Yesterday Ofcom pleased its political masters by repealing laws passed by Parliament. It may have repealed a dodgy law, but that’s beside the point: it’s not how our system is supposed to work. No matter how dodgy a law may be, it is not a quango’s job to repeal it. It’s the job of legislators. And a powerful regulator should be independent, and not heel to its political masters – although anyone who followed the history of the regulator will permit themselves a hollow cackle at that principle.
Ofcom repealed Sections 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act by expressing no more than an opinion: the justification to support that opinion is absent from its report. Ofcom could have set out its case in terms of explaining the legal framework, for example, but it didn’t. It could have argued the costs and benefits of each approach to web-blocking – but it didn’t, it hadn’t even attempted to do that kind of empirical research.
Instead, on page 43, we learn that: “It is our current belief that the blocking of discrete URLs, or web addresses, is not practical or desirable as a primary approach.” What’s practical is not defined, what’s “desirable” is well beyond Ofcom’s remit.
Imagine the uproar if a quango had interposed itself to block significant primary legislation: Britain’s entry into the Common Market for example, or the minimum wage. All are quite complicated issues, after all. The blame isn’t entirely Ofcom’s; the regulator was permitted to do this because ministers wanted to find a way to bury the Sections without Parliament formally repealing them. Again, this is dishonest, and not the way laws are made or unmade. Ed Vaizey has been trying to get industry to agree to self-regulation which would allow him to announce their imminent repeal (most likely in the next Communications Act).
The Conservatives came to power vowing to abolish Ofcom, and declaring war on what they saw as Leftish academic poseurs, and business-hostile bureaucrats. They now seem to be at the mercy of all three. How on Earth did that happen?
Chancer’s Paradise
I may have found someone who loathes Google even more than I loathe Google
I love Google Maps. Like Google Search. Use Gmail.
But, increasingly, I’ve grown nervous about the vast scope Google has over the Internet. Users have virtually no place on the world wide web, no safe haven, no single moment, from Google’s reach.
They are a for-profit megacorp that holds more information about me, my family, and you and your family than any government — and they sell that information, every second of every day to the highest bidder.
They have typically between 75%-99% of the search market in countries around the world and doctor results to put selected results, typically the ones that most directly benefit Google, up at the top. While spending millions and millions of dollars lobbying governments around the world to shield them from monopoly laws, content and publishing laws, privacy laws, no-track regulations and more.
I am disgusted by Google and the way they seek to equalize all content. All content is not equal, this is a intellectual fallacy. Or, possibly, an anti-intellectual one. Google compounds this by taking all content they can access, and scrapes what they can’t, and then wraps their ads around it — to make money off everyone else’s content. Don’t like it? Just have Google bypass you. Of course, screen scraping proves they won’t bypass you if they really want your content. If they don’t want it — meaning, can’t make any real money off it — they’re more than happy to use their monopoly power to make you invisible. Sort of like if the government didn’t like what you’ve been saying about them and decides not to give your business a postal address.
I also have come to dislike much of Google because they very quickly went from big company that sells my personal information to strangers, which makes me nervous, to a company that innovates at nothing yet spends *billions* of dollars from one business to enter new markets and destroy existing businesses.
If you have a monopoly business and generate monopoly profits and take those monopoly profits to another industry and *gave away* what your competitors (must) charge for, which led you to quickly capture the *dominant* maret share, would you…
…whine like a bitch?
Because Google does. And has.
Larry, Sergey, you are pussies.
You have deluded yourself into thinking you have earned a level of success where having billions and billions and being able to use those billions to always get what you want, whether through buying up or destroying is your *right*. Probably why Google hasn’t innovated a single fucking thing in over a decade.
Everything — every single fucking thing — since Bill Clinton has been a copy, a steal, a buy-out — or a take down.
An open letter to Iain McNicol, General Secretary Designate of Chauncey Gardiner’s Labour Party
Dear Mr. McNicol,
Congratulations on your election as the Labour Party’s General Secretary Designate. I learned of your election from your email to me earlier today, entitled “Let’s Work Together”.
Perhaps one of your first jobs when you take over from Ray Collins could be to cleanse your mailing lists and remove people who, like me, have written to Mr. Collins to resign from the Labour Party in protest at Chauncey Gardiner’s breathtaking ineptitude and ask to be removed from your mailing lists?
