A letter in the post today from Colin Challen.

On ID Cards- the theme is basically come on, give it a try, we are only piloting it voluntarily, if it flops we’ll abandon it. It will help prevent identity theft. Really? Identity theft is based around someone else pretending to be me. How can me having an ID card make a difference for “card not present” cases? What about the database Colin? Carrying the card might start off as a voluntary measure but the really scary bit is the vast bucket of data that will be collected about everybody and anybody.

On the world’s smallest quiz- he has to draw the line at third party questionaires. I can empathise with that, but it is still a cop-out

…Five leaflets waiting for us at home today on the mat, one from each candidate. Four were non-specific, however the Labour leaflet was addressed to Karen.

There was also an election feature in todays’ Morley Observer, although the BNP man didn’t manage to get his Biog in before the deadline. That’ll teach him to go away on honeymoon when there is an election on!

There is also news in both papers this week that the two papers are going to become one, the Morley Observer & Advertiser (which it has been for a couple of years but everyone has kept up the pretence that they were in competition, despite moving into the same office).

The launch issue of the Morley obtiser is May 18th so it appears to be every Wednesday. It is going up to 30p but that is 22p cheaper than buying both of the old papers & they won’t have to keep track of which story appeared in what edition any more.

As an aside, the South Leeds freebie paper had an advertising feature on Morley yesterday, they really should check their copy more frequently, it talks about Peel Market which has been closed for many years (it became an exhibition centre and is now a sort of Tat shop called “B&M Bargain Madness”.)

Nick Vineall, the Tory one, dropped me an email yesterday.

Re ID cards:

“I am opposed to ID cards, at least in the form described in the Bill that
was before parliament, and am generally pretty sceptical.”

That is a fairly positive no there, but a certain amount of bet-hedging.

Re the world’s smallest political quiz:

“I tried the “quiz” but I thought the questions were pretty ambiguous and am
not at all sure the “score” would reflect where I am on issues generally.”

The quiz has ten questions (five on individual freedom, five on economic freedom). Have a look here and decide for yourself how ambiguous you personally feel the questions are.

Sorry Nick, I’m not swayed, I feel that I’m still an honorary member of the 1952 Committee.

I’ve also had an email from Colin Challen MP (as was & probably as will be), whom it seems does have an email address (I had to send my original email to the party office, as per the BNP).

I quote his essay verbatim:

From: Colin Challen (Colin Challen’s email removed)

Subject: your e-mail

Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:39:50 +0100

To: ian.grey@iangrey.org.uk

Please would you advise me of your postal address

Oh dear, the short, sharp treatment. He must have read my unfavourable review of his speeches!

I’ll watch the post, & look out for chaps in dark glasses…

In the meantime, here is the opinion of backingBlair on his chances.

This is about the Labour flyer I received from Colin Challen, the sitting MP.

I’ve never actually met him, although I have been at several events that he has also been at. He doesn’t seem to be the sort of MP who “works the room”. My first encounter was at an “angry parents” meeting at a nearby school which had an admission cap at a rather unnatural 45 kid intake, despite being popular and in demand. The event was being run by teachers and some local Councillors were in evidence, Bryan North (former Lord mayor of Leeds) and another one whose name escapes me now. Colin came and sat down next to me but didn’t acknowledge anyone other than Bryan North. He eventually stood up to speak- as the prospective parliamentary candidate replacing John Gunnell.

The next time I saw CC was at the Leeds City Council election count in 2003. He spent most of the time on the mobile phone looking worried, a routine he repeated even more vigourously in 2004.

He recently spoke at a special event for Joseph priestley College, who celebrated 50 years in Morley Town hall. He “ummed” & “erred” a lot and I felt that he managed to make an interesting topic rather dull through a somewhat bland delivery. (The speech is on his Website here). He sends out a newsletter to interested constituents (that we call “Colin’s Chat”) and it unwittingly sends out the message of how banal and irrelevant the life of a Backbencher can be regardless of who is in power. There was a speech printed almost verbatim about how successful his diet had been that went on at such length that I assumed that he must have been filibustering.

The other downer is that he claims the glory for all sorts of things. His “I convened a meeting” translates from the other parties as “We invited him to a meeting”.

Here is his flyer, “by Colin Challen”, although no doubt there are hundreds that look and read very similarly all over the Country. It is basically the old “the Tories are going to cut money” scare tactics.

On the back, are thirty positive reasons why you should vote Labour. It is actually 29, the 30th being that CC supports them, well hoop-de-do. I was going to come up with an alternative list to match the title, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to emigrate.

I mentioned last week that I had been to see Malcolm Matson speak. He is a founder of an organisation called the OPLAN Foundation and OPLAN stands for “The Open Public Local Access Network” which he describes as a 4th utility for the information age. This disruptive concept blows the incumbent Telcos out of the water & they don’t like it up ‘em, Mr. Mannering…

I have been in dialogue with him sporadically since last summer and he recently gave me the password to get into www.oplan.org, which I won’t divulge although Malcolm will presumably let you have it if you email him (I assume they are limited in bandwidth). In this site there a fascinating document, which is creative commons public domain. I can’t justify putting it up in my own webspace at the moment as it is over a Meg of pdf but it makes most of the points of his roadshow elegantly and with a lot of humour.

One eye opener is the concept that if the canal owners had been put in charge of the railways they would have introduced the tracks alongside the towpaths in order to pull the narrowboats along. In many ways this is currently being repeated with the idea of 21st century Networks which are replicating the PSTN rather than being genuinely disruptive.

There is a very similar document to his current one on a Danish site called Citynet, which has a lot of useful information about Municipal networks (a lot in Dutch, however). You can find the OPLAN document at the bottom of this page.

Footnote on Tory Boys- it has been pointed out to me that I am confusing my camp comedians. “Shut that door!” was of course Larry Grayson. John Inman’s catchprase was “I’m freeeeeee…..” and he is also remembered for having very little interest in Mrs. Slocombe’s pussy.