Ed Dowding

Murdoch is like a redneck with an AK-47 shooting wildly into a herd of BBC elephants. “These slow good for nothing beasts! Stomp all the grass for my cattle! HAHAHA!! BANG! BANG!! Take that, Dumbo!”

But that’s all just opinions and metaphor. Numbers, let’s look at numbers. These put some perspective to Murdoch’s power grab.

So to recap:

1. Murdoch makes more money, has lower costs, and makes crappier programmes.
2. The BBC is owned by the public and run in the public interest, creates plenty of creative employment opportunities, raises the statesman-like esteem of the UK internationally, and costs considerably less.

Hmm. Pipe down, James. Grow up and stop trying to undermine the value of what we have built so that you and your barrow-boy friends can pedal more mediocre banalities and stuff your already overflowing pockets with just that little bit more cash.

Sources: BBC HYS, Today Programme, 2 Mar 2010, Yahoo Finance

I’ve just been revising a contract we use for websites we build and so having to deal with one of my pet annoyances. I don’t like contracts. They’re boring, stop me doing the fun stuff of work, and seem to spend more time building walls than bridges. The point is that you’re working together, surely?

Of course I know why we have contracts. It’s for when it something goes wrong, or there’s something new, or one party gets over-excited and asks for more than was understood at the beginning, and so on.

But they always seem to be written in such a way that doesn’t embrace and work with the fact that you’re working together for mutual benefit. There may be differences along the way, but the key point is that you’re both going to be better of working together.

(I suspect mankind may be in a more civil position had Darwin highlighted symbiosis and cooperation as equally vital aspects of life, and given us a working vocabulary with which to discuss and use the concepts, as well as bequeathing us the contagious, yet brutal, meme of “survival of the fittest”.)

Maybe I’m just contractophobic, and others have a far more civil and welcoming approach to contracts, but I’d like a contract which:

• Makes it clear we’re starting from a position of trust
• Deliberate does not try to pre-empt all eventualities (and is therefore shorter)
• Provides a framework for getting things back on track
• Provides a framework for wrapping things up as amicably as possible, should it come to that stage
• Is written in clear, straightforward, English of largely Anglo-Saxon (not Latin) origin
• Uses a lexicon of cooperation and advancement in place of limitations and thresholds

I’ll drop the Creative Commons folk a line to see if they have any ideas. Meantime, please comment!

I finally got around to watching A Farm for the Future (available on Google Video) a few nights ago, and found it to be a great introduction to the concepts of permaculture.

Key things to realise (some not from the programme):

1. Current methods of farming will not continue to feed you during your lifetime.
2. We (and I mean all of us, including YOU, reading this right now) are running out of oil.
3. Before it runs out it will get much more expensive.
4. Oil is the most expensive component of current methods of food production.
5. Your food is going to get much more expensive.
6. We import about 40% of our food (in the UK)
7. As food gets more expensive, other countries are going to stop exporting it so they can feed their own populations.
8. Oil-fuelled production food production is only 10% efficient in energy, and about 20% efficient in land use.
9. We could – if we choose to – produce up to 50 times more food from the same land. (Ok that’s a touch unrealistic since there are bound to be inefficiencies, but let’s be conservative and say just 5 times as much. It still makes sense, right?)
10. We haven’t even got touched on the nutritional or lifestyle benefits yet. I’ll leave that to other posts, but suffice to say you could live a healthier, happier, longer life.

Here are my notes from the programme itself:

• It was in 1981 that we crossed the “using more than we’re finding” threshold with oil.
• “It’s not just that current lifestyle are unethical – they’re unsustainable”.
• 10 calories of fossil fuel are required for 1 calorie of food (global average).
• GM crops are also dependent on fossil fuels, even though they may use less – ergo they are not a long term answer.
• A litre of oil is the energy equivalent of 1 person working for a week; the oil we use equates to 22bn (unfed) slaves (c.3x world population).
• There are 150,000 farmers in the Uk, with an average age of 60.
• Normally cattle are taken off fields in the winter since they turn pasture into mud. But with a blend of tough/soft, deep/shall rooted (etc.) grasses you can leave the cattle there year round. Thus no hay production required, or unused land area. It took 60 years for one chap to perfect that, in one area.
• Don’t dig. It destroys the life in the top 6″ of soil which plants thrive on. (See other posts on permaculture, too.)
• Don’t look after plants, cultivate soil.
• 95% of all food is dependent on synthetic fertiliser.
• Permaculture: conscious design of a better system (Wikipedia link).
• Khaki Campbell ducks eat lots of slugs and lay lots of eggs.
• Willow, lime, and ash leaves / branches are good fodder crops for animals.
• In a well considered permaculture plot, 12 man-days maintenance and 40 man-days of harvest will feed about 10 people per acre.
• Nuts are more efficient to grow than cereal crops. Sweet chestnuts can yield 2 tons per acre (about 60% that of wheat, with much less effort).
• During WWII, 40% of food came from small domestic production.

I suppose the question is “Neat. Is there any large scale permaculture so that we can feed lots of people? All the ones, like me, maybe in the cities, who don’t garden?”