That way, you’ll stop people like me from reporting your party to the Information Commissioner’s Office and will prevent your party from wasting more of the money it doesn’t have fighting legal cases it can’t afford.
That sort of thing.
Pip, pip.
Yours sincerely,
The Minister
I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver
The frightening pointlessness of rolling news channels was amply demonstrated once more last night, with BBC Radio 5 Barely Alive’s coverage of the Norwegian vileness.
First, the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner decided to opine – apparently in the absence of too much evidence – that the events bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack.
“Seems a little surprising,” I thought. “A blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian speaker apparently acting alone doesn’t seem too much like the multi-handed al-Qaeda atrocities we used as an excuse to bomb Arabic-speaking little brown people back to the Dark Ages.
“But, hey. This is the BBC. They wouldn’t just – you know – make it up as they go along, would they?”
This morning I awoke to the news that the blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian speaker is apparently a Christian fundamentalist with a history of decrying Islamism and multiculturalism.
Yet this morning’s Today programme was curiously bereft of Mr. Gardner fessing up to the fact he’d been talking shit 10 hours earlier.
Worse still, the BBC’s rolling news radio network inexplicably thought that the appropriate way to cover the tragedy was to phone up and ask for a comment from Jan Åge Fjørtoft.
Mr. Fjørtoft is an intelligent and erudite Norwegian who speaks fluent English, but I still don’t see what expertise he can bring to the analysis of these events in his capacity as a former professional footballer for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley.
Maybe he was the only Norwegian in the duty producer’s contacts book…
Ironically, Mr. Fjørtoft was bumped mid-sentence by the stereotypically hyperventilating presenter precisely because the producers had managed to find someone to talk to who actually had some involvement in the day’s awful events.
If these rolling news networks can’t actually cover breaking stories with a semblance of competence, then what exactly IS their point?
But then perhaps I’m missing the wider point. Maybe the only appropriate reaction to acts as senseless as those in Oslo and Utoeya is utter senselessness.
Ministerial apology
For some time now, I have been pouring scorn on Edward Samuel Miliband, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party.
In the course of the last six weeks I have described him as “floppy”, “awkward”, “clueless”, a “wanker of the first water”, “inept”, “pathetic”, “dreadful”, “abysmal”, “pitiful”, “awful”, “limp”, “anaemic”, “nonsensical”, “embarrassing” and “Chauncey Gardiner”.
With the benefit of two weeks’ hindsight, I now accept I was clearly, completely, unequivocally, dunderheadedly and half-wittedly wrong on all counts.
Ed Miliband’s superlative performances during the News International affair have demonstrated to all that he is a political giant, the likes of which we have not seen in this country since William I.
In just two short weeks, Ed Miliband has redefined the age in which we live. He bestrides the world stage like a Colossus.
Ed Miliband’s presentational skills put Apple to shame.
Ed Miliband’s leadership makes Genghis Khan look like a pussy.
Ed Miliband’s outstanding oratory literally scorches his audience, all of whom have to receive medical attention after his speeches.
In the space of a fortnight Ed Miliband has brought about an end to war, famine, pestilence and poverty.
In just 14 days Ed Miliband has cured both cancer and AIDS.
He has colonised Mars.
He has recorded and released a series of albums that completely shit down The Beatles’ throats.
The breathtaking achievements of Edward Samuel Miliband over the past two weeks cannot be overstated: Ed Miliband should not only win all this year’s Nobel Prizes, he should win them all EVERY YEAR FROM NOW ON.
Until 14 short days ago the Labour Party was hurtling towards obliteration. Now it’s heading for inevitable world domination, adenoids or no adenoids.
Ed, I was wrong and I am sorry. Your penis is enormous. Your balls are massive. Your taint is beautiful, no matter what they say.
I love Ed Miliband.
Vaz deference
I’ve just heard The Disgraced Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz on the radio talking about honour, integrity and people correctly resigning to take responsibility for their actions.
Once more, for clarity: that’s THE DISGRACED FORMER EUROPE MINISTER KEITH VAZ opining on honour, integrity, and taking responsibility.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Oh, fuck me.
(With thanks to Pickled Politics for the title.)
This is the end of the world news, sponsored by God
I feel sympathy for some of the people at the News of the World who are losing their jobs. I don’t like to see anybody lose their jobs (apart from That Bloody Woman, Bliar and the entire current cabinet, natch). Some of those people are truck drivers and printers and office staff and cleaners who have nothing to do with the “journalism” carried out by some on the newspaper.
And some of the others are honest journalists who have never had anything to do with anything that might raise an eyebrow, let alone lead to criminal investigations, prosecutions and/or convictions.
Those people do deserve some sympathy. With the best will in the world, there are not enough jobs around these days for everyone to be able to say on principle, “I won’t work for News International because of Rupert Murdoch.” People have families to feed, clothe and house. It looks as though quite a few innocent people are going to suffer for the crimes of a few and I am really sorry about that.
And it is sad that a title that endured for almost 130 years before Murdoch got his hands on it has met such a ridiculous end. To some extent, the last 40 years of the NOTW‘s life were something of an aberration in the context of its entire history. Like the Mirror and Mail before they went tabloid, the NOTW was once a respected home of investigative journalism. It broke a lot of important stories in those 168 years – and (whether it’s cool to admit it or not right now) there were plenty during Murdoch’s ownership, too, if you could find them within the tawdry tattle that made up the bulk of its content throughout my lifetime. The Observer will soon follow the NOTW into oblivion when Harry Potter finally gets his way and proud titles like that deserve better than the ignomy being thrust upon them by men not fit to fluff those who went before.
All that said – and I mean every word – it’s hard to feel too sorry to see any part of the News Corporation empire slide out of view, even if it is almost certain to be replaced very soon by a (no doubt equally tawdry) Sun on Sunday. Cor, just look at the tits on that.
But anybody who thinks that the corrupt and unlawful practices that were carried on by some members of NOTW staff are confined to the NOTW are deluded. If you think mid-market and highbrow titles don’t do that sort of thing, then look at the Information Commissioner’s report from a few years ago [warning: PDF].
If yesterday – delicious as it was in so many ways – is to mean anything in the long run, the promised enquiries and ongoing police investigations need to look at more than just the activities of some on the News of the World and drive that particularly malevolent strand of journalism back into the gutter.
If James Murdoch thinks the answer, “At this moment, yes,” is an appopriate answer to the question, “Are you absolutely certain that these practices did not extend to The Sun?”, he needs to be shown the error of his arrogance.
And if News Corporation and/or News International think refusing to accept Rebekah Wade-Mitchell-Brooks’s resignation is the right thing to do at this juncture, then Ofcom really needs to grow a pair and see whether its “right and proper” muscle still retains any memory at all.
Every serif helps
For those who don’t get my typefaces fetish, compare this:
with this:
The food almost certainly tastes the same. The cost of the items in the shopping basket is probably more or less the same. But one sensory experience is incomparable with another.
It just takes a little bit more time, effort and care.
And what the fuck would Tesco know about that?
A feature about the branding and typefaces used by a family-run German supermarket chain called “tegut…” is published on the Fonts In Use website.
Sir Bobby Robson
Once upon a time there was an English football manager who won things that mattered.
He adored the game, respected its heritage and never lost an infectious enthusiasm for the potential of 22 fellas running around after a round leather ball.
He didn’t abuse the reporters who (at times) abused him; he didn’t refuse to speak for years on end to the broadcasters who helped pay his wages; he took evident pleasure from developing stars rather than buying them in. He conducted himself with humility and humanity. His teams played pretty damn good football. And you got the feeling he’d have done it even if it didn’t pay him a penny.
How sad that he passed away having had to witness the crumbling of his beloved Newcastle United, whose current, humiliating predicament can be traced directly to his sacking in five years ago.
The English game, whose soul visibly diminishes with every passing month, today lost more than perhaps its last great manager.
Rest in peace, Sir Bobby. And thank you.
Sir Bobby Robson CBE, 1933-2009
Wade in
Apparently, the London Olympics start three years tomorrow. That’ll be nice, won’t it?
I’m desperate for there to be one hugely successful, absolutely sodden night for the British athletics team in the Olympic Stadium just so the subs on The Sun get to publish the ultimate headline:
