In a Prospect discussion of Obama's foreign policy, I saw this:

... the administration hasn't been able to figure out what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners. Some can be tried; some can be let go. But some are quite dangerous, valuable to our deadliest enemies and, for various reasons out of the control of the administration, cannot be successfully charged and tried.

It sounds like sense... yet very much like surrender. Are we simply to give up on the rule of law, then? People have died for it. People still do. Is it terribly naive of me to think that, whatever these men may do if free, we ought to risk it rather than countenance indefinite detention without trial? For anyone?

This isn't, I hope, idle posturing; most days I pass through one of the UK's larger transport hubs. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that it's me next; or my sister in London. But I think I'm less afraid of what terrorists might do to us than of what they persuade us to do to ourselves.

A day later and I'm still angry. Yesterday, on my monthly errand to renew my travelcard, I was informed that in order to buy one lasting more than a week they required my name and address, and for all I know more; I balked at the address part, bought a week card instead and got into a row with the idiot female on the desk over her inability – or unwillingness – to understand that, on the list of satisfactory answers to the question, "Why do you need this information?" the phrase, "Because the new computer system says so," emphatically does not appear. Apparently it is unreasonable of me to refuse to regard my privacy with the same cavalier disrespect as Virgin Rail does. They don't need my personal information to get me from A to B and back, and I'm still trying to calm down enough for a coherent letter informing them of that fact – for all the good it'll do.

So now what? I'm not about to go to the trouble and extra expense of renewing weekly. Hopefully I can find a place that doesn't have this new computer system – but failing that, I suppose I could give them my work address. Or lie. I'm pretty sure that's not illegal yet. But in a country where a man can end up in jail essentially for refusing to assist the police with their fishing expedition into his encrypted files, who knows?

I have taken little interest in the effort to oust Elizabeth Truss from her Conservative candidacy because the selectors weren't informed of an extra-marital affair. Frankly, I'm still not all that transfixed, but a reading of the Metro did bring to my attention one of the most unintentionally revealing comments I have ever seen, when one of the 'Turnip Taliban's' leaders replied to a charge that he was 'against women':

Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my three wonderful children appear? Women, you can't do without them. – Sir Jeremy Bagge

Fuck off, Bagge, we're not here for your convenience.

In other news, it's apparently even more difficult to get off the DNA database than I realised; aside from it not being possible at all except in the case of dubiously-defined 'exceptional circumstances', the bureaucracy involved in making that determination is Byzantine, requiring 'ten months, six different departments and nine officers'. So not only is the current system an appalling infringement on civil liberties, it's also eating up police resources. Of course, routine destruction also requires time and effort; with an example of such a system just to the north, I'd be interested to see how the two compare. Either way, surely chief constables (whose clearance for removal is currently required in England) have better things to do.

Jaw, have you been introduced to Floor? I think you two should meet. The BBC report omits the figure I saw in the Metro this morning – supposedly, the police spent £20,000 investigating ‘psychic’ claims that an apparent suicide was murder.

Allowing for the need to satisfy the family, I would have thought due diligence could have been sufficiently demonstrated by the second post-mortem – which disproved the claim that he’d been forced to drink petrol and bleach – without the necessity of a wild goose chase around pubs with lions and horses in their names. There had better be something more to this than credulous, woo-based policing.

Then again, what can we expect when we routinely teach children that in regards to claims of the supernatural, it’s good to be irrational?

"Where's the camera? There's a bat in the server room!"

(There was, too.)

So, a while back I went on the rampage over the Home Office's fact-free approach to selling their DNA retention proposals. Now it seems I was working on a faulty assumption.

The assumption? That they did actually have some evidence but weren't bothering to talk about it. Now it looks as if I was extending too much credit. If there were any real 'studies' that really supported the retention of unconvicted individuals' biometrics, one wonders why the Home Office turned around and pressured the Jill Dando Institute into rushing something out; the result being a complete shambles.

Which all leaves me wondering whether Jacqui Smith or anyone else knew anything, or cared, about the possible effectiveness of 6/12-year retention. It looks as if the Home Office settled on a policy which they thought would satisfy the ECHR without clobbering the law-and-order vote, then went looking for something to back it up.

To some extent I can't blame them for not having the numbers. Whilst I can think of other stats that might be informative, in terms of direct evidence it's been only five years since the police started retaining DNA from everyone arrested; the JDI is probably right in saying that we need at least another five before 'robust answers' are available. What I can and do lay blame for is the certainty with which, back in May, the Home Office position was put forward, when it was built on such shaky foundations.

