WOKING

Today, Dave Sant is revising for his Law finals. That means a lot of tapping and frowning.. but there was one bit of chuckling, over this:

"I respectfully refer you to the reply in Arkell v. Pressdram

Must try to drop it casually into conversation...

Today, I read about Gartner's Hype Cycle for new technologies here.

I thought that was mighty funny.

This image from Gartner scares me a bit - but you get the idea.

I followed the link from that article about class below to "renewal" magazine; in this article: 'Putting class back into British politics', I quite liked this point:

"Time will tell whether Cameron can get his bandwagon rolling in way that locks dissenting voices into lasting silence. What can’t yet be detected in the Tory Party is the utter desperation Labour had after 1992 to do anything to win again. The reasons for this are important. Thatcherism saw its task as the dismantling of the apparatus of social democracy. Trade unions were attacked along with local government. Nationalised industries were sold off along with council houses. Life for the left was painful. Where and how has New Labour made life uncomfortable for the real forces of Conservatism? The ban on fox hunting is probably as bad as its gets."

I think he means:
* The tories won't tolerate Cameron's 'triangulation' move to the left, in the way that labour tolerated Blair's move to the right.
* It's not analogous because the tories are not as desperate as labour was in the early 90s, because.....
* because life for a tory under new labour isn't bad, and nothing that worries them is happening.

I think this is an interesting point - one I hadn't heard before. I'd been thinking that labour party tolerated Blair because they were desperate for power, because they wanted power per se, rather than because they were watching terrifying things happening.

Dave sent me this link today:

This nation of shoppers needs to talk about class, Neal Lawson, The Guardian

I agree that crap jobs as contract cleaners and in call centres are on the rise - replacing traditional manufacturing. Ie , the bad jobs are getting worse. I agree that there's a new super rich elite of bankers spraying champaigne, who are immute to taxes and revolting. But, I'm not sure what the evicence is for his claim that the middle class is shrinking. Are mangement jobs and public sector etc shrinking ?

I agree that it is blindingly obvious that class does exist, and is a problem (or, lack of social mobility is a problem). But he also, I think, wants to say that class is somehow the solution; I found this statement intriguing but sadly totally opaque:

"The alternative is to recognise class as part of the answer to how we change our world together....The emerging hourglass economy creates not just a swelling lump of poorly-paid service workers, but also a shrinking and insecure middle class, the effective organisation of which demands the rebirth of a trade unionism... "

Does he mean that the shrinking middle class are going to realise that they're shrinking, start their own trade unions, and that this would stop the alleged shrinkage? Or, does he mean the middle class is going to suddenly ride to the rescue of the contract cleaners by joining their unions? I don't get this at all - I'm not saying I don't agree - I'm not yet at the agree or disagree point - still at the 'whasat?' point...

.. it's all in the mullet...

What an all star cast! Boris Johnson doing his charming messy hair thing, Tony Benn in full flow, complete with "when I met Lloyd George...", and everyone having to admit defeat to the formiddably clever and sensible Shami Chakrabarti.

.. oh and then, Mr Toad from the CBI...

Originally, I thought that the proposal to stop Blair selling peerages by having the state fund political parties was quite sensible. But Shami pointed out that state funding of politics is just plain chilling - our big 3 weren't founded by 'the state', but by ideas. None of the other panelists could do anything but concede and nod and try to somehow make out that that's what they'd meant all along....

I also thought Boris was quite brave to admit he'd made a mistake voting for the war, and David Laws was quite brave to be un-liberal on jilbabs at school.

So, the BBC have finally got around to making the videos available - click on the little video button on the right. They don't seem to have quite got the editing right though - there's about 3 minutes of other stuff before the program.. which just happens to be a Tory party political.. which is probably against the BBC's charter.. but there we go, it's a good start..

In the Lib party in Oxford East, we're having an election to decide who will be our candidate to run in the real election.. (it's all very democratic you know...) I've been electronically canvassed by two of the candidates.

These are the questions I've sent them:

National things:
---------------

If elected to parliament:

1. How would you vote (were there to be a vote) on taking action in Iran?

2. What would you do to enforce the Equal Pay Act?

3. Would you join a coalition with Labour? If so, what would be your conditions?

4. Would you join a coalition with the Tories? If so, what would be your conditions?

(I know 3./4. have been "banned" by the party - but it's an important question - if not *the* important question - and we have a right to expect an answer.)



Oxford things:
--------------

If elected:

1. What would you do to help young people in Oxford's deprived estates?

2. What would you do about the University's new Animal Lab / the protesters?

In Evil Unit Tests, Paul Wheaton says that you should be picking on little independent units - it's supposed to be "unit" testing isnt' it! Tests that involve lots of pieces of the puzzle are really 'functional' tests - JUnit or no JUnit.

He says that functional tests aren't really as useful - they have fingers in too many pies - they tend to break as a result of changes some distance away.

I think I'm writing tests at the whole range of granularities, but it hadn't occurred to me that coarse ones might really be "functional" rather than "unit".

I think the not-being-able-to-test-private-methods thing might encourage (force?) people to write overly coarse grained ones too.

See the bit at thevery bottom - "I took out the keyword 'private',. In order to achieve testability, he's had to promote a method to package access. I have been doing that too, but feeling guilty about it..

So.. the Google Maps API turned out to be well nifty.

I'm not a big fan of JavaScript (I remember the full horror of coding for Netscape 4.7..) That said, I read the docs, got a key, pasted the thing, it worked, it took minutes - can't complain. No getting, no xml parsing, all happens by magic. Nifty.

Posting javascript in blogger is another matter..!

I'm mulling over a "where is my polling station" mashup for the May elections.