I think Dianne Abbot is as racist as I am black. Which I’m not. And there ends the amount of opinion I’m allowed to have about the matter, as a white person, except to say that I think it’s telling that the media only seems to take notice of a black woman’s opinion under these circumstances.

So instead I’m going to tackle a side issue. The gate suffix.

Watergate was an actual place. It was not a scandal about water. Therefore, scandals should only be allowed to be a “gate” when a word with the gate suffix is an actual real word. Not just appended to any old word.

To help with this I have provided some examples below. Enjoy.

Police screw up Stephen Lawrence case. InvestiGate

The wife said “turn left”, but claims she said “right”. We’re referring to the incident as navigate.

I saw a copper kick a man in an already broken leg, papers are calling it castiGate

Rebecca Black was accused of lip-syncing, The scandal is being called FriGate

MP’s found smoking in the House of Commons. FumiGate

Footballer in lovechild shocker. surroGate

MP’s accused of not hiring minorities in segreGate scandal

Churches being forced to use budget roofing materials after new lead tax. corruGate.

Columbus mislabels native Americans after missing India and landing in America in a scandal called “circumnaviGate”

Fury as President tries to close the deficit by selling one of the states. DeleGate

MP caught buying “sexual enhancement products”. ElonGate

Fluoride being added to water supplies. ColGate (HT @mmeguillotine)

… The MP denied he has proposed to his mistress. Papers are calling it neGate

An MP was found in possession of bestiality pornography, it’s being called tailGate

There have been allegations of corruption of the watergate hotel. Papers are calling it “Nixon resigns shock”

I’ve written loads of these, I’m getting tired now. It’ll be called. defatiGate

But at the rate I’m going some people will call it profliGate

There’s just too many, as if someone opened a floodGate

That’s it, I’m addicted to “-Gate”. I’ll call this condition gate-AHOLIC

Here are some more words ending in gate. See how many you can do.

aggregate
abjugate.
Ablegate.
Abligate
abnegate
Abrogate
abrogate
Adjugate.
Adrogate
Alligate
arrogate
Bijugate
centrifugate
congregate
delegate
Deligate
Denegate
Derogate
divagate
Evulgate
Indagate
Irrigate
Irrugate
instigate
interrogate
Levigate
lichgate
Litigate
lychgate
mitigate
Obligate
Obrogate
propagate
relegate
Runagate
subjugate

As much as I hate -gate, I’d love to see one of those words in a Sun headline.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove is stamping his personal beliefs on his department, education. Our schools are all being sent a special “anniversary edition” of the King James Bible, with a forward writhed by Gove himself. It’s bad enough when bands re-issue old albums, but for a government to re-issue a bible? What you have here, is a government issue bible, being sent, unsolicited, to all schools, regardless of their wishes, the beliefs of the pupils, the beliefs of the teachers and at presumably great cost, as they are having to print their own editions of this bible. Of course this fits naturally with Cameron’s vision of a big society, because not enough charity groups try to give bibles to impressionable young children as it is, so it’s vital that the government steps in and helps here. I can’t think of a better use of that money or resource.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/25/michael-gove-king-james-bible

As a rebranding exercise, it seems misguided. I’m not sure what’s worse, Nasty Party or Creepy Party. At least I could trust the Nasty Party not to be up a tree with a pack of doughnuts and a pari of binoculars (unlike Labour). As it stands I’m had expecting them to do something dodgy like force job seekers to work for multi billion companies like Tesco under threat of losing their job seekers allowance if they don’t. Oh, wait. Because we all know business’are hurting and need our help, especially Tesco’s. And there’s nothing that is more urgent in this country than stacking those shelves that job seekers could be doing instead? No? Everything good? Lovely. I guess we’ve nothing to worry about then, as Tesco’s empty shelves are the nations most pressing issue. Good job Cameron et al. Almost makes me wish I’d voted for you. Oh wait, thanks to Nick Clegg I sort of did….

It’s amazing to see the outpouring of tributes for him on twitter. Whatever side of the technology fence people sit on, everyone seems to recognise his genius and vision. It’s not often we get a world changer among us, it happens once or twice in a generation. Steve Jobs was a world changer.

I think part of what bought people to Apple products was Steve’s passion. He sucked people in. We were mesmerised in a way; people called it the “Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field”. The first bit of Apple gear I bought was a Mac Mini in 2005, after seeing Steve announce OS X 10.4 Tiger. Technical aspects aside, what Steve seemed to be saying was: “that bit of frustrating technology you are wrestling with now? It doesn’t have to be this way. It can work for you, it can make your life easier, not just different.”

