Category Archives: Elsewhere

[Elsewhere] Argyll and Bute council v 9-year-old girl

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That politicians and bureaucrats don’t – and frankly often have no desire to – understand the internet is a given. It has also been highlighted over the last week by, among other things, the antics of Argyll and Bute Council.
Quite why the council thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with a nine-year-old girl raising money for a children’s charity is anyone’s guess. For six weeks or so, Martha Payne had been taking pictures of her school lunches and posting them on her blog, together with some evaluation – how tasty, how healthy, how many pieces of hair, etc. Some of the food looks okay – and Martha is quite complimentary about it; some is shocking both in terms of nutritional value and portion size, even for a nine-year-old.
Read more at the Scottish Times.

[Elsewhere] Dragging academic publishing into the 21st century

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It’s been nearly ten years since I left academia, but I have enough friends who are academic researchers in various fields to know that academic publishing continues to be stuck in the 19th century. Every so often I need access to a research paper, and I have to beg friends at universities with the right subscriptions to get it for me; occasionally, I act as a broker for such requests from other people.
Read more over at ORGZine.

[Elsewhere] Andrew Lansley and my cat

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I have had cause recently to compare private and public health care systems – with unflattering conclusions for both.
After a week at home with the flu and still not feeling the least bit better, I finally cracked and tried to book an appointment with my GP. The process normally goes something like this: I call at 8.29am, only to get their answerphone which tells me they don’t open until 8.30. I hang up and and redial, at which point the line is already engaged. I then proceed to redial every two minutes for the next half hour or so, until I finally get one step further – into the hold queue.
Read more over at the Scottish Times.

[Elsewhere] The Dragon’s Toes

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The overwhelming feeling I left this year’s ORGCon with was that digital rights in the UK had grown up. The depth and complexity of debate has come a long way since the last conference in 2010. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the two keynotes: Cory Doctorow’s “The coming war on general-purpose computing” and Larry Lessig’s “Recognising the fight we’re in”. Both painted, in broad brush strokes, a picture much bigger than the current digital rights space.
Read more at ORGZine.
This article has also been reposted on OWNI.eu.

[Elsewhere] Encouraging Scots to fight for their digital rights

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In this space, a newly-independent Scotland would have an unprecedented opportunity to set itself up for the 21st century. A comprehensive digital rights policy can establish Scotland as a state whose institutions value transparency and accountability, civil rights, freedom of speech, creativity and innovation, and an appropriate balance between the interests of businesses, the state and the citizen.
Read more at the Scottish Times.

[Elsewhere] Secrecy by default – the issues with the NHS risk register

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The Health & Social Care Bill has finally made it through Parliament. Despite vociferous campaigns from both the general public and medical professionals, the huge top-down reorganisation of the NHS has already begun.
Regardless of what you think of the need to restructure the NHS in general or these reforms in particular, there is one big issue with the way the decision was made in the first place.
Read more at ORGzine.