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Tories Warn Regional Media Not To Join Government Consortia

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:37:39 +0100

I've reported previously that the Conservatives are opposed to the Government's plans for regional news consortia. These are the partnerships which will bring together newspapers, regional television and blogs, with a little Government subsidy.

But they went a little further last week, making it clear they would do their best to scrap the consortia even if they have been created before the next election. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the Tories would "do all we can to legally unpick them".

My former boss Marc Reeves, former editor of The Birmingham Post, is part of the panel that will choose the winning bid for the first three consortia.

Here are some extracts from Jeremy Hunt's speech:

"The Digital Economy Bill sets in stone the Government policy of using public subsidy to prop up regional news on ITV. My opposition to such a measure is hopefully, well known. Using the licence fee to prop up regional news simply casts a failed regional TV model in aspic. It would actively prevent the emergence of new, local media models, making broadcasters focus their energies on satisfying politicians not reaching viewers.

"I know that many organisations in this room are involved in bidding for the pilot schemes that this Bill would make permanent. And I don't blame you: faced with the terrifying situation many of you are in, it is understandable you want to follow the money wherever it is, public or private.

"So let me be clear. We do not support these provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. And we do not support the pilot schemes. The contracts are not due to be signed until May. Anyone looking to sign one should understand that we'll do all we can to legally unpick them if David Cameron enters Number 10. And if they haven't been signed, we won't be doing so.

"This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector. Not just local TV, where we are about the only major developed country not to have proper city-based TV franchises. But profitable, hungry and ambitious local radio, local newspapers and local websites as well."

Tories Reject Labour's Plans to Subsidise Local News

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:34:42 +0100

Government subsidies for regional news will stifle innovation and lead to demands for more public money, according to the Tories.

The Conservative stance means there is a very sharp division between the two major parties over how Government can support the local and regional news industry.

As I reported previously, Labour plans to support regional news consortia bringing together newspapers, local TV news and bloggers.

Three pilot schemes will be announced soon. Word in the industry (I can't verify this) is that they will be in Scotland, Wales and north west England.

The projects will get some public cash, probably from the licence fee, although this is only supposed to be temporary.

Jeremy Hunt, the Tory shadow culture secretary, made it clear the Conservatives oppose this idea, in a speech last week.

He said: "Let's look, for example, at what the government is proposing on local news. Essentially it wants to prop up the failed regional news model with licence fee cash.

"Why is this so flawed?

"Firstly, because it will set in stone the current failed model and stifle any possibility of better local news models emerging.

"Once the licence fee is paying for regional news, then all the efforts of those people receiving the subsidy will be put into lobbying ministers and Ofcom as to why it should continue. What they will not be doing is developing the new business models for local media that are being opened up by the internet.

"Secondly it will undermine one of the most successful elements of British broadcasting, namely the fact that our broadcasters compete on their ability to attract viewers not subsidy."

The Tory proposal was to reform the rules regulating media ownership so that it was easier for existing media companies to invest in new platforms, such as local television stations, he said.

Local rather than regional channels (eg, Birmingham, rather West Midlands) could be included on existing digital television broadcasts, known as multiplexes, he said.

"I am a big supporter of the idea that we need to create space for community and volunteer-led local TV stations. But I also recognise the challenge of making them commercially viable - as we have seen from the struggles of the brave and spirited Channel M in Manchester.

"Another option is to use space on existing multiplexes to create a national network that local programming could affiliate to. This has the advantage that costs are dramatically lowered: local affiliates only need to finance around four hours of programming a day outside prime time. Advertising can be sold nationally with local opt-outs. This is the system that has worked successfully in the US and other countries for many years.

"Who might want to invest in such a model? We could set up a new network, although given that we already have as many networks as America with a fifth of the population many would question whether there is room for one more.

"But becoming the backbone for a network of local affiliates could be an opportunity for ITV, 4 and five - either on their main channels or subsidiary ones. As for the local affiliates, one could imagine investment from a combination of new players and existing local newspaper groups."

Make an RSS Feed for your Favourite Journalist

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:19:52 +0100

I have a feature on the left column of this site titled "Birmingham News", which is meant to provide links to stories I have written for the Birmingham Post and Mail. It never really worked, because there was no RSS feed for my stories. My attempts to create a feed using Yahoo Pipes were unsuccessful (and Pipes, although incredibly useful when it works, is not always reliable in my experience).

