Good morning. Today in 1990, Tim Berners Lee published a formal proposal for the world wide web. Today nearly twenty years later, here we all are. And isn’t it frightening that 1990 is nearly twenty years ago?!
2 Big Stories
Labour’s plan for ‘John Lewis’ public services
The Guardian is reporting that the Labour party are proposing mutualising public bodies – and the Guardian thinks the concept of mutualisation will be so alien to its readers that the only way of explaining it is by analogy to John Lewis.
Hospitals and schools would be transformed into John Lewis-style partnerships under radical plans that could form a central plank of Labour’s general election manifesto.
Public sector bodies, which would also include leisure centres, housing organisations and social care providers, would be allowed to take control of their own affairs if staff and users voted in favour.
Quite an amazing change of fortune from the party that has spent the last dozen years increasing Whitehall control over – well, pretty much everything.
Valerie Singleton launches six-button computer to get elderly online
The Telegraph has the story.
The screens of new PCs have just six buttons, allowing technology-shy users to surf the internet, send emails and watch videos without having to navigate around cluttered desktops.
My immediate facetious flippant thought is that receiving email from elderly people who have keyboards with only six buttons might well be a frustrating experience for all concerned. Which 20 letters will they omit?
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
- Scrutinising Scrutiny
- Is this available in English?
John Ault has news of a Tory council about to disappear up its own fundament:
Conservative controlled Wealden District Council, has ‘set up a scrutiny panel to scrutinise its scrutiny panels.’
Alex Folkes highlights an unreadable high level strategic document from new Cornwall Council. Not in Cornish, but in management jargon.
At Cabinet today, member queued up to complain about it and wrung an admission from the Leader that it needed to be ‘in plain English and fit for purpose’. Cabinet Member Carolyn Rule agreed to go away and proof-read it. I hope that she goes further and gets it re-written in English.
Don’t miss p23!
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
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4 Comments
I clearly remember when the 1990s were the future. Now they are the distant past.
I believe the correct emoticon is :S
There does seem to be renewed interest in mutualisation, cooperatives, stakeholder partnerships and the like from both Labour and Conservatives.
One can imagine the distinct ways in which each might veer off into wrongness: Labour might be tempted to over-regulate mutuals; Conservatives might be tempted to forget about the need for mutuals to be democratically accountable.
It does seem as though David Cameron is able to do weak Labour impersonations now too.
I know you were joking – but no there isn’t a 6-button keyboard, just the standard one.
The “6 buttons” are on the startup screen, and go to email, chat, web, setup profile etc.
The programs for those do seem to use nice clear graphics, but otherwise are pretty much as you’d find on other computers. But telling people something is easy to use does work, especially if it reduces fear of the new and unknown, so it’s a good idea. See http://www.eldy.eu/ for details.
Some of us elderly have been swearing at computers for 50 years. Anything, any little thing at all that makes them easier to use and/or more reliable and/or less frustrating is always welcome.
Some of us also recall the many mutuals, municpals and trustee institutions that got nationalised after 1945. Nobody, at the time ever gave a satisfactory account of the why of those nationalistions. “But they will be more efficient, of course..” was the best that I encountered. In none of the cases that I am aware of has that turned out to be true.