text:
Reading 'leads the way' on reducing plastic waste - Reading in the news Mon 14 May – University of Reading
Reading home> News and Events > Press Releases > Reading 'leads the way' on reducing plastic waste - Reading in the news Mon 14 May
Reading 'leads the way' on reducing plastic waste - Reading in the news Mon 14 May
Release Date 14 May 2018
Here is today's media coverage report.
Reducing plastic waste: Sky News featured the University's Sustain It drinks machines, which allow students to fill up reusable bottles, throughout its Saturday rolling news coverage. The trial at Reading, and support from students, was also discussed in a later interview on the programme. An article also appears on the Sky News website praising Reading for taking the lead on tackling single-use plastic, and clips from the interview with Matt Tebbit (Head of Catering) are used by several regional radio stations, including dozens of Heart stations, Talk Radio and Kildare FM in Ireland. Read more about the scheme here.
Child abuse crackdown: The Observer runs an article on the issue of child abuse in conflict zones around the world, and calls for the UN to do more to combat this. This includes a toolkit developed by Reading academics (School of Law) alongside the charity Keeping Children Safe. Read our news story.
Farming cyber attacks: Countryfile on BBC One (from 28 mins) visited the University of Reading's Centre for Dairy Research to look at how technology can help farming, but also introduce new risks such as hacking.
Royal wedding: CNN quotes Professor Kate Williams (History) in an article on how Meghan Markle, due to marry Prince Harry this weekend, is rewriting the princess story.
Regional accents history: Country Life tells the story behind Britain's regional accents, with the help of Professor Jane Setter (English Language and Linguistics).
Citizen science: The London Evening Standard previews a new exhibition on the sun at the Science Museum in Kensington, which will feature the launch of a citizen science project on space weather in collaboration with the University of Reading.
Science in the pub: Ahead of the national Pint of Science initiative coming to Reading for the first time, Get Reading runs a preview featuring the University of Reading speakers taking part. Read our news story.
Other coverage
The London Mother run an article about spotting signs of anxiety in children, featuring Profssor Cathy Creswell (Psychology)
An obituary for Professor Peter Waddington on BBC Radio 4 (14 mins 30 secs) mentions that he worked at Reading before setting up the UK's first degree course in policing at Wolverhampton University
The Guardian Nigeria runs an interview with Henley Business School graduate Hauwa Ojeifo in its Guardian Woman feature. Now a mental health coach, she talks about facing up to her own issues and advises others to seek help early
The Independent runs an obituary for former Reading Professor of Agricultural Botany, Professor David Goodall
The involvement of Reading students in the Reading Adopt Your Street (RAYS) scheme to tidy up communities is mentioned in articles by Get Reading and Reading Chronicle
Professor Mark Fellowes (Biological Sciences) was interviewed by WAMU FM in Washington DC on Reading research showing how much squirrels stealing food from bird feeders is costing the British public. An opinion piece in iNews and a piece on Brinkwire also discuss the issues squirrels cause. Read our news story
A Reading cybernetics graduate competed on Robot Wars on BBC Two
Henley Business School's latest ranking of business schools by the Financial Times is mentioned in a story by IOL in South Africa. Read more about the rankings in Henley's news story
Computer Weekly uses Reading's migration of its academic support workshops to a research cloud as a case study in an article on IT management


Minnie Jackson, an African-American maid, is the brunt of a dehumanizing conversation by the white families that employ her and her peers. One of the women, Hilly, refuses to use the bathroom because it has been used by a black maid. She suggests that the maid use an outhouse because "they carry different diseases." Hilly exacerbates the situation by telling her friends that she is pushing for an initiative to mandate that every white home has a separate bathroom for the colored folk.
Why doesn't Hilly use the guest bathroom?
Why does Skeeter try to change the subject?
What is the "Home Help Sanitation Initiative"?


This site is the result of me winning the SolidWorks "Internet Correspondence Contest" to attend and cover SOLIDWORKS World 2011. Due to the enjoyment that I got from posting and the feedback I received I have continued to do so!
In saying that this site is about me and what I do. SOLIDWORKS (the software) is part of that. Dassault Systèmes – SOLIDWORKS Corporation does not influence or make any requests from me! Therefore any thoughts, excitement & enthusiasm displayed in these posts are mine & mine alone!


text:
"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" (Abridged / Paperback)
"In the cozy den of the large but modest house in Omaha where he has lived since he started on his first billion, Warren Buffett watched the horrors of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television in early September 2005. . . . On the fourth day, he beheld in disbelief the paralysis of local, state, and federal authorities unable to commence basic operations of rescue and sustenance, not just in New Orleans, but in towns and villages all along the Gulf Coast. . . He knew exactly what he had to do. . ."
So begins the vivid fictional account by political activist and bestselling author Ralph Nader that answers the question, "What if?" What if a cadre of superrich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? What if some of America's most powerful individuals decided it was time to fix our government and return the power to the people? What if they focused their power on unionizing Wal-Mart? What if a national political party were formed with the sole purpose of advancing clean elections? What if these seventeen superrich individuals decided to galvanize a movement for alternative forms of energy that will effectively clean up the environment? What if together they took on corporate goliaths and Congress to provide the necessities of life and advance the solutions so long left on the shelf by an avaricious oligarchy? What could happen?
This extraordinary story, written by the author who knows the most about citizen action, returns us to the literature of American social movements—to Edward Bellamy, to Upton Sinclair, to John Steinbeck, to Stephen Crane—reminding us in the process that changing the body politic of America starts with imagination.
Born in Connecticut in 1934, RALPH NADER has spent his lifetime challenging corporations and government agencies to be more accountable to the public. His 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed permanently altered the course of a reckless U.S. automobile industry and made Nader a household name. His lobbying and writing on the food industry helped to ensure that the food we buy is required to pass strict guidelines before reaching the consumer. One of Nader's greatest achievements was his successful lobbying for a 1974 amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, which gave increased public access to government documents. Over the years he has co-founded the public interest groups Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert, and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. His 2000 presidential campaign on the Green Party ticket served to broaden the scope of debate on the nation's priorities. Named by the Atlantic as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, Nader continues to be a relentless advocate for grassroots activism and democratic change. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Abridged: Yes
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Publication Date: March 22nd, 2011
Fiction / Political
Political Science / Civics & Citizenship
Kobo eBook (January 3rd, 2011): $14.99

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Upgrade database with Sqlite.net Pcl for Xamarin android i have the problem that when i release new version of my application, if i add a new column to one of my db tables, the database doesn't update. Any one know how to create a script of upgrade versione in case there are new columns or new tables??
Thanks

A: It's not a matter of a script, as there isn't such a thing. You can release a version with a "patch" that will run once, extracting all your records to a temporary form -> deleting the table -> creating it again (will assure it's created with the new columns and so on) -> reinserting the records again. After a while, when you know that all your users (or whenever you set the limit) have moved to the newer version you can just eliminate the "patch" from your code.
Hope it helps.

A: You have to remember that CreateTable it's already doing the columns update for you, because internally it calls a method called MigrateTable.
However you could have to handle more advanced modification to your database, like adding triggers or something similar.
In that case i suggest you to perform modifications manually.
In Xamarin Forms i've ended up with this:
https://gist.github.com/matpag/b2545cc22c8e22449cd7eaf6b4910396
Could not be the best strategy ever but seems to work for me.
Summarizing :
You have to save the database version in an internal flag of the SQlite database called user_version accessible with PRAGMA keyword.
Every time you get the database connection, you have to perform a check and see if the current database version is the same as the app last database version.
If not you need to perform a database update and set the new current version.

A: The automatic migration feature is still not working in sqlite.net-pcl, but it looks like it does work in the other sqlite package: sqlite-net-pcl, which is actually the Xamarin recommend sqlite package.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
namespace ui {

namespace {

// Use DECLARE/DEFINE_ELEMENT instead of DEFINE_LOCAL_ELEMENT so that this
// ElementIdentifier's name is predictable.
DECLARE_ELEMENT_IDENTIFIER_VALUE(kTestElementIdentifier);
DEFINE_ELEMENT_IDENTIFIER_VALUE(kTestElementIdentifier);
const char* const kTestElementIdentifierName = "kTestElementIdentifier";

}  // namespace

class ElementIdentifierTest : public testing::Test {
 public:
  void SetUp() override { ElementIdentifier::GetKnownIdentifiers().clear(); }

 protected:
  static intptr_t GetRawValue(ElementIdentifier id) { return id.GetRawValue(); }
};

TEST_F(ElementIdentifierTest, FromName) {
  EXPECT_FALSE(ElementIdentifier::FromName(kTestElementIdentifierName));
  EXPECT_EQ(kTestElementIdentifierName, kTestElementIdentifier.GetName());
  EXPECT_EQ(kTestElementIdentifier,
            ElementIdentifier::FromName(kTestElementIdentifierName));
}

TEST_F(ElementIdentifierTest, FromRawValue) {
  EXPECT_FALSE(ElementIdentifier::FromRawValue(0));
  const intptr_t raw_value = GetRawValue(kTestElementIdentifier);
  EXPECT_NE(0, raw_value);
  EXPECT_EQ(kTestElementIdentifier, ElementIdentifier::FromRawValue(raw_value));
}

