Heather and I were awoken in the early hours of the morning last night by a violent shaking of the house and a loud rumbling sound. It would appear that we, like many others in the region and in fact across the country, were witnesses to the strongest earthquake the UK has had since the quake felt in North Wales back in 1984.

Measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale the quake caused minor damage to a few buildings and caused objects to rattle across surfaces and furniture to move around on the floor. Considering how infrequently we have eatrhquakes here it was quite a bizare experience, and many of the reports in the news speak of surprise and concern.

A fair few articles are now present on the BBC website detailing the event.

All who have been keeping up with the news lately can’t have helped but notice that yet again we have stuff moving towards the doors of parliament that involve a trade-off between our civil liberties and the “fight against terrorism”. I’m commenting on this because I don’t see enough debate on this in the blogosphere and as such I want to get peoples views and voice a few of my own.

In order to determine what is legitimate in order to fight terrorism we first of all have to decide exactly what terrorism is. The dictionary defines terrorism as [the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes]. It should therefore seem reasonable that only actions which fit this definition should be deemed a terrorist action and therefore only measures which prevent such an action should be considered valid counter-terrorism measure.

There is a problem here however. We already have a number of acts passed through parliament that mention counter terrorism but what they appear to address is not in fact terrorism but other issues entirely, and yet according to these acts anyone caught doing these actions should be treated as a terrorist when their actions do not actually correlate with the dictionary definition of terrorism.

That is practically an aside though (although it is certainly something that should be addressed). The problem is the methods employed by the counter-terrorism measures - they almost always involve us giving up certain rights that we have enjoyed for a good number of years and indeed should continue to be enjoyed. Furthermore you have to consider what terrorists aim to achieve; they want to affect our lives, make us scared, make us change our ways. In the act of giving up our civil liberties are we not in fact affecting our own lives, scaring ourselves and changing our ways before a terrorist has even been born?

It seems to me that we are doing this all wrong. When I woke up to news of explosions in in summer 2005 my first thoughts were to my friends who work in the city. Later my thoughts were of defiance; these people are not going to make me scared to go to London, to ride the tube, to live my life. Assuming I am correct in this action and not a mere fool, giving up our rights in the name of preventing terrorism is akin to waking a week after those attacks and being too scared to take the tube to work.

I don’t believe we should allow our government to pass laws and acts that force us to let the terrorists win by giving up our rights. They want us to change our lives for them. We need to make sure we don’t and show them we’re not afraid by living our lives with the freedoms we have always done. Only then can we truly beat the machine of terrorism which at present, by its mere mention, threatens to undermine every facet of freedom in our everyday lives that we should be able to take for granted.

A rare event occurred last night - I stayed up watching TV until gone 1am. Why I hear you ask, well the world championship snooker final was on and it was such a cracking match I just couldn’t stop watching. At the end of the first day John Higgins looked certain to triumph over Mark Selby with a score of 12-4 but Mark pulled it back on the second day with some of the most superb play I have ever seen, taking th match late into the night - the latest final finish on record in fact.

I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate John Higgins on his win, his world championship final victory for 9 years and to Mark Selby for a superb come-back, the likes of which I have never seen on the snooker table. Snooker is such an amazing game, especially when it gets close to the wire and I’m just sorry I wasn’t at the crucible to see it this year. Ah well, maybe next time.

I read this article on the bbc this morning about how the NHS is unlikely to be free in the not too distant future according to a large number of doctors polled.

This concerns me because we are pouring huge amounts of tax-payers money into the NHS at the moment, and what is the point in doing that if down the line we are going to end up having to pay for some or all of any major treatment we might need? Generally speaking a public service should be free because it is funded by our taxes. Likewise a private service should not be expected to receieve any public funds, but we should expect to pay at point of use for any use we make of that private service. How can we have an NHS that we have to pay for? National Health Service doesn’t really have a “we’re going to give you a nice big bill” kind of ring to it really, I mean why not just call it Expensive Private Health Service and give us more money in our pockets each month that we currently give the NHS in tax!

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for a public health service, I believe in taxation for its funding. What I don’t condone however is the taxpayer forking out money for a public health service which is really a private health service in public sector clothing. Blair and his government should be ashamed.