So thank you Google News for coming to the rescue. Their author search feature allows you to create an RSS feed for stories written by any given author, so that I can isolate my own stories at last.

I thought this may be of interest to others, because you can of course do the same with any writer whose articles appear in Google News.

For example, I am a fan of Matthew Parris. He has his own page on the Times Online website, here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/

But there is no RSS feed specifically for his work, provided by the Times. At least, if it exists, it is well hidden and I could not find it.

But you can easily create your own feed from Google News. Here is the URL:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=author%3A%22matthew+parris%22

To generate an RSS feed for any author, go to Google News:

http://news.google.co.uk/

Enter as your search term (taking Matthew Parris as an example):

Author:"Matthew Parris"

You should get a list of articles written by the author you have chosen. And on the left will be some options, including "sorted by date" and "sorted by relevance". I don't know what relevance means in this context, and personally I suggest clicking on "sorted by date" to ensure the feed gives you the latest articles as they go online.

Then you can either click on the RSS symbol somewhere near the top of your browser (it will be an orange symbol of some kind, and it will look a bit different depending on which browser you use), or simply scroll to the bottom of the page where there is an "RSS" link.

Click that link, and there you go.

Journalists and Bloggers to Work Together with Government Funding - Can it Succeed?

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:34:38 +0100

Government legislation will create subsidised news consortia bringing together blogs, newspapers and independent regional television news.

This was the plan set out by Creative Industries Minister Sion Simon (Lab Erdington) when he spoke to me during Labour's annual conference. A Bill will be bought in this autumn, he said.

While there's been a lot of discussion about the future of regional and local news, I'm not sure there's been a great deal of debate about this. The plan, as set out by Sion, is for the Government initially to subsidise the scheme, but in the hope that a business model will eventually emerge which does not require public funding.

How exactly local bloggers will feed into it remains to be seen. I wonder whether they will be happy for their work to be included in a commercial operation if they are not being paid themselves? Or maybe the plan is to pay bloggers too.

Ministers are apparently planning three pilot schemes, in Scotland, Wales and an English region which has not yet been named.

Sion spoke to me about the policy when I interviewed him in partnership with Yoosk, a web-based service which allows members of the public to pose questions to politicians, with journalists sometimes acting as middlemen. Apparently I was the first newspaper journalist to set up an interview like this with Yoosk.

The question he is answering, as you will hear, is actually about the Birmingham Mail. As I said, all the questions I put to Sion that day were chosen by users of the Yoosk website.

Here is what Sion said:

Full Text of Gordon Brown's speech to the TUC

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:33:56 +0100

Below is the full text of Gordon Brown's speech today to the TUC. You may wonder why I am posting it here. It's because I have written a post on the Birmingham Post blog site comparing Mr Brown's speech to one delivered by George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, and wanted to link to full copies of both speeches.

Believe it or not, while the Conservative website has a copy of Mr Osborne's speech, the Labour website does not have a copy of the Prime Minister's words (and it is a Labour speech, not a Government speech, so it's not on the Downing Street site either). So I have posted a copy to this blog for me to link to. Here it is:

Friends let me first of all thank your General Secretary Brendan Barber, your President Sheila Bearcroft, and all the members of the General Council for inviting me here to Liverpool today.

And it is hard to believe that we meet today in Liverpool, his home city, without the presence of our friend the giant of the labour movement: Jack Jones.

Jack Jones had ideals that were forged in the harsh and bitter experiences of the 1930s, Jack was always there for the people who needed him.

The 30s were, as Jack saw, a time when recession became depression because of the inaction of governments and the failure of the world to come together.

And if I'd been addressing you a few years ago that would have been of historical interest, a reflection of the crises of a distant age.

But today these lessons, that when people need help you cannot walk away, are pro foundly relevant, because the fears of depression have been precisely the worries workers, homeowners, savers and businesses have faced in the last twelve months.

Like the 1920s and 1930s, banks that should have been stewards of people's money had become speculators with people's money.

