devolute.net

Just a thought.  The Sun might be wrong about this one. Via @mattleys

This debate has raged between the music industry and pretty much everyone else for a while now. The digital economy bill that should have been about digital Britain and how we can all use the web for good, has been turned into a load of proposals that may endanger free speech and endanger creativity. I wrote the following to my local MP, Nick Clegg:

I’m writing to you regarding the rush that is planned to push through the Digital Economy Bill. I’m aware that this is a very complex bill and there are many parts of it that concern me. I think that there is a lot in there that many people should be concerned about and without the time to debate it properly, we’ll be making mistakes that we will soon regret.

I moved to Sheffield because of our strong design community which is doing great things with the web. In this industry I have seen how creative solutions can provide services to those who need them most. Solutions that are an asset to the design community and to Sheffield and that can save the government a great deal of money. I am worried that this creativity will be stifled by this new bill. We are already at a disadvantage compared with many European countries who long ago woke up and realised how important unrestricted internet access is.

As a constituent I am writing to you today to ask you to do all you can to ensure the Government doesn’t just rush the bill through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.

I recommend you have your own say by writing to your MP via the brilliant 38 Degrees campaign. It only took a minute (you can tell by my prose!), but to let this go through without a fight would be criminal.

This title is not a joke. I’m a big Sarah Palin fan. Some people say she has no knowledge of politics, foreign countries, science and has a shoddy grip on the whole human experience. Those people tend to be elitists (British translation: people with three-figure IQs). It’s a shame she never made it to VP. God, I love fireworks. Now she’s finally found something that everyone can agree she’s good at: stand-up comedy. Dems, Republicans, Libertarians, gays, Muslims, Jews and people who hold up “Jebus hates fagurts” banners at protests could all come together and enjoy some Palin stand-up. I don’t think it’s simply the top-flight jokes she tells, but the delivery. As Frank Carson said: “It is. The way. That you tell. Them.” The right wing in this country is in dire need of a proper comic since Bernard Manning went to the giant pie shop in the sky and Jim Davidson finally disappeared up his own backside (erm, I think. Either that or he lives in the UAE). I think she’d be honoring both the ‘special relationship’ and the needs of the British comedy circuit if she came over here and did a tour. We love you Sarah!

Even news-bots v1.4, v2, and 1.9(f) on Fox news agree with me. Great catch from v1.4 there as well: Palin isn’t “Our own”, she’s simply a contributor, silly! (In the same way ‘tea parties’ are in no way organized by the Murdoch ‘massive’). Just remember: Only Rush Limbaugh can make jokes about retards, so don’t expect that sort of humor from Sarah.

This weekends article by Madeleine Bunting for the Guardian reads like parody. Lifestyle changes which will have arguably minimal positive effect on the environment: check. Angst over carbon footprint whilst still taking flights abroad and owning a large house: check. And as if to round off the parody so perfectly: Two paragraphs detailing the guilt of Aga ownership! Perfect! This is article, along with many disappointingly similar others, is part of the Guardians new 10:10 campaign. The idea is for us to sign up and make personal carbon cuts ourselves, 10% in 2010, so that pressure is put on the government to make similar efforts. It would be nice to think that we’d spend a little more time putting pressure on industry who of course are the real big polluters and whatever private citizens do is next to useless if we can’t get them on board.

The 10:10 campaign was launched in the Tate Modern because obviously a more smug middle class location was not available.I think the 10:10 tags are set to become some of this years more desirable items. Like those ‘Make Poverty History’ bracelets (I wonder how that one turned out?). All in all I think it’s a great idea. However it may contain too many elements which put us in danger of creating a wall of smugness that distances those who honestly care about climate change from those who are yet to sign up for the full effort.

Web developer hat on: The 10:10 website is superb in both it’s design and execution, except totally unnecessary use of flash of course.

This film explores power of mass collaboration, government and the internet. Ideas such as allowing people to choose policy, not the government are discussed. It features David Milliband saying, interestingly, that an election every 4 years isn’t enough. I’m inclined to agree with him.

Representative democracy is based on the idea that people are thick. That’s not true.

