Vote at 16

When I was 16 I had a strong interest in politics, I watched the Parliament Channel on cable, I listened to the Today program and read political stories in the papers.

Obviously not every 16/17 year old shares my interest in politics but then again I’m 25 now and am still in a position where very few of my peers share my interest in politics so it’s not just 16 year olds.

In fact I seem to remember more of my friends wanting to talk politics at 16 than I do now. I think this has something to do with the fact that at 16 it’s the issues that matter whereas at 25 party politics starts to cloud judgments.

It’s interesting to see more and more areas around the British Isles looking seriously at lowering the voting age to 16. The ever forward thinking Isle of Man bit the bulletin and reduced the voting age last year and 16/17 year olds had the opportunity to vote in the most recent election there.

Now a Guernsey politician is suggesting the island reduces the voting age to 16 and it’s been mooted more than once in Jersey. It’s an ever increasingly common issue in England and a number of countries around the world have 16 as their voting age already.

In the British Isles people can work and as such pay taxes at 16 so why shouldn’t they be allowed to have a say in how their tax money is spent. No taxation without representation.

A couple of interesting comments on the BBC Jersey Vote at 16 feature.

Lukw
Im 17. I think its unfair that they feel im responsible enough to rent a house, work full time, pay full taxes.. but not have a say on what my money is being paid on, its one or another, you cannot tax us as adults and treat us like children. Its out of order, its sick.

Michael Taylor
I think that if you can’t vote at 16 you can’t be taxed at 16 and personly, I dont want to wait an extra two years because your level of maturity will not be enough different. I want to vote at 16 too. Or not have any government involvement. Life Should be a little fair.

Gwion
No taxation without representation. I’m 16 and if I had no interest in politics I wouldn’t be reading this now. It annoys me how the government thinks that our voice is less valuable than 18 year olds, but still make us pay tax, and allow us to join the armed forces. Surely if we’re ready to die we’re ready to vote?

There is a vote on that feature as well where 66% of the 140 or so people voting feel that it should be set at 16. Also included this quote posted on the Newsround Vote at 16 features “I don’t mind either way, vote and taxes at 16 or vote and taxes at 18″.

That’s the biggest sticking point. If you expect someone to contribute to the public purse and pay taxes then you should also give them the opportunity to vote for (or against) the people that decide how that money is spent.

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Global Warming Paper

The political position of a newspaper in the UK is fairly obvious, you can get it from the leader or the way they write their headlines.

Some are slightly more obscure or difficult to work out than others, especially for issues where the traditional party lines are slightly blurred.

Today’s big story was a fairly good example of newspapers not being able to decide what to do. Apparently climate change could reduce the worlds economy by up to 20% if something isn’t done now according to Tony Blair.

Tony has described the review into the cost of global warming as “overwhelming” evidence with “disastrous” consequences which is nice.

The Sun has nailed its colours to the mast with some pretty big nails, in fact I reckon they’ve done it with a few screws and nailed them in for extra effect.

Their homepage sported a photo of Tony Blair and the headline “I’m saving the world and you lot are paying (Families facing £1,300 eco hike)”. The Sun’s slighty more upmarket sister paper, The Times, suggested there was a ‘Global warming ‘disaster’.

It’s nice to know two seperate arms of the same company can express different opinions depending on who reads them and their readers opinions. I guess Global Warming is a bigger issue for the middle class Times readers than the working men and women who prefer the Sun (gross over simplification and stereotyping of newspaper readers noted and ignored).

The others were fairly straight out of the box fact or quote based headlines. The Express told of how the “PM warns of global warming disaster”.  The Guardian sported a direct quote as a full headline suggesting that we ‘Pay now to avoid disaster’.

The Independent went with “Climate report demands action, says Blair” which was pretty similar to the Telegraph’s slightly harder hitting “Blair: World must act now on climate” and the Mirror had an all caps “BLAIR: URGENT ACTION NEEDED OVER CLIMATE CHANGE”.

This got me thinking about a quote from the ever brilliant Yes, Prime Minister where Jim, Sir Humphrey and Bernard were talking about newspaper readership.

Jim: I know exactly who reads the papers.

The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.

Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.

I’ve just started watching through my Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister DVDs for what must be the fifth time in the last couple of weeks - the best political comedy series ever made (although The Thick of It comes close).

On the subject of the environment. I consider myself to be a fairly eco-friendly guy. Not through any concerted effort of my own though, if it was down to having to actually get off my backside and do something I doubt I’d ever get round to. No it’s due to a series of accidents and life decisions.

I recently took one of the Carbon Neutral Surveys that work out how much it would cost you to become Carbon Neutral - mine came out at about £30 a year and that’s only because I live on a small island and have to fly 200 miles there and back twice a year to see my parents.

I don’t drive (mainly because I’ve always been too lazy to bother to learn), We rarely have many lights on at home because I prefer the dark and I turn my computer, TV and everything else off by the mains every night (mainly because my wife is worried the place will explode due to my dodgy wiring).

A few blog posts on climate change:

Tim Worstall - A Climate Scientist on the Stern Review
Open Democracy - “The Economics of Climate Change”
Greenpeace UK - It’s not too late according to UK Government
Guardian - Climate change starts at home

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Past the Podorati?

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been going off the whole podcast thing recently, giving my ‘walk time’ to alternative forms of distraction.

However, I’m not off it completely and so decided to kill five minutes and see if there was anything new on the iTunes Podcast page since I last looked (two weeks ago).

There were a number of new things or at least things that have been there for ages but have recently been featured.

The biggest thing to hit me though was the fact that for an independent medium there wasn’t a single home made podcast in the UK top 20 - in fac tthere wasn’t a single home made podcast featured on the index at all.

Number one is what it’s been for about two years, Ricky Gervais and co. Number two is Amnesty International and the only over non media company produced podcast is the Jamie Oliver one that his team produces themselves.

Other than that the third, fourth and fifth spots are BBC podcasts as well as the eighth (for a podcast with no content), eleventh, twelth and twentieth. So basically the BBC makes up seven of the top twenty shows.

Other than the BBC the National Geographic Channel has two shows in the top twenty, the Guardian has one as does Virgin Radio and Comedy Central and the rest is made up of magazines and promo podcasts for new TV shows or films.

So this big media revolution that was going to give everybody the opportunity to broadcast the the entire world seems to be dominated by the BBC, newspapers and other media organisations.

Then when an individual does make it into the upper echelons of the Podorati they tend to already be celebrities.

There are a few exceptions to this, Leo Laporte (not really a celeb in the UK) and the Revision 3 team but you have to hunt for anything not made by a major organisation.

Just having another quick glance and Ricky Gervais is actually in the top twenty twice. Once at the top with the video podcast he produced and then at number eighteen with the Audible promo.

I’ve been toying with the idea of launching an Up Your Ego podcast, using the few broadcasting and interview skills I have to put together a weekly tech show with interviews and comment, that and I’ve been asked by a few people to re-launch the Jaffa Cake Podcast (heaven knows why!).

To be honest though, I’m not sure it’s worth it. To get past the podorati and actually be featured on the iTunes index (the only place that really matters when it comes to podcast promotion) you’d have to have a major media company behind you, which sort of goes against the point of democratic media production.

Maybe, instead of going ahead and creating podcasts on our own, and media companies trying to do the same thing, we, the podcast and blogging community should be approaching media companies with our ideas and a pilot and seeing if they’ll back it as the distributor.

This IS more democratic than the old method of trying to get something on to radio or TV where there’s a limited amount of time as all the company has to do is say - The Jaffa Cake podcast is brought to you by McVities!

It could be a newspaper, a radio station or even a biscuit company. As long as it’s a well established brand it will get featured on iTunes, mentioned in the mainstream media (and on well known blogs) and basically heard.

