Introducing the new hens
We’ve added four new chickens to our established flock of four ex-battery hens, two weeks ago but I’ve only just had the chance to upload any photos of them. The new girls are only babies—I estimate around 14 weeks old, though they were mis-sold, perhaps not knowingly, as 17 weeks old—and three of them are pure breeds, two Cuckoo Marans (the black-and-white stripey ones) and one Buff Orpington (the yellow one that looks like an Easter chick). The fourth is a Buff Orpington/Cuckoo Maran cross, with apparently the front end evidencing the former and the back end the latter.
Councils use Big Brother anti-terror law to wage war on dog shit
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), part of the government’s anti-terror drive, gave councils the power to use surveillance and to access phone and e-mail records. It’s also the law that makes BT’s plans to monitor every website its customers visit, in order to place targeted advertisements, illegal. Not that BT gives a damn. It’s happy to flout the law, because it’s big enough for the law not to be applied to it by its political allies. The RIPA was allegedly brought in to help fight terrorism, but Local Government Association chairman Sir Simon Milton has written to councils warning them that overzealous use of the powers could alienate the public, and not to use the anti-terror law for ‘trivial offences’ such as dog fouling.
Businesses sell your sexuality for money
Businesses are giving out personal and confidential details about customers to third parties in a bid to boost sales, an internet security firm has claimed, with a fifth willing to give out credit card information and seven per cent happy to disclose customers’ sexual orientation–the latter raising the questions of why is our sexual orientation kept on databases in the first place, how is it discovered, and which companies think it’s appropriate to their businesses for them to hold such intimate information.
