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I don't often blog about political issues here, but I'm finding the illiberal and frankly unjust policies of the Tory government too much to bear at the moment.  And, yes, I regard this as a Tory government since their LibDem partners seem particularly passive. Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, has long desired to eliminate as many terminations of pregnancy as she possibly can.  She has repeatedly relied upon misinformation and untruth in her campaigns (see for example this, this, this, and this).  Her latest gambit is to file an amendment to the Health and Social Care bill due to be discussed in parliament next week.  This amendment seeks to require women seeking termination to receive 'advice' from a body distinct from the termination provider. This is couched in language that on the face of it seems reasonable.  But it's only in digging deeper that the serious flaws in the proposal become clear.  The advisory groups envisaged by Dorries are principally those with an anti-abortion agenda.  You can read more about the lies deceit and ignorance being spread by these groups in this Guardian article: Abortion: pregnancy counselling centres found wanting.  Naturally, those in favour of a woman's right to choose over her reproduction are up in arms over this amendment.  It would seem from a later Guardian article that the depths of duplicity in this amendment may have finally sunk in to Number 10: Downing Street forces U-turn on Nadine Dorries abortion proposals ( though see below: Dorries has claimed this is untrue).  In my view, this ghastly MP is not making these proposed amendments through any desire to help women, but rather through a deep-seated objection to terminations.  This is shared with Frank Field, an MP with a long history od such objections. I suspect Nadine Dorries is now feeling her PR advantage slipping away.  She's now been posting increasingly hysterical articles on her 'blog'.  Her blog, by the way, doesn't permit any commenting and in any case is 70% fiction according to her.  This is the latest, posted Wednesday, 31 August 2011 at 23:45 [Blog articles at blog.dorries.org have a habit of disappearing once the author realises her foot is well and truly planted in her mouth, so I pasted the text below.  Its current URL is this. Emphasis in bold is mine]

For those who have read this in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/31/downing-street-uturn-abortion-proposals as has just been confirmed on Newsnight, Downing St has denied the story. If Downing Street were going to do anything, does anyone seriously think they would give it to the Guardian first? No, obviously, but Evan Harris would. The truth behind the story is probably slightly more menacing, more menacing even than Evan Harris. Bear in mind this amendment is to offer women the option of independent counselling, delivered not by the abortion provider, not by a religious organisation, but by one of the 80,000 BACP professional counsellors across the country who are prohibited at present from working with pregnant women. It’s just an offer, they don’t have to accept it, however, those who have doubts and need help may do and if they do, then so be it, surely it is their choice? Rumour has it that Evan Harris, abortion and assisted death zealot, is applying huge pressure to the office of Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. That would be the no longer an elected MP Evan Harris.  It would appear that he believes he has immense influence on Government policy, more influence than elected Liberal Democrat MPs even. I am led to believe that this story in the Guardian originated from him. I am quite sure that the office of the DPM would like to have a little more information about what the public thinks before it tried to apply pressure on No10 to put the brakes on an amendment which has such huge support amongst women. When I say women, I don’t include those who write for the Guardian, obviously. Nick Clegg may also like to hang fire awhile and see what else pops up in the papers over the next few days. I can assure him, it will be far more interesting than anything Evan Harris has to say. /blockquote> Isn't this a bit strong?  And in any case, Dorries is economical with the truth when she says 'independent'.   She is also wrong to claim that abortion providers seek to make profit from terminations.  I note a blog article (Abortion Amendments to the Health & Social Care Bill) at the Conservative Women's Organisation blog concludes with this:

You still need two doctors to authorise a termination. Both of them weigh up the patient's decision and will only sign if they believe that she has come to the decision independently and has considered all other choices - they would be negligent if they didn't. Instead of making abortion physically and mentally harder for women in the UK, we should be looking at prevention and education - and by this I do not mean we need to teach graphic details to 13 year olds and give lessons with condoms and bananas. Parents need to take a bigger part in the education of their children and talking about sex appropriately when they're young is the best way to de-stigmatise it. The fact is that the health and welfare of women would be affected in a bill that doesn't mention termination once in its 420 pages. I urge every MP, woman or man, on whatever bench, to allow women to choose for themselves. I urge every constituent to contact your MP to get your voice heard. VOTE AGAINST the 3 amendments and do not allow the government to introduce any other comparable legislation.

As a final note, despite the appalling Dorries and her vile amendment, it's important not to lose sight of other issues around the bill as a whole.  Some commentators have observed that it may well lead to the complete breakup of the NHS. Update:  Despite Dorries' assertion that "as has just been confirmed on Newsnight, Downing St has denied the story", the BBC is reporting (David Cameron 'won't back abortion advice change') that

David Cameron "cannot support" an attempt by a Conservative MP to change the rules on the advice that can be offered to women seeking abortions. The PM's office said he was sympathetic to Nadine Dorries' view that women should be offered independent advice. But he was concerned the planned amendment to the Health Bill would prevent abortion providers like Marie Stopes from giving counselling as well

