D-Notice

This is your government on drugs. Any questions?

2009-11-07T22:17:00.000Z

I have been meaning to get around to write summat about the government sacking the head of its drug advisory body. In the unlikely event that you're not aware, he was sacked for the heinous crime of daring to criticise our Lords 'n' Masters for placing politics above evidence by saying that cannabis isn't as bad as the Home Office makes to out to be.

There's not much I can say other than it shows that the government is more-than-willing to put the views of the Daily Mail and Tory MP Anne Widdecombe over peer-reviewed studies on the harm that various substances cause to society.

On the plus side, he's now free to speak at the next Westminster Skeptics in the Pub on Monday 16 September.

By the way, one of my proposals - which I will hope that the Pirate Party UK agree with - is that the drug laws would be based on evidence of harm.

The Sun Lies: I saw the sign...

2009-11-01T22:37:00.000Z

I have a new short post over on the Sun Lies.

This one is about a "spooky sign" that appeared yesterday.

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail, LB Newham respond

2009-11-01T22:09:00.000Z

On Thursday I said that I hadn't had a response to my FoIA from LB Newham and they were out of time for doing so.

Apparently, Newham responded on 21 October 2009. However, I didn't receive anything nor did WhatDoTheyKnow.com...

Anyway, I have now received their response (PDF):

in the three months of June to August the two most-accessed sites were Facebook and BBC News;
they don't record the time spent on any website;
they employ 13,186 people, including teachers; and
the Daily Mail's site was accessed 202 times: 60 in June, 103 in July, 39 in August

Would anyone be interested in looking at the data for Newham, Merton, Wandsworth, Tower Hamlets and the City of London.

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail, LB Newham

2009-10-29T20:28:00.000Z

I have previously mentioned my FoIA request regarding the Internet usage of various local councils within Greater London.

Legally the responses were due by last Friday (23rd October 2009) and four of the five councils - LB Merton, LB Wandsworth, LB Tower Hamlets and the City of London - have replied within the time period, providing varying levels of information.

However, that does leave out one council: LB Newham.

My request was sent on 26th September 2009 and they initially acknowledged it stating that they would respond by 27th October, but I am still to hear from them.

I have sent a friendly chasing email and hopefully they will respond. If not, I have no real option but to take it further.

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail, pt 5

2009-10-24T22:27:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in my last post, I've also had a response to my FoIA from the City of London, with the questions in italics:

* You requested information on the top ten websites visited by City of London staff during June July and August 2009. This information is contained in attachment 1 (PDF) [#1 microsoft.com, #2 google.co.uk, followed by various IP numbers which don't appear to lead anywhere].

* You requested information on the minutes spent on each of these websites during the above months. The City of London is unable to provide this information.

The City of London does not have access to information in this form through its current software. The software used to produce the reports attached to this response was purchased to meet different objectives. Extraction of this information would require production of reports on the website usage of each member of staff over the period, followed by a manual analysis to produce the information you requested. It is estimated that it would it take at least 600 hours to produce the reports, which would then need considerable further in-depth analysis to produce the precise information requested.

Therefore, this email acts as a partial Refusal Notice, specifically in respect of this part of your request. This is because it is estimated that the appropriate limit (i.e. the amount of work we are legally required to do, and permitted to charge for, in compliance with a request) would be exceeded in complying with this request. The appropriate limit is £450.00 or 18 hours work by one person, as laid down by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. The time required to accomplish the above work would be at a chargeable cost of £25.00/hr.

For resource reasons, it is the practice of the CoL not to comply with requests that exceed the appropriate limit.

* You requested information on the number of people employed by the City of London. In response, we can tell you the headcount on 11/09/2009 was 4024.

* Your final request was for the number of times that any Daily Mail website was accessed during the months of June, July and August 2009. This information is contained in attachment 2 (PDF) [total 30,656 times across the Mail's various main and sub-sites].

Ooh! My second question has been rejected, apparently due to technical reasons. However, I do find it to be odd that other councils have not had a problem in responding to that particular question...

Overall, that's four down and one to go. I should have a response from LB Newham, who have said that they'll respond by Tuesday.

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail, pt 4

2009-10-24T22:01:00.000+01:00

I've previously mentioned an FoIA request that I've made to various London local councils regarding their Internet usage, and the replies that I've received from LB Merton and LB Wandsworth.

