Irrelevant Twitter?

This came to my interest when browsing the BBC news website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040

Noah Kravitz is being sued by his employees for taking a large number of his corporate Twitter followers with him when he left the company. The USA has, arguably, always been the haven of the litigators like no other nation, yet this sets an interesting precedent for 'ownership' on the Internet. Who is the 'owner' of a Twitter account when it is set up for corporate purposes? Furthermore, to what extent can a company possibly hope to 'own' clients on a website like Twitter, where the flow of information and the forging of connections is almost instantaneous. It has often been suggested that we now live in a hyper-capitalist age: it will be interesting to see what develops when Twitter creates an environment wherein the free flow of information moves far faster than the free flow of capital.

Me and Downton Abbey

Here is a confession that may lose me valuable friends, allies, compatriots. Alternatively, here is a confession which no one will ever read from my tiny little corner of the web. But my confession is this: I can't get into Downton Abbey. I tried the Christmas special, I tried a few of the episodes prior to that, but I mention the Christmas special because it is a Christmas special and by the time 9pm rolled around, you would think that one would be sufficiently full of Christmas joy (and turkey) so as to allow you to soak up some of that Downton spirit.

Alas it didn't work, and I am left scratching my head at my lack of warmth for a series which entered the 2011 Guiness Book of Records for 'most critically acclaimed television show". It is lavish, and the cast is populated by some great actors. It is capable of creating scenes of genuine drama and emotion. Yet, something is missing and I think I put my finger on it when I watched the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations which is part of a season to celebrate 200 years since his birth. This programme has menace, it is darker, characters are morally ambiguous, there is a sense of mystery and genuine peril. It is also based on a pre-existing work of fiction, which Downton Abbey is not. It has been suggested that Downton is part of our tradition of doing great heritage drama and that, in the coming year, we will all need a bit of escapism. Revisiting the past is does no harm for a television show's narrative - look at Mad Men. Yet that show, and indeed a Dickensian drama, have stakes, they give their characters something to lose. I suppose I was left with the overarching feeling that life in Downton Abbey will never change; the ruling classes and the servant classes will keep their places, and the show will continue to provide simmering sexual tension and Jane Austen-esque dialogue. Perhaps the reasons for us finding it comforting now is because a society based on such deference was, for certain people, just as comforting back then; hence the slow crawl towards social reform. You always know deep down that Hugh Bonneville's Earl of Grantham will always be a fundamentally decent chap; there's no Don Draper shade of grey there.

These are all just thoughts, musings if you like. Maybe I'll buy the DVD and give it a re-think. Or, in a Dickensian twist, maybe a convinently placed spirit will take me back in time to Christmas Day and force me to watch it again.

So I switched on the American X Factor

So, I thought I'd flick on to ITV2, because I've nothing better to do (probably not true) and can safely say that all the speculation about the format of the new version was in no way a waste of precious oxygen (it was).

They say that when you go to the USA, a lot of stuff over there is like it is here, just bigger. Food portions is one great example you will hear people bring up often. It turns out the same is true of our, perhaps unwisely exported, television 'talent' shows. Everything about American X Factor is bigger, the stadiums, the judges' chairs, the judges' ability to talk nonsense, Simon Cowell's propensity towards evil, they're all bigger, more noticeable. So, what differences come from dragging the X Factor across the Atlantic?

1. Cowell's tan - I don't know how, but somehow the Dark Lord of Recording Contracts has found a deeper, bronze hue which somehow increases his ability to look calculating every time he sees a potential winner. I have concluded that the tan forms a delightful contrast with his eyebrows, meaning you can see literally see the cogs turning underneath his square-top cranium.

2. No Louis Walsh  - Some may think it's a good thing that there is no one on the new panel who can possibly taint it with his shady Westlife connections, or his demented Irish ramblings. However, the panel without him takes itself way too seriously. Everything about the American X Factor is all about destiny, and seizing your moment. Whenever they stumble on a star, you wouldn't think this show could crawl any further up its own bum, but it can and does. And all because Louis isn't there, waving his biro in people's face.

3. Loss of sense of humour/irony - In the UK, if someone is bad, they get mocked in a fairly awful, point-and-laugh, carnival-esque way. But it's all in good humour, the judges roll their eyes, tut, maybe Simon throws a look to his bouncer. In America, Nicole Shereerrrzingeeeeer and Paul Abdul appear to be generally aggrieved, insulted, appalled by poor performances. Almost as though the producers haven't devised a cunning way for hundreds of people to make absolute tits of themselves. When the Botox wears off, maybe they'll rediscover smiling.

