Aim
The aim of this site is to provide voters in the 2005 UK general election with a simple tool to see how the main parties represent their views. While this site is not pursuing any political agenda we would obviously urge all users to research the issues in greater detail themselves before making their final voting choice. This site is not funded by any political party or interest group.
As expected, it told me that I should vote Lib Dem, followed by the Green party.. unfortunately I live in Belfast and am not totally clued up on Northern Ireland politics just yet, so my options aren't as simple as that.
Adam Fields weblog � Why photo editing is important
I agree that Photoshop is the new darkroom and images do need a bit of tweaking to get the maximum impact out of each photo, but I dont like what Adam has done to the photo in the example he gave. In my opinion he has cropped too much off the top, and made it too sharp which has resulted in the focal point of the photo being very confused.
However, the third photo uses a cool trick.. one that I used
here.
Is jail the best way to deal with young people who scrawl their names over property, costing the UK millions of pounds in clean-up costs a year?
One judge in Manchester thought so - on Thursday he sentenced two young men to 10 months' youth detention for spraying their signatures, or "tags", onto trains and bridges. He said he hoped it would deter others.
The BBC News website went to one of London's graffiti hotspots to see if people thought it was so serious a crime that it merits a custodial sentence.
The Westway flyover, which stretches for miles over west London, has long attracted graffiti artists and taggers.
Colourful artwork festoons the grey concrete arches supporting the dual carriageway and along the neighbouring underground railway track.
In some parts, local authorities and building owners have worked with graffiti artists, commissioning works and encouraging what many admire as a vital urban art form.
Less admired are the ubiquitous and uninvited taggers, who have left their mark on almost every lamp-post, doorway, pillar, shop front and wall in some areas as well as etching their names into bus shelters and train windows.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea says it removed graffiti covering 50,000 square foot - the equivalent of 45 full-size football pitches - on private property alone in 2003-4.
It sees graffiti as an "enviro-crime", which, along with fly-posting, litter and dumped cars, blights its neighbourhoods and can pre-empt spiralling crime and anti-social behaviour.
The cost of cleaning up graffiti across London each year is estimated at £100m.
But in trendy Ladbroke Grove, by the famous Portobello Market, most passers-by saw a clear distinction between genuine street art and messy tagging.
Few thought taggers deserved to be locked up.
Yuri Cardenas, 38, of west London, said it would be better to force offenders to clean up the mess they had made.
He said: "I believe it has to be punished in some way but jail is too harsh."
Nardos Michael, 17, and her friend Ferewaini Habton, 16, said tagging was "stupid", adding: "There's just no need."
But they said locking people up for graffiti was "heavy-handed".
Nardos said: "I think community service would be more appropriate. They could make them clean it up themselves."
Social worker Ines Berg, 34, said she did not see most graffiti as a problem.
She said: "I think the kids should be given more space where they can do something productive with it. It's great. Why shouldn't the place be colourful?
"If this happened, I think a lot of this silly nuisance stuff would stop."
Portobello resident Rachel Collingwood, 39, agreed.
She said: "I like graffiti. I think most people do. I'm just not so mad about it when they write their names over my front door.
"It's grim enough looking at all these grey buildings, especially under the Westway, so let's have a bit of colour - just not on my door please."
Rudy Gad, 37, said the authorities should find out what young people were interested in and provide more activities for them to distract them from nuisance behaviour such as tagging.
"When graffiti originally came out in my school days in '84 or '85 it was done as an art form. But the authorities tried to suppress it.
"Tagging is just done by bored children. If they like art so much then send them on a course for artwork rather than sending them to jail.
"If someone who scrawls their name on walls is sent to prison with bank robbers and murderers, they're going to come out doing much worse things than tagging.
"A 12-month community service order scrubbing off tags would be better."
Patricia Roche, 59, of central London, said the idea of custody for graffiti was "dreadful".
She added: "I like graffiti if it's done well. I don't see anything wrong with it. It brightens up the day sometimes.
"I just don't notice the tagging, I don't care about it and I don't see why people make such as fuss."
