Favourite blogs for Laura's blog

Best news of 2009 announced by BBC

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/09/top_gear_on_bbc_hd_from_novemb.html

I was thinking recently of doing a blog post about the need to renew Trident and how it should be ring-fenced in the forthcoming economic horror-slasher film “Britain 2010: Gordon’s chickens return to roost”, but the government have beaten me to it by their announcement that our nuclear defense is non-negotiable. Happily, there is some even better news to blog about today. Top Gear, the best thing by a country mile to ever be dreamed up for the small screen, is going to be broadcast in HD when the new series starts on November 15th. I’m already devising ways of locking my TV onto BBC HD so that we regrettably won’t be able to resolve any scheduling conflicts with Strictly Come Dancing etc in our household – sorry Jen…

Christopher Sigournay : 23 Sep 2009 12:55 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Political stalemate

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8132968.stm

It appears that the current political debate in the UK on the future of the country’s finances has reached something of a stalemate. As political commentators, economists and those who follow politics in the news will know, Gordon Brown has resorted to outright and blatant lying in a last-ditch attempt to save his bacon. He’s widely on the record for portraying the next election as a clear choice between “Labour investment and Tory cuts”. I have yet to hear a single person outside the Labour party (who seem to have begrudingly united behind their leader after their disastrous European elections) express a view other than “this is a fabrication”. I even heard an economist on PM say (apologies if this is not exact) “For once, there is a very clear right and wrong, and all the government’s own figures show that Gordon Brown is wrong”. What I don’t understand is why there is widespread indifference to this at present. Perhaps everyone is exhausted in the wake of the economic crisis and the expenses scandal. But surely when the debate comes this far between one party telling the truth and the other a complete fabrication, then it’s really time to sit up and take action. I quote the linked article above:

Some in Labour feel it is not a credible position to say that the Tories are going to cut everything while Labour will invest. But cabinet ministers close to Gordon Brown believe that this is a fruitful line of attack.

How exactly cabinet ministers think that this is a credible line of attack, when the argument is clearly so far from being credible, I don’t know. Perhaps it is the only position that Labour have left, because as soon as they are forced to admit the true state of the finances and come clean they will be forced to show that their management of the economy not just since the credit crunch but before it was poor, which will do irrepairable damage to them. Mervin King has already said as much as the current levels of government spending are unsustainable – they have after all only been sustained so far by relying in turn on an unsustainable financial sector. Right now though, until Labour drop the pretence that investment will continue to rise under their governance if they are elected for a fourth term, the Conservatives will not be able to talk a great deal more about their plans for the economy, because discussion of cuts from them would result in Labour making political hay by falsely pointing the finger and claiming to have something altogether better. Nick Clegg is right when he says that neither of the two main parties is being honest with the public – but until Labour are forced into doing so, the Conservatives risk too much damage by revealing their future plans.

Christopher Sigournay : 04 Jul 2009 06:24 |  Tags: Brown Gordon Politics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Pirate World

This advert bothers me…

It bothers me because I don’t quite understand what PC World are offering here. As far as I can tell, the only realistic use for their magic hardware is to stream pirated movies from your PC to your TV.

How many legal websites offer on-demand movies in the UK? I’ve found maybe two, but Google for ‘download movies’ and you’ll find the Pirate Bay and Mininova come up first.

Apparently in the cinema this advert is coming up right before FACT’s advert telling you how lovely paying for films is.

I’m not convinced PC World’s latest promotion sits easily alongside that.

P.S. I’m not even going to go into the creepiness of the main guy in the advert or the pointlessness of the Christian Slater cameo.

Christopher Doidge : 12 Jun 2009 09:12 |  Tags: Advertising PC World |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why journalism and the market don't fit together

Robert Picard’s piece in the Christian Science Monitor, Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay (published Tuesday) will go down with the NUJ like a lead balloon. He argues that journalists deserve low pay because:

Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren’t creating much value these days.

If we accept his first point – that wages are compensation for value creation – then his second point is right on the money.

But that’s a slavishly ‘markets-rule-the-world’ kind of mindset. In the real world, wages are compensation for our time, effort and experience. We get paid more (unless we’re a banker) because we put in the time, the graft and have the knowledge and qualifications to do the job that’s required.

Basically, my point is that if we’re going to pay people because of the value they create, then teachers and doctors would be multi-millionaires and journalists would earn 50p per hour.

Neither of those things are the case.

But let’s ignore that for now and move down Robert Picard’s piece, because much of it is a wake-up call to the struggling media industry.

Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing, and distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences and users are willing to pay a reasonable price.

Like much of the article, this is so right it hurts. But written from an American’s perspective (albeit via Oxfordshire), Mr Picard’s argument ignores the importance of public service broadcasting, which is fairly thin on the ground in the US.

There are lots of stories out there for everyone to chew on, many of them original, worth reading and worth paying for. But with public service organisations to compete with, commercial news providers find that the pool of original journalism is reduced in size and harder to find.

