Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-11-2010

[andrewducker]

• MPs didn't call in the head of News International to testify, when warned that their private lives would be investigated...
  (tags: media uk politics)
• Wacky Patent of the Month: APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD BY CENTRIGUGAL FORCE
  (tags: funny diagram childbirth women)
• 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same
  (tags: movies)
• Bloglines killed off. Pretty much nobody cares (I escaped to Google Reader a couple of years back)
  (tags: rss technology)
• Alan Moore on DC, Watchmen, and why he loathes the comic business nowadays.
  (tags: comics watchmen)
• The justification for the privatisation of The Royal Mail
  (tags: royalmail technology uk privatisation)
• Government to press on with Royal Mail privatisation
  (tags: privatisation royalmail uk)

Comments

[innerbrat]

goddammit.

Can anyone recommend a broswer-based RSS reader that's not run by Google? I tried Gregarius and it didn't work so well for me.

[innerbrat]

I'd also find that movie article a great one if it didn't refer to "the closest thing you can find to a human skin tone" when it means WHITE PEOPLE.

[andrewducker]

I asked on Hacker News and got pointed towards this:
http://disattention.com/12/choosing-a-new-feed-reader/
and this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980784

[innerbrat]

Thank you!

I hve just realised that the thing stopping me from using Google reader was overcome when the multiple logins were introduced, but it still makes me sad that there are so few options.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I think that RSS just isn't as big as it could be in some ways. It just never made it mass-market. So there's a small niche, but there's no big players beyond Google.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I am wildly in love with the idea of an "apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force".

If only because I'm imagining the new-born baby, still attached to Mom by his umbilical cord, going "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!".... while splattering blood, placenta, and other stuff all over the room.

[meico.livejournal.com]

Privatization of Royal Mail is one of the most retarded ideas I've heard in a long time. Let me explain...

To put it in the simplest possible terms: Some things should be privatized and some things should be socialized; anyone who thinks it should be all one or the other is a total cunt.

[dommy-nick.livejournal.com]

Am just imagining the idea of spinning a baby out! It'd certainly be a new idea.

Dommy_nick

[meico.livejournal.com]

Would it?

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/crazy-medical-patent-describes-centrifuge-gadget-to-spin-the-baby-right-out-of-a-pregnant-woman-2010086/

;P

[andrewducker]

Um, that's the patent I linked to.

[meico.livejournal.com]

Haha! HUMOR FAIL on my part then... I actually hadn't noticed that you'd linked to that in the original post! Duh! (it all makes sense now)

[meico.livejournal.com]

Also, the linked article "The justification for the privatisation of The Royal Mail", while quite interesting, makes the critical mental mistake of confusing a socialized service for with a for profit business. It is very rare when one can bee seen as a success in terms of the other.

[matgb]

Define socialised. Splitting up the system so the Post Office remains as a state srvice, but the Mail is 50% solf off, with the remaining 50% split 50/50 between the State and an employees trust, solves a lot of problems with the existing setup, guarantees the post office network, and allows the mail service to compete effectively in a market that's now required, under EU laws, to be fully competetive.

I read through the initial proposals and consultation stuff when it became policy years back, and some of the backend stuff as to the mess it's in is scary.

But giving the service to partial worker control is better than selling it all off, which was the only other option given the mess, and this guarantees the post office network a separate, strong, role.

[meico.livejournal.com]

"Define socialized". No. That may sound harsh (it isn't meant to be), but I think my use was reasonably clear and I have no time for fighting over definitions online.

That said, what you described is an interesting solution for the situation the Royal Mail is in. Also, you made a great point about the EU requirements for a competitive market (I actually wasn't aware of the related directives existence). I am, however, a bit dubious of that particular solutions long term efficacy (at least without some additional protections to prevent issues I describe below).

It seems that every time a 100% government run service is partially privatized it leads to terrible problems. This is due to the fact the service is usually innately monopolistic in nature- think water services, rail services, or telecom cable lines. Opening up such services with the intention of creating a market instead often just creates a de facto private monopoly and unlike the implied monopoly of state service its policies and prices are not controlled by democratic processes.

Regardless, I do agree that the Royal mail is in a terrible state and a comprehensive solution must be found.

[matgb]

I think my use was reasonably clear

To an extent, but only because the word itself has become bastardised. Socialised has, unfortunately, become synonymous with nationalised, and that's frequently a problem.

what you described is an interesting solution for the situation the Royal Mail is in

And is exactly what Cable is proposing, and comes directly from the Lib Dem manifesto. What the press are reporting isn't quite the same thing, however.

This is due to the fact the service is usually innately monopolistic in nature- think water services, rail services, or telecom cable lines

Exactly, which is why I always cringe when people talk about Thatcher's "neoliberalism", given she tended to privatise state monopolies as private monopolies, very capitalist, but not very liberal.

However, while I give you, and completely concur, on water, the opposite is true with telecoms. To give Major & Heseltine credit (and this is hard, despite Hezza's liberal roots), they did manage to effectively break up BT's monopoly, and the UK telecoms industry, with access to BT lines and similar, is one of the most competetive globally.

However, in the case of Mail, the monopoly aspect already no longer applies, you can already send mail through multiple firms, as several discovered during the last mail strike, and business post has been split up through multiple firms for ages.

So in this case, it's impossible to create a defacto privatised monopoly, as the current state provider is struggling because it's no longer a monopoly. It needs to be able to invest to compete effectively in the modern market, and is currently straighjacketed by it's ownership setup.

Hence, given competition is a requirement under EU rules (and whether that's a good thing is outside this discussion), this appears to be the best solution.

[andrewducker]

I'd ave thought that the change from "51% owned by the government" to "all owned by shareholders" was a pretty massive change from the original commitment though.