ralpress.org

Seen on Glyn Moody’s Twitter feed:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0902/S00360.htm

I’ve uploaded a few dozen images to my flickr account that I took at a couple of recent London events, the Peace in Gaza rally at Hyde Park in January and yesterday’s Mass Picture Taking Rally at New Scotland Yard, organized by the NUJ.

I had quite ambivalent feelings about the Hyde Park rally. Marching alongside people supporting an organization that strives for the development of a religion governed state and one that encourages suicide bombings, among other horrors, is not usually my idea of a good fun, worthy day out. My concerns were purely humanitarian. I’ve heard the arguments from both parties in the conflict, reiterated many times over the years and nothing changes my view that it is unconscionable for a powerful, high-tech military controlled by a post-industrial state, to be pumping artillery shells into and dropping bombs onto what is in effect a giant refugee camp. The relative numbers killed and maimed by Hamas’ rockets and by the IDF’s strikes tell their own story. If you want to argue that Israel’s response has been proportional, please don’t do it here. Frankly, I’m sick of hearing it.

Back to domestic matters, I attended the NUJ protest outside New Scotland Yard yesterday despite not being a member of the union and despite not working within the media. I went along to register my support for the aims of the event and to express my outrage at the nature of the relevant articles within the Amendments to the Counter Terrorism Act, which came into force yesterday. I’ve posted the images I took to my flickr account. It felt quite presumptuous, this amateurish amateur taking pictures of some the UK’s most experienced photojournalists. I hope no one looking at my pics assumes that I’m claiming to be a pro-photographer. That “Pro” flickr account label implies only that I’ve paid for the unlimited (well, less limited) flickr service. It does not imply that I regard myself as an accomplished photographer! (Something that will anyway be obvious to anyone viewing the images).

The NUJ members who attended the event were a great bunch of people. Welcoming, witty, pragmatic and mischievous. The police can have few complaints about the behaviour of the several hundred who turned up, it was all constructive and good natured. I was however a little disappointed at the narrow focus on the rights of professional photographers at the expense of ordinary, camera-wielding members of the public. The focus of the event may not have been surprising given its organiser, but I feel that the  amendments to the act at issue are equally relevant to all citizens, regardless of their occupation. It’s hard to see how democracy and accountability would be better served if the only citizens allowed to photograph our police and security services were paid up members of the NUJ. Still, not wishing be unduly critical. The NUJ is taking a stand against bad, authoritarian laws, which is more than most UK organisations are doing.

UPDATES:

• Heh, I’ve just seen myself on Tristam’s Spark’s flickr stream (I’m the one taking pictures, not the one causing twitter to grind to a halt yet again).
• A video by Jason N Parkinson with interviews with key journalists who explain the motivation behind the event and their concerns about the relevant legislation. (I make a very brief appearance in this too, at around 03:50. I’m at the back of the group on the right, briefly holding up a camera above the heads of the photographers in front.)

It’s just dawned on me why it probably takes some online publications so long to moderate their user comments. Page hits. Duh. Many users who leave comments check back on a regular basis to see the reaction to their pithy wisdom or pithy provocation. There have been conversation threads on reddit in which some users have admitted that they all but sit with their elbow on F5 after publishing a comment (in order to see reactions as soon as they appear). Many Commercial sites that routinely take an age to vet submitted comments have a vested interest in doing so, users who are refreshing pages while waiting to see their comments appear are likely to be boosting the site’s ad revenue at a far higher rate than those who are not engaging in comment thread conversations.

Of course, the standard response to any complaints about moderation lag always seems to involve indignant citing of an overworked, underpaid English graduate, heroically battling his or her way through thousands of incoming messages. I suspect that the reality is that many publications moderate efficiently, in timely fashion, and then add the vetted messages to a timed publication queue with a delay sufficient to deliver the optimal compromise between boosting revenue and irritating users.

So, when a publication like El Reg next runs a story about Steve Ballmer, Ubuntu, or Jacqui Smith, and you’re wondering why it is taking so long for the inevitable scores of comments to appear, you might want to bear this in mind

And then there’s the matter of one’s browser slowing to a crawl…

http://adblockplus.org/blog/anatomy-of-ads

“The House of Lords report on Britain’s surveillance society is a devastating analysis of the systems that have been installed by the authoritarian Labour government and the controlling forces emerging in local government. There is no question now that Britain’s free society is under threat, and it is time for the public and opposition parties to declare an end to this regime of intrusion.”

Reaction to the House of Lords report on surveillance society

I suspect that this is as close as a professional journalist is likely to come to openly calling for public and political revolt.