This makes it hard to have such a diverse, privately-owned, profit-making media in the UK. But I’m not going to complain about that. Too much of the commercial world (whether television, radio, print or online) has given up the fight and has little energy left for original, value-creating journalism. They should be left to wither or should face up to radical change.

But Mr Picard’s scenario, combined with the UK’s exceptional circumstances, make me think that the Guardian’s model of ownership (through a not-for-profit trust) might be the best way forward. It recognises the necessity for a pluralistic media industry while not relying on the distraction of profit above-all-else that most organisations have to live with.

Mr Picard’s article calls on journalists to change their mindset, and he’s right to do that. But the ownership model needs to change too. Unless journalism is taken away from shareholders and investment funds, it won’t just fail to create value. It’ll fail to exist.

Christopher Doidge : 21 May 2009 09:00 |  Tags: Journalism |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why the next Speaker has to be Sir George Young

I won’t predict the next Speaker of the House of Commons. My last prediction, that Michael Martin would cling on, proved to be somewhere in the region of wrong.

Instead, I’ll offer a few reasons why the Conservative MP for North-West Hampshire, Sir George Young, should be trusted with the role.

1) Independence
He’s not afraid to walk the difficult path. In Andover, the centre of his constituency, he disagreed with almost every Conservative in the town on plans for an enormous Tesco warehouse. They generally supported it – he was one of the leaders of the campaign against it. By doing so, he was against those who wanted the jobs, but probably caught the public mood at the time. Perhaps he was guilty of following that public mood for electoral gain, but nevertheless, don’t we need a Speaker who’s in touch with what the public wants right now?

2) Transparency
Sir George was one of the first MPs to publish their expenses online. I doubt there are any others who reveal their spending in as much detail as this. In 06/07 he claimed £165 for food, for instance. The one black mark on his record might be that he maxed out his second home allowance for the last two years.

3) Balance
If convention is that the Speakership rotates between someone from the Government benches and someone from the Opposition benches, it really is time for a Tory.

4) Form
As the Chairman of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, he knows how the system works but can’t be blamed for its failings. He’s also a man in tune with the times – he led a campaign to get broadband into rural areas back in 2001.

5) The X Factor
He’s likable. He’s not annoyed anyone on the opposition benches, and he’s a lover of Parliament (theyworkforyou.com says he has well-above average attendance). Yes, he’s a Baronet, and yes he’s what people might call a ‘Grandee’, but he’s also a safe pair of hands, from the right party, at the right time.

P.S. Make of this disclosure what you will, but I lived, for just over a year, in Sir George’s constituency and regularly met with him to do radio interviews. That fact probably colours/informs my judgement somewhat.

Christopher Doidge : 20 May 2009 09:00 |  Tags: House Of Commons Michael Martin Parliament Politics Sir George Young Speaker |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

'Education, Education, Education': The Results

Figures released quietly on Friday reveal the success of some of the government’s education programmes.

Michael Gove, the Tories’ Education Spokesman, asked the government how children on free school meals (the widely used guide to childrens’ family wealth) had done at A-Level and in their Sats tests (soon to be abolished).

These are the answers he got:

Those on free school meals who sat Maths A-Level:
2004: 554 (13.8%)
2008: 705 (17.1%)

Those on free school meals who sat Further Maths A-Level:
2004: 31 (0.8%)
2008: 53 (1.3%)

Those on free school meals who achieved Level 7 in their KS3 Maths tests:
2002: 5,120
2006: 9,233

But it’s not all good news. While Maths has been a big success, English results have actually worsened.

Those on free school meals who achieved Level 7 in their KS3 English tests:
2002: 2,663
2006: 2,364

These figures only reflect successes (or otherwise) in English, Maths and Science. Many teachers say the focus on these three subjects came at the expense of other subjects, especially at primary school. Where maths figures appear to be good news, those for modern languages show the inverse. Those getting two language GCSEs at grades A* to C fell from 7.3% of pupils in 1996 to 4.7% in 2008.

Christopher Doidge : 19 May 2009 09:00 |  Tags: A-Levels Education Gcses Politics Sats Schools |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Speaker will cling on

I think the Speaker of the House of Commons did enough today to cling onto his big green seat.

He was, of course, awful. Woeful. Abysmal. He needed a good showing, and he summarily proved he didn’t know House of Commons rules by getting confused over the technical arcania of substantive motions. I was momentarily transported back to student politics.

Shudder.

But he was nice to Gordon Prentice and Douglas Carswell who did their very best to rile him.

This was out of character, and was the one solitary thing he did today that was different from last week. Hidden in his measured, if stuttered tone was a smidgen of a whiff of a note of change.

The Speaker didn’t give the people (nor the media) what they wanted though. No retirement date. No immediate release of every MP’s expenses. And beyond that faint dram of forced friendliness, no sign of change.

He doesn’t want to go. The PM may want him to go politically, but electorally a by-election in the until-now safe Glasgow North East seat would be disastrous. And a contrived band of Scottish friends, led by the ridiculous Lord Foulkes, don’t want him to go.

All they have by way of weaponry is the sharp sword of convention.

Rarely do five or six people stand up to sixty million and win. In this battle, full of history and precedents, they just might.

Christopher Doidge : 18 May 2009 20:39 |  Tags: Government House Of Commons Michael Martin Parliament Politics Speaker |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

They're not all scum

I think the Telegraph, and others, have gone too far with MP’s expenses now.

Yes, some of them are money-grabbing little sh*ts who deserve the marching orders they’ll be given at the next election.

But some of the MPs who’ve had their expenses splashed across the newspapers really have done nothing wrong.

The Daily Mail have the news that Oliver Letwin claimed £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under his tennis court. His response that:

I was served a statutory notice by the water company to repair the leaking pipe, which runs underneath the tennis court and garden. No improvements were made to the tennis court or garden.”

seems to have been pretty much ignored – the paper’s still run the story and painted him as an expenses cheat in the process.

Another overblown example is the Prime Minister – yes his cleaner seems to be flipping expensive, but suggesting he was siphoning off public money to line his brother’s pockets is pretty close to an outright lie, and yet it’s the impression most people will now have.

I’m not too worried about individual MPs being slandered though – their electorate will see through the media bluster at the next election.

But I think the general ‘they’re all at it’ mood of the press is going to be really damaging. With a change of government more than likely, you’d expect turnout at the next election to be higher than 2001 and 2005.

But if the public think politicians are universally a breed of tight-fisted, public money-stealing good-for-nothings then it wouldn’t surprise me if turnout actually dropped. What, after all, is the point of voting for anyone if every politician is bent?

Gordon Brown’s claim that the system is at fault is nearly half-right, but it takes a certain kind of person to exploit that system.

However, the media’s completely over-the-top wall-to-wall coverage of the 650+ liars, cheats and bastards will do nothing for the public’s faith in democracy. And if that breaks down, we really are screwed.

Christopher Doidge : 11 May 2009 12:54 |  Tags: Media Mps Expenses Newspapers Politics |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A weird Kind of company, a weird Kind of idea

I’ve already blogged about how silly I find the Amazon Kindle. The fact they’ve brought out a second version today (because the normal one’s too small for newspapers and textbooks) seems to perfectly sum up why paper is best.

But this new release has also got me thinking about Amazon. They’re not really a hardware company. Yes, there’s a lot of hardware behind their website and in their enormous distribution centres. But they don’t really understand how to make and market hardware yet.

The clearest sign of this is the fact that neither the Kindle, Kindle2 or the new Kindle DX are available in the UK, or anywhere outside North America for that matter.

And that’s not just because they haven’t got round to it yet – all three Kindles use EVDO, a wireless modem that’s completely incompatible with phone networks outside the United States. That, to me, is a crazy decision, and makes me think Amazon don’t really know what they’re doing when it comes to selling hardware.

Christopher Doidge : 06 May 2009 17:40 |  Tags: Amazon Kindle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

2666 reasons to read 2666

Not really, that would take forever. Instead, here’s just five reasons to read Roberto Bolano’s book, 2666.

1. It’s like The Wire. Endlessly complex, multiple sides to every story, characters that are rarely good or bad but usually a bit of both. It’s also in five parts, one of which is about the death of journalism.
2. It’s not like The Wire. It’s tougher. If you thought the crime rate in Baltimore was bad, wait until you read Part Four of this book. It also makes less sense than The Wire, but if you’re prepared to read a 900-page book, that’s probably not going to bother you much.
3. It’s unfinished. Roberto Bolano died before he completed the book, so any fault you might find in the book isn’t really his fault.
4. You’ll struggle to find a critical review.
5. In fifty years time, people might well ask you if you’ve read this book yet. You might as well get it out of the way while you’re young.

Christopher Doidge : 30 Apr 2009 16:10 |  Tags: 2666 Books Fiction Literature Roberto Bolano |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Bye Trees!

Media companies love giving you bundles. Bundles of telly, phone calls, broadband etc.

But they’re not very good at realising you’ve got a bundle.

Here’s two envelopes of ‘stuff’ I got from BT this morning…

One envelope contained a bill for my phone calls (4 pages). The other contained a bill for my TV package I get from them (3 pages).

And both contained the same junk mail. Much of it’s promoting products which I already have.

Couldn’t BT save themselves quite a lot of money by just sending me one bill, in one envelope, containing (if they must) one lot of junk?

=====

Footnote: BT is one of the contractors working on the NHS’s highly successful new IT system.

Footnote 2: BT’s slogan is, no word of a lie, “Bringing it all together”.