It has been amusing, annoying and frequently worrying to see the level of lunacy inspired in certain segments of the US population by the prospect of healthcare reform. But when they try to bolster their arguments by picking on the NHS, all I have to say is ( take it away, Mitch Benn. )

Life is generally notbad at the moment.

But I still can't stop bloody worrying. Knock it off, Me, you unreasonably pessimistic self-defeating paranoid twit!

There, that'll larn me.

I knew Rob had a funny kind of smirk on his face when our supernatural French Resistance game session drew to a halt a week ago. Last night I found out why. Who knew that blowing Nazi brains out whilst under the effect of a Somebody Else's Problem field would result in a major head trip? Not to mention the violently unwelcome attention of the field's patent holders?

I had previously wondered why he'd given my character such an enormously useful ability in exchange for a measly few points of Occult skill. Of course I should have realised before now that it was because she hadn't the faintest idea how much trouble it could get her into...

So an Islamist converting an 11-year-old is bad, apparently. Why is it not similarly outrageous that this country’s children are routinely spoon-fed equally irrational (if usually less ugly) belief systems from much younger ages? The righteously indignant are on very shaky ground over this one. No wonder I can’t find a word about it on the BBC...

Well, never mind. According to the Lovecraftian Chick Tract, we ought to be putting them all out of their misery anyway.

Some places I expect to see vapidity. But when I happened to find it in Times Higher Education, I was rather more surprised.

It's called 'Faith, hope and the academy'. It's taken me a while to write about it. I still can't reread it without headdesking. "There is ... a case to answer..." begins Hannah Fearn as she winds up to a conclusion, and all I can think is, "Where?" Because there isn't – not in that article. Just a load of theists spouting the usual vague assertions about their religion being the cure for whatever ill you care to name – in this case, a supposed 'focus on wealth creation and utilitarianism' in the current university system. The questions of whether there is such a focus, and whether that is actually a bad thing, are apparently beyond the scope of the article. (I wouldn't necessarily disagree with either proposition, but they could have used some discussion.) Even granting this premise, the various pro-side interviewees – or at any rate, the quotes Fearn chooses to print – fail to show any basis for their contention that higher education would be improved by the existence of institutions at which 'the Bible would be drawn on in all courses'. What any of this means in practical terms and how exactly this Biblical influence was expected to help was, again, beyond the scope of the article. Well, mostly. I was entirely unsurprised to see that the one specific example of a way in which the approach of one of these Christian universities would be different involved re-examining accepted geology with an eye to 'knocking several zeroes off the age of the Earth.'

Which pretty much demonstrates the problem with the idea. If we knew any reason for knocking zeroes off our idea of Earth's age that wasn't based on religious dogma, it would be having its airing in the existing universities anyway. In this entire article, the only proponents who had anything to say more informative than platitudes were young-earthers who wanted to toss scientific method in the bin. Where do these people get off, pretending that the secular education system is somehow inferior because it insists on using the methods that have historically worked, rather than according a book of ancient myths the respect they think it deserves?

As I grabbed my copy of the free newspaper out of the box, my first thought was, "Oh, typical. Any excuse to show as much female skin as they can." On the cover was a blonde in a backless purple dress, smiling alluringly over her shoulder.

Then I looked at the caption. It was Kinga Legg. She was beaten to death, and some leering fuckers think it's okay to use a glamorous picture of her to hook passing punters' attention for their advertisers. It's not as if there are ever copies of the Metro left after about 10am anyway!

Finding out a few pages later that they'd apparently met their female flesh quota and so hadn't, for once, illustrated the standard 'Scorchio' story with bikini-clad waifs did not mollify me one bit.

In the nature of a memo to my future self... (spoiler warning)

If the object of the exercise was Echo’s assassination, why not give the job to someone who would just shoot her in the head and run like hell, rather than a guy who wanted a sporting hunt? Normally I can file things like that under W for Willing Suspension of Disbelief, but if somebody went to the trouble of creating a fictional identity sufficiently thorough to fool the Dollhouse vetting, it seems ridiculous for the payoff to be so uncertain. And isn’t it a bit convenient that, in the course of said hunt, he fed her a drug which just happened to awaken supposedly erased memories?

It’s one of those ‘I hope that’s a plot point, because otherwise TV’s treating me like an idiot again’ moments.

On Saturday, my plan to mow the lawn was foiled by showery weather. This was aggravating, as a recent lack of free weekend time has resulted in it already being a bit junglous out there. Here's hoping next weekend is better, or I'm going to have to resort to mowing in the evening - not very neighbourly.

