Admin (2)

OK, all is about done, or is as done as it is going to be.

I hope you like the new layout and format, I wanted something a little more unique and this is what I have ended up with. I have less control now over things like font sizes, which is all set and imported, but I can live with that. Gone is the reaction buttons, which do not seem to want to work on non-standard templates. Also gone is the twitter-meme function, which does not seem to want to work on this format, but I will keep looking into it to restore quick RT function.

I hope people like the new name, I was racking my brain for something new - but some of the great names I came up with appear elsewhere on the internet and were not unique. I believe Governmentitus is unique, and is just a better sounding blog name than "Daniel1979 Blog" and fits with the general theme of this blog.

If you are having any issues, please leave a comment or email me daniel1979blog@gmail.com.

For those how are curious to learn more, read on...



I made the decision about a month ago to just look around and see what improvements might be available out there on the internet, and I quickly came to find the Blogger Templates Site. This got me thinking about looking for a more radical change, and had the added bonus of being completely free. So, if anyone is thinking about a change, this is the site I would recommend. If you do have cash to spend, still take a look as all of the designers have links from the templates they have provided to blogger. For example, this new template was created by Rays Creations India, who is linked from the Blogger Template Page and also from the bottom of this blog now.

From there it needed testing, so I set up a new test blog. Along the way, I came across a new format that was perfect for one of my other ventures, Football Banter, so I actually switched my focus across to updating that blog, which was successful. Here, my method and tips if you’re thinking about having a change yourself.  Importing a new template in itself is not difficult, it is simply importing a file to the HTML screen, but there are a few issues if this is a transition rather than starting a new blog from scratch.

1. Set up a testblog, with posts and widgets so that you can get an idea of how the transition will work.

2. Copy all HTML code from any widgets you have set up, and all the url's from blogrolls. Assume all widgets will be lost, as they might well be and will have to be re-established.

3. Remember to hunt through your existing HTML code for any add-ins that you have, such as Google Analytics and Twitter Meme Codes.

4. I used MS Word, to copy and paste all HTML code to, with little notes as to where to copy & paste to and from.

5. Attempt a transition on the test blog from the Blogger standard format to new format.

6. Then read the FAQ section on the blogger template site... There are a few standard issues which are all easily fixed. Also read the comments section on Blogger Templates, as others may have experienced the same and the answer may be there already.

7. If you have made changes to the Test Blog set up that you want to use on your main blog, save it and use that file when doing the main transition.

8. Update your main blog.

9. IMPORTANT - when adding or changing HTML code, always remember to click to preview BEFORE you save. This will not allow a preview, or will show in a screen how the blog will look based on the most recent changes.. You might not like it. You can then click to undo edits which will revert the HTML code back to the last saved instance.

10. IMPORTANT - Thing look better, but what you can do with the format interms of tweeking is now a bit more limited, and will require playing around with the HTML to change text colours etc.. There is also a limitation on how much can be changed under the Creative Licence - You get a free template so long as it remains pretty much as provided

Post transition things work in pretty much the same way on the dashboard as they do on a standard blogger template, so there is no new things to learn from that perspective.

. 

Admin (1)

With a big sense of nervousness, I shall now be playing with the blog format to upgrade to my new format.  People should feel free to have a look around still as this will not affect what I am doing.  If things start to disappear, and the layout suddenly changes, you can know that it is not your browser or computer, but me tinkering. 

Should the World Wide Web stop working in the next two hours, that probably is my fault and the whole experiement will have gone wrong.

Climategate Poll

Just to confirm the numbers now that the poll has closed.

Question: The Climategate Email Revelation Has...

Answers, with responses:

Made no difference to my opinions, man-made CO2 is affecting our climate and we must cap it - 1

Made some difference, but I still believe climate change is linked to CO2 - 1

Has made me question if the science is really there, and if I have been lied to - 7 (9%)

Confirmed my recent suspicions that it was all a big scam, the science does not add up - 25 (32%)

Made no difference, I have always known it was a load of old tosh - 42 (55%)

Recommended Reading 12th December 2009

Here is my latest recommended reading list.