Christopher Doidge : 28 Apr 2009 09:59 |  Tags: British Telecom Bt Environment Junk Mail Trees |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

From dunce to developer

Bill Thompson is something of a Great Uncle of the world wide web. He’s not the daddy – that’s Tim Berners-Lee. He’s more of a godfather, who Berners-Lee might trust if he had a nasty accident with some html.

In his latest posting on the BBC News | Technology site, he points out one of the many ways in which IT education in Britain is rubbish and how more of us are going to need to at least know about programming and development.

I’ve been writing websites since about 1999. My first was a sort of primitive blog, without comments. I reviewed music, films and games. It had about one reader. Me.

Then in 2001 I created a community website for my home town called Tetbury Online. Miraculously the internet archive has preserved my earliest efforts from 2002 and 2003. The site’s changed cosmetically since, but not a lot. It’s still just a static load of html with some code from Google thrown in to make it seem a little more dynamic.

I was already thinking about it before Bill Thompson’s column came out, but he might have tipped me over the edge: I’m scrapping the whole site and rebuilding it in something a little more Web 2.0.

I’ve chosen Drupal as a content management system as it seems to be well supported, relatively simple and infinitely flexible. Oh, and free. That unfortunately means heaving the whole website to a new hosting company and shared server so that I can install the cms. My old hosting provider didn’t allow databases, which I’ve recently discovered is what makes the internet go round.

Drupal’s based largely on php – a programming language with which I am as familiar with as veganism or Hungarian. But from what I can tell, that shouldn’t matter. Drupal, and other CMS’s, like Joomla are based on a system of menus, buttons, drop-down boxes and remarkably little code. All the hard work goes on under the surface.

The biggest advantage of using a content management system over just html is that for the first time, I’ll be able to let other people fiddle with the site. I’m hoping that local groups will add events, businesses will update their directory listings and employers will post their vacancies. In short, while re-writing the whole site will be a chore, once it’s done I can share the load of updating the site with others.

The new site will also be about six billion percent more dynamic. I can enable comments on any page at the press of a button. No coding. Just a click. I can have every article appear on an RSS feed without having to understand how. And I can create event calendars, audio slideshows, aggregated feeds, and Google Maps in 30 seconds.

It’s an awesome bit of kit – it’s just a shame the barrier to entry (having your own shared server space = £30+ per year) is high enough to put people off having a try.

Hopefully by the summer when the site should go live, I’ll be able to call myself a developer, of sorts. All without learning any code. Now that they should be teaching in schools.

Christopher Doidge : 23 Apr 2009 13:51 |  Tags: Content Management System Drupal Hosting HTML Internet PHP Server Tetbury Online |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sky – one of the biggest cons going?

Following the gradual death of my CRT widescreen about 6 months ago (after just over 5 year’s life – not impressed!), we’ve been progressively updating the main living room home cinema. Despite my reservations, I allowed myself to get nagged into getting Sky+ because “It’s got 24 on it” (which I’ve never seen and couldn’t care less about). And since we’ve now got a HD television, for the extra £9.75 a month it seemed a logical thing to get the high definition package as well.

Big mistake.

I always objected to getting Sky before on four main grounds – despite the plethora of channels, there’s pretty much nothing worth watching; the boxes don’t allow you to transfer files to your PC to back up content to DVD etc when you run low on hard drive space; you’re tied into their hardware which is not exactly the last word in performance or reliability, and most of what you end up watching you get with the standard television licence anyway. Having now had the box for a couple of months, I can confirm all of the above to be the case.

On the adverts for Sky, we’re constantly reminded of “How easy it is to record a series” “Even my Grandad can do it” etc etc. And yes, I can confirm that the setup is indeed pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it; it has some neat features (although I find the EPG quite clunky to navigate because of the sheer number of channels that I don’t want to watch). However, it’s little use being able to set up a series record easily if the record fails without any diagnosable reason about 50% of the time. Looking around the forums, I’m not alone. I thought that most of the problems with the early boxes had been resolved, but I’m unfortunately mistaken and hardware issues are still widespread. Compared to my Humax Freeview PVR, the Samsung HD box I have is absolutely hopeless. It regularly claims to have no signal for hours or even days at a time, has locked up several times lock up in a blue screen and require resetting, and above all the missing recordings fault outlined above really defeats the point of a PVR in the first place. The earlier Thompson boxes are supposedly even worse; I think the Pace ones are a little better but it seems to be a little bit of luck which one you end up with, and Sky support seems none too helpful on the matter. I’m particularly irritated that as an informed customer I can’t request which box I wanted; and requesting a swap seems like a fairly major battle.

So assuming that I’ve missed the recording, I suppose I could always use the catch-up facility to miss those episodes of 24 which I’m shelling out nearly £30 a month for. Afraid not; despite having a decent speed broadband that doesn’t struggle with iPlayer, the Sky streaming software plays back with unwatchable lags and breaks while it regains some semblance of a buffer. I also can’t get the “save to disk” functionality to work, despite having tried it on two separate computers (which in itself is a mission because Sky will tie it to one PC only at a time so you have to call them up to swap it over) and un-installing suspected conflicting software. Useless.