The Guardian levied an accusation against the blogosphere in todays paper. They suggest that it “… risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males”. When I first read the headline I felt a typical bloggers outrage at having my corner of the web criticised, but then I thought about it for minute and realised that it is my immediate reaction, were it to be put down on my blog, that brings about that outsiders view of the blogosphere. As such I’m going to address this in a much more matter of fact way and give my straight up honest take on the very fabric in which I express my views.

The WWW (World Wide Web) is a collection of communities, much like those we find in any country you care to name in the world. The main difference with the WWW is that each of these communities are in easy reach of each other. A matter of milliseconds in fact. The big question I have though, is how is any given offline community different from one, say, in a particular area of a city?

A city community will have an accepted way of behaving, of conducting your life, the way you speak to other people etc. An online community will have the same. To illustrate this, consider a technical forum where off-topic discussion is frowned upon and those who display more knowledge are respected above others and users expect to speak to other users in a certain way and for that to be reciprocated.

Our city community isn’t perfect however. Some people do things others don’t like, say things that are offensive, rebel against the status quo. These things are frowned upon and often cause an uproar, but none the less they go on, and simply get shouted down when they occur. Back then to our online technical community where occasionally someone offends someone else, perhaps by telling them they are wrong in a derogatory fashion. This is frowned upon by others and the offender is shouted down. These incidents still go on however and simply get shouted down when they occur.

See where I’m going? Just because its online, doesn’t mean we should expect everything we find to be tailored to us, just because we see it though a computer screen we call our own doesn’t mean everything we display on it should be suited specifically for us. We live our lives expecting some facts of our lives to offend us. Why should we demand that the WWW be exempt from this quite ordinary, accepted fact of life?

The blogosphere is a place on the WWW where anyone and everyone can express their opinions in articles or comments. We cannot and should not expect that the way others express their opinions to always match our preferred standards. In fact the very nature of the WWW is such that we can easily avoid things we don’t wish to see, or comments we don’t wish to read simply by choosing not to navgate to places on the web where these things reside, or when we find ourselves reading something we don’t want to read we can navigate away from it.

I don’t expect everyone to like what I write, I don’t expect everyone to read it, but I do expect EVERYONE to stand by and let me write it in the first place.

Not everyone likes tabloid newspapers, but I haven’t ever met one person who has been put off by reading ALL newspapers simply because tabloids exist. The sooner people start seeing the WWW and in particular the blogosphere as an extension to their everyday lives rather than a whole new environment the sooner they will see that the way it all works is not really any different to everything else around them. On that day, perhaps us bloggers will finally be left in peace.

I read with delight on the BBC news website this morning that a rescue mission to renew failing systems and install new instruments to the Hubble space telescope will be going ahead after it was canceled after the space shuttle Columbia disaster. This important for several reasons. Some of the most amazing discoveries have been made about our universe with the help of Hubble and given the rate of these discoveries its entirely possible that there are many more waiting to happen if Hubble is given the chance.

This is of course not to mention that some of the most beautiful images of our universe have come in through its mirror system - images that have left the world in awe. In an attempt to share with you the importance of this rescue mission I’ve uploaded a set of images from Hubble that I feel justifies all the effort being made and some more.

Long live Hubble!

The other day I was pointed by Heather to a BBC article on the plight of some bloggers around the world and the fact that freedom of speech online doesn’t exist in all parts of the world as we like to believe it does. You can read the article here.

This article focuses on the plight of many people the world over for daring to critisize thier government using their blogs and for just doing this have ended up in jail or worse. Amnesty international are doing a fine job in bringing this to peoples attention and I would like to express my support, as a blogger, to the work they are doing here.

Further to this though is a more fundamental point about the differences in law between the rights of online journalists (bloggers) and those who write for conventional media (such as newspapers, radio etc.). What annoys me on a daily basis is how its assumed that just because you can deduce the identity of an internet user much easier than you can deduce the identity of a source for a newspaper that this should be an important factor in if a blogger is blamed or not. Every day people are losing their jobs and landing up in court because of things they write on their blogs, things they have a right to say and things they would be allowed to say with no repremand if they were to do so in conventional media.

While these issues may become less of a problem as the law evolves to take account of online media, all those who blog need to make a stand and ensure these changes happen sooner rather than later. Free speech is our right, not a privillage.

For some time now I’ve been resisting blogging about this for fear that my somewhat synical attitude to this kind of thing was just getting in the way, but after reading a few posts on the BBCs have your say I realise that I’m not alone in this, far from it, so I’m going to rock the boat a little bit.

The bottom line is I think that the law and society as a whole has far too soft a touch when it comes to dealing with yob culture and kids on the street that just don’t know how to behave. I really feel for the people who have been posting in have your say; they see a problem, have the presence of mind to tackle it but receive no support from the law. It has to stop.

Kids soon realise that if they lose out due to bad behaviour they shouldn’t misbehave. The thing is what disincentives do we have today? School teachers can’t even yell at misbehaving pupils anymore - there are laws against it that cause teachers to go through enquiries and be threatened with losing their jobs, members of the public who intervene when youths are causing trouble either risk being beaten up or stabbed by the youths in question, or picked up by the police later with a charge of assult on the basis of the say-so of a youth who cannot be charged under law with the vandalism they have just committed. So paying a home visit we hope that perhaps the parents can help, well no, the law stops that too. Smacking children has been banned and parents are threatened with social services by their own children. Even the police are reluctant to tackle youth crime because convictions are rare due to the age of many youth gangs.

We need to move away from the books of law and out onto the street to tackle this problem. Police need to be given the rights to stop paper pushing and deal directly with the issue, being given a ride in a police car isn’t enough, a clip round the ear is what these kids need to bring them into line. Parents need their rights back. While I accept that child abuse does go on and its shocking and needs to be dealt with, there is a huge difference between the good discipline of out of control teenagers and abuse. We need to ensure parents have the rights and are given the confidence by the police and the law to tackle the problem of yob culture directly - in the home. Then we have members of the public. It shouldn’t be their responsibility to approach youths causing trouble, but if they choose to they should be in the right under the law. It’s insane to charge a resident with asault on a youth when that youth is a part of a gang vandalising property all night every night - it’s common sense to see whos in the wrong here.

The police and the law need to put things into perspective. The resident who tries to stop yobs vandalising their car is not the criminal, the yobs are. This needs to be a clear point of law and one on which the power is put back into the hands of the victims of this kind of crime. The time has come for the police to stop reaching for the pen and get out onto the street. Its the only way we’re going to get back the kind of local communities we want to live in rather than the lunacy we have to put up with now.

It was with great sadness that I heard the news of the death of Paul Hunter after an 18 month battle with cancer. He was a superb snooker player, on his way to the top of the world rankings, he exhibited superb sportsmanship in all tournaments and was very well respected by fellow players and snooker fans alike.

Something that will always stick in my mind was the way he decided to take part in the championships despite being in the middle of chemotherapy. There he was on the world snooker stage, playing his best, wowing his audience and yet the whole time had so very much to deal with besides his game.

I feel we can all take something from the determination and commitment shown by Paul in that championship; to never give up, and to always do your best against all odds. Farewell Paul, you will be greatly missed.

While away in Jersey I read one morning in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that the identity of the author of one of my favorite blogs, Girl with a one track mind, had been uncovered by a tabloid journalist. “The Girl” as the blogs author is known online, writes both the blog and a recently published book under the pen name of Abby Lee and for many of us this was quite enough information, in fact the annonymity of the whole thing was what gave it that even greater intrigue.

Clearly however this isn’t enough for some people and I was upset to see the life of a great blogger turned upside down by a tabloid in search of a quick buck by revealing The Girl’s true identity. I think this behaviour is shameful and I really feel for Abby in this. By the early blog postings it is very clear that the blog was never supposed to be a money making scheme, far from it, merely an outlet for her own thoughts and feelings on a subject not often talked about and something that is rarely found shared in such an open way.

To the un-named journalist who did this deed I hope you realise how many issues you have caused for Abby and how many of Abby’s readers you have pissed off, and even if you don’t I’m sure you’ll sleep easier knowing that you have a few more enemies in the world now won’t you.

I hope Abby keeps writing as even with the unmasked identity I feel sure her postings will continue to be of interest to readers from around the world. To all who have read her blog and enjoyed it, please buy Abby’s book as I feel sure that a confidence boost at this stage would really help yet another individual trapped and hounded by the modern day excuse we have for news.