Wark This Way

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Are we looking at the first stirrings of the beginning of the end of the Internet as we know it – or will the co-called freedom groups finally now get off their backsides and start ACTING..

http://www.silicon.com/technology/networks/2010/04/22/peter-cochranes-blog-too-late-debill-p2p-is-already-engrained-in-society-39745731/?s_cid=104

The fellow writing it, Peter Cochrane is thankfully one of those few individuals capable of talking about this stuff without devolving into technical gobbledegook…

Peter refers also to this article… http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/08/digital-economy-bill-passes-third-reading

Not sure we’ll get any joy from the next Conservative government if they were in league with this!

Are we seeing the first glimpse of the beginning of the end of the Internet as we know it, I wonder?

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/leaked-acta-draft-treaty-reveals-plans-for-internet-clampdown

As far back as I remember, we always seem to get sensible white papers from governments either just before they go on summer break – or when they’re about to be thrown out of office – either way, nothing ever then happens.

In a new white paper, the suggestion is being made that parents could be fined or jailed if their children mis-behave! Now, you may think that’s drastic – but nothing else has worked, in many parts of Britain kids roam around causing damage and absolutely nothing is done about it – I’m 55 and it’s been this way since I was in my teens. The parents don’t care, the police are almost powerless, schools are terrified of even scolding kids – and the kids themselves know it. Perhaps the thought of a jail sentence might renew the parents’ interest in the behaviour of their offspring.

As a kid, I went to “Spring Gardens” school in North Shields and I had a fabulous time but there was no shortage of discipline when needed… I was generally productive – I had hobbies and simply got on with my life – but on the odd occasion I got into trouble like everyone else and I still to this day remember sitting for what would typically be 5 minutes but which seemed like hours, outside of the headmaster’s room awaiting a caning across the hand and BOY did it hurt. Ok the pain only lasted minutes but the whole authority thing, backed by parents who usually tool the school’s side, ensured I generally played ball with society. Today, schools have zero power to discipline kids and have done for some years. Parents of unruly kids are more likely to try to sue schools and police than cooperate with them and meanwhile the kids are loving it!

If someone has kids then until they are 18 and fully responsible for their own actions as adults, SOMEONE should be responsible – and I reckon it should be the parents – and it sounds like the government finally agrees…. it all sounds like a breath of fresh air – the funny thing is it’s the LAST thing I’d expect from socialists – but then, there isn’t a hope in hell of the current government staying in office for much longer – so don’t expect ANY of these new bold initiatives to actually GO anywhere.

I’m putting my blog entries in my main scargill blog/website now so please visit the site now

As I sit here first thing on Tuesday morning in my hotel in Victoria, London, I can’t help get the feeling we’re in for a rough ride. The G20 summit is soon upon us and already the mood is grim. According to the papers, the Met have cancelled all police leave this week and in the single biggest operation to date, they’re planning to deploy more than 10,000 officers, many armed with 50kv Taser guns – at a cost of £7.2 million.

Demonstrations are expected to bring London to a grinding halt later in the week though my taxi driver figures we’ll be ok around Victoria area as “London’s a big place”. Others are not so sure.

According to one finance worker “We’re not going to wear our Rolexes next week – and we’ll put ‘down with capitalism’ T-shirts to fit in”.

I’ve been running small businesses all my life and to be fair I think the press are keen to differentiate us from the big boys – but I can see where large groups of people faced with constant simultaneous reports of redundancies on the one hand and massive payouts to the super-rich on the other hand, would be thinking someone’s just taking the mick.  Perhaps it IS time to rethink the role of large businesses in this world..  If a company does great because of one individual I can see where monetary rewards are justified but it seems all so one-sided – when things go bad the rich never seem to pay for mistakes. 

Watch this space for significant updates as the week goes by.

I can’t believe it’s that time again… this year the annual conference for the Federation of Small Businesses was held at the Celtic Manor resort in Wales. It started on Thursday 19th March and ran through Saturday night.

The product of a year’s planning and several trips back and forth, this was for me the best venue so far with 600+ delegates present. Weather was great and this was a wonderful location in the middle of a golfing resort. Even with poor weather the main building is modern, massive and houses a gym, several restaurants and a really first class reception area.

I got off to a flying start, a bust Vodafone dongle, then the phone packed in (whatever I said about the HTC Diamond Touch earlier – I apologise – it’s a heap of rubbish – there is some audio fault that they simply cannot fathom resulting in this being my THIRD phone this year). One more time and they’re getting it back and I want something else. Then on Saturday my working PC packed in – and I mean PACKED IN -dead. I have a habit of keeping everything on the D: drive so that if I have to reformat, I simply reformat C: and at least my data is intact. Of course I’d forgotten that I’d renamed the disks – so guess which one I formatted. Yup, the data disk!

Oh, the photo above – the sunset.. took that at Bristol airport last night.