And even when you do actually get a picture, the effect isn’t as impressive as you might think (assuming that you can find something worth watching on a Sky-only channel that justifies the subscription in the first place). Sure, the picture quality is pretty good (particularly once you ditch the cheap HDMI cable which gave me a lot of interference through my receiver; guess I can’t really blame them for this so much because everyone builds to a cost), but the sound is really sub-standard and for me goes quite a way to spoiling the whole experience. I think at best it’s on a par with my humble 3 year old Humax Freeview PVR through a couple of inexpensive RCA connections.

Sadly, Sky tie you into a minimum 12 month contract when you sign up, so it’s an expensive lesson in trusting your instincts and standing your ground when you have reservations about a technological product. Hopefully if you’re reading this, you might not make the same mistakes that I did. Save the cash towards a holiday / another gadget / give to the needy / burn £50 notes for fun. Whatever you choose to do with your hard-earned, just steer clear of Sky.

Christopher Sigournay : 30 Mar 2009 23:09 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What next for Spotify?

I, and I suspect everyone I’ve recommended it to, love Spotify.

It’s ludicrously simple, the adverts are reasonably unobtrusive, and it’s free.

But I can still hear the creaking of the floodgates. Spotify’s a step forward for making everything ‘free’ to the consumer, but I think there’s much more to come.

First up, a simple one: Spoken word. Spotify would be 100% better if it had comedy, drama and classic radio documentaries available. I suspect much of this material hasn’t been released on CD before because it wouldn’t be economic. Now it is. The long tail’s wagging and I hope BBC Worldwide et al will jump on board it soon.

Second, a new medium altogether: Games. I’ve had a look, and unless I’m mistaken, there’s nowhere to rent PC games online. Even sites like Swapgame and Lovefilm will only let you rent console games. And then they choose to prop up Royal Mail rather than use something more modern like downloads. The idea of spending £35+ on a new game has always baffled me. My attention span isn’t long enough to justify that sort of outlay. And rather than a fee-paying model, why not rent the games out for free in return for some advertising?

Thirdly, a step onto other people’s turf: TV. Project Kangaroo’s skipped off into oblivion, and there’s still a big gap in the market for non-PSB online TV. Some services are on the cusp of getting it right – we have BT Vision and it’s great, if a little expensive. Surely the ad-funded model is the way forward?

The best thing about these ways forward, in my opinion, is that they could bring in much more money than just streaming music. There’s a lot of scepticism that an advert every 20mins will be enough to pay the conservative record companies what they want. Each of these three ideas depend on the support of industries who are likely to be much more open to ‘free’ than the music industry has been.

If I was Spotify, I’d Diversify.

=====

P.S. This article hints at Spotify trying to get on mobile devices. If I were working for Google, I’d be pushing Android to get exclusivity on it – it’d make the Apple. fall from its tree and splatter all over Cupertino.

Christopher Doidge : 12 Mar 2009 17:38 |  Tags: Computing Games Internet Mp3 Music PC Software Spotify |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Beating the recession with a bit of gardening

Perhaps the greatest rip-offs in our supermarkets come from salad. At the moment (admittedly out of season), 100g of rocket salad will cost you anything from £1.20 upwards, and that’s on special offer. Not only is 100g almost always too much for what you need, it’ll normally go off within 48 hours.

Spinach is another rip-off. £1.24 or so for a bag of the stuff.

Well, I reckon you can grow the stuff, nearly all year round, for perhaps just 10% of the price you’d pay in the supermarkets.

First of all, you don’t need a garden to grow your own salad. In fact, all you need is a windowsill, and some seeds. They’re normally about £1.50 for a pack that will last you at least a year, assuming normal usage. But Lidl and Aldi are getting into the budget gardening business at the moment. A pack of seeds there cost between 29p and 49p, and they don’t seem very inferior to me.

Next, you need some eggboxes or used toilet rolls (the cardboard bit, naturally). Cost = nothing.

You will need some kind of compost. I’ve tried stealing topsoil from public places before, and it just doesn’t work. A bag of the stuff can be had for about £1.99.

Plant the seeds in the compost, itself shoved in the eggboxes or toilet rolls. Then stick them on a windowsill which gets some sun.

You’re unlikely to get huge great clumps of herbs and salads, but the smaller leaves you’ll get will be full of flavour. Rocket, spinach, chinese cabbage (like lettuce), parsley and of course that childhood classic, cress, all seem to be winners, and I’ve been harvesting them since early February.

The best thing about all of these herbs and salads is the use-by date. There isn’t one. Kept cool enough, they won’t really go off until you pull them out of the soil.

