One voice singing in the darkness

After decades of unmitigated and relentless capitalism and a Thatcheresque meltdown (she was not very good at seeing things going pear shaped in the long term either) it would be nice to have just a thin slice of socialist compassion and equality for the ordinary person, especially the ones on low and fixed incomes. Despite the rampant privatisations the trains do not run on time, energy, fuel and utilities cost an arm and a leg, we do not have enough affordable housing, and our infrastructure resembles an unfinished matchstick model. We are being screwed by taxes, largely to pay for a massive failure in the private sector.

via bbc.co.uk

A comment from Nick Robinson’s blog albeit a lone voice in the darkness it would seem.

UK Supermarkets Accused Of Dairy Price Fixing

Some of the main UK supermarkets have been accused of fixing the price of many dairy products. The Office of Fair Trading is looking into claims that whilst the price paid to the farmer stayed the same and even fell over a 6 year period the price the consumer paid in the supermarket went up.
In 2001 the supermarkets paid the farmgate 18.47pence for a litre of milk and charged 42.7p whereas in 2007 the supermarkets paid the farmgate 18.08p a litre but charged 56.3p.

The Office of Fair Trading, the government fair trade watchdog, estimates that consumers have paid around £270 million more than they should have done for many dairy products.

Supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda are to examine the report whilst the farmers processors, Dairy Crest, Arla, Lactalis McLelland, The Cheese Company – part of Milk Link – and Wiseman also are implicated in an agreement to fix prices. Morrisons may have inherited a policy that Safeway undertook prior to being bought by Morrisons.

Some think that the dairy processors may have colluded with the supermarkets in an attempt to raise the falling price being paid at the farmgate.
Source

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Goodbye Virgin Music Stores

Richard Branson has sold Virgin’s 125 UK and Irish record stores which will be re branded under the name Zavvi via a current management buyout. Earlier this year Branson had sold his US record stores. The current and presumably now future management of the soon to be former Virgin record stores say they are upbeat about the viability of the stores in a market that is feeling the continued impact of the decline of CD sales.

In the UK many supermarkets have signalled they will no longer stock CD singles whilst Music Zone, MVC and Fopp had already disappeared from the UK high street leaving only HMV and some smaller specialist stores remaining in the diminishing physical record store market.

The demise of the high street record store seemed inevitable much like the decline of milk floats and milk deliveries, film cameras, TV and video rental stores and public phones boxes which are all increasingly becoming consigned to being just a memory for people of a certain age.

Time marches on.

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BBC iPlayer HM Gov Speaks

I was one of  16,000 people who got an email from HM Government’s on-line petition system in order to inform us that the BBC trust has considered out collective protests at being locked out of the BBC iPlayer. In part it says:

“In the case of the iPlayer, following the consultation, the (BBC) Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC’s on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. “

The full deliberation can be read here.

Hardly an end to world poverty but If I’m going to keep paying the TV license fee I want to be able to access it on my compy OS of choice when needed.

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Brown To keep Bouncing Into An Election?

As people say, a week is a long time in politics and in a few weeks time we could even find ourselves in the midst of election fever if Gordon Brown decides to light the blue touch paper and signal a general election. The opinion polls don’t show such a decisive gap between Labour and the Tories but the Conservatives still seem riddled with in fighting and the old party pull that wants yet another new leader to lurch to the right.

Maybe Gordon won’t take the chance but he does still seem to be bouncing at the moment and if he thinks that David Cameron’s conservatives are not behind their leader 100% (will they really start playing the anti Europe card yet again?) then pressing home the advantage whilst pursuing his own mandate with the British people may prompt him to plump for an October election.

I love the Autumn. It stirs up new possibilities.

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William Shakespeare Dies In Car Accident

A water buffalo named William Shakespeare escaped from a field in Cumbria and ran into the path of cars on a nearby road on Tuesday, police reported. The buffalo was sadly killed in the accident and fire fighters had to cut a 19 year old driver from the wreck of his fiat punto that collided with the animal. The driver was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries.

Two other drivers collided with each other as they attempted to swerve and avoid the accident on the A590 near Dalton-in-Furness. The driver and passenger of one vehicle was taken to hospital with whiplash injuries.

The buffalo was owned by a local man.

Source

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Paxo Vs Humphreys on TV on Radio

Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman has been giving his views on the current state of Television whilst in Edinburgh and a battle royal between the Today programme’s John Humphrys and Paxo has ensued as he is forced to account for his own views as he dares to  question the current direction of the industry. He asks as to how can the BBC  be making so many cutbacks with a £3.5 billion revenue and (oddly) questioning the license fee itself when he said:

“The idea of a tax on the ownership of television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?”

In his talk aimed at the medium he works in he also asks:

“Is there something rotten in the state of television, some systemic sickness that renders it inherently dishonest but the question behind that question is simply…what is television for?”

Hear some of Humphreys vs Paxman here (ability to play real audio required)

Photo original by willismonroe under this creative commons license.

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