Can anyone explain what it is about this that makes me laugh?

For those who can’t be bothered to click on the link, here is an extract:

“Japanese toilets have long and famously dominated the world of bathroom hygiene with their array of functions, from posterior shower jets to perfume bursts and noise-masking audio effects for the easily-embarrassed.

The latest “intelligent” model, manufactured by market leader Toto, goes a step further and isn’t for the faint-hearted: it offers its users an instant health check-up every time they answer the call of nature.

Designed for the housing company Daiwa House with Japan’s growing army of elderly in mind, it provides urine analysis, takes the user’s blood pressure and body temperature, and measures their weight with an inbuilt floor scale.

“Our chairman had the idea when he was at a hospital and saw people waiting for health checks. He thought it would be better if they could do the health tests at home,” says Akiho Suzuki, an architect at Daiwa House.

Toto’s engineers developed a receptacle inside the basin to collect the urine for sugar content and temperature checks, and an armband to monitor blood pressure. The readout is displayed on a wall-mounted computer screen.

“With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor,” said Suzuki.

“In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet,” she told AFP.

The electronic marvel, called the “Intelligence Toilet”, is capable of storing the data of up to five different people and retails for 350,000 to 500,000 yen (about 4,100 to 5,850 dollars) in Japan, she said.

“For now our customers are essentially middle-aged and senior people. But we hope the young generation will also become more health-conscious.”

The model is the latest advance in a string of sophisticated toilets, known as “washlets” in Japan, which have become ubiquitous in recent decades.

The first models were imported from the United States, where they had been used mainly in hospitals, and quickly became standard in Japan in the booming 1980s, finding their way into at least 70 percent of Japanese homes now.

Pioneering Toto designed its first models by asking hundreds of its employees to test a toilet and mark, using a string stretched across the bowl and a piece of paper, their preferred location for the water jet target area.

“For the problem of nozzle angle and water temperature, there was a particular development team dedicated to these tests,” Kuno recalled.

First-time foreign visitors to Japan are often baffled by the complexity of Japanese high-tech toilets, which feature computerised control panels, usually with Japanese language instructions as well as small pictograms.

Standard functions include heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers and ambient background music.

A function called “otohime” (literally “princess of sound”) produces a flushing sound to cover bodily noises. A portable gadget is available for customers who want to use it on the go, in restrooms far away from home.

In most recent toilet models, the lid automatically lifts when a user enters the restroom. Men can then push a button to also flip up the seat.

As soon as the user leaves the room, both the seat and lid automatically glide back into horizontal position, a clever feature that can preempt potential conflict between male and female members of the same household.”

A couple of days ago Michael Crick floated the story that Vince Cable is being touted round as a candidate for London Mayor in 2012 (and not just as the LibDem candidate but as the COALITION candidate, but then soft-pedalled vigorously the following day.

However, his suggestion does have some real credibility.  Consider the following:

1. Vince Cable is clearly hating his current role in the Cabinet.  His body language oozes unhappiness.  He is visibly miserable about some aspects of Coalition policy and displays none of the relish shown by Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and the others for ditching major cherished pillars of LibDem orthodoxy.
2. Boris Johnson is desperately seeking a way out of contesting the Mayorality again in 2012.  It has turned out to be much harder work than he expected and it interferes with his extra-mural activities.  What is more, he is terrified of losing and he really, really, really wants to back in the House of Commons making his pitch to be the next Leader of the Conservative Party.  Interestingly, he has still failed to state clearly that he wants to run again.
3. David Cameron would dearly love to remove Boris Johnson’s platform (of course, he’d probably like to remove other things of his as well) which is used to grandstand on issues that undermine the Coalition while strengthening the standing that Boris has in the wider Conservative Party.
4. David Cameron does not want to see a Conservative candidate lose the most high-profile directly-elected position in the country.
5. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg would like to bolster the Coalition and keep open the possibility of a non-aggression pact for their two Parties in the next General Election.  A coalition candidate for Mayor might just win and would be a big boost to Coalition candidates being fielded in 2015 (or whenever the General Election takes place).
6. The best alternative candidate the LibDems can come up with is Lembit Opik.
7. The best alternative candidate the Conservatives can come up with is Kit Malthouse.
8. Successfully imposing the notion of fielding a Coalition candidate would put Simon “no election pacts” Hughes firmly back into his box.

It all begins to look scarily plausible ….

Thanks to my good friends at Team Cymru, I have been keeping up-to-date on current developments on cyber security while I have been away.

Two items, in particular, caught my eye.

The first was that India is now developing its own army of software professionals to hack computer systems of hostile nations.

The second was about the vulnerability of major companies to “spoofing” – plausible sounding cold callers seeking information over the telephone AND being provided with enough material to assist hackers to penetrate information systems.  Apparently, at the recent DefCon conference in Las Vegas there was a “social engineering” contest challenging hackers to call workers at 10 companies including Google, Apple, Cisco, and Microsoft and get them to reveal too much information to strangers.  According to an article in The Age,  one employee was conned into opening programs on a company computer to read off specifications regarding types of software being used, details that would let a hacker tailor viruses to launch at the system.

The article continued:

‘”You often have to crack through firewalls and burn the perimeter in order to get into the internal organisation,” said Mati Aharoni of Offensive Security, a company that tests company computer defences.

“It is much easier to use social engineering techniques to get to the same place.”

Other companies targeted were Pepsi, Coca Cola, Shell, BP, Ford, and Proctor & Gamble.

The contest, which continued Saturday at DefCon and promises the winner an Apple iPad tablet computer, is intended to show that hardened computer networks remain vulnerable if people using them are soft touches.

“We didn’t want anyone fired or feeling bad at the end of the day,” Aharoni said. “We wanted to show that social engineering is a legitimate attack vector.”

A saying that long ago made it onto t-shirts at the annual DefCon event is “There is no patch for human stupidity.”

“Companies don’t think their people will fall for something as simple as someone calling and just asking a few questions,” Hadnagy said.

“It doesn’t require a very technical level of attacker,” Aharoni added. “It requires someone with an ability to schmooze well.”

One worker nearly foiled a hacker by insisting he send his questions in an email that would be reviewed and answered if appropriate.

The hacker convinced the worker to change his mind by claiming to be under pressure to finish a report for a boss by that evening.

“As humans, we naturally want to help other people,” Hadgagy said. “I’m not advocating not helping people. Just think about what you say before you say it.”

I suspect most organisations and businesses in the UK would be vulnerable to this sort  of approach …..

From 1 November 2009:

We do a regular shop from Sainsbury’s using the home delivery service selecting items on-line.  Those who do likewise will know that if the item you want is not available Sainsbury’s will carefully select for you an equivalent purchase – unless you have ticked the “No substitution” box.

This morning’s groceries arrived with only one substitution.  We had ordered four 125gm bars of Wrights Coal Tar Soap (you will be pleased to note that the Harris household washes).

However, instead of this:

Sainsbury’s sent:

four three-packs of Wrigleys Orbit Complete Strawberry flavour chewing gum.

I am still trying to work out the thought processes of those who made the substitution.

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Earlier this evening I heard Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, deliver the Police Foundation Annual Lecture (given each year in memory of Lord John Harris – no relation).

Sir Paul’s lecture, entitled “Fighting Organised Crime in an Era of Financial Austerity”, was insightful and thought-provoking.

And the thought it provoked in me was how does tackling serious crime fit into the Coalition Government’s agenda?

The answer, if you listen to Sir Paul (although he was much too polite to say it so explicitly), was that it doesn’t.

The lecture spelt out the impact that serious organised crime has directly and indirectly on communities and its financial and economic cost to the country.  And Sir Paul then pointed out that, despite the significant improvements in recent years:

“The specialist resources devoted by the police service to addressing the threat from organised crime remains uncoordinated.  ….  the  service has no organised crime strategy, no established national tasking process and no meaningful performance measures.”

He didn’t say – although he could have done – that the Coalition’s Programme for Government doesn’t mention serious organised crime in the chapter on “Crime and Policing” and the closest it gets to a mention anywhere in the document is in the chapter on “Immigration” which promises to:

“create a dedicated Border Police Force, as part of a refocused Serious Organised Crime Agency, to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. We will work with police forces to strengthen arrangements to deal with serious crime and other cross-boundary policing challenges, and extend collaboration between forces to deliver better value for money.”

Refocussing SOCA on immigration hardly solves the problem Sir Paul was describing.