I've now received a reply from LB Tower Hamlets (my local council).*

I asked the same questions as previously, and have received the following response form them [style edits for clarity purposes]:

1. What are the top 10 websites visited by Tower Hamlets staff during the months of June, July and August 2009?

[F]or June

We no longer hold the data.

For July

a) Total Requests
b) Total Bandwidth

http://www.google.co.uk

a) 288,489
b) 281.9 MB

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk

a) 281,705
b) 261.8 MB

http://clients1.google.co.uk

a) 244,678
b) 183.7 MB

http://www.google-analytics.com

a) 201,826
b) 224.2 MB

http://uk1.siteimprove.com

a) 153,436
b) 133.2 MB

http://l.yimg.com

a) 148,422
b) 97.1 MB

http://mail.google.com

a) 143,590
b) 676.6 MB

http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net

a) 117,852
b) 1.5 GB

http://h.msn.com

a) 105,307
b) 127.0 MB

For August

a) Total Requests
b) Total Bandwidth

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk

a) 370,634
b) 340.3 MB

http://www.google.co.uk

a) 368,754
b) 364.0 MB

http://clients1.google.co.uk

a) 365,863
b) 275.9 MB

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net

a) 342,300
b) 187.2 MB

http://www.google-analytics.com

a) 281,610
b) 314.0 MB

http://l.yimg.com

a) 211,250
b) 139.8 MB

http://uk1.siteimprove.com

a) 206,429
b) 178.7 MB

http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net

a) 192,997
b) 2.5 GB

http://mail.google.com

a) 187,567
b) 926.3 MB

http://h.msn.com

3. How many people does the Tower Hamlets employ?

As of 30th September 2009, LB Tower Hamlets have 5,963 employees excluding schools.

4. How many times the Daily Mail website (any URL beginning http://dailymail.co.uk) was accessed in the above months if not in the top ten?

No evidence that this site was accessed during the months specified.

What can we say? Well, question 2 ("2. How many minutes were spent on each site during the above months?") has either been ignored or missed. They've not even provided a statement that the information is not collected, like LB Wandsworth, or is no longer stored, as per their own response to the questions regarding the data for June.

They have impressed me by their apparent lack of use of the Daily Heil/Hate Mail during the summer time.

The fact that advert sites are regularly-access is a bit strange...

* I've also had a response from the City of London, which I'll cover in my next post.

The Sun Lies: Cat Girl

2009-10-22T13:25:00.002+01:00

A new 'un over on t'other place: Cat Girl (no, she's not a super-hero).

The Sun Lies: Touched by the hand of Allah

2009-10-20T21:50:00.000+01:00

Another new one on the Sun Lies: about religious markings which have appeared on a child in southern Russia.

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail, pt III

2009-10-20T19:16:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I mentioned that I received my first response to my FoIA to various local councils and their Internet usage.

Today, I received an email saying that I'd had another response, this time from LB Wandsworth:

1. What are the top 10 websites visited by Wandsworth staff during the months of June, July and August 2009?

June 2009
[G]oogle [unspecified version]
[G]oogle [M]aps [unspecified version]
[S]tudent [F]inance [D]irect
[BBC] [unspecified version]
rontranet.gro.gov.uk INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE
zipporah-ds.datagate.net.uk WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
cjsm.net Criminal Justice Secure eMail
[B]ing
askews.co.uk INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE
[G]oogle [M]ail

July 2009
[G]oogle [unspecified version]
[G]oogle [M]aps [unspecified version]
[BBC] [unspecified version]
[S]tudent [F]inance [D]irect
rontranet.gro.gov.uk INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE
zipporah-ds.datagate.net.uk WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
cjsm.net Criminal Justice Secure eMail
[B]ing
[G]oogle [M]ail
askews.co.uk INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE

August 2009
[G]oogle [unspecified version]
[G]oogle [M]aps [unspecified version]
[S]tudent [F]inance [D]irect
[BBC] [unspecified version]
zipporah-ds.datagate.net.uk WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
cjsm.net Criminal Justice Secure eMail
rontranet.gro.gov.uk INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE
[C]areer[V]ision.co.uk
[B]ing
[G]oogle [M]ail

2. How many minutes were spent on each site during the above months?

[LB Wandsworth] does not measure time spent on any website.

3. How many people does Wandsworth employ?

Not including school staff, approximately 3850 people are employed by LB Wandsworth either as a part time or full time member of staff (as of ... June 2009).

4. How many times the Daily Mail website (any URL beginning http://dailymail.co.uk) was accessed in the above months if not in the top ten?

June 2009: 3487 connections

July 2009: 3484 connections

August 2009: 3021 connections

As you can see, there's a lot less information than LB Merton provided me and the obvious difference is that they do not monitor the length of time is spent on each website.

The other main difference is that they break down each month's visits, unlike Merton.

As for their data itself, it's clear that Wandsworth's employees visit pretty the same sites every month.

The Sun Lies: Jesus lives! (in IKEA furniture)

2009-10-19T23:37:00.000+01:00

A new and very short post over on the Sun Lies, and yet again it's an example of pareidolia.

Innocents on the DNA database: we win(?)

2009-10-19T23:18:00.000+01:00

I've had numerous posts about the Home Office's on-going fight to keep samples of innocent people on its DNA database, in defiance of the European Court of Human Rights.

Apparently, according to Liberty, the government has caved in and decided to drop the clauses in its up-coming Police and Crime Bill which relate to this.

Of course, knowing this government it'll just try and sneak them in at the next opportunity, but it's a heartening turn of events...

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail; follow-up

2009-10-19T21:24:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, I had a post giving details of a FoIA request that I had made to various local councils regarding their Internet usage, using the following questions that Sim-O came up with:

What are the top 10 websites visited by XYZ Council staff during the months of June, July and August 2009.

How many many minutes were spent on each site during the above months?

How many people does XYZ Council employ?

How many times the Daily Mail website (any URL beginning http://dailymail.co.uk) was accessed in the above months if not in the top 10?

I've had my first reply, from LB Merton, which is as follows:

What are the top 10 websites visited by LB Merton staff during the months of June, July and August 2009?

1. http://uk.sitestat.com (This includes all visits to [LB Merton's] website, as well as other internal monitored sites).

2. http://news.bbc.co.uk

3. http://ds.dellfix.com

4. [our anti-virus software provider] - NAME NOT PROVIDED

5. http://socitm.govmetric.com

6. http://www.facebook.com

7. http://www.google.com

8. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk

9. http://www.google.co.uk

10. http://www.google-analytics.com

How many minutes were spent on each site during the above months?

Browse Time ([days: hr:] min: sec) for period 1 June - 31 August 2009:

1. [426: 07:] 09: 04 - uk.sitestat.com

2. [50: 22:] 12: 00 - BBC News

3. [45: 13:] 35: 45 - Dell Fix

4. [41: 20:] 25: 49 - Anon anti-virus software provider

5. [35: 06:] 08: 28 - SOCITM Insight

6. [33: 14:] 56: 19 - Facebook

7. [33: 02:] 33: 58 - Google.com

8. [25: 21:] 56: 09 - BBC News (images)

9. [25: 20:] 07: 31 - Google.co.uk

10. [24: 13] 33: 30 - Google Analytics

How many people does LB Merton employ?

6025 (including teachers)

How many times the Daily Mail website (any URL beginning http://dailymail.co.uk) was accessed in the above months if not in the top 10?

62,714

I'm not sure what to make of this...

UPDATE: Apparently, there's a good chance that the stats could only relate to the IT department, based on the mention on SOCITM. However, that would mean that LB Merton haven't fully-complied with the request which specifies "LB Merton staff", i.e. all departments, not just their IT one...

... as seen on Newsnight #singhbca

2009-10-14T19:52:00.004+01:00

Last night, Xorandor and I attended the inaugural meeting of the Westminster Skeptics in the Pub.

It was a meeting to show support for Simon Singh in his on-going libel fight against the British Chiropractic Association*. He was due at the Court of Appeal today to try and obtain permission to appeal against a decision which was made in a preliminary hearing over the use of the term "bogus" in his article.

The meting was organised by Jack of Kent and featured speeches by Nick Cohen [who referred to a similar on-going case involving Peter Wilmshurst, a cardiologist who's being sued for criticising a drugs company in a medical journal, and also the Dave Osler case against Johanna Kaschke], Ben Goldacre and Singh himself.

The meeting was featured on last night's Newsnight (starting at 37:40) and we can be seen quite clearly at the back of room next to the blackboard [I'm the one on the left].

As for today's hearing, Simon managed to obtain permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal (at the third time of asking: once at the original hearing, then via a written request for permission, both of which were rejected). The next stage is a full appeal hearing which will take place some time next year.

Click on the Twitter hashtag #SinghBCA for a lot more reaction.

* Briefly, he wrote an article, which I have re-posted, stating that the BCA promoted crappy treatments.

UPDATE: Jack of Kent attended today's hearing and reports on it, what the ruling means and the next steps.

UPDATE: More on Peter Wilmshurst over on healthwatch (via @jackofkent).

UPDATE: The Newsnight feature is also available as a YouTube clip:

UPDATE: Photos on Flickr.

D-Notice: The Guardian v Trafigura

2009-10-12T23:24:00.002+01:00

From The Guardian (via Richard Wilson):

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

From Parliament.uk,

"Questions for Oral or Written Answer beginning on Tuesday 13 October 2009″

(292409)
61
N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect
(a) whistle-blowers, and
(b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by:
(i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes, and
(ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

UPDATE: Here's the injunction (PDF) via Wikileaks.

UPDATE: The report is also available (PDF) on Wikileaks.

As featured on politics.co.uk

2009-10-09T18:55:00.000+01:00

I was looking through my entry statistics today and came across one which I'd never seen before: a write-up on a site known as politics.co.uk.

I've not previously heard of this website, but would be grateful if anyone could give me any information about them.

However, I appreciate the fact that they've hunted me down and read what's written on here.

They describe the site as the following:

Blog site: http://d-notice.blogspot.com/

Political Party: n/a

Information: The author of this blog has decided to stand for election because of the Labour government's decision to make taking photographs of police officers illegal.

That political attitude is very apparent throughout the blog with links to NO2ID, among others, and most of the posts are concerned with either civil liberties issues or general discontent with the current government.

We liked this blog because of the multitude of connectivity options it provides. Links to various other sites, twitter and Flickr all provide a lot of opportunity for interaction and take advantage of the many different ways blogs can promote a message.

It's well-written, and if only this were a daily blog it would be one of the better ones going.

Biography: Unfortunately, Gareth Winchester - the author of the blog - doesn't provide much information about himself on the site, apart from describing himself as a traitorous urban intellectual.

A quick search on the web shows he is a lawyer based in London and will be standing as a candidate in the next general election for the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow, where George Galloway famously defeated Oona King in 2005.

Rating: 7/10

I've added a perma-link in the right-hand side.

Guest post: creationism is still lame

2009-10-04T19:00:00.008+01:00

Although the UK does not tend to suffer the repeated attempts by biblical literalists to force creationism into the high school biology classes that various US states endure, the disingenuously named Truth in Science (TiS) organisation exists to promote such efforts in this country. If the recent lecture by TiS's Professor Andrew McIntosh on Intelligent Design and Evolution is anything to go by, we needn't be too worried about their chances of success.

The lecture was promoted by King's College London's Christian Union. I am pleased to say that the CU rep who introduced Prof McIntosh took pains to point out that the Union did not officially support creationism and that many Christians are not evolution deniers. The lecture evidently attracted a larger crowd than the CU had been expecting: there were probably 60-plus present. It was difficult to tell quite who the audience consisted of but at key points of the argument I glimpsed facial expressions in the audience ranging from nodding agreement to scowling incredulity.

I'm going to try to explain some of McIntosh's arguments and in some cases point out why I think they're false. I have no expertise or even training in biology or thermodynamic or any other relevant field, and everything I do know is picked up from reading pop science books and science blogs. So I may make my own mistakes. But I believe truth trumps credentials.

McIntosh by stating that he did not hold with NOMA. I think that was the first and last time in the lecture he held a position I agreed with. The next step was to reduce the available positions on the philosophy of science to three: what McIntosh calls 'atheistic humanism' (roughly, the Dawkins position); a 'bottom up' approach allowing for God’s existence (such as that held by Ken Miller); and the 'top down' approach which he espouses: creationism.