But unlike the 1930's, and having learned the lessons Jack learned from them, we have not stood aside and left people on their own.

The lesson of the 1930s is that whenever banks collapse and markets fail, governments cannot stand aside; they must ensure that the savings of people, their mortgages, their credit, are all protected, and that they must intervene to save jobs.

For many of you will remember that it was around this time last year that a financial crisis was rolling over the Atlantic towards us, a crisis so great that if we did not act there was every possibility of a great new depression.

A year ago today, the 160 year history of Lehman Brothers Bank came to an end. A bank that had survived the great depression and survived two world wars collapsed and could not survive the global storm and 25,000 people lost their jobs overnight.

But that was only the beginning, Lehmans was so entangled with the rest of the banking system and we saw what was the equivalent of a power cut right across the banking system of the world and trust collapsing.

It was clear we were facing a crisis of such speed and scope that left unchecked there was every chance that the whole system could totally freeze up - with people on high streets across our country unable to get any money from the hole in the wall, families' life savings being swallowed up and companies unable to process their payrolls.

The reports I was looking at were as stark as they were serious: we were facing a situation that could have been worse than 1929.

And I knew then that it was going to have to be us, the government, that was going to have to step in directly and ensure whatever happened to the banks did not put at risk the savings of the British people, the mortgages households depended on, the credit that businesses need to maintain jobs, and thousands of jobs themselves.

And it was here in Britain that we took the first steps to recovery.

We had to make a big choice - whether to trust the banks when many said they simply had a cash flow problem - or whether there were structural failures that had to be addressed.

We had another big choice: to leave the markets to sort it out for themselves or to intervene with radical and unprecedented action to sort them out.

And we made our choice - taking majority shares of two of the biggest banks in the world, restructuring the banking system, and to prevent saves losing out, putting in place the biggest insurance policy that Britain has ever had. Fortunately - that is what other countries started to do also.

But then we had another big choice to make - to let the recession run its course, as happened in the recession of the 1980s and 90s - or to intervene to support the economy with fiscal action.

Our Conservative opponents said not to intervene, to let the recession to run its course.

But we made the decision to offer financial support to businesses and to help homeowners and the unemployed.

And I'll tell you why we did so: because for me every redundancy is a personal tragedy. Every mortgage repossession is a hope destroyed. Every business collapse is someone's dream in ruins. And where we can act we will not walk by on the other side.

And as a result of taking action I can tell you over 200,000 businesses employing hundreds of thousands of people have been able to keep people in work. Not the choice of our opponents, but our choice, the choice of the British people.

22 million people have benefited from tax and other changes that have boosted their real income at a critical time.

Not the choice of our opponents, but our choice, the choice of the British people.

And up to 500,000 jobs will have been saved that might otherwise have been lost without the action that Britain has taken.

Not the choices of our opponents, but our choice, the choice of the British people.

And by changing the way the courts deal with repossessions and by guaranteeing help to homeowners in difficulty, we have helped 300,000 families with advice with their mortgages and have helped thousands to stay in the homes they've worked so hard for and were in fear of losing.

And at no time in our history have we, the British people, done so much to support our homeowners, businesses and the unemployed. This didn't happen by default, but by our decisions.

And we had a choice about international cooperation - with Europe and the rest of the world.

We had a choice to let global forces, as happened in the 1930s- to wash all over us - or, unlike the 1930s, to work out a strategy together to deal with global markets.

We had a choice to go our own way pursue national strategies in isolation and resist EU or G20 coordination; the great mistakes of the 1930s.

Or to work intensively together to ensure that policies are coordinated and the results of what we each do are magnified and multiplied by what we all do together.

To work with other countries - to have a coordinated attack on the recession, to have joint reductions in interest rates and fiscal action together - these were our choices, not the choices of our opponents, but the choices we made, the choice of the British people.

In each of these decisions the government would have made the wrong choices if we had followed the advice of our opponents and critics.

And we know that the better path which we have taken and the one our opponents urged could be worth up to 5 trillion dollars invested in the global economy, and it could make the difference in output of 4%, and millions in work who would otherwise have lost their jobs.

We faced the Tories down - and we have been shown to have done the right thing by hard working British families.

But I tell you that we still have a choice to make: the recovery is not automatic and the road to recovery is still fragile.

