So we’re in Bad Belzig, 36 km from where we thought we might get to (Lutherstadt Wittemburg). Here’s the map

As you can see we’ve done over 60 miles. Today’s planned journey to Lutherstadt Wittemburg was supposed to be 64 miles, but the Mauerweg twisted and turned more than could be predicted from Google maps. Also, signposts were less frequent than might be liked, so we probably lost 90 minutes today for stopping and waiting for jPhones to wake up and smell the 3G-coffee.

Surfaces varied from smooth, new tarmac to cobbles to dirt paths to the whole road being dug up: get off and walk! By 6pm we were more bothered with finding a loo and a place to stay than carrying on. Attempting to ask directions to a hotel and then receiving them in German was quite taxing.

But we lucked out, finding an excellent place with a comfy room and a fine restaurant. Now necking salad and Petersiliekartoffeln with a small dunkel Paulaner von Fass. München bier, rather than Brandenburg, but excellent all the same!

So tomorrow on to Lutherstadt Wittemburg, where we pick up the path along the Elbe. Surely no map reading needed from then!

By the way, Elly’s just had a desert called Mohnpielen: bread pudding flavoured with poppy seeds and chocolate. I had a wee taste: excellent! My second dunkel Paulaner is very welcome too.

Loading up with rye bread and Erdbeeren Fruchtauftricht with lots of tea! Weather cool, overcast, so not hot.

So we’re in a holiday inn and enjoying it? Apparently so.

This morning started far too early: I’d worked until stupid o’clock on MSc stuff. I woke about 5am after a dream that I was in an English class with James Dean Bradfield. We had to do some work based on words on an electric blackboard. But the words flicked on and off so fast I couldn’t copy them down, despite JDB’s help.

The next thing I knew was a phone call from my dad to wish us happy travels. Then a hurried breakfast, some swearing at my luggage and the taxi was here to take us to Turnhouse.

Checking and the actual flight were fairly painless apart from being made to go and weight the bikes, and a wee but of turbulence during landing.

We had to wait quite a while for the bikes to be delivered. I noticed Lev’s box looked a bit bashed so I was quite concerned. So I got quite agitated waiting for the shuttle bus to the hotel.

Reinstating the bikes took over an hour: next time I want bigger bike boxes so I don’t have to remove so many bits! The only casualty seems to be the bottom of Lev’s front mudguard: an insignificant piece of chromoplastic had broken off. Fidel survived just fine!

Vegan choices here aren’t great: tagliatelle with rocket salad, baby tomatoes and chanterelles  – or nothing. The house beer seems to be a Sächsische Pilsner (Radelberger). Ok, but nothing special and not from Berlin or even Brandenberg

But what has me amused beyond belief is the trippy techno/industrial mix playing on the restaurant terrace. Very danceable!

So we have over 60 miles to do tomorrow, fairly laden. Why are clothes so heavy? Time for bed!

Theme song
Fidel is going on a summer holiday.
No more potholes for a week or two!
Gurkensalad on a summer holiday.
No more worries for me and you,
for a week or two.

Lev’s going where the sun shines brightly.
He’s going where the Donau is blue.
We’ve seen the third man movie.
Now let’s see if it’s true.

Elly’s going on a summer holiday:
bike to places she always wanted to.
So we’re going on a summer holiday
To make our dreams come true,
for a week or two.

Bruce’s going where Prater spins nightly.
He’s going where the Elbe is blue.
He’s seen it from a train-seat.
He wants to swim in it too.

We’re all going on a cycling holiday
doing things we always wanted to.
So we’re going on a cycling holiday
To change our arses’ hue:
to black and blue!

Packing bikes
This took ages, even though I’d pre-cut lengths of pipe-lagging to protect the bike-frames. For both Lev and Fidel,

• As expected, I needed to remove the front wheels, then extract their skewers and also remove handlebars, pedals, saddles, and deflate all tyres. I also removed Lev’s front pannier rack because I won’t be carrying front panniers, so I didn’t need this extra weight.
• I had not expected I’d need to remove both bikes’ front mudguards. This was so so I could turn the front forks to point backwards and thus make the bikes short enough to fit in the boxes.
• Nor had I expected I’d need to remove Fidel’s rear pannier rack (to make him low enough to fit in the box) and dismount his brake/gear units from the handlebars so I could fit them in the box.

Moral – bigger bike boxes are good!

For me, the most annoying thing about the current UK government system is that while there are governmental bodies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, England is done by the Westminster government.*

To make the system coherent, I’d want a separate body for England, then a body doing all of the UK. This could be simply a federal clearing-house, a body that deals with things that are likely to affect all of the UK** or it could delve deeply into ‘regional’ matters. I don’t care*** so long as there are the same number of tiers of government, with the same sets of powers and duties, over all UK citizens.

Perhaps this is a start…

*Please tell me what annoys you the most about the current system! (No need to parade the perceived pros and cons of different parties within the system.)

*** such as defence, interregional transport links, disease control: invaders, motorways and railways and disease vectors either shouldn’t be or aren’t persuaded by lines on a map

***Actually, I do care but my opinions aren’t well-informed enough to go into here and now. They’re also quite fluid.

I’ve started some work with Brandelicious, a start-up company that pools some talents from Edinburgh Napier University’s marketing and computing departments.

Brandelicious’s idea is to build an online marketplace or set of shops within a shop (think of Amazon or Ebay ‘shops’ – but with a personal feel) that builds relationships between customers and family producers, to give their great products a supportive online home. Ideally this will also show the next generation that a living can be made from these products, so that the current generation’s skills and knowledge aren’t lost. My current role in this is to research how customers would prefer to shop on Brandelicious’s website, in particular which product categories and choices appeal to online shoppers.

This survey is my initial attempt to research this area. I’m grateful for any constructive answers, so please spread it far and wide. Because the survey was limited to 10 questions, I’d welcome extra comments on this blog post.

I’ve kept quiet about this online until now, mostly because I believed I can’t add to the debate and partly because I wanted not to make a fool of myself online. But this week’s spending review has tipped me over the edge, so here goes.

Reasons I’ve considered voting for the status quo

• In general I’m not in favour of extra borders and divisions. We are one species, living on one world. The only borders that make perfect sense to me are geographical ones, because these naturally give rise to genetic and cultural differences. Even then, such borders should be administrative borders, not reflections of or encouragements for you’re not one of us, so I’m going to beat you up mentalities.
• Similarly, I’m not keen on UKIP, BNP and those of their ilk, nor am I any fan of the current UK government. Removing sources of opposition to those might help condemn my England-dwelling friends and family to more of such unpleasantness. (It has been pointed out that the number of Scottish MPs is nowhere near enough to prevent the UK government doing things that Scotland – or the rest of the UK population – might not want.)
• For whatever they were worth, some of the senior members of the previous government were Scottish. Assuming Scotland can produce more worthwhile politicians (read ‘more’ however you want), should the rest of the UK be denied their talents?
• The upheaval that might be caused by independence would strain the Scottish Government and civil service more than it can take. The civil service already under huge strain due to reduced head-count and increased tasks. For example, Scotland is about to take over two forms of taxation (landfill revenue and a replacement for equivalent to stamp duty), along with some responsibility for the Scottish rate of income tax.
• Nor do I want an extra government that can get into debt, or have an army of its own.
• The current government is, I’m reliably told, reasonably competent and coherent. Independence may well lead to the SNP dissolving into factions. I’m not a natural fan of coalitions and scrabbles for bits of power.
• Scotland would have to renegotiate its position in Europe and a lot of treaties to do with international relations – more strain on the civil service.

Reasons I’ve considered voting for independence
My preference would have been for more devolution, so that the first ‘pro-status quo’ argument fell. But that’s not currently an option, so here goes.

