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12 activities

Yesterday

5 activities

July 1st, 2009

  • 16:15
    ICA wrote Worker Co-operative Forum

    The Worker Co-operative Forum took place last Friday as part of Co-operatives 2009 Conference and was attended by 33 delegates. This is the first time I have organised a worker co-operative specific strand and I hope to build on this and our presence at Co-operatives 2010 next year.We had workshops on: Marketing co-operatives, running effective meetings, HR issues, and implementing The Code of

  • 13:51
  • 08:52
  • 08:17
    MJRay wrote Digital Britain Report: first glance

    The Digital Britain Report was published on 16 June 2009. I only got time to look at it quickly recently because this is one of the co-op AGM seasons.

    At first glance, it misses the mark. It doesn’t do anything to unlock Digital Britain and make us a more sharing and social place. From failing to open the 3G mobile networks to the Phone Co-op and other operators completely (they describe it as already being “highly competitive” - haven’t they visited a South West “notspot”?), through the unnecessary increase in protection for Star Wars’s foreign owners, right down to the continued support for Adobe on the report download site instead of third-sector-produced pdfreaders.org, it looks like the report won’t stop us being “Digital Divide Britain”.

    I also have my suspicions about the effect of the “DAB-only from the end of 2015″ decision on our community radio companies, but I’ve not been active in that sector for years and there’s a further consultation about that.

    Ultimately, “the Government believes piracy of intellectual propert for profit is theft and will be pursued as such through the criminal law” is the killer phrase in this report. The concept of being allowed to file-share without payment doesn’t even appear in the same section. I’ve been warning about these “New Enclosure” attempts for years: I didn’t expect the Digital Britain report to be such a leap towards them.

    I think many of these problems could have been avoided if digital production cooperatives had been included in the preparation of this report in any significant way. I feel it has been captured by the private sector and a few trading funds, to the detriment of the nation. Shouldn’t we expect better from a Labour and Co-operative government?

    What did you think of the report? What else am I missing? Seen any good reviews of it for free software fans or cooperators?

  • 06:34
    Australia.coop wrote Netherlands Co-operative wins Australian Award
    The Netherlands co-operative Rabobank has been named best agribusiness bank in Australia for the fifth year running by the Merrill Lynch Business Banking Review.
1 activities

June 30th, 2009

2 activities

June 29th, 2009

  • 14:36
    MJRay wrote Possible new word: attendocracy?

    I think I’ve just made up another new word (to go alongside my pet hate lawyerbomb):

    attendocracy
    a whole society run mainly by meeting attendees. Usually, the meetings are basically non-discriminatory (all members may attend) and attendance is itself enough to give one power, but those not at the meeting are positively ignored (no postal ballots or elections). Choice of location, price and time of meetings is key to power in an attendocratic society.

    Did this word exist? Is there another existing word for this idea? Is it the same as meetingocracy? Is there a better word for it?

    I’m broadly in favour of do-ocracy (even when it doesn’t work out as I want), so I think I’ve been handling attendocracies badly. Are they worth the time?

  • 14:55
    MJRay wrote Heatwave!

    Well, what passes for a heat wave in England: “an average threshold temperature is 30 °C by day and 15 °C overnight” according to the Met Office: Heat-Health Watch.

    So, I’ll be following HOWTO not melt - keeping cool at midsummer again. Anyone got any new tips or tricks for 2009?

    Finally, one of TTLLP’s full-timers is away this week, so enquiries may get saved and answered in batches. If it’s urgent, please put “urgent” in the subject line of an email.

1 activities

June 27th, 2009