}  // namespace ui

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Errrrgh. . .another visit to my (neuro) Ophthalmologist yesterday. Third one in the last 6 months. Lovely man except for one thing. His need to assure me that I am very fortunate that I do not have a malignant tumor, that I shouldn't really use the term tumor because that sounds more frightening than what it actually is, and that really all "it" is, is a growth and you can get growths anywhere! Then he says we are just keeping an eye on this because of the proximity of it to the brainstem. . .I am a watch and wait. My Epidermoid is around my brain stem causing many symptoms which I am treated for. Three surgeons have said they do not want to operate because the risks of permanent damage currently outweigh the symptoms I live with at this time. I am fine with that! But what I don't get is why so many medical professionals downplay the Epidermoid like its nothing to fuss about and don't call it a tumor. . .sorry just feeling frustrated.
My frustration turned to anger with subsequent reads; anger that this brain tumor is being treated this way. Now that I have had time to reflect with a cooler head about my reaction, I've come to realize that the emotion, frustration, plays a major role in dealings with this condition.
To truly understand the topic of frustration, it's necessary first to give you my definition of it. In my eyes frustration is a deep seeded emotion; this is in contrast to an annoyance. These terms are sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably.
While someone taking the last parking space in front of you may be a frustrating experience, I think of it more of an annoyance than a frustration. To me, living with a brain tumor inside your head and having your trusted physician trivialize the condition is frustrating.
I would be remiss if I mentioned frustration and did not interject my experience with the emotion: having been on the path to becoming an Attending physician (in medicine, there is a hierarchy to becoming a physician: this hierarchy is ordered medical student, resident physician, and attending physician. I was diagnosed with this brain tumor near the end of my residency). Then having this 'path' interrupted by the diagnosis of an Epidermoid Brain Tumor, becoming physically disabled overnight (as I once explained to my friend) has put me through many frustrations. These frustrations varied from fumbling with paper straw covers, to being viewed as incompetent by patients due to my poor physical and verbal ability.
The key to dealing with these frustrations is to focus instead on the positive and not to dwell on the negative. In my case, if I were to contemplate all of the frustrating factors that accompany my condition, I would no doubt spiral into a crippling depression. In fact, many around me have said, "Chris, if I were in your shoes I would become depressed." A number of psychological and psychiatric professionals routinely screen me for depression, asking about my sleep and appetite and general mood. My wife, worried about my mental state, once told me, "If you keep bottling up your frustrations, there will come a time when it all boils over and spills out." My response was that I was not 'bottling up' or 'ignoring' these frustrations; I instead chose to focus on aspects of my condition that did not frustrate me, and actually brought me hope.
I am not a daily meditator, but you are taught to try and 'clear your mind' when you meditate. "What are you seeing when you close your eyes [to meditate]?" my father, an avid and expert meditator once asked me (at the time I was trying to leech off his knowledge with meditation). At first, my response was that I would try and picture a tranquil mountaintop. (I was impressed with my answer and thought it was a clever way to clear my mind). My father's response surprised me, "Mountaintops are something, remember you're trying to clear you mind. Try instead to imagine a clear blue sky." Furthermore, he taught me that thoughts may manifest as clouds coming through this sky. "Do not ignore these clouds," he told me, "instead it's important that you acknowledge them, but then let them pass." He went on, "as you become more adept at meditation, these clouds will appear less and less." What does this have to do with frustration? If you think of these frustrations as clouds that can only hurt you, then it's important to acknowledge them but then to let them pass. In this case, yes there are people who minimize what you are going through, but remember that only you truly know what you are going through and that in the end, it does not matter what others say about your condition, what matters is how you let it affect you.


text: 218 FANTASY COMMENTATOR Thumbing the Munsey Files with William H. Evans Argosy for March, 1906 offered another of Howard R. Garris' biological fancies in "Professor Jonkin and his Busier Bees"; here the professor succeeds in cross-breeding bees with fireflies, producing hybrid insects that can gather honey at night as well as during the day. Humorous mishaps follow, and are described in amusing fashion. In the same issue of the magazine was "41 Nights of Mystery" by Guy Chase Hazzard. A comet, passing close to the earth, draws off all its electric power, leaving civilization very much crippled---although not as badly as it would have today. In spite of all attempts to find remedies, nothing can be done until the comet leaves forty-one days later. The tale is quite good, considering its period. The February, 1906 issue of All-Story magazine carried an amusing fantasy by W. B. Finney, "The Buyer of Time." It concerns a man who sells a day of his time and discovers himself living a day behind everybody else. The conclusion leaves the reader up in the air. Allstory-Cavalier Weekly started off 1916 by offering two "different" stories in the January 1st number. One was E. A. Morphy's short tale "The Astrogen Waistcoat," which describes the trial flight of "a life-preserver for use in planes which uses the new, very buoyant gas 'astrogen'." More important and interesting, however, is Victor Rosseau's "Sea Demons," a four-part serial novel. Strange creatures from beneath the sea attack humanity, guided by the traditional mad scientist bent on revenge. A British submarine finds the home of the "queen" of these beings---who are, incidentally, much like bees in their social system---and by finally controlling her succeed in thwarting the invasion. Although the novel as a whole is good, its scientific background is inadequate. The cover of the January 9, 1926 Argosy bears an illustration for Fred MacIssac's four-part serial "The Vanishing Professor." Dr. Frank Leonard, professor of chemistry and physics at Omega College, invents a device that renders him invisible, and, since academic workers are notoriously underpaid, he decides on using it to "borrow" funds from a local bank and thus set himself up in the stock market. The plot is complicated by a former student who steals the invention and a gang of thieves which is also after it; the ensuing cops-and-robbers chase makes exciting reading, the story finally ending on a happy note with Professor Leonard marrying a rich heiress. The next week Argosy presented one of Paul L. Anderson's cave-man stories, "The Trampling Horde." This describes the first taming of wolves, and a meeting between the cave-men and the last of the Neanderthals; it is excellently done. Readers may be interested in other tales in the series which preceeded it: the names and dates of publication are as follows--- "Son of the Red God" Jan. 31, 1920 "Lord of the Winged Death" Mar. 6, 1920 "Cave that Swims on the Water" May 8, 1920 "Master of Magic" July 17, 1920 "Wings of the Snow" Aug. 28, 1920 "Up from the Abyss" Mar. 22, 1924 On February 6, 1926 MacIssac started yet another serial, this time a five-part novel published anonymously. "The Seal of Satan" tells of millionaire Hudson Grant's selling his soul to Satan in exchange for being rescued from death by thirst on a raft in mid-Atlantic. Transported to Brazil, he becomes involved in a struggle for control of a vast plantation, falling in love with the owner's daughter. She became his bride after casting out the devil. Two issues later Richard Barry's five-part serial novel of fantasy, "Sea Lure," began. Three survivors of shipwreck find in the Sargasso Sea a colony of castaways and their descendants who calls themselves the Society of Con- (concluded on page 233)


Jewish Los Angeles Special Needs Trust held our first salon event this month to introduce our pooled special needs trust! The aim was to build up support so we can accomplish our three primary goals for people with disabilities: Protecting Benefits, Promoting Independence and Providing Peace of Mind.
Hosted by Board Member Stanley Kandel and his wife Charlotte, the event was very successful in reaching out to community leaders and raising needed funds, helping us move closer to our public launch. Pictures from the event can be seen below.
1. Referrals - We are looking for more families who would be interested in learning about and signing up for the trust and appreciate any family or professional connections you are able to make. Please send names and contact information to mwolf@jlatrust.org.
2. Volunteers/Donated Goods - We have many ways that volunteers can help us with the launch of the trust and appreciate any time and expertise you are able to give. We are currently seeking used laptops in good condition and other office equipment.
3. Financial Support - We need your help to get us to our launch date! Please make your check out to "Bet Tzedek" with "JLA Trust" in the memo line and mail to: 6230 Wilshire Blvd #1178, Los Angeles, CA 90048. Any and all amounts are greatly appreciated.


Following the TiVo Tupperware idea below, I went to Tupperware.com to see what they're up to these days. That led me to TupperwareParty.com, which allows Tuperware evangelists to hold a 14-day themed online Tupperware party by giving Tupperware the email addresses of their invitees.
It amazes me that this company keeps finding new ways to get people to do their marketing for them.


â–· Why did Shuddle fail? Learn it here!
Shuddle launched with the ambition to become the go-to service for parents with busy schedules that needed someone to drive their kids to their classes. Shuddle drivers, which were usually moms, teachers, and nannies, were said to have been hand-selected through the extensive screening process so as to assure kids would have a safe, reliable and on time ride service.
The company offered a much-needed service but parents became increasingly disappointed with it. Online reviews of the company show that the service that claimed to be the safest and most reliable to children, would routinely leave kids stranded, cancel the booking at the last moment or make them wait for long times. Shuddle customer support was also poor and, apparently, often no one would answer or return calls. Although there were parents routinely used the app and coped with the shortcomings since there was no other similar service in the area, there was still a big chunk of parents that would try the service once and vow to never use it again for how inconvenient it was.
Adding to the service quality, there were also concerns about security since Shuddle did not subject their drivers to fingerprints background checks claiming at one point that they were too expensive for them or that they were not needed.
Their business strategy also seemed faulty. Reports state that the company lost a lot of money on several rides and that they incurred losses on every ride they made before 2016. The charged a $9 per month subscription fee plus the ever-changing fare fees, and yet was said to struggle to pay for its operational costs and employees' salaries.
Shuddle was unable to raise funds to keep themselves afloat, no one was interested in investing or acquiring them, and they closed down in 2016.


text:
Q: returning an int from UNIX I need to find the number of files in a directory with my C program but I am having trouble saving the number. I am using the system command and not having any luck.
n = system( " ls | wc -l " ) ;

system does not seem to return a number so I am kinda stuck at this point. Any ideas?

A: you should use the scandir POSIX function.
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/scandir.html
An example
#include <dirent.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

struct dirent **namelist;
int n;
n = scandir(".", &namelist, 0, alphasort);
printf("%d files\n", n);

When you are programming C code using Unix functions, POSIX functions are the standard way to do this. You can implement your own ls functions in a standard way.
Enjoy!
NOTE: you can define a selector to use in scandir, for example, to get only the non directory results
int selector (struct dirent * entry)
{
   return (entry->d_type != 4);
}

For more options type, visit: http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?topic=dirent
Then you can scan your directory using your custom selector (and sort method):
n = scandir(".", &namelist, selector, alphasort);

A: If your question is about counting files, then better to do it using C library functions, if possible, like @Arnaldog illustrates.
However, if your question is about retrieving output from executed child processes, popen(3)/pclose(3) (conforming to POSIX.1-2001) are your friends. The function popen() return FILE pointer that you can use just like that returned by fopen(), just need to remember to close the stream using pclose() to avoid resource leak.
Simple illustration:
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    int n;
    FILE * pf = popen("ls | wc -l", "r");
    if (pf == (FILE *) 0) {
         fprintf(stderr, "Error with popen - %m\n");
         pclose(pf);
         return -1;
    }
    if (fscanf(pf, "%d", &n) != 1) {
         fprintf(stderr, "Unexpected output from pipe...\n");
         pclose(pf);
         return -1;
    }
    printf("Number of files: %d\n", n);
    pclose(pf);
    return 0;
}


Dana White and the UFC front office are putting together a solid card so far for the fans on June 13th in Mexico City. Eddie Alvarez and Gilbert Melendez have been booked for the co-main event in a lightweight match up with major implications to move up the lightweight rankings. Alvarez (25-4, #10 ranked lightweight) and Melendez (22-4, #4 ranked lightweight) are both looking to bounce back from losses to Donald Cerrone and Anthony Pettis, respectively.
The fight between the top 10 lightweights also sparks interest as both Alvarez and Melendez were once lightweight champions outside of the UFC (Alvarez in Bellator, Melendez in Strikeforce). Melendez had the opportunity to capture UFC gold in his last fight, however fell short when lightweight champion Anthony Pettis was the first ever to submit the Caesar Gracie black belt.
UFC 188 will also feature a fight which was supposed to happen in Mexico back in November, when interim-heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum (19-5-1) and heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez (13-1) will meet in the main event of the evening. Velasquez makes his long awaited return after suffering an injury which took him out of action back in November. Mark Hunt would replace the injured champion Velasquez in an interim title fight, whom Werdum would defeat and become the interim champion.
Cathal Pendred (16-2-1) will also return into action and face Mexico's Augusto Montano (15-1) in a welterweight showdown. A women's match is also confirmed as Tecia Torres (5-0) and Angela Hill (2-0) put their undefeated records on the line in a strawweight bout.


text:
After Murdoch
A potentially awesome shift in the UK's power structure is taking place if the role and influence of Murdoch's newspapers is really undermined. This is because the mess that Jeremy Hunt wishes to see sorted out is the very fusion of politicians, journalists and media owners that govern us - the political class.
Anthony Barnett
Murdoch traded on fear. He and his papers always sensed a weak point and were unscrupulous in exploiting it for the worse. He favoured war, polarisation, division, greed and sexism because they sold papers and gave him leverage.
We all knew about his hacking of celebrities, paying the police and intimidating MPs, threatening to work over their private lives if they tried to hold News International to account. We knew this especially thanks to the Guardian, its editor Alan Rusbridger who supported the investigations and Nick Davies, its key reporter, whose book Flat Earth News maps the wider degeneration of contemporary journalism. Yet many continued to buy News International papers - while those who spoke out against them were ghettoised. From the police to the BBC, critical stories were scorned, dismissed as merely the Guardian/Observer trying to 'get at' a man whose power represented the accepted status quo. Indeed, the prime minister has just told us that he was not in fact explicitly warned against taking his Director of Communications into Downing Street - a man who oversaw "a flourishing criminal conspiracy" when he was Editor of the News of the World - because, as he told the House of Commons, the information had already "been published in the Guardian". So that doesn't count then. Why, it might equally have appeared in that organ of truthfulness Private Eye!
I am compressing things here, which I'll unpack when we come to the Prime Minister who should clearly resign. One of the reasons for David Cameron finally throwing the book at Murdoch is an attempt to save his own skin.
Cameron knew. We all knew. And yet much of the public and the political class continued to buy his papers and take them seriously. Murdoch and his employees took this for public as well as official support - or at least active permission for the way they behaved. It turns out to have been cowed acceptance.
Was it as simple as that? This is the interpretation offered by Tim Garton Ash in his Guardian column. He describes the appalling influence of News International on politicians of all parties and the shocking spinelessness of the police and concludes "the most plausible explanation boils down to fear". Now, he continues, we are putting the "putrid quagmire" behind us and "the future looks brighter". Out of this, "one of the most important crises in the British political system", we can put in place a new settlement between politics and the media.
The problem with this analysis is that it turns all those who were running the state, the political parties, the police, the civil service, almost all MPs and the governments of the day, into the intimidated victims of News International. Murdoch's dark empire frightened and suborned them into submission.
While I agree we are witnessing a crisis and a welcome democratic opportunity, this isn't a plausible explanation of what has happened.
Murdoch's dynamic hypocrisy
Murdoch is a warmonger. He is a man who sells wars. He learnt the profits of war in the Falkland conflict in 1982 and this bonded him to Margaret Thatcher. He applied this at a world level after 9/11. Not one of his 130 odd editors around the globe opposed the invasion of Iraq. He formed a triumvirate with Bush and Blair to back the invasion. Had his media been genuinely investigative (as is now claimed for News of the World) they'd have exposed the lies and disinformation in the lead up to Iraq. Instead, at Fox News especially, he helped create and disseminate them.
One of the profits of wartime alliance with leaders is their gratitude and access to official license. Although a leading advocate of market fundamentalism and hostility to state regulation, Murdoch was a welfare monopolist. His greatest skill was fixing deals with government, permitting him a market advantage.
This was the malevolent dishonesty at the heart of Murdochism. He was a close ally of state power who advocated hostility towards it. Worse, he was an ally of the most baleful and threatening aspects of state power, its police and security and the database state, while he attacked its best aspects, regulation, welfare, investment in and defence of the public interest.
His close relationship to power allowed his media to help 'create reality'. This reinforced a belief that he was above the law. Being above the law is worse – more frightening and lethal – than being merely criminal. It means your crimes do not need to be secret and you can get away with them (see also Tony Blair). Armed criminals do not threaten the state's monopoly of coercion. A mafia does.
Buying police was an aspect of this and police corruption is a huge part of the story in London. It is unlikely that the details will come out as much as they should. The British way of dealing with police corruption, if it can, is to retire the officers concerned and move on. The relationship of News International to the employment of criminals and ex-criminals was actively connived in by the police (and apparently also elements in the secret service). This is another example of News International double-standards. When it supported 'our boys in blue' its readers did not think this meant they were corrupting them.
Page three in the Sun is a daily example of Murdoch's double standards. The supposed advocate of family values he was undermining them in the name of "good, clean fun" – ironically, he hid behind the 'frankness' of topless nudity to use women in a way that was anything but honest.
In none of this, however, can it be said that he acted alone. His empire was not that of a tyrant built by conquest over the powerful elites, as Garton Ash suggests. In Britain he was more the agent of an Anglo-American elite than its master. In the UK in the 1970s they wanted to secure the newly oil-rich archipelago for finance-dominated globalisation and this meant breaking Britain's post-war welfare state and its consensus politics. Murdoch was a crucial part of this. But he was a hired-hand, an energetic foreigner with few if any scruples, used to blast apart the ranks of a lazy, cosy establishment and over-trade-unionised working classes.
Too much power
This influenced British opinion and its politics, including how people voted. I don't agree with David Elstein that the influence of Murdoch's papers didn't have electoral outcomes. Murdoch's press was a constant, shaping cultural pressure, direct and indirect. Even if mechanically assessing voting intentions is unable to measure this, priorities were set and political agendas shaped (just as I think the BBC influences voters).
Where I agree with Elstein is that the creation of satellite television was a creative move that increased plurality and quality competition. But opposition to the total takeover of BSkyB stemmed from fear that his monopolising this success would give his newspaper holdings an advantage, by combining a pay wall and cross-media integration into the BSkyB charging system. Probably, Murdoch was more interested in taking a wholly owned BSkyB out of the UK's tax jurisdiction. And, of course, there was its potential Foxisation.
The battle over this became a symbol of a larger fightback over Murdoch's influence within the oppressive, dehumanisation project of commercial media which he had come to personify. Ironically, the celebrity culture that he encouraged made him the bogyman for those who scorned it. Yet given his power and his son's beliefs, the precautionary principle seemed more than reasonable to me. I opposed the BSkyB takeover as a citizen, which is why I argued, as soon as the Dowler revelation broke, that it was the Murdochs themselves, not their editors, who should be removed. Henry Porter put it simply and rightly on the Today programme. Murdoch had too much power and ought to have less, not more.
There is a kind of Masonic expertise amongst those who understand the intricacies of broadcasting law and its oversight and regulation, what it permits and doesn't, which suggested a more nuanced view. But for all his brilliance and daring as a media mogul, Murdoch was a man who stood for bad things without nuance. That was the basis for my opposition to him. The feeling is strongly reinforced by James Murdoch. Thirty years of Rupert expanding his influence was bad enough. The prospect of a successful dynastic transition, with James in the saddle riding $2billion plus profits a year and shaping his media to his agenda is intolerable.
It feels strange, as if it is a hostage to fortune, to write about their power in the past tense.
The source of Murdoch's power over Britain
Though hardly original or limited to him, Murdoch's populism and celebration of the market were popular. They provided a genuine political attraction in a snobbish country without an honest constitution, where access to political power was an establishment game that relied on norms of paternalism and gentlemen's rules.
Those who trade in fear live off the weakness of others. In the UK this informal, elitist constitution of ours while lauded as strong because flexible is in fact a weakness. Murdoch joined with Thatcher in exploiting its informality to expand their power and in the process further hollowed out its self-belief. They began to dismantle the old regime without any desire to replace it by anything other than themselves, the less regulated the better. The process continued under Tony Blair.
In 1945 the 'absolute sovereignty of parliament' meant the sovereignty of a genuine system: a politically interested monarch, a wealthy landed aristocracy in the House of Lords, a Commons that believed in itself and drew on mass-based parties to organise votes, an independent civil service (without special advisors), the Church of England, and the last of empire. It was financially bust and had to be propped up by Marshall aid. But it had been re-forged by wartime Churchillism into a powerful system of consent.
Today it is easy for us to see the closed and undemocratic nature of its elitism and forget how deeply support for it penetrated the population, thanks to trade unions, a shared wartime experience and commitment to the creation of a welfare state and improving living standards. When this political edifice tottered in the crisis years of the seventies it needed an honest constitutional democracy to replace its closed shops with open associations that could have preserved its social democratic dynamism.
Instead, we had Thatcher. She shattered the closed shops, it should not be forgotten, of both the City of London and the union, with a free market ideology for which Murdoch was the foremost media propagandist (he had bought the News of the World in 1969 and the Sun in 1970, she enabled him to acquire the Times and Sunday Times in 1981). Their successful assault was permitted by the lack of constitutional safeguards, a lack they then preserved. This is why his papers are ferocious opponents of constitutional reform. The high point of the process came in 2003 when the absolute sovereignty of parliament became the absolute sovereignty of Tony Blair. Except that Blair needed Murdoch to achieve it.
The importance of this for the UK's political culture may be hard to grasp, so here is an example to illustrate the wider point. In his sycophantic biography of Murdoch, William Shawcross asks the media mogul, known to be privately a republican, about the monarchy. Murdoch's answer is revealing. He says, I am summarising from memory: "if you want to preserve such an obvious weakness that is fine by me". It was like a bully praising an opponent for his cowardice. "Please keep your elitist, indefensible system as this means you will find it all the harder to regulate and govern me!" (Only he didn't say "please".)
From the eighties onwards the clash between Murdoch-Thatcher-and-Blair and the traditional British Establishment was a conflict between two non-democratic forces. The mandarin elite of the old regime was undermined by the grasping opportunism of the global capitalism Murdoch represented. A decisive section of the ambitious middle and upper classes preferred the modernisation Murdoch offered to the restrictions of the old regime. Together the rising, media-savvy politicians, policy advisors, PR consultants along with editors and proprietors formed a 'political class' that pushed aside the old establishment. But there was a refreshing aspect to this. It did raise people's game. It did bring wealth and growth with it, however unbalanced and unequal. Britain was in a crisis in the 1970s. It badly did (and still does) need to change (but not in the way Murdoch advocated). It remains appallingly elitist.
It is not the case that a good, honourable system was tyrannised over by an incoming authoritarian. A decayed, elite system that refused to democratise itself embraced modernisation from outside to preserve its privilege.
The fire in the firestorm
The kind of change the UK needs is a genuinely popular, democratic politics that has a new sense of the public interest, one that is not BBC-Reithian and top down.
But is this what is happening? The New York Times (locked in deadly competition with Murdoch's Wall Street Journal) declared that a 'British Spring' is under way – its democratic breezes and fresh social media campaigns lifting fear over Westminster as it is cleansed of Wapping's sinister influence.
If this is a Tahrir Square moment, where are the people in the square? The British public, I would argue, did play a decisive yet ghostlike role in all this. The moment the Guardian published the revelation that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked was indeed a tipping point. As the story began to roll, everyone knew that the game had changed. The family of a murdered girl had been given false hope that she was alive thanks to the heartless indifference of a News of the World hired hand.
Had the political leaders stood together and defended Murdoch in the way he had come to expect, Parliament Square would have been seized by a crowd exponentially larger than the 30,000 young people who stormed it in December last year.
It is an irony of our post-modern times. Industrial-scale callousness of the kind that led to the Dowler hack has been going on since the popular press was invented. Historically, the wealthy and important were treated with deference while the poor were punished because as victims they deserved what they got. Today - and when did this happen? - if you are a leading member of society, powerful, rich or a celebrity, then you are 'fair game' for maltreatment. It is acceptable to hack the phones of top people or steal and publish their medical records – good luck to you mate! But if you hurt the feelings of the poor and innocent you have to go to jail.
Call me egalitarian but I find this peculiar. What was been found utterly intolerable and created mass revulsion is the prospect of regular people being worked over like celebrities by the tabloids. Even though most of us are taught that we would rather like to be a celebrity. The peculiarity is a delight: Murdoch was brought down thanks to his own populism.
But what was the nature of the explosion, given the absence of the masses in any physical sense as the Wapping Bastille crumbled?
Here is how the Prime Minister experienced the pressure after a week of attempting to minimise the whole affair, do what he could to protect Murdoch and limit the damage to himself. On Wednesday 13 July he told the House of Commons:
We have to be clear about what is happening here. There is a firestorm, if you like, that is engulfing parts of the media, parts of the police and, indeed, our political system's ability to respond. What we must do in the coming days and weeks is think above all of the victims, such as the Dowler family, who are watching this today, and make doubly sure that we get to the bottom of what happened and prosecute those who are guilty.
Later in the debate he repeated the phrase
What has happened here is a massive firestorm of allegations that have got worse and worse.
Of course it takes time to get these things right when you have this enormous firestorm going on, but I think that we have taken some major steps forward that will make a big difference.
Was it a firestorm of revelations and allegations that was toasting him, or a firestorm of popular revulsion and public opposition?
The adroitness of the British elite
This is where the British elite has not lost its adroitness. It has always governed with consent, working hard to try and make sure government was popular. The Victorians rightly saw this as being distinct from democracy, at a time when most of the population were not yet trusted with the vote. Now, however, opinion polls confirm that politicians as a class are staring into the abyss of almost complete lack of public trust.
In the expenses crisis of 2009, the politicians worked out how to put themselves at the head of the opposition to what they had been doing. It seemed to work. (There is an amusing John Cleese short where he plays a boss who concludes that he has to fire himself then agrees with himself to give himself another chance.) With the Murdoch revelations they did the same again. To a man and woman our MPs were aware of the baleful influence of News International better than any, yet took its calls. All of a sudden, with an ultra-quick exhalation of remorse, they unanimously supported a motion in Parliament against any expansion of Murdoch's power, leading the revolution against themselves!
Two things were going on when the politicians turned themselves into the voice of the public's revulsion at the lawlessness of News International, an amorality they had connived in for years.
On the one hand a genuine and welcome shift in the balance of power is taking place, as unaccountable might is brought to book and the intimate collusion of the executive and the media is to some degree prised apart. When the parliamentary expenses crisis was at its height, Graham Allen MP wrote a powerful complaint. He protested that the government and the media were ganging up in a collusive tango against Parliament itself, damaging any real hope of democracy in the process. The peccadilloes and permissiveness of backbenchers who were on the make had in fact originally been inspired by an executive hoping to make them more submissive. The Telegraph-led assault against, far from leading to a strengthening of the independence of MPs, had happened upon new forms of taming them and a further weakening of parliament. In this way a justified exposure led to a 'clean up' that in fact increased centralisation and further weakened parliamentary democracy in the UK, replacing its executive permitted corruption by a mass of controls.
This analysis places the collaboration between the executive (ministers and civil servants) and privately owned media at the centre of the state: the very collaboration that has been set back, at least momentarily, by the assault unleashed upon the Murdoch empire. As a result, we are becoming freer, and the polity more law-abiding and less corrupt, especially thanks to a clearer shared understanding of how bad things were. It may be relative but it is a wonderful improvement. How was it achieved?
Ed Miliband played a pivotal role. Casting aside the advice of caution, he spoke for himself and broke the collusion of party power with Murdoch's influence. In doing so he spoke to and for the country for the first time since becoming his party's leader. He thus became prime-ministerial at a stroke (a great stroke). It is difficult to think of a moment when the leader of the opposition so clearly led the way in an issue of such importance.
To everyone's astonishment he did the right thing! With the public clearly taking his side he had momentum and the initiative. Also, he clearly enjoyed it and was saying what he meant. And he was clean. At the end of June he was seen to be a loser, unable to make his mark. The media was especially hostile to him because he had not been their candidate. The Blairite machine had stitched up the papers and TV into supporting David Miliband. The arrogance of the media, led by boys and girls from News International, lies in its conviction that it is the voice of the people. This means it feels it can decide who is electable, as it did with Blair and Cameron. Suddenly, Miliband's disadvantage in this respect came to his aid. The fact that he was not a creation of the press, and News International in particular meant that he could lead the demand to have the Augean stables of British power swept clean.
Yet the sweeper remains a united House of Commons and a judicial inquiry. As if the cattle themselves can clear away thirty years of their own deposits. Anything to head off the mighty Hercules of an angry people!
Ed Miliband, celebrity and the net
Three things have contributed to Miliband's crushing defeat of Murdoch. First, his leadership was on the edge of extinction. Tony Blair had launched a devastating, serpentine assault upon him – naturally enough in the Sun. The former leader and his followers seem to have decided they had to oust Ed Miliband now, if his replacement was to have any chance of unifying the party after a bruising fight and winning an election in 2015. Miliband's only hope of defeating his opponents, who included most Labour MPs, was to show that he could win voter endorsement, outsmart Cameron, and open up the Labour Party to a new generation of support that would bring an expanded, growing party behind him. All this seemed quite beyond him when he made a totally disastrous response to the one-day strike by public sector workers the previous week (see this account by Dan Hancox). Young newcomers who had joined Labour to stop the Coalition were tearing up their party cards and posting images of this online.
With nothing to lose, Miliband considered saying what he really thought about the behaviour of the Murdoch machine and risk becoming its enemy. He consulted with his team on Tuesday 5 July, the day after the Dowler revelations, an event that was promptly dubbed the "sod it" meeting. The old calculus was abandoned and he spoke out and became his own man.
This may only have happened because his back was up against the wall, but from the wall's side there were two forces pushing him forward. The full-spectrum dominance of the tabloid media is no longer the only voice in town when it came to summoning up what is called popular opinion. Two new forms of influence have emerged over the last twenty years. Both existed in a more confined analogue form before then, but are now turbo-driven by digital communication and the internet. They are 'celebrity' and viral campaigns.
Celebrity is now a form of power. An issue can languish on the margins – or be something the Guardian 'bangs on' about - and then be catapulted to prominence by the advocacy of someone famous. A well-chosen celebrity bestows 'sex-appeal' on the most unlikely cause, creates attention, ends specialist status and ensures that 'everyone' is talking about whatever it is. Politicians then compete to show they are 'with it' for fear of being shown-up as being 'without it' by their opponents. Like all forms of volatile power, celebrity endorsement can blow up in your face or humiliate everyone by turning into a damp squib. So-called "reality" television has created celebrity-for-itself, those famous for being famous (and selling newspapers and magazines) of whom many of us have never heard. Their support can be fatal for a cause. Meanwhile other celebrities have to some degree earned their fame, if not their notoriety. They can have a genuine voice provided they also have authority to speak for the cause in question.
An example of this kind of celebrity power in the UK was Joanna Lumley's campaign to allow Ghurkhas who had risked their lives for Britain to come and live here. As well as being famous, funny and attractive she was brilliantly successful because her father had been an officer in the 6th Gurkha Rifles and it was a cause that she understood and which mattered to her personally. Thus her use of her stardust was genuine not contrived. It meant hers was not just a celebrity endorsement, as in an advert: in this campaign she was also a 'real person', not a contrived figure of public relations. The mixture of authenticity, public recognition and an attractive appearance and personality is compelling, drawing in millions to consider a call or an argument they'd otherwise have ignored.
This was the mixture that celebrities like Jemima Kahn and Hugh Grant brought to the lobby against hacking. In a striking Newsnight encounter Grant told an executive from the Times that far from his sister paper's bad behaviour being "in the past" as he claimed, the Sun had recently acquired and published Grant's own private medical records. Everyone was astonished and appalled. Grant could no longer be scorned as merely publicity-seeking in his support for the campaign.
So Miliband had effective celebrity on his side. It's a new form of top-down populism that has escaped the control of the tabloids who created it and in this case celebrity served democracy. For sure it is ambiguous and self-interested, but it has brought a new force into the equations of power.
In addition to gathering celebrity support, Miliband's stand echoed the call of online campaigns by Avaaz globally, which called for an end to "Murdoch's criminal empire", and 38Degrees in the UK. Both had memberships who wanted to blow the whistle of the web against News International. Thousands upon thousands of messages poured in, not least to MPs from people in their constituencies, and companies were called upon to boycott News of the World. Paul Mason of Newsnight asked if the network had defeated the hierarchy. The answer is "yes, in part". As with celebrity power, the monopoly of traditional politics is being prised open and Miliband finally found himself on the upside of the energy.
With these forces pushing him forward, once Ed Miliband went for broke the firestorm became unstoppable. He became the leader of the 'political class' which then put itself at the forefront of the mass outrage against the way the political class had behaved.
The 'Political Class'
I say 'political class'. As the nature of political power in London reshaped itself in the hacking crisis, this term went live in a novel way. It was introduced as a concept by Peter Oborne in his book, 'The Triumph of the Political Class'. In it he argues that the British aristocracy, industrial and middle classes, inspired by a Burkean ideal of public service, created in the 19th century an uncorrupt disinterested administrative class who could not be bribed or suborned, while being an MP was unpaid. Public service became a self-regulated, honourable calling at the heart of the Establishment. This ethic carried through the Second World War and into the 1970s, when a new process started. This got into its stride under Thatcher and came into its own under New Labour, which saw the rise of manipulative, corporate populism (Oborne is kind enough to credit me with this term I coined in 1999 to describe New Labour). The agent of this change was the rise of 'the political class', who are mostly Oxbridge-educated men recruited young into the circuits of political influence. Two things define this force. First, it seeks personal gain from public office. Second, it makes its career and its fortune from "a fusion between the media and political domains". This analysis set Oborne at odds with the dominant narrative which misleadingly offers the public the picture of still honourable politicians harassed by a "feral" media (Tony Blair's term) as the influential nether world of advisors and consultants is lost from sight. A critical figure in the formation of the new corruption was Rupert Murdoch, to whom Oborne dedicates a trenchant section.
After the book was published the term 'political class' moved into circulation, although usually by journalists contemptuously deploying it to describe politicians, as if they themselves were not part of it. On Friday July 8, in an interview with Kirsty Wark for Newsnight, Ed Miliband told her that the "whole political class" had got it wrong in its relationship with Murdoch. In effect he identified himself positively and professionally as a member of it. This was the first time I had heard the term used in this fashion, by one of its leading members, as an objective, uncritical description of reality, a plain man's substitute for the political elite. Implicitly, Miliband's use included the media and certainly unelected advisors and the civil service within its ambit.
Miliband was making the language as well as the political weather. It didn't take longer than a weekend for this to gain parliamentary recognition. Answering questions for the government in the debate on phone hacking and News International on Monday July 11, Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Culture, the Media and Sport, said at one point, "We have all failed—politicians, journalists and media owners - and we must all work together to put the problem right". And later, "In the last Parliament there were two Select Committee inquiries on the matter and two reports by the Information Commissioner stating that things were wrong and needed to be sorted out, but nothing happened. Let us hope that as a political class we are up to the challenge of sorting things out this time".
Hunt's use of the term is impeccable, combining politicians, journalists and media owners. But what he wishes for is impossible. The mess is the fact that we are governed by a fusion of politicians, journalists and media owners. They have come together in pursuit of the creation of public consent to policies which benefit them but are against the public interest.
What is needed is a Chris Wood style "grand correction" which, naturally, the political class is determined to prevent. One form of it has been advocated by Suzanne Moore to "bust open journalistic practice", another by Dan Hind in his Return of the Public. It is the principle on which OurKingdom was initiated within openDemocracy. We need citizen government that opens up the political class to constitutional democracy. And maybe the only force that is able to do this is a networked politics.
Gordon Brown, David Cameron
It is a long way from here to there. Standing in our way is the political class itself, a vested interest dislocated from genuine political movements and public life. Gordon Brown entered the debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday to demonstrate what I mean. It was a graceless, rambling, self-pitying performance. Without a touch of remorse, Brown put himself forward, in a television interview as well, as a pure victim, a man and his family wronged by what he denounced as a "criminal-media nexus". He didn't mention that he had tried very hard to become a member of it himself (and permitted his own people to intrude on the private lives of others). Allison Pearson spelt it out in the Telegraph, "For Brown to complain about the invasion of "private grief" was like Faust moaning that someone had forged his signature on the pact with the Devil". Tim Garton Ash accepts Brown's presentation. I think it is evidence for Oborne's thesis that the underlying nexus is the active, collusive twinning of politicians and proprietors who are in it together, while falsely presenting it as a fight to the death.
In order to justify himself and prove that his relationship with News International was not cosy, Brown read out from the advice he had received from the head of the civil service when he inquired as to whether he could call for a public inquiry into the News of the World – after News International had switched its support from Labour to the Tories. The answer came back that it was so close to the election it would look partisan and might fail if it was challenged in a judicial review. This, Brown implied, showed how the forces had ganged up against him.
But a simple response was available to him in the light of this wholly predictable, justified advice. Brown could have made a call for a full-scale inquiry into the tabloid press part of Labour's election manifesto. He could have taken the issue to the voters and challenged the tabloids to do their worst. We can now see that this could have won him political support and personal sympathy. Instead, he played the game. By intervening in the way he did this past week he is still playing the same game. We, the public, are again encouraged to be observers not players.
More ominously, his successor is still playing the game. As he entered Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, David Cameron said, "I want a political system that people can trust and look up to once again". Hah! I referred above to one of the warnings he was given not to take Andy Coulson into Downing Street as he had overseen a "flourishing criminal conspiracy". It was in fact written by Peter Oborne who has been an acquaintance of Cameron for twenty years. True it was in the Observer and it is well worth re-reading it today. I posted about it at the time, in an article on the heart of the matter. If it had been arguably untrue, Coulson would have sued. It is inconceivable that the Tory leader was not aware of the seriousness of these charges in the run up to the election.
But pressed on the issue in his press conference on Friday July 9, Cameron said repeatedly that he had checked and, for example, "no one gave me any specific information. Obviously, I sought assurances, I received assurances, I commissioned a company to do a basic background check, but I'm not hiding from the decision I made." But he was hiding. Because his next answer - "I sought some specific assurances but also some general assurances as you would expect. It was a series of conversations, a series of meetings we had after he resigned from the News of the World, before he came to work with me at Conservative Central Office and in the House of Commons." – referred to the time he first employed Coulson four years ago, not the warnings, such as Oborne's, in the run-up to the election, against his taking Coulson with him into Number 10.
It is interesting to see how skilfully Cameron dissembles and wriggles, well worth remembering when listening to future presentations of policy. Now it turns out that he had invited him to Chequers as a weekend friend even after he was forced to step out of Downing Street. This is a perfect example of the integration of media and politics that is coming apart. The Prime Minister now denounces in shocked terms the possibility that he has been lied to by Coulson, if with a touch more remorse than his predecessor Brown. In both cases they are seeking to scapegoat Murdoch and company for their own collusion.
A potentially awesome shift in the UK's power structure is taking place should the role and influence of Murdoch and his newspapers be really undermined. When Thatcher introduced market fundamentalism into Britain, Murdoch was a key player in winning popular support for privatisation and undermining the unions. Now the Coalition, alongside their austerity programme are launching an unprecedented reconfiguration of the state, opening it up to corporate provision in the name of the Big Society, as Olly Huitson has summarised. The same day that Jeremy Hunt told parliament that "we the political class" should "sort things out", the Prime Minister launched the Open Public Services White Paper, a classic of political class jargon dissected by Anna Coote. Without the influence of the Murdoch press, Cameron may find it hard to break the inevitable resistance to his double-sided campaign of austerity and marketisation.
At the same time, many in the media are also rubbing their hands with pleasure at the humiliation of a rival. In terms of the news, we are now left with a monopoly provider in the BBC. (see these graphs here, displayed on Conservative Home). Why is the BBC a danger? Well, for a start it permitted the creation of the database state. It never gave the Guardian's coverage of the hacking case its due. If it had been left to the BBC, all the most egregious aspects of Murdoch's power would have remained intact. It also is part of the circuit of the political class. We won't be safe until there is competition and plurality within public service broadcasting – a case set out in open debate in the Public Service Broadcasting Forum. But for this to happen there needs to be a democratic ethic of public interest guiding the media that is not defined in terms of the market and efficiency. Des Freedman's report of the utter incomprehension of broadcasters, from the BBC to Google, in the face of such a suggestion is a salutary warning that Murdochism will live on after Murdoch.
world forum democracy – media-freedom
Joining the dots on the media in Europe


