Category: Current Affairs
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Gifts, Not Exchanges
Interesting debate going on about charitable giving in the UK. The recent coalition government’s budget set a cap on the amount of money that people can give and get tax relief for…and charities have responded with concerns that this will reduce the amount of money they receive. In a weird parallel story, a supermarket have…
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Homeless People as WiFi Hotspots | The Wire | Seeing the Invisible
One of those bizarre stories that makes you check the date carefully and make sure it’s not 1st April: homeless people are being used as mobile WiFi hotspots in Austin, Texas, during the South-By-South-West (SXSW) conference. Yes, you did read that correctly, and you can read the full report in The Atlantic here. That piece…
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Catching Up…
Been quiet here… which is probably a function of being very un-quiet elsewhere. So thought I’d mention a few of the things I’ve been doing / working on… Firstly, I have to mention The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. It’s a big, wonderful novel which basically ate most of my time in the past…
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SOPA | Internet Piracy
In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site. As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim…
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Debt Crisis, Leveson, Healthcare… Finally Paying the Price for the Poverty of Capitalism
Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items. Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now…
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Poppies, Remembrance and the Need for Disruption
It’s been interesting watching the argument over whether the England football team should be allowed to wear poppies for their international matches this weekend. The international governing body of the sport, FIFA, ruled that they could not have poppies on their shirts as this contravened their guidelines. The FA, the British body, cried foul and…