Jonathan R. Pritchard’s Homepage

I identify myself as a believer in capitalism, free-enterprise and free-market economics. I also have a strong affinity for the Conservative party. However, I don’t agree with a number of Conservative policies, be they ideological or just ill-thought out. Indeed I find that I want to nationalise the railways, increase funding of state schools and take away the tax breaks on independent ones; as well as reform and create a strong NHS.

Education is close to most people’s hearts, be it from our memories of our school days, or the wishes of parents for their children, the human resource of the future, to do well, get ahead and have a strong foundation for the future. It is in this background that David Cameron’s attacks on grammar schools were arguably his most misguided move, apart from WebCameron; it doesn’t look good when an Eton and Oxford-educated man denounces grammar schools which I see as a key proponent of social mobility. The defence of which was a key Conservative policy.

It is no wonder why school standards are falling under a Labour government that prefers comprehensive schools completely forgetting the point that education needs to be universally accessible: giving everyone the chance to make the most if their god given gifts and it needs to be uniform.

The creation and protection of selective schools is not a discriminatory policy for the privileged. It is not an example of ‘the tyranny of the majority’. Grammar schools are a key method for the bright, but deprived, to reach higher grounds. Education has always been a tool out of the vicious cycle of poverty, and frankly, now it is gone or in decline.

There has been so much panic in recent months - that is before Labour’s poor showing in the local elections and the Crewe and Nantwich byelection - the fact that our future economy is going to have a shortfall of well-educated graduates in the labour market. This of course is a direct consequence of poor educational standards in schools.

It is not a huge jump, therefore, to look at the school rankings and notice that the independent schools and the grammar schools dominate the top of these charts. It is not the fault of independent schools who have always been well privately-funded and have maintained standards. It is a loss of our valuable assets in state schools of grammar schools across the country, bar the home counties and a various spattering around the country.

Just like the NHS, education in our schools is mortally important for the country. Just as every NHS Trust needs to be up to standard across the country so does every school. Those that oppose grammar schools speak of the unfair, undue pressure put upon the shoulders of 11-year olds and talk of it’s crippling psychological damage of being labelled a ‘loser’ by themselves or others. They fail to realise in this analysis that there is the 12 and 13-plus exams if they don’t get in the first time round. there is also the case of appeal, which a significant minority win. Finally there is also the choice of school for sixth form.

Why cripple social mobility? Why ruin our children’s chances? This is the state of our politically correct, but ignorant government. In my eyes, David Cameron not only joined the government on this failure of policy but has forsaken the likes of Margraret Thatcher and Edward Heath who are grammar-school educated. It is he, who is clearly discriminatory in his command as Leader of the Opposition; having 13 out of ~20 shadow cabinet ministers from Eton is akin to the problem that the Labour party has with Scots in the cabinet. I’d say Cameron’s cabinet problem is the greater.

How do we pay for all of this? Well the Conservative party say they believe there is at least £7 Billion of waste in the government’s various departments, how about you look at the waste that’s been going on in the NHS computer system which adds up to Billions alone. £50 Million to fix a computer program that was speaking in German. We’ve got to make people accountable again.

I’m often asked where are the best places to download television programming, both state side and from the UK.

Moral and legal matters aside, it’s never been easier. There exist both legal venues for this (See: BBC iPlayer) as well as the existing BitTorrent trackers and eDonkey networks.

For American television programming on a weekly basis, I use Azureus and BitTornado in conjunction with the website Mininova. I prefer Azureus (Classic UI, not Vuze.) over BitTornado now. The Shadow, the maintainer of BitTornado, hasn’t updated the file sharing program in awhile. My large bandwidth allowance per month necessitates that I queue up .torrent files since I am away from home a lot, an ability which BitTornado does not possess at this time. Azureus’ popularity means there are plenty of plug-ins for your needs I personally use SafePeer and Speed Scheduler amongst others.

For British television I must say that the BBC’s own iPlayer is now a much more acceptable compromise than the earlier Beta’s pre-Christmas 2007. It’s flash based player at least now allows one to access the content without sacrificing both their computer and their ethics in regards to DRM. However Flash remains an Adobe, proprietary format and cannot be played by say a vanilla distribution of Fedora Linux. A step in the right direction however that should be hearlded.

iPllayer only allows you to watch the last 7 days of programming from the BBC. So using Azureus still, why not sign up to TheBox.bz who are a private torrent tracker community that have a wide range in available downloads if you abide by the rules.

That’s it for a piece that’s been hanging around since long before Christmas.

I have found the N95 8GB SIM Free, at Play.com, for an astronomical £499.99. Whereas they sell the old Nokia N95 for £349.99. That’s a £150 price difference which seems pretty stupid to me. They need to lower the N95’s price and the N95’s price by at least £50.

Personally, I’d only buy a Nokia N95 8GB, when I can get one brand new without Vodafone/Orange removing the VoIP software. For around £350-400.

The going price on ebay has recently dropped from £410 for brand new and/or sealed models, to ~£390.