Each individual has opportunities to make a difference and an impact in their community. We hope to show you that you have an important voice, and you can contribute to the decision-making process. Be empowered with the inspiration to make positive changes in your community.


text:
View source for Stream Receiver
← Stream Receiver
===Introduction=== Software Version 201807290 introduced the capability to receive an incoming stream and trigger a repeater to relay it when the stream is active. The concept of operation is that a special "repeater input" streaming channel can be set up on the BATC Streaming Server for any repeaters who wish to implement the facility. This stream will not be listed on the normal BATC live stream pages as it will only be viewed by the Portsdown stream receiver at the repeater site. A dedicated Portsdown Stream Receiver is then installed at the repeater site and set up to listen or monitor the allocated "repeater input" streaming channel only. The Stream Receiver's video and audio output is fed into the repeater video input matrix, and the "stream active" signal is used to switch the repeater logic to show the incoming stream as if it was a normal RF input channel. Trusted members of the repeater group are then given access to be able to stream in to the BATC server on this account and will then be able to access and send signals to the repeater using Adobe Media encoder, Vmix or a Portsdown in streaming mode. ===Preparation=== You will need a Raspberry Pi 3B or Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a good power supply. This should be connected to the internet at the repeater site, and the video and audio outputs from the 3.5mm jack ([http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-2-Quick-n-Easy-RCA/ connection details here]) connected to your repeater input matrix. GPIO pin 7 on the Raspberry Pi should be connected to a suitable interface to switch the repeater input into use when the pin goes high (3.3v). https://wiki.batc.org.uk/PTT_and_band_switching#Summary_of_GPIO_connections A suitable memory card with Raspbian Stretch software and Portsdown Software Version 201807290 or later should be fitted. Note - no touchscreen, video dongle or audio dongle is required. The next requirement is to have a "Repeater Input" stream account set up on the BATC Streaming Server - to do this, send a request to admin@batc.tv. Once the account is set up, you will be sent the account details including the stream RTMP input URL and key and the stream output URL. The stream rtmp input URL and key should be given to your trusted users to configure their streaming software (Portsdown, Vmix OBS, Adobe etc). Be aware that the received input stream will be transmitted over your transmit output and so should only be used by licensed amateurs observing their license conditions. The output stream URL should not be passed to anyone as it is only used to set up the repeater site stream Receiver as described below. ==Setting up the Raspberry Pi== ===Change the default password=== Connect to the Raspberry Pi through the console as described in the [[Console_mode|Console Guide]]. The first step is to change the default Raspberry Pi password as it will be constantly connected to the Internet. You should not run a Portsdown-configured Raspberry Pi constantly connected to the internet without changing the default password. From the console, select Shutdown and Reboot options. Then select Option 3, "Exit to Linux". At the command prompt type passwd and press enter. It will ask you for the current password (raspberry), but will not echo anything to the screen as you type it in. It should then ask you for the new password (twice). Again it will not show anything on the screen. When complete, type sudo reboot now and press enter to return to reboot; you may need to disconnect and reconnect the power. Don't forget to write the password down (yes!) and put it out of view, but attached to your receiver hardware (on the underside of the box?). If a hacker has physical access to your hardware, you have bigger problems than the hacker simply knowing the password. ===Setting up the stream receiver=== When the Raspberry Pi reboots, log in with you new password and the console should be displayed. [[File:Console 1.jpg|661px]] From the console select option 4, Receive. The select option 4 on the Receive Menu. [[File:Receive Menu.jpg|661px]] Next, the software will request the stream output URL. This is the stream output URL for your special repeater input channel (NOT your normal repeater output stream) and will be in the form of: rtmp://rtmp.batc.org.uk/live/gb3xxinput Press enter and it will start the stream receiver FOR TESTING. You can now check that the stream is displayed and that your switching circuitry works. The final, ESSENTIAL, step is to set up the system to boot straight into the receiver. From the Console Main Menu select option 5, System. [[File:System.jpg|661px]] Next select option 1, Autostart, and move the red box to the "StreamRX_boot" line and select it with the space bar. The press enter to select it. [[File:Autostart.jpg|661px]] The stream receiver will now start at every reboot. The last thing to do is to reboot the RPi and check that the stream receiver does restart and work. ==Operation== The stream receiver is designed to be run unattended for long periods. This is how it operates. With no incoming stream there is a continuous loop that starts the stream player (omxplayer) every 10 seconds. If there is no stream, the player times out after about 6 seconds and sits idle until it is restarted 4 seconds later. If the player finds a stream and starts, it sends a status message. The status message is checked by the software, and if the first line starts with "Video" this is taken as an indication that the stream is valid, and the GPIO pin to trigger the repeater switching is set high. Sometimes the player does not start properly and only finds the audio part of the stream. In this case the player is stopped and restarted at the beginning of the next 10 second cycle. When the stream finishes, the player times out and the GPIO pin is set low. The 10 second cycle starts again. There is an occasional lock-up condition where the player seems to detect a valid stream, but does not display any video. This triggers the GPIO switch, but leaves the system locked up showing the "Valid Stream Detected" message. To overcome this without requiring repeater keeper intervention, the player is stopped (whatever is happening) once an hour, normally within 10 seconds of the top of the hour. During normal running, the stream receiver does not write to the SD Card, so it is unlikely to get corrupted in the event of a power failure.
Return to Stream Receiver.
Retrieved from 'https://wiki.batc.org.uk/Stream_Receiver'


text:
<?php

/* partials/base.html.twig */
class __TwigTemplate_1b46f7dffbb5851320d3a1f3a34c6151aadca8dd4cd7db90f160376885f07733 extends Twig_Template
{
    public function __construct(Twig_Environment $env)
    {
        parent::__construct($env);

        // line 1
        $this->parent = $this->loadTemplate("partials/base-root.html.twig", "partials/base.html.twig", 1);
        $this->blocks = array(
        );
    }

    protected function doGetParent(array $context)
    {
        return "partials/base-root.html.twig";
    }

    protected function doDisplay(array $context, array $blocks = array())
    {
        $this->parent->display($context, array_merge($this->blocks, $blocks));
    }

    public function getTemplateName()
    {
        return "partials/base.html.twig";
    }

    public function isTraitable()
    {
        return false;
    }

    public function getDebugInfo()
    {
        return array (  11 => 1,);
    }

    /** @deprecated since 1.27 (to be removed in 2.0). Use getSourceContext() instead */
    public function getSource()
    {
        @trigger_error('The '.__METHOD__.' method is deprecated since version 1.27 and will be removed in 2.0. Use getSourceContext() instead.', E_USER_DEPRECATED);

        return $this->getSourceContext()->getCode();
    }

    public function getSourceContext()
    {
        return new Twig_Source("{% extends 'partials/base-root.html.twig' %}
", "partials/base.html.twig", "/home/moonwort/public_html/user/plugins/admin/themes/grav/templates/partials/base.html.twig");
    }
}


text:
Relevance · Date 61 - 80 of 85
moderated List Rules - Tue, 12/01/2020 #cal-notice
List Rules When: Tuesday, 1 December 2020 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-05:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly,
moderated List Rules - Fri, 01/01/2021 #cal-notice
List Rules When: Friday, 1 January 2021 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-05:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly, a
moderated List Rules - Mon, 02/01/2021 #cal-notice
List Rules When: Monday, 1 February 2021 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-05:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly,
List Rules When: Monday, 1 March 2021 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-05:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly, and
moderated List Rules - Thu, 04/01/2021 #cal-notice
List Rules When: Thursday, 1 April 2021 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-04:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly, a
moderated List Rules - Sat, 05/01/2021 #cal-notice
List Rules When: Saturday, 1 May 2021 12:00am to 1:00am (GMT-04:00) America/New York Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly, and
moderated Happening Now: List Rules - 06/01/2021 #cal-notice
List Rules When: 06/01/2021 12:00am to 1:00am (UTC-04:00) America/New York View Event Description: The following is the current version of the JFW Mailing List policies. These are sent out monthly, an
moderated Now: List Rules - 07/01/2021 #cal-notice
moderated List Rules - 11/01/2021 #cal-notice
Hi. Who is James, the signer of the following rules email? Is he the phantom moderator? I believe that the narrative of this email has not been updated for some time and is just automatically sent out
By Ken Chernack · #93973 ·
Unfortunatley, the owner/moderator of this list has apparently given up his moderation duties and allowed the list to become a more general discussion forum where almost anything goes and rules are no
By Gerald Levy · #93974 ·
Why do some folks concern themselves with which list is best? If there is low traffic on a list, why unsubscribe from it? The list traffic may pick up later. If it is low traffic, then there is no bot
By Glenn / Lenny · #93975 ·
- No, it's not. It's the result of not thinking about what you're asking about. On every screen reader group I've participated in there are members who think that a question about some given piece of
By Brian Vogel · #93978 ·
Ken, The activity on any list ebbs and flows. The "windows" list is also down the last few days. This list offers many quality, effective, answers. Don't compare lists for there are too many variables
By Dan Longmore · #93979 ·
Maybe you should follow the rules , especially rule 2.
By Chris · #93982 ·
Definitely rule # 1 needs to be updated or rephrased. Especially since pretty much everything goes on TV, vulgar speech, loose morals etc. I won't continue this thought so, don't worry, owner or moder
By David Diamond · #94000 ·
It is never no traffic on a group that makes me leave, it is primarily heavy handed moderation of a mod that seems to be on a Power trip. Or, on one group, the inflammatory thread was dying out and th


These bid tabulations are for Information Purposes Only. Bid Awards will be contingent upon evaluation by Staff and End Users. Bid Awards are made by Shelby County Schools Purchase Order Only. Download the latest adobe reader if you are not able to view files online.


