Interesting Links for 10-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators
  (tags: copyright piracy content media business thefuture )
• Can 'financial repression' solve the debt crisis?
  I do sometimes think that inflating our way out of debt is the only response that's going to work in the long term. It's not going to be any fun though. And much harder for countries in the Euro.
  (tags: euro debt finance )
• Why we should be hoping that Greece defaults today
  (tags: greece debt insurance money )
• Ofcom lodges porn TV complaint with Dutch regulator
  (tags: porn tv uk europe censorship children )
• Religious TV host Pat Robertson wants pot legalised
  (tags: religion usa marijuana legalisation )
• 10 Things You Should Know about Comics.
  (tags: comics funny )
• Playing chess in short skirts is now forbidden!
  (tags: chess women clothing )
• The Wolves, the Pig, and the Retarded Bunny
  (tags: society offensive language )
• The NHS Bill will remove the obligation to provide free treatment and allow charging for health services
  (tags: politics uk nhs )
• There was, apparently, an R-rated cut of Galaxy Quest
  (tags: scifi movies )

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ye gods. I'm still rather boggled that they're pushing ahead with these healthcare reforms.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

If you look at the piece Goldacre links to, and cross-reference it with the bill itself, it's scaremongering. Breaking that argument down into two parts:

"remove the obligation to provide free treatment"

What the bill did in the early drafts was change the Secretary Of State having an obligation to 'provide' a comprehensive service to Clinical Commissioning Groups having an obligation to 'arrange' a comprehensive health service. Amendments to the bill now say the Secretary of State "retains ministerial responsibility to Parliament for the provision of the health service in England."

So it doesn't do this.

" and allow charging for health services"

Well, kinda-sorta, if you look at it funny. The new CCGs (the replacements for PCTs) will have slightly more power to prioritise what gets spent where - you would want to spend more on drug addiction treatment, for example, if you were responsible for healthcare treatment in Moss Side and Hulme than you would in a suburban area where mostly retired accountants lived. The bill would then allow councils, if they disagreed with the CCGs about what was appropriate for their area, to commission additional services from other providers. I don't *think* the bill says anywhere that they have the power to charge for these services (though the bill is so amended at this point that it's practically unreadable by human beings), but it doesn't explicitly say they don't have that power. It's meant, though, as a safety net to prevent CCGs mismanaging things rather than as a means of charging people.

There is also a small subset of things that *may* (or may not) be delegated by the Secretary directly to the local authorities, which again it doesn't say explicitly can't be charged for. Those things are almost all non-patient-facing stuff like training or lab services, so any charges for those would be charges by the council to the CCG, not charges to the patient. The list does, however, include vaccinations, so it's theoretically possible that this bill *may* introduce charges for vaccinations much like we now have charges for opticians and dentists. Which would be an absolutely stupid idea.

Note all the 'may's and 'possibly's there. The bill is so badly written that no two analyses of it I've seen agree exactly what it says - and *that's* the main reason for scrapping the bill. Almost every word of it will end up being challenged in the courts to determine what it actually means.

But the Lib Dem amendments have drawn the teeth of it enough that it's merely a huge waste of time and effort, rather than the outright horror that it was. In some ways it's actually now rolling back some of the privatisation moves in the 2006 Act, thanks to changes in the competition requirements (previously providers had to be chosen on the basis of price, now there will be additional safeguards in place).

So, yes, they should drop it, but no, it's not quite as bad as its detractors are making out.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that's good to know.

I get very fed up with the contrasting information being bandied about, and I trust very little of it.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

The last thing you want to do is trust me, either. This is my own interpretation based on reading through all this stuff, but I Am Not A Lawyer and so much of the bill is amendments to existing acts changing a comma in subparagraph fifteen that in the end your guess is as good as mine about some of it.

But what it definitely isn't is something that removes free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare, unless I'm *horribly* misreading it, and the BMJ article Goldacre points to doesn't provide enough evidence to back up its more worrying claims.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

one of the core problems with the bill now, as you allude, is that it was so horrifically written that the sheer volume [thousands] of amendments makes the bill itself a total bloody shambles.

on that basis alone it needs to be torn down and redone.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agree. I just think it's a mess, though, rather than a destruction of all we hold dear.

Incidentally, I reread the bill (all 400+pages of it) today because there's so much noise going on about it, and found this:

"The services provided as part of the health service in England must be free of charge except in so far as the making and recovery of charges is expressly provided for by or under any enactment, whenever passed”

So that settles it. Definitely no new charges.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

[Comics] are not like the movies except when they are

Of course, if the properly does not belong to comics publisher, this cannot be avoided!

