DougWeb – Doug's home on the Web

Someone had far too much time on their hands to make that I think…

Dr. Crippen is a doctor in the NHS who blogs about ‘life on the inside’. Last week he posted about the care one of his patients received that defies belief. The way this man was treated was absolutely diabolical, and should never be allowed to happen again. If the description of the care he received doesn’t shock you enough, then the accompanying photo after he was discharged will.

NHS Blog Doc

Another example of the ‘care’ that the elderly receive can be found in a posting by ‘Nee Naw’, who mans the 999 system for ambulances in London. Again, absolutely shocking.
Nee Naw.

Things had better change…

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill currently making it’s way through parliament should worry anyone who values democracy.

Basically it allows a Minister of the Crown (government minister) to repeal any and all laws or to reword them as they choose – so long as they don’t increase taxes, force people to incriminate themselves, authorise forcible entry, increase criminal sentencing by large amounts or violate human rights. Other than that any UK law would be fair game for a rewrite/replacement/repeal without ‘bothering’ parliament. e.g. to make ID cards mandatory, the government could simply rewrite a law regarding passports…

The UK needs a proper constitution (and not something the EU wrote!).

When both Labour and the Conservatives are fighting for the ‘middle ground’, differences in policy are rare indeed. But when those differences arise – they are significant indeed.

Labour

Next year’s local elections in England could be abandoned under plans being considered by the government, the BBC has learned.

Whitehall officials have told council chiefs they are considering cancelling the May 2007 polls because of possible plans for a local government shake-up.

BBC News

This is legal? If this is legal – what law allows the government of the day to simply decide that elections aren’t worth having? Especially after all the fuss/expense over devolution.

Conservatives

One of the factors causing disillusionment with politics is the decline in the status and power of Parliament. Restoring trust in politics means restoring trust in Parliament – and one way to do that is to enhance the role of Parliament in scrutinising the Government’s decisions.

In a number of important areas – going to war, and agreeing international treaties – there’s no formal mechanism for consulting the nation’s elected representatives. In other areas, like making senior appointments and re-organising government departments – the Prime Minister is able to do what he wants without consulting Parliament at all.

David Cameron

Who would you vote for?

Although fairly obvious, the largest ever study of code used in web pages confirms that fact that web standards are largely ignored.

The study was done by Google, who analysed the HTML in 1 billion pages.

Looks like the Web Standards Project has their work cut out!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered her 9-month-old son’s name was on the United States’ “no-fly” list of suspected terrorists.

“We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled,” Zapolsky said, recalling the incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in July. “The desk agent started laughing. … She couldn’t print us out a boarding pass because he’s on the no-fly list.”

Zapolsky, who did not want her son’s name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. “But when I found out you can’t actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed.”

Yahoo News

For the eleventh year in a row, the European Union’s annual accounts have failed to gain a seal of approval from the EU’s own auditors.

BBC News

Emphasis mine. The story goes on to say that they auditors were only happy with 35% of the spending from the £67 billion budget.

That’s £43.5 billion of money spent unaccountably. It’s incompetence on a huge scale, and it’s about time the UK had nothing to do with it IMO.

According to BBC News, the St Stephen’s Tower clock (Big Ben, although technically that’s only one of the bells) has been stopped for about a day, so that maintainance can be carried out.

I don’t have a problem with that. However the caption to one of the ‘In Pictures’ photos, reads…

Trainee clock mechanic Huw Smith makes adjustments to the settings of the clock.

In my opinion, trainees have no place working on the most famous clock in the world. Only the most experienced should be given the job.

And can you imagine the outcry if the poor bloke makes a mistake whilst working on the settings of the clock Especially as the clock is renowned for its accuracy.

Obviously the government knows better than me…

Tony Blair last night sensationally vowed to end the tradition of being presumed innocent until found guilty.

The PM pledged to turn the nation’s criminal justice system on its head and hand police sweeping new powers.

He promised fixed penalty notices for ANY crime — forcing suspects to prove their innocence in court.

Um…WTF? I know Tony Blair wants to be remembered for something other than the Iraq war, but this is insane. If our MPs have any kind of sanity, this won’t be allowed to happen. But I’m not convinced.

According to a news story today, 100,000 UK children run away from home every year.

Examining this ‘finding’ reveals the following.

According to the UK Office for National Statistics, the UK has approximately 60 million people, and 1 in 5 are under 16 i.e. the UK has 12 million children.

That 12 million encompasses everyone under the age of 16 – including babies, toddlers etc.

Let’s be generous and say that once you reach the age of 10, you possess the necessary skills to run away and survive (that includes being tall enough to reach the shop shelves with the food you want to steal/eat).

That is 100,000 in ((16 – 10) ÷16 x 12,000,000) run away from home each year.
That’s 100,000 in 4,500,000
That’s 1 in 45.

Put another way – 2 pupils in every 3 secondary school classes (and a lot of primary school ones) ran away from home last year.

Even counting babies and toddlers, that’s 1 in every 4 classes. The figures just don’t match reality.

But what do I know – according to the UK Disability Rights Commission 8.6 million people in the UK (14% !) are disabled….

Recognise this girl? She starred in Clueless along with Alicia Silverstone.

Recognise her now? She’s now ranks highly in 100-sexiest polls.

I highly recommend heading over to Boing-Boing, and reading a highly informative piece on the creator of the neutron bomb.

In the spirit of ‘What’s wrong with Netscape 8 (parts one and two)’, I present the following screenshot presented to those updating from 8.0.2 to 8.0.3.3.

So if I upgrade, I get a bug that stops me downloading, as well as something undefined. Way to go Netscape!

Mind you, this is coming from a company that released 8.0.1 just 1 day after 8.0 to fix security issues, that had been fixed by Mozilla the week before, then had to release 8.0.2 because Netscape broke XML in Internet Explorer, and then had to pull the original 8.0.3 release because of various issues (including the aforementioned download bug). I’m assuming that screen is supposed to say that 8.0.3.3 fixed that bug, but given that release history, who knows?

I’ve just come across an absolutely amazing Star Wars rip-off, promoting organic food. Funny just doesn’t describe it. And wait till you see Yoda!

7.65Mb WMV file (mirrored here)

Original site

Meetings should be like skirts.

Long enough to cover the important bits, but short enough to maintain interest.

..why not blame the US and the UK?

A state-run newspaper in Zimbabwe has suggested the UK and US are to blame for droughts in southern Africa.

The Herald said climate change has been artificially induced “in a bid to arm-twist the region to capitulate to the whims of the world’s superpowers”.

It said weather was being manipulated for political gain using unspecified “unconventional” chemical weapons.

from BBC News

The site went online March 2004. In just 15 months, it’s had 5 updates to the design. Because I’m someone lacking artistic vision, creating a design from nothing is actually very hard work for me. Throughout each update, I’ve always felt something was missing – I’ve never quite been happy with what I’ve produced. Especially styling links – I’ve tried many different things. I’ve now learnt a valuable lesson.

Let’s take a quick pass through the hall of shame! Right-click and ‘View Image’, ‘Show Image’ or equivilant for a larger picture if they appear too small

Design #1 was very bad indeed. I knew this at the time, but having just paid for a domain name, I wanted to get something on it as soon as possible. The quickest way of changing black text on a white background is to reverse the colours. And that’s exactly what I did.

Design #2 – the next design change introduced the now familiar blue background, and white headers. Comic Sans and that logo vanished in favour of the easier-on-the-eyes Verdana. I kept the layout of the menu.

Design #3 – this was my first attempt at revamping the menu. Somehow I don’t think the 3D-button look worked that well. This update also introduced the borders around different parts of pages. The footer got introduced as part of this design (but wasn’t part of the initial update)

Design #4 – the current design. I moved headers on top of the borders, redid the menu so it matched the footer, and also removed those orange link underlines in favour of double-black. I’m not sure which is better to be honest.

Design #5 – going live later this month (I’m still tweaking it). The menu and the buttons from the footer have moved to a new sidebar. The contents of the sidebar are only semi-opaque until you hover over them, which is an effect that works surprisingly well. The footer also remains fixed in place when you scroll. Although the available screen space for the ‘content’ is reduced, everything still fits nicely in resolutions of 1024×768 and up (currently 96% of visitors). Link styling has reverted back to the default of a single solid underline – I’ve decided that defaults are there for a reason…

This design also introduces MiniMe!

Comments welcome on the designs – both old and new…

That wasn’t hard was it…oh wait…it is!