Recent blogs about which equipment we should be using in the House of Lords to access the internet struck me as being a housekeeping matter. As legislators shouldn’t we be more concerned about whether the internet is working for the benefit of us all?
Much of the debate in Parliament has been about net neutrality. About equal access to the infrastructure and how this access should be easy, transparent and fair to both mobile and fixed users. About how this traffic is managed so that there is proper competition regulated by OFCOM and the Office of Fair Trading. It is important to our economy that internet based companies should flourish and so should the social networks.
But there is another concern. The concern that a few web based companies dominate and control what happens on the internet. We all may have equal access to the internet, but our use is largely controlled by a few dominant web based companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. Particularly when we are using a search engine. On the 5th April there was an adjournment debate in the House of Commons about the unfair way in which Google ranked a price comparison website which was obviously in competition with their own price comparison website.
There is a big business in manipulating these rankings. JC Penny is a large clothing and homewares retailer in the United States and for the three months leading up to Christmas 2010, if you Googled dresses or rugs they were top of the list. After this was looked into they weren’t even on the first page.
Partly because of this, some firms – insurance companies, airlines – do not have their prices on comparison websites.
The European Commission is investigating this aspect of Google’s business. Of course there are 177 other search engines available to UK users of the internet.
In the old economy dominant companies were able to see off new competitors because the cost of entry was high. They stood in the way of further innovation and progress. We had to learn that lesson in the old economy. We must not let it happen in the new. The cost of entry on the internet is now so low that virtually anybody can start up a web based business. As Parliamentarians we have to ensure that the dominant search engines and existing web based companies do not control access to these new businesses and social sites in an arbitrary way that suits them and limits competition, innovation and progress.
Lord Lucas touched on this in his blog when he spoke of Apple controlling what went onto the iPad.
We are all looking to the internet to produce economic growth and social change for the better.
Our concern must be that nothing, especially vested interests, stands in the way.
I am a UK pensioner, pursuing both better-health-supports and increasingly-sustainworthy membership ((of any sustainworthy organisation at any level, including a ‘Sustainworthy Earth Citizenship’ – (not to be confused, please, with ‘the international community’ which at present seems to consist merely of Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama) ))
and I have a number of difficulties from both the Internet and Economic work- and life- places respectively.
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I find both User-keyboard-support and Technical-support to be both inadequate and unaffordable.
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The ‘new’ economics is also under-performing and over-charging:
the Utilities’ and other Business-Companies’ Variable Direct Debit payment system I have found to be seriously-overcharging, wasteful, and inefficient, arguably for all parties i.e. Government, Supplier, and User.
Let me instantiate:
A near-neighbour, an impaired and elderly lady pensioner in a bedsit under Local Government housing, actually needs and uses less than £2 worth total of water-and-sewerage service per month, but because she is not allowed to have the requisite two meters, one for cold water and the other for hot, SWW (South West Water aided and abetted by Local Government, the new Plymouth Community Homes Housing Association, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Member of Parliament, the Law, and the two Houses of Parliament)) charges her £25 per month, more than ten-times what she is actually consuming.
That the latter very-low-consumption is because she has no bathroom nor shower, does not use the communal bath/shower/laundry, flushes only once a day, and only uses a microwave or hw-jug to heat a cup-of-tea or cook porridge sometimes, and spends all her daytime hours 8a.m. to 10p.m. 7 days a week in my voluntary-care at my single flat a mile away on the opposite side of Crownhill where my total metered water bill is only (hold your breath) £8 per month, and my account is always in credit, should be of further ‘red-flagging’ interest and concern, I think.
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The Electricity and Gas Utilities: in brief, are all unsatisfactory and a threat to anyone’s mental as well as physical health.
The Direct Debit has always proved a ‘rip-off’ to myself, and more recently also to the lady I give some supportive care to.
I wrote to USwitch asking for a utility that would set up an in-credit account monthly-maintained in credit by Standing Order, and not by Direct Debit.
USwitch replied that they agreed and supported this proposal, but that we would find none of the utility companies would accept it.
The MP (and C.A.B.) both said that Direct Debit is the only way the utility company can be sure of getting its money.
I reasoned (but nobody has yet accepted it) that
1. Opening a Standing Order account two-months credit in advance and maintained by monthly SO equal to the going price of the elec/gas, would
a) keep the Supplier in an aggregate large credit balance
b) make it possible for the Government to ‘underwrite’ poverty-level customers by putting-up the credit-in-advance;
and thereby qualify the govt to share in the money-market profits raized by the utility company out of the huge credit balance they could now hold for literally millions of customers each utility.
c) help the customer to take a much more frequent and thereby responsible part in billing-and-payment, relieve them of the Credit-Blackening threats and actions of predatory Companies (and all appear to be just that);
and help them to make a different sort of direct-payment method from Govt to Company, such as with Housing Benefit rent paid direct by Local Govt to the Landlord.
