Just a quick note to explain why the ongoing battle about copyright infringement are important to everyone. Because it's not like we all have the right to download stuff for free off the internet, right? I mean, if someone spent a lot of money making a film or whatever, then it's fair to ask people to pay to see it.
That's the trouble with this whole thing! Any discussion about it tends to get sidetracked almost straight away into a discussion of whether or not piracy is a bad thing or not. And that isn't the important thing.
Here's what the important thing is: what you do on the internet is private. I don't mean that it ought to be private - it actually is private. What you download a file, no-one can tell what was in it.
What this means is that anything they do to "clamp down" on internet piracy is going to end up infringing everyone's privacy. Either they have to give themselves the power to - basically - read your mail, or they have to work on suspicions instead of proof. So you get these things where they can get your household's internet connection cut off if you are accused of copyright infringement three times.
Not 'found guilty of', mind: 'accused of'.
Now that's a big deal. In this country, we don't punish people because they've been accused of things. This is fundamental stuff.
And that's only if they use these powers responsibly! What if they bring these rules in, and a future government isn't so trustworthy? They have the power to cut your whole household off from the internet - that's email, websites, Skype, everything - just by sending you three letters!
And that is why you should care about this stuff even if you don't care about internets and pirates and all that stuff.
Once you do care, sign up for email alerts from the Open Rights Group. They will let you know when one of these laws is proposed, and tell you how you can oppose it. Normally you just have to send an email or sign a petition or something. It works, too - they've tried several times, in several countries, and we've been foiling them so far.
So at this vote for a change rally, they didn't have any truck with all the (apparently) usual objections to proprtional representation. Basically it goes like this.
Yeah that's a good thing. These two big parties don't give us enough choice.
Within the big parties this is exactly what happens already. Oona King and Peter Mandelson are in the same party, and they are worlds apart in their beliefs and stuff. The difference with smaller parties working together will be that the arguing will just be out in the open instead of behind closed doors.
Pfft. "Strong". First, the parties we have know aren't strong, they just try to put on a brave face. Second, even if they were, big strong governments aren't that awesome. What's awesome is when the government represents the people.
That would suck, but unfortunately that's democracy. There aren't actually that many racists in the country, but there are a few, and frankly, if 1% of this country want BNP MPs, then 1% of parliament ought to be BNP MPs. Hopefully everyone will quickly see how impractical and dishonest they are, and not vote for them any more.
Nuts to that. We gave votes to women, we lowered the voting age, we cut off the King's damn head when he got tyrannical, we fought and won a war against fascism, and we made a national free health service without a great lot of fuss like they have in America about it. This kind of progressive change is practically a British tradition. You just have to keep working towards it, that's all.
So I went to this vote for a change rally a couple a months ago and I found out about proportional representation. It was totally convincing, so I thought I'd write this down so I can link to it instead of keep telling everyone about it.
Here's the problem. It's way simple - this is how I explained it to my five-year-old daughter.
You have to choose two people to represent your year on the school council. There's Alice, Bob and Charlie. You and all the girls in your class vote for Alice, but all the boys in your class vote for Bob - and there's a couple more boys than girls in your class, so Bob is the one chosen by your class.
All the girls in the other class vote for Alice too, but all the boys vote for Charlie. There are more boys than girls in that class too, so that class has now chosen Charlie.
So now Bob and Charlie are on the school council, voting for all kinds of trouser-wearing, boy-type stuff, even though way more people in your year voted for Alice.
Even without a five-year-old's acute radar for unfairness, you can tell that isn't right.
I know it's not a perfect analogy, but it works, I think. In real life, it goes like this - I vote for the Lib Dems - quite a few of us do - but mostly people around here vote Tory, so they win where I live. At this point, my vote is thrown away. I tried, I failed, I'm out of the game.
So with a proportional representation system, like they have in Scotland (so I'm told), that wouldn't be the end of the story. My vote would be kept, and counted up with the totals from the rest of the country. If the Lib Dems don't get any MPs for specific places, but they end up getting 20% of the votes across the whole country, we add a bunch of Lib Dem MPs to parliament until they make up 20% of it. They don't represent any particular constituency - they just represent people like me.
Doesn't that sound better? Not much different, but a bit better. That's good, right?
Oh, FINE, yes, there are some down sides. Well, there aren't really, but people think there are. This post is long enough thought, so I'll come to that later.
Most people I've spoken to (i.e. two or three woolly liberals like myself) agree that we shouldn't try to prevent the BNP from having their say - indeed, if we ever manage to get a proper voting system in the country, I'd say they ought to have an MP or two, if enough people really want it. It's difficult to defend this position sometimes though, on account of how nobody actually wants to have to listen to what they say. But Richard Herring really nails it in his blog post today:
I certainly think that Question Time should have Nick Griffin on their show. Not only was he democratically elected by the idiotic British public, but by silencing him one only shrouds him in mystery and makes him appear like some speaking maverick whose words are so scintillating that they can not be heard. Let him get up there and say whatever is in his tiny head, because if it's anything like anything else that the BNP have ever said it will be palpable, laughable nonsense and he can only make himself look like a prick. I have doubtless said this before but generally when people are silenced by a government or the church it is because what they are saying is true - Galileo springs to mind, as do the political prisoners around the world who are incarcerated for daring to criticise oppressive regimes or propose democracy. But the BNP have no such worthy or truthful purpose. Let them speak. What they say is wrong and their arguments fall apart under the smallest amount of examination. Are we worried that people might be stupid enough to be seduced by these lies? Perhaps they will be, but if you want democracy then you have to let stupid people have an equal say. It is up to the less feckless individuals to do their part and stop the fascists in their tracks. But we should let them speak or they gain a cachet that they don't deserve.
Following on from my wildly popular (in certain circles) Ragged Robin timeline, and inspired by Ryan North's Songs In List Format1, I hereby present a timeline of the argument2 described in One Week by Barenaked Ladies.
She:
She:
He laughed at her, and said that she had just done just what he had thought that she was going to do.
In the living room:
She had forgiven him.
She just smiled at him.
He still has the rug burns on both his knees arising from the tackle on day three.
He sits back and waits till she says she's sorry.
Both parties will say they're sorry.
1 Actually it looks like a few people did versions of this on the original thread. But I still like mine better.
2 ... which we're assuming takes place between the narrator - a man - and his girlfriend.
Man, if there's one thing I love, it's cover versions of hip hop songs. These are my favourite ones.
| Originally by | Dr. Dre | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | **** | a pretty classic Dr. Dre track |
| Swearing | ***** | tons of it |
| Sex | ***** | also heavily featured |
| Violence | ***** | some murder |
| Emotions | ***** | Ben Folds really emotes like crazy on this one |
| Originally by | Nelly | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | ? | I have not even troubled to listen to it. Why would I? |
| Swearing | *** | a bit |
| Sex | ***** | lots, plus extra points for being a girl |
| Violence | * | a lover not a fighter |
| Emotions | **** | a goodish bit |
| Originally by | Missy Elliot | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | ***** | rockin |
| Swearing | * | radio-friendly |
| Sex | *** | I think there's lots but the lyrics are too hard for me |
| Violence | * | don't think so |
| Emotions | ** | plenty of energy but it's not like they suddenly infuse the lyrics with soulfulness |
| Originally by | Sir Mix-A-Lot | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | **** | a crass classic |
| Swearing | * | radio-friendly, actually |
| Sex | ***** | it is a song about bottoms |
| Violence | * | it is a song about bottoms |
| Emotions | **** | JoCo sings it like he means it |
| Originally by | Black Eyed Peas | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | * | just awful |
| Swearing | * | radio-friendly again |
| Sex | ***** | it is about the singer's "lovely lady lumps" |
| Violence | ** | Alanis is quite fighty in the video |
| Emotions | **** | tons BUT Alanis is being ironic. In fact this cover loses points for straying into 'parody' territory |
| Originally by | Snoop Dogg | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of original | **** | a pretty popular track, by all accounts |
| Swearing | ***** | oh, plenty |
| Sex | ** | a fair bit, but loses points for the zz-top-ness of the singer |
| Violence | * | too laid back |
| Emotions | ** | not so much |
I like Tori Amos but this is just too terrifying for me to even link to. The whole dynamic of the original is that the lyrics are monstrous but the tone is childish. Tori Amos just takes the second bit out of it and whispers the lyrics over a haunting background. Absolutely nightmarish.