Blogged Elsewhere: There will be an AV Election in the Lords

As anyone who has followed proceedings in the House of Lords, with regard to the Bill that could bring about a referendum for a fairer voting system for Westminster elections, the Labour peers have dragged their heels.

There are still 92 positions for hereditary peers in the House of Lords. This was the number that was decided upon in 1999 would exist until all hereditary positions were removed. However, when one of that number dies, there is a by-election in the upper chamber...

Read the full story at Fairer Votes Belfast

It was Fifty Years Ago Today...

Well it was 50 years ago today,

In Matthew Street they first time to play,

In leather jackets and their Cuban heels,

Four local lads who'd induce squeals,

So may I intorduce to you,

The act you've known for all these years,

John, Paul, George and Pete* - The Beatles!

* Yes on 9th February 1961 Pete Best was still the man hitting the skins when the Beatles took to the stage for the first of their 292 appearances at the Cavern Club up until 3 August 1963. Richard Starkey better known as Ringo Starr wasn't to join the band until the following year.

Hat tip to the Guardian.

"Compelling" but Still Ongoing

Alistair Campbell is to appear just up the road from the Yes! to Fairer Votes offices in Belfast today to speak to students at Queens about his new book People and Power. Speaking in today's Belfast Telegraph he says Northern Ireland’s peace process was "one of the most compelling" issues of his Downing Street career.

Whilst for Alistair it is compelling for those of us who are living with the new threats of security alerts all over the province in recent days it is still ongoing. Admittedly what Campbell's boss, Tony Blair, enabled here in Northern Ireland has taken us a great distance, the people are wanting to live in a shared present (something that some of our political class have yet to realise) but there are still some resisting this is a violent way.

Some people only know objection as a armed conflict here. They seem unable to articulate their argument in a sensible non-threatening way. Others are still so obsessed with the past that they cannot look beyond events and actions in the past and work with those whom they historically were opposed to to move things forward.

Of course as in 1998 the people are ahead of some of the politicians once again. The recent Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) draft programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration was widely slated for being a management of division and not a programme to eradicate it. The fact that it only focused on sectarianism and racism and ignored other 'excluded' communities within Northern Ireland, in fact putting those other needs unto a back burner, showed a lack of vision.

There is plenty of talk about a 'shared future' in Northern Ireland but what the people want is a shared here and now, a shared present. So while the work of Tony Blair for Northern Ireland may well have been compelling to those who witnessed it firsthand it is as yet unfinished. It is up to the politicians in Northern Ireland to bring that task to such a natural conclusion. It may well be up to politicians that have yet to rise up and be counted, however what Northern Ireland needs is to be normal, not some unruly young nephew that is confined to the corner almost out of sight at parties.

Farewell Mr Barry, John Barry

John Barry wrote the iconic theme for that secret agent, licensed to kill On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Although he never received an Oscar for Bond he did have five of the little Golden chaps. Two for Born Free (1966), one apiece for The Lion in Winter (1968), Out of Africa (1985) and Dances with Wolves (1990). He was classically trained as a pianist, but learnt to play trumpet before taking an interest in composing and arranging, it was during his national service that he began performing as a musician.

His band the John Barry Seven had some hits including Hit or Miss which he composed for the BBC's Juke Box Jury. His first movie score was in 1960 for Beat Girl it was also the first film soundtrack to be released as an LP in the UK. After he did the soundtrack for the Adam Faith film Never Let Go he was approached to come up with a theme for the lead character in a new film Dr No the composer Monty Norman had given the producers one they weren't satisfied with. The result Barry's polishing up* of course is legendary as preformed here a capella




Of course there was plenty more in the body of Barry's work, as the five academy awards, one Grammy and one BAFTA show. As well as the 11 Bond Films he scored there were 87 other movies that had the Barry touch as well as 25 TV themes and 5 musicals. In 1998 he was inducting the Songwriters Hall of Fame and in 2005 was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship.

He hadn't been responsible for a Bond score since The Living Daylights (1987) but his successor David Arnold, suggested by Barry himself has remained true to his motive, most notably in Casino Royale (2006), where as each piece of Bond identity is acquired a little more of the theme is utilised until the crescendo of the final titles of the most quoted introduction in movies, "The name's...."

So the names Barry, John Barry 1933-2011.

* Many believe he did more than that and started from scratch, something that Barry himself always denied.

Sometimes the Effect of Words Can Hurt or Kill You #DavidKato #Uganda

One of the saddest things I read this morning about the killing of Ugandan gay activist David Kato, is not the fact that he was killed for being gay, but that some haven't noticed the effect of their words.

We had a recent sentencing on a homophobic murder in Trafalgar Square, but we didn't have the national press calling for gays to be hung weeks before. However, the words of Giles Mulhame the managing editor of Ugandan weekly show no remorse. His paper on 2 October 2010 published a picture of Kato with his address details under the headline "100 Pictures of Uganda's Top Homos Leak" and across it the words hang them. While he said he was sorry for the family he said Kato lived in an area where murder was common, going on to say:

"This looks like any other crime. I have no regrets about the story. We were just exposing people who were doing wrong".

