From the “improve our lives by addressing the mundane and everyday” department…
Folding Design Flattens the Fatty UK Plug (Gizmodo)
That’s just totally wonderful. The whole design is impressive, but the Big Grin Moment for me is when the folded plugs all connect to the side of a master adaptor. Someone please give those designers a lot of money and go into mass production NOW!
So, a new design, as you can see (unless you’re reading this via your RSS aggregator, in which case, don’t worry). I decided to go for the Cutline theme for WordPress, as I’d seen it on a couple of other people’s blogs, and liked the clean lines and suitability for customisation.
I still have a proper, self-designed identity in mind for this site, but I just need to find time to get it from my head into actual CSS. Until then, Cutline makes for a nice stopgap and an eventual platform for my own design. I’ve tweaked the basic CSS slightly, so let me know if anything doesn’t quite seem to work in your browser!
I’m not going to burble insincere drivel about a musician in whom I only had the vaguest passing interest. There are plenty of self-satisfied rent-a-quoters already doing that on every news report.
However, I will draw your attention to this wonderfully inappropriate BBC headline…
“Latest live coverage”… in the 24/7 glare of modern media, even death is no longer final!
It’s been a bit quiet on here lately… a mixture of self-inflicted DIY, bluesjamtracks work (including the London International Music Show) and the usual everyday stuff.
Anyway, this springs to mind as the most attention-worth bit of news I’ve seen…
Nightjack case kills the right of anonymity (Guardian)
In case you weren’t aware, Nightjack was a blog written (anonymously) by a police detective. I used to read it from time to time, and it was an interesting read, offering an alternative (and unflinching) view of British street crime from that portrayed in the Daily Mail, Guardian or BBC. I wasn’t the only admirer; Nightjack was awarded the prestigious Orwell Prize for blogging this year.
And then it all came crashing to a halt. “Jack Night”, the pseudonymous writer of the blog, failed in his legal bid to prevent the Times from revealing his true identity. Mr Justice Eady judged that “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”, which is just a ridiculous over-simplification. Of course blogs are publicly accessible, and anonymity is frequently abused on the internet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions. The whole point of Nightjack, as a piece of journalism and an educational resourse, was that it had to be anonymous. Revealing the true identity of the writer makes the whole thing pointless.
Tempting as it is to hurl abuse at Mr Justice Eady, the real culprit here is whichever Times journalist thought it was in the public interest to reveal Jack Night’s identity. The gulf between new and old media is still pretty huge, it seems.
Although I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of Hazel Blears, I’m slightly alarmed by the way the fall-out from the whole expenses scandal seems to be escalating into the realms of Completely Missing The Point.
This isn’t exactly helped by most of the media, where various events over the last couple of weeks have been identified as the “final nail in the coffin of New Labour” (or something like that). Gordon & Co. have been polishing quite a few contenders for Ultimate Nail all by themselves, but THIS IS NOT IT, okay?
To turn this specific affair into the necessary leverage for removing Labour from government would be unwise, causing the inevitable Tory victory to seem like a purge. Let’s be clear here… some of the most arrogant and profligate wastes of public money occurred in Conservative seats. There’s Bill Cash with his creative offspring-juggling, Bill Wiggins and the mortgage that never was, Douglas Hogg’s moat, Peter Viggers’ Duck Island, Anne Kirkbride and Andrew Mackay with their dual primary residences, countless cases of Capital Gains Tax avoidance and so much more.
I’m not trying to score desperate lefty points here; the Labour MPs have shown a striking lack of ethics as well. What I’m getting at is that this is not a question of party politics, not a reason to win or lose an election. This is something that needs to be completely cleared up and repaired RIGHT NOW, independently of the party system.
As a huge fan of Spotify, I couldn’t help letting out a little squeak of excitement at the news of a forthcoming mobile version.
But then the cold light of rationality hits me and I wonder how practical this is going to be. With our mobile network providers still charging ludicrous rates for even the fusty old GPRS data standard and patchy 3G coverage even in city centres, how functional will mobile Spotify be in the UK?
Of course, there’s Wifi and supposedly also WiMAX, but whatever happened to the dream of free (or at least cheap) wireless networks spanning our towns and cities? With very few exceptions, you’re limited to networks provided by BT, T-Mobile or The Cloud… complete with rip-off prices!
The “buffer” mode mentioned in the MusicRadar article sounds promising, given the mobile network issues, but then you might as well load up your iPod before you go out. The wonder of Spotify lies in its instant access, and it’d be a shame if our mobile networks robbed it of so much potential.
… or “why I love Twitter #237″.
One of my Twitter friends (or followers, if you prefer) is the groovy solo bassist Steve Lawson. In one of his tweets he mentioned his namesake. I’m a nosey Twitterer, and regularly follow links to people I’ve never heard of, so I clicked over to this other Steve Lawson’s Twitter page and then to his literary blog.
