No geek
is an island

The Channel 4 News website has an article about a new IPPR report on children’s use of teh internets (Young people ‘are being raised online’). The news story avoids much of the usual scaremongering, although it’s typical of the IPPR to suggest that because “parents need to be reassured about what they are looking at” the Government must intervene.

There’s some high class, in depth research in the report too:

The researchers found that on YouTube, a search for the term “happy slap” delivered 117 videos posted in the last week and “street fight” 312 videos.

My motivation for highlighting this story, though, is to draw attention to Channel 4 News’s own bizarre interpretation of the law online, as revealed in the final paragraph:

Unlike television programmes, internet content is not subject to any legal restrictions such as the Obscene Publications Act, Sexual Offences Act, and laws relating to race hatred, defamation and libel.

Really? I mean, really?

Some of these laws may be enforced in different ways, and some specific to other media (for example, video classification laws) may not apply, but the idea that I can state that Jon Snow eats newborn babies in order to feed his unquenchable bloodlust (important legal disclaimer: he doesn’t) and not be risking a libel action is absurd.

Of course internet content is subject to legal restrictions, although these will vary from country to country. That’s how file-sharers swapping copyrighted material have been prosecuted; that’s how a UKIP parliamentary candidate won a libel action over posts on a Yahoo! forum. To suggest that these laws don’t apply is pretty irresponsible.

*Just to be clear: I have no reason to think TV treasure Jon Snow eats babies.

There’s a long preview of Brian Paddick’s autobiography Line of Fire in today’s Mail on Sunday. The book will, the article says, “offer an insight into police culture and practice - from the era of Life On Mars to the era of the suicide bomber.”

Paddick is, of course, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor in May’s London elections. His thirty years in the police force make him the ideal person to lead the fight against crime in London, and those three decades of experience are charted in his book, from the Brixton riots to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Here’s a morsel from the Mail:

Whenever I went out on night patrol with one particular pandacar driver, the first stop was the “tube station” - the off-licence.

We would buy a couple of “tubes” of Foster’s lager which we stowed under the front passenger seat. We would wait for a lull, go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and then sit in the car eating and drinking lager.

In those days the unofficial policy was to try to avoid arresting people for drink-driving - because police were drink-driving themselves.

Line of Fire is released on March 25th.

It’s Eurovision time again - hurrah!

This May there will be not one but two semi-finals - that’s three Eurovision TV shows in one week. My my. The UK, of course, goes straight through to the final, regardless of how badly we did last year.

But before we can do that, we need a song, and tonight’s the night we get to decide who will represent us in Serbia. Not for the first time, I won’t have a chance to vote in the selection, but it’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make.

Once again, the singers include a healthy share of has-beens, but this year reality TV shows are represented in even more abundance than before - and the format positively encourages it.

There are six contestants, divided into three pairs: solo acts, groups, and, ahem, Joseph versus Maria. A studio jury, headed by Terry Wogan, will choose one act from each pairing to face the public phone vote, along with one of the remaining three. Then, in a second show tonight, the two acts receiving the highest share of the vote will sing again before one of them is chosen as our entry, again by public vote.

So who are these audacious songsters?

The solo acts are X-Factor loser Andy Abraham with the passable Even If and former EastEnder Michelle Gayle with Woo (U Got Me). Michelle Gayle has had the most previous success of all the acts, although the only time I’ve seen her was a couple of years ago and she was doing a PA in a club in Blackpool.

Even If is pleasant enough background music, but there’s nothing special about it (a statement that can be applied to most of the entrants). Woo (U Got Me), as it’s slightly silly name suggests, is more fun and, were I part of Terry’s team, I’d probably put it through ahead of Even If.

The two groups acts are both all girl groups. LoveShy (they didn’t learn from Hear’Say, did they?) have a reality TV provenance, but I’m not familiar with them so I’ll let Pop Unlimited explain:

Popstars: The Rivals rejects Emma Beard and Aimee Kearsley still haven’t taken the hint. Refugees from Clea, who miraculously managed to release three albums, the new duo LoveShy are in the running with Mr Gorgeous. […] I’m not sure they’ll really cut it live.

