Taking Liberties at the British Library

What a marvellous, and free exhibition! Go see it! It finishes 1st March. Open late on Tuesday.

Taking Liberties is an exhibition about our liberties; how they came about, how they have evolved, and how they continue to change today. It's a large exhibition with a wealth of supporting documentation, including priceless objects like one of the four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta.

In the British Library next to St Pancras, the exhibition is accessed through their shop. On entry, one dons a bar-code wristband, which lists one's "citizen number". This is used throughout the exhibition to keep track of the answers given in various questions.

Inside, one passes through several themed areas, Rule of Law, Women's Liberties, The United Kingdom union, The right to vote, Human Rights, Free press etc, each of which has all manner of beautiful historical papers and books spanning 900 years of British democracy to examine.

Curiously given the subject of the exhibition, there are no curators, instead CCTV camera sit high above us watching our every move. The room itself is quite dark, and I found myself straining to read some of the presented documents.

To anyone interested in the history of the UK, our constitution, politics, democracy, rights or law, this exhibition is nothing less than wonderful. I've been twice now, spending about an hour and half each time, and I still haven't finished it.

I do have a personal connection - though it is not acknowledged (bad BL!), my cousin Susie Cole chose the sound clips that one can listen to on headphones in a few spots around the exhibition. I don't think the punters seem to be paying much attention to either these or the video based clips either.

The exhibition is brought right into relevance today with cases like the Good Friday Agreement and Guantanamo. As is said, our rights are not ours forever - they can be changed or removed, and at various times in our history, they have been.

The British Library's free exhibition 'Taking Liberties: the struggle for Britain's freedoms and rights' is on till 1st March 2009.

Here is the curator's blog. There's also a lot of good information on the exhibition website here.

NB: Thanks to Rob Ainsley for pointing out my "typo" - exhibition is at the British Library (not Museum!).

Find me Free Wifi in London!

Why is this such a mission?! It's probably one of my biggest bug-bears with London, along with the lack of true 24 hour life and the cost of transport.

The best site I've found so far listing spots is: http://londonist.com/2007/05/free_wifi_in_lo.php. It's a good start, but not ideal and not always accurate.

Cafe Camera near the British Museum is tiny but quaint.

The Royal Festival Hall cafe level is a great spot but last time I was there my laptop refused to get online.

Pret have announced free wifi but I've yet to find a branch that has implemented it.

The ideal for me would be Cafe Nero, my favourite chain, having free wifi. Come on Nero, I'll live in your coffee shops if you don't make me pay for net access!

How about a new logo indicating free wifi?

DEC Gaza Appeal, Emotive Language and BBC Bias

Far be it for me to comment on the merits of the BBC and Sky's refusal to show the Gaza DEC Appeal (except to note mild irony in the case of the BBC with their biased reporting), or indeed comment on the conflict in general. It's clearly a very sad situation on both sides. After all the debate about the DEC Appeal though, I decided to do what people often do not in these situations - I thought I'd actually watch the appeal, which I readily found online.

It is a series of emotive shots of children and devastation, talked over by a calm clear voice rattling off various information designed to sway you into handing over some cash. What I didn't like, aside from any questions about accuracy, is that the numbers just don't add up. I decided to make a note of them. Watch the numbers and descriptors (or lack of):

Children are suffering

Many are struggling to survive, homeless, or in need of food and water

Several hundred killed

A large number of children

Some of those survived are traumatised

60% are living in poverty

Thousands are malnourished

1 million depending on aid to survive

Thousands homeless

300,000 without access to running water

Entire streets flattened

40% without electricity

Seems to me, if we are being harsh but fair, if only thousands are homeless out of (implied) millions, this is something that could be handled without too much external intervention. There are a lot of figures being bandied about in the video without much logic to back them up. Note that the EU has just announced extra aid worth £50m on top of the 600 - 700 million Euros donated annually. Is this not sufficient to sort out a few thousand homeless and rebuilt (again) the roads and houses that Israeli has flattened?

Now the last DEC Appeal I was aware of was the Tsunami Appeal, which was aid for, what, several hundred thousand dead and millions displaced? I'm not sure whether the Burmese Cyclone Appeal (150,000 or so killed) was organised by DEC. Both, though, are of a different scale to Palestine. Furthermore this appeal excludes the civilians (or should I say "children" to keep it emotive) killed by the thousands of Palestinian rocket attacks into Israeli, which is what I suspect makes it unpalatable for the news organisations.

Further reading: The Balen Report, currently being supressed from Freedom of Information using over £200,000 of licence-payer money! That's almost 1,500 licence fees not including the cost of writing the report in the first place!

My First Loldog

I was going to post a rant about the UK finances, and the IMF's negative view of our PM saving the world, the credit agencies about to downgrade the British economy from AAA, perhaps with some pessimism about the weasel behaviour of our leaders in trying to cover up their personal expenses whilst pouring trillions of tax pounds into a pit to support foreign debt liabilities our greedy bankers have incurred racking up their disgusting bonuses (continued p94).

But then I decided instead I'd make a loldog!



Yes, I have ventured into the world of Lolspeak and created my first Loldog! Quite satisfying, although not on a level with the brilliant exhibits on the main site at http://ihasahotdog.com/, a derivative of the famous (depending on what company you keep) http://icanhascheezburger.com/.

Here's one of my favourites, diz how we, by blazeorama:



No doubt breaching copyright etc, I can't help but post these Matt cartoons from the Telegraph which beautifully capture the current economic situation: