Vox Polis

It would seem that the person that dreamt this up missed the irony somewhat.

EDM quote:(sorry can’t find original article)

the proposal by a firm of builders, reported in the Evening Standard, to re-brand Archway Shopping Mall as Karl Marx Square in order to make it more commercially profitable; the plans are deeply offensive to the thousands of victims of Communism given shelter in this country and insulting to the millions killed in the name of the ideology it espoused.

Capitalism never fails to disappoint…but I suppose it’s not that surprising really. If people can make a fortune by plastering a picture of Che Guevara on t-shirts then why not use the name of Karl Marx.

MPs rejected changes made by the House of Lords to the ID bill again last night in a move which essentially ends this chapter of opposition to ID cards.  The Lords had attempted to prevent the cards from becoming compulsory without an additional act of parliament.  The removal of the ammendments was passed by 310 to 277.  Charles Clarke stuck to his claim that by only forcing the ID cards on people when they were issued with a passport the cards were still essentially voluntary as the passport is voluntary.  Full compulsion will almost inevitably follow at some point making this something of a moot point.

With political methods of opposition to the scheme now essentially closed the focus moves to grass roots campaigns such as NO2ID.  12000 people have signed a pledge stating that they will refuse to carry an ID card.  Sadly I fear that this will make little impact when most of the country will quietly accept the new bit of plastic that comes with their next passport.

So what does this mean?  In the short term we can expect to see the government’s IT suppliers lining their pockets with more of our money.  Mid-term look forward to a scandal about overspending (EDS - I’m looking at you here) and a dubious claim from the home office press department that ID cards prevented a terrorist incident.  For all my doom and gloom the long term effects are less clear but I’m quite happy to record for posterity my belief that ID cards will make us less free.  Doubleplus ungood.

Today’s IHT has some reasonably thorough coverage of the proposed legislation to decriminalize online music sharing/piracy. Seen as this doesn’t seem to be going away I thought I’d add a bit more to my previous comments.

In my opinion, the IHT article fails to cover two points that are important in the debate. Firstly in it’s focus on reaction from politicians and the industry it fails to mention that the new leglislation is great for consumers. No longer will you have to wonder whether that track you downloaded will play on your brand X portable player. DRM does nothing for music listeners at all, it exists solely to protect big business and anything that bring it’s death closer should be welcomed.

The second thing that seems to have been forgotten in the furore is what effect the legislation will have on music distribution at a grass roots level. The proposed method of artist compensation under the new system is to divvy up a tax amongst the major labels with the size of the slice based popularity (there’s a conspicuous absence of technical detail on how to measure popularity in a downloading free for all). The labels will then continue to pay their signed artists according to whatever agreement they signed up to. My worry is that this results in is a system where consumers expect all music online to be free and almost all the money is still feeding to the major labels. If people looking for music online expect it to be free it makes it very difficult for individual artists or very small labels to operate a donation based system of compensation that bypasses the majors. Instead of damaging the big labels (which they seem to be very worried about at the minute) this could end up giving them a government sanctioned iron grip.

Either way, interesting times are ahead.

It may not be clear what caused the death of Milosevic; it may be the case that we never know. However the case of Milosevic is a reminder of the problem of what to do with a tyrant who is removed from power. In the past it was often much simpler…the deposed King and his family were killed to prevent usurpation and plotting (see Machiavelli’s The Prince for further details).

Even Churchill advocated this path. He swore that if Hitler was captured he should be put to death because Churchill understood that any trial would inevitably become a farce.

He was certainly correct if we look at the two most recent examples; both Milosevic and Saddam Hussein’s trials are drawn out affairs, often giving the leaders opportunities to speak from their soap boxes rather than administrating justice. Certainly the “sudden death” of Milosevic has ended a problem that wasn’t going to be solved by the Hague Tribunal. Perhaps Saddam should watch his back if he doesn’t want to face the same fate.

This will show all those who are sceptical of wind power. For those of who aren’t privledged enough to be able to read The Economist there’s some interesting information about wind on this page.

This wind turbine basically turns conventional turbines on their side, increasing efficiency by up to 20%. Hopefully this will be coming to a field or house near you soon….

This is wrong!! Old Ming has only been leader for a couple of days and people are already betting how long he’s got left. But i’m not just talking about how long he’s going to remain party leader…but how long he has left to live. To place a bet you can get the odds over on Guido’s blog. I know politics has never been nice, but come on cut him some slack. I suppose where there’s money and power to be gained, people will come flogging…

French politicians are currently considering whether to legalise music and film downloading and implement a monthly fee to compensate for the lost royalties. The policy has met with opposition from the French government and (surprise, surprise) the recording industry. Some musicians have also come out against the bill. Consumer groups are in favour of the new proposal.

A downloading license has always struck me as being an ideal third way between the current state of affairs where illegal downloading is endemic and the artists get nothing and the course favoured by, for example, the RIAA of restrictive technology barriers backed by draconian laws.

Clearly there would be a number of issues which would have to be cleared up with any such scheme including:

• How much does the license cost?
• How is the money distributed?
• Who has to buy a license?

Those certainly aren’t easy questions but if they can be satisfactorily resolved I believe that a download license could be a suitable method for paying artists in the Internet era.

Via The Register.

We’re pretty keen on microgeneration here at Vox Polis so it’s pleasing to see the Tories lending it their backing. David Cameron’s arrival has bought a change in policy focus including taking a look at environmental and energy issues. While you might expect the Tories to be keen on nuclear (big construction contracts = good for the economy) when you start bandying around words like decentralization microgeneration starts to make more sense as a Conservative policy.

Microgeneration is also a good way to appear green without having to back the more unpopular choice of windfarms. The recent rejection of a major new windfarm at Whinash in Cumbria as a result local objections goes to show how difficult large scale renewable schemes can be to implement in practice, at least without serious government backing (which in my opinion the Whinash scheme didn’t have). Interestingly the government don’t seem to have factored in local issues into their nuclear equations. The idea that people will reject a few windmills but will roll over for a 1000 acre nuclear plant seems a little strange to me unless of course the government has a private preference for nuclear and intends to push through planning permissions when the time comes?

Of course whether the encouraging talk will turn into manifesto commitments to subsidise purchases of generation equipment is the real question that has to be asked of the Tories. An answer to that is unlikely before the policy review committees start to come back in a couple of years.

Thanks to DogPatch for spotting the original article.

The other day when hunger struck me after a long hard graft in the office I gave into the final biggest temptation that exists in the post super size world. I eat at Maccy D’s. But I didn’t just have a Big Mac. No I decided to gorge myself on a whole meal. Unfortunately they didn’t serve supersize anymore so I had to make do with a large one instead.
What struck me as I sat devouring this unnutritional, calorific meal, apart from the nauseous smell and rather chewy meat, was the amount of packing there is. Before I could photograph the table that had now become a (not so little) landfill site, the efficient staff cleared it away. It seems the staff have less to do now that fewer of us are willing to eat this cardboard food, where more often than not the packaging looks more edible than what’s inside.

The amount of packaging in a normal McDonald’s meal looks something like this. If we work on the basis that McDonald’s servers around 35 million customers a day, that’s a hell of a lot of packaging. Of course it’s not just McDonalds…how many of us have had similar stories to these folks?

…..along comes somebody ripe for manipulation. Berlusconi is going to meet the pope days before the election. He’s planning to turn it into a “papal blessing.” I suppose to the “Jesus Christ of politics” its only second nature to contact your father through his Voice on Earth.

The question is, is there anyone else that Berlusconi can rub shoulders with to help him win this election?