However, the comics publishers who have (some) control have lousy timing in respect of people jumping on current comics from the films. Which is odd, because Burton's Batman gave those a great boost, with an expansion in the number of Bat books and storylines not too far outside the movie. (In fact, Gotham suddenly took on the movie look.) Yet, when The Dark Knight came out DC was in the throws of the Batman R.I.P./Battle for the Cowl storyline. Not a place to jump on Batman.

So, let's see, Iron Man also comes out in the middle of 2008, at which places it during the period when Tony Stark is Director of SHIELD and everyone hates him (though not as much as he hates himself) and the fans think he's a fascist pig. It also looks likely, from what Matt Fraction has been saying that by the time Iron Man 3 debuts, someone else may be wearing the armour.

Meanwhile, if the article on Thor in Wiki is correct (because I am so not reading current Marvel) Thor in the comics isn't the same Thor and the original has been retconned out of existence which is so going to boost Thor 2 when it comes out next year.

When Captain America: the First Avenger debuted, either Barnes was Captain America or he was (supposedly) dead again and Rogers hadn't taken the identify back yet. (I really cannot be bothered to check the exact timing, and the reviews for Fear Itself suggest it's terrible.)

I am still boggling a bit about how they are going to try and get Hulk into the Avengers Assemble comic given current continuity. (And anyone who picks up the current main team book is going to be confronted by the Red Hulk and is that going to confuse them.)

Not to mention that we're promised the current cross-over event will "Change the Marvel Universe forever." *sigh*

[andrewducker]

Yeah, Marvel could really have done with creating a Movieverse line from the comics. Of course, managing to have interesting stories in that line without stepping on the toes of the upcoming movies which hadn't been written yet would have been tricky.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The writers and directors of the movies often want to use classic comic book storylines, but these are (almost) always too complex to fit into a two hour movie - I have a post coming on this...

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

My opinion was that Fear Itself wasn't terrible, and it had a few nice touches. But it was all a bit blah. I really wish comics would stay away from "Everyone on Earth will die!" villains, because I know what's going to happen in advance - they lose. (Sorry, spoiler!) Threaten one person - particularly someone who isn't the title character - and I'll care a lot more.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It was the number of one and two star reviews on the collected edition on Amazon that prompted this comment... not to mention comments from people whose opinions I value.

This all reminds me of an old Peter David comment about the number of letters he used to receive that said, basically, "Please have Hulk fight Rhino again," and his response that, "No. Hulk will just whup Rhino again and I'm not interested in writing that."

The problem seems to be that there has to be a balance between whst writers want to write and what the readers want to read(particularly as the readers don't all want the same thing.)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

that NHS stuff sounds horrible. hope that wedge in the door never gets in - or if it does that at least they give us nice decor in suicide booths that will be th eonly affordabel alternative to full medical care if we are unlucky enough to get long term or seriously ill. Buggers would probably try to charge for that too....

Free healthcare is one of the main things that makes/keep this country (or any country) what I'd call civilised. I kinda like civilised, you know?

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I'm not dogmatic about _how_ we provide healthcare to all who need it (There are various systems in Europe that provide healthcare, after all, and I'd be happy with whichever one works), but I want one that provides guarantees.

[werejud.livejournal.com]

Both cairmen and I found the "Why I Pirate an Open Letter To Content Creators" very interesting. While the post's writer has some good points he does come across a little aggressively and seems to forget that just because he won't buy content at X price doesn't mean it should be priced how he wants it (i.e. demographics and target audiences, and studios/content creators worth their salt know this).

cairmen has a more detailed (better written and more informed than me in this field) commentary on the piece - find it here.

[andrewducker]

I agree that it's overly-aggressive. But I also think that there are a lot of people who think like him, and more all the time.

I do think that certain things are likely to stop being made once a high-enough proportion of people are pirating things. But I also think that he's completely correct when it comes to things being locked down with DRM. And also that suing your customers is rarely a winning proposition.

The world is moving on, and I'm going to be fascinated to see what comes next.

[ckd]

The Galaxy Quest recut is quite obvious; as one of the commenters on that article points out, they looped new dialog in a couple of scenes including a blatant-to-anyone-who-looks F bomb replaced with "screw". The MPAA gets really picky about language, and that alone could have been enough to get an R in the initial cut.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Piracy:

The Hurt Locker. That comment hit me. I wanted to buy the DVD, and was going to when I read about the studio going after downloaders. I could have bought it second hand for £1.50, but like the author I pirated it just as a 'fuck you'.

I still buy DVDs all the time. I rip them all. Stuff I can't find at a decent price I download. Hurt Locker is *the* example of why I pirate.