Taxis

Taxis are strange little things.  They are private hire cabs that allow you to ride in them to a destination.  I don't use them that much but a lot of people do.  Well, this got me a’ thinking.  Why set up a taxi company and what sort of guidance does the government give in making then?  The government has published all their guidelines about taxi companies and shown what sort of things that they have to do.  

Why set up a taxi company?  If I was to set one up, then where would it be?  What are the qualifications that are needed (If any).  In times gone by, all you needed to be a taxi driver was to talk into the town hall and say “I want to be a taxi driver, please!” (The please was optional). Is it the same now?  So I asked all Welsh Councils the same questions, which were:

1. How many Taxi drivers are in your brough
2. What is the cost of getting a taxi driver licence
3. How much has been made on taxi’s

On the table that I have made below, I have deliberately left off the answer to the third questions, purely because I think some of the council's misunderstood what I meant by this question.  I meant what profit has generated from the licensing of taxi drivers.  Most of the council's replied with revenue or were confused.  As a result, I am not saying.

Name	Amount	Cost
Blaenau	324	270
Bridgend	588
Caerphilly	566	224
Cardiff	2132	£100 for 3 years, £60 for one
Carmarthenshire	583	£38.00
Ceredigion
Conway
Denbighshire	352	140
Flintshire	413	259
Gwynedd	484	174
Anglesey	174	346
Merthyr Tydfil	253	130
Monmouth	276	186
Neath Port Talbot	368	213
Newport	726	246
Pembroke
Powys	523	268 – 3 years
RCT	535	239
Swansea	1120	236 for 3 years start & 191 for renewals for 3 years

Torfaen	254	150
Vale Of Glamorgan	328
Wrexham	409	250

Over 2000 taxi driver in Cardiff!  Jeepers!  They must be making some money there!  That being said I was quite surprised by a number of things.  There is a wide variety of taxi driver licences that there are to choose from (the ones here are the ones that you can get from the rank).  The other thing that shocked me was that most council ask you to get qualifications in being a taxi driver (Identify risks, help disabled people, how to maintain a car), but some of them required that you pass a knowledge test. It’s not the same as the London Cabbie Knowledge test, but it is similar (Thanks, Swansea!).  

So it shows that Taxi drivers are getting more professional and council are trying to improve their standards.  It also shows that Cardiff is not the place to be a taxi driver.

Julian Assange

I don't know what your opinion of him is (And to be honest I don't care, either), all I know is still inside the of Ecuadorian embassy in London.  He is a controversial character, heralded as a purveyor of truth in some quarters, and a national menace is others. All I know his, him being in the embassy is costing us money.  This means that it is something that interests me. Again this is apolitical, my personal opinions about this situation are not of any interest to me.

Our starter for ten, how much did the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) spend on patrolling Assange from 19/06/12 to 28/01/13?  £2.3 million.  That a heck of a lot of money. That includes overtime and normal spending.  Is it worth it?  Your choice. It does show, thought, how much it costs to patrol an area for 6 months, however.

There are a lot of different requests concerning the amount that that has been spent on the Julian Situation, but a more uptodate request shows some of the breakdown of the costs involved in the detention of Julian.  You can find the response here. The interesting this is in the response the MPS stated that they will give more information at a later date. The same response was given to another request of a similar nature here.

This one is a bit too broad.  If you think about it, “All information”, could include anything. I am going to think about how to reword this to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (‘Cause it’s cool).  Don't know what it will turn up, but that’s half the fun, isnt it?

What do the police say about this issue?  Well two requests have been made on this one.  After a LOT of clarification (And a lot of going back and forth) this one was refused. I can understand why, because it was a bit too broad, but then again, how to change that?  Try again on a slightly different front? Now this latest one was a bit more successful due to the limited nature of what it is asking for.  It does give us some of the tactical plan and a power point.  Nice eh?

What about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?  They gave some details of what they have been up to. It isnt everything that was asked for, but it's there, none the less. Also, this one shows who wrote the letter regarding the Ecuador threat (Badly spelt at the beginning, but who cares).

Now this is a massive topic (A look here shows what people have done) and even Julian Legal system (Find it here) have done a lot on this topic.  This maybe another area to investigate later on in the year as this is again a topic that I have only had 500 words to write about.

PS, I loved this one and this one - It goes to show that there are even more topics to look at when we get on this bandwagon. Nice eh?

Operation Grapple

Operation Grapple was an operation that the British Military was involved with at Christmas island.  It was dealing with nuclear testing.  Now that last sentence is probably one of the most important ones in this story. It was the British military looking at nuclear weapons. This puts it right in my sweet spot. An investigation about nuclear weapons.  So, to give some more details:

“On the 2nd September 1958, a Valiant from 49 Squadron, Bomber Command, dropped the second most powerful Hydrogen Bomb, detonated by the UK, close to Christmas Island”

So why am I bringing his to you?  Well, we looked at the planes involved in the previous blog, so why not bring the whole of the mission to you now?  Under the FoI act we can find out a lot about what is going on and what has happened since. We can find out all about what has happened in that mission plus a lot of cool stuff, to boot!

So what were the operational procedures involved in the case?  Well, here they are. These are a list of documents which allow us to see what the testing was for and what it was being used to get (Look down the documents and see the attachements).  Makes for some interesting reading.  In fact, one australian man wrote this article about the whole affair.  It good to see how much information was being held and does give us a pretty good idea of what they were up to.

Here is some of the operations that the HM Ships Scarborough Cavalier and Ulysses had when they were involved in this test. Again interesting reading.  It also shows what we can dig up if we ask the right questions. It also shows that we can use small FoI requests to build a bigger picture. Here we also see more information about how the flights were operating (You have to look at the response and look at the links in the response too).

Again, a quick thought about all of this makes you think why we are looking into one specific operation of this whole nuclear test.  Its because this one went wrong…  This specific mission may have affected the health of many service men at the time of the mission.  This is something, again, which shows how the FoI can shed light on a very difficult issue and shows what people actually know.  So, here is some of the information based upon the court investigation and some of the guidance given to the sips as part of their wash down procedures.

I have only given you some of the main points, with regards to this issue. You can find out here all the other things that people have found out about Operation grapple.  The reasons that I am bring this to you is because these men and women, who have been affected by radiation, have used this to show what has happened and what they can do to help. Good init?

Radioactive Planes

The Freedom of Information act is the greatest piece of legislation that the UK has created in ages. It helps us to keep an eye on the powers that be.  They also show a deeper insight into what they have stored.  It also helps get a deeper insight into the British mind (This is not racist, it’s just that I don't think that French people can make applications to us).  So why am I bringing this up?  Because I’ve just found stuff out about a radioactive plane.

Canberra B.6 Serial No. 754?  Ever heard of this?  Me neither, but Joseph Pasquini has and is looking like crazy into it.   IN case you are wondering, this is about a plane which Flew through the “Grapple Yankee Hydrogen Bomb Cloud” and was contaminated.  SO what is the Grapple Yankee Hydrogen Bomb?  That's another blog for another day, but for the moment, the plane. The above request shows the decontamination report for the plane. That’s pretty cool that we are able to get this.  

Here is the the report into the disposal of the aircraft engines of that aircraft. It makes pretty interesting reading. The way that this is presented is the actual report.  Cool stuff eh?  Looking through the request the guy has fought to the bitter end for all the information.  It does show a very comprehensive account of what is going on with the regards to the engine’s disposal.

SO what about the crafts extraction of a quarantine radioactive material from the aircraft? Thankfully that's been found, too!  Again really interesting stuff and shows that this sort of thing is being looked into.  Also the reason why this was chosen has been looked into as well.  Pretty comprehensive accounts. I don't know about this one, but have a look nonetheless at this one.  And this one.

I love the way that the government have to give this information. It also helps us with some of the bigger question.  The question is what is this about the Gapple Yankee operation?  Well, this is something that I am going to look into later.  The thing that makes me interested in this is that this is the sort of stuff that we should be learning about.  These are cases that are fascinating.  It's like the SS Richard Montgomery. Did you know about this stuff?  

This is definitely something that I am looking forward to investigating in complete technicolour!

Trident Nuclear Weapons

This is a tricky one to write.  Trident, is the nuclear weapon system that we have to defend ourselves from a nuclear attack and launch missile, if need be.  Again, this is not about what I think, or believe.  This will be written as neutral as I can.  So what can we find out about Trident?  What are some of the issues that people are looking at?  Let’s have a look!

Now this is an interesting FoI request. It asked what statistical models have been made to look at the fall out patterns of the warheads. Would you have thought of this:

Trident is a ballistic missile system. In short, the missile is tossed up into the air in the hope that it will descend to land on the target... In practical terms it is an equivalent computational problem to discharging a 12-bore shotgun into the air in a way that each pellet will fall into a designated egg-cup 500m away.

The request wasn't answered, BUT, doesn't it make you think about the way in which the warheads make targets and what modeling has been done!  This is one of the more clever request that you can see.  

This one is about the psychological effect of people using the nuclear weapons . This is a pretty interesting one.  You think about it.  The people who would launch the missiles need to have psychological tests on them to ensure that they are using the system correctly.  It does make you think that people really do look at some issues in a lot of depth.  Again, would you have thought of this?

