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2002-03-07 Entry: "Audience Participation"

I'm unable to be quite so dispassionate about it any more. I have actual evidence that people are reading this thing (okay, two emails but that's still evidence). On the one hand, it's nice to have got the worry out of the way; but on the other I've got a whole new set.

I would say it could lead me to censor what I'm writing, but there's not exactly anything to censor...

Meanwhile in my humdrum life, family meals out - something to do with celebrating all the new jobs in the house (two at last counting... hopefully my brother will make three shortly). The meal was fine (Italian), but I felt rather rough this morning; I'm not sure if it was due to the alcohol consumed (of which there wasn't all that much) or if the food just didn't agree with me - hopefully the latter, as the former would make the coming beer festival a trying experience.

In other news, the US have imposed tariffs on non-US steel... which has lead to suitably difficult questions for Fozzy after his support of the guy who was buying the Romanian steel works and lobbying the US government to impose tariffs. Of course, following the money gives us our usual grubby view of political life. Give money to the party in charge and you can get just about anything you desire. It almost makes me wish for public funding of parties (but just capping the amount that can be donated and the amount that can be spent on elections to really small amounts should do the trick without the public having to fork out extra).

There's a quote (that I'm not going to get wrong) about taxation with representation. Well, we get taxed and that allows us to vote whichever party we most trust / agree with, or just least hate into government. Corporations (and foreigners) aren't allowed to vote, so they get representation by paying a slightly different form of tax (political contributions). The only problem with the system is that the latter (corporation representation) overrides the former (personal representation) when all parties cave to their donors.