The politics of software

Q: What do post-Soviet Russians and Bill Gates have in common?

A: Both have been known to describe Linux and open source software as “communist” because of their collaborative nature.

Moreover, at various times US right-wingers have been known to call Linux either unpatriotic, un-American or the operating system of terrorists.

Against this background, one quote last month from a UK politician with aspirations of power really caught my eye:

“Another example is Linux. Linux is the open-source operating system that is the main rival to Microsoft Windows.

Linux is constantly updated and improved. Yet no one owns Linux. No one is directing the improvements or updates. The code is available on-line and thousands of independent programmers make changes, fix bugs, and add new features – all for no personal gain.“

Who was responsible for this? The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, while he was giving the Olsen Memorial Lecture last month and taking as his theme “Politics and Media in the Internet Age”. If you don’t believe me, read the full transcript of the speech; the above quote is about three-quarters of the way down.

That’s right! It comes from a Tory, a toff, the traditional foe for a working class lad such as myself, a member of the party once styled “the nasty party” by one of its former Chairmen. Have the Conservatives really moved that far to the left they now embrace ideas post-Soviet Russians regard as too extremely left?

What’s one to make of this? Did George really understand and endorse everything he said? Does he just have a clever speech writer instead? As with all politics, one has to reach one’s own conclusions.

Transport of delight… long time coming

I first became acquainted with the Severn Beach railway line on my first visit to Bristol in 1975, a couple of years before moving here. Over the years, the rail services from and to my local station of Stapleton Road have become regular fixtures for shopping, going to meetings, meeting friends and travel further afield. It’s also much cheaper and more reliable than the alleged bus services provided by Farce Bus. However, the Severn Beach Line rail service has always suffered by being run only every hour or two hours and it doesn’t run at all on Sundays (shame!).

As you can see, it’s been treated a bit like Cinderella over the years: it was the only branch line in the area to survive the cuts under the Beeching Axe in the 1960s that emasculated Britain’s railway network; and last year one ugly sister, in the shape of Bristol City Council, withdrew its subsidy to the line – a mere £135,000 – in a fit of cost-cutting parsimony.

However, the line has many friends, one of whom, a group called Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways (FOSBR), has responded to Bristol City Council’s latest budget consultation by asking for £450,000 to pay for a half-hourly service between Bristol Temple Meads and Avonmouth and has written to all Bristol councillors and MPs to enlist their support. FOSBR has also written to South Gloucestershire Council, asking them to subsidise a half-hourly rail link bus service between Avonmouth and Severn Beach and is planning a big campaign to push for the improvement before council budgets are decided in February.

Bristol pays a heavy price for not investing in rail: road accidents and congestion cost Bristol over £2.8 million every week (to the accompaniment of constantly whining motorists on the correspondence pages of the Evening Pest) and the city compares unfavourably to others such as Birmingham, where half-hourly services are the minimum, and where 20% of those commuting into the city travel by rail (compared to 1.6% in Bristol).

In addition to FOSBR, the Bristol Green Party has also highlighted the present shortcomings of the local railways and has come up with some good ideas on rail.

Come on Bristol, get a transport policy on track!

Ichthux – God’s own distro?

I’ve just come across yet another Linux distro. This one’s called Ichthux and it’s aimed squarely at Christians. Perhaps this is just what I need to persuade my mother and brother to switch from the Hell of Gates.

Anyway, Ichthux is based on Kubuntu, the KDE desktop version of Ubuntu Linux and is open source, of course. Speaking of which and beating the likes of Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens and other luminaries of the FOSS movement by nearly two millennia, there’s even justification for free/open source in the Bible, in Matthew Chapter 10, verse 8:

“…freely ye have received, freely give.“

As the first part of the same verse deals with healing the sick, cleansing lepers, raising the dead and casting out devils, could this also be a disguised call to convert Windows users? I’ll leave you to decide.

