the fourth place

Sweet joy!

• How powerful is management?
• Who owes whom a favor?
• What independent promoter's cousin is the drummer?
• What part of the fiscal year is the company putting out the record?
• Is the royalty rate for the artist so obscenely bad that it's almost 100 percent profit instead of just 95 percent so that if the record sells, it's literally a steal?
• How much bin space is left over this year?
• Was the record already a hit in Europe so that there's corporate pressure to make it work?
• Will the band screw up its live career to play free shows for radio stations?
• Does the artist's song sound enough like someone else that radio stations will play it because it fits the sound of the month?
• Did the artist get the song on a film soundtrack so that the movie studio will pay for the video?

These factors affect the decisions that go into the system. Not public taste. All these things are becoming eradicated now. They are gone or on their way out. We don't need the gatekeepers any more. We just don't need them.

And if they aren't going to do for me what I can do for myself ... on my own Web site, then they need to get the hell out of my way.

I decided to take the day off today, not becuase I'm so sick that I can't go to work, but because if I struggled into work through the confirmed transport chaos caused by today's snow then I would probably be too sick to work in the near future, or else would simply continue to suffer in my own time.

Anyway, after checking out the (congested and closed) local tube, the bus link (crammed with freezing commuters staring at firmly closed bus doors), and calling in my abscence I find that melt-water is slowly dripping onto the tiled floor of my hallway - presumably from where snow had collected on the set of stairs leading up to the house above. Therefore, on what was supposed to be a day of rest and recuperation, I end up out in the cold clearing snow from the steps with a trowel and broom.

While doing this I could at least anticipate the gratitude of my neighbours, since clearing the snow for my benefit also gives them a clear path from their home. However, I couldn't help but worry about whether having cleared away an inch of soft crunchy snow I might eventually find myself sued for leaving ice behind and causing someone to slip. Caught between a health and safety nightmare and a water damaged home I ended up doing the most thorough job of snow-cleaning I could manage. I scraped with the trowel at every peice of transparent grey smush I could discern from the patterned stonework and brushed away any pooled water with a broom. I then shovelled the resulting ice-piles out of harms way.

All this was ironically much harder work than I would have been doing while sat at work coding. I may not be resting yet, but at least I won't need to put the heating up!

Michael brings a very interesting history of how the BBC has harmed television over the years ans essentiallty created a monopoly on Sports coverage for subscription media that would not exist in a free market.

He concludes:

So for now ... we watch premium sport on BSkyB most of the time, except for the occasional listed event that is shared between the BBC and ITV. And even these are declining in number ... due to the fact that administrators and athletes want the money.

agrees minister.

Following discussion in the comments I have gone back to UKIPHome to try and find-out more about this "interest rates too low" commentry and found an apparently related comment from someone called Matt Davies. He seems to blame Labour and the EU for these aparently dangerous debt levels:

Will the people who have had their lives ruined remember who did this to them? Or will they fall into the trap set for them by the EU/Labour branch to make them fully dependent on the state?

But I don't follow, its banks that are lending at the high multiples not the Government. Above the posting a UKIPer writes what sounds like an appeal for regulation:

For comparison, in France, mortgage lenders are not allowed to lend an amount that would result in a monthly payment greater than one third of a person's income. If they lend above this amount, the debt becomes unenforceable.

Here's me thinking that UKIP was small-Government libertarian, I'd really like to understand this line of reasoning. I feel an email comming on.