Not that I want this site to turn into a 'veil issue' site, but this BBC news story has perfect timing. (Plus I have a day off which I have spent mostly sleeping and am too tired to write a big post).

A Muslim woman has been suspended by a school in West Yorkshire after she insisted on wearing a veil in lessons.

Bilingual support worker Aishah Azmi, 24, was asked to remove the veil after pupils found it hard to understand her during English language lessons.

I'm not the only one then. (Although it'll be interesting to see how the tribunal goes).

Another blogger has been stopped from writing. In the grand scheme of things where people are killed for their words not too important but nevertheless not good in a 'free' society.

If you came here from here – I have no idea about the news about chemical masks, but I do know that we are all going to be given radiation detectors.  I mentioned it here along with a suggested new name of ‘London Ambulance and Canary Service’.

Also the news story says ‘Paramedics’, as an EMT am I therefore expendable?

(Yes, yes, I know that ‘Paramedic’ is media shorthand for anyone who works on an ambulance).

I'm a big fan of police blogging, hardly a day goes past without me working with the police on one call or another. So I know that they are human beings with the same frustrations and concerns as the rest of us. Unfortunately they come in for a lot of criticism from the press and are unable to respond. Their PR department seems to prefer 'spin' and 'whitewash', playing the violins while the Titanic sinks rather than providing the truth of police work. The police blogs give us an insight into a secretive world where their hands are tied by the government and this has prevented them from making the real difference that many of them joined the service to do.

The police management have a habit of shutting down the blogs though, perhaps they can't see how well they humanise the police services. No longer is the harassed copper who comes to take your details a uniformed cog in the machine, but is instead someone who is so buried under paperwork and government targets that they can't help you no matter how much they would like to.

It looks like another police blog is in danger of disappearing, Inspector Gadget is to have an 'informal chat' with the Professional Standards Unit. His sources tell him that this will be about the blog, and that he may be in some serious trouble.

At no point has he brought the Police Service into disrepute, he has not interfered with any investigation (ongoing or in the past) and his blog has shown people the world over the struggles and strains of trying to serve the public while facing unreasonable pressures from government. He tells the truth without it being whitewashed with 'spin'. The should be no reason why his bosses should want it removed.

This leads onto the wider question as to why the Police hierarchy don't like the truth being told. Nor why members of the police seem to have their Human Right of freedom of speech and expression removed from them.

Please, go over to his site, read the archives to see what a great blog it is and leave a comment of support. He deserves it, and hopefully with a show of public support it may demonstrate to his seniors why we need police bloggers.

It would be a terrible loss to see him disappear like 'The Law is an Ass', or 'Brian's Brief Encounters'.

Why can't they be as blog friendly as the London Ambulance Service?

Here is the clip of me on Sky News.

The reason behind me looking so laid back is that this particular body posture helps me to relax.  All my stress is in my neck and shoulders, so if I sit forward like most people on the telly then I would tend to freeze up.

Not bad for someone with less than four minutes TV experience.

Due to the timespan of getting me on there, it was kind of obvious that no-one had really read the book, which explains the vague questions that were asked of me.

I’m impressed by the presenter, he not only presents but makes production decisions when the video is running and checks his emails.

(He gets the same spam as myself).

And yes…I was wearing makeup.

With the exception of Midweek on Radio Four on the 20th of September, I think that’s the end of the publicity machine.  It’s been a bloody good laugh.

From tomorrow I’m on a training course, sitting in a classroom for a couple of hours is Hell for myself.

But other things are making me happy.

I've been speaking to a young lady today, looks like I'l be on Sky News in the UK this Saturday at around 11am. Live...

I'm thinking of adding a line to my CV, "Will do TV, Radio, Print, Podcasts, or anything else for a bit of attention".

I’ve mentioned it before, but I think that writing about it again would be worthwhile.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is (probably) the first book by a major European publisher to release a book under a Creative Commons license.  It has been released under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. which means that you can…

…use copyright material in specific ways without affecting the author's overall copyright in the work.

Under the terms of this book's licence, you are free to make copies of all or part of this work for your own personal use and for other non-commercial use. You may annotate or edit the work in any way, and republish it online in any format, providing any annotated and edited version includes a link back to the source material at http://www.fridaybooks.co.uk/bst

You may also make derivative works (Flash animations, videos, images etc, etc) based on this text for online, non-commercial use only.

Any annotated, edited or derivative version must be made available under the same Creative Commons licence as the original material.

As a wiser man than I has said, “My problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity”.  It is also because this website is licensed under the same scheme and to change it now that a large amount of it is in a physical book seems like an unethical thing to do.  I love Creative Commons, it’s a great way of finding new music, writing and other art.  Sure – it’s a bit of a gamble, but I honestly believe that this brave step by my publishers is the best thing for this book.

I’ve got to admit that it was nerve-wracking in asking my publishers about this and I cannot commend them enough for listening to, and understanding, the thoughts behind Creative Commons.

So you can go to The Friday Project page and download the *whole* book in a variety of formats.  You can then fiddle around with it and do whatever you like to it then upload it back to The Friday Project just so long as you don’t try to sell it. 

Fun, yes?

I’m hoping, and it’s a bit of an ego thing here to be honest, that it might shake up publishing a bit in this country and provide a blast across the bows of those who would restrict what you can do with media that you ‘own’.

(You do realise that in the UK it is illegal to rip a CD to your iPod, even if it is for personal use?).

Lets see how things go…