In the evening, to evil_chalkie's housewarming - he and Bel have a lovely place on the Solihull-Worcestershire border. I saw various people I don't see often, and discussed politics with Jon Cole and barrettyman. Sadly, it does not appear that Nadine Dorries has been claiming for two homes whilst having only one, as initially reported. She still has some explaining to do as to why she's claiming her Bedfordshire home as her second, when she apparently spends more time in it than in her Cotswolds place, but if she reprinted the letter from the Telegraph accurately, and if as she claims she's renting both her homes, then there doesn't seem to be much of a case against her.

But, as with the complaint about her improperly funding her website, asking her to explain herself is just not nice. I would lay money that behind the accusation of not being co-operative with the fees office lies a history of her blaming them for her mistakes as well as their own. And then there's this self-pitying screed (scroll down a bit - she made three posts that day) thumping her chest about her right to a private life and now they've made her 'humiliate' her daughters. I have no idea why it's such an imposition on her privacy, having to justify her use of public money by revealing that she rents a place at an undisclosed location, along with some very general details about where she spends her time, or what in the post is so humiliating for her daughters. Daughters, I might add, who must already be used to being paraded on their mother's blog.

On Sunday, I ran the first session of a new D&D adventure. I really must have a think about the layout of the living room. Otherwise, it went rather well. The first encounter was a bit anti-climactic - the party spotted the goblin ambush, not unexpectedly. Then, when the half-orc barbarian/ranger was entirely unsubtle about his preparations for a fight, the goblins realised their cover was blown and legged it. Goblins might not be the smartest creatures, but they can tell when they need the element of surprise.

Monday evening, blowing up a bridge in the name of the Communist French Resistance. In a setback we probably should have forseen, the water displacement wrecked our getaway vessel, resulting in some cold, wet trailing around fields towing Mark's character Zoltan, who due to an approaching jeep had had to set off the detonater before enough wire was out to avoid him getting temporarily blinded, deafened and stunned. The upside was that we then got to witness Dan (Oscar, giant of a dock worker) and Rob (various French passers-by) playing out Oscar strolling into a nearby village, gun over his shoulder, and essentially saying, "Hello comrades, I'll be stealing this boat now. Vive la France," and the villagers breaking their necks in their haste to look the other way. I'll bet the Nazis get to hear about it soon enough anyway, but that's a problem for the next session...

Sunday before last, as dreamfire was picking me up to go to storytelling class, the lock on my front door jammed. I was on the wrong side of it at the time.

I didn't make class that day. I did get a sunburn.

The tale of the next five hours is not a very interesting one, but I did pick up two pieces of wisdom I would like to share.

Firstly, if you don't already have a number for locksmiths and other emergency repairs on your mobile, I suggest you enter the following upon it now: ReactFast 08001951269. (Apologies to nyarbaggytep and other eschewers.) Naturally I am going on a sample size of one, and I don't know how good they may be in other parts of the country, but I do know that their man turned up within half an hour, got me inside in five minutes and was gone, leaving me with a reasonably-priced new lock, in another half.

So why the reference to five hours? Glad you asked, for it brings me to my second piece of advice, should you disregard the first or not have your mobile - never, ever use UK Locksmiths. If you call a 118 number and they try to send you to them, ask for someone else. Having endured more of their rudeness, incompetence and utter failure to ever call me back when they said they would than I was prepared to stomach, I was unsurprised at the ReactFast gentleman rolling his eyes when I mentioned the name.

What would your policy for a DNA database cover?

I don’t know. I don’t yet have the facts I need to decide, and that’s what aggravates me. Whilst I believe that one has a duty to inform oneself, there are limits; and if the Home Office reckons that innocent people’s biometrics are its business, it should be pushing the facts that back that idea – not just scratched-record-ing ‘It’ll put bad guys away 4500 fewer cases solved a year think of the victims.’

Is it OK to retain that of people who are convicted?

I wouldn’t have a problem with some convicts’ records being kept indefinitely. However, I doubt any purpose is served if the biometrics of a 40-year-old with an otherwise impeccable record are on the system because he swiped a six-pack of beer when he was 18.

Charged but not convicted?

In principle, no, but in practice it’s a bit fuzzier. If an otherwise solid case collapses due to some technicality, there is a public-interest argument for retention for ease of future detection. Perhaps judges could decide on a case-by-case basis.

What is the evil of having everyone's DNA on record?

