Author Archives: Mark Pack

Another in my mini-series (see here and here) of snippets from the Communities in Control White Paper that haven’t had the attention and debate that perhaps they should have had. This time, directly-elected Mayors:

We want to make it easier for people to demand that their local leaders move to establishing a directly-elected mayor through a referendum, so:
• we will consult on permitting on-line petitioning as well as traditional paper petitions to demonstrate support for a referendum
• we will consult on reducing the threshold for a petition to trigger a mayoral referendum from 5 per cent of voters –

…

As I touched on in a previous post, there is much to debate in the Government’s Communities in Control White Paper published over the summer, even if Hazel Blears’ recent speech on the topic seemed to rather miss the opportunity.

Here’s another morsel:

We will give local authorities the power to provide incentives for voting in local government elections, for example by entering voters into a prize draw. Voting incentives should not be construed as ‘paying for votes’ or create a major new financial burden on councils. Instead, they should be viewed as an eye-catching method to increase awareness and engagement,

…

The Government’s White Paper, Communities in Control was published over the summer and the subject in part of Hazel Blears’ recent (and, er…, rather controversial) speech. As this extract shows, there’s plenty to chew over in the proposals, despite Hazel Blears’ diversion into swipes at a pair of bloggers:

Among the voluntary organisations we want to help in different ways to build stronger communities, there is a particular role for faith based groups. Britain has a strong tradition of faith-based organisations working to improve local communities. This reflects the importance placed on charitable acts, social action and civic duty

…

Anthony Hook has the story.

The way has been cleared for millions of out-of-print books to appear on the internet with the news during the week that Google has come to a $125 million settlement in two copyright lawsuits brought against it over its plans to scan books and make them available.

Google has already scanned around 7 million books, of which 4-5 million are out of print, and this deal clears the way for their full content to be made available via the Google Book Search tool. Currently the tool lets you search the full content of the book, but you can then only read a limited extract online unless the book is an out-of-copyright book from one of the libraries Google has partnered with.

The plan for the future is that the full content of in-copyright but out-of-print books will be available for purchase, with the revenue being split between Google and publishers/authors. For in-copyright and in-print books, the deal will see easy options for people to buy the book.

This deal only covers the US, though is likely to expand to cover more countries over time.

It is interesting to see how, albeit via the medium of lawsuits, the book publishing industry seems to be reaching an outcome that still gives it control over its products (and they can opt out of Google’s services) whilst also using the power of the internet to make them more widely available and to generate revenue. While the music industry fell well behind the curve, the book industry – with the advantage that books are hardly to copy round than songs are – seems to be riding it successfully and exploiting the opportunities that internet services offer rather than fighting them.

The wider availability of book content may also see a shift in the subtle, but real, bias in the sources of information used for online content.

The American Stop Genocide blog has three excellent recent posts about the tragic events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):

• The death of a peacekeeper
• A round-up of the latest news, and
• A reminder of how beautiful the area can be.

You can donate to UNICEF’s appeal here.

The recent news that Rwanda is seeking membership of the Commonwealth means that, if successful, we would therefore be seeing Rwandan citizens resident in the UK also voting in elections here.

One of the quirks of Britain’s imperial past is that Commonwealth citizens living here are able to vote, including in Parliamentary elections. This includes Mozambique residents who are able to vote because, although Mozambique was not part of the British empire, it was admitted to the Commonwealth in 1995 for political reasons.

Rwanda’s application to join is part of its attempt to move away from its Francophone past. The recently announced …

The usual complaint is from mainstream / traditional journalists that bloggers don’t meet standards of reputable journalists. However, there are three respects in which I think that bloggers repeatedly show higher and more ethical standards than mainstream journalists.

First, honesty about where a story has come from. Too much of the traditional media still uses twee phrases such as “it has emerged” as code for “one of our rivals has reported that…”. In comparison, it’s pretty rare for the source of stories taken from other outlets not to be acknowledged by a blogger, complete with a link.

Second, transparency over re-writing. There …

A cheery wave and good afternoon to you all.

Page 19, today’s newspaper: “It emerged yesterday that the number of days MPs would attend Parliament in the next session would be the smallest since 1979-80.”

Liberal Democrat Voice, 24th October (that’d be six days ago): “Over the next year Parliament will sit for just 128 days, the lowest figure since 1979.”

I’m off to get a “Bringing you the news six days before the Guardian” T-shirt 🙂