It seems as though today's highly anticipated Sky Player service for the Xbox 360 got off to a bit of a shaky start. It launched at 10am this morning with some good early indications, but by time I had got home to try the service on my Xbox it was displaying an advert on Xbox Live stating it was coming later today, the advert eventually disappeared. So what happened?

Well it appears according to Neowin some users were suffering issues streaming content. Microsoft have taken down the service because of "an unforeseen technical issue"  and it appears the decision was made to protect the quality of service for all customers. According to an article on Digital Spy it was a problem caused by the streaming coming from the Sky Servers which was affecting the whole Sky Player platform.

Unless you've been living under a rock somewhere, you've probably heard of Google Sidewiki already. The latest add-on to Googles' toolbar that enables you to comment on any webpage you visit. Any comments you make are shared with the rest of the world and that's probably where the problem begins, Google's toolbar is probably one of the most popular toolbars in the world. Almost everyone I know has it installed so they can see the Google Page Rank of pages or to use some of the other features it gives such as enhanced in page searching. Naturally everyone who uses the Page Rank is now able to see the Sidewiki as though it was a part of every website you visit. A part of a website that the website owner has no direct control over.creepy?

My first example of this was going onto CNN's website and seeing a comment on Google Sidewiki saying they preferred the BBC. The comment has now been removed, which seemed to happen quite swiftly after I tweeted about it. Google provide a content policy guide on Swidewiki, however I have been unable to find anything on on what to do about inappropriate content posted about your site on Sidewiki if you are the website owner. Take this one step further imagine an online retailer who has comments posted by one disgruntled customer on how they would never use them again. That one entry would probably cost that business heavily in income, even if there was truth to what was being said all online retailers have bad experiences every now and again where they were unable to help the customer or one fell through their customer service web. But saying that Sidewiki could also be a force for good, imagine someone being conned by a fake website setup to sell fake goods? What would be a better way of informing people, than by writing a note on Google Sidewiki?

Those were the harrowing words I read in today's Evening Standard in an article about the French police clearing the "Jungle" camp near Calais. Those words hammered home just how desperate migrants are to get into the UK. This immediately got me thinking why don't they want to stay in France instead of the UK? Or any of the other countries on their way to the UK?

Having watched UK Borderforce a show on Sky 1 that follows immigration offices catching illegal immigrants or stopping them before they come into the UK at Calais. The reasons they give for coming to the UK are quite interesting, some of them are

• Coming to the UK for free education
• Some believe they will get free housing
• Free health care
• To marry someone in the UK and raise a family
• To join family (sometimes distant) already in the UK

But why don't they do these thing in France? Well some of the reasons range from France not being as soft a touch as the UK, the immigrants speak English and therefore naturally want to settle in the UK. Another interesting fact is that the French do have a problem with immigration but these are from ex French colonies where people generally speak French as a second language, they know how the systems work in France and take advantage of it as people who know the system in the UK.

Deporting illegal immigrants is difficult many of them know that as long as they don't carry a passport its practically impossible for them to be deported, however they are not allowed to work. Its a catch situation which the government sought to solve with biometric id cards. The idea is to receive the benefits of "Club Britain" you need a membership card that entitles you to all the club has to offer. Because of wide spread outrage at the id card scheme the government decided to reverse the trend giving immigrants biometric id cards. Even if they did lose the cards their biometric information makes them identifiable to the system once again, hence making them deportable once they had over stayed their welcome.

It seems a vast majority of illegal immigrant based on the above appear to be economic migrants, they are after the ideal life, a better standard of living and a shield against poverty. Reducing this trend can only be done by not making services in the UK as accessible but most importantly helping to improve conditions in countries most illegal immigrants come from. You now start entering a fight against world poverty and we know just how successful that has been in the developing world. What if the old colonial powers started colonising parts of Africa again taking over war torn countries without governments and started making safe haven countries for immigrants, with economic havens, well conditioned and more free from corruption, building these countries up again and then calling elections for them to be handed to a locally formed government. Could it work?

Just seen an article in the Evening Standard where Organic food was considered no healthier than normally grown food by the Foods standards agency. I thought the whole point of organic food was not to have food riddled with potential pesticides and free of being GM. Surely that is healtheir than food that has been grown using pesticides?

Dear blog I am so sorry I have neglected to post anything. I have been rather busy moving home but now that thing are settling down. I promise to post more frequently. Rory

Well we all know it makes sense and a lot of you have said how it would be such a good idea to watch on demand TV on your Xbox 360. If you can see it on your PC why can't you see it easily on your games console which is actually connected to your TV? Well Microsoft and Sky have finally seen sense and quite soon Microsoft will be offering Sky content on the Xbox 360. If you look at how Sky delivers its current offering called Sky Anytime PC, they are using Microsoft's Silverlight technology while everyone else (BBC, Channel 4 and ITV) are using Adobe Flash.  As you can see Sky and Microsoft are quite compatible on the technology front.