There are answers I can provide for this, and I’ll get to some of them in a moment; but I think it’s the wrong question. If the state wants more information about the people, it’s up to it to show why it should have it, not up to dissenters to show why it shouldn’t.

Has there been any record of this information being abused or is the assumption that the government will eventually and inevitably do so?

I’m not making any such assumption – but, depending on how broadly you mean ‘abuse’, I think there’s a risk through idleness, overwork or incompetence, if not malice. Can we agree that the police are sometimes guilty of all four? These two are the cases that spring to mind for me regarding the consequences of fingerprint or DNA-related mistakes. In the latter, it’s true, a universal database might have led to quicker discovery of the error; but to me the point is more the German police’s readiness to drop all other evidence in favour of chasing the DNA to a non-existent serial killer.

And that’s assuming the system works properly, when the reverse assumption would be a safer one. Information gets deleted. It gets corrupted. It gets hacked. It gets taken out of the office on laptops and flash drives, or (to quote the most notorious case I know of) couriered on CDs, against procedure, and duly lost or stolen. The bigger the size, the bigger the risk and more costly the maintenance.

I'm against ID cards not because of any infringement of privacy but because they seem a highly expensive way of failing to do what they are supposed to.

I’m against both things on both grounds.

dreamfire is probably right – listening to Radio 4 in the mornings is bad for me. As if I need more stuff to be annoyed about. I have at least two other rants on hold, and that's not including the tale of me getting locked out, or the slow-motion trainwreck going on at work which I probably shouldn't be discussing in public.

( This morning it was the DNA database )

On a happier (though not entirely unrelated) subject, Virgin has started putting Dexter season 3 on TV Choice. Only two episodes so far, but they are very win indeed.

Why wasn't Samantha Orabator news earlier?

And why, now that she is news all of a sudden, is the press blathering on about her pregnancy? Isn't it scandalous enough that she was locked up for months without access to a lawyer, even given the somewhat confusing accounts of who knew what and when? And why are the articles all cautiously circling the question of how she apparently became pregnant whilst in custody, and whether there's any likely scenario under which it could have happened without abuse of power or outright rape?

And then there's this little gem as well:

[Director of Reprieve]Stafford Smith said: "She is five months pregnant, without ever having met a lawyer, facing a show trial for her life

"If this provokes a miscarriage, the Laotians should understand that they have caused the death of this baby.

What I would dearly love to know at this point is whether Smith has any evidence that, were Samantha Orabator to be released today, one of her earliest ports of call wouldn't be an abortion clinic. Again, the other facts of the case seem to matter far less than the fact that she's got a BAYBEEE inside her now, and what will this do to the BAYBEEEE, and never mind if you don't actually want it, you drug-smuggling whore, the BBC says you're a 'mum-to-be', so there!

Somewhere inside my head there's a more coherent rant about attitudes like this, complete with mention of the fact that, if the Marquis de Condorcet in pre-revolutionary France had grasped the idea that it's not cool to treat pregnant women as invisible baby-vessels, we're way behind the curve, but it's not coming out today as, for one thing, I'm too angry and, for another, I'll be late for storytelling if I write it.

So, I will depart with the question that's buzzing around my head - are the media giving the public what we want, or telling us what we want?

Last week I was suffering with a bad cough. So bad, in fact, that on Tuesday I repaired to the doctor convinced that my annual bronchial flare-up had finally arrived, a mere three months late. But no, she assured me that it was just a normal cold, and although still hacking and croaking I went back to work, then to the West Bromwich Storytelling Café in the evening.

“Aha!” cried Graham when I appeared. “I was hoping you’d come – we don’t have a floor spot for this evening!”

I explained that my vocal apparatus was somewhat broken. He didn’t respond. I understood that, unless I outright refused, I was standing up that evening. Ah well, I thought – I can hardly nurture dreams of professionalism if I’m not prepared to tell whilst feeling lousy. So I listened to the wonderful Jo Blake, swigged from my bottle of cough medicine at a strategic moment, and after the interval told ‘Old Nance and the Doinney-Oie’ – without, to my astonishment, any coughing. I was in too much pain to give my imitations of the Doinney-Oie’s horn their usual volume, but Graham later said my projection was fine.

So that’s one worry cleared up – yes, I can tell, and make a decent job of it, whilst sick.

( In Other News )

Here's how it works - leave me a comment and I will give you five topics to expound upon. spiraltower (a while ago) gave me fear, wisdom, nostalgia, numinous and obsession. Finding myself with a slight case of writer's block, I elected to approach them with the aid of another five words - The Order of the Stick.

( Five Words )