I often come across as anti capitalist. I’m not really, I’m just anti not making the world a better place. Anti doing something you are not passionate about. It’s great to see someone actually get to live that. And that’s why it’s so very sad to lose him.

Steve’s thoughts on death start at 9:10, but the whole thing is very worth watching.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Think different.

To be honest, I should have walked away the moment Ronnie Corbett walked on screen.

DVD Cover Burke & Hare

Part of the trouble with this is that it was billed as dark comedy and the set guys did a great job on creating an atmospheric setting. It looked like dark comedy, It was billed as a dark comedy. When Simon Pegg interviewed about it, he called it a dark comedy. It was not a dark comedy. Pegg and Serkis play the lead roles as blundering idiots. There is nothing sinister or clever about them to make this work as a dark comedy. Their motives are mere opportunism and need of money. For this to work they need to be likeable, which they are not. Pegg’s character does it for a girl. Trying to insert a romantic comedy plot into this diverted a lot away from the actual story, and meant that Burke and Hare did very little actual body finding/acquiring. I think Simon Pegg just fancied Isla Fisher.

If it was a dark comedy, why did one of the militia feel the need to fall over in every scene in a comedy manner? The one that wasn’t Corbett or Reece Shearsmith. In a grave, fainting at any given opportunity, just generally throwing himself on the floor when he had nothing to say. Everytime he was on screen. From what I can tell, the Hammer Horror version was less cheesy. The best think you can do with this film is play a drinking game with “spot the cameo”. Bill Bailey, Christopher Lee, Stephen Merchant, Reece Shearsmith, Paul Whitehouse and Michael Winner to name a few.

As with all of Simon Pegg’s recent movies, I go into them with hope, but end up simply bored. I really hope “Paul” is better, but I may end up giving it a miss to preserve the memory of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead.

1 Stolen Cadaver out of 5.

During the riots we had 24 hour news on TV in my house. They were reporting predominately about London, and barely ever mentioned the riots outside of London. The bits they did report from London were repeated on an endless loop, often excluding new breaking news. In short, we knew something bad was happening, but not precisely what, or where. As I live in Bristol I wanted to know what was happening in my city, were we safe, would my work still be there tomorrow, things like that.
So I did what many people did, I turned to Twitter for news. Crowd-sourcing news and information is one of Twitter’s massive strengths. There were people setting up riot hashtags letting people know what trouble areas to avoid. Even the police were using Twitter accounts to reassure, and inform people of what was happening.
Twitter was extremely valuable to countless people all over the country, and did far more good than harm. We even got to see the Big Society in action, there was a #riotcleanup hashtag and accounts (like @bristolriots) where people organised, while the riots were still happening, hundreds of people to get together and move in first thing in the morning to cleanup their communities.
This must have been very distressing for Cameron. The Big Society was in action in two different ways. Both as a news source and as a cleanup operation. Without him, and more damningly, without the private sector. People were doing it, for themselves, by themselves, with no money changing hands. This is not his vision of modern Britain!
Cameron is a highly manipulative, devious and cunning person. The Big Society was his way of trying to sell an emotion and an ideal, without really understanding that emotion. Empathy, compassion, community and caring. Like all effective psychopath’s he’s studied people’s behaviour. He knows what his reaction probably should be, and he knows what people want to hear, but he has no idea how to do it or even why he should.

Wait, are you saying Cameron’s a psychopath?

Psychopath, sociopath, I’m not pretending I’m qualified to say. But, in my opinion, yes, most probably. Psychopaths often end up in positions of power due to their lack of empathy and their cunning, and manipulative tendencies. I’d say that Thatcher, Blair and Cameron are all likely contenders. Clegg isn’t, he’s too weak and would never side with someone so domineering if he was.

What does this have to do with Twitter?

I’m getting off the point. Cameron reacted very poorly to all this. For him to take his eye off the ball like this is very unusual. He spend the first few days of the riots in a villa in Tuscany on holiday, and when he eventually showed up, realised that he had massively underestimated what was going on and had to be seen to be making strong decisions. Social media is an easy target, but shutting down people’s communication is knee jerk and reactionary. It wont solve anything. You might as well shut down phone lines and the postal service. The riots would have happened without social media, they always have before.

It’s not that simple though, is it?

No. I think it’s simpler. It’s revenge. It’s personal.

During the phone hacking scandal recently, much of the story and many of the new developments broke on Twitter. When information breaks out on there you can’t stop it, eventually the mainstream media is forced to recognise it, even though they were sometimes days late with the news. Given that Murdoch controls much of the news here, the story would have been ignored until it went away if it were not for Twitter, and the work of The Guardian. Twitter’s role in keeping the scandal on the news agenda was huge. This caused David Cameron massive embarrassment and has threatened his premiership. It could still bring him down. He has a personal axe to grind with Twitter so this sort of kick back is really not surprising. He’s been handed a situation where he can take a swipe at the social movement that’s caused him the most hurt yet, and he may well try and go for it. Right now he’s doing a cost, benefit analysis (he is after all, a Tory). I expect he’ll realise he has too much to lose and not enough to gain.

To overuse a poker metaphor’s: The News of the World fiasco left Cameron severely short stacked. He only has enough chips left to play one or two more hands. It takes a weak player to wait until their blinds come up and they are forced all in on an unseen hand, and he doesn’t want to appear weak. He’s trying to work out whether he can shove all in now on a hand with a little potential, or wait for the next uncertain one. He should fold this one. He’s not that short stacked. Not quite yet.

All photos by me taken at Camp Bestival 2011.

To celebrate a week of Veganism, I visited the world capital of hippies and vegans – Glastonbury. Surely, in Glastonbury of all places I’ll be able to find something to eat. Especially in a cafe/restaurant. We ended up in The Blue Note Cafe, unfortunately the choice was limited to burger or burger. I had the burger. A schnitzel burger. A schnitzel burger takes entirely exactly like a burnt turkey burger. Apparently it’s world famous also, so if that’s the best, I wont be trying others.
Glastonbury has an “ethical supermarket” everything in it is vegetarian or vegan. Including a vegan pepperoni pizza. At £5 though, too pricy. They even have vegan washing liquid. It doesn’t come in bottles, you pump your own.

I have also been harassing supermarkets. Sainsbury’s provide a comprehensive list online of vegan suitable foods. Well done them.

Morissons tell you to read the packet. Thanks for that.
Asda think it’s a nice idea, and point out that they label vegetarian stuff. I agree with you, if our products are labelled with a logo like our vegetarian food, it would make shopping easier. Great. They do have a two year old list. It’s better than nothing, but it’s definitely incomplete, and can’t be relied on.
Waitrose don’t have any info in store, or in electronic format, but have promised to post(!) me a copy. Presumably they will print off their computer first…
Tesco are slow to respond to emails.
As are Lidl.
Aldi don’t provide an email contact, snail mail only.
I have found this http://www.animalfreeshopper.com which is great, but I’m not sure it’s very mobile friendly, especially in supermarkets where there is often poor signal.

The work canteen is never going to offer anything, beyond a watery and undercooked baked potato with baked beans. I need to find something I can bring with me, that doesn’t need heating, that I can add to this. I currently have beans and microwave rice in my locker. They don’t make a hugely appealing combination.

The Vegan society has got back to me and I have a mentor. Very exciting. I will email him later and hopefully get some good ideas/guidance.

My wife has started a vegan blog, just for vegan stuff. Have a look.
[1] I’m starting to really miss bacon!
[2] yes I watched the apprentice. I need something to make me angry occasionally.

I am almost constantly hungry. I’m putting this down to portion sizes. For some reason, eating a vegan diet has made my portion sizes smaller. I have made my way through almost a whole bag of apples throughout the day, but it’s not seeming to make a difference.
I’m thinking about food all the time. That’s not healthy, hopefully it’s just part of the newness of this.

I have learned a few key things. Coffee is much better black than with rice milk. Rice milk tastes much better on cereal when shaken properly. Work canteens are woefully inadequate at providing vegan options.
This was the only option available to me today. It was bland and unfilling. I did have the option of having chips instead of the potato. I’m not sure changing the shape of a food counts as an option.

I am going out tonight[1], to see Richard Herring performing Christ on a Bike at the Comedy Box/Tobacco Factory in Bristol (review later!). This presents me with my first “eating out” challenge. The Tobacco Factory is surrounded by pizza places, kebab shops and fish’n'chips shops. Eating a bag of chips feels like cheating and is just a carb fest. There is an Aldi next door and a Tesco extra up the road.
I am trying to avoid the situation altogether. I have had some piri humous on toast and a soya yoghurt. But the gig wont finish for another 5 hours.

In short, it’s not going great. I’m struggling to think of things that I can eat, variety is going to be tricky. Especially while at work and out. What I am eating isn’t filling me.

Also, as is usual for me, I have managed to set myself a large and doomed to failure project to go alongside this large lifestyle change. As usual, it involves learning an entirely new skill[2]. If I’m going to fail, I’m going to do it properly.

I don’t want to quit through just getting annoyed with it. I don’t want to quit because I’ve got bored of the options available. I need to find a few healthy vegan snacks that are actually filling. Any suggestions?

[1] Melanie, I did tell you about this, repeatedly, and most recently last night. I wont be home until late.

Yes.

Yes it is.

It IS on the calendar.

Go and check if you like.

See?

No I didn’t just add it. I booked the ticket last December!

[2] An iOS app. Hopefully more details later.

I’ve thought about this for a while, one word kept going round and round in my head. Objecting loundly and effectively.

Bacon.

Dammit.

I have three reasons for doing this, health, support for my wife, and science.

Mainly science.[2]

I have no ethical problems with eating meat. As a species, we have practical issues with eating meat. The whole land air deal. But eating meat isnatural and part of the food chain. This is not to save the planet, or animals or for guilt reasons.

I have relatively unique eating habits. At home my wife is returning to veganism and has been a strict vegetarian all her life. That will make the process easier, BUT we have two small children.
They are not vegan. Or vegetarian. That’s a choice they can make later in life if they want. It’s not healthy for them to cut meat and dairy. So weneed to prepare meals that can be both vegan and normal.
At work I work long shifts. It’s normal for me to eat all three meals in a day at work. Food preparation facilities are a microwave, a kettle, a toaster and a fridge. During the weekday days, there is a canteen. I cannot leave things in the fridge as they will be “borrowed”. I have a small locker in which I can store non perishables.
I will not eat mushrooms.

The pledge
I have signed up for the “Vegan Pledge” Apparently they will give me some advice and I’ll get a mentor. Practical advice will be really useful here!

My hypothesis. I will be unable to eat a Vegan diet given my eratic and complicated earing and food preparation requirements.
Secondairy[3] hypothesis. The effort, cost and lack of variety involved will make veganism long term unacceptable to me.[4]

Day 1.

The experiment started today at midday. It’s almost a snap decision, and I’ve had a few cups of coffee with cows milk this morning. And a biscuit.

On my lunch break I went to Sainsbury’s. I thought for day one I would have toast with soup, one of those new covent garden ones. The fancy nice ones.
All contain milk.
On investigation, their special nutrition page is not helpful. It lists vegetarian. Itlists gluten free, wheat free, dairy free [5] milk free [6] and garlic free [7], but doesn’t list, or even mention vegan.

I ended up buying this.

Innocent veg pot.
Rice milk.
Soya spread
spicy houmous
Soya yoghurt
Apples
Bread.
Cost £11.95 Ouch. Admittedly there are some things in there that should last several days, it seems like a lot for a sandwich, apples and microwave vegetables. This is not sustainable and will hopefully improve over time.

Here is my first[8] vegan meal.

One hour later, I’m hungrier than before. I did however skip breakfast, have been up since 5:30am and it’s now 16:30.

Coffee with rice milk looks like gravy. It tastes strange. As giving up coffee is out, I may have to start drinking it plain black.

Old Stock
In my cupboard I have a stash of food. What out of it will I be able to eat?

Definitely not vegan.
Princes hot pots (one chicken, one beef)
Cheese and bacon pasta.
Powdered milk.
Macaroni cheese (also one year out of date)

The ones I had to check, that were ok and were not labelled as such.
Pepsi Max Apparently vegan, but full of crap. I’ll probably cut these out.
Baked beans. Labelled as vegetarian, the website also included vegans, and gluten free.

The ones I had to check and were ok and am still not sure about. (any help in the comments appreciated)
Oats so simple (original). Contains Quaker Rolled Oats[9], Stabiliser: Lecithin (soya) not labelled as anything, nothing on the website.
Peanut butter, contains peanuts, peanut oil, salt, dextrose. Labelled as vegetarian. not vegan.
Sainsbury’s Fruit and Fibre. I honestly can’t see anything wrong on the label, but labelled as vegetarian not vegan, no mention of anyting on the website, not even that it’s vegetarian.
Asda brown sauce. The website says vegetarian. I can’t see anything non vegan listed. Lets face it though, I only have this to put on bacon sandwiches.

The ones I had to check and were not vegan.
The super noodles[10] contain powdered milk.
The tomato soup, contains milk.

Day 1 thoughts
From the first day I’ve learnt that rice milk in coffee is nasty, and many products don’t label their food as vegan. This one is confusing, although I can see that some meat eaters find it offputting? Assume that vegan food is automatically weird? Either way, it’s going to make this project a lot harder.
I am also hungry, I still don’t know whether or not I can eat my cereal.

Finally, have some vegan comedy courtesy of the hilarious Myq Kaplan. here’s an iTunes link.

[1] Try is an important word here. As is fail.
[2] I’ve been playing Portal 2 all weekend.
[3] It’s a pun, not a spelling mistake.
[4] I don’t really have a secondary hypothesis, but I really wanted to use the secondairy joke.
[5] this includes chicken soup!
[6] apparently different to dairy free
[7] for vampires
[8] deliberately, I’m sure I’ve accidentally eaten vegan before. Almost certainly considering my wife’s diet.
[9] are they counting quakers as animals? is this why it doesn’t get an ok?
[10] not pictured, I can’t do everything here!

EDIT: Phew, just checked, Jack Daniels IS vegan!

If you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, is the saying so many politicians wheel out whenever they want to bring in some new draconian surveillance or database or police power. It’s so maddening to hear because the people who say it tend to believe steadfastly in the incorruptability of the people who enforce these powers.
The main problem with it, despite being flawed, is that it’s dangerously wrong. Innocent people hide things. Innocent people have things they don’t want others snooping through. It’s not a crime to have secrets, or privacy, and it’s not unreasonable to expect to be able to have and keep them.
Of course you can’t just make a law that states no one has any privacy anymore. But you can say it’s illegal not to comply with an official who needs information “for national security”. Of course, because it’s a national secret, you are not allowed to know why the information is needed, what it’s going to be used for and how it’s going to be kept. It’s a secret. Trust us, just like we don’t trust you.

Cory Doctorow is one of the internet’s big privacy advocates, a champion of free and open. He’s an editor of the endlessly fascinating blog BoingBoing (seriously, if you don’t have this in your RSS reader, you’re not using RSS properly, it has something for absolutely everyone in it) and an author. He also gives away his books. For free, under the condition that you are allowed to share it as far and wide as you like, as long as you don’t profit from it. He also has major publishing deals and sells the books that he also gives away. It sounds backwards, it sounds like it shouldn’t work. Yet it does. He seems to believe, like many people are starting to realise, that an artists biggest problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.

So, how does this relate to security, privacy and your rights? I’ve just finished reading one of his books, Little Brother. It’s an extraordinary book, in that it’s both a fast paced, gripping and relentless story, but also acts an introduction to hacking and security (personal and computer).

The story starts in a very near future. It’s about a 17 year olds personal fight for his freedom, for his liberty, for his friends against the system.The technology is no different to what we have now, but the surveillance laws are (slightly) more draconian. It’s important to the impact of the book, that it could very easily happen, right now. There is nothing in it that doesn’t either exist, or couldn’t exist with already existing technology. It’s not sci fi, more modern thriller.
The title “Little Brother” sets the books position as a counter point to George Orwell’s Big Brother from the book “1984″, but instead of a story about trying to survive, fighting back, taking on the big faceless government system. Marcus and a small group of friends are caught up in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack on their home city. In the confusion that follows they are arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and held in guantanamo bay like conditions. Upon his release Marcus swears vengance for his unjust treatment.

The book does a great job of addressing the “if you’ve got nothing to hide” BS. What do you have to lose? More than a guilty person. A guilty person has given up freedom, knows the consequences of his actions, and effectively surrenders them, they’ve made a choice, a trade, their actions for the consequences. An innocent has made no such choice, and therefore loses control and choice, and certainty. If someone is detaining you arbitarily, you have no way of knowing for how long, what rule they will come out with next, or how many times they will deny you your rights.

Over the last few years I’ve been turned off open source software and the open rights groups. I often find the attutude of a few people in that crowd so infuriating and petty that I got sick of the whole thing. It’s apparently very easy to come across as preachy, self righeous and snobbish on this subject, and it’s given me a bad attitude towards the whole subject, while losing sight of the actual important issues. This book has brought it all back to my attention with a bang. By the end of reading this book you will be wanting to rip the network cables from your computer until you get all your emails and web use encrypted. It even (just for a little bit mind) made me think I though trade in my iPhone for an Android and put Linux on my MacBook…

It’s fast paced, action packed, thoughtful, educational, just plain good read. The next time I recommend someone read 1984, I’ll be saying, “and also, definitely read Little Brother”

Links:
Download Cory Doctorow’s books.
Little Brother specifically and a download link, virtually every format going, kindle, sony, iBooks, plain text, html, the list goes on and an Amazon link if you want the dead tree version.
BoingBoing
OpenRightsGroup

Here’s a video of Cory delivering a talk on the issue of online privacy, social networks and the information we so freely give out for little to no return, with no guarantee of confidentiality at TED