Convicted rapist at Labour event - A businessman with a rape conviction attended a fundraising event for the Labour Party, the BBC reveals. [BBC Politics]

Ok....so a convicted rapist attended a political event.

Whats the problem here? It happened in 1996 for gods sake. Presumably since the man is wandering around free, he has completed any punishment the courts set down for him.

If you don't feel that the punishment set down for him was enough or appropriate, then thats something YOU need to deal with. I would suggest lobbying your local MP for some serious justice and penalty reform.

I am in no way condoning what this man has done, to rape any man or woman is unforgivable. I am not suggesting he be forgiven and have no doubts about it, he won't be. That offence will be on his record forever, like a port wine stain on his face.

I've stayed fairly quiet recently because I've been busy with other things, but every now and then something comes up which means I have to take time out and write about them.

This story about the sailors taken hostage by Iran is one of them.

Until last Friday, the story played out pretty well how I would have expected it to. After the sailors were taken, the British media published every manner of emotive crap they could dream up to keep the story alive. Diplomatically, deals were obviously being done to bring about their release, but the government has been pretty tightlipped about what those deals were.

What was conceded to Iran to get them to let those sailors go? Its a side issue to this story, but its not one which seems to have been followed up, or at the very least widely reported. Make no mistake about it, Iran was unlikely to have given the sailors up easily, especially given the circumstances of their capture and subsequent imprisonment.

So David Cameron smoked some dope when he was fifteen and got caught. Does anyone really care?

Should anyone care?

I don't think so. After all, I think everyone of us has done something when we were fifteen which perhaps we shouldn't have. The problem here is that the popular media is making a much bigger deal of it than they perhaps should be. We are now reaching the period in time when people in the wild and free era of the sixties and seventies are reaching the top of their political careers and we are going to see an awful lot more of this sort of thing in the future.

So lets get a sense of perspective on it now.

To quote the immortal words of the counselor on South Park "Drugs are Bad, hmkay?"

I personally don't particularly care whether David Cameron smoked dope when he was fifteen. I don't even care if he did it when he was studying at university. If he was finishing off a speech in the House and going home to hit the bucket bong a couple of times I might be a bit concerned, but I really don't believe that to be the case and I think, neither do any of the commentators on the subject.

I said in my last entry that I would have a look at the function that the Australian Senate performs in Australian politics, so bear with me while I give you something of an overview.

Now this is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the system of Australian politics, since it would take a fairly hefty book to do that and I couldn't consider myself to be any more of an expert on it that any other Australian.

And make no mistake about it, Australians are generally pretty keen observers of their political system. They have to be, because voting in Australia is compulsory, with punishment in the way of escalating fines if you don't. You can cast a donkey vote if you want to, but in the minds of most Australians, thats a bit silly, because if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain about whoever gets into power.

So Australians vote. Added to that, since most people are cheapskates at heart, they won't even give something as ethereal as a vote away without looking to see where they are putting it. Which just adds up to having to understand the system, since without understanding you might put the vote in the wrong place and that would just be silly.

Officially, the Australian system is known as the Washminster system, since it combines aspects of the Washington system of politics and aspects of the Westminster system.

So Jack Straw has presented his plans for reforming the House of Lords. What did you think of them?

Have you actually had a chance to think about it or have you been blindsided by the idea of giving the life peerages redundancy pay if they should choose to leave the upper house?

This government could well be compared to a prizefighter, leading with the left and smashing with the right when you least expect it.

The six options presented by Jack Straw for lords reform are except for one, ridiculous. Not only that but parliament has fairly simply been told that there will be reform no matter what they say. The voting system he proposes asks MPs to list their preferences numbered from one to six. That way if one option fails,  the MPs votes will then devolve to their next preferences and so on.

Now that in itself isn't such a bad way of doing things, indeed its very close to the system used for all elections in Australia. The problem arises when the options don't include all the possibilities, which seems to be the way Straw wants to set it up.

Now it may be that people will wonder why it is I seem to attack the popular media a lot in this blog and the reason is simple.

It is because the popular media is the conduit through which the people recieve the majority of their information.

Notice the flow of that sentence. To look at it from the perspective of communication theory, the popular media is a perfect example of channel based communication.

In its simplest terms, channel based communication is where a message is passed from sender to receiver through a specific channel or medium.

With communication though, it is generally the case that there is more than one channel carrying information, which would generally mean that information is balanced and contrasted with other information, which tends to allow people to receive a balanced view of messages being received.

The problem with the popular media today though is that with the possible exception of the BBC, the messages getting through to the receivers are being biased or at absolute worst totally garbled by the senders.

Fears raised over bird flu trucks - An MP raises concerns about the safety of transporting culled turkeys across England. [BBC News]

Just a quick one before I get into my main entry of the day.

It would seem DEFRA are doing it again. I live in rural Northumberland about 7 miles from the epicenter of the most recent foot and mouth outbreak a few years ago.

Speaking to locals who were here at the time, I found one of their main concerns was that trucks carrying carcasses culled as a result of foot and mouth were being transported through villages and towns throughout the countryside.

In addition to this, it would seem the definition of 'sealed' was the same back then as it is now, with nothing more than a plastic sheet on the bottom of the trailer and another on top. Quite a few residents told me they saw trucks carrying carcasses leaving a trail of blood and other fluids on the road as they made their way to the disposal sites.

Now without wishing to sound negative about this, I am really hoping that Westminster don't try to make political hay on this issue.

Bird flu and the H5N1 strain in particular is a horribly serious threat which according to the WHO, in a best case scenario, the UK could see between two and seven million people die if the flu manages to progress to being a pandemic.

Thats a fairly frightening figure, especially since it is very rarely that the best case scenario actually takes place.

Its very difficult to know what to do in this situation, but with the virus hitting over 2000 birds in a Suffolk bird farm, I feel a little suspicious when I'm told that the situation is under control.

How is it possibly under control? Did nobody notice these birds getting sick? If not, I would pay an absolute fortune to see some footage of all those birds keeling over dead at the same time. Not because I think it would be funny, more because of the sheer scale of the collapse.

I find it ironic in the extreme that all the Google Adsense ads being targeted to my previous blog are advertising same sex wedding services.