Are we learning from Obama’s campaign?
There is a real difficulty in translating the Obama campaign to the UK. Inevitably, we end up focusing on the easy bits – the technology for example. The tougher bits such as how you pluck a energised movement out of the ether tend to be ignored. We focus on the more recent influences on Obama ‘08 – moveon.org and the Howard Dean campaign – and forget that it is actually rooted in very old-fashioned politics.
The Fabian Society’s Change We Need launched with self-conscious irony in Millbank Tower last night. Though excellent in many respects, it falls into this trap to a degree.
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Tech politics: libertarians and the Library
A year ago, I wrote a piece here about the great art of the Gothic and Renaissance periods, and how we owe its existence to the Dead Hand of the (Tuscan) State. But where should we look for actions of slightly more modern government working to enrich our lives? Certainly not in the unending flow of nutty, illiberal laws; nor in the insidious creep of compliance culture (subject of a memorable Stephen Fry podcast). So, here’s an idea: look to the British Library.
More specifically, their Turning the Pages project, 10 years in the developing, that put our national library in the very first rank of learning innovation worldwide. (See the video.) The project’s achievement has been to digitize 15 (so far) of the Library’s most valuable manuscripts, and deliver them inside an interactive online environment that re-creates the experience of handling them in the raw.
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Ben Goldacre legally threatened by LBC
Writer of the popular Guardian ‘Bad Science’ column, Ben Goldacre, has been threatened with legal action by LBC radio. As Ben explains, the controversy arose when he took part in a debate on LBC radio around the MMR vaccine scare – a hoax that the media keep running with. He says the whole discussion was so bad, and the presenter Jeni Barnett’s behaviour on air so atrocious, that he posted the radio segment on his blog.
That invited legal threats by LBC radio, which in itself is outrageous. How is a radio segment (now on WikiLeaks) broadcast on air property of LBC? Furthermore, doesn’t it fall under the ‘fair usage’ criteria (or is that only applicable in the US?).
Ben says: “If you felt that this was an irresponsible piece of broadcasting, and an inappropriate use of the public bandwidth – which is licensed to companies such as Global Audio as a privilege by the nation – you may wish to complain about Jeni Barnett’s MMR show of 7th January 2009 to OFCOM.”
A complaint against Jeni Barnett is definitely in order, but what about LBC’s appalling behaviour in not allowing their output to be reproduced elsewhere?
Update: A Sunday Times investigation has now found Wakefield altered the MMR data. What will Melanie Phillips say now?
Digital Britain isn’t ambitious enough
The government’s report into “Digital Britain” – an 81 page pdf – was launched last week.
As an interim report, it would be unreasonable to expect it to have come to conclusions across the board – but time after time, rather than offering up suggestions or ranges of options for further consideration before decision, the report basically says, “we’ve thought about it, and decide someone needs to think about it some more”.
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Why Digital Britain could be bad for you
Digital Britain is one of those government initiatives that might provoke a degree of cynicism, since it comes at a point when many people are not expecting the authors to hold power for much longer.
Both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have criticised it as being unambitious in its headline conclusions about broadband roll out.
But that’s not the only thing about this report that should be worrying you.
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Why is the BBC flexing media muscle in the travel market?
Last November I wrote a piece outlining the worrying implications of the BBC’s acquisition of Lonely Planet for the Corporation’s non-commercial UK neutrality. I’m not the only travel journalist with these sorts of doubts. The BBC Royal Charter and Agreement, remember, is very clear on how the Beeb can and cannot interact with the UK media market:
The Agreement requires all commercial activities undertaken by the BBC to comply with four criteria. …
4. comply with BBC fair trading guidelines and in particular avoid distorting the market.
Of course, that begs a whole series of questions, but this much is plain: BBC Worldwide activities that distort a domestic market in which the corporation is a player are forbidden. This, essentially, was the basis for the decision to disallow BBC investment in ultra-local video last year. It’s the reason that the BBC’s acquisition (through BBC Worldwide) of Lonely Planet should be reversed at the first opportunity. continue reading… »
A broadband tax for the UK?
Further to a recent post (on my blog) suggesting that the UK isn’t going to institute a “3 strikes” law, there is speculation that the government might instead introduce a broadband tax, where ISPs’ customers will pay and the money going to the music industry to compensate for the loses they’ve suffered through P2P filesharing. According to The Times:
Lord Carter [...] may suggest additional charges on customers’ broadband bills to compensate the music industry.
