Stuff about stuff

Failure of World Trade Talks

2008-07-30T07:45:00.002+01:00

After what seemed like a promising announcement a few days ago, yesterday we learned that the WTO talks had once again failed to reach agreement, after 7 years of negotiations, no less. The implications of this failure are huge, and will lead no doubt to worsening poverty in many parts of the developing world, while the rich west protects its own short term interests once again. If our leaders are incapable of reaching agreement on such important issues, perhaps we should get rid of them and appoint representatives that are better able to do their jobs?

Who said Macbooks weren't robust?

2008-07-30T07:27:00.002+01:00

Despite my efforts at looking after my Macbook its once pristine white casing has steadily become increasingly marked and scratched. I'd also read reports that it was not as a robust as many Windows laptops. Well, yesterday afternoon - due to my own failure to zip up my rucksack - my Macbook fell from it to the hard wooden floor (a drop of over 1m) and then proceeded to slide out of its little protective bag and fall, banging and crashing, down a steep and uncarpeted wooden staircase, to finally come to rest on a quarry tiled floor at the bottom of the stairs.

I thought that this would very probably spell the end for my machine, but as I picked it up I noted that the little LED on the front edge was doing its thing, which offered some hope. I rushed off, late to get home, and did not look at the machine until several hours later. On opening the lid I was amazed and relieved to the Macbook come to life. The optical drive made some funny noises (and still does every time the machine wakes) but other than this it appears to be unharmed.

And cosmetically I'm also impressed. No cracks, splits or major damage other than a "bruise" mark indicating a major point of impact on the front right corner. Not bad. Congratulations Apple for for a machine which is not only a joy to use, but which is capable of withstanding some pretty rough handling.

The cost of buying a Mac

2008-07-18T08:57:00.003+01:00

Don't get me wrong, I am a dyed in the wool Mac user, and have been since around 1986 when I first got my hands on one of those little compact SE20s. Today I use a G5 iMac and a Macbook, and OS X is clearly the best operating system on the planet for humans. But you increasingly have to look at the price of Apple kit. I paid just shy of £1000 inc. VAT for my Macbook a couple of years a go (the mid-range option with max RAM).

Today you can get a well specced Windows laptop for around £300 (of course you have to suffer Vista or XP unless you go Linux), while the current equivalent of my Macbook currently retails for £829 inc VAT. That is a big differential. Apple has never sought to play in the budget space, but all the same, computing in these cost conscious credit crunchy times is becoming a commodity item, and surely Apple has to respond with a lower cost mobile offering. Remember the hugely well-liked 12" pro laptop of a few years ago? With the phenomenal rise of the Asus EeePC thingy, perhaps its time for Apple to launch a small - say 11" screen super-mini. With a price point of say £399 it would compete effectively with the top end eePC and provide a competitive OS X platform in the mainstream laptop market. Just a thought...

iPlate launched while connection falls over

2008-07-02T11:36:00.002+01:00

No, it must be just a coincidence. Even BT would not be that devious and underhand, would they?

On the day the BT iPlate (a little gadget that's supposed to improve your ADSL performance by an average 1.5 Mbps) goes on sale, my connection is playing up big time. Spent most of the morning so far just checking and restarting my router, repeatedly trying to get key websites to appear in my browser, and generally harumphing around out of sheer frustration.

OK, I get my broadband connection from the ethically sound Phone Co-op (who buy wholesale from Fused Networks or somesuch), and not from BT, but the dark mysteries of Openreach presumably sit behind it all.

Roll on fibre! I don't know about you, but is it not time that UK consumers and SMEs took the bull by the horns and took control of the shambles that is telecoms in the UK. 100Mbps up and down is what I want for my monthly fee please, and I really don't see why I can't have it. Increasingly other places in Europe have it, so why not here in the UK? BT (the incumbent) seems quite happy sweating the copper network for every last drop of profit it can extract from it, and is not keen on getting fibre deployment moving (and looking at it from their perspective you can see why), but that does not help us users one jot. BT needs to take care, else it will find itself surrounded by small "Islands of Fibre" springing up all over the country, and hey presto! no more monopoly. I can't wait.

In fact I've been developing the notion of community owned fibre for my locality over at ColneValleyFibre.net. Sign up there if you're local and keen to get involved, or interested in investing in a profitable community owned utility cooperative.

