Conference blog

8 comments from readers

Carl Jones
16 September 2008 at 22:37

Big pharma appears to be very unhappy about some internent sites who are highly critical of their products and as a result, they want these critical sites to be censored in some way...maybe just labled as "liable to making negative low evidence (?) based statements".LOL

Of course, this will backfire on the establishment. Just imagine that "X" site goes to court and forces the establishment to prove their case. At the weekend, David Miliband told a blatant lie on BBC radio....should I now get the BBC a black mark to go with the thousends it should already have?lol

Ben, you sound like you have a strong NWO agenda of rubbishing Labour, knocking the Libs and supporting Mr Cameron who happens to hold some very rightwing positions...nothing like his media persona.

BTW, did you arrive by snorkel, or was it on an Israeli sub?LOL

Douglas Chalmers
17 September 2008 at 01:52

"Conference season sees various New Statesman staff dashing around the country to take part in fringe events..."

Soohhh, this is what goes on, eh? Get back to work, you guys!!!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (USA + Australia)..... conservative political parties are reviving, revivifying and revitalizing.

The old Neocon agenda is out and the agenda they should have had a decade ago is in. Wow, they're almost human - at last, duh.

Admin
17 September 2008 at 09:23

Carl, you sound like you're delusional. What have I said that suggests I in any way shape or form support Lexus Dave? For the record I don't, couldn't and never will. Ben.

Carl Jones
17 September 2008 at 14:44

Ben, you are knocking the Libs, it could still be a hung parliament. We must remember that only 22% of the potential electorate voted for Blair and half of those said they only voted for Blair because they couldn`t bear the thought of a Tory getting in. So don`t trust the polls and there vanillia questions.

I suppose your boss wants Brown out? Maybe he does lunch with Murdoch.LOL

Roland Baker
17 September 2008 at 17:59

"Conference season sees various New Statesman staff dashing around the country....". I hope they have paid their carbon tax for not using telegenics and satellite links.

Digital access and necessary training in what to do with that access to enhance participation and inclusion are significant subjects. Any chance of a video being posted on here for us to have digital access!?

Did the panel consider the infrastructure ownership, security and financing arrangements? We are chronically short of bandwidth in a country where only 2.3% of total bank lending is to manufacturing industry. In "2084" whose fingers will be on the multiplexer and the router? We have plenty of scope for efficiency improvements by deploying digital methods to the full - eg in health access with electronic prescriptions and email medical advice.

Is having a biro and paper, or a telephone ,a human right or just a widely available convenience for the exercise of human rights - eg family life? It should really be a widely available convenience with the emphasis on widely available. The interface with human rights is how internet use is policed against abuse and how the data it contains is used by government and powerful corporations. Similarly, the widely available convenience can be "early adopted" by the economically well breached to secure entrenched advantage to the permanent detriment of the less fortunate - eg in education and job prospects.

Will the NS be having a digital access correspondent?

Admin
18 September 2008 at 10:21

Hi Roland, curiously we covered most of the issues you raise. Andrew Pinder told us he lived in a Shropshire village and BT had kindly installed broadband as a result. I think he was joking but at least there's no bandwidth shortage there...

We also talked about the issue of policing the internet, about the role of different corporations and the points about human rights and intellectual property were quite hotly debated. I don't think we're going to stretch to a digital access correspondent - we don't have a social housing one either. But these are issues that are interesting to us and our readers. We're hoping to post a podcast of this year's fringes shortly - and, for the record, I travelled to Bournemouth by train and tube. Hope this helps, Ben.

Carl Jones
18 September 2008 at 17:13

But Ben, you said you "surfaced briefly in Bournmouth"....I didn`t know there was a tube in Bournemouth.LOL You really had me fooled....I thought you were doing a Buster Crabb.lol

gnuneo
25 September 2008 at 17:47

damn - i would have liked to be there, how does one manage to finagle invites to things like these?

anyway, what the UK needs is quite simple, to guarantee the individual freedoms that makes us a 'liberal democracy'.

a national/regional Well, based upon free open-source linux code (see Ubuntu for a model), with high level individual encryption for *every* user, including business and individual users, with proxy servers automatically hiding IP addresses built into the system, giving a highly secure on-line front end system that can be accessed anywhere by the user.

built onto this will be digital quality 'tv-on-demand', where the viewer pays a small amount per show/video (& i *mean* small - such as 10p or less for archived material), eventually this will allow program makers to distribute their shows directly to the consumers, meaning no more adverts, and no more TV license.

sound good so far?

there's more. Create PC manufacturing capability in the UK, and high-quality screens/speakers etc, and make the new OS incompatible with Windows - and then subsidise the new high quality, low power, repairable and durable equipment into homes that need it, such as the elderly, people on benefits etc, libraries, social centres. As this will be a combined high-speed internet with high quality TV (and cheaper than cable/license fee, with infinitely more choice), and as every set purchased is more British workers employed, more infrastructure built - this is surely a no-brainer, and will expand over the whole UK rapidly.

and as this UK-based system expands, it will be the only large-scale completely secure web, uncrackable by US Govt/corporations to give business the trading privacy they need - and so it will spread abroad, pulling our new white-box products with it. And also pulling in revenues for our media output!

the investments needed would be the start-up capital for these manufacturing companies, who should be designed so the workers purchase the shares ASAP to make these private companies properly capitalist. The software is already fully available and free, and new on-line games could be programmed rapidly for the new OS.

we would end up with a state-of-the-art communications structure, a new manufacturing base, our business and personal communications secure from hostile foreign electronic surveillance (or hostile domestic State surveillance), children and youth far less brainwashed into purchasing 'things' based purely on artificially created needs and fashions, and finally - a fully independent BBC, responsive not to the Govt and its grubby hands on the license fee jar, but to its own creative workforce, its own desire to make Quality programmes, programmes that will be watched around the entire world for their sheer excellence.

of course, with the current bunch of incompetent middle-managers we have to put up with in Govt, we can expect other countries to do this first, and once again leave British ingenuity and excellence in the dustbin because the British Elite would rather destroy this great Nation before allowing any power or control to leave their fingers.

and of course, the notion of the Govt actually helping create small manufacturing (instead of £100,000,000,000 to banks), is little short of heresy in the neo-conservative world.

the funny thing is, even now the UK could achieve the highest standard of living in the world in just a couple of decades with the right policies. Shame really.