‘No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls’

That’s what Ken McDonald, head of the Crown Prosecution Service until 31 October 2008 thinks about the idea of a ‘superdatabase’ tracking the addresses and numbers of all email messages and telephone calls made in the United Kingdom.

I don’t think it is a very attractive or practical idea either. How about you?

---

• Open Rights Group tracking the Government’s Intercept Modernisation plans


• Andy Maggs’ correspondence with Home Secretary Jaqui Smith in July and August 2008

Advice to writers of skits, in times of economic hardship

Til critics
Learn to write edible plaudits
Cooking rhyme
Is only a waste of thyme

Dear Chancellor Merkel …

[submitted on the web site of the Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. And for Posnan read Poznań]

Dear Chancellor Merkel,

I hope that by the end of the talks in Posnan you will have decided to support the enviromental proposals in full, showing the strong leadership that you have in the past.

I feel strongly that the opportunities for 'green' industry and social practice will soon outweigh the interests of industrial polluters. I believe that the proportion of the labour market and economic influence that is held by those polluters will rapidly get smaller in all European countries, not just my own.

I also feel that polluters in every country should take on the economic burden of their pollution. The polluters are the only ones who will benefit through their pollution; everyone else will suffer. It sets a very bad example if the most technologically advanced and wealthy countries do not enforce this policy. Other European countries, and the rest of the world, are fully aware of such double standards.

The population of countries such as Germany have the expertise, the manpower, the economic capacity and the political will to change the way we all think and act on environmental issues. Please do not let the short-term interests of the minority stand in the way of a better environment for everybody. A recent survey shows the majority of Germans want to make this change: 'According to an Avaaz YouGov Opinon Poll (5-8 December 2008) 85% of Germans agreed that "Germany should show leadership in securing a strong climate agreement for the EU despite the economic downturn"' (http://www.avaaz.org).

I think in particular of the populations of countries such as Bangladesh who are under threat of significant flooding if sea levels continue to rise, and of the Chinese whose country is industrialising rapidly and whose descendants do not deserve to inherit an industrial wasteland. In Europe we have experienced the degradation that unregulated industry creates and we have rejected it. Please take the next step and make it clear to the world that you strongly support an economy based on environmental respect and regeneration, not environmental destruction.

I know that I am adding my voice to those of many others. I write to you as I have written in the past to the political leaders of my home country, the United Kingdom. Thank you for making this an easy task!

Yours sincerely,

Ben Weiner

Reading Type in Free Font Index

I’m pleased to have my typefaces, drawn ten years ago now, included in this rather nice new book :-)

Two updates

Firstly, to brag about the conference I helped to organise at St Bride Library on 7 November. Entitled ‘Letterpress: a celebration’ the idea of the conference was to bring together people from across the surprisingly broad field of letterpress printing and let them get to know more about each other. We were privileged to get great speakers and exhibitors, sell out, and receive lots of complimentary comments.

Secondly, to mention the new version of the Open Font Library site [current version] which I spent much of October working on. It’s not by any means finished, but it’s looking good; we have worked hard to explain what the site is for and how to get involved, and provided some guidance on font formats and licensing.

Ed Trager is making a character viewer that enables users to get a preview of each font using any one of a gazillion keyboard layouts, so we will be able to go far beyond simply supporting the Latin alphabet. We also have a very simple @font-face CSS rule generator. The credit for the site’s good looks (at this stage of development) goes to my brother James, who did the visual design and wrote the CSS. Internet Dave raised funding for the work and held the project together. To stay up to date with progress, watch this space, or join the OFLB mailing list.

Dear MEPs:

I am a resident of Reading, Berkshire. I am writing to ask you to oppose proposals to allow European industries to be given free carbon-dioxide permits after the year 2013. This would send out entirely the wrong message - of double standards - to countries outside the European Union and within the EU it would fail to support the initiatives of businesses which are striving to find more environmentally-responsible ways to generate energy and carry out manufacturing.

The EU parliament's industry committee has already voted to end the free carbon-dioxide permits after 2013, but now exemptions are sought that will totally undermine this decision and negate the progress already made.

Effectively it would mean Europe giving up on its strong lead on global pollution reduction before anything has been achieved.

I do understand that there is a risk that large manufacturing companies will relocate to avoid the legislation, but I feel that this should be mitigated with efforts to encourage enterprises that will deliver pollution-reducing ideas and techniques. Why not insist that the big polluters sponsor these companies, so that both can receive rewards in the longer term?

I look forward to your upholding of the EU parliamentary industry committee's decision.

AFP: WWF bemoans attempts to water down EU's green targets
FT: Climate change fears after German opt-out
EU Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee

Walking backwards for Christmas

I went looking for some info about tax (not yet found) and ended up reading a brilliant article about freelancing by Phil Gyford [thanks to fidothe's delicious delicious links for that]. I hopped across from there to Matt Webb, mindhacker, who wrote well on the strange business of working out what to charge and how it can be influenced by the degree to which you think your work might benefit yourself or humanity.

This brought me back to my own situation, freelancing as I do: I’m writing a little software – developing an lightweight home automation interface at the moment – then also polishing the work of others, slotting in features, occasionally tutoring clients or the employees of clients, and quite often overtly using the information design and typography skills I learned at university. This is what is turning cogs in my head. But most of the social contacts I have are in the world of graphics and print history, because I volunteer for St Bride Library and that takes up most of my free time, some of my work time and certainly all my conference time.

I seem to be walking into the world of software facing backwards into the activities that were the springboard for that work, rather than forwards into the possibilities ahead. Like the goon I am, I suppose. And for how much longer?