ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

Members of Parliament have voted to give themselves £10,000 each a year to spend on things like websites to boost “public understanding” of Parliament.BBC News
Sorry? Did you just say ten thousand pounds? Each? Per Year? Per MP?
Look, I probably post more on my blog than most bloggers do. My site, including hosting, database connectivity, domain […]

Read: Government Bloggers at £10K a pop »

It was only two posts ago that I was saying Slavery was a jolly bad thing which was never technically legal in England, and that slave trading was made illegal 200 years ago. It’s instructive to look back at the working conditions people experienced in the past, so here’s some stuff fruit pickers had to […]

Read: Slavery: Isn’t It Time We Banned It? »

Other breaking news:

Joseph Alois Ratzinger believed to be Catholic
Ursus arctos horribilis found to defecate in woodland

Fewer than half the UK’s 29m adult internet users believe they are responsible for protecting personal information online, a survey suggests.
One in six of the 2,441 people surveyed felt responsibility rested with banks.
BBC News
… and until you need to pass […]

Read: People Are Not Using the Internet Securely »

The issue of slavery has cropped up in the news at the moment (I’m against it, by the way) because it is supposedly 200 years since slavery was abolished in the UK, and again the topics of whether or not “we” should apologise for it and/or pay compensation in some shape or form.
Firstly, (according to […]

Read: Slavery was a jolly bad thing »

Yes, England are shit. McClaren isn’t good enough. But I was telling you that before he’d even started the job, even though I wasn’t that hot on how you actually spelled his name at the time:
Oh, and I’ll go on record now as saying I don’t rate McLaren for the England job.ThePickards, July 2006
As soon […]

Read: England vs Israel vs Dundee?? »

Ah yes, the ongoing saga of whether or not WCAG 2.0 should include validity in there somewhere.
Well, according to the lastest minutes of the Working Group, they have finally got around to looking at it, and they have decided to refer the issue back to Committee.
They had previously dropped validity from their criteria, simply instead […]

Read: WCAG 2.0, Validity and The Holy Trinity »

From the Beeb:
Police in Jamaica have launched a murder investigation into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer.
Following the results of a post mortem examination, police said Mr Woolmer had died of asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation.
BBC News
That’s shit. I mean, I know Pakistan are out of the Cricket World Cup following […]

Read: Woolmer Murdered?! »

In November last year, I wrote a blog post called Bigotry In The UK which condemned the racism, sexism and rampant homophobia in our glorious national game. Four months later, we’re back to the bigotry issue again.
Elton John wants people to stand up to bigots, and shout back against homophobia:
Sir Elton John has called on […]

Read: Bigotry In The UK: Part 2 »

I found 34 Things on Vigo’s site, and I thought that it was a while since I’d done a meme, so here goes with 34 things about me…

Read: 34 Things About JackP »

After offering my own thoughts on the Better Connected 2007 thing, where I mentioned some of the problems in trying to assess accessibility, particularly when it comes to measuring it across different websites. I’ve since volunteered to give someone else’s site a good going-over and do an accessibility audit for them — and provide them […]

Read: Assessing Accessibility Part 2: ThePickards Audit »