Just as well that I wasn’t wanting a travelcard this morning – my local newsagent was “closed for filming”. And the street outside (Uxbridge Road) was adorned with a black-out tab, film crews, an awning with a production crew having coffee (and talking with American accents), and lots of cables running everywhere. The side street had three not-really-OB-but-similar trucks parked up it, with all the cables snaking along the gutter between the newsagents and the trucks.

I wonder what made them choose that particular newsagents to film in? This didn’t look like a low-budget film (but not quite a Hollywood blockbuster either), and Uxbridge Road wouldn’t be the first place I’d think of for a film set. (Well, it would, but that’s because I live there!)

Here’s a letter I quickly wrote and sent to the Home Office about the proposed identity card scheme. It’s not a comprehensive list of problems with the scheme, but I still think it’s important to take an active part in the process. Have a look at Samizdata for more details, and email identitycards (at) homeoffice.gsi (dot) gov.uk with your response.

Hi there,

I remain to be convinced that the government should carry out its proposed identity card scheme, and therefore I feel I must register my opposition to the scheme.

Unlike many objectors, I have no problem carrying a national idetity card, and I think such a scheme is both useful and desirable. However, there is absolutely *NO* need for a centralised database of personal information – a much better solution (and in my opinion, the only acceptable one) is to have the personal information stored only on the cards themselves, and a ‘checksum’ of the information stored centrally. This would allow my identity to be checked, but without having such an attractive and easily abused/misused central server. Hey, if SO19 can leave sniper position information in a petrol station, what makes the proposed database foolproof, both technically and socially?

Additionally, and quite importantly, I do not feel that the Home Office is responding appropriately to legitimate concerns about the system being raised by vast numbers of people. It is not enough to dismiss any opposing points of view put forward by civil liberty activists, purely through a difference in ideology. Where the concerns are raised the Home Office *must* respond to them. As has been so often stated, personal identity is a large and very important issue, and therefore any proposed solution should be subjected to, and pass, direct and detailed critiques.

Finally, the civil service and other branches of government (notably the Passport service, Inland Revenue and the NHS) have a dispicable record of wasting vast amounts of taxpayer money on ill-concieved IT projects. I see nothing to suggest that this will be anything other than the most recent one.

Thank you for your time.

Yours,
Andrew JR Allan

So there.

It’s amazing how cheap bus travel in central London has become – for me, at least – and it’s mostly thanks to the new Oystercard system. But I’m not sure that my experience is what Transport for London were intending…

When I left London a year ago, bus journeys outside Zone 1 cost 70p, and it was £1 if any part of the journey included the central zone. Since the Oystercard doesn’t know when you get off the bus, the fare basis was changed to just have one zone, and the cash prices were raised to a flat £1 wherever, whenever. To encourage everyone to use Oystercards, it’s only 70p with one – quite a large 30% discount, and so it’s what I use.

Unfortunately, lots of the oystercard readers on buses don’t work properly. Hang on, it’s not actually a misfortune, since whenever they aren’t working, I get a free bus ride. Which is about twice a week – so I reckon my average journey price must be pushing around 65p. That’s quite a contrast to Michael Jennings experience with the ticket machines in the heart of Zone 1. But given the large oystercard discounts I’m surprised that anyone still considers using cash, instead of adding a pre-pay, unregistered Oystercard to a wallet full of ‘loyalty’ cards.

Yesterday I encountered a new twist, when it comes to loading a bus at Shepherds Bush Green. A number of large bus routes start at the Green, and it’s a busy bus interchange, so quite often an entire double-decker-bus-load of people are trying to get on at once. In the past, everyone would file in in two columns, with those in the one away from the driver holding passes up for the driver to check. But now that most have Oystercards, it has turned into a single queue of people swiping past the only reader – slowing the whole process. So this particular driver was just waving everyone past, saying “just keep going, don’t worry about it”, and so I took his advice, and had a free trip.

Interestingly, Oystercards are supposed to speed up loading a bus, by removing the need for bus drivers to deal with cash (and TfL are aiming for cashless busses by next year). Someone didn’t do their research properly though – most people, especially during busy commuting times, rarely paid cash fares, and introducing Oystercards has slowed the verification of pass-holders. Perhaps the busses could have additional readers installed on the right-hand side of the entrance, and we can go back to the two-column loading routine.

I doubt that many of you out there will have heard about it, but some of the folks at Mozilla have realised that as well as making the best browser around, they need to get people to use it. So Asa Dotzler (one of the chief bigwigs at Mozilla started a campaign to get FireFox reviewed on download.com, confident that most of the reviews would be good ones. I share his confidence, and more importantly, I’ve added my (brief) review. Just over a day ago they were aiming for a whopping 1000 reviews – but they were already at 654 when I posted mine – wow.

So for those of you who use FireFox, congratulations on your choice of browser – maybe you want to help the campaign, and submit your review.

If you haven’t tried FireFox, then you’re missing out – pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, extensions, standards compliance, faster page display, more secure than the other leading browser (guess which one?)… and more. Most importantly, it’s open-source, and works on both Windows and Linux (and MacOSX), and it’s free, and it’s only a few megabytes in download size, so there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a go. You can get it from download.com, or have a look at the FireFox homepage.

Now here’s an idea for the folks at Mozilla – when it comes to version 1.0 later in the summer, they could try releasing it to a few employees, and then offer invites for other people to download it… – heh!

(If you review it – post a comment here and let me know. A review and a mention on your weblog (if you have one) might earn you a pint from me – now there’s an offer!)

So Gary’s computer is disappearing this weekend, which means that I’ll be without an internet connection all summer. I’ll still be checking my emails from time to time, but don’t expect a speedy response (unless you know I’m in the storeroom!).

And I almost committed a terrible lapse in concentration, but don’t worry; for the next hour, I’m furiously downloading the rest of 24 Series 3 off of his computer. Phew, close one.

Burly posted a link to an article on Harmoised Cable Colours to crew-talk today, and I’m sure I’ve heard about it elsewhere recently too. Everyone’s first reaction is to think ‘EU bureaucracy’, and leave it at that, but I thought I’d take a slightly closer look.
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