It is being hard won by government making the right choices and could be quickly wrecked by government making the wrong choices.

People's livelihoods and homes and savings are still hanging in the balance, and so today I say to the British people: don't allow anyone to put the recovery at risk.

There is a fundamental difference between the parties as to how to come through this recession and avoid it being deeper, longer and more damaging.

And we still have big choices to make. The choice of whether we continue to act to help families and businesses or whether we listen to the Tories and withdraw support from families and businesses, cut public services now, and refuse to invest in Britain's future.

So once again the country now has a decision to make, about whether we continue the support that is necessary to sustain the recovery, or we cut away the support now.

And it's a choice that says something about what we believe - not as political parties but as people.

If I were to take the advice of our Conservative opponents, I would stop the school leavers guarantee that is giving 55,000 young people a chance of work experience or further education. And I say, to tell school leavers after their chances have been destroyed by the failures of the banks, I'm sorry there's nothing we can do, to abandon them to unemployment, is to repeat the Conservative mistakes of the 1980s which led to a generation scarred forever. It would be callous and cold hearted - and it's the wrong choice for young people, the wrong choice for Britain.

If we were to take the advice of our Conservative opponents we would withdraw the support now available to homeowners, and do nothing to prevent repossessions rising to the rates of the 1990s. But I say to you to tell a new generation of homeowners who have saved up to buy their first home, and now face difficulties because of unemployment, we're going to do nothing for you now times are the toughest, is unfair and irresponsible: the wrong choice for homeowners, the wrong choice for Britain.

And I say to tell the business owner we'll wait and see if the strongest will survive but there's nothing government can do to help is the wrong choice for business and the wrong choice for Britain.

This is not the moment to cut apprenticeships this is the time for government to support them. So I can tell you that we will provide 21,000 additional apprenticeships in the public sector this year.

And this is not the moment to withdraw public support for house-building but to step it up and I can tell you that we have set aside 1.5 billion pounds to build 20,000 additional affordable homes over the next two years, including for the first time in many years - new modern council homes.

And this is not the moment to abandon the help that has kept over 200,000 businesses afloat, this is the time to continue it, so I can say that businesses who need deferral of tax you will continue to receive it over the coming few months.

And we do this because it's right to help people but also because it's right for the economy.

Because the more jobs and homes we lose now, the higher unemployment rises, the lower growth is as a result, and the more difficult it will be to secure our recovery, bring our debt down, and keep people in their jobs and homes.

Growth is the best antidote to debt.

And so I say to you today: don't allow anyone to derail the recovery and threaten tens of thousands of jobs by calling on councils to stop building the houses our people need.

And I say to workers and businesses across our country, don't risk the recovery by abandoning what we know is now working - a modern industrial policy, a laser focus on tackling unemployment, and worldwide support for coordinated global action.

Just this morning I met with the head of the ILO to discuss the best way of protecting jobs. In two days time I will be working for British jobs at the EU summit, stressing the Need to implement fiscal stimulus packages in full without stopping them prematurely.

And next week when I attend the G20, I will be putting the case for a global compact for growth and stability for now and for the future.

Last April we got an agreement about what we had to do together to move the economy forward through this crisis. Now we need an agreement about what we can do together to maintain the road out of recession.

I will be asking people to contribute to worldwide growth, to the benefit of jobs in all our countries.

I will be demanding that banks beyond Britain do what we have done - to isolate their impaired assets and show how they are to be removed.

I will be demanding that internationally we look at setting limits on city bonuses.

And I will be standing up for what you believe - that there should be no escape from paying your fair share, and that's why I will be arguing that we should implement a black list on uncooperative tax havens.

And so be clear - my priorities in the coming weeks and months will be ensuring that jobs are retained, the recovery moves forward, and that we offer people our vision of a fairer, more responsible, greener and more democratic Britain.

And I want a new industrial policy to signal the creation of 1.5 million new jobs for the future - jobs in green industries, in making the low carbon cars that Britain is leading Europe in developing, in new digital services.

And let's be clear, yes, jobs in the advanced manufacturing which will be central to Britain's long term future.