Having written just the other day why I view the iPad as an appliance or a gadget rather than a personal computer (my judgement revolved around limits to what the user is able to do with the device), I found myself limited by iTunes 10.4 running on Mac OS X Lion. The problem surfaces for two reasons.  I dislike iTunes because it's clunky and painful to use, and I dislike iTunes because it seems to limit how I deal with digital music - I like to choose the file format in ways that iTunes appears not to like, for example.  Anyway, I investigated removing iTunes, and it turns out OS X throws a bit of a wobbly when you try this, claiming that it's required by OS X.  Now, I don't know whether that's true or not, but even having found a method of doing this I thought it better not to try (most such efforts are a prelude to making a clean reinstallation).  I don't synchronise my iPad to my MacBook, and I've recently replaced an iPod Touch with a more reasonable device from Cowon (review part 1, part 2) partly to get away from iTunes. No matter, I thought, I'll simply assign the default application for opening audio files such as mp3 to Songbird, and that'll deal with the issue or iTunes opening every time I open an mp3 file.  Well, I can report that on my MacBook at least, iTunes refuses to relinquish its role as the audio player foisted upon me by Apple. Irritated, I had a bit of a Google about, and found recommendations to try an application called RCDefaultApp.  This seems to over-ride the iron grip of Cupertino and forces iTunes to take a back seat!  The whole episode does seem to reek rather of control-freakery and reminds me of one's inability to remove Internet Explorer from Windows.  I do wonder how required iTunes really is for OS X...and whether this is symptomatic of a move of OS X towards the iOS way of working.

Ars Technica has an interesting article pondering whether the iPad can be considered a Personal Computer or not (The iPad is a Personal Computer—true or false?).  This is something I have considered, in the year or so since I became an iPad owner. My own personal view is that iOS devices such as my iPod Touch and iPad occupy a space somewhere between an appliance and a computer.  I'm used to being able to do what I want with my computers: something that reaches the heights with my various machines running Linux (two laptops and a desktop running Ubuntu 11.04, and a Mythbuntu system).  Even my most recent acquisition, a MacBook Pro laptop, falls into this category.  Despite the surface gloss, it's a Unix-like OS at heart.  The GUI may be remarkably limited in configuration possibilities, but I've still set up Perl scripts, done limited Bash scripting and negotiated aspects of networking, particularly for my backup system.  Significantly, I can install what I want, where I want, and put files where I want them. How different that is from iOS.  Applications selected from a tightly organised (and some might say censored) list.  Application install in some space in the filesystem, and the files associated with an application go in that application's defined filesystem space.  In fact it doesn't seem terribly easy to see the filesystem space! If anything demonstrates why I don't consider the iPad a computer it would be any one of those restrictions.  If the iPad was a proper personal computer, I would be able to install Flash on it. For me, the iPad remains a gadget, something that's a huge pleasure to use.  But it's not a personal computer, for there's no way it can replace any of my computers, be they running OS X, GNU/Linux or Windows.  It does come close.  I routinely use my iPad for quite a lot of things:

• - email/calendar access
• - navigating my music collection
• - remote access of computers by VNC
• - limited wordprocessing
• - reading pdfs
• - reading e-books (though it isn't as good as a Kindle)
• - web browsing (except for those sites using Flash)
• - simple games
• - watching TV (either from apps such as BBC iPlayer or from  my Mythbuntu box) and videos
• - Twitter, Facebook and the like

Much as I've tried several Office packages, none really come close to using a notebook or desktop PC, even when using a Bluetooth keyboard to speed text entry.  

So, today I was riding the Chronos RT '10' over on the F2A/10 (A428), courtesey of Clive who kindly gave me a lift over.  The day had dawned rather calm and sunny, but the wind had built up during the morning and by the time we got over to the race HQ, it was really quite strong.  Added to this was the threat in the weather forecasts of light rain at about the time the race was to be on. I got to the HQ and got the bike all set up, and rolled off to do a warmup.  This went OK, until I suffered what appeared to be a front tyre blowout* at about the furthest point from the race start.  I am very grateful to #52 (Jan Ertner of Cambridge CC), who insisted on riding back to the HQ to fetch a wheel, which he lent me for the race.  I also have to say the number of riders who stopped to see if they could help was really heartening.  In the end Jan found me again, we swapped out the wheel (the replacement was a standard road wheel) and I sprinted for the start while he took my trispoke to leave with the time keeper. I made it to the start line in time to see #36 depart (I was #35).  Fortunately I didn't have long to wait for a start, as #37 was a DNS.  Somewhat disturbed by all the excitement, I failed to reset my computer (hence the somewhat extended Garmin trace below) as I set off to rescue my day.  I zoomed off from the start, made the sharp left at the roundabout and hacked off down the sliproad onto the A428 at about 29mph.  The speed ddn't hold for long, as it dropped to around 23-24mph for a bit as the full force of the head wind took its toll. Once into the swing of things, however, the pace picked up.  The course is actually pretty flat and if one could ride on a calm day might be pretty quick.  I reached the turn, which I negotiated easily, despite the motorist who tried to drive through me.  The return leg was a fair bit quicker, as the cross wind had enough of a tailwind in it.  I spent much of the return leg ruminating on what time I was likely to to finish in (as I'd not rest the computer), and felt pretty comfortable cruising along. After finishing, I paused at the start to see if they had my wheel, then back to the HQ.  As I write this, I don't know my exact time, but I recall a short 24 on the results board.  Taking into account the extra two minutes, I think that's a decent result on the day**. *Back home, I examined the tyre and tube closely.  There are no punctures in the tyre, but a series of small holes in the inner tube. **Paul T. who was manning the results board tells me 23:05 including 50s late start penalty... I'll add the results when they are available.  In the meantime here's my Garmin trace: And a photo taken by Dave Jones at the Cambourne underpass.  This was on the outward leg.  Note Jan's wheel! [caption id="attachment_1609" align="alignnone" width="576" caption="On the outward leg of the Chronos RT '10', with borrowed front wheel"][/caption]