The other group is trio The Revelations with a track called It’s You. Group member Annika is from Sweden, which can only help.

Mr Gorgeous is, to my surprise, quite catchy, contemporary pop with something of a Girls Aloud sound. It’s You has a very sixties feel to it, which apparently is the group’s style. Either could probably be an OK Eurovision entrant.

Which leaves us with Any Dream Will Do failure Rob McVeigh with I Owe It All To You and How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? failure Simona Armstrong with Changes.

I Owe It All To You begins like a million Shayne Ward/Westlife/Steve Brookstein written-for-male-reality-TV-show-winner snoozefests (that’s an actual genre). It comes slighly to life about 60% of the way in, but that’s one-and-a-half minutes too late. Missed opportunity for a Eurovision key change towards the end too.

Changes is marginally better but nothing exciting. I’d probably choose it ahead of IOWATY, but I wouldn’t let either of these anywhere near Belgrade. My only advice to voters: pick one of the other four.

You can listen to clips of all six songs on the BBC’s Eurovision website. Eurovision: Your Decision, with Sir Terry Wogan and Sir Claudia Winkleman, is at 7pm tonight, with the results show at 9.30pm. Happy voting!

I may not be the train regulator, but… One of my eight wishes for 2008 was:

That the majority of my commuter trains into London are on time (December’s score: 0%).

Two months into 2008, how is Southern - my local train operating company - faring? I’ve crunched the numbers and the answer is that they’re getting better, but are short of my target.

Based on the wording of my wish, these stats are limited to journeys I’ve made into London for work, and only count the train I actually took: if I got to the station and a train due earlier than the one I was aiming for arrived late and I caught it, that counted as a late train; but if it was so busy that (rather than squeezing in) I waited for the next train and it was on time, that counted as an on time train.

On the one occasion that the train I went for was cancelled, I’ve made an exception and counted that as a particularly long delay (17 minutes; the longest delay otherwise was 9 minutes).

Here are the stats:

So my morning train did manage to be on time the majority of the time this month, but, averaged out against January (when I caught more trains), the proportion for 2008 so far is 45%.

Not great, but only a little way to go to get over the key 50%. And what a triumph that would be.

Not this one - this one.

And probably not. But still…

Whenever Barclaycard staff are recruiting new customers/borrowers/credit monkeys - usually at stations - I always turn them down on principle. The reason I give is that I already have one, which is true, but even if I didn’t I would refuse.

Because Barclaycard are Evil.

I am not, I confess, the sort of person to carefully pay off my balance every month and get the advantage of Nectar points/0% interest/cashback without paying any interest. For that reason, it’s all the more important that I have a sensible credit limit, so that I’m never tempted to book a round the world cruise on the assumption that I’ll pay it back one day when I’m rich.

A few years ago, when I was a student and very short of cash, I asked Barclaycard to increase my credit limit by £50 so that I could buy some new glasses (all the better to see things with, which was handy at the time). They duly increased my limit by several hundred pounds. It wasn’t long, given the option of some “free” money, that Student Me had spent it.

Occasionally, Barclaycard write to me and congratulate me on having earned another credit limit increase. These letters always insist that for “security reasons” they can’t tell me in the letter how much the increase is. I have to log on to their account management website or wait for a statement before I can find out, an implicit direction to just get on spending it without thinking.

I logged in this week to discover that they’ve increased my credit limit yet again - by £1,000. I’m now going to have to go out of my way to request they reduce back to what it was (and probably lower).

This kind of behaviour by credit card companies has fuelled the massive rise in personal debt in the UK, the sort of carefree lending that leads into a credit crunch. It’s irresponsible lending that will see families with existing debt problems getting further into trouble.

So boo to Barclaycard.