I second Leslie's suggestion of The Garden Primer. I was given the original… hmmm… 20 years ago when I bought my home and started my first garden. Last year I bought myself her new, updated, entirely organic edition. I love it! It covers everything… asparagus to zinnias.


After visiting China at the start of our Asia backpacking adventures we were always curious about the region of Tibet. An area that is torn with the rule of China and the claims of national sovereignty that has raged for years, this is against a backdrop of beautiful scenery, incredible culture and a land not many get to see. This is our bucket list plan for visiting this incredible land.
One of the main problems facing those who want to visit this incredible area is that China has it on lock down due to the on going troubles with sovereignty. The Chinese make it difficult for those wanting to cross over into the large expanses of wild frontier in the west of the state. This means that firstly you need to gain a permit to travel to Tibet in addition to the annoying process of gaining your Chinese visa! Yet more paperwork!
Another additional problem is that independent travel to the region is also very hard and frowned upon by the Chinese authorities, meaning that the best way to visit is on a tour. We usually hate tours but to such a wild, vast and hard to reach region choosing the right Tibet tours means you can get even more out of a trip here, staying with locals and gaining access to remote areas that would have been extremely difficult other wise.
Tibet is close to visitors from in March and the winter months are especially cold and fierce. In order to make the most out of travelling to Tibet the Spring time, April to May, offer the best conditions. The ice melts meaning many mountain passes and remote roads are freed up and the lush green valleys are in bloom. Travelling in the Spring in Tibet is the most pleasant time due to the improved weather but also to avoid the more crowded summer season.
However, having said that it does depend on what your personal reason for visiting Tibet are. If you are making the trek here to marvel at Everest then April to mid-June and Sept to Oct offer the best weather conditions free of rain and fog.
If you are headed to Tibet mostly for the culture then then it's best to travel when the many festivities are in bloom. The intense and colourful festival of Losar (Tibetan New Year) and Butter Lamp Festival are around January to February and allow a great capture of Tibetan culture. In early April peach blossoms in Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Nyingchi provide a stunning splash of colour that is every photographers dream. Other major festivals such as the holy lakes like Yamdrok Lake, Namtso Lake,and Manasrovar take place from May to October.
Despite sitting on the roof of the world, Tibet actually has several different routes and methods of travelling into this mysterious and beautiful world.
Nepal is the closed neighbouring country to Tibet and so travelling to the region from Nepal is a great method of entering the region. There are no trains connecting Kathmandu to Lhasa so the best way to take this route is either via a short flight or even better by driving the incredible road through the Himalayan Mountain range. This route does take 2 days and requires access to a vehicle which will be part of a tour and is more open to closures and problems.
Travelling from mainland China is probably the best option and the most straightforward. The most highly recommend option is to fly into Tibet and then take one of the spectacular train rides back out. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is an engineering marvel and the highest railway in the world. It is also one of the most spectacular rail journeys in the world, traversing immense landscapes, snow capped mountains, incredible lakes and the Gobi desert. However it can take over 40 hours!!
This has to be the number one reason to go to Tibet, from here you can take in the world's highest mountains from several vantage points, hike or even trek to the base camp itself! This offers a great alternative to visiting the mountain in Nepal and one that is far less popular.
The largest Buddhist monastery in Tibet it is a site of pilgrimage for many who follow the religion. The sight itself is also a magnificent example of the dedication of the monks of Tibet. Sitting at the foot of Mount Gephel it create a dramatic and mesmerising sight that's actually only 5km from the capital of Lhasa. Many people also come here to see the Thangka Unveiling at the Shoton Festival.
The holiest of all the Tibetan Buddhist temples and the spiritual centre of the country, the Jokhang temple is a major site of pilgrimage. The oldest part of the temple dates back to 652!
This freshwater lake surrounded by incredible mountain scenery translates to turquoise in English and is one of the three largest scared lakes in Tibet. Stretching over 72km long it is revered as one of the most beautiful natural sites in the region. It's also a great place to spot a yak!!
Of course, there are many other incredible places we can't wait to one day visit in Tibet, but these are highest on our list.
What are your tips for a tour of Tibet?
Visiting London on a budget, how to make the most out of the UK capital!


The day was punctuated by ups and downs for all the Honda riders. Davide GUARNERI (ITA-Honda) finished as the best red rider in 7th place overall, winning one special. Christophe CHARLIER (FRA-Honda) was in excellent shape until a violent fall shook him up and relegated the Honda RedMoto rider to 13th position overall - a long way off his potential. Thomas OLDRATI (ITA-Honda) was steady and focused, finishing 8th on he day.


RAM Mount TAB-Lock; RAM iPadhouder met anti-diefstalslot.Tablethouder met ingebouwd cilinderslot en spring-load release knop voor makkelijke verwijdering tablet. Geschikt voor iPad Air en iPad Air 2 met rugged cases zoals Griffin Survivor, Otterbox en Gumdrop. Voor montage aan RAM Mounts is een kogel met ronde base plate nodig (RAM-(B)-202U).
The RAM-HOL-TABL20U consists of a spring loaded back plate, custom support cups and locking mechanism. This spring loaded design makes it easy to load and unload your iPad Air, along with keeping it secure while on the go. Cup ends are designed to optimize the functionality of your iPad, allowing access to audio jacks, usb, power, and other ports, your iPad can be used just as it was intended. Quickly lock the cradle, keeping your iPad Air secure and safe from theft.


Currently hiring a Job Captain!
Please click here for Job Captain Info!
We're passionate about doing the right thing—for our clients and for ourselves. That means doing great design work that is on time, on budget and brings the client's vision, brand and culture to life in a holistic way. Internally, we are a supportive family that works together to get the job done (and has fun doing it!). We value great attitudes, flexibility and a thoughtful approach to design. We check egos at the door. Our new Zero Net Energy building embodies our environmental responsibility by creating a workspace that enhances wellbeing with minimal environmental impact.


text:
Rendition Special Event Photos Favorite Movie Button
"Rendition" star Reese Witherspoon at the L.A. premiere.
"Rendition" star Omar Metwally at the L.A. premiere.
Actress Meryl Streep at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
"Rendition" star Alan Arkin at the L.A. premiere.
"Rendition" star Jake Gyllenhaal at the L.A. premiere.
Producer Michael Sugar, Director Gavin Hood and producer Steve Golin at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Adam Arkin at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Aramis Knight at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Writer Kelley Sane at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Yigal Naor at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Director Gavin Hood at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Producer Marcus Viscidi at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actress Nzinga Blake at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Hiroyki Sanada at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actress Michelle Borth at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Drew Fuller at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actress Carly Steel at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."
Actor Zachary Quinto at the L.A. premiere of "Rendition."


text:
african american women in business
Juneteenth: America's Second Independence Day
Slavery may have ended, but African Americans still face discrimination in the business world.
Starbucks Lands Sam's Club Ex-CEO to No. 2 Job
She'll be getting $1 million in base pay for her efforts.
The Story Behind the Uptick in Minority Entrepreneurship
But it's safe to say it's happening.
The Internet Is Celebrating #BlackWomenDidThat
Many celebrated Shirley Chisholm, the first black female presidential candidate.
How One Tweet Led These Women to Start Their Own Law Firm
'We wanted to make sure we could compete with our counterparts and be taken seriously.'
The fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S.? Minority women.
Across all ethnicities, the number of women-owned firms is increasing faster than the number of men-owned businesses.
Entrepreneurs must first buy, bargain, finesse their way to the negotiating table
Detroit-based founder Carla Walker-Miller discusses how she built a successful business from the ground up and the challenges of being an African American female entrepreneur.


Tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Doing fine but want to do better? Prepping for the zombie apocalypse? Whatever your financial goals, you'll have a better chance of reaching them if you have a plan for your money.


text:
Rembus är ett släkte av skalbaggar. Rembus ingår i familjen vivlar.

Kladogram enligt Catalogue of Life:

Källor

Vivlar
Rembus

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


While browsing through Google Analytics many people may find they are receiving traffic from sites that have no relation to their own. After researching these domains they find out the site is a spammy site that they no longer want to see within their Google Analytics reports. This data can skew reports and overall looks bad for reports to clients or management teams.
How does this happen? A majority of the time this is done by bots, now there's much more to the back end of this fake traffic, but for the sake of this article we will keep it simple. These bots crawl the page, register it as a visit, then bounce of the page. This shows within a site's analytics, catches the user's attention, then the user visits the page. The site will typically try to sell the user a service (often related to traffic or SEO) or bombard the user with more spam or ads.
Let's get it removed so it's no longer showing and the data can be more accurate.
1) Log into the analytics account, navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Referral. Here a list of the referral sites that provided the most visits over a set time period. It's helpful to sort this list by bounce rate, placing 100% at the top. Now sorting through the list is a bit more manageable.
2) Identifying spammy domains can be a bit difficult, however, users quickly notice what doesn't fit. Keep in mind these sites want users to visit their page, so the best approach is not copy paste the URL into your browser. Although in some cases you'll need to do this to get an idea what the site is. Another option is to plug the URL into Google and see what is being said about the site.
Note: Before visiting any sites make sure some type of virus or malware software is running.
3) Before we build a filter, let's first make sure bots are being blocked. This is done by going to the Admin section > View Settings, here we will make sure the Bot Filtering box is checked. Keep in mind this won't filter all bots, so we will take additional steps.
4) Staying in the Admin section, we'll click on the Filters tab. In this section we can build a custom filter that will block any traffic within analytics from a set URL. Add a new filter that is 'Custom' under the Filter Type drop down. Select request URL from the list, and paste in the URL you would like to remove.
Note: Just adding the spam website to the "Referral exclusion list" will not block this traffic.
5) Continue to monitor your web traffic as the list of spam bots may grow. You'll need to update your filters as new spam bots are detected.
For information on setting up analytics and blocking visit Adficient's tracking and analytics.


