fisharepeopletoo

"There is no alternative." Remember that one?

"There is no alternative." Remember that one?

It is what Margaret Thatcher said at the height of the recession of the early 1980s to justify her economic policy.

But that recession wasn't an unforeseeable and unstoppable tsunami any more than this one is.

That recession, if not politically generated, was used, with malice aforethought, by Margaret Thatcher's government to remove any counterbalancing political, economic, social and cultural centres of power that might offer an alternative to the dominance of the City of London [global financial services] in the UK - those counterweights being the industrial and manufacturing city-regions, mostly centre-left politically.

And that is exactly how we've got ourselves into the fine mess we are in now.

Because since then there has been no world view, and no point of view from which to have it, that carried enough weight to say

"Umm. Err. Umm. Err. Maybe letting 28-year-olds make massive bets with other people's money, pay themselves billions of pounds of bonuses based on what they claim the bets are going to win some time in the future, retire at 35 to set up an organic single estate first press olive oil importing business because they've always been passionate about the finest ingredients, and leave everybody else to face the consequences when the bets not only don't win but turn out never to have had any way of winning except by using them to make more bets and pay more bonuses, might not be the only possible way to run a country."

A One-Girl Focus Group

Whenever I see my goddaughter Cherry, we always spend half an hour talking about what she's up to on the web and mobile phones.

She knows this is a grown-up work thing for me and always kindly indulges me as a way of helping me not to make a fool of myself in front of other people.

So, in the same spirit of helping out us oldsters, this is the Christmas 08 secret intelligence from quite a cool 13 year old girl who goes to school in Bristol, UK

1 Bebo is out, squares.
Something to do with the way they have redesigned it and made it more complicated, but also perhaps a general shift in fashion (or an age shift - maybe bebo is a pre teen place?).

From being on it all the time, she now hasn't logged in "for months"

2 The iphone is out, squares.
Everyone has got one and it gets boring after a few weeks.

Take that, Steve Jobs. Merciless.

3 Facebook is still in, squares.
It is "more sophisticated". (Cherry is a big Audrey Hepburn fan, so sophisticated is important.)

I was disappointed by that - i hate Stripmallbook - but I was glad to hear that...

...4 There is still a place for MySpace -
she doesn't go on it herself "it's more for blogging" ("no one can be bothered to blog any more" was a classic Cherry summary from a couple of years ago.) but it's not "out" in the way Bebo is.

Myspace is fine for people who want to add bands and comedians etc - it has a purpose, and it's not wrong to be on there for those purposes *

However, and this is an interesting one...

...5 being able to customise and personalise pages and profiles isn't always a good thing.

If you can customise your profile you have to spend a lot of time and effort on maintaining it, updating the skin for instance, and making sure not too many of your friends have the same one, or you start to get comments about how out of date it is and so on.

6 She wants one of those phones with a touch screen that also slides across to reveal a full qwerty keyboard.

Being dumb, I haven't been able to see what use these qwerty keyboards would be - how would you type without putting it down on a flat surface, and surely the keys would be too small?

But of course Cherry pointed out that you hold it in two palms and type with your two thumbs! (A bit like holding a prayer book in fact) Though she did add that she'd probably never use it.

(and I now realise that must be how people use Blackberrys etc - I don't move in very Blackberry circles.)

7 She's heard of Twitter now
this wasn't the case a few months ago, but she doesn't use it and doesn't know anyone who does.

8 MSN messenger
Always, including from her phone.

and from my phone, which she wanted to have a look at, and in order to test it logged in to MSN messenger over wifi - a couple of years ago she would have tested the camera (this may either be an age shift, or to do with cameras now being taken for granted)

"You don't have to ask them [whether she asked friends "will you be on msn tonight"] Everyone is always on it." - this was considered to be my dumbest question of all.

However, she would still normally text from her phone rather than MSN.

My phone (N95) was felt to be not stylish enough.

9 Bluetooth.
Bluetooth.

10 The look on Cherry's face when I mentioned World of Warcraft, you can imagine for yourselves.

Since I first asked, this response has gone from neutral - almost like asking her about fishing, for example - to judgemental.

* I didn't risk exposing my ignorance even further by telling her about "social objects" but it seems to be borne out by her view of Myspace.

Messin' with The Man's head

Go onto Google product ideas for mobile site and vote for all the rubbish ideas.

"Coupons sent to my mobile whenever I visit the Mall" - yes please!

(though whoever submitted that one had to be launching a little denial of seriousness attack of their own.)