And I believe that the fight for fairness must include agency workers, and so I pledge to you today that when parliament returns our new legislative programme will include equal treatment for agency workers and that in the coming few months the law will be on the statute book.

And when the recovery comes, I want workers on low and modest incomes to benefit from rising prosperity. I want to see their skills rewarded with decent pay. I want them to have more chances to get on at work and get on in life. When people gain new skills, employers should make sure they use them - so that the company goes up the value chain, and the workers can go up the pay ladder.

Because we know the pressures many people face as they balance the demands of work with the needs of family life. Since 1997 we have increased paid maternity leave from 18 weeks to 9 months. And we retain our ambition to extend it further. This is not only good for mothers but helps give children the best start in life.

But fathers have responsibilities too. No Tory government has ever given a single day of paternity leave. This Labour government gave men the right to two weeks paternity leave. Now, from April 2011 we will give fathers the right to take up to three months additional paid paternity leave during the second six months of a child's life, if the mother has returned to work, because Labour believes in giving couples more freedom, dads more rights and children more time with the two people who love them most.

And I want to talk to you about the future of our public services because in these difficult times people need to know the NHS, our schools, our vital frontline public services will not only will always be there for them but day by day week by week always improve the quality of the service they offer.

Take the National Health Service. Let us remember that here in Britain because of the NHS there are not millions of people uninsured. Here in Britain you don't have to check your wealth before they check your pulse. Here in Britain health is a universal right, and delivered on the basis of your ability to pay but your need.

And we are now transforming the health service again for this generation. We are now offering personal guarantees to patients about waiting times that from the time they go to the doctor to the time they have their operation they will not wait more than 18 weeks.

And while the Tories want to abandon these guarantees we are trying every day to ensure that the vast majority of patients get treatment even earlier. And that we will continue to do.

We have given guarantees to everyone worried about cancer that they will not wait and worry. And while the Tories want to deny that right of no more than a 12 weeks wait to cancer patients, every year we are making it easier and quicker for cancer patients to be treated with speed. And this we will continue to do.

We have given guarantees about GP services that there will be weekend opening and evening to suit you the patient to go at the time that is most convenient. And while the Tories want to leave GPs to do exactly as they want, we will ensure that this new right is extended to even more communities in the country.

And we will match those guarantees with the guarantee that every young person will have the right to education not to 16 as before but to 18.

Previously the only way to get personal tuition for children that could not read or write was to pay. Now we are extending the right of young people with learning needs and with special talents to get the personal attention they need. Not through private tuition but free individual tuition in our schools and in our communities.

And we will give a guarantee that every year each and every neighbourhood will have more extensive neighbour hood policing on the beat that communities need to be safe and feel safe.

We will do all these things and more, because we believe that decent education, health and services should be available to not just some, but all of our people.

But we can only make these improvements within a framework of sustainable finances. And to pay for these improvements and to achieve our budget reduction plan to cut the deficit in half over the next four years, we have to take action like other countries - America, Germany and France - we will have debt levels around 80 per cent of national income and as the recovery happens we will have to plan to bring that debt down.

And that's why to continue to fund our public services and to cut the deficit we have announced we will raise national insurance from April 2011 by 0.5 percent to help pay for our public services.

That's why at the same time we will remove unfair tax reliefs on higher income earners.

And why we will raise the top rate of tax to 50p for those on the very highest incomes. So I must tell you the tough truth about the hard choices: my motivation is always to do the right thing by the British people - investing more during this recession and others are following our lead.

And we have made the right choice to provide the support that markets and banks failed to offer.

And we are doing the right thing to make sure that for the future as we move into a full recovery we will invest and grow within sustainable public finances - cutting costs where we can, ensuring efficiency where it's needed, agreeing realistic public sector pay settlements throughout, selling off the unproductive assets we don't need to pay for the services we do need.

Labour will cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets. But when our plans are published in the coming months people will see that Labour will not sup port cuts in the vital front line services on which people depend.

The choice is between Labour who will not put the recovery at risk, protect and improve your front line services first and make the right choices for low and middle income families in the country.

And a Conservative Party which would reduce public services at the very time they are needed most, make across the board public spending cuts to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest few, and make different choices about public services because they have different values. These would be the wrong choices at the wrong time for the wrong reasons because they have the wrong priorities for Britain.

