While the secrecy, harmonisation and the inclusion of investor state dispute resolution are bad enough aspects of TTIP, it seems this is another ‘Living Agreement’. Not only will the courts that interpret these agreements be beyond public accountability, any amendments to the treaty and agreements will be so too. I found this out at the meeting called by the Open Rights Group where Nick Dearden of the World Development Movement came to speak. …
I have just submitted a short comment opposing the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Resolution (ISDR) clauses in the EU’s negotiating position on TTIP, and urge you to join me. I used this web site, at sumofus.org. While their tag line, “Fighting for people before profits” is reminiscent of Lewisham’s rag bag of careerists and trots, both ISDR and all the non-tariff extensions to TTIP should be opposed and the concept of putting people before profit is equally laudable. …
Many company’s, particularly US owned, staff evaluation schemes are based on ranking their staff, and additionally rewarding the top 20% and firing the bottom 10%. (This idea comes from the US, probably from GE; firing people because they are not as good as someone else is illegal in the UK and much of Europe.) Basically it is not about continuous improvement, it’s based on a world view that thinks people are lazy and need fear to make them work hard. Fear of not getting a bonus, or fear of dismissal. This cynicism and hate will never build a successful firm. …
At Don’t Spy on Us’ Day of Action, I attended the seminar/panel “Changing the Law to uphold our privacy”. Amongst the speakers were Ross Anderson, Claude Moraes and Mark Stephens. Ross Anderson works at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Security Engineering. He blogs at “Light Blue Touchpaper”. To me the most memorable contribution, was from Anderson, where he shared his views developed while researching and writing his paper, “Privacy versus government surveillance: where network effects meet public choice”. …
Earlier this week, Pascale Lamb, one of Labour’s MEP candidates tweeted, “It’s not immigration that causes pressure on services…..it’s austerity”, and in under 100 characters sums up what should be at the heart of Labour’s campaigns this spring and isn’t. The right wing led Commission of the European Union is the world’s ideological engine of austerity and in this country austerity economics has been adopted by the Tory led coalition as a macro-economic policy enabling the assault on standards of living and the welfare state. There are alternatives. Labour should be offering hope of a better (economic) life, not to mention a decent tolerant society. It should also be making something of the fact that it has a candidate for President of the Commission. It’s austerity which is killing jobs, and it’s the result of policy. …
Building another W8 laptop as Xmas present for someone. I am really unsure that Microsoft did the right thing in trashing so much of the XP/Vista UI. Stuff that was easy is now hard, not because it’s hard, but because no-one knows how. They have destroyed the value of the world’s Windows self administration knowledge which was one of its key competitive advantages in winning the desktop. While the battleground for consumer mindshare has moved to the the phone and Microsoft needed something that worked there, the amount of learning required by consumers is very high and not required of Linux nor Apple users. Neither Apple nor Google have one user interface for the laptop and phone, why do Microsoft think they need it. …
I have over the last couple of weeks, upgraded my Apple Macbook pro from Mac OS 10.6 to 10.9. It’s been pretty easy until it came to Macports. There is/was a rumour that stopping at Version 10.8 was the best answer but this wasn’t available to me; they’ve stopped shipping it. The new version of MacOS was easy enough to install, just a download from the Apple Store which is good, although the consequent performance was shit and then we have to move Macports forward. This wasn’t so easy, and I document the steps I took at an article called Macports on my companion wiki. The fact there is so much mucking around is another proof point that Apple are not building a general purpose computer, but a desktop appliance and iTunes host.
…
In the aftermath, of Ed Miliband’s conference speech, I came across two important articles published on the Touchstone and IPPR blog sites. Responsible Capitalism Takes Shape by Duncan Wheldon, and On left populism and Labour’s conference by Nick Pearce. It was Wheldon’s article that caught my eye first but both he and Pearce suggest there is a tension in the Labour Party between those who believe that British Capitalism no longer serves the interests of the majority; that what’s good for business is no longer good for people and the ‘simple keynesians’ who follow the old New Labour policies of using macroeconomic policy and demand management to encourage private sector growth. Pearce argues that Miliband believes that it’s broken and needs rebuilding, he’s on record as saying he thinks the 2015 election will be as transformative as that in 1979 and as he put it in the conference speech in speaking about the fact that capitalism seems no longer to let people afford a decent life, …
On the journey home, I shared a table with one of the exhibitor staff; we spoke about Ed’s speech and Labour Party Reform, particularly the suggestion that we should hold a primary for our Mayoral candidates. My fellow traveller said that he’d like the opportunity to help choose Labour’s candidates; since he also lived in Lewisham, I am not sure if he was referring to Lewisham or London and while I spoke about the supporter’s organisation he didn’t seem that interested. I need to think about this.
He also said he thought the speech was left wing, and I expressed surprise. Miliband is speaking about improving markets and making them work, not imposing worker’s or even consumer’s control. It’s about regulation. This is in contrast to the right but it’s not in itself left wing. Renationalising the Utilities would be left wing, although I am not sure that we really want that method of control re-imposed. …
I stayed in the Hilton to take part in a fringe event called “The economic contribution and growth potential of the creative industries” with speakers from the CBI, UK Music and UKIE. The meeting was planned to be chaired by Tom Watson, but Sion Simon stood in for him.
Matt Fell from the CBI’s competitive markets division spoke first. He started by pointing out the bleeding obvious that creative is becoming digital; except it’s not! Most musicians make more money performing than they do through licensing their content. It’s industrial music and its parasitical lawyers, agents and accountants, and now it would seem commentators, lobbyists and analysts that need copyright and the corporate industrial cocoons. He also stated that there was a lack of government backing, absolutely look at the coalition’s abolition of the British Film Council and he called for strong intellectual property laws. I wanted to ask how they could be stronger! …