There are a number of issues with any such proposal:
A Case for Internet Regulation
If, like me, you have a knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone suggests regulating the Internet, this A List Apart article on captioning/subtitling of online videos is a challenging read. Joe Clark argues that the voluntary approach to developing a good, standardized captioning system has failed, and that only governments can enforce some sort of progress:
In short, disabled people’s right to be free of discrimination trumps the belief, however fallacious, that the internet cannot or should not be regulated.
Earlier this year, the Liberal Conspiracy take on Andy Burnham’s recommendations on Internet regulation, was that it was merely a sop to the powerful music lobby and their outdated business models. Contrast this with the case of subtitling, where it is the lack of regulation which has allowed the studios and broadcasters to ignore their obligations to provide accessible content, in favour of greater profit margins.
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CIC paper: Access to information
Liberal Conspiracy is publishing a series of discussions about the government’s Community Empowerment White Paper. This is a summary of the third chapter.
Chapter 3: Access to information
How can I find out information in a way I understand and can use?
Information is power say the paper, and a lack of information leads to powerlessness. Jargon can ‘alienate, confuse and frustrate citizens’ and be exclusionary. Barely half of local authority residents feel that their council keeps them very or fairly well informed about the services and benefits it provides.
The Internet is a powerful information delivery system but those without online access should not be forgotten. Information across the range of issues is being made available via the likes of NHS Choices. The government wants to support the use of new technologies.
A ‘Digital Mentor’ scheme in deprived areas will support groups to develop websites and podcasts, to use digital photography and online publishing tools. Community radio can have a unique role in working within communities.
Comments
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Not defending the BBC, not this time anyway
It’s a commonplace on this site that one should “defend” the BBC from unceasing, unsubtle and rather tiresome attacks from trenchant right-wingers. Very little written about the organization by either the Daily Mail, or any of its apers on the Web, has any merit. That’s true. The Beeb is worth defending: there’s something enriching about our ad-free broadcaster. Something that serves the public, that stands above the commercial white noise of modern television. Of course, the organization isn’t entirely non-commercial: BBC Worldwide makes decent profits that, at least nominally, feed back into UK public service broadcasting. So far, so uncontroversial. However, BBC Worldwide’s 2007 acquisition of travel guidebook publisher Lonely Planet did raise objections, continue reading… »
Obama’s ground operations explained
I went to the U.S. a month ago because I wanted to see how the Obama campaign worked and what we could learn from it to apply here in British politics. It’s worth noting that Obama massively built on what was pioneered during Howard Dean’s campaign four years ago (See Joe Trippi’s book: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised).
More importantly, it was a model popularised and pushed by left-wing American blogs, notably Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo. It has always been the left-wing blogs that pushed hard to raise money online and popularise the practice among Democrats (hardly any popular right-wing blogs in the US raise funds for political candidates), focus hard on specific campaigns and encouraged readers to get organised and involved, and they have been the most vocal in pushing the idea that Democrats have to be more aggressive in challenging their image and avoiding traps Republicans lay down for them on various issues.
My point here is: there’s no reason why we can’t spearhead something in the UK, with the obvious adjustments necessary for British politics.
The Obama campaign can be divided into two main areas:
1 – message/image (David Axelrod) and;
2 – ground operations (David Plouffe and Jon Carson).
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Is Feminism Political?
This might not be as daft a question as it at first may seem. It arises from a reply I got to an email I sent to Wikio, earlier, regarding my categorisation in their blog rankings, and the categorisation of others.
Politics is defined quite well on Wikipedia, for my money. They say that:
[p]olitics is the process observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions by which groups make decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes.
I therefore consider my Lib Demmery-focussed blog to be pretty political, but not exclusively so, and I wasn’t massively offended to be put in the category “other”, since I do talk about Doctor Who and Top Gear sometimes. However, when Steph Ashley told me that Dib Lemming is also classed as “other” I had a closer look at some of the categorisations. And, what do you know, pretty much all the blogs I would call political blogs that are written by girls are also in “other”. To be fair to Wikio, there are also lots of blogs which are written by boys which are in “other” which read like politics blogs to me – Amused Cynicism, for one. And they do cover a lot of blogs, and can’t be expected to examine the minutiae of each one… And then I noticed The F-Word’s categorisation.
Now, some of you might be aware of my annoyance when people assert things that aren’t true, like They’re trying to ban Christmas!!
and The Daily Mail is a newspaper
and girls don’t blog, especially not about politics
… Ah yes. Girls don’t blog, do they? Especially not about politics! Politics is boys‘ stuff! Well, of course, depending on how you define politics, this is exactly so. For instance, if you define “politics” as only including electoral politics, then that is going to be a mostly male space. Which seems an unnecessarily narrow definition to me, but what do I know? I’m a girl.
And, of course, if you explicitly exclude feminist blogs from your definition of political blogs, as the gentleman (and he has been very gentlemanly, BTW, even though I have ranted at him rather a lot) who emailed me from Wikio tonight does, even though he believes (but isn’t sure) that the writer of The F-Word has asked him to include it under politics, then that is going to take vast swathes of women outside the remit of politics…
Now, obviously: your site, your rules. This is the way of the internet. But the whole purpose of feminism is to effect political change so that women are treated as equal to men. If that is not political, then (with the greatest of respect to the very gentlemanly gentleman from Wikio, and apologies for my unladylike language) what the blue buggery fuck is?
Why Labour Voters Ought to Think Again
Yeah, I figured that headline would get the attention of some of you. Cory Doctorow has posted what it’s like to be on the sharp end of Labour’s current policies. Because I know that some of you won’t be arsed to click the link, I’m going to copy and paste.
Earlier this year, I married my British fiancée and switched my visa status from “Highly Skilled Migrant” to “Spouse.” This wasn’t optional: Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had unilaterally (and on 24 hours’ notice) changed the rules for Highly Skilled Migrants to require a university degree, sending hundreds of long-term, productive residents of the UK away (my immigration lawyers had a client who employed over 100 Britons, had fathered two British children, and was nonetheless forced to leave the country, leaving the 100 jobless). Smith took this decision over howls of protests from the House of Lords and Parliament, who repeatedly sued her to change the rule back, winning victory after victory, but Smith kept on appealing (at tax-payer expense) until the High Court finally ordered her to relent (too late for me, alas). continue reading… »
Second Life event at Labour Conference
I’ve just had word that one of the SMF’s conference fringe events will be streamed into Second Life on Monday morning. I know that politicians in the US have held events in Second Life, but we think this will be a first in the UK.
The event is titled Public Sector 2.0: How can emerging information technologies improve public service delivery? and will feature contributions from Tom Watson MP and Jerry Fishenden from Microsoft. Watson is the Cabinet Office Minister responsible for E-Government, and of course one of the first MPs to inaugurate his own blog.
How tabloid journalism works (pt 934)
It’s the silly season, it’s a Sunday, and you haven’t got anything approaching a front page story. Do you: (a) put in the effort and attempt to find a new angle to the problems facing Gordon Brown? (b) continue to go on alarmingly about the moral decline in society because a rich man who enjoys being spanked has won a court case or (c) turn the most innocuous addition to a social-networking site which just happens to be a rival to the one owned by your own proprietor into a super splash?
There’s just no contest if you’re a Sun “journalist”, is there? I’m not on Facebook as I don’t have any friends, but even I know there’s a whole plethora of “poke” applications, such as giving one of your friends a virtual sexually transmitted disease, as well as literally dozens of similarly hilarious things. There isn’t however at the moment a moral panic about STDs, but there certainly is about knives.
Andy Burnham’s concern is only for the rich
There was, in last Friday’s Independent, a most remarkable piece of writing on the subject of the Internet and the role of the state. Written by Andy Burnham, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, and weighing in at 800 words or so, it does something I might otherwise have considered impossible in such a brief statement. It encapsulates just about everything that is wrong about the government’s thinking, if ‘thinking’ is not too strong a term, about the Internet and the culture of cyberspace.
Burnham’s central thesis is simply this: that cyberspace is an anarchic, value-free, quasi-Hobbesian homagé to the frontier values of the American Old West. A place in need of a new breed of lawmen and state-sponsored private sector bounty hunters. Sam Peckinpah’s Tombstone.com:
…the internet is a lawless zone, where it is the vulnerable, the poor and the weak who are most at risk from the absence of any guiding rules. Democratic consent on guiding principals upholds the common good, and prevents one group in society pursuing their own interests at the expense of others.