The features of Ichthux are:

• it’s based on Kubuntu 6.06.1 LTS “Dapper Drake”;
• bibletime with multi-language support, using Frank Ruehl rich Hebrew font;
• kio-sword for Bible study integration in the Konqueror file manager;
• several Bibles installed by default for English (KJV), Spanish (SPARV), French (LSG) and Hebrew (WLC);
• Bible console tools: verse, bible-kjv;
• a Christian emoticons theme by default in the Kopete instant messenger;
• kdict with the Easton and Hitchcock Bible dictionaries;
• culmus Hebrew fonts;
• improved default settings for a better Christian experience of the computer desktop.

Anyway, for the curious there’s a page of screenshots and, for the committed, a download page.

Finally, this has got me wondering if there are any other religious-based Linux distros out there. Let me know.

Rubbish!

I’ve just received the following email from Jim Carpenter at Easton Residents’ Network:

Recently, Easton Residents Network has been meeting with a variety of groups and residents in Easton in order to determine the issues of main concern to Easton Residents.

One common issue mentioned was concerns over rubbish and cleanliness in Easton.

In response to this, ERN will be holding a community meeting with Councillor Gary Hopkins on December 11 at 10:00am at the Easton Community Centre. This meeting will be an opportunity for Easton residents to express their concerns about rubbish to the Council and the Waste Doctors.

We have been told that the Council has not heard a large number of complaints from the Easton area and therefore do not think the problems in Easton are severe. The more of us who come out to attend the meeting on December 11 the greater the chance that we will see action in the future.

Please mark your calendars! We need your support!

Easton Residents Network

ARE YOU TIRED OF SEEING RUBBISH ON THE STREET?

Easton Residents Network and The Somali Voice invite you to…..

WHAT: An open discussion with Cllr. Hopkins about the rubbish problems in Easton

WHEN: Monday, December 11, 2006 from 10:00am – 12:00pm
(lunch and refreshments included)

WHERE: Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street

WHY: We all deserve to live in a clean community!

Please contact ERN for more information at 0117 952 5383

I know I’ve banged on about cleanliness in Easton before, but I think this is a matter where constant pressure is needed. As regards the lack of rubbish problems reported from the Easton area, the council’s flytipping form is here. Use it!

Not properly thought through

Reading the posts on Bristol Indymedia recently, I’ve been intrigued by the activist and anarchist posters who all seem to have webspace on MySpace.

Visiting MySpace and doing a site search for well-used radical terms reveals some surprising results. As a taster, here are just two:

• Anarchist – over 41,000 hits;
• Anti-capitalist – 1,500 hits.

In case readers are unaware of the fact, MySpace is owned by NewsCorp, the multinational conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch, better known to Private Eye readers as the Dirty Digger, who has been devouring media companies around the world for the last 4 decades.

Were all those anarchists and anti-capitalists with MySpace sites thinking straight when they signed up? Were they even aware they were dealing with the media world’s equivalent of the devil?

I just hope they’ve got long spoons when they’re invited to sup.

The language of something to hide?

Politicians have long used language as a means of obscuring their true intentions. This was recognised by George Orwell, who stated: “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

In recent years lumpen, ugly jargon has been increasingly used by workers and others in the public, voluntary and community sectors. What may have started out as a means of professional shorthand has now got completely out of hand. At a recent event I attended everyone was on about “sustainability”, but did they all mean the same thing? Hardly likely, given how it’s now used for every conceivable concept from financial viability to environmental friendliness.

However, the most worrying development in my opinion is that those same people mentioned above now use this jargon instead of proper English when addressing mere mortals. This happened in an email I received earlier today via the Easton Yahoo Group, which had the following piece of obscurantist gibberish in the middle of notice of a meeting on the River Frome:

“There will also be an update on a recent walkabout held with residents and agencies to initiate environmental service changes in key problem areas.“

So, council officers, residents and others went for a wander, but to do what? If they mean look at bits of Easton that need cleaning up and plan such, I’m all in favour. If that’s what they mean to do, why don’t they just say it in plain English!