4. The sob stories are even more ludicrous - Lest we forget, the gap between rich and poor is wider in America. So I guess, when people have failed, or have had it rough, they really, really, really have. The most questionable was the guy who had smoked weed, and then fallen down the slippery slope into harder drugs. Upon appearing on the show, he was 70 days clean. I think I heard from somewhere that, when you're in rehab, you shouldn't make any life changing decisions for at least a year. I could be wrong, but even that doesn't excuse the clearly staged moment when Simon looked this guy in the eye and said "you need to stay clean, we're putting you through on the condition you stay clean, blah blah blah". The man saluted Simon. I would, he's made his own television show even more transparently shameless than it was before.

5. No Peter Dickson. Enough said really. JAMIE ARCHER! Ahem. Aww, shucks, I miss Peter Dickson. 

Cheryl Cole appears at two auditions. I could understand her!!

I know, and she's a Geordie and everything.

Nicole Sheeeeerziingeeer also turned 21 on this week's episode. She got the adoring crowds to sing "Happy Birthday" to her.
"To meeeeee".
 Simon at one point, awkwardly shuffles into her dressing room with a cake. He had to do something nice for another human being, cut him some slack, yeah?  Facepalm

We can't do without tabloid gossip anymore than our Cheryl can do without Ashley...

I'm currently watching This Week, and the speculation, unsurprisingly, is rife that this is the end for Rupert Murdoch, for News International. In the eyes of its media rivals, the 'spell' that the Murdoch empire has held over British politics is completely broken. Murdoch is Voldemort, he's Lex Luthor. It wouldn't surprise me if the Sun had used phone hacking to uncover that Clark Kent is Superman.

Yet, once more, the reaction to the hacking scandal has been strangely paradoxical, as News International has been churned up and spat out by the same media machine that it has spent so long propagating. Cameron's knee-jerk reaction has been as much about reacting to the 24 hour news cycle as it has been about bowing to any public sentiment. The News International story can run for weeks, its rivals will see to that.

News International's stature on the British political landscape may be significantly diminished. Yet, somehow, one still gets the feeling that our politicians and our celebrities are still being judged by the journalists who have mapped out the narrative of this crisis. For example, a Daily Mail editorial from earlier this week questioned the links between Robert Peston, BBC business editor, and some of his former colleagues and sometime sources at News International. Likewise, Melanie Philips had turned her sights onto Hugh Grant, for having the audacity to publicly criticise Murdoch's tabloid press and its blatant disregard for people's privacy.
It may be that the likes of Steve Coogan and Grant will never be left alone by the tabloid press. After all, their misdemeanours are seemingly part of public record: how dare they take the moral high ground with those who splash their faces across page 3?

Gossip can be found anywhere. Only this week I've been privy to two discussions, on radio and television, about Nick Clegg's apparenly craaazy desire to both be Deputy Prime Minister and take his children to school in the morning. I know, what a git.

Also in the news, Cheryl's gone back to Ashley. The Daily Mirror's saw her give him a lapdance, so it must be love again.

Does careless talk really cost lives?

The heading I have given this post refers to an old wartime slogan, and invokes a paranoia, or at the very least a wariness about what you choose to talk about in public. Now, however, the villain appears to be a gun toting maniac, not invisible German spies.
 I am, of course, referring again to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the accusations that the gunman, Jared Loughner, was egged on by the increasingly inflammatory political debate which permeates both Arizona, but also wider American politics. I, for one, am sceptical of such ideas. Whilst I didn't like Sarah Palin's statement in the aftermath, believing it to be cloying and safe, the idea that she is somehow, however indirectly, responsible for Loughner's actions is questionable.
 That is not to say that the political climate in the USA is not heated and that, in investigating the context of Loughner's killing spree, we have not stumbled on some of the more troubling aspects of US political discourse.
 Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the most high-profile victim in Loughner's rampage, criticised Sarah Palin for targeting key Democratic seats with "cross-hairs". A rhetoric of "take up arms", an anti-government sentiment that also happens to be pro-guns, a Second Amendment, giving American citizens the right to "bear arms" which sits at the heart of the Tea Party's love of the hallowed US Constitution; this is, broadly speaking, the culture that is now being blamed for Loughner's actions. But the blame is nebulous, it is difficult to place it on one person, there is no neat causality chain leading back from Loughner himself. And so, as it was with the 9/11 attacks, public consciousness has to try and create one.
 What it speaks to instead is the new politics of America. Obama and Palin are, after all, the first generation of political icons to embrace social networking, the Internet, to whip up campaign support and spread their respective messages. This presents a problem when it comes to explaining Mr Loughner. The blame for his actions could lie with no one, but if you scoured the Internet, it could lie with about fifty different people. Online marketing, Internet movements, they are harder to put a name to than one might think. Loughner and the Tea Party may share ideals when it comes to their anti-government sentiment. Yet, overlap does not equal blame, as the online world continues to make politics ever more individualistic.
 Talks of reforming what can and cannot be said in public are somewhat futile in the world of the 24 hour new cycle. Obama last week proved that the only way to combat hateful talk is by utilising its opposite. Indeed, his White House has been too silent for too long, and this is part of the problem.
 More importantly, movements can become fads very quickly in this day and age; for an example closer to home, consider the brief mobilisation of the curious beast that is Mumsnet, against the producers and writing staff of Eastenders. Already the outrage has been swallowed by more important and up-to-date news. It will probably now remain where it belongs, tucked away in the first week of 2011, to be resurrected by a review of the year. This is where Loughner belongs: whatever his problems, it is his victims and not him, that deserve to be remembered.

