Where have you gone?

At the time of writing this, Aston Villa are loosing 3-0 at home to Manchester United. They'll probably score more before the game is over.

I don't mind loosing, it happens. Should have beaten Bolton on Saturday but we lost instead, funny old game football.

The thing that gets to me is Manchester United turning Villa Park into a home ground.

25000 went to see Villa vs. Bolton last Saturday. The ground holds 43000. Bolton are a good side and Villa have been doing well so why so low?

When the Premiership started in 1992 Aston Villa were as big a club as Manchester United. We had the highest attendance of the season in 1994 before the Holte End was knocked down. We qualified for Europe more often than not throughout the 1990's and yet now we're small fry.

A few seasons back there was a banner at the base of the Holte Upper tier saying "Where has the ambition gone" - it didn't have a question mark so I'm reproducing the error.

What I'd like to know is "Where have the fans gone?"

We now have an ambitious (and wealthy) chairman, an ambitious (and highly successful) manager and an ambitious (and rejouvenated) squad. So where are these ambitious fans that have been 'staying away' over the last few years?

They can't all live 250 miles from the ground like I do. Birmingham is the second largest city in England - bigger than that northern shithole the away side come from - so surely 43000 can bother to turn up to the ground two hours later than usual?

Even the manager has said that we lack home support so is it any wonder that we get turned over by United at home if we've got no fans?

I don't go on about how we won the league and the european cup in the early eighties as I was too young to remember it. But what concerns me is our rapid decline in status (not achievement) since the F.A. Cup final in 2000.

There really is no excuse for an empty ground. Our catchment area is enormous, the nearest Premiership club is Sheffield United. At the rate we're going there'll be higher gates at St Andrews than Villa Park.

I'm truly disgusted that the large numbers of people that have spent the last 6 years slating Doug Ellis haven't put their money where their mouth is now that he's gone.

You're all a fucking disgrace!

A step in the right direction

I was reading this today and unlike the critics in the article, I actually know a few things about enormous government databases. After all, I do work for one.

'Mixing up' the data does not make it 'less secure' like the No2ID spokesperson suggests*. Lax security protocols and bad programming make data less secure. I don't think it's a u-turn either, someone has had the guts to point out the glaringly obvious that similar databases already exist and can easily be adapted.

It would have made for a better report if the BBC had put in a comment from someone in the I.T. industry (e.g. a University lecturer or someone who's written a book) rather than the opinions of a bunch of opposition M.P.s and a spokesperson from a lobby group campaigning against the ID card plan. They're all paid to criticise it so it's hardly surprising that they have.

Anyone within the I.T. industry would tell you that the successful implimentation of a large computer system can only be obtained by tackling risk head on. By using existing infrastructure / systems architecture, much risk has been reduced already.
By removing the requirement for volatile data (address information changes frequently and serves little benefit), the risk could be reduced further.

All in all I would say well done to the government for actually listening to the experts (well, consultants anyway) and making an informed decision.

However the biggest sticking point has still been ignored:

Who is going to put the data on the system?

If it's all done by a bunch of agency temps recruited from who-knows-where then the integrity of the data will be non-existent.
Each user must conform to security standards set by the government and the government needs to make us aware of these standards and how they plan to measure compliance.
It's doubtful that the government will oversee the recruitment and vetting of all the people required for the initial data entry stage of the project so they need to have 'quality assurance' from whoever does.

Given the value and volume of this data, failing to rectify this issue could still bring the project down to it's knees.

* If No2ID want to make a bit more headway in stopping the implementation of a large computer system, it might help their cause if they get some expert advice rather than sprouting out bullshit. Convergence happens all the time in the I.T. industry. WTF do they think the internet is? Mind you they might improve their chances if they have a wash and stop smoking weed!

Monday Night F*** Up

So the Villa have got another MNF clash tonight.

Prediction - Defeat

Irrespective of what form we have going into any MNF game (or the oppositions form for that matter) we always seem to screw it up and suffer an embarrasing defeat.

If MO'N manages to break the curse tonight then he's elevated himself from saintly to godlike.

On a seperate note I was both pleased and saddened to hear that Alan Pardew was sacked today.

Saddened as I think he's done wonders for that club and this is the final nail in the coffin of three months of constant undermining.