We will at all times be guided by our values of fairness and responsibility. We will not cut public services to pay for huge cuts in inheritance tax for the richest few in the country. In contrast, Labour believes that there must be a fair distribution of the risks and the rewards. And so today I tell you we will be saving up to five hundred million pounds over the next three years by reforming Whitehall early exit scheme pay outs for early retirement. It's a scheme that's often as much as six times annual pay. These high costs prevent us giving other people jobs and this is not the best way to spend public money. I am calling on all public authorities to make similar reviews of their terms.

Now I know that some people will say that with all the constraints in the world economy and the problems they have brought, can we still ensure that year by year keep advancing towards a fairer more responsible society?

I say when we came in in 1997 we faced huge constraints to get the debt down, and we chose the right priorities; we created the minimum wage, created sure start for children improved schools immediately ended the neglect of the NHS and created the new deal that has helped two million people . We did it because we chose the people's priorities - each of us working towards realising the talents of all.

And the first thing we must do is to ensure a generation of young people have the best change of employment.

In the 1980s we marched for jobs, we rallied for jobs, we petitioned for jobs, but because we were not in power we couldn't create jobs without a government committed to jobs.

And so i ask you - the people who remember - to campaign with us as government to say that we will not allow a new generation of young people to become a lost generation. We won't let that happen - never again.

Never again should their potential be lost even before their adult lives have begun. Never again should their talent to be wasted or their contribution to the country spurned.

And so let me tell you what we will now do.

For the first time, we will put the apprenticeship programme on a statutory basis and ensure that an apprenticeship place is available for every suitably qualified young person by 2013. And thanks to Labour the minimum apprentice wage rose last month by more than 20 percent.

And I can also announce today up to 7ooo jobs from the future jobs funding the next stage as we move to create 100,000 jobs for young people. In total we will spend five billion pounds on creating jobs.

And friends as I conclude, let me pay tribute today to our armed forces, who risk their lives to ensure global security. Their heroism is unsurpassed, and our gratitude to them is boundless.

I want to say just one final thing, because I know that so many of your members were the backbone of the make poverty history movement, and are anxious about what the recession means for global solidarity and global justice.

Let me reassure you today.

There are those who would use the excuse of the financial crisis to break their promises to the worlds poorest. Well we will not. We will keep our promises.

Let us remember that our beliefs, our conviction, our determination to fight for them has resulted in astonishing path breaking and life-changing advances - debt relief, 500 million children to be vaccinated, 40 million more children in education, millions more with free health care.

And friends, our achievements teach us never to believe something is impossible.

Never to believe a blind fate governs us all.

Never to believe that justice is beyond our reach.

And so this is a moment that calls for the progressive policies we fight for and believe in.

Blog Aggregator for Birmingham

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:31:48 +0100

As I have stated many times on this blog, I am in favour of aggregators which make it easier for people to find content from across the web, although I think there are some limits on what they should do.

I have begun work on an aggregator for Birmingham blogs, to replace the rather poor "blogroll" on this site.

If anyone has any thoughts on whether this is a good idea or not, I would be very grateful for their input.

Work on it has only just begun, and it will be a long time before it is anything close to comprehensive (I'm sure it will never be complete).

Take a look at http://birmingham.localbounce.com and leave a comment, either at the "about" page on that site, or right here.

How Twitter Caused a Headache for David Cameron

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:31:58 +0100

I've been chatting to a friend in America who tells me that the evils of our NHS have become a favourite topic among opponents of Barack Obama's healthcare plans.

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan (South East) has made a number of appearances on US television to explain to America why our healthcare system is so bad.

Mr Hannan became something of an internet sensation after his eloquent speech condemning Gordon Brown, in the European Parliament in March, received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube (currently 2.4 million).

Hannan speaks to the European Parliament

Despite this, he doesn't get a great deal of attention in the mainstream media in the UK.

But his comments in the US have nonetheless been highlighted in the UK by users of Twitter.

Hannan speaks to Fox News

The "micro-blogging" tool has been used by supporters of the NHS to defend the health service against the attacks by Mr Obama's critics, using the hash-tag #welovethenhs.

And some of these have also had a dig at the Tories - demanding Conservative leader David Cameron disown Mr Hannan.

Mr Cameron has insisted that he also loves the NHS, and spoken in a positive way about the Twitter campaign, on the official Conservative Party blog.

There was no mention of Mr Hannan, something that has been noted in comments left by the blog's readers.

But Mr Cameron has distanced himself from the MEP's comments elsewhere. It seems that Mr Hannan has become an embarrassment to his party.

And while the mainstream media has picked up on the story, from what I can tell it all began on Twitter.

In Defence of TheYamYam

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:20:36 +0100

Mark Blackstock, editor of TheYamYam, has contributed this reply to my earlier post about his website. JW

------------------------

Hey Jonathan. Thanks for commenting on the YamYam.

The simple reason why the YamYam sometimes scans stories from newspapers and posts them on its own website is because the stories are not to be found anywhere online.

This is often the case with the Express and Star, where many excellent stories about Walsall, of interest and importance to local people, appear in newsprint but never find their way onto the E&S website. Believe me, I would much prefer not to have to take the trouble and time to scan stories but simply link to the original content online - scans also look rather ugly.

I have raised this issue with the Walsall editor of the E&S. Unfortunately, it has been explained to me that publishing all of the E&S content online is beyond the capacity of the newspaper's small internet team. I suspect this is as frustrating for the Walsall journalists who write these stories as it is for me, and for you who may perceive this as ‘theft'.

A story scanned and published in the YamYam is always credited, it is always reproduced as an image file, the article is not OCRd and stored as text in a database. So unfortunately, it is not possible to provide a link to an original article if the article does not exist online in the first place.

Readers appreciate articles being scanned, not just for their news value but also for the record. Much of the value added by a site like the YamYam is it's attention to links. Obviously links to specialist websites are a useful resource for someone researching or wishing to find out more about a particular subject, company or institution etc. But a story published in newsprint can often be isolated and read out of context.

Historical links can add meaning and tell their own story on a subject. So scanning an article is also important historically for telling the full story in links for when the subject appears next time. This is of particular use to people and groups campaigning around local issues.

As for your reference to using RSS feeds in your previous comment, I do wish it was so simple. Unfortunately many newspaper RSS feeds are unreliable and I spend many hours in search engines hunting down and selecting content. And for the record, there are no computer automated feeds going into the YamYam website - it is all human activity.

Many of the headlines and intro paragraphs (not all) are rewritten, for reasons of space or clarity on the page design or RSS feed, since what makes sense on a printed page often doesn't translate into a different web context.

As a former newspaper man of many years, I am saddened by the decline of newspaper readership and circulation - but I don't simply blame the internet for that. I am also saddened by the regional and local press's failure to embrace the internet and develop viable websites and online business plans which can monetise their content. And also for the record, as a general rule, I attempt to only link to the BBC as a last resort and give preference to local (or national) online newsprint sources or reliable bloggers - but I acknowledge that does not always happen.

In the absence of a daily newspaper for Walsall, the YamYam seeks to collate and aggregate from numerous sources as much daily news about Walsall as possible for its readers to easily navigate and read in one place - or select from an RSS or Twitter feed.

As the website builds I do hope to provide more original content but presently this is restricted to a few news and comment pieces on important issues which haven't been covered elsewhere, particularly on issues where decisions by Walsall institutions go unchallenged or ignored by the Birmingham and Wolverhampton press which dominate our part of the West Midlands.

So in conclusion, the YamYam does not attempt to monopolise or steal anyone's content but rather work alongside other media producers by sending readers off to the original source, be it a major media publisher or a local blogger, where it is up to that website to serve advertisements and run other income generating activities.

Mark Blackstock
Publisher, The YamYam

Calling All Gurus - You Don't Know What The Future Holds

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:42:50 +0100

None of us know what the future holds. Speculation about the way the internet is going to develop, how people will behave online or where they will get their information from, is little more than guesswork.

Let me give some examples:

Software

As a middle aged man who started using the internet a long time ago (mainly to play Ultima Online rather than do anything useful), I remember when an amazing new piece of software appeared. ICQ was the first popular instant messaging service to run on Windows.

All of a sudden, e-mail seemed slow and cumbersome. Everybody had to have ICQ.

