Interesting Links for 10-08-2012

[andrewducker]

• How does the Corby by-election change the UK's electoral mathematics?
  (tags: elections coalition uk )
• 1300 extreme porn convictions in the last year. Rather more than the original estimate of _30_
  (tags: viaCipherGoth porn uk law freespeech )
• Spotify, Pandora, Streaming Music Make Up 25 Percent of Warner Digital's revenue
  (tags: music spotify

Comments

Paying Prisoners £3 an hour - a solution.

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah. In fact, it's probably important to charge a market rate for lots of reasons, and almost secondary who benefits from it.

The first post about French prisons allowing people to send money to their family seemed a very good idea: that gives people an incentive to work other than "so I'm not locked in my cell all day", and gives them a natural transition into holding a real job when they leave.

If it went to the victims or into escrow, that would be not very beneficial, but better. Even if the prison kept all of it, that would probably still be better than the government using slave labour to undercut the normal labour market.

Re: Paying Prisoners £3 an hour - a solution.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. I think that getting prisoners rehabilitated to the point where they can hold down a job is a good thing. But undercutting non-prisoners to do it seems unfair on everyone else. Of course, I'm not sure how many people would employ prisoners if they had to be paid minimum wage, which would make rehabilitation harder.

Drinking at work makes you more creative (but less able to focus)

[cartesiandaemon]

Vindicated! (Not really :))

[philmophlegm]

That BBC bloke who interviews the athletes after they've just won a medal / bravely made the final / completely cocked up everything they've been working for for the last four years could do with reading the points about inappropriate touching and invading personal space.

And is "creeper" American for "creep"? I've never heard that word before except in a botanical sense.

[andrewducker]

I hadn't either! I assume it's either a normal US term, or has just been neologised.

I've not seen any of the Olympics - is he getting uncomfortably personal?

[henriksdal]

The BBC seems to really be going for the interviewing as soon as they've finished the race, leaving a fairly rubbish interview with someone who is out of breath and not interested in being interviewed. The best was when they tried to interview a 15 year old Ukranian the minute she stepped out of the pool - suprise she struggled with her English!

[nancylebov]

I haven't heard "creeper" until the recent online discussions.

[notlosers]

That the don't-be-a-creeper advice is needed at all makes me weep a bit for humanity. Common sense and the tiniest amount of empathy will get you everywhere.

[andrewducker]

Sadly, many people are missing both of those (see my comment about being in lifts below).