Political opinions

I've just discovered a site called Political Opinions which appears to aggregate a vast majority of all the UK political blogs out there in an inteface that is easy to read and use. It's quite possible I'm horrendously behind the times in discovering the site, but I thought I would plug it anyway.

Web 3.0 is here... somebody pass me a razor!

There is a worrying development in the technology world, at time whent he phrase "Web 2.0" makes a teeth grinder amongst techies, the fluffy talkers have gone one step further and coined a new phrase. Web 3.0. Yes, we're moving on.

According to an article in the NY Times the next big thing is the "semantic web" or Web 3.0. Apparently it's all wrapped around the difference between "web documents" and "web data" and plans to use AI to generate recommendations, predictions and answer free form text questions.

Of course, this sort of thing has been a goal of developers, especially search engine developers for years. It is nothing new at all, and it doesn't deserve it's own name as if it is somehow "new".

I hate it when marketing people get their hands on a simple idea and make it sound poncy.

Why do we have export bans for art?

Some people may find what I'm about to say a little controversial, but I've noticed in recent weeks that the Culutre Minister, David Lammy, seems to do little more than slap export bans on works of art that have been legitimately purchased on the open market.

Now, perosnally I have a big problem with banning the export of works of art that have been legitimately sold, either in a private deal or at auction. This is especially the case when you see that the export ban is limited whilst they look for someone in the UK to stump up the cash to outbid the buyer see here for example.

Surely a person spending thousands on pieces of art, or historical diaries should be allowed to take them wherever they wish? The Government should not be intefering in the market in this way, should it?

The Sun for Asians?

I'd never heard of the Eastern Eye until this morning. A red top for British Asians. Brilliant!

What's wrong with the Midlands Industrial Council?

I'm a little confused, Lib Dem Voice it seems is banging on about the Midlands Industrial Council and party funding for some reason. I'm yet to figure out exactly what is wrong with the MIC in terms of legality.

Apparently, when the MIC gives money (publicly) to political campaigns it is not good enough. What should be happening is the MIC should say where it got the money from. In other words, its members' names should be published. This is surely a never-ending argument though? If you must say where the money came from, shouldn't you say where it came from before that, and before that, and before that, in perpetuity.

After all, if (as the conspiracy theorists at Lib Dem Voice imply) the MIC is acting as some sort of sinister laundering operation for those that want to secretly buy influence with the COnservative Party. Wouldn't donors just start using proxies to donate through it if members names were published? The Lib Dem conspiracy theorists talk about "transparency", but where does it end I wonder?

As far as I can see, the MIC is not much different to a Union in terms of being an organisation that gives money to a political party but does not disclose where it all came from. Of course, the only reason Lib Dems have the bit in their teeth about this is because they're facing near bankruptcy because of their own dodgy donor, and, more importantly, they'd love to see the taxpayer foot their bills.

Government wins award for spin

It appears that the Government have won National Business award for "Marketing Strategy of the Year". How ironic that a Government utterly obssessed with spinning news whilst simultaneously saying it doesn't, should win an award for spin and then gloat about it on it's Propaganda News Network.

The award is apparently for the "THINK!" road safety campaign which used cameraphone style footage showing teenagers being run over in order to increase awareness amongst children that roads have cars on them. Perosnally I liked Stephen Ladyman's comment in the press release the best, he said

"Road safety is a key priority for this Government. We have set demanding targets to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured. We are determined to achieve them."

Or in other words, road safety is a key priority, and we've failed to achieve our targets. Ladyman's newspeak is so transparent perhaps there should be a reTHINK! on that award?

Steve Pound's "blog"

I don't think Steve Pound MP really get's this blogging lark. He has a blog on the main Labour Party website here. It didn't start off particularly well with sporadic posts sometimes separated by a week, but then it got progressively (excuse the pun) worse to the point now where he appears to post once a month. He might as well just not bother.

Rumsfeld to face war crime charge..... in Germany?

Well I said that we'd start seeing lots of nasty legal proceedings against leading lights of the Bush Administration now that the Democrats have some democratic clout in the US Congress and I was right. Well, kind of.

According to an exclusive posted last night by Time, a criminal investigation is about to begin against Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzalesin (US Attorney General) in Germany. Yes. Germany. The case is being sought by 11 plaintiffs from Iraq who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo. Apparently they chose Germany because they have "universal jurisdiction" when it comes to war crimes.

Quick reality check time though. The US will never extradite Rumsfeld to face war crime charges in another country in what she will see as a politically motivated trial. In the case of the Attorney General I think he might actually have to extradite himself. It's never going to happen, which makes the trial rather meaningless.

The fallen are easily mocked...

I laughed.

Who controls history?

It seems there are plans afoot by the Government to stop criminals making money from selling their stories or writing about their crimes. I have to say the I can see the point that someone who is in prison and serving a sentence for a crime should not be able to make money from it by either selling a story or writing it whilst serving their sentence.

However, once a sentence is complete, should such restrictions really apply? After all, if we accept that the measurement of justice relates to the sentence that is given then surely once the sentence is complete there should be no restrictions on someone writing about what they've done?

It seems to me that if we restrict those who society consider "free" from writing about specific events the implication is that a sentence does not in fact end when one is released from prison. We are, in effect, extending sentences into the realm of thought and expression.

Of course, the murderer who writes about his murders whilst in prison should not be allowed to profit from it, and this is the case already if Dennis Nilsen's recent letter to the Standard is to be believed. But should we restrict people who have served their sentences? I don't think we should.

Is there not another side concern relating to the historical record though? If we restrict ex-convicts from writing about what they did then we actually restrict the future understanding of today in history. Who controls history in that cases? The state or the actors involved in the events?

It's certainly a difficult subject to approach, and I imagine that it owes more to the Government's desire to triangulate the Conservative Party on matters of law and order. After all, the press statement is couched within the language of emotion, talking about victim. It smacks of spin more than it does of principle. What's more, if such laws did come in, we might never get to read Tony Blair's memoirs.