Last Friday (11 November 2011), I was at the Cooperatives-SW annual conference at the Cube Cinema in Bristol, titled Growing Your Co-operative and sponsored by the Co-operative Membership South and West. It was another sold-out event, featuring headline talks from Co-op Party member and Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, Eli Sarre of Essential Trading worker co-op (pictured), Carole Theyer of Sparks Inc and Jim Pettipher from Co-operative Futures. There were also some great workshops I went to a finance workshop led by Ian Rothwell from Co-operative and Community Finance and a regulations one with Paul Martin of Kabin (details may appear on their event page) and a brilliant lunch from Runcible Spoon (and those of you who know me will know I have been livid with some co-op event lunches!) with some time to chat and network, although I also went to a fringe meeting about the RISE problems. The event concluded with the formal AGM of Co-operatives SW (electing a new chairperson and approving transfer to a new co-op corporation) as well as a bit more chat afterwards. I felt it was a great event and well worth my time being there. I m glad that some people from outside the co-op movement, from community businesses like the Strawberry Line Cafe and a few people considering joining or forming co-ops, were there and I hope it was good for them too.

I came across the mingetty changelog by chance while researching something totally unrelated. Paul Martin, you are a genius.

mingetty (1.07-2) unstable; urgency=high
   * Critical security patch: Fix unsafe chroot call. (Closes: #597382)
   * Checked dependencies for locusts. (Closes: http://xkcd.com/797/)
  -- Paul Martin <masked>  Sat, 25 Sep 2010 01:51:12 +0100

Original cartoon: http://xkcd.com/797/

One of the proudest moments I had as a Canadian was sitting in the Senate visitor's gallery watching the debates on same-sex marriage that led to the full legalisation in Canada. In coming down to the US for work, I was sad to come to a place that not only didn't allow it, but had actually had a number of ballots in states voting specifically that the marriage referred to "One Man, One Woman".

I found a transcription of the Hansard of Prime Minister Paul Martin's introduction of Bill C-38 (The Civil Marriage Act). The logic in there for why Canada needed to legalise same-sex marriage is quite specific to Canada, but he talks about why it's important for the issue not to come to a vote:

The Charter was enshrined to ensure that the rights of minorities are not subjected, are never subjected, to the will of the majority. The rights of Canadians who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers. These rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority.

I don't really understand the US system of rights. I hope that the protection of the right to love another consenting adult and make a commitment to them becomes the law of the land throughout the United States.

I love being married. I get the joy of being able to come home to my belle and share my day, spend time, and know that to the best of our ability, we're going to try to grow old together. I'm so happy that this ruling has come down and that in California the debate is now over.

I'm installing Paul Martin's iptables ssh-rate-limiter on the public machines that I run, to reduce the amount of logfile rubbish that ssh-scanning crackers produce. I've also added an iptables-restore line to the pre-up of the relevant sections of /etc/network/interfaces So far, there doesn't seem to be any disadvantage to doing this. Is there one? If not, why doesn't everyone do this?

In A recent CBC article, Stephen Harper is quoted as saying that his plan for the national child care program is simply a part of the budget. Failure to pass a budget is seen as a failure of confidence, and triggers an election.

This puts the opposition parties in a tight place. Specifically, the Liberals aren't ready to head to the polls yet. Paul Martin hasn't been officially replaced, with a successor not expected to be chosen until October or so. An election in May would go very poorly for them.

Since getting elected, Prime Minister Harper has managed to trigger an ethics inquiry into his government, and is already taking a hard line that risks bringing it down or screwing the opposition party. He told us that he would bring new things to our government, and certainly he has. This type of maneuvering can only be described as "incredible" for what, the second week of parliament?

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Stevey-baby.