2. If a poverty-line family can not afford to pay, the Direct Debit is more of a threat than a help, because it can mount up to hundreds and thousands of pounds in no time;
and the Company is never up-front in immediately warning the customer that they have started falling behind;
so the Direct Debit is actually a less-safe way for the Company to get its money than my above-proposed Standing Order method.
Only one Utility company (nameless) has agreed at the outset to accept such a Standing Order commitment; but they have never put it in writing; and they still refer to it both by letter and on the telephone as a ‘Direct Debit’ payment method.
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All that a bit “off-topic” ?
I think not;
especially since what we need is not so much Economic “Growth”, of the Quantities and Rates of Over-Consuming Earth’s Lifesupports and Over-Destroying Earth’s non-renewable resources,
but s Reduction, to sustainable quantities and qualities of let’s call it “ecolo-nomic” goods and services; why not ?
So can you include such People’s, and our Civilisation’s, real needs in your deliberations (which should exhaustively precede Debate and never be supplanted by it) my lord ?
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1649M18April2011.JSDM.
I think it is a bit off topic, but I agree with you entirely. Measuring our economy by what we consume for better or for worse has past its sell by date. We try to balance this with quality of life measurements. Forward looking businesses try to do this by measuring customer satisfaction, but unfortunately short term accountancy tends to win out. However, we’ll keep trying.
The cost of entry on the internet is now so low that virtually anybody can start up a web based business.
I recently started a new web site for about £20 for the year including the name.
Both as
(1) Workers in Workplaces, Careers, & Jobs
and as
(2) People in Lifeplaces, Lifestyles, & life-tasks,
we need always to distinguish between
many and various types and levels of Workplace-Skills* and Lifeplace-Abilities*.
This is of relevance and importance because in the workplace a final-job-skill is usually made up of many sub=skills, mini-skills and micro-skills;
whereas in the Lifeplace one does not by an y means need either a complete-job-skill or a certificate of competence in the use of a sub-skill;
in fact, without ‘taking home’ some workplace-job-microskills we would soon have a nation (as distinct from a workforce) of incapable people (as distinct from incompetent workers).
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The above goes to the point of the noble Lord Haskel’s categorically-directive Need for Britain to make the internet produce both workplace-economic-growth for the workers, and lifeplace-social-improvement for the People;
and also to the point of (friendly) People versus Parliaments communications channels and equipments.
I trust that such submissions are not to be judged-down, among the
“nothing, especially vested interests” that must not be allowed to stand in the way ?
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* let ‘Skills’ or ‘Workplace-skills’ be the primary descriptor for Workplace activities;
and let ‘Abilities’ or ‘Lifeplace-abilities’ be the primary descriptor for Lifeplace-activities.
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0755T190411.JSDM;
What would be good for the UK and the rest of Europe would be a British Google, Amazon, or, other, that could not only compete with but outdo the lot of them. And that’s what we should be aiming for. In every sense.
Any ideas?
I agree. I am not sure that we could outdo Amazon or Google – they have plenty of competitors who may eventually take some of their market. Where I think we have a great opportunity is providing web based public services. Many public sector services are trying to do this, but it is so fragmented that people are deterred. A single overall public service website would become a major business.
My Lord, as a man of intellect, intelligence and neutrality on issues of debate please list the bloggers here in order of their importance to a searcher.
Not so easy is it.
Each search engine has it it’s own criteria or algorithm to rate sites, those of us with SEO experience will have a better chance of getting higher as will those industries who can pay for this hard earned capability. This is the way of the commercial world.
I’m still of the mind that when the internet was young it was better, it wasn’t commercial and we all freely shared data and experience. Sooner or later someone will see a commercial value and things will change in some for the better others for the worse.
The sharers, those with a good deal of knowledge are still out there, they are called,in the main, Pirates or hackers. They do not deliberately undermine society however Government panders to finance and where a song and dance man or a storyteller could have once been called vagabonds or beggars they have now a commercial value. Far beyond what I believe their worth, the same with footballers and other sportspeople and celebrities.
The dollar or pound rules and that is made clear in acts such as the Digital bill which will criminalise lots of our young for the sake of Sony’s pockets who actually supply the copying machines and the ability to pirate. Companies before people.
A two tier net ? Finance will control the outcome as usual as it does with airports and other industries. We’ll be told they’ll more jobs, it will be better for you, quicker, speedier and all the time freedom will be eroded the little man unable to compete. All this happened with the Supermarkets, where are the butchers and greengrocers ? Tesco profits up again today I see.
People do not control our world, money does and Governments worldwide pander to it, naturally, which is partly why we have so much corruption. Finance, trade, the big names will win the battle. Law is not always just and the law of the jungle is now measured in dollars.
Yes, the internet has become big business and acquired all the good and bad things of the commercial world. That is why it needs regulating in the same.
@Lord Haskel:
I read this morning Apple Iphone has walked off the shelves over the last weeks. Could that be as a result of the Lord’s Patronage?
And, yes, the UK could outdo Google and Amazon.
Our inventors are way ahead of others, but, they are not taken seriously at home. A rethink is needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee