Popularity of social networks

The University of Sussex IT Service surveyed students recently. Among the more interesting results was this. They love Facebook, but mostly don't use MySpace or Twitter. Skype and Youtube are popular. I imagine that Skype is more popular among overseas students.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Lewes refuse and recycling update

I received the following update from Andy Bryce, head of Lewes District Council's waste and recycling department, today:

Almost all staff have turned up for work, with very few exceptions
where people have not been able to get out of their local areas.

Refuse collection: Hazardous conditions with snow on top of ice haveresulted in us calling off collections today. We lost a vehicle
yesterday into a ditch in Barcombe (photos attached). The vehicle was stationary when it started to slip and ended up in the ditch. Nobody was hurt and we expect limited damage to the vehicle because it was so slow
moving, however, we are unable to recover the vehicle as yet because the
recovery company felt it was too hazardous.

We aim to try to catch up with the refuse work by having the crews work
on Saturday and this is currently being worked on. This will, of course,
also be weather dependent but we are very aware that the worst hit
areas, generally on slopes on back roads, will potentially have had a
number of missed collections. We would ask people in these areas, where they are able to do so, to bring their rubbish to the nearest passable
main road where we may be able to collect.

Kerbside Recycling collections have also been suspended today for the same reasons. Our aim is for staff to work through doing extra hours
over the next week and a half to catch up. We would ask residents to
still keep putting their boxes out, or to leave them out if it will not
cause problems, so that we can come back to get them where we can.

Street Sweepers are out and doing path clearing in the main town
centres to assist the Highways Authority where possible. There is too
much work for too few people but we are doing what we can.

The Recycling Centre is open and operating but HGVs are not out
working. We are looking to see if we can do some catch-up work over the
weekend.

Vehicle Workshops. All staff are in and working and so two MOTs and
servicing work will not be held up thus avoiding additional problems
later on.

Again we apologise for any inconvenience.
Kind Regards
Andy Bryce

Andy's team did a great job keeping up with collections in the run up to Christmas, and I know they'll continue to do the best possible in the conditions.

Lastest on LDC waste collections

I've just got this news from Andy Bryce, the District Council's Head of Waste and Recycling Services. I think they're doing a tremendous job in the circumstances, and they've done well to get a full turnout of staff today. I managed to get about 100 yards this morning before twisting my knee on ice. I hope all the staff manage to complete the day safely, and have a good christmas.

There's additional news on weather disruption at http://www.lewes.gov.uk/16221.asp and the Christmas collection schedules at http://www.lewes.gov.uk/news/16170.asp

I am writing to let you know the progress on refuse and recycling
collections provided by Lewes District Council.

We have experienced considerable problems this morning (Wednesday the
23rd of December) on what is already a very difficult week. Early in the
morning when the crews were starting there were a significant number of
road closures (including the A27 in parts).

All of our collection staff have made it into work and all of our crews
have been sent out and are working, however:

The northern part of the District especially the rural areas, but also
Lewes town itself, have been extremely difficult with black ice and ice
under foot. We have delayed collections in those areas and concentrated
along the coast whilst the day warms up.

We have just started diverting refuse and kerbside crews up into the
rural areas (around 10:00 am). In kerbside. We will also be slow to
collect from Piddinghoe, Rodmell, Southease and Northease but have tried
to make a start.

We will be concentrating on catching up on all of the areas both this
afternoon and tomorrow; this, of course, is somewhat weather dependent
but we are aiming to get to the worst areas in the latter part of the
day.

The Bring Sites are generally being collected but certain sites are too
dangerous e.g., the car park in Ditchling that has a steep slope.
There have been a lot of logistical changes to deal with the situation
and circumstances that we are facing.

There will be delays and residents will not necessarily be collected at
the time they may normally expect but we are aiming to and still believe
we can finish the week's work at this point.

We are very sorry if there are some collections we are unable to make,
we ask that residents do leave their waste out for us (remembering that
we are asking for rubbish to be put out one day early and kerbside to go
out on the normal day according to your calendars). The Council's
web-site and District Link have details.

If waste has not been collected by 3:00 pm on Christmas Eve we will not
be able to get to those (hopefully very few) residents until after
Christmas.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience that anybody has been caused.

Despite the lies of the Times, majority believe climate change is man made.

Yesterday, the The Times online published results of a poll that demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of the British public believe that climate change is man made (anthropogenic). Bizarrely, they chose to mis-represent ("spin") the results with the headline Global warming is not our fault, say most voters in Times poll.

