Political engagement, it’s a struggle. It’s summer, the beer is fine, and house prices haven’t fallen for over ten years. Too busy being taught how to decorate by the latest television programme, why should anyone be bothered with politics?
Imagine a manager who never came into work. A boss who never even rang you up to ask you what you were doing. How hard would you slave away if he was always off walking in the countryside? If he still paid you your salary no matter what you did?
I have some interesting scrawled notes from a train conversation with Richard earlier today. He was talking about software engineering management (don’t go away, I’m going to relate it to other things in a moment), and how there is a scale upon which you can slide too far one way and things go wrong. This is about varying how much managers tell their staff about what is happening:
Insufficient information given to workers < ———-> Too much information given to workers
Imagine that someone owned a patent giving them the exlusive right to know how to make a piece of toast, or how to lock a front door. Everytime you did one of these simple actions, you risk being sued and forced to pay huge damages for patent violation. In the world of software developers, this absurd situation is about to become a reality.
Public Whip is “suspending services” for a few days, while the EU Council of Ministers is taking an important decision on software patents. If the directive in question is passed, it will make it very hard for small businesses to make software, and will make it risky for people like me to make websites like The Public Whip.
The media is an interesting and double edged sword. Newspapers and TV can act for freedom and democracy, unearthing problems in government, championing what the common man would do himself (if he had the time and the contacts). On the other hand, they can be a divisive barrier, splitting us apart from our elected representatives, devaluing politics into gossip and invented entertainment.
Here’s something a bit different. It’s a project I’ve been working on in my spare time the last couple of weeks, and it’s been launched tomorrow. Downing Street Says is an easy way to read what the Prime Minister has said about the issues of the day. And - the twist - anyone can comment on what he is saying. In some ways this bypasses the media, but we’re hoping that it will also empower them by providing juicy source material.
Exciting national media fame. Yesterday, the Independent newspaper printed a story about MP voting records (view it now before the Indy charge you for it next week). It’s entirely based on data from Public Whip. I made them a special report of the voting record for the 2002-2003 parliamentary session. You can find the full figures in an unlinked page on the Public Whip site.
Some of my blogging energy has been siphoned off into an irregular newsletter for Public Whip, the MP voting website that I do with Julian. I just sent out the second issue. You can read it here. You might want to sign up if you like what you see.
This week we released the game that I’ve been working on. It’s called FleaFall, and it rocks.
Naturally, now comes the job of marketing. You don’t understand capitalism until you’ve had a go yourself.
Most of us are quite isolated in corners of a hierarchy somewhere. We’re not really sure what the organisation we work for is doing or why. I could never get to the bottom of what was happening at Creature Labs over the last couple of years, and there were only 50 people there to analyse. Once I even went to visit the CFO to ask him who owned the company, how, on what basis and for whom decisions were made. The answer had little connection to the impenetrably complex political reality. Luckily I’ve never had to find out how it feels in a multinational corporation.
Sarajevo (first photo) was absolutely astonishing. I arrived unknowningly some way out of town at an eastern bus station, and was amazed by the taxi ride through what seemed like a teaming metropolis. I’d expected it to be rundown and wartorn, but by night it was a thriving European capital. After leaving my luggage at the private room I was staying in, I walked round the town to find somewhere to have dinner. I stumbled upon the most beautiful mosque (Gazi Husref-Bey). The courtyard was tranquil, with a few people sitting about in quiet contemplation.
I quickly visited the ancient ruins of Butrint in the south-west, which were a bit disappointing. Tirana, the capital of Albania, was even more so. I arrived too near sunset, with the guidebooks both warning you to be careful going out at night, at least in the suburbs. In a rush, I found a decent hotel and then went out to buy a newspaper and get some food.
Shortly after leaving the Tirana International Hotel, where I had bought the Guardian in order to read about Tony Blair’s testimony to the Hutton inquiry, a man started talking to me in Albanian on some pretext. I replied in English, and he looked all surprised, and flatteringly said back also in high-quality English that he had thought I was Albanian. He muttered something about the world service, and then started chatting to me. He was a teacher.
Land borders are always fascinating places, and the one between Greece and Albania was no exception. The bus services are awkward or non-existent to border posts in this part of the world, so you have to hire a taxi to drop you off there.
After crossing the Greek checkpoint on foot there was a long stretch of no-man’s-road divided by a tall wire fence. Alone, I trudged my way up it towards the Albanian border post. Twenty or so Albanian men were hanging out there slouching by the road, shouting out names of places as I past. It was creepy. Usually borders are bustling places full of local trade, people too busy crossing over to do business for them to even notice me. I said I wanted a lift to Gjirokastra, and somebody called to his friend on the other side of the wire. He slipped through a small hole, and became my next driver. So much for the border controls - it would be easy to smuggle anything into Albania through that hole, and I don’t have much faith that the guards were watching it.