So, The Dear Leader and Shaven-headed Sidekick have given up on the burden of proof of the criminal law...

The Al Capone Bill (yes, it's been at least a week since a Serious Crime Bill was in the works) is positing that the necessity of proof is just a fiddly little thing that plain gets in the way when you're trying to get those Nasty Mr Bigs.

Oh yes, we're reducing the burden of proof in Criminal matters to that of Civil cases because it's easier that way.

Insert your own A-levels joke here...

Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And put it in the attic with the emperor's old clothes
When did it fall apart? Sometime in the 80s
When the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean

Britain isn't cool you know, its really not that great
It's not a proper country, it doesn't even have a patron saint
It's just an economic union that's passed its sell-by date

300 years ago today, the bells of the High Kirk in Edinburgh tolled out the hymn tune Why Should I Be So Sad on my Wedding Day? while the populace rioted in several Scottish cities.

The EBBC's response to this was fairly typical: On BBC Breakfast this morning, they invited Z-list celeb Aggie from How Clean is your House?, who's been out of Scotland so long she referred to the Scots as they, and some Scots-born architect who declared a loathing for all things Scottish to debate whether Scotland should stay in the Union. They also commissioned a survey so biased in methodology that it showed a drop of a third in previously surveyed support for Independence. Balanced Reporting: BBC style.

The West Lothian Question

Pausing only momentarily to note the 290 years when English MPs in the 'United Kingdom' parliament could foist anything they liked apon Scotland through sheer force of numbers, the only danger that the WLQ brings is to ultra-unionists who are worried about the symbolism. Does it practically matter? Probably not. But let's not wear the blinkers that say that the only alternative is a return to full Unionism — that's politically untenable. Anyone positing the WLQ in post-devolutionary times is arguing for something bounded on the one hand by a Federal Kingdom and the other by Scottish Independence, whether they're aware of it or not.

An English Parliament?

Let's make the point of principle first: if the English want a Parliament, it's a decision for the English Body Politic (ie all those who live and vote there) to make, and to decide which powers it will inherit from Westminster. Just as it is for the Scottish Body Politic to decide our constitutional relationship with the overall UK. If they want it, good luck to 'em.

And what of the federal option?

We're partially in this mess because the 'Union' was a de facto takeover. The official theory was that the Scots and English parliaments both adjourned, and their representatives joined a United Kingdom one. But of course, the English parliament remained, and absorbed the Scots MPs in such small numbers that English interests remained dominant. A more equitable settlement would validate all the Brownite rhetoric of I represent a constituency in the United Kingdom parliament; it doesn't matter where it is. And a fully federal state, where limited powers are equally reserved to the Federal Senate from all constituent nations would entirely remove the WLQ.

(Here's a side-thought - wouldn't this body be a logical end-game for the House of Lords debate?)

The powers I would reserve would be a far-narrower set than at present, and I suspect that English political opinion would come to the same conclusion. They wouldn't include the Home Office and Lord Chancellor's Office, for a start; we have our own judicial tradition, thanks. And the skill shortages in Scotland that might be filled by immigration are quite distinct to those of England (particularly those of London, which drive current policy). I'd also devolve DWP, as again, Scottish political sensibilities have a different aspect on much of Disability and Benefits policy.

Although Independence (whatever that means for any nation-state in our globalised world) is my preferred option, I could live with that.

The Barnett Formula and Subsidy Junkies

The echo-chamber of unionist and reactionary English bloggery would have you believe that without English money, Scotland would be in penury. It's easy to believe... if you only go for the advertised per capita spend without further analysis. To understand whether the conclusion is true, you also need consider the following:

Scotland's needs are greater than England's

Wealth creation/poverty reduction in the UK is biased towards England. Set policies that reduce the gap and we'll happily do without the extra cash. To be fair to the Welsh brethren, they do far worse relative to needs — there's probably a case for a needs-based assessment all round.

The Government Spending in question is identifiable expenditure

As HM Treasury admits when pressed, what's included in this is an entirely arbitrary classification. One could equally point towards the massive central government infrastructure in the South East of England that is an enormous subsidy to that region, yet strangely not counted when working these things out. It makes the bleating of the Evening Standard about 'subsidy junkies' particularly odious. The appropriate quote here is:

If the government spends money in the regions of the UK it is called subsidy. But if it pours it down the gullet of the cities and counties in south-east England it is called essential support of the infrastructure.

Political Editor John Forsyth in the Scotsman

It only counts spending

Scotland also has a significantly higher financial per capita contribution to UK taxation revenues. Scotland is in fact a net contributer to the UK economy.

Nationalism is Not A Right Wing Creed

I hear this myth all the time, whether overtly, or implied through barbs of Anti-English Whining when applied to any nationalistic argument. It's not even close to being true — the perpetrators of this myth have clearly not noticed that the SNP is some way to the left of the Labour Party on most issues, showing that Nationalism is ideologically neutral — it can be a Progressive philosophy as much as a Reactionary one. I can think that my country's great, want to better the people who live there, love its (current, ever-changing) culture, while at the same time, be perfectly happy to welcome people to it and celebrate the variation this brings.

But because of this left/right agnosticism, there are fellow-travellers towards Nationhood who dirty the word with their thuggery. Narrow-minded, thoroughly dogmatic, unable to accept difference from self-defined 'norms'; you'll find Fascists in all human societies, political parties not least. It's up to us to fight them wherever we find them.

So where does this leave us, 300 years on? Does the UK continue to make sense? The strongest pro-union arguments I've heard over the last 20 years have all been based on tradition and past glories: The Union has served Scotland well or The Union (particularly the Army) was the best means by which ambitious men could achieve anything.

What it is left with is an economic union that was put together on one party's terms, quite unlike the EU where each member state negotiates its entry. An arranged marriage, with a hefty bribe dowry paid to MPs who had lost out at Darien. Yes, we've had our good times. But we're fed up of being in your shadow, kept subservient incapable of making our own decisions beyond spending the housekeeping.

Which Bride would enter into such a marriage these days? And which Wife of such a marriage would not weep on her anniversary?

I've now spent a few days looking at the alternatives to appleTV now. Well, I say alternatives... I mean MythTV, as the idea of buying into the Windows ecosystem via WIndows Media Centre didn't even come close to crossing my mind.

But I've looked at quite a few possible configurations for a MythTV system, and I'm beginning to see the rationale for appleTV. The appleTV system is essentially:

Backend Media Server

Intended to be the house's main Mac with the big hard drive. This is the one that hosts the account that buys content from the iTunes Store, holds ripped music etc.

Frontend Client, with a local cache

This is the appleTV device. It's chiefly there to provide a UI to the backend server. But because the default use case of WiFi networking isn't deemed to be robust enough to simply stream from the backend server (particularly for HD content), it needs a local hard drive. And drives are so cheap these days, might as well make it big enough for a few items so you have some local choice without hanging around fot it.

And all this integrates with not only iTunes for music and (iTMS-sourced) video, but also iPhoto. If you stop thinking of it as the only digital media component, but just the front end to what you've already got on your Mac, it makes sense, and it'll pull people into the iApps ecosystem, which is the idea.

But to make it actually effective, it needs to be able to access video content not derived from the iTunes store. It needs to be able to show:

1. Home Movies (you think iMovie's going to get left out..?)
2. Digitally recorded TV content
3. Content ripped from legitimately bought DVDs

Now elgato have already managed to get eyeTV as a content source under Apple's Mac-based media client - Front Row by exporting to iTunes in iPod-friendly format, so they must be able to do the same to the appleTV. In fact, a little searching on their site shows that elgato are confident that eyeTV recordings will be usable by appleTV.

If indeed all that's needed to add a new source to the appleTV's backend server is output in H.264 or MPEG-4 and a wee bit of API smarts, then it can only be a matter of time until someone produces a DVD-ripper and transcoder that'll slot in nicely. The basics are already done:

So the basis of a pretty reasonable backend setup is starting to come together, looking like a Mac Mini, with large-ish external storage and an eyeTV Hybrid as PVR capture. Adding this up, it's probably comparable to the price of a similarly specc'd MythTV homebrew, but with much less setup required.

MythTV alternatives

The Full Myth

Meaty MythTV linux server for the backend. Low-end mythTV Linux machine for the front end. If I can't build one cheaper and quieter, then the front end machine will be the beautifully quiet and affordable Mac Mini, with OSX cleared off and replaced with Ubuntu.

The Half Myth

Watching the Keynote, the appleTV can suck content from up to 5 Macs on the LAN. Now, I'm sure someone very smart is going to find a way to get a MythTV server to appear in the list... In which case, the appleTV at £200 looks very attractive indeed as the silent front end server...

Sigh. It doesn't feel right, damning Apple with faint praise for both of their major announcements within 24 hours of their launch, but here I go anyway.

First off, let's talk about device convergence. I'm sorry, but I don't want a bundle of second rate camera/second rate music player/second rate phone. If excellence in each means keeping multiple devices, then my shirt pocket is going to have to cope. So to even get on the ballpark, Apple is going to have to convince me of the following:

That the phone actually works.

Reliably. As reliably as the non-whizzy Nokias I've known, used and loved for years now. This is the foundation competence. I used to own a Treo, having got bored transferring numbers via my brain. But the damned thing crashed with dependably high frequency, so I went back to my Nokia.

The data service is reliable and affordable and coverage is good

No idea which network carrier Apple are going to partner with in Europe. But unless it's O2, I'm not going be able to use it at all, as that's who my work phone is contracted to. And that's before I persuade my employers that data services are worth paying for.

The camera is a reasonable quality

By which I mean, the lens is semi-decent optically and the CCD has enough sensitivity and colour fidelity. Never mind pixel numbers which are largely meaningless, it's quality I want. I'm assuming here by the way that the location awareness of the device records appropriate geocoded metadata into the image file's Exif tags. Which could be very fun for moblogging to flickr.

As for the music player — yes, it's an iPod, and therefore de facto of quality. But it's an iPod nano in capacity terms, and I have 30+GB of music, and don't want to have to choose what to take with me.

But what I'm more concerned about is the interface. TheSteve made much of the lack of physical keyboard in the announcement, claiming that a similar problem had been solved in desktop computing by the bitmapped screen and mouse combo. I've news for you Steve — for any text-related function (like the email you showed off), you need a keyboard as well.

One of the most popular Palm accessories has been the wee fold-out keyboard add-on, because text entry by on-screen keyboard is truly hard. People like the physical feedback of key travel. It does wonders for speed and accuracy of entry. And small on-screen keyboards are particularly difficult, as self-confessed fat fingered friends opined yesterday; it's the devil's own job to press only one onscreen key. Unless this Multi-touch stuff is a step-change beyond what we're used to, we'll be back to stylii pretty quickly.

So, the long awaited iappleTV is properly announced and demoed. While in itself, it's all very nifty, I can't help but think that it could have been so much more.

Yes, being able to stream your iTunes video content to big screen TV is A Good Thing, although obviously better if you live in a country where Apple deign to sell you such content. But we have a reasonably large DVD collection whose physical media I'd rather put out of the reach of small children and into storage like our CDs. And when we have broadcast/Freeview TV again, I'd probably like to be able to record it digitally and recall old stuff from a large database living on hefty attached storage.

While eyeTV would probably take care of the Television end of things, for DVD rippage and storage, we're probably talking about mythTV on one of these mothers as the solution of choice for the time being.

Somebody somewhere convince me that there's a better way round this...

Ahhhhhhh I'm back, with a working server once more.

What had happened is that my old Motherboard had gone 'phut', so needed replacing. Could have been much worse - could have been the hard drive, with associated data loss.

Here's the culprit:

Still, not so easy to replace at short notice when I'm mostly in Newcastle at the moment, and the time I have at home has other priorities. And once the Mobo was replaced, I discovered that it took a different kind of RAM to the old (now discontinued) one, so that was another trip to PC World for the sake of speed.

So now I have a nice EPIA M motherboard (and new stick of RAM) in my home server, and I'm back on the air. A huge thanks to Kevin at indigospring for diagnosing the problem. He also fixed my previously dead iPod which had resisted all the solutions Apple had provided, other than splash out on a new one. Cheers Kevin!