Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Nice when you get it

Just had a nice call.

Remember my Voucher Tree idea?

Well, one of the schools we helped has just advised me that they had enough coupons in their coconut to be redeemed for a new wheelbarrow for their organic garden.

Every little bit helps, eh?

But I still can't stop wondering how much better it would have been, for all in the community, if Morrison's had allowed us to put the tree in their foyer to catch folk as they were leaving.

It would have reminded those without kids to collect them anyway, the schools would have got tons more... and the store itself would have gained awesome PR.

TWEET ME SEYMOUR

The problem with online experiments is that the positives can be matched equally by the negatives.

So for all the advantages of speed, ease of creation, etc, there is that slight worry that the minute you hit 'send', it's out there, for all to see, with its flies open.

And one thing I have discovered is that few in the blog, and especially twitosphere seem of a mind to sidle up and say 'Psst... actually, this doesn't really work [for this reason....]. Maybe time to think of a wee review?'

Anyway, nothing ventured, etc.

Following some truly appreciated support, I am beta-testing (ok, trying out) a new twitter regime.

Basically, I am going to use the new twitter retweet button to scoot throught what comes my way, morning, noon and night. And as the system permits no comments, I can't and hence won't. So if the content delights... or enrages... with luck the twitocrats will realise that to get context they need to follow the trail, to bouquet or brickbat the authors accordingly for their <140 masterpieces.

Meanwhile, the plan is for me to go back over the day (if I have time... most likely next morning) and do a quick review of those that tickled my fancy.

Working title: TWEET 'N LOWDOWN (see who salutes:)

Well, that's the theory.

The issue.. as some would have it?

Just heard on the BBC as the talking head reads out what he's told to ask Prof. Sir David King: 'the issue is that a large number of people are saying there is nothing to be concerned about'.

Is this true?

Or is this how the government and its media shills would wish to see 'the debate' framed?

Anyone who thinks there are no issues of concern regarding PMWNCC is a) not being too rational and b) in a very small minority. Hence why play that up?

My concern, and I suspect that of others, is that 'climate' gets used as an excuse by already mediocre minds to try and compensate for fiscal failures elsewhere that will have zero or, worse, negative enviROI impacts on my kids' futures.

I smell straw men, and the media using them to frame...more like steer the issues stinks.

At least the talking head raised the contradictory point of Ed. Miliband shrieking about reductions whilst the government he is part of is advocating a 3-fold increase in air travel.

Addendum:

My first foray into how the print media complement the narrative:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/we-wont-let-sceptics-hijack-climate-talks-1836029.html

Good to have standards. Not to have them as doubles

But this is an MSM that seems to see the US EPA and its timely actions as somehow unconnected with media management in a new era of command and control by big government.

And is one that also doesn't 'do' irony.

At least, watching today's broadcast news as I now catch up on the print.

Dancing to the tune of PROs of your mates and issuing news by press release does the BBC (or any medium) little credit. Especially when it is contradictory.

You either think greenhouse gasses are a here and now issue, or you don't.

Stick Ed Miliband and Richard Branson up together on this and I think most environmental correspondents' brains would freeze as anything either comes out with gets shared with zero critical thinking attached by our star-truck, government-slavish media.

IRONY ALERT - We have standards; at least double most

Just had to pop this one in to Aunty and SKY:

Watching today's news.

Some entirely welcome, and valid coverage on Copenhagen, and the issues at stake.

Then a few more pieces, followed by a commercial for favoured son Richard Branson and his next moneymaking scheme taking the uber-rich into space for a quick Kodak moment.

But it's all ok it seems, as the design of the craft is, according to the [at least in the case of the BBC, astoundingly] reporter, 'fuel efficient'.

Dancing to the tune of PROs of your mates and issuing news by press release does the BBC little credit. Especially when it is contradictory.

You either think greenhouse gasses are a here and now issue, or you don't.

Stick Ed Miliband and Richard Branson up together on this and I think your brains would freeze as anything either comes out with gets shared with zero critical thinking attached.

To be fair (if conceding two wrongs makes an MSM consenus) SKY had the same double standards as well. Who gives a sod about the planet if you get invited [to the Mojave Desert] by a ratings-cert Celeb billionaire to play with his rocket?

News generation by PRO and reporting by press release. Unique.

Addendum:

Having taken the broadcast media to task (and found that what was troubling viewers more... at least as claimed by those who select the emails... was a ban on 'pink'. Go figger), it was interesting to move on to their print cousins:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/branson-unveils-his-spaceship-1836142.html

'The environmental impact would be minimal, Branson said.

"It's almost zero carbon output. We can put people into space for less carbon output than say, a flight from New York to L.A. and back, and that's for your particular seat on the flight from New York to L.A. and back," he said. "And I think in time, we will almost definitely be able to get to zero carbon output."

That is almost definitely a meaningless crock of... unsettling science.

Apt as the various debates around reducing GHG's swirl like contrails from a plane taking off from one of Gordon Brown and his government colleagues' (esp. Miliband. E) expanded airports.

But saying that would seem to make me a denier, or maybe saboteur? Too the too-cosy double-standard world some in the politico-media bubble live in, perhaps. Welcome to a Britain where the media is managed, and barely managing professionally it seems, other than via 'news' from press release by government or corporate PRO.

Meanwhile back at Copenhagen...

Telegraph - NEW - Virgin spaceman's flight of fancy