There are a host of interesting people featured here, from Cabinet ministers, users of Mumsnet, mySociety folk and even Linux geeks. More importantly; it looks past the current extent of e-Democracy which seems to be, basically, “Lets put everything on YouTube, yeah?”

via Core77

So I’m a total dick on the internet. All my pals know it. I engage in fisking sometimes, arguably one of the most dickish activities one can take part in. Even so I can never reach the dizzy hights of dickishness of Tory blogger Donal Blaney. He may quite possibly a very clever parody (much like a British Stephen Colbert). I don’t know. Claire Hazelgrove is politically a nobody. She’s only 20 and who has heard of her? Why would anyone go out to shoot her down? But on Blaneys blog he decides to rip into her posting a little bit of internet fluff. You know that ‘tell us 25 things few people know about you’ thing that’s going round facebook / twitter? Well Blaney fisks the hell out of her answers. The result is embarrassing. I remember when my little sister talked like he does. She grew out of it when she was about 14. When Ms. Hazelgrove says;

I’m utterly useless before 10am, although I do quite often have to get up before then.

Blaney wittily retorts;

Judging by your contribution to political life thus far, you’re not much better after 10am either, you idle sheet-presser.

Meow! Is this guy for real? The rest of the thread is pure gold in my opinion. Including a perhaps slightly unfair comparison to Hitler and I think every comment should be prefixed with a *cat noise* What a pissy little bitch he is! He’s got to be a nu-labour plant. Check out the rest of the blog for more chortles, including some really weak attacks on Obama. Didn’t Donal get Dave’s memo? We’re supposed to all love Obama now!

Thank you internet! Or more specifically I think we need to thank the ever-brilliant mySociety and other grassroots organisations. Parliament wanted to vote to ensure that MPs could conceal their expenses from the public (i.e. the people who pay for them) but the vote has now been cancelled. I’m not sure if MPs are aware of the irony of such secrecy. In a period when ID cards, national databases and cameras on every corner are being forced upon us by the government, those in power don’t even want us to see how they are spending our money! Hell; we may not trust them but at least we don’t suspect them of being terrorists, as they do to us.

Anyway, the vote was cancelled in part due to a huge internet campaign that let MPs know how unpopular this was. This is great news for anyone with a passing interest in living in a modern transparent democracy.

The argument made by Harriet Harman that publishing all 1.2 million receipts would have created “a blizzard of information at great expense” is again, an ironic one (given the massive cost of the national big brother database) and one that shows an ignorance to the possibilities of web and technology in general. Again, the web as a tool to ‘rally the troops’ has, like the Obama campaign,  shown itself to have a positive effect on real democracy and the important freedom of information campaign.

Dick Cheney

I’m pretty sure that’s the right picture.

Ahmadinejad

Channel 4 are courting controversy as usual and are letting the President of Iran take the reigns of their ‘Alternative Christmas Message’. I usually don’t watch the Queens message (because I know what she’s going to say anyway), but I think I’ll be watching this. I’ve not heard much from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since Obama won the election. Although Obama isn’t exactly going soft on Iran, he doesn’t seem to be partaking in any G. W. Bush-style goading of the Iranians. So if Ahmadinejad mentions anything about his new less-threatening counter-part, it could be quite interesting.

We never get to hear Iranian politicians without it going through some pretty heavy filtering. Remember the “Israel must be wiped off the map” ‘translation‘ in the Western media? I’m no fan of Ahmadinejad’s often frankly dickish behaviour, but an appearance like this on Western TV is definitely a must watch for anyone interested in the nonsensical  ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East

The worlds most universally hated man and serial bastard, President George Bush, has a dog called Barney. Barney has stared in many of his own videos and this Christmas is no exception. The reason for Barney taking such a role at Christmas is probably because despite his support of the war and attacking journos, he’s probably the least unpopular living entity in the Whitehouse.

His latest video is painful, obviously. It’s nice to see the Bush twins  in a less slutty pose for a change. Watching the Bush family ‘interact’ is undoubtedly cringe worthy but like all good train-wrecks, you’ve got to watch.

Barney and the Bush family; Maybe a white fluffy cat would be more fitting.

The thing that disappoints me, as a non-American, is that the production of the video is actually rather good. Well; not ‘telly good’ (maybe ITV), but Barney the dog receives definitely better video production than most of our British politicians.

Remember when the statue of Saddam fell and everyone set about it with their shoes? It was then that I learnt that a shoe to the face is pretty much the greatest insult one Arab can give another. Well; at a recent press-contest an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at Bush. He almost got him in the face. It’s a pity Bush dodged, because then he could have said he had at least sacrificed something in the war on terror / Iraq / anyone who looks at us funny. Still, it was a pretty good throw (non of this under-arm nonsense) so full credit to the guy.

Apparently the reporter shouted, “This is a fairwell kiss, you dog” before he probably got the secret-service ass-kicking of his life. Apparently Dana Perino White House Press Secretary / presidential eye candy Dana Perino came away with a black eye in the scuffle. Lets hope at least she passes that message on.

I don’t know if it needs making clear how Iraqis feel about the current (but not for long, thank god) president but you never know, we might see Obama wearing an anti-hush puppies flak vest. For the comments section: If you could have any footwear thrown at you, what would it be?

This is possibly not exactly what you’re thinking. This is ‘hack’ to improve, not destroy. Why haven’t we done this before?

Government isn’t very good at computers. They spend millions to produce mediocre websites, hide away really useful public information and generally get it wrong. Which is a shame.

Calling all people who make things. We’re going to show them how it’s done.

They’re completely right of course. Government currently are a bit of a joke on the web. Especially local Government. Just look my own councils awful awful website. Call that navigation? “Widescreen”? wtf? I’m not sure about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if rewiredstate.com was the gang at TheyWorkForYou, simply because I know they are very much on the ball when it comes to the web and politics in Britain. The web is a great way to share information that should be available to the public. Doing that only strengthens democracy and increases citizen interac…. oh why the hell am I saying this? They know that. We know that. Lets hope someone does something about it.

I personally feel that when large companies get involved with the Government and computers then it almost always ends in unmitigated disaster (see; NHS). Maybe if APIs are created, access is encouraged (or even allowed), OpenSource is utilised and work is done by designers and developers on a volunteer/small agency basis, then we’d see a lot more useful stuff. Well, a lot more usable stuff anyway and certainly a lot less waste. I’ve signed up. Lets hope this flourishes.

www.rewiredstate.org

edit: example of government waste provided

When this man is on point, he can really fly. Originally a sports broadcaster, he has moved into politics. Sadly he wasn’t in full swing around the start of the Bush-era but he is now a must watch. I quite often watch his MSNBC show online, or at least the ‘World Worst Person’ segment. He’s a little Jon Stewart-esque, but with less jokes. That’s not to say that watching this frustrated silver-haired doberman as he angrily tears apart talking points isn’t funny. Here’s all you need to know before you dive into his work:

I learnt that I was wrong. Watching the US media in the past few months gave me the impression that the fear of a black man running the country was so great that it’d mean Obama would loose. It wouldn’t be because of his policies or his character, but the idea that there was just something not quite right about him. I was shown to be wrong, and it’s restored a lot of my faith in not just the US, but mankind!

I also learnt that although many people are prepared to be a bit more liberal in some respects. People have woken up and realised that the imminent threat of their local Walmart being blown up isn’t quite the reality that many seemed to think it was back in 2004. However; now the Prop8 result may show that some people are even more scared of gays than any AK-wielding terrorist.

The power of social media, the web and associated technologies surpassed what even I, a web professional, expected. I wish that some of the more liberal groups in British politics would realise this too.

Finally, I learnt that sometimes no matter how crazy you sound, no matter how much you screw up and no matter how plain nasty you are, you’ll can still pull in votes. Here’s to you, Ted and your series of tubes.

Twitter was one of many tools that the Obama campaign used to get people involved

Now we have to look forward to the inevitable disappointment as Obama announces that the Iraq pull-out date is going to be 2023 and Joe Bidden inserts himself firmly in the buttocks of the music companies (and starts going after internet users). At least we got to see Palin cry. I’m looking forward to Schwarzenegger – Palin 2012. Hey; it could happen.