do league tables for banks, and news sites. I wish them luck, but who is going to change there bank because the website isn’t top of a league table?

*none of this mesures how easy it is to find or do things on the site.

One thing that winds me up, news articles about how ‘trendy new technology X or something people do because they like it’ is costing the UK economy ?N billion pounds.

I hate these so called news stories for two reasons.

1. there not news there press releases. almost always these stories come from some survey of British companies and are conducted by a firm who surprise surprise have a way to stop people doing the thing that it costs us so dearly.
2. they reinforce the idea that people are slackers who are looking for any excuse to stop work and waste time. we should all be working nonstop. Preferably in cages where we don’t get to see daylight and are expected to produce work continually with no break, oh sorry thats’ chickens. easy mistake.

Today the reason I am ranting is because “Facebook and MySpace a threat to Britain’s competitiveness?” and this costs

?6.5 billion per annum, calculated in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage required to keep our friends and contacts informed on our latest mood swings and whereabouts.

and you’ll never guess what.. Global Secure Systems, the people who commisioned the survey have some software that can stop people from accessing this evil.

the story that’s never written is how much it costs the UK economy when all your staff start behaving like twelve year olds because that’s how you are treating them.

Or the cost to the UK economy in your staff spending time trying to circumvent the measures you put in place, and news flash there will always be a way around what ever you do. because no matter how good the software; your IT department will always go around it. I.T may be all for blocking stuff, but of course they don’t mean for themselves - and this leads to a black market of tricks to bypass the blocks. how much do you think all that costs?

now go give your boss 1.4p for reading this