Doh
I should probably just delete this site as I’m useless at blogging!
Quick update since my last post…Leanne & I are planning to get married this year. We both now NEC officers at Pirate Party UK and this is keeping us busy. Otherwise, it’s the same old same old. Hoping things work and economy wise change for the better soon.
No good deed goes unpunished?
It’s been a mental couple of weeks. I’ve had workmates suffer from sudden heart attacks (on the mend thankfully), Leanne crashing her car (the only major casualty being her car thank $diety) and all sorts of interesting things happening on the work & politics fronts.
As I’m useless at making regular posts here, I’m going to move to an irregular ‘schedule’ of ensuring at least one rambling post a month – with others when I remember or have specifics to highlight :) As no one reads this anyway, it doesn’t matter!
So, last week was spent mainly on helping Dave out after his heart attack, including picking his car up from work, then collecting him from hospital and ensuring he got home. As always, he was worrying about work despite the get well card full of notes telling him not to! Friday was (literally in car terms) a write off after Leanne went into someone on the way to work – followed by my car deciding to break down at the scene (battery died – now replaced!). Leanne was taken to hospital but released after a couple of hours with no major injuries to report thankfully (I think the main ones were to my nerves..). I cancelled my trip to Manchester for PPUK and spent the weekend playing nurse (which really doesn’t suit me). It did mean I got to teach Leanne what a great game Civ V is though :)
In other news, you may be aware that BT have now started blocking the Pirate Bay (along with such reputable outfits as TalkTalk, Sky & Virgin Media). If this is affecting you, I have an easy solution – http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk :)
I have cancelled my phone & TV with Virgin Media due to this (Broadband will go as soon as I can get a reasonable alternative installed). Sky is being cancelled next month at end of contract. If enough people decide to do the same, they might finally start standing up for their customers and reject the censorship that is being forced on them. Until that happens (which I fear is a long way off and after our rights have been trampled a lot more) I’ll vote with my wallet and also keep trying to raise awareness as a member of the Pirate Party.
Speaking of those rights & freedoms, another attack is on the way, in the form of the Draft Communications Data Bill – this intends to track pretty much everything you do online, goodbye any right to privacy :( – You can find the Pirate Party take on this here: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/press/releases/2012/jun/14/snoopers-charter/ & http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/press/releases/2012/jun/15/snoopers-charter-future-freedom/
Enough rambling for now, I shall try and post more soon.
Local Elections – May 2012
I have spent most of the past 2 months working with 3 groups of ‘Pirates‘ in Edinburgh, Glasgow & Manchester on their local election campaigns. As the party Nominations officer, I had a key role in ensuring that all our candidates could stand for election. Without my authorisation, no candidate could stand on behalf of the party – this involves quite a bit of paperwork juggling when you live hundreds of miles from the candidates!
Thursday 3rd May was the day of reckoning – I was on the ground in Manchester checking on polling stations and knocking on doors to ‘get the vote out’ as generally only 1 in 4 people bother to vote in the areas we had candidates in :(
Thursday evening saw us heading down to Manchester Central to watch the count and see how we did. All the info is here but the highlight of the evening was Loz Kaye getting over 5% of the vote in Bradford ward and beating the Lib Dems – a result which shows we are finally being taken seriously as a party.
After being up for 26 hours, I finally got a few hours sleep at about 7am on Fri morning, then it was back to work with Loz as we monitored the Scotland election results while he was interviewed by a magazine (will update who when it’s published).
Now I’ve had a couple of days recovery time, it’s back to work – I have internal elections to run for our board, reports to write on the election processes and planning for a possible by-election in November. This is all in addition to the normal work of standing up for our freedom of speech and human rights, which the current government are attacking every single day. Just another day in the life of a pirate……
Stuff
Update first – still busy with Pirate Party UK stuff for May elections, hopefully heading off to Manchester tomorrow to meet up with some of the candidates and do some training :) Also dealing with some potential changes at work so can’t say life is boring!
Also, really enjoying Questionable Content atm – the current space station story arc with Hanners dad etc is epic. Keep up the good work Jeph Jacques!
March Update
I decided my recent posts have been too boring, so here’s some XKCD:
On (hopefully unrelated) other topics: I’m currently in the process of sorting paperwork for PPUK candidates standing in May. It looks like we’ll be standing in at least 3 cities with a good range of candidates, I will be out on the ground in the run up helping to drum up support :)
Leanne has got a new job and will be starting later this month, so please send her congrats on her blog or FB :D
Finally, after spending several hours last week stuck on a train after it hit someone, remember that there are always people worse off than you – regardless of how things seem.
ACTA
This has been on the radar for a while, but SOPA was a more immediate threat. PPUK were at an anti-ACTA protest in London last week (unfortunately I couldn’t attend), Loz Kaye (Party Leader) gave a great speech which you can read here: http://lozkayepirate.tumblr.com/day/2012/02/11
If you aren’t up to speed on this, I suggest you keep an eye on the news as there will be more over this in the coming weeks.
Quick Update
Wow, a lot has happened over the past month! Leanne (better known as Cosette to some) proposed to me on new years day. I of course said yes! We’re planning a long engagement so don’t expect a date for the wedding for at least a year…..
In other news, I’m still working hard on Pirate Party stuff – hopefully I’ll be re-elected to my post on the National Executive Committee next month (I’ve just started running the bi-annual elections for all NEC posts and we’re in the nominations phase). Conference is also coming up in April and we will be fielding candidates in local elections in May.
I’m also involved in a number of ongoing issues which the party is concerned about, I’ll post more in a blog later this month but the DEACT continues to rumble on, the US are pushing multiple acts for internet censorship which could have wide reaching consequences and we have the Richard O’Dwyer extradition case pending appeal. All of these are good reasons for me to keep volunteering my time for PPUK.
Finally, It’s Leanne’s 21st tomorrow and big party down in Skegness this weekend – hope to see a few readers there :) (assuming I can drag her away from Star Trek online now it’s gone free to play….)
SOPA
For those that read this blog, please be aware that this site will go dark on 18th and 23rd Jan in protest against the SOPA legislation currently being debated in the US. More information regarding this can be found at americancensorship.org & http://www.pp-international.net
Huh, where’d that year go?
Hard to believe that’s it’s mid December already. Having trouble getting into the festive spirit this year, not sure if there is any one reason for that.
The one upside to this time of year, is that I’m back out playing DJ for the next few weeks after a bit of a break. Not sure if I’m going to continue doing this after next year tho.
Although it’s still nearly 6 months away, I’m gearing up ready to support candidate for the Pirate Party in the May elections – as nominating officer for the party I’ll no doubt have a tired hand from signing off all the paperwork for those standing in 2012!