[Liverpool] Open Rights Group : Digital Economy Bill - Manchester, 23rd Jan

[Simon Johnson]

2010/1/10 Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh>

> On Sun, 2010-01-10 at 01:53 +0000, Simon Ward wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 01:24:05AM +0000, Bob Ham wrote:
> > > > It is about talking to people, and I would expect the training to
> > > > include things such as being polite
> > >
> > > This seems odd to me.  If you have to explicitly tell people who are
> > > effectively volunteering to represent your cause, that they need to be
> > > polite when talking to people, it kind of makes me wonder whether the
> > > campaign is doomed from the start.
> >
> > Some people can be rather “enthusiastic” when advocating something thay
> > are passionate about.
>

Like I said earlier, it makes no difference how many people talk to their
MP.

This bill was changed after a meal Lord Mandleson had with a music
executive. This is straightforward corruption. Mandleson has been given a
back-hander to introduce this.

You can't get this changed by trying to persuade your MP. Even if you
succeed the clout your MP has is practically nil. Most MPs are backbenchers
with little or no influence.

Lord Mandleson's grip on power exceeds that of the Prime Minister. He is the
most powerful man in the country and he has personally intervened to have
this put in the bill.

You can take as many lessons as you want on getting your point across, it
won't matter - because they're not listening. They've been paid not to
listen.

Computers like to follow rules and geeks like to set those rules to create
nice, functional programs. We often make the mistake of thinking the real
world works in the same way: if we follow the system and there's enough of
us then we'll get the right result.

It doesn't work like that. Our opponents don't care about the rules. Do you
think they wrote polite letters to their MP? Do you think they took lessons
in how to get their point across and went to their local MPs surgery? Of
course not! They bribed the right man and got what they want done.

The right way to get this fixed is to get the telecommunications companys to
exert their "influence." They have deeper pockets than the content industry
and will be able to out-gun them in the corruption department.

I know such views are not popular on these mailing lists but if we're going
to direct our effort anywhere, it should be towards that goal. MPs are a
useless distraction.

Cheers,

Simon.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/liverpool/attachments/20100111/437f534b/attachment.htm