Please note, I do not necessarily agree with these posts and articles, however I found them sufficiently interesting to warrant a recommendation:

Dungeekin has the solution to Climate Change.

Ian Parker-Joseph says the betrayers are becomming the betrayed.

Ed West says the Tory Taliban are intent on driving the Libertarians from the ranks of the Conservative Party.

IMHO thinks hell must now be frozen over... becasue it is snowing in Houston, Texas.


And finally, The Daily Mash says that the Tories are to but the Chancellor a new house, after he delivered a PBR that suited the Tory leadership.
Enjoy!

Friday Caption Competition - 11th December 2009

"G5" Aiming For Christmas #1 In Charts

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Post script: If you would like to display this on your blog, please email me for the HTML code.

Taxi For Ming

Nothing illegal or headline grabbing in this observation I am sure, but me thinks Sir Ming Campbell has tried to, or perhaps had to bend the rules somewhat.

Under his Additional Cost Allowance which is there to cover the cost of an MP’s second home Sir Ming has been charging for a taxi service. This is costing the tax payer anywhere between £60 and £220 per month, typically. This BTW is on top of an additional monthly claim in the region of £125 for “Parking” which one presumes means he is therefore in possession of a car.

Why is Sir Menzies charging us for the taxi’s under his Second Home Expenses when there is an uncapped Travel Expense system which he is already using to claim back his mileage and air travel?

I am going to speculate, and I stress I am speculating - that the Travel Allowance rules state that taxi services are refundable when a standard mileage based cost is applied, but Sir Menzies service invoices have related administration costs, and thus this could prove to be an example of an MP fitting the cost of a comfortable and/or convenient service into a different column to get around a particular rule.... I understand that Sir Menzies has suffered with illness in recent years which affected his hip and I would not wish him any discomfort; but did he and others in the Commons not write the rules in which the MP's themselves do not seem able to meet? 

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/GreenBook0309.pdf

A Few Receipts That Stand Out....

From Shaun Woodward, a £429 phone bill from BT which seems a bit steep, but that's nothing next to his £1,056 Electricity Bill, labelled a "Green Electricity Bill" -

See Here.

Here is the infamous Jacqui Smith bill where hubby Richard had put in for Dirty Movies...
This and the rest are HERE.

... The thing is, Ms Smith accepted the mistake for claiming the additional packages as an error, and an embarrassing one at that.  However, other Virgin bills of £57.25 in December 2008 and £73.50 in July were claimed for in full.  Seems the real error here was that Hubby Richard only sent in the itemised page for the one they got caught on... Perhaps in the interests on honesty these should have also been submitted so that the phone package and broadband could have been itemised for?

We also kitted out the Smith Redditch residence with a 32 inch HD LCD to the tune of £555.74... this because Jacqui Smith declares her Sister's home in London as her Primary residence, so hubby and the kids were free to enjoy a free TV....

Well, at least the picture quality on any future pay-per-view films will be fantastic!

According to my work colleagues (half the office is looking through these today with venom in their eyes)... the BBC are reporting that Quentin Davies tried to claim £20k for a Bell Tower... Well he did, here is the receipt...

The fees office declined to pay the full amount, but did cough up £5,376.91.  Perhaps Mr Davies can explain to us how a Bell Tower is a wholly and necessary requirement of him being an MP?

Lembit Opik gets a special mention as he happily renovated and upgraded his second home with a £6,655 contribution from the taxpayer towards his £12,955 refurbishment in one sitting...

See HERE.

All of the work must have worked up an appetite.  MP's are still allowed to claim up to £400 per month for "food" without receipts.  Lembit however managed to get in a claim for £2,000, no doubt back charging for an "allowance" he had not claimed for a while. 