My infant grandson wears a leg brace and needed a sock to protect his sensitive skin. These socks are the perfect solution and the argyle pattern and color selection are great. Ordering was a breeze and shipping rapid. Thanks FCTRY!
You honestly cannot find socks like these ANYWHERE else. I love the Argyle! I assure you these socks are wonderful! Lovely! Comfy! Stylish!
Très chic. Love love love.
timeless and classic look! love it.
I love the fabric and the no-slip silicon dots ! Truly and quite literally a life-saver !


text:
CHEAP Thrills: This Week at The House
Published on March 15, 2019 in Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God by Drew Brown
Question Period is like a soap opera, except about politics and with terrible pacing. Old storylines are picked up wherever they left off while new, meandering subplots bubble up all the time. All the actors in the show have tangled, weirdly passionate interconnections that sometimes go back decades. But the script is badly written and all the drama is exaggerated beyond any resemblance to a reality most people would recognize. Prolonged exposure seems hazardous to human mental health, and I worry the surrealist funeral parlour lighting in the scrum room might trigger an acid flashback.
Outside of the actual content of the House of Assembly, though, it has been a tremendous first two weeks at the House of Assembly. My colleagues in the press gallery are all lovely. I am deeply humbled to be part of that small cadre charged with checking on the stewards of the state. This job would be impossible without peer support.
And that's enough sincerity from me! Back into wearied cynicism I go. Let's take a look at the top stories coming out of the House this week.
A CHEAP DEAL
On Monday, PC leader Ches Crosbie released his personal plan to save Newfoundlanders and Labradorians from spiking electricity rates after Muskrat Falls comes online: the Crosbie Hydro Energy Action Plan, or the CHEAP. (Or, less charitably: the Crosbie HEAP.)
Most of the plan proposes to follow the lead of the interim report on rate mitigation from the Public Utilities Board released in February. "We'll do what the PUB says" is a perfectly reasonable plan for action, but nothing about it is proprietary to the Crosbies.
Otherwise, the CHEAP plays like a collection of Tory greatest hits. Fight harder for the Atlantic Accord! Find a new legal technicality to subvert the Upper Churchill contract! Make a basic accounting error that nullifies a quarter of our mitigation money! Everything you've come to know and love from the Progressive Conservative brain trust that brought us Muskrat Falls.
I'm being harsh on the Tories. Ideological autopilot isn't unique to the PC caucus only. It's the only kind of politics this province produces anymore. If the Liberal plan for rate mitigation that eventually appears is 'better,' you can chalk it up to the incumbency advantage and better access to consultancy resources. The government can afford to have McKinsey & Co. to write their election budget, after all.
Besides—the Liberals are already hard at work restructuring operations at Nalcor. Sort of.
NALCOR'S BABY BROTHER
This week, the Liberals formally introduced Bill 42 in the House, legislation that would separate oil and gas operations from Nalcor and turn them into a fully-fledged Provincial Oil & Gas Crown Corporation. (No name has been decided yet. "OilCo." is my shorthand, but it doesn't really matter what they call it.) Existing assets, equity stakes, and revenue streams (i.e. the Hibernia, Hebron, Terra Nova, and White Rose projects) will remain with Nalcor—rate mitigation money, baby!—while day-to-day management, exploration, and all future assets and revenue will be handled by OilCo. It will also handle the Bull Arm fabrication site as a subsidiary.
The government's stated goal is to transform Nalcor into a pure electrical utility company for managing Muskrat Falls, and create a new Crown corporation to help meet the Liberal plan to double oil production by 2030. The province wants to establish NL as the "globally preferred location" for offshore extraction. They are betting that having a standalone petroleum company whose board of directors reports directly to the Natural Resources Department is the way to go. (You can tell they're taking the "economic diversification" thing very seriously.)
Minister Siobhan Coady repeatedly assured the House that the process of splitting off OilCo from Nalcor will be a "net zero" transfer—in other words, that it won't cost the public any extra money beyond whatever it cost to house all this at Nalcor. But OilCo won't generate its own self-sustaining revenue until around 2025 when the Bay du Nord project kicks in and NL gets return on its 10% equity stake. (Also: why did the province start buying equity stakes in oil developments, anyway?)
Sure. If the province manages to turn a Nalcor subdivision into a full-blown corporation without incurring any new expenses in paying out promotions for everyone getting bumped up to an executive board and all the other new staffing requirements the Nalcor-cloned OilCo will need in the years before Bay du Nord, I will print and eat this column.
The birth of OilCo announces that the province is fully committed to doubling offshore extraction. It is doing so through a regime where the provincial state itself is involved in the promotion, development, and environmental regulation of a petroleum industry in which it is a literal equity stakeholder. It's hard to shake the impression that the environment will get the shortest shrift in all this. Committing to doubling production through the 2020s is functionally climate change denial, and the Premier's recent trip to Ottawa to lobby against increased federal environmental oversight of industry does not exactly inspire confidence in provincial commitments to ecological stewardship.
Plus, you know, they're cloning Nalcor. Yikes.
BANNING THE BAG
Speaking of good ecological stewardship, there has been a growing movement across the province to ban single-use plastic bags. In 2015, Municipalities NL started calling for a province-wide bag ban, and the province completed a comprehensive study of plastic bag management strategies in 2017. Liberal party membership also voted in favour of a province-wide ban at their 2016 general convention.
The movement culminated this week with Minister Graham Letto announcing another round of online consultations about banning the bag. This annoyed a lot of people and sparked a minor spat with his Liberal counterparts in PEI.
When pressed about it in the House, Letto insisted this new round of consultations will ensure that the plastic bag ban, if and when it comes, will be a flawless piece of legislation that won't require any amendments. PEI had to amend its bag-banning bill once before it became law, which Letto appears to believe was a major political failure. The extra consultation is guaranteed to make everything bulletproof, because by leaving an online survey up for three weeks they can make sure no one's voice is left out.
The Liberals love these online engagement portals. Expect to see some pop up along the road to democratic reform, too. If the plastic bag ban is your jam, you've still got two weeks to log in and tell the government to eat your ass and get on with it.
Just don't get your hopes up. "Communist Revolution" was the top suggestion when the province asked the internet in 2016 how to fix the economy, and we're still waiting on that one. I'm starting to think these things might be non-binding!
WHAT'S HAPPENING TO THE NDP?
Okay, so, this technically didn't happen in the House this week, but I'm including it here because it's significant news. The provincial NDP sent out a media alert at 10 A.M. on Thursday morning setting up a surprise press conference for 11. There, longtime St. John's East-Quidi Vidi stalwart Lorraine Michael announced she would not be seeking re-election so that new leader Alison Coffin could be afforded the safest Dipper seat in the province.
This came as a bit of a surprise for a few reasons. For one, Michael very pointedly did not step down for NDP leader Earle McCurdy during the 2015 election. For another, when Gerry Rogers suddenly resigned as leader less than a month ago, Michael was very emphatic that she would run again. Then, on top of all this, it turned out that Michael's sudden resignation and endorsement of Coffin took place without anyone contacting Sheilagh O'Leary, who had last week surprised the party (and the MHA) by launching a nomination challenge against Michael for the seat.
It, uh, seems like a mess.
The inner workings of the provincial NDP are beyond me, but we can venture a few guesses about what is happening. This seems to be as much a flex by the new leader as an effort by the party establishment to signal to O'Leary that she should know her place.
Charitably, the situation looks so chaotic because Coffin has to do an immediate emergency reboot on a moribund party, and this is just a messy sign of the otherwise healthy shakeup required to get things in order. Uncharitably, the situation looks so chaotic because it is, and whatever long-simmering tensions that have been straining within the NDP since before October 2013 have been transformed into a proxy war between their some of their most highest-profile women candidates.
Nothing about O'Leary backing down from a provincial run after getting spurned by the NDP suggests these developments are positive for the party. But, as they say, we will know the tree by its fruit. It's worth noting that it took the NDP four days after the close of their leadership nominations on March 1 to announce that Alison Coffin won by acclamation. The decision for Lorraine Michael to vacate her seat for the leader was made Wednesday night and announced immediately the following morning.
Make of that what you will. Something is happening in the NL NDP.
That's a wrap for this week, folks. Join the Indy next time for another exciting adventure in gazing through the abyss called Newfoundland and Labrador Politics.
Tags: electricityNalcorNewfoundland and Labrador politicsNL NDPoil and gasplastic bagsquestion periodrate mitigation
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, for your crimes of NOT DOING MUSKRAT FALLS PROPERLY AT ALL, we sentence
Spot the Difference: Baron Amulree or McKinsey & Co.?
New Hospital for Corner Brook Announced, Again
Previous Story Previous post: Memorial Students Rejected a Bad Proposal, Not a U-Pass Program
Next Story Next post: Muskrat Falls and the Tip of the Iceberg
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, for your crimes of NOT DOING MUSKRAT