BT is missing the point - again

2008-06-12T16:12:00.003+01:00

I'm getting increasingly interested in the whole broadband/FTTH debate. On the BBC news site today, talking about the long heralded BT fibre test at Ebbsfleet, where BT appears to be offering performance that will merely "burst" to 100 Mbps down and only 2Mbps upload, a BT spokesperson had the nerve to assume they had a clue about what us consumers want and need by saying that the speeds would be "Higher in fact than anyone currently needs"!

What utter rubbish. How does BT know what we might need in terms of speed. I know for a fact that the paltry 0.3-1.5 Mbps that my "up to 8Mbps" connection delivers is not what I need. If i want to download a 2GB movie file I'd like to get that file as quickly as possible. 100Mbps sounds pretty useful to me.

BT really is doing itself no favours with its current stance on this whole issue. Why doesn't it actually take the time to talk to its customers, and then respond by doing something really excellent and useful, rather than bleating about the cost of fibre roll-out, and capping the performance even in its own trials! Fibre can deliver at least 100Mbps up and down. Think what that sort of upload performance could do for online entrepreneurial activity, to say nothing of two way video calling, e-care services, and community safety issues. Just what they are doing in Neunen with 100Mbps up and down.

Make no mistake, BT is not at all interested in delivering a world class solution into the UK. It is interested in lining its own pockets and those of its investors by sweating the copper asset to the last. Even the Ebbsfleet trial is using a fibre topology which is inherently anti-competitive, militates against unbundling, and delivers a second class service to consumers.

Fibre - done right - offers some fantastic benefits to consumers, business and our communities at large. Make no mistake, if we wait for BT to deliver, we will be waiting for some time to come, and we will end up with a second rate service.

If you want something doing properly, do it yourself. There has never been a better opportunity to communities to take control of their own communications technology and build a network of community level, community owned fibre networks.

Bye bye BT.

Reflecting on the global credit crunch

2008-03-25T22:55:00.006Z

I've been thinking about the "credit crunch" that seems to be rolling around the world's financial markets creating all sorts of havoc.

For me this whole debacle highlights the critical flaws in a global financial system which appears to be essentially founded not on trust but on greed. Had the financial institutions that originally exposed themselves to the risks of the so-called sub-prime lending market acted responsibly and with due regard to their customers and other stakeholders, rather than being driven by naked greed, the financial markets would not be in the situation they now find themselves in. Greed has failed, and has exposed the fact that there is little or no trust between these financial institutions, so all the financial institutions are now unwilling to lend to their fellow institutions for fear of skeletons in the closet.

Instead it appears that it is down to the taxpayer to bail out these people, as governments in the UK and the US seem to be pouring public money in to create desperately needed liquidity in the markets.

Maybe I'm missing the point here, so please correct me, but it sort of feels like yet another market failure, and one right at the heart of the capitalist machine.

Has Balfe gone bonkers?

2008-03-23T06:43:00.003Z

Today's Independent on Sunday reports that Cameron has recruited Labour defector Richard Balfe to woo the "trade union and co-operative movement". A quick heads-up to Messrs. Balfe and Cameron: this is not a single movement. The unions don't really understand co-operatives, and indeed are very wary of worker co-operatives, often perceiving them to undermine the role and power of the unions. And while there are undoubtedly plenty of unionistas within the Co-operative movement there are equally a good number of us that view the trade unions as not being up to speed on a whole range of issues, and as so focused on their own survival that they can't see the bigger picture on employee engagement, ownership and control.

While Cameron's tactics are undoubtedly interesting - and there are many people within the co-operative movement who are not natural Labour supporters, and who may view his approach as attractive, I really can't see it having any major impact, other than perhaps contributing to a polarisation within the co-operative movement.

The article goes on to report that Balfe said "...under David Cameron's leadership the Conservative Party has shown that it has the ideas and vision to harness the co-operative movement in a way that can really benefit society." Wow. That sort of language is certainly not going to get him too far. It is the co-operative movement that has the ideas and vision, not the Conservative Party. It is the co-operative movement that for at least the last twenty years has been making the running about how co-operative approaches can provide solutions to many of the socio-economic problems we seem to struggle with in the UK, and more widely. And as for the Tories "harnessing" the co-operative movement - how I laughed!

