Git News

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New iPhone app keeps track of MP

Want to know what your local MP is doing? There’s an app for that.

Labour MP Derek Wyatt has become the world’s first serving politician to launch an iPhone app which he said makes him more accountable to constituents.

The free MyMP app shows users what their MP is doing, where they are, their surgery hours and location and also lets the public send messages directly to their elected representative.

Review also download for beta – expensive but cheaper entry for some.

we set off to the cinema tonight to see this film – on the way out Jean glanced at the evening paper and saw that the cinema was closed due to a burglary and the police were still crawling all over it.  So we went and had a curry at the Indian Village in Mardol, Shrewsbury which was very good indeed.  I noticed they did not have a website – will I have to eat it off again like I did with the first Indian restaurant website I designed!  Which all makes for an eclectic post!!

This portrait in oil on canvass by Wade Reynolds of Tony and Alison Cork was presented to them last weekend – the painting has been work in progress for a number of years but Wade finished it and gave it to Tony and his Muse – I think it captures their spirit and Wade is a very clever artist

Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine’s opposition leader, has narrowly won the presidential election against Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister, exit polls suggested.

The National Exit Poll, a consortium partly funded by Western embassies, said Yanukovich had secured
48.7% of Sunday’s vote against Tymoshenko’s 45.5%.

Allegations that "very senior BAE executives" were implicated in bribery conspiracies by the company, were revealed last week. The detailed allegations were spelled out in obscure magistrates’ courts that only now can be reported by the Observer.

Because the arms giant signed up on Friday to a plea bargain, under which the company pays almost £300m in fines for accounting irregularities, there will now never be a full trial at which these claims can be tested.

Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, BAE’s key confidential agent in central Europe, denied the accusations against him "wholesale", and charges against him were dropped on "public interest" grounds as soon as BAE agreed the settlement deal.

But what was not revealed was that after the count’s arrest, during hearings at London’s Highbury Corner and Westminster courts, lawyers for the SFO described what they said were BAE’s systematic methods for making corrupt payments to foreign politicians and officials.

The courts were told that Mensdorff, husband of a senior Austrian politician, originally had "no track record in the arms industry". He started in a poultry business and moved into forestry. But he set up as a BAE "adviser" in Vienna, Budapest and Prague between 1993 and 2007, the SFO said.

"From 2002 onwards, BAE adopted and deployed corrupt practices to obtain lucrative contracts for jet fighters in central Europe," the courts were told. It was a "sophisticated and meticulously planned operation involving very senior BAE executives". They conspired with Mensdorff and spent more than £10m to fund a bribery campaign in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, the court heard. Mensdorff paid bribes "to public officials to favour BAE’s bids to supply Gripen jets".

Three offshore entities were successively created in Switzerland. The secrecy was to prevent them "being penetrated by law enforcement" agencies, the SFO alleged: "The underlying purpose was to channel money to public officials."

About 70% of the BAE money transferred to Mensdorff went into accounts in Austria. BAE executives were alleged to be present at meetings involving "so-called third party payments or down-the-line payments".

There were "significant cash withdrawals", often within days or weeks of important defence procurement decisions. More than $17m in total was transferred to Mensdorff, but all he officially did in return was produce "marketing reports".

British law forbids the disclosure of details of evidence given at preliminary criminal hearings. But now the case against Mensdorff has been abandoned, it can be reported.

In the Sunday Times Prof’s Thrasher & Rallings of Plymouth University have re-run the 2005 results of the general election as if the alternative vote system were in place.

The results show that Labour’s majority would have risen from 66 to 82, with the Tories getting 15 fewer seats. The Liberal Democrats would have gained an extra 9.

Labour, with 36% of the popular vote on people’s first preferences, would have gained 364 Commons seats, equivalent to more than 10 for every 1% of the vote. The Tories would have secured 183 seats for their 33% of the vote, just five for every 1% of the vote.

Thrasher and Rallings simulated the results of such a system by estimating how voters would distribute their second preferences. Only 10% of the second preferences of Labour voters, for example, would go to the Conservatives, and vice versa, while 40% of their votes in each case would go to the Lib Dems.

The key second preference votes would be those of Lib Dem supporters, who would favour Labour by two to one.

“It is entirely possible that voters may behave differently when faced with an actual election where preferences count, but unless there is a radical shift in party ideologies it does look as if a centre-left ‘coalition’ of Labour and Liberal Democrats could install an electoral obstacle to the centre-right Conservatives that it would struggle to overcome,” conclude Thrasher and Rallings.

“The figures also suggest why the Lib Dems are lukewarm about Brown’s idea. They would pick up a few more seats — largely in areas where currently they run the Tories close — but their return is much less than under a proper proportional system when they could qualify for well over 100 MPs.”

Andrew Rawnsley’s piece is also interesting

Saxophonist who played for Charlie Parker, collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald and wrote the Avengers theme tune dies after a 60-year career in music

Sir John Dankworth, a totemic figure of the British jazz scene who worked as a musical director for artists including Nat King Cole and Ella ­Fitzgerald, has died at the age of 82.

A saxophonist and band leader, he also enjoyed a career as a film and TV composer writing the theme tune for The Avengers, as well as scores for films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Servant.

Born in Essex in 1927, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music after winning a place there at the age of 17 and was voted British Musician of the Year in 1949 following a period of national service. His group, The Dankworth Seven, became a favourite of the British jazz scene in the 1950s, and he shared the stage with numerous jazz legends.

He was appointed CBE in 1974 and was knighted in 2006. He was married to the singer Dame Cleo Laine, whom he met in 1950 while he was auditioning for singers for his band.

Ladies loos-ing out in toilet trauma – Women are claiming that they have been left inconvenienced by a new toilet block planned for a car park in a small Shropshire town – which has no female loo.And a space-age pay-as-you-go public toilet block dubbed “The Tardis” has got residents of another town so worried about getting locked in that some of them say they would rather relieve themselves in nearby bushes.

Developers of the new loos in the car park at Childe Road, Cleobury Mortimer, have been caught short by protests about the lack of a female toilet.

The Shropshire Council loo block offers a urinal for men, a toilet for the disabled and another section with unisex loos.

There are nappy changing facilities in all three sections but no separate ladies’ toilet.

Resident Jim Reynolds said: “A lady assures me that research many years ago made it clear toilet provision should give greater precedence to ladies because they require more time than men.”

Elsewhere in the county, pensioners in particular are said to be scared of being locked in the hi-tech loos at Shifnal.

But the 20p-a-visit toilets by the village hall are the only public conveniences available.

Councillor Gerald Nickless told a meeting of Shifnal Town Council on Thursday: “There is a real problem with those Tardis toilets. I saw a group of people up there and they weren’t using them, they were using the bushes instead. No-one uses them.”

His concerns were backed by residents who said the Shropshire Council-built toilets were known as “The Tardis” and claimed they were universally disliked.

Jane Blackstock said: “I wouldn’t go in there. They frighten me to death.”

Steven Brown, Shropshire Council’s head of environmental maintenance for south Shropshire, said: “We are carrying out a consultation on public toilet provision in Shropshire and encourage people to let us know of any concerns they have of public toilets in the county. We will visit the toilets to ensure that there are no problems with the lock systems. We would like to remind people that it is an offence to urinate in a public place.”

Couldn’t resist this – so I am becoming a bit of an Allen Jones collector.

Rosso
Allen Jones
Lithograph on paper
Year: 1977
Image: 19 x 17 cm
Signed: AJ
number 3303/5000 on back
Published by: Bolaffi Arte Italy