Category Archives: News & info

Bringing you essential etiquette guidance since 1102:

“ Being a scholarly Journal within which gentlemen, and those others, who in so being concerned with manners and all matters of etiquette in these dark times make it their solemn duty to educate their peers and lessers in the ways of civilisation.”
The Editor, 1102

Can be perused at your leisure. The April issue features “nominative difficulties, feminisation of theatrical artisans, apologising for social absence, card gaming and letters to the Editor.”

The ‘first broadband environment channel’ - green.tv has been online since the start of the month, and busy racking up the hits and enjoying lots of media attention. Backed by the UNEP, designed by large blue in collaboration with the espians, {featuring the first application of the ‘Protoplex’}, green.tv broadcasts environmental videos drawn from a wide range of sources - including the Environment Agency, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. One of the ideas -I believe- is to showcase independent films and the work of environmental activists/grassroots work/what’s actually happening on the ground, alongside raising awareness of the ‘big issues’.

If you’re a filmmaker or an organization producing environmental videos and would be interested in contributing your content, please visit their blog for more information. They are also currently in the process of developing the community angle further - if you have any ideas, again please get in touch.
{There is also a pledgebank connected with this - open till 15th May}

With regards to building up the community side of the site, and generally ‘stickiness’ a couple of thoughts come to mind. A wiki would be a great way to encourage collaborative effort - find out what everyone’s thinking - about the content that’s up there, and related to that - how they might want to get involved in the various different projects that are out there in the world today.

On a local level it would be great, if for example one saw a film made by some Southwark kids talking about their environment and their issues etc., and one could then check out the community zone and find out what initiatives are happening in Southwark right now, what the state of recycling is ( and boy does it make a difference depending on what local authority area you’re in! More on that to follow later – yes the state of recycling in London is shocking) or any other relevant happenings- now that would be brilliant. Of course, this is from the perspective of someone who works for an environmental charity – perhaps others will have different views depending on who they are and what they do.

As often is the case, Institutions ( especially big ones - or the ones with clout) can be somewhat overpowering - they like publicity, the hype, the advertising potential –> and there’s always the chance that this can squeeze out what individuals have to say: hence collaboration is key. Generally this is the situation with television and the broadcast industry nowadays .. familiar to anyone who’s taken a passing interest in political economy issues of media. So whilst it is technically interesting to have seamless video streaming on the net –- still, the usual issues of ‘broadcast’ vs. ‘interactive’ remain. push vs. pull and all that old business.{ and boy! talked about for so long:that great-buzzword-since-the-late-90-‘s “video-on-demand”, and nowadays - Over IP Video - OIPV and IPTV etc.}

No need to get into that particular bit of discourse right here and now, suffice to say that I feel that given the success of this green.tv project will depend on how interactive it actually turns out to be. It’s a fabulous concept, and a great opportunity. Particularly for the folks out there – environmental activists and ordinary people making changes in their lives - instead of just ‘talking the talk’ - this is a great opportunity to be ‘heard and seen’ and if we can all ‘push’ it in the right direction – then it will be fabulous indeed.

what green.tv has to say for itself:

“With green.tv we’ve brought together the audience pulling power of television with the chatroom and blogging interaction of the internet to create a truly powerful new medium, one that reaches out to a global broadband audience - an audience which, importantly, consumes most of the Earth’s valuable resources”

aha, well the guardian has finally clearly lost its patience with the ‘wayward’ contributors to its very popular News Blog and have finally introduced comment registration. previously, any old so- and-so could have come along and written any old thing ( and did). And it was wonderfully amusing, precisely because it digressed so much. as the editors now put it -

“The introduction of comment registration is intended to keep the standard of debate as high as possible..”

“Blog commenters are reminded that comments here are intended to relate directly to the post, rather than to veer off into unrelated subjects. ..Our blog system is ill-suited to that kind of discussion.”

“..Occasionally, when discussions have become irrelevant to the post in question, we will close comments on that post, and we may delete comments already posted if they are unrelated to the topic, to reduce the size of the page for other users.”

well i guess that explains why recently comments have been closed on posts despite clear interest from participants in continuing the slanging matches.

ah, goodbye to the enjoyable vitriol. well it shall be fun to see how the discussion threads ‘behave’ from now on. of course i always think its a bit pointless for ‘moderators’ or ‘editors’ to imagine there’s such a thing as ’sticking to the point’ in a discussion. Doesn’t happen - of course if you don’t want that kind of free-for-all expression on your site, fair enough! I find it amusing of course, that’s what’s so interesting about the Internet. from the point of view of social observation, its invaluable.

Or rather, a look at some of the amusing items posted on last Friday’s Guardian News Blog ( now closed for comments) on the ‘Plame Game’– some of these really tickle me, some for their snide sarcasm, the irony, some for their outright stupidity etc. etc. Some of these threads do get quite outrageous, its always worth reading the newsblog ‘rants’ when one is a trifle bored. [Now the Guardian moderators seem to like to close these threads a bit too early nowadays, don’t know why, clearly it hadn’t run out of steam yet, so the fun in chewing these things over has to be carried out on your own blog. ]

About 246 comments, the usual vitriol from some of the usual suspects.

“..I mean, if I were in the UK growing up I’d have a hard time not being jealous of how Americans live too. I mean most people in the world speak American English for one. I mean, more people want to come to America. The only time Britain wins anything is in the Commonwealth Games. Britain does win in teenage pregnancy. Which is fine, because if more British people dont get pregnant youre going to be living in The United British Califate of Muslimstan anyway at the rate youre going. Everyone knows that the US presence in Europe is still important. I know that its a matter of national pride for you to be anti-American; and who could blame you? Posted by stan on April 10, 2006 11:10 AM.”

>>Oh stan you’re such a funny man. No, really.

“I mean, if I were in the UK growing up I’d have a hard time not being jealous of how Americans live too!” that really is funny. Did you hear that folks? So if you live in the UK and are ‘jealous’ of how the Americans live, please do let me know. If I had one of those survey-o-meters, or knew how to invent one [note to self: learn, could have a lot of fun with that..) id stick that one up here. Hmm, let’s see I bet we’re jealous of all that worrying about health insurance – yup that’s for sure. Hilarious..what else, oh right, here in London, we’re really, really, jealous about that item of fame – Los Angeles’ public transport system. Yup.I daresay lots of people are jealous of the idea of how Americans live. Clearly this idea of what America is, rather than the reality of America, is important – to both non-Americans, and to Americans.

“Please, please donot pull out American troops out of Iraq. How else would be able to feed our families? Posted by American coffin maker on April 10, 2006 10:32 AM

“Stan: the entire point is that the 'European left' don't want the US to 'stand up' for them, and don't need them to. It's just a shame that the world's most wealthy nation formulates foreign policy in terms of 'kicking ass', an attitude taken in Europe mostly by children. Europeans - unlike Americans - live with the reality of the world, not a messianic fantasy. It's very telling that you have to resort to a string of insults to attempt to make your point: because god knows you couldn't make your point through argument. Anyway, I'm sure this won't make any difference to you - you can't force a person to grow up.” Posted by SBL on April 10, 2006 10:09 AM.

>>Ooh my ‘when half of them don’t even want to wake up in the morning and go to f***ing work?’ Heh hehe. Is this then referring to the much vaunted ‘ anglo-saxon protestant work ethic’ we hear so much about and that mr. Samuel huntington raved on about ..that he claims that the Hispanics don’t share because they’re not ‘anglo-saxon’. So amusing. I suppose stan’s right about some things – you won’t find too many people in europe who won’t take their holdiays cos they’d rather work their lives away. Well you might, im sure that’s possible, diversity and all that ( chuckle) but hardly something that’s broadcast as a virtue. Really..

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“What I dont like is arm chair British guys coming to criticise us hardworking Yanks. They contribute troops in small numbers and want to have the most say. We Americans are the ones taking the casualties in Iraq. About time the British just shut up!Posted by Pissed off on April 10, 2006 07:36 AM.”

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well there you go. most amusing, check it out for yourselves, definitely a good laugh.