He must be one hungry bugger to have consumed that much food!  But here is the thing; he did it twice in one year.   A final claim of £800 ensured that the Lib Dem MP claimed the maximum £4,800 during the year on this particular "allowance".  This is not even the most interesting thing in his claims.  It seems the Lib Dem MP had some electrical problems, so he called out an Emergency Electrician... but why on earth did he call someone who had to travel hundreds of miles to do the work??

(Click to enlarge)

That requires some special Lib Dem Logic!... I can only wonder allowed what the Carbon output must have been.  Not very considerate on Mother Earth was it.

If I get chance, more will come later on.  Feel free to email or leave any that you may have caught in the comments.

MP's Expenses - The New Batch

These are online now for the latest period, go check out what your MP has claimed, HERE.

I got to page 2 and have just dicovered we are paying for my MP to have her Ironing done! (HERE)

Random Thoughts #3

Now that Chris Mounsey (aka Devil's Kitchen) is the leader of The Libertarian Party UK, I wonder how long will it be before he gets an invite onto BBC's Question Time?

I Probably Missed Nothing... Right?

I have pretty much missed all of the PBR reporting today because of work (however, I am more grateful to still be in work that to have had the time to have caught it though!) I did catch a brief summary earlier online at the end of lunch so I kind of have a feel for what I will be heading home to on the news tonight. In my mind, it is not too important to know the in's and out's this minute, as what tends to happen with the Budget and the PBR is that it takes a few days for the analysts to sift through and find the real details rather than the fluff announced at the dispatch box.  I also want to add that it's a good thing as well that the Treasury left the VAT announcement until 9th December, nothing like giving the nation a whole 10 full working days, (plus the Christmas period) to implement an entirely new Tax rate on top of the tax accounting rules due to come into force on 1st January 2010... Very considerate and visionary of the man charged with setting the course for economic recovery.

With the announcements and what it will likely mean, I already feel from behind my veil of ignorance that I will probably be stuck to my previously stated mindset; that the UK will again not be out of recession after Q4, and my guess is that it will be Q2 2010 at least before a return to growth. Though, given how long it we have been in recession and potential impact of the PBR I guess Q1 2010 could be realistic, but I still harbour doubts so will not change my outlook; well, not yet anyway. I am also guessing that in a few days time, when the likes of John Redwood and Fraser Nelson have dug through the details, whatever the top line cut figures are on my TV tonight will actually be revealed to be lower, and/or the proposed tax hikes actually deeper into our pockets... Like I say, I will wait for a few of the better economic journalists and organisations to have a good pick through, as they tend to do a pretty good job these days interpreting these budget announcements back into English.

Another thought occurs; weren’t the online MSM sites promising a big expenses scandal today? Has this been slipped out the back door under the cover of the PBR...? I will have to see about getting online later and having a search for the news (gossip).

Recommended Reading - 09-Dec-09

Here is my latest recommended reading list.

Please note, I do not necessarily agree with these posts and articles, however I found them sufficiently interesting to warrant a recommendation:

James Higham talks about the roots of European anti-Semitism.

Angry Old Man recalls some wise words from President Klaus.

Iain Martin says that "authorities" knew in 2005 that tripartite regulation would not work.

Heresy Corner laments the latest government cut; the MOD are to stop investigating UFO sightings.

Raedweld says that Labours ineptitude with our economy means that George Osborne will be kept out of the key decision making meetings of the G8 when he is Chancellor.

And finally, The Boiling Frog has a sense of Deja Vu.

Enjoy!

Copenhagen T-Shirts?

This is Maggie Thauersköld, Sweden’s most prominent climate-sceptic blogger

Stolen from Roger Helmer

Thinking Out Loud

I am very excited, I have managed to download my prospective new template and have done some testing and I am loving the new format.