Obama may be divisive in actions, but he is still unifying in words

The political vitriol which both preceded and follows the shooting in Tucson, Arizona was temporarily halted today, when President Barack Obama made a speech at a memorial today. Paying tribute to those who had been killed, and in the case of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounded, he acknowledged that "our hearts are broken". But, almost like the third act of an American film or in a manner befitting the fictional American President Josiah Bartlet of West Wing fame, Obama seemed to find again that hopeful, soaring rhetoric that governed his campaign for office, nearly three years ago.
 Obama has had a year in which he has proved to be a divisive President. From healthcare reform, to the failure to bring the unemployment numbers, to the "shellacking" he, and the Democratic Party suffered at the hands of the Republicans last November, it has been a difficult, and sometimes gridlocked year.
 Yet the reason, perhaps, that Obama has become such an antagonistic, polemic figure in the eyes of the Tea Party is simply because he has allowed himself to be; public political discourse has turned against him, because running the country prohibits him from being a part of it.

Today, he proved why he may confidently win re-nomination and re-election in 2012. For, with one speech, he once again spoke in the language of hope, unity, heroism and patriotism that defines him. Obama's greatest asset in the increasingly divisive conservative-liberal debate that has surrounded the Tucson shootings is his ability to rise above it, to condemn it and challenge it. Obama is a new President in his use of Facebook, Twitter, but his rhetoric is in the best tradition of some of the greatest United States Presidents, it is introspective without being indulgent, and inspiring without being controversial. It is a lesson that Tea Party activists, Republican contenders could do with learning. Obama's oratory creates the myth of one, strong, familial America and a cynic could brush this aside; but at least it is a united America, not one which hates its government, or its President. It's an America which can be better, which can shape its destiny. Just words maybe, but it's the poetry which Obama's government has lacked in recent months and needs to reclaim.

Vince Cable and the contradiction at the heart of the Coalition

Vince Cable is the latest politician to fall foul of being recorded without his knowledge. Already, there has been a rush to perform damage control; Mr Cable has had to apologise and his embarrassment has been well-documented by the 24 hour news cycle. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both been forced to repudiate his remarks, with Cameron saying he has "every reason to be apologetic".
 In the conversations recorded by undercover Daily Telegraph reporters, Mr Cable was heard to say that he was, paraphrasing, "going to war" with Rupert Murdoch and his company NewsCorp, in its bid to become the majority shareholder in BSkyB. This poses a problem, since the business secretary was to have the final say in the ruling surrounding Murdoch's bid; he is, after all, supposed to appear impartial in such matters.
 Today, Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband, has argued that progressive liberalism cannot sit with traditional Tory policies in this coalition.
 This is one of many contradictions in a Coalition government which has, since May, introduced some of the most sweeping reforms to welfare, health, education that this country has seen since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
Since it's inception, this coalition has tried to maintain an ideological neutrality which is proving difficult to keep up. It is not New Labour, this we are reminded of every week, whenever the financial crisis or the deficit is brought up; nor is it Thatcherite, lest it be associated with a certain hard-headedness, for which Margaret Thatcher's Tories are now historically famous. New politics is liberal and Conservative, the two are interchangeable; indeed many a joke has been made about Cameron and Clegg being somehow doubles of one another.
 Yet, in its policies, this government has had to reconcile this New Politics with what it is asking the public to accept. Higher education is to become a market like never before, under the belief that this will raise standards. The NHS is to become liberalised, with the belief that GPs who have complete autonomy over all aspects of their practice will, likewise, become more efficient providers of care.
It will, however, be the government who has the final say on what is "efficient". Michael Gove's "free schools" policy, whilst representing a liberalisation of the current state school system, has a strangely authoritarian tone in its desire to close down failing schools, and implement another top down reform of the school curriculum.
 This contradiction is perhaps best evident in the banks; Cable being a proponent of more punitive measures against the City banks, whilst Osborne is fearful of driving their business elsewhere.
 Government may find it in an interesting position as this decade unfolds; the financial crisis took place against the backdrop of an increasingly globalised market. It was the markets that got us in this situation; in following the policies it has, this government has chosen to roll the dice and trust that, ultimately, the market will get us out of it.