According to Tom Harris, the Scottish version of the Hatemail on Sunday has published an article under the headline “Proof at last… our MPs really are a bunch of prize twits” attacking himself, Jo Swinson and Eric Joyce for Twittering from the Commons camber during PMQs (the article is not online and so this is taken on faith).
Tom has, rightly, stated that he will continue to Twitter during PMQs no matter what Mail hacks think.
I think it is a good thing that MPs do this – I think that more …

Gordon Brown is going to give us “online powers” to rate our public services such as GPs, police, childcare and councils. He says that it is wrong that consumer websites have “higher standards of transparency” than the services we have no choice but to pay for.
This website is due to go go live in May.
However, one massive section is missing from this proposal – rating your local MP and the government as a whole. Why can’t we have the ability to rate the national government as well as local government? …

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Microsoft have finally admitted hat many have know for a long time – that Internet Explorer, their web browser, is shit. If you use IE, you are now open to our computer being taken control of by cyber criminals, who can then use it to steal your passwords and thus have access to all of your internet accounts.
Which, if you use IE, pretty much serves you right.
It is the worst possible browser and doesn’t even work properly – ask any web designer. And there is absolutely no need to use …

The Northern Monkey feature has, once again, been noticeable by its absence. However, I once again have an excuse.
My long suffering laptop finally croaked its last, and left me without free browsing time to call my own. Leaving me with the long search to find a replacement.
What made the search so long was trying to figure out what I wanted. Nowadays, laptops have so many functions it’s difficult to know where to start.
Do I want a funky portable netbook like the Eee-pc? Well, yes, but practically it doesn’t really cut …

Emails waste an hour a day of an office worker’s time. This is not really all that surprising. I get tons of emails every day, dealing with them all takes time, and email filing can be erratic.
However, email is essential. It enables swift communciation, and is not reliant on the recipient being there to receive it immediately or remembering it at a later date.
Of course, there are some things that email is not very good for. It is then that the use of common sense to determine the correct medium …

One of my interests (and aims of the blog) is to encourage participation in politics as widely as possible. At least two of the three main parties have been talking about training, including media training, for younger members. The Liberal Democrats are talking about why their Leadership Academy should train everyone as they are all potential leaders.

Meanwhile, the Young Britons’ Foundation ran a training day at the Conservative Party Conference for young activists. Mike Rouse has kindly written an account for the Wardman Wire.

The internet, says it’s [British] creator ‘needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science’.
Erm, why? People have brains. And, guess what, they can use them too!
People can check the veracity of sources on the internet. And, frankly, only an idiot would take something read in just one place on the ‘net – no matter where that is – as “the truth”.
Even were this not the case, how precisely would any system to verify any website work? Who is to say what the “truth” is? The sort of …

I’ve been using Chrome for a few days now, and I like it. It is a lot cleaner looking than Firefox is, and loads quite significantly faster as well.
And, of course, it is far far far superior to Internet Exploder.
In fact, the only downside to Chrome that I can see is the lack of applications.
It is now my browser of choice.
Download it here.

I came across Chris Applegate’s rather wonderful algorithm for a David Aaronovitch simulator, based on this column:

• Step 1: Go ad hominem from the very start and label your opponents as being part of some mythical self-styled intellectual commentariat (while ignoring just how eminently qualified you are yourself to belong to that same cadre):
• Step 2: Posit a false dichotomy and put your opponent at one extreme end of it.
• Step 3: RePush the boat out even more – emphasise how the bad men will get you if you don’t do what they say. Go for the heart-tugging “as a father” line if need be:
• Step 4: When all else fails, wring your hands and play the race card.
• Step 5: Ask a sub-editor to top it off by giving it the headline “Ignore the paranoid fantasists” and voila! Instant column!

That invites a question:

Could we re-engineer Eliza to be an Aaronovitch simulator and thereby prove that belief in the real one is logically unnecessary?