2011 Prediction - Freedom of the press and the internet

Freedom of the press was never about allowing anyone to publish, it was about allowing the middle class (who were the ones rich enough to own presses) the right to publish. The USA revolution was a middle class revolution and it was to allow competing voices within the ruling class to be heard.

There's a long history of using pretexts and excuses for suppressing freedom of expression in Democracies (Dictatorships don't need excuses). Advertising has also been a control mechanism ... offend a powerful group and your advertising dries up making it hard to run those expensive presses.

As they slowly wake up to the fact that the Internet allows ordinary people to say what they want to as large an audience as they can attract power slips slowly away from the communications media owned by the ruling classes. With publication so cheap, the advertising lever is no longer as effective.  The Internet has reached the point where it is starting to scare the ruling classes and they are finding pretexts to "regulate" it. Wikileaks, Whale Blubber's vigilante blog, etc give high profile whipping boys and I expect them to find more pretexts like these in 2011 to push for a more highly regulated Internet.

Tongans raise $600k for quake appeal

A small amount, but given the size of the Tondan population and the levels of discretionary spending they have it's a huge amount of money.

"The prevalent public attitude here is that the people and government of New Zealand are usually the first on Tonga's doorstep soon after a natural disaster and here was an opportunity for us to reciprocate that generosity"

NZ Herald

Stopping Crime: Finally someone "gets it"

From today's paper, a grieving father understands:

"Mr Borrell, whose son was killed by a youth already on bail for assault, said he favoured tougher sanctions against violent youth offenders, including short periods of incarceration, to 'shock' them before they progressed to life-threatening crimes." NZ Herald

And from the same paper, we have evidence of a justice system that still "Doesn't get it"

"One of the country's worst repeat drink-drivers has been jailed for two years after his 20th conviction for drink-driving and his 35th for driving while disqualified."NZ Herald

So, if he's "a very real and serious danger to the community" has it been left until now to get him off the streets?

I've long felt that a big part of the problem we have with escallating violence and crime levels is that people, especially young people, get away with lesser crimes and learn that there are no concequences  to their anti-social behaviour. This leads them to an ever increasing spiral of progressively worse behaivour until someone is killed and then there is an outcry.

I believe that if we started imposing small, but real, penalties from the start, then progressively increase those penalties until either the person learns to comply with what society requires or is removed from society, we'd be a lot better country to live in.