It’s a bit worrying that SIM free, they’ve released it at such a high price. Hopefully it’ll go down by Jan/Feb. Which is when I plan on getting one. eBay too, should be flooded with them by then, and from all different networks hopefully, so I can find one from 02 or something like that.

I guess we should be grateful that we don’t have to pay Nokia UK Shop’s prices, £459 for the original Nokia N95… not even including delivery *whinces*.

On a more unrelated note, but still of some relevance, the more I see Hannah play around with her Sony Ericsson W910i, the more I think the Symbian OS looks dated. The W910i is a slick looking phone with great functionality at a very good price (~£200). I think I should wait longer, if I’m spending £400 on a phone it better be even better than the N95 8GB actually.

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Update (16/11/07): The market for Brand New In Box/Sealed Nokia N95 8GBs has crashed on eBay. There are some going for around £350. The going price at the moment seems to be £350-390 with postage. There is a presence of some genuine SIM free models probably not encumbered by Vodafone & Orange removing the VoIP software. Assuming that they are carrying this practice over from the N95. Just remember to ask sellers questions before bidding. I’m going to wait around for a newer top of the N Series Nokias with at least Xenon flash. The N82, just released looks like a contender. Looks good, has most of the features of the N95 8GB but with a Xenon flash. Doesn’t have that sleek looks however. It looks like with Nokia you always have to compromise.The N95 was a compromised vision, nearly a year on from it’s release we have the N95 8GB. Which goes some way to solve the problems of the original N95, however it is now outdated and not as ambitious. For £400 for a phone I think everyone expects the same kind of technology as in the N95: OMAP 2420 processor, 3D games, GPS, great camera, WiFi etc. But to me it is more and more looking like it’s Symbian OS that doesn’t cut it.

It’s reached the point in time where we’re on the edge of a really exciting time for mobile technology. With Mozilla announcing the development of a Mobile Firefox. Google announcing it’s Android OS initiative. Nokia’s success with the N810 Linux-based Internet Tablets and the Maemo Framework. I think there’s a good chance of Linux coming on as a mobile platform in mobile phones. Where it needs to be. Not driven by people like Qtopia, but by people like Nokia. If they could merge Maemo with phone functionality, it would be amazing. There would be many, many applications due to the open source framework, it would run well on a lot of hardware, be interoperable and good looking. I think that’s the only true way forward in the mobile sector. I don’t think Android will be the OS to do it.

Update(11/01/08): Nokia N95 8GB SIM Free UK Models can be found online retailing around or less than £330 on eBay. As of this moment in time. What a bargain. If only it had Xenon+LED flash.

David Cameron’s speech was delivered very well. A great fuss is being made by his delivery without auto-cue. It’s certainly turning into something of a race of personalities in this election that is not yet to be. Whether Gordon Brown will call one or not, is anyone’s guess.

However, a complaint often levelled at David Cameron is “What does he stand for?!”. I think this finally answers it. He brought forward his policies on emigration, his thoughts on the NHS, the Army and foreign policy focus on Afghanisatan. Already the Shadow Chancellor’s promised reforms on stamp duty and inheritance tax are near election winners in my vote. And they’re justified, the finance is backed up.

There were some big corner stone pieces of policy unveiled in this speech, completing an otherwise empty dossier. He downplayed his family values points. However with stamp duty and a clear push towards national citizenship service as well as discpline in schools and over-arching power to headmasters shows the kind of things he will be doing in a push towards greater family values and therefore logically, one would think, a stronger community.

I applaud the idea to strengthen border controls and control emigration instead of introducing ID cards. But the recognition that it is something has made this country great.

What I am scared of is his talks of keeping jury trials, something that is taken as a given in my mind but apparently something Labour are trying to scrap. Repealling the Human Rights Act is a bit suspect, I’d have to look further into the issues at hand to say whether that’s an informed move or not, but I agree that sometimes the Human Rights Act is stupid - protecting terrorists. There must be checks and balances however. You can scrap police paper work etc. and push for more local control by schools and zero tolerance policing and what not, but what happens in the case of the guy who’s innocent or needs help?

I strongly applaud the move to let the NHS decide it’s own future more, to not hinder public sector with targets, something that has even impacted myself. We need a strong NHS.

I disagree with getting rid of the ’state monopoly’ on schools. Education isn’t a business, it should be nationalised and standardised.

Although I support many of the Conservatives and in particular David Cameron’s newly revealed policies one must be slightly cynical. It is easy to question and jeer at this government’s achievements and failures but it’s obviously a hard task running a country. With a more neutral view a journalist made a good point - how is Cameron going to achieve some of these things whilst remaining in the EU, which is largely a good thing and I think definitely a beneficial thing for us here in the UK. It does however dictate much of our legislative power.

I fear there’s too much emphasis on the person and not the policies, what’s all this “authentic Cameron” and “He didn’t use an auto-cue unlike Brown, yesterday”. Simply bollocks. If the Conservatives gain power, which I hope they will as a progenator to change they must be kept true to mission, with checks and balances I fear some draconian and anti-civil liberty type legislation coming in further down the line. All under the banner of family values. As always in politics, it’s a mixed bag.