New and old Media control

The New Scientist this week talks about how the internet is different in North Korea. The nation puts heavy restrictions on net access. It wants to control what its people learn about rest of the country and world.
Have you ever thought about out how you see the internet? Allow Google to personalise your search results, they will be skewed towards what it thinks you would like to find.

This “personalisation” can be found in other sites such as Facebook and Yahoo.
The New Scientist warns that we could “create digital dictators in our own image”.

Our MP Dr Phillip Lee picked up on this in the recent discussion about News International.
Part of what he said:
 “…discuss media plurality in reality, as it is now in this world. The way in which individuals search for news, and indeed share news, is changing and has changed. As for the idea that the ownership of one news channel watched by a relatively small number of people should concern us greatly, I suggest that the ownership of search engines and social media should concern us more.”
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2011-07-13a.390.1&s=phillip+lee#g414.2

This was picked up in a Lib Dem Blog.
“The algorithms the search engines use to generate their results are commercially secret and how would we know that they haven’t been tweaked so that news sites favourable to the engine’s owner don’t get weighted higher than those unfavourable? How often when searching does on go past the first page of results?”
This blogger goes on to quote an example from Belgium, where some newspapers disliked Google indexing their pages and pictures. The same papers are now annoyed that people cannot find the newspapers’ stories because Goggle no longer creates an index to them.

Have you checked your settings recently?

Phillip Lee - The campaign continues

A party political blog post. But first a short story from Cardiff Blogger


Serious stuff!
I recently asked my friend’s little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be Prime Minister some day. Both of her parents, New Labour, were standing there, so I asked her:
‘If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?’

She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’

Her parents beamed.

‘Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ’But you don’t have to wait until you’re Prime Minister to do that.
You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, weed the garden and sweep my patio, and I’ll pay you £50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the £50 to use toward food and a new house.’
She thought that over for a few seconds then she looked me straight in the eye and asked: ’Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the £50?’
I said: ”Welcome to the Conservative Party!”
Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.


Anyway - moving on...

Participation and Donation


Anyone and everyone can help Dr Phillip Lee get elected.
He is eager to serve all the people of Bracknell Town, Finchampstead, Crowthorne and Sandhurst. He wants this constituency to remain a great place to live.
www.phillip-lee.com/ 

Helpers are always most welcome.
You can help by distributing literature.
You could carry out surveys/canvassing in your area in order to gain information about the electorate’s voting intentions, worries and concerns, etc.  This information enables us to campaign effectively and helps to increase our membership base.
Many people find that their skills can be best utilised by helping to organise the many varied social events that take place throughout the year, helping to raise funds as well as bringing enjoyment to everyone involved.
Donations to campaign costs are always most welcome.

More at myconservatives.com/dr-phillip-lee-for-bracknell 
And at bracknellconservatives.com 

Find Bracknell Conservatives on Facebook HERE

Blog Time

How do people get the time to sit and write interesting Blogs?
I get a few ideas together, but to link them up properly, and then make sense in a few words, takes time.
Perhaps I could spend less time of Facebook and Farmville? Facebook is useful for catching up with people, but Farmville is too addictive. I am not sure how to make time between work, housework council and political stuff.

On the subject of political stuff, canvassing takes up time, but is interesting to do. The Priestwood and Garth councillors try to do walkabouts quite often. With the election coming up the pace gets rather frantic. It will all happen again next year, when there are the local elections for Town and Borough.

I seem to be coming across a lot of fake virus alerts just recently. It would be good to know just how these things sneak on to people computers. There is a very useful guide to removing it HERE.

And to take up more of my time, there is an interesting event on at the Bull. The last meeting was attended by General election candidate Phillip Lee and the Borough Mayor Bob Wade. Nat West have kindly agreed to sponsor the food for the latest event. More HERE. It is all about local people and local Business.

On the subject of the election again, you can catch up with some stuff at the BBC - Dr Phillip and others on the Politics Show, and the Andrew Peach programme - Highlights HERE.

At least I got this written while waiting for a Windows Update on a clients computer to finish.