• There are some cultural differences between England and Scotland. Should administrative borders not reflect and nurture regional cultures? (Having said that, I tend to think ‘this is our culture/tradition, so we’ll keep on doing this’ arguments are loathsome and stupid.)
• The current Scottish Government has said it will get rid of the nuclear weapons in Scotland. I’m all for that, especially if leads to a reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons.
• If there are going to be armies, I’d sooner they were under local control.
• The current UK government is, to me, a pernicious bunch of lying, incompetent, stupid, evil tossers which whom I wish no association. Reducing the number of people they can influence for the worse might be a good thing overall. For example, the recent spending review  contains three pernicious pieces
  1. the amount of money that Scotland could ‘spend’ has increased – and has been portrayed by UK government as extra generosity to Scotland. Not true: the UK treasury has said ‘here is some money you can spend lend’ (I’m not sure whether such loans are restricted to businesses or can also go to individuals) but it must be repaid to the UK treasury. It’s not a grant or any form of generosity, it’s a way to eventually increase the UK treasury’s income with no guarantee that such profits will return to Scotland. I don’t think tempting people or organisations into debt is a good thing. Also, Scotland’s capital budget has been reduced, while the rules on how much can be spent in different areas have been tightened. So much for local democracy and the Scottish Government having control.
  2. Unemployment benefits will be denied for a week after a person has become unemployed. From what I recall, it already takes ages for benefits to arrive. Desperate people may well be forced into the hands of loan-sharks during this time. Reduce the amounts, tighten up the qualifications, turn benefits from grants to loans (to be repaid when income allows, like student loans) but for goodness’ sake don’t increase the number of dispossessions and other forms of debt-misery. I’ve seen debt collectors in action – very, very scary and the individuals concerned didn’t give a toss that I was unrelated and had nothing to do with the debtor concerned. (It’s possible that I’m arguing here against the increased availability of
  3. This one tipped me over the edge: the denial of benefits to those who don’t already speak English and will not take lessons. I’m all in favour of integration, which probably needs a common language so that good things can flow BOTH ways’. (I’m not in favour of the form of integration that says ‘you must become like us but even then you’re originally foreign so you can never become a first-class citizen’.) However those in need of benefits who don’t yet speak English may well be desperately in need, having arrived from war-torn or otherwise horrible places. Food, shelter and security from persecution and rendition are likely to be major priorities. Arranging lessons is likely to be far down their list of priorities.I agree that speaking English is likely to help with these aims, and I can’t imagine any sane person wanting not the tools to get on in his or her new circumstances. But unless the lessons are provided along with the benefits, then this measure is simply an instance of ‘shun the poor’ combined with ‘dirty foreigner’ mentalities.I’d also like to see how many people this measure will affect. If there are many, it’s a classic case of British injustice and I want nothing to do with it. If there are few, then it’s just a bit of popularist rabble-rousing while still being unjust.
• There is no guarantee that future independent governments will be competent or even decent. Who can tell whether my place here in Scotland will remain secure. After all, I was born in England to foreign parents, one of whom still does not have UK citizenship after 50 years of living and working here, contributing to the UK economy for almost all of that time.
• There is no guarantee that the UK government will continue to be as repellant to me as it currently is.

I realise that many of my pro-independence thoughts are emotional. Certainly I feel emotional as I write them. Perhaps its impossible to remain emotional about this. I would like to base my reasons on quantitative evidence but that’s unlikely to be the full story. For the moment, I’m very, very likely to vote for independence and just hope that the government and form of independence that might result are ones that no longer sicken me.

With added wikipedia links…

From Wiggins, B. (2004). Specifying and procuring software. In A. Gilchrist, & B. Mahon, Information architecture-designing information environments for purpose: Managing Information for the Knowledge Economy Series (1 ed., pp. 69-85). London, England, UK: Facet Publishing. The word in bold capitals is my addition.

A client needed guidance to build a business case for to support a procurement decision. The client was asked if they would be content if the resulting business case determined that the decision that had ALREADY been made was not the best way to proceed. Unfortunately the client was adamant that business case had to support the decision. The obvious question then became, why bother preparing the business case?

Have you experienced this at all?

My laughter at the above quote prompted a civil servant to tell me of the concept of policy-based evidence-making (instead of the desired evidence-based policy-making). Gibber!