Apart from the fact the the group which Kato worked for Sexual Minorities Uganda took the paper to court to stop them publishing more details. They were successful. As Kato left court more death threats were directed at him. That means this was not like an ordinary crime, nor with the number of death threats that apparently he had been receiving should anyone consider it might just be a coincidence of an accidental "just another" murder before the police announce their findings. But this is what a newspaper proprietor thinks he can do.

Yes Rolling Stone in Uganda was exposing people, but in a way that leaves them unprotected from a vigilante. Unprotected from a loose cannon, or in this case a hammer wielder. Someone who the paper had given all the details they needed, image and address and the edict to hang David Kato and 99 others. With freedom comes responsibility, with the words that we use we must think of possible consequences. Mr Mulhame hasn't realised yet that the words in his paper led to this murder. The blood is as much on his hands and the person with the hammer that hit David Kato twice in the head killing him.

But it couldn't happen here in the UK, surely? Actually men have been charged with handed out leaflets calling for the death penalty for LGBT people in Derby. It only takes one person to form their own vigilante execution squad to mean one LGBT person is exposed to immense risk and possible lose their life.

As Johann Hari wrote so well this morning in the Independent we only want to be treated the same, that is the end of the gay agenda.

Time to Save the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy #SaveH2G2 #H2G2

 PEOPLE OF EARTH YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE

 Don't Panic there is not a Vogon constructor fleet poised above us in the ionosphere, at least I hope not. But there is axe axe being wielded by the BBC over some of its online content. One of those sites is a quite remarkable site, it is a social media that was popular before Facebook reared it's head, it was an online encyclopedia of Life, the Universe and Everything before Wikipedia became the de facto font of all knowledge. It is a place where people have made friendships, many have then taken that online relationship offline into real friendships at meet up, some have fallen in love and even produced small people as a result of sexual co-joining. After all as Douglas Adams once wrote, most of the rest of the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy is full of sex.

This is story of one of that Guide's researchers.

Back in December 1999 a fan of a the books, Radio and TV series (there was no film back then) of Douglas Adams's opus saw a link from the online edition to The Times to a site that purported to be the online edition of the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. He was hooked, he started to write articles about things he knew, get involved in the community, write for the community news paper. He was mildly dyslexic and the people around him helped him overcome the embarrassment of the occasional mistakes in what he wrote, correcting it with love.

He eventually became one of the first researchers to write 100 solo approved entries for the guide, under the nom de plume of Demon Drawer. He also wrote for over 100 collaborative entries and 100 articles for the H2G2 Post. He certainly gained an confidence in getting his written words out there on public display. However, in recent years his contributions to the guide have been less frequent, he still has works on progress that he revisits from time to time, but that doesn't mean that he has not been writing.

You are currently reading the words from the same person, one of the over 3,000 online pieces that he has written in various formats and on various sites including almost 2,700 blog posts on here.

H2G2 was difficulty once before, in the early days of this millennium when the Internet bubble started to burst. The lifeboat was picked up by the BBC. But on 24 January the BBC announced that it was making radical cuts to its online presence, the community, especially the old hands, felt here we go again. The result however is that the BBC is prepared to set H2G2 adrift again rather than merely turn it off at the switch, but it needs someone else to come by in the 'virtual' sense like the Heart of Gold and pluck us from the etha. The Community has set up its own Community Consortium to look after the needs of the community in that transaction, as one of the ancients (although not quite a 5 figure user number*) I wholeheartedly back this campaign and will do what I can to help Save Our Site.

It has changed my life not only through the confidence in my writing, but it was through finding love with a fellow researcher that I ended up in Scotland, it was through that I became so heavily involved in politics once more, it is through the site that a lot of who I am today has bizarrely come to be. H2G2 is more than just a mangle of words on a screen it is a community, it has a heart, it has a soul, it is a family.

Long may it continue.

(Aside) Can someone check, are the dolphins still around? (Pause) Good.

Yes it is too early for so longs, even the Delphinidae and Platanistoidea agree on that. There must be plenty more fish in the sea ready to keep H2G2 alive.

Your normally Hoopy Frood Demon Drawer

* A sign of great seniority in the early days, which us young upstarts having a six figure user number, mine is all the even number 104268.

Cé a bogadh an eascaire? - Who'll move the writ?

Now that the formalities of Gerry Adams vacating his seat, as Nigel Dodds wittingly said in PMQs to emigrate, or at least attempt, to so he can stand for the Dail Éireann, here is the next issue.

The Parliament website says that:

"Traditionally the Chief Whip of the political party whose MP held the vacant seat will begin the procedure for a by-election. This is known as 'moving the Writ' and takes the form of a motion in the House of Commons."

This has to occur within the next three months now that the vacancy has arisen. Now the highest level Chief whip that Sinn Féin have within the United Kingdom is Carál Ní Chuilín at the Assembly, who is not one of their 4 remaining MPs, not that she or any of the 4 MPs are likely to take the oath merely to move the writ.

The recent occurrence in Oldham East and Saddleworth was moved by the Liberal Democrats because although Phil Woolas had been elected as a Labour MP upon the initial court hearing he was suspended from his party, therefore the Lib Dems in second place were the top party in the previous election to have a party member still from that ballot.

In the case of West Belfast it may well fall upon the SDLP also the party in second place in May's elections who are the party that will move the writ as no members of the party who have vacated the seat have a member sworn in at Westminster.