CR Linefeed

Ok, so I’ve been thinking a bit about ecomonics lately.  I’m by no means an expert, but it certainly is an interesting area.  Part of this is that I have been exposed to quite a lot of Libertarian thinking from my involvement in NO2ID. So I’ve read quite a lot of stuff written by people who see individual liberty and free markets as being opposite sides of the same coin.

Let’s just start with the assumption that free markets are the best way to organise an economy. That is certainly something that the people running the vast majority of large companies would agree with.  If that is so, why is it that those same companies all seem to be run like Soviet-style command economies? Instead of the Supreme Soviet, you have the board of directors.  Instead of a Five Year Plan you have, well, a five year plan. If free markets are such a good thing, why are they not introduced within those companies?  You could have multiple groups competing to provide services, with the best ones succeeding and the worst ones ‘going bust’.  Maybe this does happen in some organisations, or perhaps I’ve missed something obvious here…?

I am going to be exhibiting some of my photos as part of Oxfordshire’s Artweeks festival.  There’s a group of us who have got together to hire the local church hall as gallery space.  For a sneak preview of what you could see if you come along in May, take a look at the Kennington Artists website.

Yesterday I loaned some money through Kiva.  In case you’ve not heard of this, it is a scheme whereby people with a little spare cash can make small loans to people in the developing world.  So you send off $25 (along with a bunch of other people) to help someone buy stock for their small shop or whatever.  You don’t get any interest, but the vast majority of loans are paid back in full.  So all you stand to lose is the interest you could have gain from investing it elsewhere.  Now with interest rates at record lows, that means it isn’t costing much.

Discussing this with Beth this morning she joked that people in this country would be needing these sorts of loans soon.  This was just before a news item on the possibility of the government giving loans to the car industry to keep them afloat.  So the government is considering giving our money as a business loan anyway.  This got me thinking.  Maybe they should follow Kiva’s example and set up a micro-financing system where ordinary individuals can decide how much money they fancy giving to Jaguar/Land Rover.  If enough people think it is a good idea and are confident it’s a good investment, then they’ll get their bailout loan.  If not, they won’t.  Direct democracy in action!

Personally I feel more confident giving my money to a Lebanese plumber than to a car company at this point in time.  But then maybe I’m just a pessimist?

During November I am growing a moustache in aid of Prostate Cancer, with a team of colleagues. To donate to this worthy cause, visit my Mospace page: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/1588936

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I’ve been having fun creating some comic strips with toonlet. It lets you create comic strips and publish them to the world very simply indeed. Ok, so most of the strips out there are not that good, but I’m sure some gems will emerge…

We interrupt our usual broadcast to ask a question:

Is there something intrinsic to the making of dark, bitter marmalade that requires it to be thick cut?

I’m a fan of these darker marmalades, like Hartley’s Olde English. I like the bitter taste, but I’m less keen on the chunks of peel. They make it hard to spread. I wouldn’t mind so much if the quantity was the same, but the pieces were smaller. So is it just tradition that means darker implies thick cut, or is there a good reason?

Incidentally, did you know that the word ‘marmalade’ comes from the portuguese ‘marmelada’, meaning a kind of quince jelly? This has the odd effect that if you pick up a jar of marmalade from somewhere like Lidl, which has food labelled in a host of european languages, every translation will contain the word ‘marmalade’ except for portuguese.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted something here, but I have been quite busy since Christmas. A week off work with a nasty dose of flu and then my transformation in the last week into all-round media man. Yes, my organisation of a barbeque to mark the opening of Oxford’s Identity and Passport Service interrogation centre has thrust me into the limelight with multiple different media organisations. I did several interviews in my role as chair of Oxford NO2ID.

Although I ended up quite enjoying being on the radio, I don’t think it is really my natural environment. The most annoying thing is that because it is live you have to think on your feet. I found that I came up with the perfect response to some of the questions a day or two after they had been asked. Since I can’t go back on the radio and answer them I thought I would bore you with them instead, dear reader….

One odd thing was on the Bill Heine show on BBC Radio Oxford, where I was ‘guest co-host’ no less, sitting in the studio for a full three hours. Towards the end a woman phoned in to say that since she and her husband are disabled they don’t have driving licences. They also don’t travel, so they don’t have passports. I was therefore accused of denying forms of identification to disabled people. I think I handled it fairly well, but I think the first thing I should have said would have been: if you need a form of identification, couldn’t you just get a passport? Somehow the obvious response was not obvious at the time. The next question is: Do you feel comfortable having to prove your identity so often?

Another situation where I could have come back with a better response was when I was back on BBC Radio Oxford for the Sunday morning show. The host, Phil Mercer said “It’s hardly likely that we will have a repressive regime here”. Firstly, that is like saying “I’ve driven for 40 years without having an accident, so I don’t think I need a seat belt”. But ignoring that, suppose you lived in a country where there was collusion between the authorities and death squads targetting a minority of which you were a member. In that sort of situation you might feel more than a little worried about giving the government control over your personal data. Of course, that couldn’t happen here in the UK, could it?

What is is about identity and intellectual property? They seem to bring out the weirdest use of language in organisations. I think it has something to do with trying to explain abstract concepts in layman’s terms.

Take the lovely UK Identity and Passport Service. Now you know that these folks are not top of my Christmas list since I’m a hardline opponent of ID cards. But they do seem to say the strangest things. Their current tagline is:

Everyone is unique. Let us keep it that way.

Is it just me or does that make them sound like they are in the business of hunting down and wiping out clones? Looking at their website again recently I saw they explain interviews for first-time passport applicants with this gem:

The interview confirms that the passport application we have checked belongs to the customer and that they are the rightful owner of that identity.

Hmmm, the “rightful owner of that identity”? So, will I need to bring along some kind of title deed, or a receipt to show where I purchased it?

Moving into the world of intellectual property we have FACT, the Federation against Copyright Theft. With a name like that they must be in the business of stopping copyrights getting stolen? Well, no, because you can’t steal a copyright. They’re actually involved in looking for breaches of copyright, which is not theft. They just used that word because breaching copyright is kind of like stealing if you wave your hands enough.

They could have chosen a different crime and I think they could have had more impact as an organisation if they’d gone for FACG, the Federation against Copyright Genocide….

My cousin Will Taylar is an artist currently living in Berlin (which has a thriving art scene). He has an exhibition opening at the Rocket in London’s Shoreditch next month. If you know any rich art collectors interested in works by an up and coming artist, do send them along!

With my birthday coming up, I suggested to Beth that she could buy me a lens for my camera. I’ve heard good things about the cheap-as-chips 50mm lens you can get from Canon. I’ve seen it on sale in the region of £60 in a variety of places, but apparently it hits well above its weight in terms of quality. For comparison, Canon also make a 50mm lens which sells for well over £200 and another pushing four figures.

Since it’s not too long until the big day we decided to pop into Jessops in Oxford. Anyway, we asked about the lens in question and were met with incredulity: “A Canon lens for less than £100, what? where?”. Now I haven’t frequented them much since I got back into photography, but when I was a teenager I used to be in one of their shops most weekends. I’m sure they seemed more on-the-ball back then. As we left the shop, the shop assistants seemed to be chuckling to themselves about the nutters asking for cheap Canon lenses.

Anyway, to cut a long story short we picked it up from Amazon for £65, although if it had been more competitively priced at Jessops.com I might have got it there and opted for their “Store Pickup” service just to have the last laugh.