The New York Times have published a wonderful piece this week that not only strongly suggests Coulson is wicked rather than stupid but that also raises very serious questions over the conduct of the metropolitan police in the matter. It would seem they may have put their good relationship with the News of the World ahead of their responsibility to the truth and to justice. A judicial review has been sought and it will be concerning if it doesn’t happen; a good democracy is built on the trust of the judiciary and of the press to keep our politicians on the straight and narrow. That trust is already under great strain.

The vast majority of news outlets are completely ignoring this story; only the Guardian and the Independent have covered it. While the deafening silence from the news outlets over which News Corp holds it’s iron fist is understandable, that the BBC has so far failed to report it is less forgiveable. Are they cowards or just slow? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, the nation has its knickers in a twist because, whilst on the road campaigning and to save the tax payer money, William Hague shared a twin hotel room with one of his aides. So pitifully sex obsessed and repressed have we apparently become as a nation that two men sharing a hotel room with two separate beds in it is sufficient to lead to accusations of the collapse of William Hague’s marriage and a homosexual relationship. The furore has forced the poor aide to resign from a job he was apparently very good at out of despair at the treatment of him and his family by the press and the Hagues to publicly admit to a very private and painful struggle of their own that is none of our business and which they should not have had to reveal.

Do we really now believe that two heterosexual men cannot innocently share a hotel room?!

Come on people! Priorities!

I don’t have strong opinions on who makes the best MPs. I think that, whether you come from Oxbridge or the University of Hard Knocks, you will have valuable experience and skills to bring to the job. I do have strong opinions over who doesn’t, however, and people who have never experienced life outside of Whitehall most definitely fall into that category.

I would like to see a minimum requirement of 10 years as an adult gaining experience (not necessarily work) outside of politics before anyone can run for any form of public office. That would put a minimum age of 28 on the start of any campaign, which I think is no bad thing.

Those people with a passion for changing the world could use that decade to inform their politics. The people that can’t wait that long were never interested enough in the first place and are no loss.

1.  Which is perhaps why the NUS is a somewhat pointless and poorly functioning entity. Meh.

2.  There will be some who are very good, I’m sure. There’s an exception to every rule. Nick Clegg may be one, although I’m not entirely convinced. He’s doing alright, but I wouldn’t go further than that just now.

Then, the next day it was armagedon:

Amazing sky isn’t it? It was about half an hour before sunset (hence the orange) and it cast the strangest eerie light.  It was the mother of all thunderstorms, but it didn’t go directly over us, pity.

I am now in Zurich, I love it already

Me: I will be in Switzerland on these dates, please don’t stop my card if I use it in the ATM.

Co-op: That note is on your file, have a nice time

Me: If I nip to London will I still be able to use me card?

Co-op: Oh yes, of course! (Says goodbye and hangs up. Time taken: 2 mins 27 secs. Blood pressure: low)
Barclays: No, you must call us before you leave Sweden.

Me: Switzerland

Barclays: Swaziland?

Me: S. W. I. T. Z. E. R. L. A. N. D.

Barclays: Ahh, ok, you must call us before you leave Switzerland.

Me: I will only be there 3 days, then I am returning to Japan

Barclays: You must call us again before you leave London or you won’t be able to use your card in Japan.

Me: No. That’s ridiculous, every time I call you it takes 20 minutes, I’m not doing that. I’m not calling you every time I get on a plane. Can’t you put it all on my file now?

Barclays: Pleasehold

…

Barclays: Would you like to change your address to Japan?

Me: No

Barclays: Please wait while I change your address to Japan

Me: Please don’t

Barclays: But if I you don’t you will have to renew the travel marker every 90 days

Me: That’s fine.

Barclays: Pleasehold

…

Barclays: Pleasehold

…

Barclays: Pleasehold

Me: *sighs heavily*

Barclays: (sounding irritable) I’m so sorry to keep you waiting

…

Barclays: Please confirm your travel dates

Me: *confirms dates*

Barclays: Please confirm your travel dates once more.

Me: *CONFIRMS DATES*

Barclays: Ok, those dates are on your file (says goodbye and hangs up. Time taken: 18 minutes 49 secs*. Blood pressure: high)

When you put them side by side the difference is significant.

*and if you think that doesn’t seem long transcript for a call lasting nearly 20 minutes, that’s because I’ve cut out the bit where I tried to explain the seemingly infinitely complex concept of a trip with two different destinations.

——————————————

Because this has been a slowly developing situation and because of the recent revelation that the Pakistani government have been funnelling money to the Taliban, some people apparently feel that this is a humanitarian disaster they do not need to donate to.

