I had to made my father turn Emmerdale off tonight – I was overcome with emotion hearing Lisa Dingle recount when she was raped. Tears are in my eyes now just thinking about it, and I find it hard to breath normally. My former fiancee and I were both victims of sexual offences in our lifetimes, both had serious effects on us. We are not together now, but what happened to us, like people in similar situations, is with us day in day out.
My ex was from the time I knew her, one of the most sexually attractive people I have met. She often wore a sexy short skirt, even when we went to church! Some called her a ‘tart’, but we all have our preferences. I would rather go out with a woman I see as beautiful inside and out with no job or education, than a millionaire woman with a Phd who I can’t stand to look at or be with.
It upsets me whenever I hear people say that women who dress sexually deserve to be raped – my ex didn’t deserve it, and nor did I deserve to be seriously sexually assaulted as a child. I may not want to see my mother dress the way my ex did, but I enjoyed every shopping expedition I had with my ex, seeing her try on all the different clothes, and being in a kind of fantasy land during it. The men who stand outside the shops waiting for their girlfriends are missing a trick!

Some feminists want to ban women like my ex from being allowed to use their bodies to make a living and feel their own beauty and adoration of others. Yet most of them are willing to control their bodies and deny the birth of another life as a birthright. I feel women should have complete choice over what they do with their body on their own terms, and not be denied that freedom by other women or men, whatever form it takes.

However, I say women – not girls. I think it is more important to stop the sexualisation of childhood and ban erotic clothing for children, than to violate the privacy of Muslim women by trying to prevent them from hiding their body from others, saving it only for their partner. I’d would prefer the eminent Iranian Muslim Shirin Ebadi be my Goddaughter’s role model than Katie Price!

I would rather see an extreme where the women who appear on page 3 of the Sun, and anyone else in the sex industry such as prostitutes be made to be a member of a regulatory professional body with a code of conduct than the other extreme of living in a suppressed society where adults are stopped from expressing themselves in a consensual erotic way with other adults. Sex industry professionals of any gender or sexuality at should be allowed to offer their services with the same level of acceptance of Spa weekends, providing minors are protected from the exposure to advertising and other promotion of it.

When I go to university at UWIC, I buy a copy of Nuts along with my lunch – I’m forced to, as they won’t accept credit cards for under a fiver! I think I would prefer these magazines or the more explicit ones to only be in places where adults go, like at universities and nightclubs, than any child to see them in a newsagent. I like watching the sexy music videos on the music channels, but would rather a 24/7 version of the FHM channel I used enjoy watching sexy music videos on with mandatory parental controls or subscription only and a mandatory watershed for sexualised music videos on the other channels, if it meant children weren’t exposed to sexualised content contained in most music videos today, which adults like me want.

I think all children and only children should be allowed to have to have a ‘Solo’ debit card if they are under 15, or a ‘Switch’ if they are 15 to 17, and then a Visa/Electron/Mastercard etc if they are 18 or over.
The Video Recording Act should be used so that any content in any electronic media which is sexually explicit or any electronic product or service used primarily by children should be required to request a rating from the film classification board, as video games were required to after the James Bulger case, something I thought extreme in an essay I wrote for my GCSE English project in 1993. Internet services containing adult content (such as Second Life, and Ann Summers) should only be allowed to accessed with a credit/debit /card that only adults can use. Sites rated U to 12A should require both an adult credit card and child (Switch/Solo) debit card. Those rated 15 should require either a Switch card, or an adult card for someone 18 or over.

Searching for the term social networking and a term that child sex offenders search for on Google Trends shows, the an increase in the searches for the former happens proportionally to a decrease in searches for the latter, as you can see here.
This suggests to me that child sex offenders are lying about their age and identity on sites like Bebo and MySpace and asking minors to ‘sext’ obscene pictures to them so that they can ‘groom’ them and get instant gratification from the without detection.