Of course, the first two positions are indistinguishable in practice since they both require methodological naturalism. So McIntosh's lecture was aimed at the traditional creationist target of evolutionary biology. And the arguments were the standard creationist arguments, albeit cloaked to an extent in budget evening wear. He wheeled out some examples of complexity in nature - trilobite eyes, ATP motors – and argued because some endogenous retrovirus sequences influence protein folding, 'junk' DNA does not constitute evidence for evolution. As though that was discovered by intelligent design ‘researchers’. In any case, it is misconcieved. There were some mutually contradictory arguments: he talked about a conspiracy between mainstream journals not to publish research that contradicts evolutionary theory and, later, misrepresented a published paper about the origins of life as evidence against evolution. He claimed that mutations are overwhelmingly harmful rather than beneficial; and that mutations always cause a loss of information and are thus incapable of adding information to the genome. He did not address gene duplication, which indisputably is capable of adding information to the genome.

McIntosh is a professor of thermodynamics. A standard and absurd creationist argument is that because the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases, evolution cannot have happened because it involves order arising from disorder. This argument has never struck me as making any sense, since it's trivially obvious that equivalent processes happen over much shorter timescales, events we witness all the time like babies developing. However, the standard rebuttal to the creationist claim is that entropy increases in a closed system (not one which, for instance, is constantly being fed energy by a star). McIntosh acknowledged this, but said that it was irrelevant, citing as evidence the fact that sunlight falling on a dead stick did not prevent it from decaying. McIntosh obviously knows his stuff in that field and it seems curious that he would use such a seemingly absurd argument; I thought at first I must have missed some key step in his logic. But on reflection, I suspect the argument is probably as spurious as it seems on the surface. McIntosh mentioned that he had debated Dawkins and that Dawkins had failed to understand his point. Dawkins' account tells a different story:

I said, of course, that the chemical bonds in DNA were maintained by energy supplied via the respiratory processes of the cell. McIntosh furiously shouted that that was no answer because there had to be some 'machinery'. I said OF COURSE there is machinery, the cell is riddled with machinery and it has all evolved by natural selection. McIntosh said the existence of machinery implies a designer (which, of course, begs the whole question of what we are arguing about). Then the chairman brought proceedings to a proper conclusion.

So the argument from the second law of thermodynamics, as reinterpreted by McIntosh, ultimately depends on the same old argument from complexity which was rendered worthless by the publication of The Origin of Species. What a shocker.

As a side note, it's widely accepted that what creationists lack in valid scientific arguments they often make up for in rhetorical skills. The format that reveals their worthless, dishonest nonsense in the most unflattering light is written debate. I can't resist linking to two classic examples of creationists being utterly humiliated on their own websites in such exchanges: the first is an exchange on an ID blog between ID creationists and a neuroscientist explaining her opposition to TiS materials’ being distributed to UK schools (an easier-to-follow duplication of the key parts of the exchange is here). The second is Conservapedia's owner being intellectually eviscerated in an email exchange with a scientist whose research had shown bacteria evolving novel behavioural traits.

The Q&A session which followed the lecture was short but amusing. Several questioners brought up clear rebuttals of some other of McIntosh's points such as his misrepresenting information theory. McIntosh repeatedly employed a sort of broken kettle defence of his position, claiming both that the questioners had misunderstood his point and was wrong, and that it didn't matter if the questioners were right because it didn't affect his overall point.

Finally, McIntosh revealed the identity of the designer he apparently thought his lecture had demonstrated. I won't ruin the ending for anyone who wants to listen for themselves, but I doubt it will come as a surprise.

The Sun Lies: She's Hearing Voices

2009-10-03T15:23:00.000+01:00

I have a new post over on the Sun Lies.

Only a small one this time and more of an "Ask the Audience" sort of thing concerning what people can hear in a piece of video footage.

London Look-a-likes

2009-09-30T23:10:00.003+01:00

The Tory Troll has a competition: who can come up with the best London politics look-a-likes using Google's new Similar Images function.

Here's my submission:

David Mitchell/Mark Corrigan

Kit Malthouse

Help Tim Ireland, update

2009-09-30T22:21:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I had a post asking people to help Tim Ireland fight a smear campaign.

Unfortunately, it has got a lot worse: he's now receiving threats of violence from complete strangers.

As far as he can make out it stems from a group called "the Cheerleaders" who claim to be an anti-fundamentalist Muslim group. They've been infesting the comments on Barth's Notes since the start of the year, who also seems to be getting hassle, albeit of a lot weaker sort, but refuse to come out into the open.

These people are nothing more than cowards and, if anything, their actions are those of extremists.