In general I welcome the trend towards an ongoing and constructive dialogue between the co-operative movement and all of the major parties. The old-school approach of being wedded to Labour is no longer relevant or helpful, and has held the co-operative movement back in the UK. In the US for example, co-operatives are far more apolitical in their nature (with some exceptions). But if Cameron and Balfe really want to engage with the co-operative movement, they need to listen to us, listen to what we have been saying for decades now about how to do things properly, and provide us with the resources to enable us to put our vision into practice. The notion of a parallel conservative co-operative movement run by the Tory party is daft, and simply won't deliver any significant outcomes quickly enough.

Cooperation, our best friend

2005-09-26T16:17:00.000+01:00

That headline was originally going to be the title of this blog, but I found I was writing loads of stuff that wasn't about cooperation or cooperatives, so I changed the title to something more apt. Looking back I find that haven't actually written anything about cooperatives, which is surprising. So here goes:

I've spent the last 17 years working in or for cooperatives. Why? Cooperative structures offer a clear and viable alternative to the non-functional hierarchical pyramids of traditional business (anyone who works in a hierarchical business structure will know what I mean). Why is it that we in the west espouse democracy, to the point that we are willing to go to war to defend it, but when it comes to business, the concept of a democratic approach simply does not get any airplay? I find this dichotomy pretty weird. In fact it's often worse than this. It's not just that cooperatives don't get coverage, it is often the case that on the rare occasions when cooperatives get into the news, they are actively denigrated by the media. What are they afraid of?

Cooperatives are radical organisations. They could be considered anti-capitalist, even revolutionary. They turn the norms of business and commerce on their heads, and yet they go almost un-noticed. Why is that?

There is clearly increasing unease with the way conventional business does its thing. A growing awareness that if we support a model of business that places the creation of profit (shareholder value) above all else, we reap the rewards from that in terms of the social and environmental damage that such a single minded approach causes.

At the same time issues of sustainability, social responsibility, and ethics are increasingly at the forefront of the minds of consumers. We hear more and more about fair trade, trade justice, global poverty, climate change, and the need to radically change how we do most things in the west if we are not to destroy the very things that we rely on for our existence.

Cooperative enterprise joins up all this single-issue thinking into a sensible coherent whole. And yet most people simply don't get it (or or don't appear to). Some of the most socially and politically aware types appear to miss the point about how the systems and structures we use to trade with others are fundamentally important.
If my business is owned by a bunch of investors who want solely to maximise their return, then how can I, as a business person, be socially and environmnetally responsible about how I operate. It's difficult, if not impossible, to justify any investyment I might want to make in those areas to my shareholders.

The answer is clear: choose to operate under a different structure, where the return-hungry investor is not even in the picture.

You want to invest in a cooperative business? Sure, just sign here. But please note that it's a democratic organisation. If it's worker owned the chances are that as an investor you won't get any say whatever. In other forms of cooperative investors do get a say, but it's unlikely their voice will be in proportion to the size of their investment, rather a more straightforward one person one vote approach. Cooperatives are about social justice, giving interested parties a fair shake regardless of their economic power.

Perhaps it is simply human greed that drives conventional business forward, to the detriment of pretty much everything, and which forces more sensible business models to the margins.
There is a real sense now that co-operative ways forward are coming to the fore as we increasingly look for something with some depth, some humanity, something offering broader benefits than simply hard cash. Money is important, but on its own it's of limited benefit.

Many people wrongly characterise co-operatives as 'not-for-profit' (or non-profit, depending on where you are from). This is not the case. Cooperatives are "more than profit" businesses. Making money is just a part of the picture. Doing business as if people, and the planet, matter. That's what it is about. That's what it has been about for the last 160 or so years.

And now, as we plough as recklessly as ever into the 21st century in amongst devastating political and climatic change. caused largely by our own huge errors over the last 50 or 100 years, perhaps it is time to take stock and look for a different way, rather than just contiunue to repeat the gross mistakes of our forebears.

More on this subject later, no doubt...

Meanwhile, check out http://www.ica.coop for more information and contacts about the global cooperative movement.

