“This is the first campaign of its kind in trade unionism. We are not going on strike. We are not even having a sit-in. We do not recognise that there should be any redundancies and we are going to work-in.
“We are taking over the yards because we refuse to accept that faceless men can take these decisions. We are not strikers. We are responsible people and will conduct ourselves with dignity and discipline.
“There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, and there will be no bevvying.
“We are not wildcats. We want to work.
“The real wildcats are in No 10 Downing Street. They are the hardest-faced bunch of political gangsters I have ever met. They make Al Capone and his gunmen look like a troop of Boy Scouts. The biggest mistake we could make is to lie down, capitulate, and grovel to them.
“We don’t only build ships on the Clyde, we build men. They have taken on the wrong people and we will fight.”
Speech at the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, July 30, 1971
[video]
Do bear in mind, as he seems unwilling to do so, that he is not the sketch-writer for a sixth-form paper, but the BBC’s political editor.
Nick Robinson, raise your game.
Sub: Erm.. this picture..
Chief-sub: What?
Sub: The ant pic. It’s..
Chief-sub: It’s fine. It’s a good pic. Nice and sharp.
Sub: Yeah, but..
Chief-sub: It’s from Getty. They’re free. We have to use free pics.
Sub: The story’s about flying ants.
Chief-sub: Look. I don’t have time for this. Just make it work.
Sub: Right. Fuck it.
I don’t get the calls to loosen the 140-character limit on Twitter.
Sure, it’s an arbitrary rule, but nobody is forcing you. Don’t like the rule? Don’t sign up.
If you want more elbow room, blog.
This is a fucking outrage. A website that sells itself as a whole-hearted member of the “Mac community” provides a step-by-step guide to stealing from that very community.
Of course, there’s the predictable weasel words about “not condoning” piracy. Bullshit.
I’m not linking to them, they can whistle for the traffic.
Scum.
Utterly brilliant TV.
John Naughton is a tech writer for The Observer, notable for thoughtfulness, balance and rigour in research. Recently, however, he’s been showing worrying signs of “mailing it in”.
Now he has joined the chorus of fact-challenged link-baiters weighing in on Apple’s “Antennagate” brou-ha-ha.
In Friday’s almost unprecedented “emergency” news conference, Steve Jobs repeated his claim that the “Death Grip” causes similar problems with all smartphones. Then he showed some video of it actually happening with three other phones, a Blackberry, an HTC and a Samsung.
This didn’t go down well. RIM issued a non-denial denial response, blasting Jobs’ “distortion”:
Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.
As far as I know, they didn’t release a supporting video.
Naughton weighed in on Twitter, calling it “pathetic”, as if stating a case then providing hard evidence to support that case was somehow beyond the pale.
He then blogged on the issue… well I say “blogged”. What he actually did was copy and paste a sizeable chunk of Apple’s initial response to the issue, a position that Jobs publicly rowed back from on Friday, using it as a hook gleefully to rub his hands about the coming publicity “shitstorm”.
In “evidence”, he commits further abuse of cmd-c/cmd-v, and bestows upon his readers the “wisdom” of fellow tech “guru” Dave Winer.
That’s where it all goes horribly wrong. For Dave Winer hasn’t a fucking clue what he’s talking about.
Naughton attempts to clarify Winer’s blarney:
Dave’s point is that instead of just being a Plucky Little Company Apple is now just Another Big Corporation. Like Microsoft. Like Google. Like BP.
“Like BP”, whose criminally lax attention to detail killed 11 oil workers and left a scar on the planet that is visible from space. That BP? Over-react much, John?
Since we’re talking attention to detail, let’s examine some of Winer’s “point”, helpfully included by John:
It’s also going to get ugly because we’re fed up with corporations. It was remarkable that there were no ads for oil companies on the World Cup broadcasts (at least the ones I watched).
I don’t know which ones Dave watched, but it would be hard to miss the pitch-side hoardings for FIFA partner Castrol, since they were present during every fucking game. Castrol is owned by BP.
But maybe John should have paid a bit more attention to Dave’s previous outbursts before so approvingly citing his new hero.
Like the one where he claims the iPad is not all that because it is “impossible” to write with and “awkward” to look things up on, despite its onscreen and bluetooth keyboards and one-tap access to the fucking internet.
Or the one where he claims that blogging “changed” the web, despite blogging being around since before Sir Tim Berners-Lee had his bright idea. Or hilariously confusing a tool with a protocol by wibbling that the Twitter API married with Facebook would give us “another FTP or HTTP or RSS”. OK, these two are a bit arcane, but Dave, let us not forget, is a “tech guru” with qualifications up the wing-wang. He’s supposed to Know About This Stuff.
So finally, I give you the one where he says that what makes iPhone game Angry Birds “so much fun” is that it gives players the sense that they are “suicide bombers” toppling the Twin Towers on 9/11. Dave Winer actually lives in New York.
Seriously, Mr Naughton. Hitting on Apple is fine. I’ve done it myself. But if you think Dave Winer has anything meaningful to add, like him, you are belming into the void.
Mallory, education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
Sam Seaborn, “The West Wing”, S1Ep18
Read this.
As a journalist, it saddens me that it takes a lawyer to make a complicated tale simple and compelling.
I watched, gawping, as the whole clusterfuck unfolded on Twitter this afternoon. Never has someone been so deservingly hoist on her own petard.
Ben Goldacre deserves some sort of medal for unfailing reasonableness in the face of extreme provocation.