And there I learned all about Infinite Summer, a group readathon (sorry!) of David Foster Wallace’s huge novel ‘Infinite Jest’. Now, I’m a big fan of the book, having read it twice (the first time haltingly and with great bewilderment; the second time with ever-growing admiration) but there’s a lot to digest, so it should be interesting to read it again with the benefit of other people’s comments and a general community vibe.
So ner to all those people who dismiss Twitter as either a bunch of celebrity stalkers or self-obsessed wankers who want the world to know what they had for lunch.
Back to the expenses abuses. I’m writing this before I read about Harriet Harman’s expenses reforms, so I’m fully expecting to be disappointed, but still…
Basically, the ONLY solution I can see is to remove the opportunity for abuse. There is a reason why I consider this whole debacle to be less of a scandal than, for example, launching a war based on dodgy intelligence… to a degree, the MPs were only doing what we all do in our own jobs. We all interpret the rules as liberally as possible. The difference here is that they were dipping into public money with such a mixture of arrogance and nonchalance.
So, we remove the room for interpretation. We standardize the entire system.
Constituency residences are entirely the responsibility of the MP, as these are understood to be their family homes. In buying and maintaining (or even renting) these homes, they behave like every other citizen, paying out of the family income. Of course, if they choose to make their family home outside of the constituency (Lady Olga Maitland, former member for Sutton & Cheam, springs to mind) that’s up to them. It’s still their financial responsibility, and the consequences of this choice are up to their local party representatives and the constituents who may choose not to vote for them at the next election.
To complete the accommodation picture, we build (or ideally, renovate) a series of apartment blocks in convenient locations in central London. Every MP has the right to one of these apartments. That’s right, every MP… we’re standardizing everything, and that includes removing any room for argument over what constitutes “too far from Westminster”. Of course, there’s no obligation to live in the state-owned apartments, but no accommodation expenses will be provided by the state. These apartments will be compact, but comfortable; they’re professional temporary accommodation, not surrogate family homes. We’re not monsters in this new, sleaze-free world… they’ll be of a decent standard, with security precautions. Hell, they can even have gyms and satellite TV, given how much sleaze money we’ll be saving!
Travel will be provided for free between London and the constituency (along with journeys to vital meetings and conferences). Standard class trains for the majority, first class trains for ministers, private cars for high-security cabinet members. Standard class flights for extraordinary distances from Westminster. Petrol vouchers, to a value precisely calculated to suit the distance of each constituency from Westminster, will be offered as an alternative to rail tickets. Any other private road travel is the responsibility of the MP. Travel between governmental offices and London apartments will be of the same standard and also free and unlimited. A state-owned taxi company will be set up for late night journeys.
All food in government offices (including the Palace of Westminster) will be free, and of a high quality. All other food will be the MP’s own responsibility. The rest of the population have to feed themselves once they get home from work, you know.
Salaries will be recalculated to allow for the loss of certain expenses, and will be comparative with high-ranking public sector posts. There will still be a rising scale from back-bencher up to prime minister. And there will be no room for negotiation. Because we really don’t want to trust them with setting their own salaries, do we now?
But before I write anything sensible, here’s something that made me laugh this morning…
Average (UK) MP’s expenses cost taxpayer £118,000
Originally uploaded by Teacher Dude’s BBQ
And here’s one I just made, recycling an old poster remix campaign (click to embiggen)…
In a shameful week for politicians, Commons Speaker Michael Martin is struggling with the concept of PR…
Of course, MPs have as much right to protect their personal data as the rest of us, but there’s a lot of *public* data there that would be covered up if the Speaker had his own way. This is all a bit rich, coming from the chair of the House of Commons Commission who sought to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act back in 2007.
I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this whole expenses scandal… we saw most flavours of sleaze back in 1992-97, and (New) Labour have given no indication that they’re better than the Tories when it comes to ethical behaviour. Mind you, it’s heartening to see the first signs of how some Tory MPs have been milking the system to even more spectacularly decadent ends. It’s supposedly easier to be in opposition than to be in government, because everything is hypothetical and reversible, but that lot can’t even keep out of trouble while they’re in opposition!
What’s shameful is that such a vast and wide-ranging mechanism existed to make these claims possible in the first place. The second-home trick has been dominating the headlines, but this is only the large tip of an even larger iceberg. To my mind, the enormous list of trivial, everyday expenses is more damning, because it suggests an ingrained, arrogant attitude of entitlement.
No doubt the system will be improved. Receipts will be demanded and scrutinized. There will be stricter rules about the description of “family home” and “second home”. Tax loopholes will be closed. And then human nature (because, let’s face it, we all like to bend the rules) will take over, and new opportunities will arise. The ONLY solution is to remove any room for interpretation. Everything must be standardised, unambiguously, for all MPs.
I want to get this posted now, so I’ll say more in the next entry…