This is a caricature, of course.
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Burnham on Basic Principles
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham calls for regulation of the Internet to protect the “vulnerable, the poor, and the weak.” From the title of the article, “In a Lawless zone, we must protect the vulnerable” one would think he is talking about paedophiles in chat-rooms, or the 180% rise in phishing, but in fact he is talking about copyright theft.
It is also contentious that the poor are being disadvantaged by the ‘lawless’ internet – One great advantage of the medium is that it reduces the financial barriers of entry into any given business. Putting online regulation in place will surely restore those barriers. Indeed, the proposals to introduce some kind of licence fee to download music looks like a revenue generator for record companies, rather than a measure to help young and creative people who are just starting out, and giving away their music free on MySpace.
But for entirely different reasons, it was the following quote hat caught my eye:
Nothing can be accepted as inevitable. Though technology moves quickly, we can’t abandon basic principles that have stood society in good stead for centuries.
Wasn’t this the precise argument against 42 days detention!?
Fifth Estate or Democratic Tool?
When we think about blogging and the development of human interactions through the web, it is easy to assume some kind of historical determinism. The Internet is one huge sandbox, with new blogs and campaigning sites being launched all the time. Most peter out (I’ve been involved in a couple of those myself) but others persist, and grow. This trial-and-error approach suggests that we are at least inching towards a more sophisticated and empowering blogosphere, which exercises more influence over politics and therefore the direction this country is headed.
The Blog Nation event earlier this week raised some of the key issues that the Left needs to answer in order to become more effective online. As I crouched in the front row of the event, rubbing my temples and trying to think of answers, the following thought occurred to me: What if this is all there is? By which I mean, perhaps it is impossible to become much more organized. I refrained from articulating this thought at the time, but it did seem a deft, if nihilistic way of avoiding giving an answer to some of the questions posed, above. Perhaps there is no historical determinism to any of this, and we are not destined to develop anything significantly more efficient than what we have now.
Now I don’t know whether I really believe things to be so hopeless, but if its true it may not be such a bad thing. Rather than grandiose ideas of the blogosphere become some kind of Fifth Estate, perhaps we should aspire to nothing more than another tool for the people to use in checking the power of the elite (both elected representatives and others who hold positions of influence).
Of course we should ask how existing bloggers and activists can work better together, but that is just oiling the machine, rather than inventing a new one. A more important focus is to try to increase access to the new information and opinion that is appearing online. Just as increasing literacy strengthens democracy and promote equality, so computer literacy can strengthen it too. So, my suggestion for the next open source campaign – introduce one relative, friend or colleague to blogging each month. This need not mean forcing them to set up their own blog. Instead, just a gentle explanation of the power of RSS, and the suggestion that they bookmark one – just one – of the fine sites listed here.
Ever so slightly longer version cross posted at my own corner.
Casting the Net: Firefox, Vibrators, and the Police
Tomorrow is Download Day. I’ve been using the Firefox3 beta for some time now, and I’m very impressed with it. If you’re using IE and fancy giving it a shot, you may as well do it tomorrow and be part of a world record attempt. Click the button for the link:
Lynne Featherstone talks about the difficulties of relying on the NHS to provide you with independent movement.
Spirit of 1976 has suddenly discovered an urge to try Khat – why? Because the Tories want to ban it.
The Times has a fascinating article on the history of Vibrators, and how the humble Personal Massager reflects the changing attitude of society to women.
Smash Boredom has a convincing argument that Robert Mugabe is right about something.
PC Bloggs has a very affecting tale of police resources spread too thin. I can’t recommend her blog enough.
And finally, Feminist SF reviews the weekend’s episode of Doctor Who in a rather weary manner.
Twittering politically
Twitter is the thing we’re all supposed to be waffling about right now, ever since some Downing Street fixer hit on to letting everyone know the intimate manoeuvres of the PM in the US, plus the writer’s own progress through the complex world of comparative hot beverages and muffins.
It works like this. The PM’s meeja minders come up with a ‘new media’ communication wheeze which isn’t really that new at all. Then old media journos wake up in time simultaneously to pronounce it a desperate piece of wannabe PR (because the spinners are doing it) and the latest thing in cool (because, hey, we’ve finally caught up!).
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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