The key to growing your own salad is what the seed packets call ‘successional sowing’. Basically, a few weeks after planting your first batch, plant some more. By the time you’ve eaten your first bits you’ll then have some more ready for you.

So, salad all year round. Very little cost. And an end to 48 hour use-by dates.

And you don’t even need a garden.

Christopher Doidge : 09 Mar 2009 14:28 |  Tags: Credit Crunch Environment Gardening Recession Salad Vegetables |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Less is more?

Amazon don’t seem to have noticed the campaign for less packaging in consumer products. This is the Kindle2 – their electronic reader thing that I’ve already said I don’t see the point of.

It comes with a monumental amount of packaging, none of which seems to have a practical use, and little of which is likely to be recyclable.

I know this product’s probably saving a few trees that would otherwise have been turned into books, but this is just silly.

[More pictures of the packaging from Engadget]

Christopher Doidge : 25 Feb 2009 14:07 |  Tags: Amazon Kindle Environment Packaging |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Jack Bauer – A shadow of his former kick–ass self

Oh Jack Bauer, how much I loved you in the old days when you were blonde and had a daughter that kissed you goodnight and a wife who wasn’t, you know, dead.

I started watching Season 1 of ‘24’ again yesterday. The wave of nostalgia emanating from the TV screen was awe-inspiring. Remember the days of Standard Definition? Of dodgy sound editing? Of bad haircuts?

Remember when 24 was actually good?

The experience was depressing. Because it made me remember just how face-crunchingly abysmal 24 has become. We’re now on Season 7, and the show should be on a life-support machine.

Every plot twist is recycled from an earlier season. Even characters Just. Won’t. DIE. and keep making miraculous returns, presumably to cut down on the need for casting directors.

But worst of all, the show just doesn’t know where it’s going, what it’s doing or what it’s about.

Villains come and go faster than Jack can say ‘sonofabitch’. Their dastardly plan changes from one minute to the next. Civilians die in their hundreds and the fictional CNN seems to forget about it ten minutes later. And Jack has to defeat his arch enemy Every Fricking Hour just to keep the audience happy.

Well I’m not an American simpleton with a thirst for blood and a desire for Jack to win every round.

There is literally a scene in the first episode of that first season when a character tells Jack exactly what will happen for the whole season. Terrorists will try and kill a Presidential Candidate. That’s it.

Now, the writers would be hard pressed to sustain an idea that simple for ten minutes, let alone 24 hours.

In Season 1, Jack had a team. Yes, two of them were moles, but he had relationships with people. Now he is, to quote Judi Dench’s M, a “blunt instrument”.

24 was revolutionary, and not just because of the way it was told in real-time. It led to hundreds of drama serials which rejected the traditional one-episode, one-story format of CSI, ER and Law & Order. Lost and Prison Break were just two of the more successful attempts to tell one story across six months of television.

And it was also the show that gave us hacksaw decapitations.

24’s not just a lurking shadow of its former self.

It’s as blunt as a spoon.

Christopher Doidge : 24 Feb 2009 09:00 |  Tags: 24 Abc Fox Lost Media Television United States |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A prediction

I’m kicking myself a little for not blogging my predictions for last night’s Oscars. Or the Baftas before that.

Because I got it dead right. Not only did I know Slumdog would win best film – I blogged it so on January 16th – but last night I also decided (in my head) the film would win eight awards.

Which it did.

So here’s another prediction, one that I’m not so keen to make.

On January 31st I suggested to a friend that Man United had peaked too early in the season and would suffer a big dip in form before the prizes are given out in the early summer. I was heartily laughed at. Well, I think the dip starts tomorrow against Inter Milan.

I hope I’m only good at predicting film award ceremonies.

Christopher Doidge : 23 Feb 2009 18:08 |  Tags: Football Oscars Prediction |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cracking the Tories' "Broken Society" Code

The Conservatives have been holding their cards close to their chest on social policy for a while.

While David Cameron has derided Britain’s “broken society” for months, he’s not offered much of an idea as to how he’d stick it back together again.

But today his Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling (right), might have identified the remedy, and it’s meant finally admitting what’s been on their minds all along:

Britain’s society is failing because Britain’s parents are failing to properly bring up their children.

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what “Broken Britain” – (c) The Tories, The Sun & The Daily Mail – means.

The answer? The government should do bad parents’ job for them.

Grayling’s announcement today that he might introduce legal ‘groundings’ for children who misbehave is the clearest indication yet of the direction of travel for the Conservatives’ social policy.

Where Labour took the long view of trying to fix society by putting more money into childcare and schools, the Conservatives will administer some short, sharp shocks.

So now the window is open, how much further are Cameron and Grayling willing to go with this idea? How much further will they intrude into the once-sacred family life in order to ‘fix’ Broken Britain?

Christopher Doidge : 23 Feb 2009 16:58 |  Tags: Chris Grayling Conservative Party Politics Society Tories |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How 12500 new British jobs is actually just 500.

Much of the media seemed to fall for the Department for Transport’s PR this morning.

‘Super express’ trains contract gives boost to British jobs said the Guardian.

The Daily Mail said: Government buys British for intercity train fleet

The Telegraph seemed to fall hook, line and sinker: Next generation of Intercity trains to be built in Britain they said.

The only trouble is, none of those headlines appear to be entirely accurate.

They all stemmed from the DfT’s confident announcement that ‘This will create or safeguard some 12,500 manufacturing jobs in these regions [of the UK].’

But as the day’s gone on, that number’s begun to look like a big ball of spin.

The 12,500 appears to include maintenance workers, who could hardly have found their jobs offshored! “Safeguarding”, here, seems like an exaggeration.

Hitachi, part of the winning consortium, issued a UK press release that goes along with the DfT’s version of events. But they also issued a global press release, which has a different version.

Rather than 12,500 manufacturing jobs, as stated by the DfT, Hitachi promise their shareholders the deal will “secure up to 12,500 direct and indirect jobs in the local supply and services industry and local supporting communities.” It doesn’t say create, and doesn’t say manufacturing. “Local supporting communities” could mean Joyce who works in the nearby corner shop.

What’s more, it appears the trains will be designed and, largely, constructed in Japan. Only the final assembly and some basic manufacturing will be done in Britain.

Transport Briefing says just 500 manufacturing jobs will be created here in Britain. I’ll repeat that again: Five Hundred.

It appears that of the Department for Transport’s headline figure, just 2.5% are new jobs.

Why does all of this matter? Well, there was another bid for the £7.5bn tender from Bombardier, who are based in Derby and would have designed and constructed the trains in Britain.

I’m not a protectionist, but the spin coming out of the DfT today has been particularly effective, and particularly deceitful. Slowly the media’s realising they’ve been had.

Edit: The BBC just beat me to it on the spin story.

Christopher Doidge : 12 Feb 2009 18:13 |  Tags: Department For Transport Government Lord Adonis Politics Spin Trains Transport |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

And right on cue…

...Twitter breaks down.

Let’s hope some of that $20m investment they’ve just had is used to buy some hardware.

Christopher Doidge : 11 Feb 2009 10:22 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Full disclosure could strangle the BBC

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/11/bbc-lords

The House of Lords will today decide whether to make the BBC publish an internal report into its own coverage of Israel and Palestine.

It was written in 2004 and has since become subject to one of the most controversial Freedom of Information requests ever submitted.

Many suspect that the so-called Balen Report contains damning evidence of pro-Palestinian reporting within the Beeb. It would probably be more of a shock if the report found otherwise.

But while I’m a firm supporter of the Freedom of Information Act, which is a brilliant tool for journalists (including, ironically, those at the BBC), releasing the Balen Report would be a bad idea.

The report’s raison d’etre was to provide an honest assessment of how the BBC covers the Middle East. It was always designed to only be available internally. Had it been designed for an external audience, you can bet the author would have been much more careful, and perhaps less frank about the BBC’s shortcomings.

If every internal decision the BBC makes is going to be scrutinised in detail by the many people who want to see it scrapped, the Corporation will become timid and far less likely to commission a report of this importance.

The Balen Report is all about honesty. But honesty and transparency are not the same thing. Revealing this report – or others – to the public would make the Corporation afraid of taking risks, and later, of properly assessing whether those risks paid off.

EDIT: The Lords have ruled the legal fight can continue. That’s some more taxpayers’ £££ down the drain then! It now goes back to the High Court.

Christopher Doidge : 11 Feb 2009 10:13 |  Tags: Balen Report BBC Foi Freedom Of Information Israel Law Lords Palestine |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What's wrong with a book?

I don’t get the Amazon Kindle.

Someone basically saw the iPod and thought “Yeah, we’ll do that but with books”.

And that was probably as much thought as went into it.

The device – and it’s newly announced successor the Kindle2 – is jaw-droppingly expensive. $359, or £240. For something that replicates, albeit badly, the idea of a book.

Don’t forget that unless you’re going to commit to a life of nothing-but-Dickens, you’ll still have to pay another £5 for every book you want to read on it. And that’s before we get to the device’s USP, newspapers and blogs. They also cost money to read (up to £7 a month), even though they’re available online completely free.

Some of the technology is very clever – the so-called ‘e-ink’ is impressive and it does look more like reading a book than your typical computer screen. And yes, you can store billions of words all on one little chip.

But then some of it is awful. It’s got a wholly unnecessary keyboard. It has an operating system that takes up more than 600Mb (for a book!). And it tries really hard to make you hate it by banning RSS feeds.

The Kindle completely kills the idea of what a book is all about. Books can be shared, given pride of place on a bookshelf, passed down to future generations, and loved.

The iPod made music portable. The Kindle is just making books look like even better value.

Christopher Doidge : 09 Feb 2009 16:33 |  Tags: Amazon Books Kindle Technology |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

University refuses to answer questions on financial health

Questions surround the University of Warwick’s financial state after it refused to give details of its budget forecasts and plans for this year and the near future.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request from RaW, the University decided “to withhold information relating to forecasts and budgets, including the five year financial plan”.

Citing Section 43 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Deputy Registrar informed RaW the request had been “carefully considered, but that “Information is exempt if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)”.

Nevertheless, Peter Dunn, the University’s spokesman, has said that “despite the global economic downturn the University remains confident that that it has a sufficiently diverse range of funding streams to meet the challenges posed by such a global downturn.”

Mr Dunn refused to use the term “well placed” on grounds of ambiguity.

The Students’ Union, which is facing a deficit this year of nearly £0.75 million has also expressed confidence in the University, from which it receives a significant annual grant.

Andy Glyde, the Union’s Governance and Finance Officer said: “We have no concerns over our annual allocation from the University as a result of the recession. We are confident that the University will be able to ride this wave and continue to support the work of the SU.”

“They have been sensible with their money and in the past have shown the capability to deal with pressures externally on funding. In the 80s when HE [Higher Education] funding was cut by the Thatcher government, Warwick was at the forefront to developing alternative sources of income in order to cope with the declining funding.”

Mr Glyde who was limited in what he could say, added that it would be “inappropriate” to comment on the University’s financial health.

He also believed that the University had a “reasonable reason to refuse the information” requested by RaW.

“You have to remember that the University runs a fairly substantial commercial operation in order to help fund the activities of the institution. They are not a member organisation like the Union and so are not accountable to students on their finances…. Release of financial information could damage them against competitors.”

Given the deteriorating economic outlook, the University may have greater impetus to protect sensitive financial information.

Last year’s statement of accounts of the University indicated that the University’s surplus had fallen to £2.9 million, a fall from a peak of £11.9 million in 2005/06.

For the year ending July 2008, it blamed the fall in the surplus on “strategic investment” and “increases in staff costs following the most recent national pay agreements”.

In the Treasurer’s report it was stated: “We expect the current year to be a demanding financial environment. We have significant inflationary pressures … The investigation of new and growing sources of income, alongside cost saving and efficiency initiatives, is a priority to help compensate for inflationary cost pressures.”

In the short term the University remains ”...confident that the financial outcome for the current year will be acceptable in the circumstances.”

As for student’s job prospects, the University indicated that Warwick Careers service would be “very receptive” to any new internship opportunities which become available from the new “government scheme or elsewhere”.

However, it was less on clear on whether the institution would be doing anything particularly different this year to help graduating students.

Instead, spokesman Mr Dunn says that students will be able to welcome recent media coverage “suggesting that while city firms are reducing the number of Universities they look to recruit from…they are still looking at Warwick as one of their sources of recruits”.

Sam Shirley

Samuel Shirley : 15 Jan 2009 23:55 |  Tags: Union |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"The Manifesto is written", Conservative Party Chairman tells Warwick students

Caroline Spelman MP speaking to Warwick Conservatives says party is “on war footing at all times” and that universities should offer more vocational schemes to help students

The Chairman of the Conservative Party, Caroline Spelman MP, has told students at a Warwick Conservatives event that she doubts that there will be a General Election this year.

However, if the “polls tighten” and government does go to the country, she expects that Chancellor Alistair Darling will use March budget to cut income tax and then hold the election on June 4th, coinciding with local and European elections.

Ms Spelman, who has been dogged by questions regarding expenses eleven years ago, also sought to quash rumours regarding cabinet reshuffle speculation.

At the talk which took place on in the Ramphal building on Thursday evening, she claimed that rumours indicating that she would swap places with Jeremy Hunt as Shadow Culture Secretary as “a little bit of mischief… as many of you know [Newsnight journalist] Michael Crick and I are at loggerheads”.

She said that it was the right of the party leader to pick who was in cabinet, but that nothing can happen until her position was resolved.

The Conservative Chairman argued that the “the [next general] election will undoubtedly be fought on the economy”, but that the NHS, for which the Conservatives has been “quite hard territory”, is an issue which the party is keen to be heard on.

“On the economy there is now a huge difference between the parties”, she said.

Speaking on the issue of students seeking jobs after university, Ms Spelman admitted that when she graduated during the recession of 1980 that she did not have a job, despite her university claiming that “everybody gets a job”.

She said: “We want to encourage the Higher Education sector to offer more vocational schemes to enhance your chances of getting a job”.

“Jobs for you are going to depend on organisations, public and private, having the courage to recruit”.

Ms Spelman, who is MP for the nearby constituency of Meriden, encouraged students to join the Conservatives to avoid the Government’s “burden of debt” that will encumber their generation.

Seeking support, she said: “Students tend to be anti-establishment… and you regard Labour as the establishment”.

Sam Shirley

Samuel Shirley : 15 Jan 2009 23:28 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem