Blog
Blog articles.
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Legal use of Terrorism Act 2000 44(2)
In follow up to my previous post. So I complained to the IPCC. After a number of initially dismissive letters back and forth, I started to get some thoughtful responses.
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Misuse of Terrorism Act 2000 44(2)
I just watched the compelling documentary Taking Liberties, which prompted me to finally send my complaint to the IPCC, and finish off this draft.
I was travelling Oxford to Cambridge, and had missed my connection at Paddington Station, London. With insufficient money for a hotel, I decided to just sleep in the station and catch the first train back to Cambridge. It was a cold night, so I plugged my headphones into my iPod, switched it to Pseudopod, pulled my Warwick Atheists hoodie tight around me, and sat on a light for warmth. For the next hour or so, I moved between sitting on lights and sitting with my back to a lit sign on a stall, trying to get most warm and most comfortable. There were a few other people in the station — perhaps in similar circumstances, perhaps homeless and seeking shelter from the outside wind. After some time I was dosing and listening to Pseudopod still, when I was woken (about 01:45 am) by a couple of officers in uniform who informed me that they were conducting “random” stop-and-searches under new anti-terrorism regulations. They asked me why I was there, and various other circumstantial questions. They asked to look in my backpack (which contained clothes, university work, laptop, wires).
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Twitter account suspended
Aw man. I got hacked (or something) and an obviously spam message got posted in my twitter feed. Of course, I’ve had my account suspended, pending investigation. I should be back up within a month, according to twitter. I don’t know whether the error is twitter’s or mine, but needless to say every place where I used the same password as for twitter has been changed, just in case. All in all, not as painful as it might have been, I guess!
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Poster controversy
A poster I made while I was the publicity officer of the Warwick Atheists Society recently got some coverage in The Guardian’s Comment is Free section.
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The Importance of Atheism
Edit 2023-07-24: I’m including this post here so I can link to it. Did I make this poster when I was like 19? Yes. Would I make it and distribute it today? No. A lot has changed in the world, and in me.

A poster I designed for Warwick Atheists to advertise a series of talks promoting and exploring topics in atheism, agnosticism and antireligion. This poster got the society into some trouble.
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Democracy in action
Step 1: Pick any British politician from any party.
Step 2: Listen to them talk.
Step 3: Think to yourself: Would I buy a car from them?
Step 4: Ask yourself why we’re happy with them having the positions of maximal responsibility.
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Upgrade
Over the last few days there’ve been a number of occasions when I’ve thought about something, and then thought “I wanna write something about this, but it’s too long to sum up in 140 characters”. I’ve had “CaiWingfield.com” registered for a while, and had some vague nothing sitting in a WordPress framework for a while. I had fun designing some fancy AJAX site but then (as is always the way) realised that I had no actual content. So today I decided that I’d go ahead and upgrade to WordPress 2.7, clear out everything that was content-free, and start again. Here it is. I’ll probably add design back in, slowly, as it’s fun.