The thought that anyone might think that a sufficient excuse not to help makes me sick.

Here is some more in-depth coverage from Al Jazeera (as usual, the coverage from our own news agencies seems more concerned with the performance of their cricket team than with the deaths of thousands of Pakistani citizens).

Here are links to Oxfam and MSF for you to make your donation.

With more rain on the way, this situation could be about to get a lot worse. Don’t put it off: next week might be too late.

Bill and Melinda Gates

In 2001 the long running antitrust case between the US government and Microsoft came to an end. The case didn’t dent the company’s profitability too much, of course (although there are signs that its star is fading as Google’s rises), but it did seem to rather disillusion Bill Gates, and he separated himself and his personal fortune from the company’s and went off to set up the Gates Foundation. The charity is not without critics[1], but it is certainly mind-bogglingly large and has staggering potential to do good. Notably their vaccine and health program is working to eradicate polio once and for all.

Warren Buffet

A pretty darned successful and wealthy investor, Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates as the worlds richest man in 2008. He is famed for spending little, in spite of his huge wealth, and describes the current turbulent time on Wall Street as “poetic justice”. His fortune is in the region of $60 billion dollars, however, he has pledged to give away 99% of that money (much of it to the Gates Foundation). 1% of 50 billion is still 500 million, so his family and he will hardly starve, but still, 99%! It would seem he also places a great deal of importance on charitable giving of time as well as money and while he admits he himself does not donate his time (although he must spend some time on his philanthropic work as he does a fair amount), he has apparently brung his children up right, because he says they do. When you read what he has to say, Warren Buffet appears to just be a good man. There are too few of those around, so we are lucky that the richest two people in the world apparently fall into that bracket.

Between them, Warren Buffett and Bill and Malinda Gates have persuaded a further 40 US billionaires to pledge at least 50% of their wealth to charity. I wonder if that is enough to shift those “2% of the world’s population possess 50% of its wealth” statistics? The sums involved are vast, so it might just…

Google

Google are the new Microsoft, which means it is fashionable to distrust them and assume they are out for nothing except power and money. Yet, if you scratch the surface, you find a solid core of ethical business practices that appears to be more than fancy words. Their green initiatives arm is doing a lot to make the company as close to carbon neutral as is currently possible and they recently invested in two new wind farms. They have a philanthropic arm too and, while it isn’t as big or as dramatic as Warren Buffett’s gesture, it uses employee time and the technology Google has invented to track and help solve real world problems away from the internet.

Innocent

As well as making darned tasty smoothies (and other things[2]), the Innocent Smoothie Company are more devoted to ethical and sustainable business practices than any other company I have come across. Every single step of their manufacturing process is carefully balanced against the environmental and human cost. They carefully research the best places to buy their ingredients and they recently started the process of shifting some of their mango buying to Kenya for no reason other than they wish to start contributing to African economies. They not only use the latest recycled and recyclable packaging in all their products, but they also research and develop new and improved sustainable packaging which feeds into that used by other companies. Their premises are, like Google’s, run to be as sustainable as possible, with great care taken over not only their carbon footprint, but also their water one. Oh, and there is, of course, a foundation that takes 10% of the company’s profits and donates it to the communities where they buy their fruit.

I don’t believe in evil people, only evil acts, and I suppose that means I don’t believe in naturally good people either, but these few people and companies are demonstrating that you can accumate wealth for reasons other than simple acquisitiveness and that a business does not have to be evil in order to be profitable. I just hope everyone else catches on before it is too late; we are already standing dangerously close to the edge.

1. Seemingly often of the “Bill Gates is evil therefore his philanthropy must be a lie” mindset.

2. Oh boy, how I have missed Innocent while I’ve been overseas. I wish they’d start moving into the Japanese market!

Anyway, today’s earworm, for your auditory delight, is Vampire Weekend’s very Paul Simonesque “White Sky”.

More here.

The pattern is always the same: some idiot unthinkingly repeats a long-discredited item from their list of sciencey-sounding fallacies, using as much appeal to authority as they can shoe-horn in, usually whilst really trying to sound as though they know their stuff (they always fail) and often in CAPS!!!!!!!!!. Then some well-meaning person who understands the science will patiently try and explain to them why they are wrong and supply them with the evidence that proves it. But it never works, because the denialist canard cannot be argued with logic as it stems from illogic, greed and wishful thinking. The ignorant fool will just go off to another comment thread, their Opinion unsullied by truth, and continue to spout the same tired lines.

Such people are not interested in genuine debate; they are trolling – nothing more nothing less.  It is time the moderators of such fora started treating them as such and denied them their soap box.