Regulating Internet and sexual goods and services in the way I suggest above and strengthening the definition of an ‘obscene publication’ in the Obscene Publications Act to include any sexualised image depicting a minor that exists in the real world, and the transmission of it (‘sexting’) by an adult to be considered making an indecent image, would reduce the likelihood of sexual offences to children and adults, in my opinion.

One of my economics tutors used to say that a public monopoly is better than a private monopoly – he would say that as someone who spent so little of his time in the private sector and so much time in the public sector.

The Tories are now considering selling of the Royal Mail’s distribution arm to the private sector, which would mean instead of having a public monopoly we would have a private monopoly.
I have a better solution.

Make Royal Mail a not-for-profit organization like Welsh Water, (e.g. ‘The People’s Mail’) which issues dividends to its customer based on service usage. And allow anyone with minimum qualifications to become a local collector and distributor, rather than giving the whole market to a large private firm.
We could reduce the need for the State to subsidise post offices by allowing any store that meets the criteria for a PayPoint to be allowed to use this to sell services usually offered by a Post Office. In this same way many of these stores offer a ‘Dry Cleaning Collection Service’, an independent private firm, maybe even a one-man-band made up of white van man could then collect it and take it the main sorting office of ‘The People’s Mail’. The People’s Mail would be under the same obligations as Royal Mail is today through being made to have universal service, expect rather than being done by a public or private monopoly it would be done by communities of entrepreneurs.

I read this article on the BBC, and then followed it up with all the misleading articles in the press.

The Judges at the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice are composed of the most experiences, senior and able judges from the countries that are signatories. The San Marino judge Antonella Mularoni  judge from a country of 30,000 will have less experiences that a Judge in our Supreme Court but why shouldn’t they be represented when the Court makes judgements affecting them?

I have Masters of Laws in European Union Law, which discussed the implications of the European Convention on Human Rights would have should the Constitutional Treaty have gone ahead and the EU become a signatory to the ECHR – We all know it didn’t, even though we were promised a chance to vote on it and were denied that opportunity which my father had when we went into the Common Market.

This LLM gives me an insight most journalists don’t have, and most of the public certainaly don’t have. But the public aren’t as stupid as the media and politicians think.

I want the public to know this: I like reading the Daily Mirror because it is always having a go at the Tories and I’m a member of the Labour Party so it makes me feel more secure even in troubling time. Those with fears about immigration read the Daily Mail, because it make them feel that at least someone is thinking about the concerns they have.

People who are Anti-Europe rad the Sun, because it means their beliefs are being confirmed. Scientists like me call this ‘confirmation bias’ – but I think it is needed so no matter what is happening in their live they feel the media are on their side – even we do it!

I ask people to read these two websites before making their minds up:

Wikipedia – Tell you all the background to the European Convention of Human Rights

The European Convention on Human Rights – Tells you all the rights you have now that you would lose if we opted-out of the ECHR.

If I could introduce one law using the ECHR as a legal base it would be Article 10 so that the media to print almost anything it wants providing they give the public links, like the ones I gave above, so that the public, who are reading the papers to learn rather than relax can make up their own minds. News papers would then act like a road sign at a cross roads, which gives you the chance to choose any direction you want.

No longer would the media and politicians be able to tell us half truths that are upsetting and confusing, rather than comforting and reassuring. We would have accress to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Let me tell you some secrets most people in Europe don’t know, and the politicians, media and corporations don’t want you to know.

The ECHR was drafted by a Scottish lawyer based on the Common Law rights British people had centuries ago that Parliament took away by Statute.

Any decision of the ECHR can only be enforced in the UK if the Supreme Court issues ‘a declaration of incompatibility’, which means the Government is required by the Human Rights Act that they introduced to change the law.

As Parliament’s sovereignty over the UK Citizens is greater than any other body they are a member of in the world they don’t have to change it. By simply passing a resolution of both Houses we can leave the EU and ECHR, meaning Parliament can overrule the referendum the British people voted in in the 1970s to enter the Common Market to and the manifesto commitment made by Labour in 1997 to create the Human Rights Act, where there was a landslide to approve.
If we are to leave the EU and ECHR we should have a referendum, but consider the consequences:

When the Human Rights Act was passed in 1998 (which you can read for yourself here) you couldn’t go anywhere without out hearing someone saying ‘You can’t do that I have my human rights’. The Government didn’t consider the consequences of the public having more rights than they wanted them to have.
Read some of the judgments of the ECHR on this website:

Many of them haven’t resulted in Acts of Parliament to repeal unjust and tyrannical laws all Governments have introduced to take away or civil liberties. They only reason some want to get ride of the Human Rights Act and the European Communities Acts is so the government, media and corporations can do whatever they want without the Judges in our Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice being able to anything when they try to supress our civil rights and freedoms – If Parliament can take away the jobs of my family and ancestors in the Rhondda Valleys once had, and the rights of my ancestors and I to self-govern ourselves as Freeman of Llantrisant then what elcse could they do if we don’t have the ECJ and ECHR to protect us?

When I was doing the Teaching in Schools and Colleges module at the Univeristy on my MSc in E-Learning I had the opportunity to observe children with Sepcial Educational Needs in both IT supported and traditional environments.

In this one lesson I saw a SEN pupil make a spelling mistake. It was underlined in red and they clicked the right button and selected the wrong word. The teacher, corrected their mistake – thinking they used the wrong word rather knowing what I knew that they actually selected the wrong word from the spelling check menu

Then the other day I installed Google Toolbar for a family member with dyslexia who was educated before the Conservative introduced the Education Act requiring statementing and before a backbench Labour MP brought forward the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act.

What I saw gave me a great idea which I would like someone to do research on to prove or refute my hypothesis.

The family member with dyslexia click the spell check button and things highlighted red and they selected the correct spelling and it went green.

My idea is to develop special software for people who have difficulties in spelling due to visual processing difficulties such dyslexia or chromosome issues such as Down Syndrome for example, to do this:

The spelling mistake is highlighted in red to suggest negative feedback. Using a ‘context aware agent’ the person with the spelling difficulties would by trial and error correct the spelling until they get the right one. The correct spelling would then be highlighted in green and a ‘ping’ sound would go off as positive reinforcement so they are more likely to remember the correct spelling. This is based on what education and learning authority Dr Genene Stubbs taught me on my CBL/E-learning modules on my HND, BSc(Hons), MSc degrees between 2000 and 2004 and an application of the education theory of language training authority Michel Thomas, who said people are more likely to learn from mistakes they make that rote learning.

To explain to you what I mean. If you install Google Toolbar in your browser if you don’t have it already:

http://toolbar.google.com

Type some spelling mistakes into the status field on Facebook or other text box on any other site, then click the ‘Tick-A’ spell checking button and you will see their spelling mistakes go red. When you select the correct one from the right-click menu it goes green.

What I’m saying is that instead of allowing the right-click-menu to be used, the person will spelling difficulties changes it by trial and error until they get it right. It is then highlighted in green and makes a ping to make the SEN fell good and clever, so much so that it gives them so much confidence they think they can do anything.

I haven’t got time to develop this, but if other have got the time to do it, then I will make this idea open source providing my moral rights to be identified as the inventor are respected.

A way in which the public can make an informed decision about the merits of voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’, without taking the Yes or No campign’s word for it, then to read the arguments for and against on the Richards Commission website

There are lots of strong arguments against (Including one by me!) and lots of strong arguments in favour. If people were to read the opnions on the website then however they decide to vote it will based on the evidence not any miseleading claims by the Yes for Wales or Tsrue Wales campagins.

This is also this document on the Web which presents 250 of the most signficant things the Assembly did between 1999 and 2007.

