- Adactio: Journal—Erase and rewind
The BBC it seems, refuse to learn lessons from their own history. I'm usually one to defend the BBC against a lot of the flak it gets, but this is just plain stupid. Archiving these sites should be a matter of maybe an hour's work each, at most.
- Isotope
Tech bollocks. JS (specifically, jQuery, my new best friend) library for doing all sorts of very nice layout/sorting tricks. Bound to be handy.
- Woke Up, Got Out of Bed, Dragged a Comb Across My Head – morning routine food | Ask MetaFilter
I have been reflecting of late that I could do with adjusting my morning routine a bit. A lot of what's in here is moderately standard hippy crap, but the annoying thing is that I know quite a lot of it works, if one sticks to it. So I should probably get on that.
- To us, it's an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it's the heist of the century
If you live in the UK, stop what you're doing and read this, assuming you haven't already. This is somewhere between absurd and terrifying, and I simply don't understand how anyone in Cameron's position can contemplate it. Well, I do, but the only way it makes sense to me is active malice and contempt for other people, which is a motivation I find hard to ascribe to any human being.
Tag: cuts
Bookmarks for January 18, 2011
- Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data – ProPublica
Handy set of guides for getting useful structured/meaningful data out of websites.
- Will the ConDems allow the disabled to live? | Blogeration
Another one I imagine you've already seen. Some absolutely splendid writing on the subject of the cuts, and how grossly unfair it is to ask the disabled to bear the size of cuts we're talking about.
Bookmarks for January 13, 2011
- A List Apart: Articles: A Simpler Page
Discussion of laying out text for ipads (or similar) on the web, and a library to to the rendering. Particularly like the three modes – bed, knee and breakfast pretty neatly describe all the ways I use my device.
- Come out of your comfort zone, disability living allowance cuts are relevant to all | Society | guardian.co.uk
An excellent article on the cuts to DLA. Cannot quite believe that even this government of utter shits would essentially say "one in five people who have previously been assessed as needing help now won't get it". And yet they are. There's no suggestion that the previous tests were flawed. There's no (credible) suggestion that fully one in five of disabled people are OK, really, and just scrounging. They're hiding behind "we can't afford it". Which makes my blood boil. Surely, even in a time of national austerity, the one thing we should bend over backwards to afford, the one thing we should scrap all manner of other things to pay for, is caring for the most vulnerable members of our society.
Bookmarks for November 11, 2010
- New Statesman – Inside the Millbank Tower riots
I imagine you'll see this link a lot over the next day or two – Penny Red on yesterday's riots at Millbank Tower. Superb writing, in support of an important cause.
Bookmarks for October 29, 2010
- No terror arrests in 100,000 police counter-terror searches, figures show | Law | guardian.co.uk
I think the most surprising thing about this story is this quote: "A policy which fuels resentment and antagonism amongst minority communities without achieving a single terrorist conviction serves only to help our enemies and increase the terrorism threat." And the reason it's surprising it that it's coming from a Conservative MP. (Although I it is David Davis, who I confess to a grudging admiration for on the subject of civil liberties.)
- Del's plain english guide
Yes. More of this sort of thing, please.
- WGGB – News – PLR agency written off
Here's one of the governments cuts that won't make headline news, that won't get any of the usual arts bodies fighting against it, because it's not music or theatre or public art or any of the other stuff luvvies and lefties get up in arms about. And honestly, it probably won't change most' people's lives, but realistically also won't save any serious money. It's a cut for the sake of making a cut, an idealogical statement. And that statement is, broadly "fuck writers".
- budgie's squawks – The Fast Fiction Challenge 2010: The final list
Budgie has managed to write 150 ultra-short stories in 150 days. If you think that consistently writing 200 words a day isn't a remarkable feat, then I suggest that you try it. Every day, for almost half a year, you sit down in front of a blank piece of paper, and force yourself to have a good idea. No excuse for illness, no excuses for just "being busy with other things". 150 days, having a new idea every day, and executing that idea to a high standard, without fail. Yeah. My hat's off to you, squire. 200 days next year, year?
Bookmarks for October 21, 2010
- The Right To The City
"The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire.”
- China Mieville: Letter to a Progressive Liberal Democract
I wish I had his way with words.
- apiphile: If it helps, try to imagine I am less of an annoying git and more of a conduit for wisdom
Del, on writing with clarity and purpose. I would like to forcefeed this to oh, really, everyone. Including myself.
Bookmarks for October 20, 2010
- First they came for the quangos…
I imagine this one will be doing the rounds today.
- Kupenga Kwa Hamlet at Oval House Theatre 16th November to 4th December
I am told that this is "An exhilarating re-telling of the classic story of betrayal and vengeance, told by two outstanding, award-winning Zimbabwean performers using music, dance and a fusion of traditional African storytelling with contemporary Township Theatre practice. Fast, powerful, moving and unlike any other Shakespeare you have ever seen." I'm planning on going. Anyone else?
- Osborne will escape public wrath if Labour lets him win the blame game | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian
Good piece on the importance of the blame game in today's cuts. Remember: it is not Labour who is responsible for these cuts. If you are disposed to blame someone other than the current government, I suggest you blame the bankers. And if you are disposed to suggest that they should have been more heavily regulated, then, well, I agree with you. And I suggest you ask yourself how the Conservative party of the time argued they should have been regulated. (Hint: it was not more heavily.)
- london futures | images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate change debate in a way that everyone can understand
Will have to try and get to the Museum of London to see this.
Bookmarks for October 15, 2010
- BBC News – Spending Review: Universities 'to face £4.2bn cut'
This *has* be delibarately leaking of a massively inflated figure, so as to make the real figure seem much more palatable when it eventually comes out. It just has to. The alternative is simply unthinkable.