The Ministry Of Truth

The fallout from the leaked BNP membership list fiasco continues.

The Register reports that the Wikileaks website buckled last week under the strain of up to 70 requests per second to download the list – more than 2,000,000 requests in the 24 hours after Wikileaks posted the leaked database.

While that might initially seem fanciful, I think I can say it’s probably not complete hooey.

A few weeks ago, I installed at the Ministry’s entrance a traffic-monitoring service called Woopra.  (It’s fantastic, by the way, and I shall come back to it again in a few days.)

Woopra tells me that on 19 November, the day on which I had an active direct link to the relevant Wikileaks page, traffic to the Ministry increased by 975% from the previous fairly average day.

96% of visitors that day were first time visitors to the Ministry since Woopra went live here.

We’re still talking very small numbers – just 130 in total last Wednesday – but the salient point is that I do not advertise or publicise the Ministry at all apart from to personal contacts.  Never have and never will.

Visitors other than the Google, MSN and Yahoo! robots are therefore ordinarily either my friends or family, or are directed here after a specific Google search – and indeed, more than 95% of the Ministry’s visitors last Wednesday came here from google.com, google.co.uk or google.ie.

(Most of the searches, incidentally, were for the name of the “lecturer in human rights” who appears on the list and whom I initially named.)

Although it fell back sharply, traffic was still at more than double its normal level the next day, despite me taking down the man’s name and the direct link to the database early on Thursday morning.

So if one tiny little site on the edge of the t’Internet like the Ministry can see such a spike in traffic simply by directing people to Wikileaks, it’s not too hard to imagine the cumulative effect of the coverage of the story by sites like those of The Guardian and The Register.

It’s also a frightening reminder of the power of Google, but that’s another story.

If I fall ill, I want to be taken to a hospital belonging to one of the following NHS Trusts:

• Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust
• Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
• Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust
• St Helen’s and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust

The Healthcare Commission has recently conducted unannounced, spot check inspections of 51 NHS Trusts (about a third of the total) and found that only the five in the above list fully met hygiene and cleanliness standards designed to minimise outbreaks of MRSA, C.difficile and the like.

Other highlights of the inspection report:

• at three Trusts, Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust, Ipswich Hospitals NHS Trust and Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Trust, serious breaches of the hygiene code were found and improvement notices were issued “to safeguard patients”
• more than half of Trusts were failing to keep all areas clean and well-maintained
• 20% of Trusts did not properly comply with rules on decontamination of instruments and equipment used with patients
• one in eight Trusts had inadequate isolation facilities for infected patients

So to recap: more than 90% of our hospitals are unclean.

One more time so we don’t miss the point: almost all the hospitals in the fifth richest country on Earth are dirty.

This is not news to me.  About six weeks ago my father was hospitalised with an MRSA infection.  In fairness, his local hospital did manage to find a side room for him in an attempt to isolate the infection and even allocated an adjacent lavatory for his exclusive use.

However, they undermined these steps by cleaning his side room precisely once during his eight day stay and failing in any discernible attempt to police use of the lavatory, which was in almost constant use by other patients and their visitors.  Particularly worrying was when I left my father’s room at the end of one visit to find a hospital worker emerging from that lavatory and zipping up his fly as he did so.

Barely one in three of the fellow visitors I saw wandering on and off the ward during this period bothered to use the disinfectant gel dispensers on the corridor leading to and from the ward.

Today – Monday 24 November 2008 – is, of course, a good day to bury this kind of bad news while Arrivederci Gordon and Captain Darling distract attention with some sleight of hand over tax.

It’s another indication of the cluelessness of this administration that they are ramping up the froth levels over a potential increase in the top rate of income tax for the highest earning one percent of the population rather than deal with the basic, bread-and-butter issues that I still believe matter most to voters.

Unemployment is on the rise and the government accepts it needs to stimulate the economy and create jobs.  Well, how about buying some mops and disinfectant and employing a few people to clean the fucking hospitals?

11½ years and they still don’t get it.  Jesus wept.

So good I had to post this on both sites.

Two things.

First, Google has announced a deal under which it is hosting and making available the millions of photographs from the past 150+ years that comprise the Time-Life archive.  Special landing page here, or or add “source:life” to any Google Image search to search only the Time-Life archive (eg “computer source:life”).  Be prepared to lose the next hour of your life.

Second, I think we’ve all known what to expect from the forthcoming Guns n’ Roses album.  Yet in one gorgeous opening paragraph Popdose’s Jeff Vrabel shoves Chinese Democracy even further up Axl’s hole than the Minister ever imagined possible…

Unless you’ve spent a lot of time in the company of William Shatner, Chinese Democracy will likely be one of the most ridiculous audio recordings you ever come across. It is sprawling and stupid and ludicrous and hilarious and will make you shoot milk out of your nose and cringe and it is not very good and sometimes extremely terrible, and just when you think things cannot possibly get any more extraordinarily strange, that’s when Axl Rose drops the MLK sample on you.

Glorious.

I’ve never said it before and I doubt I’ll say it again but, despite the initial hilarity of the situation, I do have some sympathy with the British National Party over the leaking of its membership list.

Few things wind the Minister up as much as unsolicited telephone sales calls that interrupt his dinner.  I have reported a few organisations to the Information Commissioner for disturbing my lobster thermador/cheese-on-toast for using my personal data without my consent.

While I am currently unaffiliated I have been, variously, a member of the Student Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and Socialist Alliance.  I am not ashamed of any of that – unlike, I suspect, many of the 10,000 on the BNP list.  But nor was it up to a disaffected member of any of those organisations to declare my affiliation to the world without my permission.

Whether we like it or not the British National Party is a legitimate political party.  It is not proscribed;  membership is not illegal.  I won’t be so crass as to quote Evelyn Beatrice Hall but, despite the efforts of a succession of idiotic Home Secretaries, it still remains lawful in 2008 Britain to subscribe to views that are abhorrent to anybody with half-an-inch of brain.

It remained lawful to be a member of the National Front throughout the 1970s.

It remained lawful to be a member of Sinn Fein throughout the 1980s.

It remained lawful to be a member of the Conservative Party throughout the 1990s.

Some people may have found some or all of those memberships to be embarrassing and/or difficult to explain away, but they nevertheless had the right to exercise their political freedom.

The only justification for the leak is in respect of those people performing public-facing roles that are incompatible with membership of a racist organisation.  So if the police force has deemed it unacceptable for an officer to be a member of the BNP, then the disclosure of the names of serving police officers who are paid-up BNP members in contravention of their terms and conditions of employment arguably has some merit on the grounds of public interest.  The same is potentially true for teachers, doctors, those involved in the criminal justice system and so on.

It is, however, stretching credulity for the same to be said to be true of graphic designers in Poole, Dorset (or whatever) or the children of simpletons who took out ‘family’ membership.

It is interesting (and heartening) to know just how few members the BNP actually has, though it would probably be equally interesting to learn just how few individual members the Labour and Tory parties have were their books laid open to similar public scrutiny.

That in itself, however, does not justify the mass invasion of the privacy and legal rights of the majority of people in the membership database – ordinary citizens.

I am a hypocrite.  I posted yesterday morning’s entry in the giddy rush of knee-jerk excitement at seeing the nasty racists get what is coming to them and without giving the matter due consideration.  In retrospect I should not have linked to the database and I am removing that link now (though the database itself remains accessible).

The initial reaction of most of the media has been similar to mine and, I contend, similarly ill-considered.

Save for those in public-facing roles, it does not matter whether you are or ever have been a member of the British National Party.  What matters is what you say, what you do and how you live your life: for that, the BNP 10,000 may warrant vilification – simply for carrying a membership card, they do not.

Whatever “we” are, we are not Salem and the Ministry is not the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

The British National Party’s membership list has been published.

The Minister would never condone breaking the law – not even the Data Protection Act – but the list has been helpfully reproduced by the admirable folk at Wikileaks.

If you want to see how many of your neighbours and colleagues are nasty little racists, you can download an Excel file here [link removed].

22 serving and former policemen.  Whodathunkit, eh?

Four solicitors/retired solicitors and one trainee solicitor.  Nice.

No obvious Tory frontbenchers.

And 48 people from the Minister’s hometown, The Whitest Town In The United Kingdom™.

I was particularly struck by the inclusion of [name removed], described as a “lecturer in human rights/data protection”.

You couldn’t make it up.

(On that point: no, Richard Littlejohn’s name does not appear on the list.)

On Saturday I was dispirited to read on the front page of Times Online a small article by David Leppard headlined ‘Sneak’ plan for mandatory ID cards.

Being the saddo I am I wanted to look at the bill to which the article referred, so I just did a search for the article using the Times Online website’s own search facility.

No sign of it under searches for ‘ID cards’, ‘identity cards’ or ‘David Leppard’.

Yet it’s still there (via Google News) or if you know the direct URL, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5162669.ece

How curious.

Surely The Thunderer isn’t censoring itself, having inadvertently drawn attention to a matter on which the Tories remain curiously silent when not openly schizophrenic…?

Anyway, one more time in full for those with a tendency towards depression:

‘Sneak’ plan for mandatory ID cards
David Leppard

Ministers have been accused of trying to introduce compulsory identity cards through the back door, despite promises that people will not have to carry them.

Lawyers at Liberty, the civil liberties group, say that little noticed clauses in the draft immigration and citizenship bill introduce new powers to make people produce identity documents or face arrest. The bill is expected to be in the Queen’s speech next month.

At issue is a clause in the bill which says that anyone who is to be examined by an immigration officer “must produce a valid identity document if required to do so”. Failure to produce an identity card or otherwise prove identity will become a criminal offence. At present, producing a passport counts as proof of identity.

It had been thought the clauses applied only to people entering the UK at ports.

But Liberty says a separate clause in the bill extends powers of examination to new categories of people. They include anyone in the UK — whether a British citizen or not — who has ever left the country.

Isabella Sankey, Liberty’s policy officer, said: “Immigration law is being used as a cloak to introduce measures that would effectively compel us all to carry ID cards. Under these paranoid proposals if you have ever set foot outside the UK you could be required, at any time, to prove your identity and nationality.”

The Home Office disputed Liberty’s reading of the bill. A spokesman said: “The bill does not contain legislation that will require UK citizens to be issued with compulsory ID cards. It clearly states that valid identity documents must be produced on request to maintain effective immigration control.”

Launch of the ID cards scheme begins next week when marriage visa holders and non-European Union students will be the first recipients.

Airside workers at some airports will then be issued with cards — a move opposed by pilots’ unions and related groups.

The cards were proposed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America. Opponents say they are expensive, unnecessary and infringe on human rights.

Cards will carry a picture and security chip containing biometric data.

According to the Minister’s Wife (who doesn’t visit the Ministry, claiming she can’t remember the URL despite it appearing prominently on three of the Minister’s most worn t-shirts), the third series of 30 Rock is tanking in the ratings and last week’s episode – featuring the Sainted-To-The-Minister’s-Wife Jennifer Aniston – spectacularly underperformed.

According to the t’Internet, last week’s episode of 30 Rock pulled in 7,500,000 viewers – down marginally from the previous week, but up 20% on the average for the show’s first series.

It all depends upon how you read the tea leaves, doesn’t it?

My employer’s proxy server is based in California so I now have access to the US iTunes Store, meaning I’m watching the third series in real time, before any of the second series has aired on Channel Five.

The first couple of episodes seemed weaker than usual (though that may be because I’d missed an entire series of narrative arc) but last week’s show was razor sharp, to wit this exchange between Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, who had just revealed he had had sex in a meat locker with Ms. Aniston’s character:

LEMON: What is it with you men?  You’re like junkies.  Why can’t you just say no?

DONAGHY: Lemon, let me explain something that you could have no way of knowing.  Emotionally unstable women are… [he pauses, raising his hands] FANTASTIC in the sack.  I mean, their self-loathing translates into… [he gazes into the distance and smiles briefly to himself.]  Never mind.

Still miles better than anything else on my iPhone.

I have a new website.

It remains a work in progress but release version 1.0 may be viewed here.

I am keen to stress that its creation and existence should not be considered an endorsement of its subject.

And SMIP #10 should be along any day now, by the way.

I really should switch back to decaffeinated.

David, who lives in a Ministry like this?  It’s over to you.

Typealyzer gets its Myers-Briggs mumbo-jumbo cribsheet out and says:

The analysis indicates that the author of minitrue.co.uk/wordpress is of the type:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. 

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Genderanalyzer says:

We think minitrue.co.uk/wordpress is written by a man (72%).

(Not sure whether this means that the Minister is 72% male or that they are 72% certain the Minister is male.)

The Blog Readability Test states:

This blog’s reading level: COLLEGE (UNDERGRAD)

How Much Is Your Blog Worth? concludes:

Your blog, minitrue.co.uk/wordpress, is worth $0.00

At least one of these is soul-crushingly accurate.