Archive for March, 2007

Government Bloggers at £10K a pop

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 20:52 29 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Life, Politics, Public Sector

Slavery: Isn’t It Time We Banned It?

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 20:37 3 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Life, Politics

People Are Not Using the Internet Securely

Monday, March 26, 2007 20:32 21 Comments

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 … [...]

This was posted under category: Scams & Spams, Technology

Slavery was a jolly bad thing

Sunday, March 25, 2007 12:34 22 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Life, Politics

England vs Israel vs Dundee??

Sunday, March 25, 2007 11:49 19 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Oddities, Sport

WCAG 2.0, Validity and The Holy Trinity

Friday, March 23, 2007 17:33 39 Comments

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, [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Articles, Standards, Technology

Woolmer Murdered?!

Friday, March 23, 2007 0:28 22 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Sport

Bigotry In The UK: Part 2

Thursday, March 22, 2007 20:50 3 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Life, Politics

34 Things About JackP

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 22:56 1 Comment

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…

This was posted under category: Memes, The Pickards

Assessing Accessibility Part 2: ThePickards Audit

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 20:44 29 Comments

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 [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Articles, Disability, Standards, The Pickards