They may be ignorant in their folly, unaware of how the astroturf organisations they so gullibly follow were set up by Big Oil and Big Coal to orchestrate their performances, but they are none-the-less willing mouthpieces for such dishonest groups.

It isn’t censorship: no-one is denying these people their right to believe such dangerous rubbish, nor to set up their own forum where they can reinforce each other’s ideologies to their heart’s content, but it is time the mainstream press grabbed their editorial balls in each hand and made a stand. It is time they made repeating such rubbish against the house rules and started deleting them when they turn up.

We have tried to argue and but their fingers are in their ears. The science is in, it is not up for debate any longer, it is time such views were accorded the respect they deserve and kicked into touch.

This sounds great for the consumer; all that lovely content for free! But… producing really good content takes time and money, and if you want people to spend time and money doing something, they have to be able to make a living at it.  If we want to continue getting good content, we have to find a way to pay for it.

Some blogs sell advertising space. That’s ok, but you need astronomically high levels of traffic before that begins to return significant amounts and not everyone wants advertising on their blog (I know I don’t).

So, advertising doesn’t work, paywalls don’t work, running a shop only works if your product is something other than the words you write; how can we ensure those interesting people who make the internet a fun place can make a living at what we want them to do? I’m hoping Flattr might hold the key.

Flattr is a micropayment site.  The idea is that, if you like a website, you can make a voluntary donation and, although the donation will be small and not everyone will make it, hopefully enough people will put their hands in their pockets to keep the site going. In the case of Flattr, you set a monthly allowance and at the end of each month Flattr counts up how many sites you would like to pay, and splits your allowance equally between them. So, if your allowance is 2 Euros and you Flattr 10 sites, they’ll each get 20 cents. If you Flattr 100 sites, however, they’ll each get 2 cents.

That differs from a traditional pay wall in two crucial ways:

The first is that it is voluntary. With a pay wall, you can’t get new customers because they can’t see whether what they’re getting is worth the money until after they’ve paid. If you wait until you have a large customer base before instigating the pay system (Times), you will alienate all your old customers who are used to getting your content for free.  With micropayments, new customers can see what’s there and old customers are offered a chance to contribute if they want to, but they aren’t locked out if they decline.

The second difference is that Flattr is very very easy. I sign up, put some money in my account and then, if I see content I like, all I have to do is click the Flattr button and the payment is made. There’s no rooting in my purse for my card and no filling in of arduous details over and over again for each site I would like to pay.

Flattr breaks something called “the penny barrier”. The penny barrier is the term used to describe the inordinate difficulty of parting a web surfer with that first penny, but, once you’ve got them to sign up to paying the first, it is very easy indeed to get them to pay more.  Flattr solves the problem by getting you to deposit money in one and at a time and place psychologically removed from when you make the payment. When you see something you like, all you have to do is click a button and the payment is made at the end of the month. You don’t even have to decide on the amount, because Flattr automatically divvies up your allowance between every site you Flattred.

The problem with Flattr is that it needs to grow. It will only work if lots of people are signed up to it and Flattr buttons become commonplace. I have had an account for ages, but I didn’t put any money in because I’d never seen a button. Finally, last week, I saw Wikileaks have added a Flattr button and so I bit the bullet and added some cash. I was going to donate anyway, but I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and give Flattr a boost as well. Sure enough, since then I have paid money to two other sites that I wouldn’t have had I not set up my account[2].

Flattr is very new, and it isn’t quite right yet; I have two major complaints. First, I can’t Flattr multiple times, so even though I would like to give Wikileaks more of my allowance than some blog post I saw by some guy that I quite liked, I can’t; secondly, I can only Flattr once per page, in the case of a blog, that means I can’t Flattr on a per post basis. That leads to unfairness, because a site I read one post on in a month will get the same payment as on I read every day.  I would like more control over how much I give to each place and both problems could be easily solved but allowing me to click the botton as many times as I like.

Flattr is only in beta, so hopefully they will resolve those issues but, in the meantime, if you would like to see the people you read regularly getting paid for their work, sign up[3].

1. Contrast the number of comments on the headline Times articles with those on the Guardian. Times: 10-15 comments, Guardian: over a hundred. Comments don’t tell the whole story, but I suspect 15 comments for the headline story in a major broadsheet is symptomatic of a woefully low number of readers.

2. I have also, of course, added my own Flattr button, but not out of any particular wish to make money at this. More as an experiment to see what happens and as a way of spreading the word; Flattr will only take off if content providers start putting up the buttons.

3. Because it’s only in an early phase, there is a waiting list for invites. As a member, I have a couple left, so if you would like one, let me know, but otherwise you may have to wait a bit to sign up.