He did, however, reveal that the Government is now drafting a paper on organised crime – so I suppose that must be progress.  However, before we get our expectations too high, he warns that this:

“must not be a collection of fine words and generic statements.”

…. perhaps he’s seen the draft.

And he concluded with a stark warning:

“I wonder how many Chief Constables across the country are going to be able and willing to balance the very proper desire and requirement for local community policing, with the challenge of maintaining at least existing capability to deal with the high end but often less obvious demands of serious organised crime.  And is the situation about to get even more complex?  Will the new accountability and governance model for police forces, incorporating directly elected local individuals, lead to the unintended consequence of further eroding existing limited organised crime capability?”

And, if the Coalition omits tackling serious organised crime from its programme for crime and policing, what will happen with directly elected police chiefs?

I hope we don’t have to wait for a Sicilian-style breakdown of civic authority before tackling organised crime reappears on the Coalition’s priority list.

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

This may be the first time I have praised the prospective actions of the Coalition Government, but I was pleased to see the story on the front page of today’s Observer saying that “Late-night bars and pubs face levy to meet cost of policing binge drinkers“.

Apparently, Theresa May is:

“agitating for alcohol to be considered a law-and-order issue, with responsibility for licensing moved to the Home Office from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.”

According to the article:

“Bars and pubs that stay open after 11pm will have to pay a “law and order” fee, following police concerns over the levels of drink-fuelled disorder.

Under plans to dismantle round-the-clock drinking, the government wants late-night bars to help pay for the cost of tackling antisocial behaviour and alcohol-related violence.

Town halls will be given the power to charge premises additional fees for late-night licences, with the amount likely to be graded on the establishment’s popularity. The proposals will run alongside new powers reducing the number of outlets selling alcohol.”

I don’t like to say “I told you so”, but late at night on 13th January 2003 I moved a series of amendments to the then Licensing Bill that would have done just this.  I said:

“My reason for tabling these amendments stems from my experience over the past two and a half years as chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority. I declare that as an interest. During that time I have spent a great deal of time visiting every London borough to hear how policing issues are working out and what particular problems and difficulties may arise.

In an enormous variety of parts of London the issue of policing implications for licensed premises emerges as a significant problem. That is the reason for the amendment. Amendment No. 191 A is designed to give the police an opportunity to make representations to the licensing authority to the effect—this would not be a routine matter, it would be intended to be flexible and to be an alternative to objecting to the grant of a licence—that, because of the exceptional circumstances of a particular application, there would be extra policing costs, and that those extra policing costs would be likely to be significant.

If such a representation were made—and only if—the licensing authority would be required to consider it. It would then have discretion as to whether to proceed and to place as a condition on the licence that the holder of the premises licence should pay an annual sum each year to the police authority to defray the costs of additional policing. The remaining amendments are designed to ensure that the process would allow an appeals process. If people felt that the licensing authority had acted inappropriately in response to representations, there would be a mechanism for an appeals process and also a mechanism for review at a later stage.

I believe that there is widespread concern in London, and more generally around the country, about specific licensed premises—I refer not to licensed premises in general but to some individual ones—either because of what the licensee hopes will happen in those clubs or because of the number of people likely to attend. The concern could be about the way people are likely to behave inside and outside or about the way in which premises are managed or are likely to be managed.

Quite recently the Greater London Assembly, of which I am a Member, held hearings on 24-hour licensing. Members of the Association of London Government, among others, presented evidence to an all-party delegation. There was concern that there would be insufficient police resources to cope with any anticipated increase in disturbances, resulting from the proposed reforms. That was expressed in terms of the volume of policing needed at one location and the spread of that resource throughout the night. That is a concern, I suspect, shared around the country. It was thought that that would require the police authority to re-think its policing priorities and objectives to ensure that additional policing was available. That would mean police resources diverted from other functions.

Later on in the inquiry the deputy assistant commissioner responsible for the Westminster area presented evidence. He highlighted again the point that if there is a rise in the number of licensed premises, there will be a commensurate rise in disorder which will skew resources to deal with that. If there is a plan to say that this is going to be a place, as he said, that has a huge number of licensed premises, then we need to think how we will fund public services to cope with that. If someone comes in to make a legitimate profit, how do we fund the policing that might be needed?