But happy because a couple of months earlier he might have been tempted to quit given all the shit that was going on around him. At least by sacking him they'll have to pay him the money he deserves.

I still find it hard to believe that when you throw in the debts that were taken on, Eggert Magnusson paid roughly double the amount for West Ham United compared to Aston Villa.

Whether you want to argue about which team is the 'bigger' club or not, the assets that Aston Villa possess (some of which are being sold later this month) outstrip the assets that belong to West Ham United. I'm not sure whether Lerner got a bargain or Magnusson paid over the odds? Either way the two valuations don't match up.

Finally I'd like to say a big well done to Stuart Pearce for having the balls to criticise his own player for diving. It's just a shame that the repulsive turd that manages the other club in Manchester decided instead to attack Gareth Southgate for pointing out the glaringly obvious about Christiano Ronaldo rather than criticising the little shit himself.

It's worth a try

There's an online petition against the Prime Ministers plans for National ID cards on the Prime Ministers Office's web site.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to try.

I was going to whinge about there not being one for the road pricing but there is and it's even more popular than the one about id cards.

SIGN IT!!!!!!!!!

I don't believe it

The whole reason I got this blog in the first place was because I was fed up of hearing the opinions of reactionist arseholes in the media and so wanted to get my own opinions out and let off some steam.

After all no-one else can be right unless they agree with me.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself agreeing with two opinions on radio 5 about two different topics.

They were the topics of the day: Road pricing and PaedoWatch.

Jeremy Clarkson was talking about the road pricing and said what I've always thought which is scrap road tax and put it all on fuel. That way the more you use your car and the more thirsty it is, the more you pay.
This would also mean that the scroats that don't bother paying their roadtax would have to cough up like the rest of us. AND we'd loose an unneccesary layer of beaurocracy.
A good example of this system in action is a comparison between myself and one of my friends.

I drive a 1.9 TDi Renault Laguna, they drive a 1.3i Ford Ka.
I drive 4 miles each way to work every day, they drive 40 miles each way to work every day.
I pay £185 a year in car tax, they pay £100 a year in car tax.
I get nearly 50mpg, they get about 35mpg.

I don't see how it's fair that I'm paying a larger standing charge for a car that burns less fuel that I use far less. My carbon footprint is much lower due to both the efficiency of the vehicle and the distance I travel so surely I should be rewarded for it?

As for the governments satelite tracking business, as well as the issues normally raised (i.e. vehicles with the equipment removed etc.)I would also like to raise my slight concern that I don't think the goverment has a fucking clue how complicated this system will be!:

I work in a team that develops and maintains software that uses maps and stores static data that relates to them (i.e. a graphical representation of the land a person owns).
We have enough problems doing this so how on earth they plan to run a system that tracks the movements of millions of vehicles 24/7 is beyond me.

What about cars coming from abroad? We can get the money from the pump without any problems but they're hardly going to have a tracking device fitted whilst they're on the ferry/chunnel are they?

As for the business of solving congestion, no-one seems to address the reason why there is congestion in the first place.

It's because we have these outdated working practices where everyone starts at 9 and finishes at 5. You can fix this by offering businesses a lower rate of corporation tax if they stagger their working patterns.
Secondary schools can get a bit smarter with their timetables by putting on earlier and later lessons and putting children into the lessons according to their parents working patterns / childcare arrangements.

Anyway I seem to have gone off on a tangent and not got to PaedoWatch yet.

The bloke they talked to thought the idea was stupid as you would only be aware of people already on the register. People have to do something to get on the register in the first place and you would have no protection from them until after they've done it.
Again I agreed, the only points I would like to add are:

Paedophile attacks are a plane crash - they rarely happen but when they do you'll hear about them.

Attacks by family / carers are a car crash - it happens so often that it doesn't make the news unless there is something extra-ordinary in the detail (e.g. satanic ritual, foster parents etc.)

Cars are a bigger danger to children than paedophiles. Yet children aren't made to fear roads like they were when I was growing up.

So lets hear less from the idiots who think that a video of a man getting killed running from the police is racist because he is black and hear more from the kind of people who try to enforce drug laws (and therefore have experience of them) but think it would be of more benefit if addicts got the drugs for free.