UK Govt anti terrorist measures

2005-08-06T06:55:00.000+01:00

Blair's announcement of further measures to act against those who may have ill intentions has further raised the temperature of debate. Yesterday two MPs - George Galloway (as one might expect), and the Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews, were on the radio talking about how the British Government needs to acknowledge the long history of western foreign policy regarding the Middle East, and take responsibility for it, if the risk of further terrorist atrocities in the UK is to be significantly reduced. UK and US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq (including the so-called 'first Gulf war' in the nineties), and the whole 50+ year history of the occupation of Palestine, are increasingly coming to the forefront of the debate, which has to be a good thing.
If Blair and Bush were to take steps to acknowledge that much of this history was not necessarily in the best interests of the local population in the region, and redouble their efforts to progress towards a peaceful settlement, especially in Palestine, they would surely ease the threat. Not that I'm suggesting any sort of climb down in the face of the threat - rather a pragmatic approach to the problems created in the past, and an honest effort to improve the situation now and for the future.
Some years back I was lucky enough to visit Jordan for a week or so. A large chunk of the population in Jordan comprises Palestinian refugees. The economic situation in the country is not good, with many people living in pretty poor conditions. The contrast with Israel (funded by the west) is stark. No suprise then that some of those displaced, disenfranchised, poverty stricken refugees are sufficiently unhappy with their lot that they choose to take up arms against what they perceive as an agressor.
Marshall-Andrews made the argument, to which I subscribe, that by announcing further repressive measures in the UK, Blair will almost certainly add further strength to the cause of those angry young men (and it is always angry young men) who disagree with UK foreign policy, and so swell the numbers of those extreme few who may be willing to take more drastic action.
We all want the authorities to catch and try those who have ill intent towards us, and we all support the outstanding efforts of the police and the security services to date in this regard. But do we not already give sufficient powers to our police and others to do what they need to do, without fuelling the flames by introducing yet another package of draconian measures. It reminds me very much of Thatcher's government in the days when she was struggling with the problems in Northern Ireland.

Kids

2005-07-18T13:13:00.000+01:00

A hell of a weekend. Last Tuesday night my son Joe (3) woke up at 11pm with breathing difficulties. Thinking ti might an asthma attack brought on by the high temperature (it has been really warm here this last week or so) we took no chances and called an ambulance. It turned out to be a virus causing croup - an inflamed larynx causing the difficulty in breathing. By 2.30 am we were home and all was well-ish. Since then Joe's behavious has been dreadful. Totally non-compliant and rebellious. We think it might be down to the sucrose in the medicine he's been taking, causing him to be hyper, so hopefully as he no longer needs the medication, things will improve. But he has driven me to distraction over the weekend. And just he has recovered from the croup, his sister Rosa (6 months old) looks like she's got it, leading to more sleepless nights. The joys of parenthood,eh.
It's now Monday afternoon, and I've been able to escape to the office for some much needed rest.

2 minutes silence

2005-07-14T23:24:00.000+01:00

I missed the 2 minute silence that was observed today by many across the UK and further afield. I'm unhappy with myself about missing this (I was involved in a discussion and simply lost track of the time), and once agian I am surprised by my strength of feeling over this whole tragic affair.

London Bombings

2005-07-08T08:44:00.000+01:00

Just had to post a comment on yesterday's bombings in London as it has affected me more than I would have expected. Listening to the news reports last evening as I drove home I was fighting back tears so that I could see to drive. Not being prone to such emotional responses I was surprised by it, and still am. The attack is shocking, and has struck me more powerfully than other recent incidents, such as the Madrid train bombings, I guess because it is closer to home (a work colleague went through King's Cross station probably less than an hour before the thing started).
Perhaps it's something about having kids?
On which note, Joe is three years old today (which is a far cheerier thing to think about), and was up at 6.30 am to kick the day off in style.

Make Poverty History and the G8

2005-07-05T13:38:00.000+01:00

So what will happen if the G8 summit happens and our esteemed leaders announce a package that goes some way towards achieving the goals of the MPH campaign, but does not actually put in place the required changes to resolve the issue?
Will Bob Geldof call on all those millions that have signed up at www.live8live.com to rise up and hold their leaders to account, and demand further action? Where is this thing going to go?

Hoon goes for compulsory voting: have they totally lost the plot?

2005-07-04T14:36:00.000+01:00

This is madness - Geoff Hoon suggests that the way to reinvigorate our democracy is to make voting compulsory!
He has clearly missed the point. The three major parties in the UK, led by Blair's New Labour project, have successfully worked away over the last ten years or more to take the politics out of politics in the UK. Now they have succeeded they are wondering why no-one wants to play any more.
If the extent of democracy is to be limited to voting once every four years or so for a bunch of suits that are almost indistinguishable from one another, then its really no wonder that we aren't engaged in the process. When will they actually catch on to the meaning behind their own rhetoric, and truly enable ordinary people to take control in their own communities, and participate in the process of government, instead of simply allowing us to choose once in a while which amongst the elite will be able to exercise the power on our behalf. The people want a share of the power for themselves. Participative democracy is all we seek.
It's not revolution, but judging by their reluctance to make it happen, one might be forgiven for thinking that it was.
The internet gives us the tools and the power to do it for ourselves, without the need for hierarchy (if ever there was a real need for it) or massive party structures. These guys are living in the past, it's time they saw the cluetrain a-coming.

