Archive for October, 2007

Iain Dale, much to my surprise, has posted The Strawb’s ‘Part Of The Union’ song on his website.
“When we meet in the local hall
I’ll be voting with them all
With a hell of a shout
It’s out brothers out
And the rise of the factory’s fall.”
Unfortunately, the Kelvin Mackenzie of the blogosphere has put a pathetic pro-English (but not anti-Scottish - according to him) cheap-shot video up with it.
No-one has disputed the facts in the video, he claims, but maybe he is wearing green-waxed barbour blinkers because I see many comments disputing the sentiment and facts of the shitty little piece of propaganda. It’s so poor, it makes 18 Doughty Street’s campaigning videos look semi-professional.

Now, without delving into the Barnett formula and debating what contribution Scotland’s natural resources, manpower, fighting men and women and inventions have helped to bale out Britain as a whole, the point Dale fails to make is that some part of London’s economic success is down to the city processing other countries wealth, including the other home countries and that of some English counties.

Still, the one thing Dale has made clear in his pro-English (not anti-Scottish) propaganda is that The Conservatives have abandoned all hope of making any further inroads into the Scottish vote. They are prepared to sacrifice any Scottish votes in their efforts to maximise the vote in their main constituency of England.
That’s why the Tories have an English Oak for their logo in England, a Welsh Oak in Wales and a Bonsai Tree for their logo in Scotland.

His mates are content to enjoy the hunting, shooting and fishing and being condescending to the locals. But that’s OK because Iain Dale’s party is concentrating on England’s green and pleasant land to source their votes, even though its tactics (as amplified on ID’s blog) belong on the grey and unpleasant wastes of the dodgiest of football terraces.
Next election, the Scottish Conservatives will do well to to rename their party HQ an embassy (that is if Tory mouthpieces had any idea of the meaning of diplomacy.)

torylogo

Difficult to distinguish between candidates and rumours of selection being based on style and ‘cultural’ criteria.
Lembit Opik has ruled himself out despite calls to do so from members who believe it would make the party more ‘entertaining’.

As I completed this, I got a niggling feeling that someone may already have done an Ant and Dec/Lib Dem spoof - If so, apologies.

As Scotland sees a return of its favourite dinosaur. (sorry, cruel and unfair - temptation got the better of me.)

The Lib Dems relaunch themselves as a dynamic, go-faster-stripes party with a new logo. (Hopefully an animation soon using this character.) (pic now updated)

I admit the whole De Menezes issue is confusing.
My own (current) opinion is that most officers on the scene were put into a situation where they had to act on what orders they were given and intelligence and organisation was badly flawed.
However, the photoshopping issue in the health and safety case is all over the place.
Having worked with the images that are available, there do seem to be lightness, saturation, (possibly) contrast and minor angle of photograph issues.
Then there is the cropping of the photograph.
The media seem to be showing a cropped image of the police handout which does show a misalignment of the top of the heads.
If I hadn’t discovered the police handout, I would have said the image was judiciously cropped to obscure this misalignment but it wasn’t - the media have done this.
Do remember that I can only go on what I have seen published. Perhaps there are better resolution images in the hands of the experts but the lightness and contrast issues could account for the loss of detail on the De Menezes ’side’.
It does surprise me that the police handout does seem to be more degraded than images I can find on the net but I don’t know if these are the exact source photos used in the composite but I believe they could well be.
The big BUT is, though, why align the left hand side of someone’s face with the right hand side of someone else’s ?
Faces aren’t symmetrical. If you are comparing likenesses, you compare the whole to the whole, not manufacture a hybrid.
And, what if you were to compare the other side of the faces as I have done.
Now, I haven’t aligned faces. What I’ve done is look at what I can best approximate are the mirror images of the faces. i.e. hide the sides that were show side by side and reveal the opposites in the same alignment as the mirror images were.
Please note that I created my own composite of the Met Police one (which has greater contrast) and that is the one on the top.
The original Met Police image is below that one. There is a slight difference in face size which does give a slightly more obvious misalignment at the top of the head (probably exacerbated by the higher contrast) but the width of the faces and alignment of the facial features do seem to give a different impression.
Update - I have amende my own images and adjusted the size of Mr De Menezes head (in both top images and in proportion) to reduce this alignment.
Further update - I have now reduced brightness, contrast and saturation (on both sides of my own composite) as best I can to mimic that of the original and placed the opposite (reduced contrast etc.) to the right of the original. My own (reduce contrast etc.) appears below the original.

New image for Channel 4 News Politics.