I may lose some of the existing functions, such as "reactions" and the re-tweet, but I think the improved layout will be worth it!  Anywho, what is sticking in my mind is, leaving the url as is, I am tempted to go with a new blog name (which as yet, I have not decided on).  Would anyone object to me changing the blog name?  I think "Daniel1979 Blog" is a little boring and not very eye-catching, nor memorable... I would like something a little more pithy.

If Christmas shopping can be kept to a minimum, I will probably look to roll it out here this weekend.

Any thoughts?

Exodus

Hmmm.... 1,000 bankers quit RBS for rivals, just as the Government is hinting strongly about punitive taxes.



Who could have possibly seen that coming!

Doug Carswell - Referendum Man

I seem to be behind on this, but I have just learned that Douglas Carswell MP, one of the few MP's in Parliament that listens to what people are asking for and then tries to deliver is seeking to bring about a Private Members Bill to the floor of the House of Commons providing the people of the U.K. a referendum on membership of the EU.

Private Members Bills are a tool for MP's who are not on the front benches to introduce legislation, but tend to have a low success rate and little floor time is provided.  There is going to be limited time available in Parliament with the lead up to the General Election as well.  However, with an issue as big as continued membership of the EU and with the right momentum there is a chance that Mr Carswell with enough public and media support could force the issue in Parliament.  We should assume that the Whips will not be in any mood to help Mr Carswell in this cause, so it is down to people to make their voices heard and for the general population to shout out that we do indeed want this Bill to be passed to that we can have our say on EU Membership.  It is time the people of this country are allowed a say on what we do and do not want.

Mr Carswell's piece, where he sets out his intentions is here.

I for one wish Mr Carswell every success, I hope he can succeed and help us get what so many of us have longed for, for a long time.  He will be a very popular man if he can!

New Climategate Petition

HERE is the link to this petiton, please feel free to spread the word on this.

Hattip: Daily Referendum.

Friday Caption Competition - 4th December 2009

From: Personnel Today

Au Revoir Nigel

Update:  Make your own HERE.... I did
Update 2: My video remove as there was no play/pause or stop - and it got boring real quick.  REDACTED.

Climategate: Caught Green-Handed - Monckton Report

This is not so much Recommended Reading as it is Required Reading.  The Science & Public Policy Institute has released THIS REPORT which analyses the Climategate emails and demonstrates how the Science of climate change is not settled; and how the email revelations have in fact hidden then truth about what is going on with our environment and our climate.

The report delves into the science, but is written as best as possible for those of us without PhD's.  There are some interesting recommendations at the end, all of which seem reasonable to me.  If we are to subject the world to carbon taxes in the middle of the worst economic downturn for several generations, it should be based on global, open and verifiable science with the raw data available to everybody on earth to be able to analyse and scrutinise.

Fellow bloggers, facebooker's and twitterers, please can you pass these links along so as to ensure it reaches as broad an audience as possible.  The science is not concluded, the stakes are high and time is of the essence to force the debate before Copenhagen.  Politics and politicians have put us in this position, it is now time for people to voice their opinions and concerns, because if we do not we know that the politicians will do what as they have sought to all along.

Some of the conclusion (but not all) from the report is reproduced below [I copy & pasted the raw data from the report, I felt no need for "tricks" or any "fudge factor"]

In public policy terms, the revelation that the international scientific and political establishment has been inventing, bending, distorting, manipulating, hiding, blocking, and destroying scientific data for the sake of advancing a narrow, extremist, and bitterly anti-Western political viewpoint cannot be safely ignored.



Climate science is too important to be left to politicized scientists, just as climate politics is too important to be left to unscientific politicians.


The first step is to close the Climate Research Unit (and perhaps the University of East Anglia with it), to dismiss all of its personnel, and not to allow any of them to be funded by taxpayers ever again. Scientific fraud and corruption on the scale that has now been revealed must be firmly rooted out and prevented from recurring.


