One could have predicted it. The government has been talking with "private firms" about selling access to the proposed ID card database. This is the database that would gather together information about every person in the country - from biometric data to benefit entitlement, from home address to health problems. And it will be available to Tesco and any other company prepared to pay to rifle through your private life.

Independent article here. (Link originally from The Inquirer.)

The article mentions using the cards and database to check identities at the PoS. From this most authoritarian and untrustworthy government it can only be the beginning.

The infamously unnacountable and inexplicable private credit rating system illustrates how little lenders and vendors care about the validity and accuracy of the information they use, and how little they care about the effect it has on people (as a group distinct from their customers). With the government chucking its dubious databasing ability into the mix, including its aura ineffible official "correctness", one can only imagine the ensuing chaos.

It took far longer than usual to get in on the bus this morning. For no apparent reason the lower half of the M32 was stationary; no accident, no lanes closed, no policemen with speedguns. The bus took a rather circuitous route to avoid the latter stages of the blockage - so circuitous that it's wasn't clear that we actually saved any time at all. We did, however, get to survey roadworks on several other roads not directy fed, or fed by, the motorway. I'm sure half of them are new today.

Later, walking from the from bus station to the office I saw that some of the most central roads are being resurfaced. This seems to be being done without closing them off. The top layer has been scraped off one lane while the other is nearly finished. The tarmaccing lorry was driving along in the normal traffic flow. There were workmen scurrying between moving cars marking up the new tarmac for lines and studs.

On the pavements there seemed to be twice as many people as normal. (Due to the weather the total number of clothes was the same as normal, of course.) There were a flood of students near the office; probably I caught the end of a popular lecture or perhaps one of the theaters is air-conditioned.

The overall impression is of enthusiastic industry, as if the whole city sat up in bed and throught "Right! It's Summer, time to get on with things!". It's a shame so many of them ended up parked in little tin boxes on the M32.

First post.

This is me poking the blog with a stick to see what happens.

Cosmos 1, a solar sail powered space craft launches later today.

The science behind the mission is fantastic: imagine a craft that can fly, at speed, through the solar system powered only by the solar wind (this one is a tester only: it will going to into a low Earth orbit and not staying there too long). Like ocean going sailboats it's a thing of beauty: a combination of elegance, human creativity and technology.

But more, it's privately funded and it's going to be launched by an adapted Russian missile. What better way could there be to redeploy an unwanted bomb?

Along with Scaled Composites' Spaceship 1 this is a triumph of free human endeavor in a world dominated by government backed military missions. The job of space exploration and exploitation is starting to shift from soldiers to explorers and entrepreneurs. Let us hope that this is a theme that will continue.