Where is it now? My ICQ buddy list has dwindled over the years, while my Windows Live list has grown.

I'm sure people still use ICQ. According to Digital Trends, it has an estimated 15 million active users.

According to Microsoft, Windows Live is used by 330 million people a month (I'd guess many hundreds of millions more have it installed and never use it).

I don't know where Digital Trends gets its figures from, but I doubt anyone who uses instant messaging much is going to disagree that ICQ has been overshadowed.

So, will this happen to Twitter? I doubt it, but I don't know. Neither do you. Let's see what happens when Twitter is sold to AOL while Microsoft and Google launch their joint-venture micro-blogging service.

Hardware

The first big wave of internet hype, about ten years ago, didn't come to much (although some of the predictions are beginning to come true today).

Rather than sit at home in front of computer screens, people embraced technology nobody had really predicted - mobile phones and texting.

But have we now entered an age when the PC becomes as commonplace as the television?

Maybe. But maybe Microsoft's dream of flogging us all integrated home entertainment systems which let you play Counterstrike, watch high definition DVDs, browse Facebook and listen to music - all from a box far cheaper and less complicated than a PC - will come true instead.

As consoles like the Xbox and Wii shift from gaming machines to all-round entertainment and social media systems, people may not feel they need to shell out on a PC after all.

The significance of this is that consoles are designed to be idiot-proof. They are harder to mess up, for example by downloading Trojans or accidentally wiping your hard disc.

So they are far less amenable to small start-ups or amateur coders producing new apps. The days when bloggers are raving each week about Floogle, MyBo or some other bizarre new service may be limited. Or maybe not.

Manners

Somebody once invented a horrible word - netiquette. You laughed at anyone who used this word, but generally followed its conventions

They included a prohibition on cross-posting - posting the same content to lots of different places - and a dislike of shilling, or self-promotion. (Shilling doesn't necessarily involve making money, as actually making money on the internet was pretty much unthinkable anyway).

It's an understatement to say that's all gone out the window. Today, people boast of their technical prowess in using ping.fm to post the same content to a dozen different places.

Twitter abounds with people hyping up their blog (I'm going to do it once I post this) or slyly informing us how amazed they are that they were included in a list of the most influential bloggers with a B13 postcode.

And maybe that's better. Perhaps it's just sensible to make your content available to as many people as possible.

But if you're going to boast that you "get it" and understand the rules of the game, it can't hurt to consider that they will be different tomorrow. Maybe.

TheYamYam - Simple Theft or Sophisticated Theft?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:31:55 +0100

Edit: Mark Blackstock, editor of TheYamYam, has replied to this post, and you can find his comments here.

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One of the clichés you hear thrown around on the interweb is that "nobody owns the news".

I've never heard anyone claim that they do own the news, and I wouldn't understand what they meant if they did.

You can't own "the news" in general, any more than you can own fiction or music as a concept, but if you write a novel, song or article - however good or bad - you own that. Or, if you have sold your labour to someone else, they own it.

Frankly, I suspect the phrase is sometimes used simply to justify ripping people off. Which brings me to theyamyam.com.

I wrote about theyamyam before, in fairly positive terms. I did note at the time that the site was taking more from newspaper websites than they had chosen to syndicate via RSS (it seems to me that if you put something in an RSS feed you are tacitly giving people permission to use it), but didn't make much of it.

Their latest angle, however, is to scan in full stories from local newspapers and stick them up on their website, with a handy Google ad placed next to the scanned image.

Here's one example, ripping off the Express and Star (for some reason the Birmingham Post, Mail and Mercury don't seem to be getting the same treatment yet).

The Express and Star is credited - but believe it or not, there is no link to the E&S website. The name of the paper is there, but that's not a link.

In any case, once the entire original story has been posted on the YamYam, why would anyone want to click through and read the original?

To those who say local newspapers simply cut and paste press releases anyway, I ask why the YamYam doesn't just do that? (Answer - because that's not what local papers do. But any website is welcome to do it).

This is just theft, in the same way as downloading a pirated copy of a film or CD is theft. I regret saying nice things about this website, as it's become nothing more than the digital equivalent of the guy down the pub trying to flog dodgy DVDs.