a vast kind of collective sort of brain thingy
Microsoft has taken a further step in connecting various devices on line. I saw it all years ago. In the way things wrok, I write: “Commonly called ‘a network of networks of networks of networks’, the internet is actually a vast kind of collective sort of brain thingy which allows you to connect your gas-stove to the TV aerial and tell the heater in the greenhouse to switch on the cigarette-lighter in the car. I mean its potential is mind-boggling. The internet was started at the vast underground European Ear, Nose And Throat Research Complex (EENATRC) which straddles the border between Austria and Belgium. Here, a humble British scientist called Timbo Nersley hit upon the idea of running a piece of bare copper wire from the earphone-socket on his pocket calculator to the coin-weighing mechanism in the Coke machine along the hall. With trembling hands, Nersley cautiously pressed a random selection of buttons and within minutes there appeared on the screen the message: ‘Error 404. DNS lookup failure.‘ Simultaneously, the floor of the research centre began to swim with foaming brown soda and all the lights went out. The internet had been born and the world would never be the same again.”
Ofcom has been consulting on wireless broadband and admits that it’s been overwhelmed. It’s going to re-open the consultation after howls from the industry at its proposals. In commerce, a unit which fails is closed and replaced. In the world of government and quangos, you just start again but still get paid.
Peter Bazalgette, media-mogul, says BBC Radios 1 and 2 should be privatised, which makes so much sense. Think of the millions in revenue that have been forgone since those stations started in 1967. He also wants Channel 4 privatised, which will come as a surprise to some. Surely, don’t all those advertisements which interrupt the programmes mean it’s already private? C4 is, in fact, more government-owned than the BBC, which is slightly at arm’s length from the state. When it comes to serving the public, C4 arguably does as well if not better than the Beeb, yet without a penny of public money.
A think-tank wants London-style mayors for everywhere, but just hold on a minute. Such folks are elected dictators. Many folks voting in next month’s London-wide elections will think the London Assembly is some sort of county-council which the mayor uses to govern, but this is false. The assembly is a pretty toothless regulator which asks the mayor embarrassing (and sometimes cringe-makingly sympathetic) questions which he routinely ridicules or parrys. A better model of accountability is the one being demonstrated in parliament at the moment, where MPs are calling the prime minister to account over his abolition of the 10p tax-rate. Advocates of mayors say they give strong government, but then Zimbabwe has that. London doesn’t actually need a city-wide mayor. The boroughs have large enough populations to be unitary authorities (each with its own mayor, BTW) and there’s already a body for handling matters such as transport which cross borough-boundaries: it’s called national government.
St George’s day sees a new way of mapping northern France and southern England. Instead of the customary aquatic frontier between the two nations, several counties and départements become the manche (sleeve) region of the EU.
