Longrider

The boy Cameron is now calling for Brown to decide upon an election:

DAVID CAMERON this weekend challenged Gordon Brown to “stop dithering” and call a general election as the Tory leader unveiled radical tax-cut plans ahead of a make-or-break party conference in Blackpool.

I’m not entirely sure whether this is bravado or simply a glorified political suicide note… Everything suggests that the British public have been brainwashed into dependence on the state and feel that the control freaks currently in power are looking out for their interests – as opposed, that is, for their own grubby ends, the pursuit and possession of absolute power for its own sake. Everything suggests, therefore, that the bastards will win another term if they go to the polls now.

Frankly, while I have little time for Cameron; he is a vacuous waste of space who vacillates instead of providing a robust set of alternative polices; it is time for a change. A change will provide us with a brief honeymoon period before he follows in the footsteps of his predecessor and starts to clamp down on liberty. The chances of electing a government that genuinely looks after the interests of the electorate are remote as this will mean politicans making much of their activities redundant.

If they won’t voluntarily commit suicide, then perhaps it is time for the rope and lamp-post approach. A few gibbets outside the palace of Westminster might concentrate the minds of those feeding at the trough inside.

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Oliver Cromwell

I was contacted yesterday by someone from a company called Pluck, based in Texas. They are expanding their Blogburst product into the UK, Europe and Asia. Using the blog’s RSS feed, content is syndicated into the websites of large news sites, such as Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, USAToday, and Reuters. I was being invited to join (it’s invite only, apparently) – the usual ego pampering stuff. I don’t respond readily to attempts to flatter me and not having heard about this service before as well as being a deeply cynical individual (must be something to do with growing older), I thought I’d do a bit of research.

If you are a blogger who is keen on getting more exposure, then you may well be interested – and, to be fair to Pluck, these are still early days and the product is relatively new (about a year or so since the launch in the USA). On the downside, some of the early criticisms still stand.

The first is remuneration. The business model used by Pluck consists of on-selling of content to their clients. The client sites are monetised using advertising. At first, bloggers were merely expected to be satisfied with the increased exposure. Blogburst now has a ranking system which means that bloggers can be paid anything from around $50 – $1500 depending on performance. So, if you go for it, you may get paid. But then, you may not. This, from the licensing agreement:

You may be compensated for the Works that you have contributed subject to Pluck’s then-current policies. However, you acknowledge and agree that Pluck is not obligated to compensate you, you are not entering into this Agreement with the expectation of any payment…

Still, you might get to be famous for five minutes. Perhaps the greatest caveat is this, also in the licensing agreement:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you grant to Pluck and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, license to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works of, perform, display and disclose the Work (and derivative works thereof) for the purposes of (a) adapting the Work to fit within Publisher web sites without substantially changing its original meaning, and (b) distributing the Work (and derivative works thereof) to Publisher electronic web sites

Think very carefully before you agree to this. As Gary Farber points out, no professional would sign away their intellectual property rights in this manner and I certainly will not.

I would never sign a “perpetual license” without a vast amount of compensation. I would be willing to grant a limited term license under various more normal terms and limitations, and provisions for reversion of rights, in return for something resembling a standard royalty. As it is, you are asking for an extraordinary grant of rights, in return for essentially nothing, I’m afraid. Not withstanding the unusual “non-exclusive” language. But “royalty-free, perpetual” are words I have a problem with.

Having fallen foul of contract law some years ago, I am extremely wary about what I agree to. Since Gary wrote this, the “perpetual” clause appears to have been dropped. However, it still asks me to sign away far too much. When I write professionally, I issue an invoice upon publication. My current going rate for a 1,500 word article is £100. I am not prepared to write professionally for nothing or the possibility that I may be recompensed. Nor am I prepared to sign away my rights to the material. What I write here is not written for commercial use anyway; it is my sounding board. If people want to read it and join in the discussion, that’s a bonus but I don’t want to be constrained by any licensing agreements.

However, negative points aside, this is a developing field. If more exposure is your thing and you are prepared to sign up to the licensing agreement, then good luck to you; just think very carefully about those terms and conditions and be aware of what you are agreeing to.

Don’t get the impression that I think this is necessarily a bad idea; quite the opposite, it tends to demonstrate that we are being taken seriously. I am simply not prepared to sign up to the agreement and, frankly, I don’t particularly want this place to become commercialised.

To summarise;

• The big media publishers get access to bloggers’ content and make advertising revenue from it.
• Pluck makes a profit by selling bloggers’ content to the big media people.
• Bloggers get… Well, they might get some money. Otherwise they get their egos stroked.

Um… Fuck that!

Oh, yeah, there is also one other caveat:

Requirements for acceptance into the BlogBurst network:

• At least weekly posting
• Family-friendly language and content
• Distinct, intelligent writing style

I can manage two out of three…

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More reading:

Medgadget

Mediashift

Online Journalism

Plagiarism Today

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Update: I came across this from Blue Cat:

In the end I ran it past my attorney and web-specialist, who said: “OK, basically they want to sell your content to the newspapers.  You get nothing but the pleasure of seeing your blog content on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.  Meanwhile, BlogBurst gets paid money by the SF Chronicle for providing it with stuff people want to read, i.e. your blog.  And the SF Chronicle makes money by putting ads around it.  Ooh, it’s like TOTAL EXPLOITATION. Tell them to fuck off.”

Thanks attorney. Sorry Eric.

I didn’t do the attorney thing, but came to the same conclusion…

According to Chris Hodder, the BMF’s Government Relations Executive, writing in Motorcycle Rider – of which your humble scribe is an occasional contributor – (no online copy, I’m afraid) the DVLA thinks that a third of motorcyclists are criminals:

Thirty-eight per cent of all motorcycles are being ridden without tax, according to the DVLA. That means that every third motorcycle on the road doesn’t have a valid tax disc. Somehow, I (and many others) find that very hard to believe. That would mean that over a third of all motorcyclists are criminals.

Well, quite. So how did they reach this figure?

The DVLA sent people out to take down the registration number of every passing vehicle and they then checked this against the tax database. This yielded a figure of 16 per cent evasion for bikes. They then ran this through a computer model working on the assumption that untaxed bikes are ridden less and arrived at a figure of 38 per cent.

To those of you who may be struggling with this; they made it up.

Their proposed solution for this outrageous criminality (that they made up)?

Apparently, as a third of all motorcyclists are habitual criminals, we all need tagging like a paroled prisoner. Move forward a short while and we reach Electronic Vehicle Identification (EVI) ankle-tags for motorcycles. EVI is the DVLA’s latest plan to catch the untaxed motorcycle. All motorcycle number plates would be fitted with a chip which could be read with a roadside reader flagging up the untaxed and uninsured motorcycle as it passes, and alerting police to the criminal.

Of course. Naturally. I expected nothing less. The DVLA are a bunch of incompetent, lying fuckwits and their solution to a problem that they have exaggerated for their own nefarious ends is to treat us all like suspects and tag us like criminals. I have come to expect just that from what is rapidly becoming a fascist state. It never occurs to these incompetents that they might have got it wrong – oh, no, they invent a figure from their own deranged imagination and assume it to be accurate and then propose a “solution” based upon that error. Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick! Is it any wonder I have come to despise absolutely the machinery of government?

Chris goes on to point out some flaws in this proposal:

Now, ignoring the potential expense of replacing every motorcycle number plate in the UK and equipping every police force with readers we reach the next problem of accuracy. As the DVLA has already proved, it does not appear to have a way with numbers.

He is being too kind. I would use the word “fraud”, but then, I’m not feeling particuarly charitable.

Personally, I don’t have a great deal of confidence that the DVLA even knows that I have a valid tax disc, let alone that it has the correct details for the 1.62 million motorcycles it thinks it has details for.

Indeed – still, if they can invent one set of figures, why stop there?

Then there is the potential for technological problems. The readers are not yet 100 per cent reliable and sometimes have problems reading anything that is concealed or obscured. Then add on the fact that they are easily disconnected. As a substitute for Automatic Number Plate Recognition, it is hardly inspiring.

Quite. Disconnecting it is exactly what I will be doing. I will not, absolutely not, have my bike tagged. It is road legal and despite resenting every penny of the road fund licence, I pay it. Any attempt to tag either me or my machine will be met with vigorous resistance and if it is made law, I will break it. There is a line and these bastards have just crossed it.

The Department of Transport has issued the new Highway Code. From what I can tell, the online version has not yet been updated. Anyway, it’s started…

Under the new Highway Code, which comes into force today, having a cigarette while driving is a breach of the rules of the road and classed as a “distraction”.