PS. My article on Sunday received two (!) comments. One was sympathetic, from some one linking to something called the Couchtripper forum, one was a link to a very childish anti-Tim attack site.

Project Censored 2010

2009-09-26T10:54:00.003+01:00

It's that time of year when Project Censored publish their list of the stories which the US media have decided to ignore for whatever reason.

As usual, it's interesting but US-slanted and of course quite a few are related the the global economic collapse and its aftermath.

[For the ones in 2006, 2007 and 2008, click the years. I don't appear to have the one published last year - presumably it was released when I was in the US and so missed it - but it is on their site.]

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail

2009-09-26T10:43:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago, the Daily Mail had a ludicrous article about the amount of time that staff in Portsmouth City Council spend on Facebook. It was ludicrous because the amount of time it allegded was the equivalent of 19 hours per day. In reality it was 11 seconds per day and
this Liberal Conspiracy article goes into more detail about it.

Anyway, Sim-O left a comment referring to an FoIA request he did to various local councils where he lived and I thought I'd do the same thing for a few in London.

I've done a FoIA request to:

LB Tower Hamlets
LB Merton
LB Wandsworth
LB Newham
The City of London

I'll let you know if I hear anything...

Help Tim Ireland

2009-09-26T10:15:00.006+01:00

Earlier this year the Sun had a story which claimed that Alan Sugar was on a hit-list of high-profile British Jews that had been uncovered by some guy on a Muslim message-board.

Tim Bloggerheads did some research into it, discovered it was a complete load of rubbish which eventually led to the Sun retracting the article and the guy who gave them the information converted to Islam.

All very well you'd've thought. However, Tim has had to put up with a lot of shit as a result of his investigations, including having a smear campaign against him which amongst other things included him being labelled a paedophile had having his work ripped off by Private Eye. He's also had his ex-directory phone number and address leaked to various people.

To cut a long story short, Tim is asking people to write to their MPs - just a polite letter - to get their opinions on the actions of the Tory MP Patrick Mercer.

I'm lucky to say that my MP is George Galloway who I know will be a great help...

Anyway, I'm going to write to Gorgeous George and see what happens. You should write to yours too.

UPDATE: Here's what I've written using the WriteToThem.com website

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

George Galloway MP
Bethnal Green and Bow

Saturday 26 September 2009
[D-Notice,
The D-Notice Mansion,
D-notice-ville
D-Notice-shire]

Dear Mr. Galloway,

I'm sure that you are aware of the on-going saga regarding a story that was in the Sun earlier this year about an alleged hit-list of high-profile British Jews.

One of the people named was Alan Sugar. However, it has subsequently been shown that the article was completely false which has led to the Sun apologising for the article.

I'm mentioning this because I would be very grateful if you could help out a friend of mine.

It was my friend, a Mr. Tim Ireland, who investigated the story in his own free time and discovered that it was inaccurate. Unfortunately, Tim has had to put up with a lot of hassle as a result of it, including being smeared as a child molester and having his ex-directory phone number and address published on the internet.

The reason I am writing is that unfortunately, quite a lot of the problems that Mr Ireland has faced are due to the actions of a fellow MP: Patrick Mercer (Conservative) and his staff. I would be very grateful if you would be able to speak to Mr Mercer about his actions (a summary of which Tim has given at http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/09/suburban_jihad.asp and http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/09/patrick_mercer_boom.asp)

Yours sincerely,

[D-Notice]

The Sun Lies: Mother Nature in Tears

2009-09-03T23:15:00.001+01:00

A new short post over on the Sun Lies.

This is another one about the Sun's apparent insistence that random patterns mean something.

D-Notice vs the Confederate Yankee

2009-08-28T08:04:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, the US blog Instaputz had a post which showed that the claims that a right-wing US blogger - the Confederate Yankee (whose name suggests he's a twat) - that he never labelled people "traitors" to be a complete load of rubbish.

This encouraged me to go over to CY's site, search for the term "treason", and leave the following comment:

After pressing the submit button, the following came up:

However, it my comment has not been published, even though later comments have been.

I guess the fact that my comment wasn't exactly favourable has nothing at all to do with it...

The Sun Lies: Conclusive proof of Nessie!

2009-08-26T21:06:00.002+01:00

A new, brief post over on the Sun Lies by me: about how Nessie has been "spotted" on Google Earth...