Live8 and the G8 summit

2005-07-02T20:52:00.000+01:00

I'm listening to the Live8 concert from London as I write this.
It may be the spirit of the occasion that has taken me, but I think that if the G8 summit does not get a result next week - and by that I mean a substantial and immediate improvement on the commitments made to date regarding Africa - the nature of the relationship between the people of the G8 countries and their governments will be radically altered.
Trust of the politicians is already at a pretty low ebb. Failure of the G8 to deliver a result on poverty could fatally damage what trust we have, leading potentially to an effective failure of the current democratic system.
Turnouts at elections will fall away further, leading to a collapse in the mandate (already pretty flimsy) that our politicians have to do their thing.

Europe: why don't the politicians get it?

2005-07-02T16:53:00.000+01:00

In the wake of the recent French and Dutch votes against the proposed EU constitution, it looks like the politicians are running around wondering what went wrong, who they can blame, and what to do about it.
I sense they are missing the point.
As I see it the people voted 'No' not because they necessarily disagreed with the constitution, but simply because they have not been included in the process that has got us to where we are. They see the EU as remote, bureaucratic, and unrelated to their daily lives and concerns.
The way forward surely has to be a major shift in how our elected representatives and national governments relate to the people they govern. The key word here must be 'participation'. If governments want the support of their people, they must be open, honest and enable real participation.
The rise in popularity of things like blogging and citizen journalism is not unrelated to this. We the people simply want to be involved, engaged and consulted over stuff that affects our lives. That's not too much to ask,is it?
We are no longer content to be passive consumers of government and big media spin. If they want our trust, they need to earn it. They do this by being open, honest, and placing some trust in us.
The sooner our elected politicians wake up and smell the coffee, the sooner we can get some real progress.

Michael Jackson Media Circus

2005-06-14T11:56:00.000+01:00

What a joke! Watching TV last night we had nothing but wall-to-wall journalists boring everyone (including themselves) stupid trying to fill long chunks of time with guff in between the announcement that the verdict on the Jackson trial had been reached, and the point where it was acutally made known to the world. we were treated to long tedious shots of the Jackson convoy as it made it's way from his home to the courtroom; endless bollox diatribes on the case and the people involved and the speculation on the impact of the verdict and impact of the trial on Michael's career (to say nothing of his mental state) and the decroations around the gates to his ranch and the media frenzy itself etc etc. All a huge waste of time and energy and of incredibly low news value.
With so many 24 hour news channels avialable to us, they are scrabbling for content, at all times steering well clear of any real in-depth analysis of any of it. And they ownder why the Internet is powering a huge boom in citizen journalism and community ownership and control of news.

Southampton relegated - as expected

2005-05-17T06:48:00.000+01:00

It's only been a matter of time. The day that Gordon Strachan left the club was the day that Southampton's fate was sealed. The process of succession was totally bungled by the senior management of the club. Steve Wigley made an honourable fist of a job that he was clearly not up to, the supposed high flyer Paul Sturrock lasted for only a handful of games before he left as a result of player power (from what I understood at the time). Finally Harry Rednapp comes into the job (wasn't he available at the point of Strachan's departure?), but clearly it was a case of too little too late at that point Too many changes over a short period of time, too many player changes, and the whole project was fatally wounded. Who to blame? Clearly Rupert, his aides, and fellow board members have to look at themselves and ask whether they could have avoided the shambles that took a smooth running Strachan-run side that was semi-seriously gunning for a European slot and turned it into a side that looks like it will struggle for survival in its new lower division home.
Ever since I've been following the Saints they have never been a great side, but have always shown promise. Until these last months, that is, when they have appeared lacklustre, directionless, and doomed. Thanks Rupert, for nothing. I hope that at least you take this blow as the necessary wake up call you clearly need, and learn the lesson that what happens on the pitch in future needs to to take priority over all else. Without exception.
Looking to next season, I have my doubts about Saints' ability to go straight back up. Very unlikely unless Rupert is prepared to spend (which I doubt), and we are able to retain the majority of the playing staff, and build on that.