What about this!  Just to copy a little bit from the request:

While the UK does hold nuclear weapons, it does not ‘purchase’ them and therefore the direct answer to your question is that no money has been spent on purchasing such weapons. We maintain in the UK our own capability to build, maintain and ultimately decommission UK nuclear warheads at two main Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) sites based in Berkshire. This capability, along with a longstanding arrangement with the United States that covers both the title to a number of D5 Trident missiles and a contribution to missile-processing facilities based in the US, allows us to maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

Interesting, again eh?

What about the fallout effect?  The humanitarian effect, of fallout, has been studied but there was over 100,000 files on the matter and was therefore not able to answer.  Darn.  Shows that they are looking into the matter. The same question was asked about nuclear submarines and how they would act.  This information was refused purely because it is available for public consumption.  

Now this is a massive topic, and I am only scratching the scratch of the surface.  There is endless possibilities on this matter.  Makes me wonder what the depth of this can go to?

Resiliance Again!

For those of you that read my previous post, know i love disaster movies.  I love seeing what people will do when… well, whatever… So again I started to have a little look further into this area again.  I wanted to know what the government is up to on a regular basis.  The reason is simple.  It is amazing that these departments have to communicate together and plan for any sort of disaster.  It also make me laugh as qa couple of mates of mine are preppers (See previous post) and these guys were TOTALLY unaware of what the government is up to!  

Lets first off go to the law.  Due to something called the Civil Contingencies act, government bodies HAVE a legal obligation to work together and coordinate their activities together. They are divided into level one responders (Police, fire and ambulance) and level two responders (Can't remember off the top of my head).  These people have to work together to help you.  They work in something called the Local Resilience Forum which works across all of Wales to help to get things organised for you.  They are devolved into four separate entities what look after the four areas of Wales.  Each one of them faces a different threat and have to plan for them.  For example Powys Resilience does not need to plan for coastal problems (A little nod there to Daniel, whom I come to later). Here is the link for:

1. Gwent resilience Forum
2. North Wales
3. Dyfed Powys document
4. South Wales

Each of these forums helps to think about looking after you in every type of emergency, as they are LEGALLY obligated to.  Here is the government's risk register of thing that they are looking at.  This is at the national level, but it shows you what they are looking at.  To find out what each individual thing that hey are looking at click on the links. There are other forums such as the Cleveland Emergency Planning Joint Committee, and they very nicely gave me some idea of their budget and their training.  

So what about the ministry of defence?  Do they help?  Well the Ministry of defence is a category one responder in civil emergencies but it doesn't give any training to local resilience forums. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation gave details of how they communicate and respond to local resilience forums, which was pretty interesting to see how.

The thing is it is amazing how much civil defence work goes on without our knowledge.

Gulf War Medicine

Out troops are some of the best in the world and they should be looked after with trust, love, and respect.  The things that they have seen and done are mind blowing, and we should never forget that.  So finding out how we treat them is a very important issue and it is something that we remember it.  Veterans were given huge amount of vaccines, which in some respects have affected them adversely to the point where some of them suffer from something commonly known as “Gulf War Syndrome” (Here is the government response).  As a result this post is about the investigations that have been done into what has caused this condition.

A brief look through the www.whatdotheyknow.com pile showed that people have been looking into this.  A full list of vaccines has been asked for, but was considered too much work to get hold of. This is still under internal review, so it might be a case of  this information get released. A slightly different request might give us some more light on this matter.  Whilst the Ministry of Defence didn't hold the list of the Organophosphates that were used as part of the immunisation programme, they did provide the evidence of where they can be found. Another list of vaccines given to troops is found here (Ignore the refused thing, it's listed in the national archives.  Check the attachment)  It does strike me how much information is in the public domain on this one.  I mean look at the attachment on this FoI request.  Thats a lot of information.

There is a heck of a lot of information released on this.  It does strike me that when the entire details of a study are released , how much information there is. This study, I haven't read, purely because it wouldn't open on my computer, but it shows that there are questions being answered.  Here is a bank copy of the consent forms and where they are being kept, Here is a list of the Portadown records requests (or not).  I don't quite understand the reason why the significance of manufacturer of the Pertussis Vaccine being notified of use in Gulf war is important, but the response on this is here.  Here is the response from  the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency.

So what about specifics of what was in the inoculations? What do we know was in these injections. We know for a fact that Aluminium Hydroxide wasn’t used in some vaccines but was used to protect from Anthrax.  Nagalase wasn't used. Thimerosal was used

This is an emotive issue, and if you read the comments made on a lot of the different requests, you can see that there is a lot of mixed emotions.  Have a look at this request and this request if you don't believe me. Here is the MoD response to crown immunity.  Again, strong language.

There are a LOT of requests on this matter.  I have only brought the main points that are the most interesting to this point. The question is, however, what else is being held?  Is there anything else?  What else can we find out on the matter.  How else can we look at this matter.

Interesting stuff, eh?