Perversely, Web 2.0 has become synonymous with an American mythology of freedom. But information technology works best in small well-organised political units with high levels of social protection. So there is every reason to believe that the net works best with another notion of freedom – the security of knowing that failure will not have [...]
Category Archives: consumers
What part of surveillance society don't you understand, Jacqui?
April 27, 2009 – 2:03 pm
It almost beggars belief that the UK government, rebuffed in its anti-democratic plans to use the EU Data Retention Directive as a cover to create a database of all communication between citizens, is ploughing the same sordid furrow, using public data from social networking sites to to create ‘profiles’ of potential subversives. We wrote about this [...]
Random facts about funhouse Britain from Thus
April 14, 2009 – 12:30 pm
In no particular order, and with no special weighting, here are a few facts gleaned from the media with help from friends of Thus at Ten. Please feel free to send in your own facts. We need them in this era of spin and errant fantasy: 68% of Britons believe that MP’s salaries are ‘too [...]
British Rail Fares 50% higher than Europe – why oh why etc.
February 19, 2009 – 7:04 pm
There should be a sign upon disembarking at London St Pancras International train terminal: “Welcome to Britain, where everything’s a lot dearer and a little bit rubbish.” By John J Kelly A report by Passenger Focus has told us something we already know: British rail passengers, especially commuters, pay 50% more for our generally uncomfortable [...]
Some good news at last – News Corp lost £4.4 billion last quarter
February 9, 2009 – 11:09 am
Cheer up – the recession (depression, according to Gordon Brown’s most recent Freudian slip of the tongue) has some green shoots. You wouldn’t have noticed unless you were looking hard – the company in question is hellbent on global media domination and now owns the Dow Jones Wall Street Journal- but on Thursday, 5 February [...]
Why inflation is a Good Thing
January 27, 2009 – 4:58 pm
The view that inflation is an evil ‘debasement of the currency’ with terrible social, political and economic consequences is still orthodoxy among central bankers and the vast majority of economists. Over the next few years we are likely to see it return and become embedded in Western economies. This may not be such a bad [...]
So, where are the poor in the Brave New World?
January 13, 2009 – 3:03 pm
Authors and filmmakers can answer this question but policy makers and pundits seem not to have a clue. Perhaps it’s because they see them as statistics, not people. By Daniel Taghioff, India. Aravind Adiga’s Booker winner White Tiger and Danny Boyle’s Golden-Globe-harvesting film Slumdog Millionaire (based on Indian Diplomat Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A) [...]
It's official! Parasite blogging bastards have killed print journalism
Hold the front page – on second thoughts, don’t bother. There won’t be one to hold much longer. That bloody web thingy has eaten our journalists. Everything we hold dear – the right to be told what to think by poker-arsed blowhards in the pay of Illuminati kingmakers, fed and watered by PR lizards in [...]