It means that if a driver crashes his or her car while smoking they could be charged with driving without due care and attention. That could mean a fine of up to £2,500, three to nine penalty points or even a ban.

And just how many road traffic incidents are caused by smokers smoking while driving? Ah, but, the department isn’t worried about little things like evidence. These are the same half-wits who introduced the rule requiring motorcyclists to ride with daytime headlights – despite there being no evidence whatsoever that it makes the slightest bit of difference to the rider’s safety. So what we have is unfounded assertion being used to persecute people. Nothing new there, then. Update – found it; Rule 148.

Other additions include drivers being advised to stop if they are dazzled by the sun. (Rule 237)

Oh, great. And then what? Wait for a cloud to come out? Wait for the sun to go down? If I am dazzled by the sun, I put my sunglasses on or flip down the sun visor on my helmet (depending on what vehicle I’m using). It’s called applying common sense. Clearly, common sense is a commodity that is becoming increasingly uncommon and is entirely absent in the echelons of government. Again, no surprises there.

This little story from the Thunderer makes depressing reading:

There could be more time to make the tea in the middle of Coronation Street if Ofcom agrees to follow the lead of Europe and relax the rules governing television advertising.

As someone who detests advert breaks upsetting the flow of a programme I am less than enamoured by this decision. As someone with a libertarian bent, I find myself all convoluted with contradiction. That is; there shouldn’t be any government imposed rules in the first place. On the other hand, I hate intra-programme advertising with a vengeance and the regulation has broadly worked in my favour.

But Ofcom, the communications regulator, is preparing to review the rules and has hinted that it is likely to allow more minutes of advertising on British screens. It could permit up to 12 minutes an hour, the future European maximum.

Bugger! Okay, I realise that this is how commercial television is financed, and am happy enough for adverts to be shown between programmes, but during them is, frankly, so annoying that I won’t watch commercial programmes live; preferring to record them and time-shift, thereby giving myself the opportunity to skip the ads. I will not be changing this approach. Indeed, despite some morons thinking that this is stealing, my position on the matter will become ever more entrenched.

To the advertisers out there; you do not endear me to your products by engaging in this practice. Indeed, if you disturb my viewing in the middle of a programme, you can be sure that I will go out of my way to avoid your product.

Insiders at the regulator are keen to emphasise that they want to avoid coming close to US advert levels, which they believe would be unpalatable to British audiences.

No kidding?

Azon Howie, of the Carat advertising agency, said: “There will always be complaints if a change like this is introduced, but if we’re allowed to do it people will be keen.”

Well, Azon, you might want to look at my previous comment. True, there’s only me saying it, but there are plenty of others out there who time-shift precisely to avoid watching the dross you pollute our programmes with.

Janice Turner is braver than I; she has tried cycling the mean streets of the capital:

I’ve just got back on my bike after a four-year hiatus. On day three of a Tube strike that was keeping me from the new autumn fashions in Selfridges, I walked into Edwardes of Camberwell and left riding a silver Dahon collapsible bike. On its maiden journey, I remembered why I’d given up: cycling in London is an extreme sport, little safer than base jumping. Every time a bus skims past or I wobble on a drain cover or I have to trust that a FedEx driver has seen me, I imagine my skull being squished like a watermelon. A journey begins with trepidation and ends with me slightly high that I’m still alive.

Um, that’s why, despite having a bicycle in my garage, I don’t venture out onto the roads with it. The cycle-way that runs past our house is nicely separated from the city streets and that suits me just fine.

The city hates the cyclist. It is evident from every spiteful sign saying “Bikes attached to these railings will be removed” (how are they possibly hurting anyone?), the warnings around Covent Garden that police will punish those who don’t dismount (why not draw bike lanes through pedestrian precincts?), the scarcity of cycle racks, the mapped routes that suggest we take looping detours while cars hog the crow-flight main roads . . . See, after just three weeks in the saddle I’m already brimming with cycling self-righteousness.

The city may offer the use of bus lanes – and as a motorcyclist, I can use these in Bristol – but dicing with buses isn’t much better than taking one’s chances with the rest of the traffic, quite frankly. Yesterday, I watched as a cyclist was hassled by a truck. The truck eventually went past the rider with inches to spare and was treated to a well deserved salute for his efforts.

I wouldn’t ride my motorcycle in London – having worked there I am aware of the standards of driving – let alone take my chances on a push bike. Janice Turner deserves a medal – that or a trip to the asylum.