Large scale production permaculture is probably going on somewhere (I understand that Pittsburgh Permaculture showcases examples), but to a certain extent it’s a bit of an antithesis to the small, intensive, and hyper-local principles. However the cities still need to be fed so.. a few answers:

1. The goal is community efficiency not self-sufficiency
2. It can be a great business opportunity, especially if more people know about why it’s being done.
3. It’s not an industrial farm, so don’t expect it to behave like one. If the old models aren’t working, don’t expect to see permaculture behaving in the same way. (That said there are some neat multi-storey urban farms.)

A question from The Blended Lifestyle

if we move away from a materialistic life, what is the name for the kind of life we enter into? I don’t like ‘de-materialised’ (so what is it then?), ’simple’ (it’s not simple), or ’spiritual’ (problematic term). So I am missing a word. Do you have any ideas?

There’s huge power in a name. I think I’ve written about the power of the “space race” before, and it’s obvious that words like “frankenfoods” and “credit crunch” can both act as a convenient shorthand, but also shape the debate. Names that allow us to aspire to greatness tap in to that which is the very best in humanity. Who wouldn’t want to agree with “Yes, we can!”?

Orwell has a defining essay on this topic: Politics and the English Language

Anyway, I spent a few hours in the garden yesterday, and had time to ponder this. So here’s the answer I posted:

Sustainable: quite obvious and somewhat tainted by the idea that it might imply “less” and therefore “less good”.

Transition: meh.. great for towns and to talk of the process, but says little about the quality of the goal.

Ascetic: technically more accurate (‘This is to be understood not as an eschewal of the enjoyment of life but a recognition that spiritual and religious goals are impeded by such indulgence’), but again hints at emaciated preachers beating themselves with sticks beneath a cold hose.

Gardeners: careful cultivation, working harmoniously with natural systems, long term thinking… this has a lot to appeal; and also is going to be an accurate description for most who choose this route.

Extraordinary: literal, and makes it sound more appealing. Hearing envious talk of “your extraordinary life” is something which can’t help but stir humble pride.

Sophisticated: from sophos (wisdom). to refine, make more complex, make more worldly-wise and less naive.

Philosopher: lover of wisdom (and all the things above). The philosophic life… has a nice ring, possibly too pretentious. Also the people best suited to determine the direction of a nation, according to Plato.  (Have you ever noticed how people who develop hierarchies find themselves at the top? Including myself in this example, thinking that ‘gardeners’ sounds apposite, whilst out gardening…)

I’m reminded by a conversation that I’ve just had that the Hierarchy of Needs is about as succint and powerful and true and psychological models get.

What a great idea, and fantastic use of liberated data:

[The Postcode Paper] gathers information about your area, such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.

It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area. In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time.

It gathers information about your area, such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.

It’s not just data from central government – we also scraped TFL for travel times, and a bespoke spider map of transport options in our area.

And there’s stuff from the NHS and the council.

Source: Newspaper Club

Shiply – matches you with rated delivery firms “going there anyway”

Israel is to become the first country to give donor card carriers a legal right to priority treatment if they should require an organ transplant.

Israeli organ donors to get transplant priority, BBC News

Now if they’d make it opt-out, too, they’d have the best system in the world.

I really love the work of the New Economics Foundation.

It’s clear that the amount we pay people does not correspond with the amount we value them (contrast teachers with stock traders, farmers with ad. execs). The NEF has gone on to calculate the real value of different professions.

The report goes on to challenge ten of the most enduring myths surrounding pay and work. People who earn more don’t necessarily work harder than those who earn less. The private sector is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector. And high salaries don’t necessarily reflect talent.

The BBC has a nice summary:

“The point we are making is more fundamental – that there should be a relationship between what we are paid and the value our work generates for society. We’ve found a way to calculate that,” she said.

A total of six different jobs were analysed to assess their overall value. These are the study’s main findings:

The elite banker

“Rather than being wealth creators bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse

Paid between £500,000 and half a million and £80m a year, leading bankers destroy £7 of value for every pound they generate”.

Childcare workers

“Both for families and society as a while looking after children could not be more important. As well as providing a valuable service for families, they release earnings potential by allowing parents to continue working. For every pound they are paid they generate up £9.50 worth of benefits to society”.

Hospital cleaners

“Play a vital role in the workings of healthcare facilities. They not only clean hospitals and maintain hygiene standards but also contribute to wider health outcomes. For every pound paid, over £10 in social value is created”.

Advertising executives

The industry “encourages high spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12m top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate”.

Tax accountants

“Every pound that a tax accountant saves a client is a pound which otherwise would have gone to HM Revenue. For a salary of between £75,000 and £200,000, tax accountants destroy £47 in value, for every pound they generate”.

Waste recycling workers

“Do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced. There is also a value in reusing goods. For every pound of value spent on wages, £12 of value is generated for society.”

The research also makes a variety of policy recommendations to align pay more closely with the value of work.

These include establishing a high pay commission, building social and environmental value into prices, and introduce more progressive taxation.

WWIII Propaganda