on April 8, 2009
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Channel 4 News are reporting they have new film footage of Metropolitan Policemen hitting Ian Tomlinson, the passer-by who died from a heart attack at last week’s G20 protests in the City of London. They are saying they will broadcast it this evening at 7pm. Tomlinson’s collapse followed a number of interactions between himself, Met Policemen and the street surface, some of which you may see here.
UPDATED – 18.40: Well the clip seems to clear up any doubt about whether Ian Tomlinson was hit by the policeman before he was pushed to the floor.
on April 8, 2009
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In this time of economic despair, think of something cheerful, play beautiful music, have a row about public morality* and make an advertising executive very happy as a result. Durex advertising – it’s a guaranteed result.
*with luck
on April 7, 2009
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Another excellent infographic from the New York Times on the changes in wages for the leaders of the Western world’s largest corporations and enterprises.
on April 6, 2009
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From the BBC report – ‘No Britons onboard.’ That’s alright then.
Published at Channel 4 News.
on April 6, 2009
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Email, web search and database cartoon – Me and my digital shadow © Matt Buck Hack Cartoons for NO2ID
The government of the UK now requires your internet service provider (ISP) to keep details of all your email and web searches for one year. There’s a report from The Independent here. Specialist IT reporters such as Techcrunch and more overt campaigning organisations like No2id and Liberty worry this is a step towards a giant state-sponsored communications monitoring database which the government has been consulting on in the past few years. Outlaw.com have an archive of articles on the issue (search for UK data retention) and The Telegraph have a handy Q+A piece here.
The UK Home Office website and advice on the retaining of personal data is here.
on April 3, 2009
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British Bloggerati - Iain Dale as a horny little devil © Matt Buck Hack Cartoons
Horns in the lead at present. And a lovely plaintiff contact from Devil’s Kitchen…
Please don’t sully the beautiful horns by putting them on Master Dale: the horns belong to me…
The Daily Dust spotted the relationship between politicians and drawings of them because if someone is ‘important’ enough to be drawn – they must be very important indeed. There is more than a grain of truth in this observation, at least in the eyes of the subject and the artist. The reason I drew Iain was because of the comment reaction (here) when his name went onto the Orwell prize nominee list for blogging.
The ‘importance’ of Ian is a reflection of his skill at publicity – he is very good at it – as you might expect from a politician. He’s not shy of his allegiance to the Conservative Party and both he, I and all his critics publish opinion.
The reaction to his nomination which I found interesting seems more evidence of practice runs for the coming general election, which promises to be very digital and rather dirty. It’s something I wrote about here – and there are some excellent comments from other practitioners of the art of drawn comment which you can read there too.
on April 2, 2009
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There will be 1,700 redundancies at Aviva, formerly Norwich Union. The job losses concern both full-timers and contract or, virtually employed workers. This second group make up an increasing percentage of the UK workforce. To all extents and purposes, they work as full-timers but they have fewer employment rights and are liable for their own business expenses.
These cutbacks are being undertaken to save shareholder value in the business and are a direct result of the effects of the abusive risk-taking (thank you Mr Obama) undertaken by many large financial institutions over the past 20 years.
The scale of these losses at the regional offices of Aviva can hobble local economies for years. If you would like an example, here’s some anecdotal evidence about what happened to the town of Hatfield in Hertfordshire after British Aerospace shut its factory there in the 1990s.
on April 1, 2009
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UK politicians expenses claims © Matt Buck Hack cartoons for Tribune
There is another furore about the expenses of the UKs professional politicians – and this one features the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. As is traditional, the particulars of the matter have now been outsourced to an independent review (name that peer to run it) and then kicked hard into the long grass.
This week also saw the start of the formal withdrawal of British troops from Iraq after the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation. There is not much clarity about the national expenses claim resulting from this although Military Families Against the War have been asking.
UPDATED: 14th May 2009. If you have arrived here after The Daily Telegraph’s revelations about the MPs allowances scandal you can find further content here, here and here.