And THAT is the crux of the democratization of media - yes everyone will be able to make their own content and publish it but the only ones that will get a substantial audience beyond friends, family and a few dedicated followers (now that the initial everyone in phase is over) are the ones tied to a big name brand.

Leo Laporte and his TWiT crew are OK because he started earlier enough to build a brand (and he had a radio show of his own to kick things off), Diggnation and Revision 3 will work because they’ve got the tech mecca that is Digg tied in and Ricky Gervais and Jamie Oliver are… well Ricky Gervais and Jamie Oliver.

(I’ll add links tomorrow).

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A bunch of TWiTs

One of the first podcasts I ever listened to was Go Digital (didn’t see that one coming did you) from the BBC with Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson.

The second podcast I discovered was TWiT with Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, John C Dvorak and others.

I’ve played with other podcasts along the way, and enjoyed many of them but these are still the only two I listen to as soon as they’re released without fail.

Podcasts are the perfect audio format for me. Their portability means I can listen to them in just about the only free time I’ve got - my walk to work in the morning.

However. For the last few weeks I’ve been doing other things on my walk to work. Listening to music, reading books or just thinking about things.

One of the reasons I’ve been finding alternative forms of distraction from the fact that I’m actually doing excercise, isn’t because I really wanted to do other things, but because I was bored of podcasts.

I still enjoy the ramblings and tech debate of the TWiTs, the informed wonderment of Digital Planet and all the other things I get from the 20 or so podcasts I subscribe to, I’d just decided it was time for something else.

In the same way that until a few days ago I’d gone through a phase of only blogging a couple of times a week - because I was feeling a bit of blog burnout.

From the post on TWiT.tv by Leo Laporte I get the feeling a few of the regular TWiTs are suffering the same sort of burnout and as much as I love the podcast it has felt a little tired lately.

Leo suggested that he may retire TWiT and replace it with something else but after several hundred comments of complaint he said he would keep it going and just rest it for two weeks.

My suggestion to Leo would be to look for a new set of guests and vary things up more often when it returns.

Look for a sort of Question Time for Tech style approach.

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Pretty Electic Proms

The Electric Proms as a concept is brilliant and one that non-classical music fans have been calling for for years.

Basically it’s a giant live music festival but with the flair and creativity of the proms. Not just a bunch of people getting muddy in a field watching a band play on a big stage several miles away.

It will include gigs from Paul Weller, Jamiroquai and The Who through to The Raconteurs, Kasabain and the Zutons.

As well as the select few seeing them live you’ll be able to watch or listen to sets online, see them on BBC Big Screens around the country, listen on the various BBC Radio Stations, watch on the various BBC TV Channels or catch sets on BBCi.

This is all wonderful, brilliant, fantasmagorically glorious in so many ways but even better than all that - at least for someone as geeky as me - is the pretty BBC Electric Proms website.

I’m hoping this is a sign of things to come from Aunty Beeb as it has the colour scheme of the best of the 2.0 generation, the interactivity and usability of the best of the social web (without too much social bollocks) and the content of the greatest media company in the world.

It’s pink and black with a simple menu system and features linking between themselves.

It also has by far the sexiest (and simplest) media player the BBC has ever produced - it’s a bit of a nod to the concept mock ups I’ve seen for the iPlayer era News Player (pink and black).

Currently you can watch a set by Paul Weller, Jamorique or the Magic Numbers as well as listen to sets by The Young Knives, Seb Rochford and Klaxons.

Every band taking part has it’s own page complete with photos from their set, audio or video of them playing and comments from fans.

There’s also live webcasts of sets and interviews including one tonight from 21:30 with The Good, The Bad and the Queen.

Everything above, alone, without any of the other brilliant programming is why the BBC is by far the best media organisation in the world.

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Freeview in Jersey

The great digital switchover starts in 2008 and is due to finish in 2012 around the United Kingdom but not in the Channel Islands. 