The two big changes this year: I discovered BLIP.TV and Google’s Picasa – not that special on it’s own except that it is REMARKABLY quick at tarting up lots of photos – but then add that to Google’s Web album software which lets you store up to a GIG of photos for free on their servers….. and you have a pretty good package – look to see this being used advantageously on the FSB’s conference site… www.fsb.org.uk/conference2009

I was watching TV yesterday with interest. In Japanese airports they now have infra-red cameras which spot people with elevated temperatures – so they can single them out and check if they have some kind of infectious disease as they enter the country – I’m assuming they’re looking for bird flu or whatever.

This reminds me of a trip not that many years ago, when the foot and mouth crisis was in it’s peak in the UK, Maureen and I travelled to the states and when we got to Chicago airport they had a sign asking people from foot and mouth areas to go down a separate line – this we did and they wanted to sterlise our shoes.

I remember at the time thinking what a bunch of pillocks they were – because by this time we’d spent several hours wandering around a plane – and if we HAD a disease on our shoes would surely by now have infected the shoes of the OTHER passengers and the people at any intermediate airports etc.

And now I’m thinking the same about the Japs. Would it not be a LOT more sensible to check people BEFORE they get on the plane?

Is this REALLY the best that Gordon Brown could muster (speech)? In his speech to congress, the only people who seem to have been impressed were our own press – and they would…. but even then the infatuation quickly died… here are some extracts from the press…

Despite Mr Brown’s glowing summary of the "special relationship" between America and the UK Dana Milburn (Washington post sketch-writer) described Obama’s treatment of Gordon as "a surprisingly cool reception for an ally".

Conclusion? "He’s just not that into you" said the British press eventually. Time magazine dubbed the British media’s obsession with how the UK is viewed in the USA as "kid of pathetic".

Not content with screwing this country, returning to a time of strikes and discontent we’ve not seen since the 70′s, Brown has now managed to screw up a major opportunity to tighten bonds with the USA.

When will the people of this country WAKE UP and get rid of this utter and complete shower. Labour could not operate a brewery visit.

I wondered how long it would be before someone brought up this taboo subject, sadly it seems to be hidden away in a corner of the BBCs website  – maybe it should be on the front page.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7865332.stm

It may be politically incorrect to discuss but the maths is simple – less people means less consumption means less pollution.  I watched a video last night TED – on TV of all places in which a guy discussed the fact that methane as we know comes from livestock – most of which are there so we can eat them – and contributes 18% of greenhouse gases. Bearing in mind that there have always been greenhouse gases and the earth has always kept everything in balance, it seems to me that reducing livestock would make a considerable difference to the effect that greenhouse gases have on our planet. There are two ways to make this happen – if we had less people, we’d need less cattle. Alternatively if we simply ate less meat we’d also need less cattle. Given that the latter, by and large just isn’t going to happen thanks to multinational food giants and our insatiable greed, it seems that a reduced population would be a good second option. After all it’s not as if anyone is going to be hurt by avoiding pregnancies unless you’ve some mystical view of the world.

Of course something as simple as encouraging populations to have no more people than they can actually afford, back in the real world is a non-starter, we’ll probably wait until the population gets so high that a virus does it for us..  but at least now, hopefully the subject is on the discussion table where it should be.

Does this remind you of anything: Britain struggling against the cold in the midst of an economic downturn, Power workers on strike with sympathetic strikes sprouting up all over the country, meanwhile our political rulers spend their time sucking up to the communists.

Well, if you’re pretty old,  you may be thinking about the 70’s – I seem to recall it was called “The winter of discontent”.  It seems our socialist government has learned nothing in the intermediate 30-odd years. A couple of inches of snow and the entire south comes to a grinding halt, meanwhile up in the North I had to cancel a trip yesterday not because my car would not work well on a gritted road but because despite phoning the council, no gritters were forthcoming up our way.  Its not even as if it were a surprise… we had ample warning from the weathermen and we still could not get our act together.

I recall things got so bad in the winter of discontent that my dad went out and bought a Honda generator… and watching the news last night as our racist power workers put us to shame, it seems that I might have to consider the same. But this is not the 70’s – there are a lot more of us and we rely on power to a FAR greater extent than ever before. Can you imagine the horrors awaiting us in a winter this cold without power?

I’d rather not… and as for Gordon Brown sucking up to the Chinese.. is there no moral limit to the phrase “business is business” ??

Can someone tell me, in a small country like Wales, surrounded by English speaking people, in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, are the Welsh INSISTING on pushing forward with making companies that deal with them publish materials in their language? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7863542.stm – the British people have shown we’re incapable of learning other languages (how many of us speak French for example, compared to our multi-lingual partners overseas).

Given our failure to take on other languages – there is NO chance of most of us adding Welsh to the list – so surely that is going to put companies, especially the smaller ones in England and Scotland, from dealing with Wales?? It might just be me  but at least when I see French I can make a STAB at the meaning – Welsh to me just looks like a random assortment of letters.

I assume there must be SOME benefit to this? Or is this another example of officialdom gone wrong – like this recent bus lane I drove past on the way from Celtic Manor in Wales back to the airport..

Note the bus lane on the left – taking up half of the road. It goes on for miles and despite being mid-day Saturday I did not spot ONE bus. I wonder who’s brilliant idea that was!