Those responsible for the deliberate blocking, altering, concealing, or destroying of scientific data must be put on trial – to use James Hansen’s term – for “high crimes against humanity”. For it is on the word of crooks and racketeers such as these that, in the name of addressing the non-problem that they had invented and fostered and festered, the Third World has been flung into food riots and mass starvation by the doubling of world food prices that followed the biofuel scam that the “global-warming” profiteers invented as just one of a bewildering array of boondoggles to enrich themselves at the expense of the little guy, who, as always, suffers when the political elite merely exploit him when it is their duty to serve him.


Let the climate criminals stand trial, and let them be fined for offenses under the Freedom of Information laws, and let them be imprisoned for their fraudulent tampering with scientific data, and for their suppression of results uncongenial to their politicized viewpoint, and for the sheer venom with which they have publicly as well as privately denigrated all those scientists with whom they disagreed, and for the insouciance with which they interfered with editors of scientific journals and with the process of the UN’s climate panel itself.

Recomended Reading - 03-Dec-09

Here is my latest recommended reading list.

Please note, I do not necessarily agree with these posts and articles, however I found them sufficiently interesting to warrant a recommendation:






Steve McIntyre's blog time-lines some of Willis Eschenbachs FOI emails with some of the hacked CRU emails.

Subrosa has an interesting quote.

Charlotte Gore no longer wishes to be a Lib Dem blogger.

The Clamour of the Times points to Carbon Fraud in Denmark, soon to be hosts for the Copenhagen Summit.

And Finally, The Daily Mail says that giving cakes to hospital patients is no longer considered safe.

Enjoy!

The EU Commission Now Wants To Know What YOU Think About Lisbon

Quote from the Secreteriat's-General webpage:

The Lisbon Treaty introduces a new form of public participation in European Union policy shaping, the European citizens’ initiative, which enables one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States to call directly on the European Commission to bring forward an initiative of interest to them in an area of EU competence. Before citizens can start exercising this new right, a few ground rules and procedures have to be laid down in an EU regulation.

Given the importance of this new tool for citizens, civil society and stakeholders across the EU, the Commission has opened a broad public consultation in order to seek the views of all interested parties on how the citizens' initiative should work in practice.


The Green Paper, which launches this consultation, gives an overview of the legal, administrative and practical issues that will need to be addressed by the Regulation and asks a number of questions to which interested parties are invited to respond by 31st January 2010.

Here is the email address, ECI-Consultation-citizen@ec.europa.eu  which says nothing at all about not accepting emails of an abusive or sweary nature *hint*.  I shall compose mine in the morning, though I suspect know the language will not be of a suitable nature for this blog.

They wouldn't let us have a referendum, and now they want to know what we think - Soviet EUnion Government is upon us.

Reality Has Become A Commodity

Al Gore Confronted In Chicago

Novembers Top Referrals

Thank you to all bloggers who continue to send traffic this way, it is very much appreciated.  As always, here is the Top Ten referrers for November, with movement of position indicated in brackets.

1. (+5)  Muffled Vociferaction

2. (-1)  Letters from a Tory

3. (-1)  The Voice of the Resistance

4. (New)  BBC Blogs

5. (+11)  SNP Tactical Voting

6. (-1)  An All Seeing Eye

7. (+1)  EU Referendum

=8. (New)  Football Banter

=8. (-4)  Scunnert Nation

10.  (-7)  Unenlightened Commentary

=11. Subrosa, =11. Rantin Rab, 13. Daily Referendum, 14. John M Ward, 15. Barking Spider, 16. CatoSays 17. The Red Rag, 18. Events Dear Boy, Events, 19. Twitter, =20. Lord Elvis, =20. The Vote of the Resistance.


Farewell to Wardog and Advanced Media Watch who have stopped blogging this month, and also to Lord Elvis's blog, although he will continue to blog over on The Voice of the Resistance.  It is sad to so many blogs disappearing and I wish the people behind them well.