First, I'll fess up. My headline is also spin. The poll didn't ask people if they believe in anthropogenic climate change. It asked if

Climate change is happening . . .
... and is now established as largely man-made 41%
... but not yet proven to be largely man-made 32%
... but it is not environmentalist propaganda that is man-made [sic - I presume this wasn't the question that they really asked] 8%
... Climate change is not happening 15%

But, if my headline is spin, theirs is a downright lie, and here's why:

In their report, they used the phrase "established as a scientific fact". But, what they didn't ask is "what do you believe". So, lets take a look at the more detailed report [pdf], and see what people really said.

First, 83% agreed that climate change is happening ("Earth's climate is changing and climate change taking place?" [sic]). Only 2% had no view.

Second, 80% (96% of 83%) agree that climate change is a serious problem. Now, at this point, the question should not be "Who's fault is it?", but "What can we do about it?". However, I'll grant that the answer to the first question has some bearing on the latter. If it's our fault (in a causal rather than moral sense), then maybe we can tackle the problem by stopping doing the wrong thing. If it's not our fault, then we have to start doing something new. Either way, if 80% of people agree that it's a serious problem, then surely that should be the support that the UK government requires in December.

The Times goes on to say "The high level of scepticism underlines the difficulty the Government will have in persuading the public to accept higher green taxes". But that's also rubbish, as their survey demonstrates. Most people (over 50%) surveyed were in favour of higher taxes to combat climate change: specifically with respect to air travel (57%) and gas guzzlers (68%). Oh, and 87% are in favour of stricter building regulations - something that I'm sure the Times would be happy to describe as a "stealth tax", if (a) they'd thought of it, and (b) it weren't so popular!

And this is where we come to the lie. Remember, they said that most people thing Global Warming is not our fault. Presumably, in "most" they're including all those who say it is "not yet proven", but are these really people who say it's definitely "not our fault"? They can't be - not if they also think that taxing air travel or gas guzzlers is going to help. At best, you can characterise this group as "undecided", but my bet is that it consists of some "believers", some "disbelievers" and all the "undecideds". Frankly, it's a poor question.

Note, the poll shows that support for climate taxes is increasing - though the Times shows it's innumeracy here by somehow claiming that more people oppose increasing the cost of motoring, despite showing that men and women are separately less likely to oppose this measure. As are all age groups, and supporters of all parties (assuming "p8" is a typo for "-8").

This bears repeating: the Times are claiming that most people think that climate change is not caused by humans, while at the same time reporting that most people are happy to see new taxes to stop humans causing climate change!

Brown's half full house

The speaker here is Gordon Brown. Plenty of empty seats, eh?

Why I'd pay for free wi-fi

I've been to a couple of conferences this year, and both times looked for cheap hotels with free wi-fi. In Birmingham, I needed to finish the presentation (on spam email), so I needed wi-fi to research aspects of that presentation. I also used it to find out about local eateries. It all worked smoothly.

In Bournemouth, at the Lib-Dems conference, I used wi-fi for similar purposes, but also wanted to use it to synchronise my laptop calendar with the calendar on my iPhone, using Apple's MobileMe service which normally does this automatically. The conference fringe timetable is complex, with lunchtime and up to three evening slots, and perhaps a dozen events in each slot. All to be fit around meals, and meet-ups.

I booked a hotel with free wi-fi, but they'd overbooked and moved me to another hotel where I had to pay online before using the wi-fi. At £10 for a week, that's not too bad. The problems started when I tried to pay.

Of course, to manage paid wi-fi, the providers have to put up barriers between me and the Internet. And, they want me to pay over the Internet using PayPal. When I came to pay, my browser popped up a security warning. The security certificate wasn't a PayPal certificate.

I phoned the provider, and was told that this happens quite frequently, and not to worry because the network was completely secure. That's simply not true. Trivially, nothing is completely secure, but in this case I was being asked to click through known security inconsistencies, and given no guidance as to which invalid certificates I should accept.

Throw in a couple of timeouts, and it took me about an hour, in all, to get connected.

Worse, once I was connected, pretty much any secure service I wanted to use wouldn't work properly. Either I had to click through a security warning, or - in the case of the calendar sync process - the service simply would not work.

So, that's a tenner completely wasted, and I'd have gladly paid more than a tenner (for the room) to get free wi-fi, without the payment system that made this so hard to use. Oh, and I never did get the wi-fi to operate with my iPhone - I couldn't get past the paywall even though you're supposed to be able to use multiple devices with the one password.

Elevated status

The Sussex Express printed my article today. They've managed to describe me as "a Liberal Democrat county councillor for Priory ward, and a Lewes District Councillor".

In fact, I'm a Liberal Democrat district councillor for Priory ward. I'm not a county councillor at all. Never mind.

Interesting to see that Jason Sugarman chose to use the article to undermine trust, by repeating lies about Norman Baker's expenses.

Anyway, in my article, I said you can read more about the turnout stats on my blog. That's all in this post.