I may be voting ‘yes’ instead of no now, but I still think it is wrong that the public and the no campaigns don’t have access to the resources to make an informed decisions. If they don’t have this information, then how would a ‘yes’ vote have any true credibility or legitimacy? If the public vote with their heads rather than just their hearts, then maybe my dream of ‘perfect information’ will be closer to happending.

I have High Functioning Autism, this means I am very clever, but can’t feel the way others can feel. I can still show that I care,  but it’s a rational concern for others based on values about what is right and wrong that I learned from discrimination as a child, rather than one based on emotion.

I am also a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer, something I spent 10 years of my life working towards. I was even willing to give up a grant from the European union worth over £20,000 to be a Fellow of the BCS, so if my party asked to go against my beliefs and lie, like they tried to do Aneurin Bevan, who gave up his cabinet position because they tried to force him to vote against his belief in nationalisation, then I would resign like he did.
I think all politicians should have to say where stand on all the significant policies, fundamental to the country’s functioning that are in the UK Citizenship Test so they have less opportunity to say different things to different people, base on his knowledge of whether they are socialist, capitalist, liberal or conservative.
As the people of Treforest know I stood against John Bell at the last election. They knew I was autistic, but didn’t know That John was dyslexic.Had they known than the same understandable worries the ruling body of the Labour Party (the NEC) had about me would have been cancelled out. During this elected I was told shopkeeper in Treforest at the election that John Bell was telling people I had autism. I trust them to have told me the truth – why would they lie? Also, the Chair of RCT Lib Dems Karen Roberts, stirred things up by posting to the Pontytown forum saying ‘Is this Man (me) fit to be a town councillor’. I am honest, if I were to lie, I could be ‘impeached’ by the British Computer Society and possibly lose everything I’ve woeked for. So I would like the public to have access to ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ about politicians. So if I got my way, John Bell would have had to have declared his dyslexia like I did my autism – Then we would have been on a level playing field.

Even if this happened and politicians were made to tell the truth, the media would still have the powers to tell lies about them and damage their character. David Cameron can’t make a speech without the Daily Mirror spreading mistruths about him. Ed Miliband can’t make a speech without the Daily Mail misrepresenting him. A similar thing happened to me recently – the press said I was a ‘nominated’ councillor who hadn’t been elected by the public. This was a mistruth: I had been nominated by two prominent members of the community and then no one stood against me so I was elected unopposed. I see this as no less democratic than when Bill Clinton stood for the very senior position of Attorney General, which while making my position of a town councillor seem insignificant, the principle stills applies – My election to public office was no less legitimate that his.

So, in addition to making politicians provide more information to the public and think while there should be freedom of the press to say what they want, they should be made to give the public the chance to test whether what they are saying is correct. My mother reads her paper as a way to relax and escape from the real world. My father on the other hand watches the news on the TV to relax and unwind. But I, like many other people read and watch the news to see what is going on in the world, in search of the ‘truth’, which even if we don’t find it, it won’t stop us looking. So what I’d like is this:
Whenever the media reports on a speech by a politician (whether in Parliament or in public) they should have to provide an Internet address of where their readers can go to see the original, such as ‘Hansard’ or the Prime Minister’s website, or Leader of the Opposition’s for example
I would like the rules of the game of politics to change as I say about – so that people like me who are upfront and honest are not disadvantaged when contesting elections. Do you think if the public had known that within days of George Bush getting into office he was preparing for a war against Saddam Hussein they would have voted for him? I don’t’ and that’s why I want the public to have full access to information, so they can make an informed decision, like I am giving them the chance to do by putting everything I have said and done since 2002, including my weblog, letters to the press, press releases and news coverage on my website for all to see.

If I am being upfront and honest with the public, why shouldn’t other politicians have to. The media, through fairly holding these politicians to account by providing the public with full access to the information they need, then maybe politics will mean more genuine people like Gordon Brown and me will be in politics.