Charity begins at the tax office

In the Uk papers today there's a report that compares the charitable giving habits of people of different religions.  Moslems come out top with a bit over 300 pounds a year and atheists come out 'meanest' with only £100 a year.  Thumbs up for the believers you could say....  but what it desn't say is what do we mean by charity - what's included? The whole concept of the welfare state is to give a share of your income to supprt those in need - whether the sick, the young, the old or the jobless.  The amount we pay in taxes far exceeds the small sums the survey is talking about for charitable giving.  Apart from salving your moral (and spiritual) compass do the sums mentioned in the survey really make a difference? 

Well yes, if you are one of the charities that relies on generosity over and above your tax duty for a cause the government doesn't feel responsible for - from hospices to cmpaigners for or collective rights.  Things are tight for many people all the more reason to ig deeper into your pockets.....

Digital choice the copyright way

Found on a comment list http://dlvr.it/

"See, by only providing content through locked down, time limited, location restricted methods, the studios are actually giving us a lot more choices in how we consume our content.

Dirty pirates can only consume their content in one way: no encryption, HD, and worldwide. But the studios give us an unending stream of different choices that provide real value to their content. Maybe you want DRM that requires a constant connection to the internet. They have that. Maybe you want content that's purposefully degraded. They have that. Maybe you want to be able to watch content only in the US. They have that. Canada? They have that too.

Content that expires after 48 hours? No problem. Maybe you want to have to watch it in the theater? They got you covered. The depth and breadth of choices that the studios provide is something that the evil pirates just cannot cover. The other day I asked someone at the pirate bay for an encrypted copy of The Grey that would only play on my computer for a week and they couldn't do it!"

But why Diggers?I

History is a mirror for the present. In it's silent reflection we can learn lessons and see parallels in the world we live in today.

In England in the middle of the 17th century parliament had just fought a bloody war freeing the people from monarchy and rule by divine right. But as in a prequel to Orwell's Animal Farm. for the common man it was soon clear that nothing much had changed. The rich and noble still held sway, and enclosure of common land into private ownership was rife, a triumph of vested interest over common good.

It's against this background that Gerard Winstanley and the Diggers took over an area of common land to farm collectively. Winstanley wrote pamphlets arguing on moral and religious grounds against the exploitation of the poor and preached a new Commonwealth where the commons would 'be a treasury for all'

They're sometimes described as the first communists but today you can see them in a different light. Then as now

they are the 99%. Then as now they stood up against greed and the exploitation and monopolization of the commons.

Over the centuries people have always struggled against the inequality of power and money - the Diggers are just one chapter in that story. But as relevant today as it was in 1649.

Falklands . Whose rock is it anyway?

The Falklands are back in the news again. More than 25 years have gone since Margaret Thatcher saved her government with a gungho war in the South Atlantic.

Now, once again Argentina are pursuing their claim to sovereignty. Nationalism is being stoked again to lay claim to a few small islands that for twenty years or so were part of the young Argentina.

That they want them back, and that Britain wants to keep them is no surprise.  With the islands come undersea oil, and a claim to a slice of Antarctica.

Who did what 180 years ago seems a bit irrelevant... particularly as I hold that primitive view of land that it's really the people that belong to the land rather than the opposite.  The islanders are for better or worse the people that should decide.   ... And two nations greed for resources really shouldn't be a factor in making a choice. Should it?

Sharing is caring, Ideas are divine

I guess you may have seen that kopimism (Copy me ism) is now a recognised religion here in Sweden. 

The basic tenet seems to be that to share knowledge is sacred, and no surprise then that the church's 3000+ members see file sharing as a good thing. Now you may think that sharing knowledge is a strange thing to revere, but is it?  Is it more strange than believing in an all-seeing non-corporeal immortal that sits on a cloud casting thunderbolts?

If you want to think of something intangible and invisible that can live for ever and have huge influence over our lives what have you got?

An idea.

While you can debate the existence of god the idea of god clearly exists and has clearly had huge influence on mankind over innumerable centuries. Immortal. All powerful.

Ideas

On the bus

The new year finds me with a new phone and I've finally got the knack of working multiple windows on it so now just maybe I have what I need to blog on the go. Like now... on the bus

Good times?

"How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that there should be any good left in it."

H. Rider Haggard, 1887