While Sky Anytime PC is a good service they do not offer all of their channels live through the service. The majority of the content provided is a catch up service for missed TV episodes (not bad) and for Box Office Movies. It doesn't (and I could be wrong here) look as if Sky will be offering their flagship channel Sky One live through this service, it would be great if they did.  In the ideal world I would like to see everything that is offered via my satellite dish also offered over an IPTV service including on demand content.

It used to be possible to view Sky Player content on your Xbox 360 but only using a Windows XP or Windows Vista machine as a proxy hopefully this should change all of that.

No doubt there are probably hundreds of articles on the Internet regarding this very subject. However I thought I would look at it from the start, trying to understand how some of this came about.

Do a few searches in Google yielded some interesting results especially on Google Timeline.

Go back to February 1996 and you find an interesting article about John Majors government wanting to move MP's into a new pay league. At the time there was a feeling that MP's were poorly paid  having a large sum of their salary docked.

In June1996 another article stating that MP's are set for a 30% pay increase. Even back then the idea was sneered at by members of the public and the work that MP's did was not considered as important some comments such as "part-timers" and "fly-by-night lobbyists" seemed to depict the mood at the time. The idea behind the pay rise was to sway MP's away from "moonlighting"  

In July 1996 when Tony Blair's Shadow cabinet was split over the issue. They feared that an increase in MP's salaries would anger unions and voters. An interesting quote from the article:

Chris Mullin MP said: "You can live quite comfortably on pounds 33,000 a year [the existing salary for MPs]. Having one rule for MPs and another for everybody else is going to be very damaging." - source The Independent July 1996

March 2001 An independent review board of cabinet members salaries stated that "Tony Blair must allow cabinet members to accept their salaries in full because Labour's freeze on ministerial pay is distorting the parliamentary pay system."

According to the article cabinet ministers were furious by the pay freeze allowing them to only take home £96,887 instead of the £114, 543 they were entitled to a year. It seemed as though Tony Blair at the time was trying to set an example in his own cabinet.

October 2001 An interesting article in the Guardian stating how Councillors' pay has rocketed by 60% over the past 5 months. Top local politicians salaries being almost on par with most MP's

December 2002 Moonlighting MPs double their Common's salaries with lucrative directorships of companies.  

At the time MP's were accusing striking firemen for having second jobs.

December 2004  Details of MP's expenses and allowances were published for the first time. The basic MP's salary at the time was £57,000 their total expenses claims totalled £80m in addition to perks and pensions. The public was invited to comment on this short article some of the comments were quite interesting. Some people defended it saying that we had to pay for good MP's while others could not understand why there was one law for MP's and one for the general public. Several commented on how MP's thought their jobs were more important than doctors and nurses who were on much lower pay. 

There was also a feeling back then according to the comments in the article that MP's were out of touch. Some people were already objecting to the second home and employment of family members as secretaries or general staff members to MPs. Some people also felt we had too many MP's

July 2008 MPs vote to keep pay rise below inflation despite the anger of back benchers who insist they should be paid more. MP's at the time were on £61, 820 a year.

Interesting quotes from the article:

Harriet Harman, leader of the Commons, told MPs at the start of debate: "We should show the same discipline in our pay increases as we expect from the public sector." - source Guardian July 2008

David Maclean, the Conservative former minister, said that, on their current salary of £61,820, MPs were paid the same as a "second-tier officer in a district council".

He said that he felt MPs should be paid about £75,000 a year. And he said that he was willing to speak out "so that I can collect most of the hate mail". -source Guardian July 2008

Sir Patrick Cormack, the Conservative MP for South Staffordshire, said he was "appalled" by the attitude of the government and the Conservative frontbench. He said there were people in the Commons catering department who earned more than MPs.- source Guardian July 2008

April 2009 David Cameron suggests increasing MPs salaries in exchange for cuts in allowances

What I find interesting is how this all begun. It appears it started with some pretty good intentions, pay MP's more so they are less inclined to "moonlight". Pay a good wage to MP's and you should get some pretty good people in government if you apply the same principle used in private business..right? It seemed early on that party leaders were already worried about the impact MPs salaries would have on voters. It would appear to keep MPs happy, they were given expenses to make up for the shortfall and MPs treated these allowances as part of their salaries. Almost as bankers treated bonuses as part of their salaries we discovered when looking at the credit crunch, some were pretty angry when they did not get their "guaranteed bonus". To many it felt MP's were hugely out of touch with voters, they are basically public servants right? And to many they act as though they are members of the aristocracy.

I suppose if you have people in government who suffer the same day to day hardships you do and the same burdens of tax, you are more inclined to trust them and believe they will do their best to improve things for the ordinary person. When elected officials loose touch with the voting public it can lead to some pretty severe consequences, I am sure party leaders are only to aware of. People who are disillusioned can sometimes steer to far right parties and before long you can end up with a revolution as history has taught us only too well. Let us hope lessons have been learnt and parliament takes a more humble approach when it comes to the public purse strings.  

My poor cat Willow is suffering from a limp in her front left leg. The vet gave us some anti-inflamatories for it but its not gotten better. The limp doesn't happen all the time and she doesn't act as though she is in pain. Although occasionally she goes and sits in a dark corner by herself. It looks like we may need to have her X-rayed has anyone else had the same problem with their cat?