Officers may be taken away from a housing estate where they are sorely needed in order to go to police late-night drunks. He cited a number of examples where holders of licensed premises voluntarily make a contribution to policing costs. The problem is that that is a voluntary requirement. It is not something that the irresponsible licence holders will necessarily do; nor is there necessarily any agreement about the level of contributions.

For those who may think that this issue applies only to central London, I was particularly taken by representations received from my honourable friend the Member of Parliament for Hornchurch about the problems faced in Havering. The borough does not have a high level of policing resources and, by and large, does not need them. With the number of licensed club premises in Romford Town—I use this as an example—the vision that he conjured up was of large numbers of highly excited young Essex girls and boys congregating in Romford town centre in the early hours of the morning. This clearly presents issues which require a considerable policing input into a borough which, by and large, does not have a very large policing resource.

Where exceptional policing costs are likely to be incurred through a licence application there should be some arrangement whereby, as a condition of such a licence, the police authority receives a contribution towards those costs.”

Unfortunately, despite support from one LibDem peer (Lord Avebury) – the Tories were silent on the issue – the Government resisted my proposals with a number of frankly specious arguments from Baroness Tessa Blackstone.  Apparently, my proposals:

“could drive a major wedge between the police and the industry at a time when we need them to work together and with others in partnership to defeat crime and anti-social behaviour. Certainly, there would need to be very widespread public consultation on this issue before we could agree to take it forward.

The financial impact on the industry would also have to be carefully analysed. The hospitality and leisure industry is a major part of the wider tourism industry. The well-being of this industry is important to our economy. Since 1997, it has provided one in four of all new jobs created in the UK and one in five that have been created in pubs and bars.

We should also recognise that this would be an additional tax on industry by another name. Under the terms of the amendments, it would be a tax for the benefit of police authorities imposed by the licensing authority and not by the Government with the consent of Parliament. The phrase “no taxation without representation” could come back to haunt us.”

I responded by describing myself as “somewhat perplexed” (Lords-speak for “I think this is nonsense”) by the response from the Minister:

“The point is that such a provision would provide an opportunity for the exceptional cases or the areas where there are real problems to be picked up on the basis of representations by the police and then to be determined by a licensing authority—which under Bill’s proposals will be democratically elected; so the argument that there is no taxation without representation is clearly spurious.

My noble friend made the point that it would be much better to have a voluntary arrangement rather than a compulsory one. Of course it is much better if those who cause the most problems are happy to volunteer to make a contribution. But I suspect that if one asks the communities around the various types of establishments that we have been talking about, one will find that it is those who are least responsible who cause the most problems and who are the least likely to enter into voluntary agreements. For those reasons, I believe that it is necessary to include a provision which can, under certain circumstances, require such licence holders to make some kind of contribution.

Similarly, I am not convinced about the argument that the amendment could create a wedge between the police and the industry. A wedge is created at present by irresponsible licence holders who do not enter into discussions.

The fundamental problem that I have is this: yes, of course this proposal could be interpreted as a tax; but it is proposed that the circumstances should be exceptional; and that the discretion would be exercised by an elected authority. That point deals with the argument that there is no taxation without representation. In any event, taxation agreed by Parliament would necessarily apply across the country.

An issue that arises in regard to many of these establishments is that they are very localised. Havering is a low crime borough, but the problems of Romford town centre and of the clubs in Romford are extreme, and other suburbs have to deal with similar issues. The problems of Westminster are the result of a concentration of licensed premises in the centre of London.”

In any event, the then Government would not listen.  I don’t suppose Teresa May was tuned into the Parliament Channel then either, but it is gratifying that the point is now understood and I look forward to seeing some concrete proposals being brought forward.

It has been reported by Reuters that 178 people suspected of cloning credit cards have been arrested in a major international police operation initiated by Spanish police.

The scam itself was worth €20 million.  In Spain alone, where76 people were arrested, 120,000 stolen credit card numbers and 5,000 cloned cards were discovered and six cloning labs were dismantled.

Police in fourteen countries participated the two-year investigation and there were also major raids in Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland and the United States, with additional arrests in Australia, Sweden, Greece, Finland and Hungary.

According to the police, the detainees are also suspected of armed robbery, blackmail, sexual exploitation and money-laundering.

Hardly the time for the Coalition Government in the UK to be cutting the money it gives to the national Police e-Crime Unit.