The analogue TV signal will be switched off leaving millions of televisions, video players and equipment obsolete, well sort of - they can all be fixed with a £20 freeview box.

Joe Smithies of the Digital UK group told BBC Radio Jersey’s John Uphoff show  that the Channel Islands would be switched in 2013.

Unlike other areas of the UK there won’t be a crossover period though. Jersey will only have analogue one day and then only have freeview the next.

From what I’ve been told in the past this is because there aren’t enough frequencies available to launch freeview and analogue in Jersey at the same time.

Jersey won’t get the full set of channels either, apparently due to commercial reasons the island will only get the basic public services stations from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and five.

Joe Smithies expects the average cost per household will be about £100 to switch fully from analogue to Digital in 2008 but a lot less by 2013 when Jersey jumps ship.

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Let me be legal

Bill Thompson has been musing on his blog about whether multi-million pound TV deals like the Sky One getting Lost deal recently announced have a place in a modern, international digital market place.

He talks about bit torrent and Five’s new download service offering CSI for £2.49 before it airs. There’s no way I’d pay £2.49 per episode but I would happily pay £1.49 if it was available at the same time around the world.

I don’t want to illegally download TV shows, I’m more than happy to pay for them as I started doing with music when iTunes launched. I just need to be given the opportunity to do so.

I also know a large number of people in the UK who would happily give up bit torrent and use iTunes or a similar service if 1) the price was right and 2) it was available at the same time as the US.

I don’t care whether it has DRM (although I find DRM a massive pain in the…) as I would be watching it on my computer or on my TV, which is connected to the computer. So I don’t need to burn it or put it on an iPod.

The problem is, at the moment in the UK you have a few seperate services offering a couple of shows each (Channel 4 and five) much later than the US release and for a much higher price.

I don’t have time to sit and watch a show when it first airs on TV and more often than not I’ll forget to record it as well. So having the opportunity to pay a season pass and have every episode of my favourite shows on my computer would be a god send.

I’ve been playing with the Tape it off the Internet beta lately as well but to be honest it’s still not giving me the chance to legally download any episode of any TV show I want for a reasonable price when it comes out in the US.

Although it does point me in the direction of iTunes and Unbox (not available in the UK) it still points me towards various Bit Torrent trackers. The big difference with TIOTI is that it has a web 2.0 social layer to it which gives me the opportunity to share thoughts, finds and favourites with friends using the services - a bit like last.fm for TV.

At least from next year we should have the BBC iPlayer for shows broadcast on the good old B B of C - as long as Sky don’t screw things up for people that want it that is.

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Slightly Surreal Spam

The vast majority of my spam messages are trapped by Akismet so I rarely see them but sometimes I like to have a look in the spam folder and see what they’re trying to sell me now.

There seems to be a slightly surreal trend of tyring to make a proper sentence that’s more or less complete nonsense.

These are some of the message I found in there, covering everything from horses to caravans.

Roland
That’s a horse of another colour…

Ottewell
The mountain has brought forth a mouse…

Pierce
Better be alone than in bad company…

Newton
That cock won’t fight…

William
The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on…

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Great interview with Beeb DG

The BBC Director General Mark Thompson listens to the Guardian Media Talk podcast and obviously various BBC podcasts, but prefers to listen to/watch programmes as they happen.

He also doesn’t see podcasts as broadcasting because that is something sent from a mast to millions of people.

In the interview with Thouroughly Good Radio’s Jon Jacob, he suggested the podcasting model is more like starting a new magazine or sending out a newsletter which is a really interesting concept that to be honest I sort of agree with.

It was interesting to hear that he does actually have a knowledge of blogs and podcasts and can name some instead of being a talking head.

It’s a great, fairly frank chat about the future of broadcasting, the importance of the BBC and the way the corporation has changed over the years.

It touches on new toilet seats for the DG, the BBC logo, podcasting, You Tube and using indie production companies.

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