Blog posts

A few comments on a variety of blogs over the past few days have reminded me of the confusion I felt when I was first exposed to conservative American views on trade unions. The snide side-swipes at trade union bosses’ salaries and the scant attention to the importance of trade unions to provide for collective bargaining and essential checks and balances seemed a strange balance to me. A little more exposure to history—particularly through John MacArthur’s ‘‘The Selling of Free Trade’—brought to my awareness the territorialism and related abuses which have stained the history of trade unionism, leaving the reasons a little more clear. Alongside that, headlines such as this one do show that there is some truth to the allegations about union bosses’ pay when some earn as much in a week as their average member does in a year. ...

One of my favourite stories to make its way round blogs yesterday was the news that: Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, lost a ballot initiative in Los Angeles County to build a retail complex after local officials said the development would decimate small businesses. (from Bloomberg.com’s coverage, picked up from Hugo’s blog) The news came a day after I had spent some time reading various articles about Wal-Mart as Kari and I put together a list of local amenities for those invited to our wedding, a list which also includes a couple of warnings. We decided that we’d link our recommendation that guests avoid Wal-Mart to Alternet’s article. ...

With the temporary laptop having arrived this morning, most of the day has been spent transferring files and installing software. As a result this entry’s ended up being a bit of a whistlestop tour. Last night, in an effort to share his love of Naomi Wolf, Steve Lawson pointed out this site about contemporary feminism. This article on Good Housekeeping magazine seems a good introduction. It’s rare that I actually get round to reading articles from Sojourners, but this article about Susan Pace Hamill, a campaigner for changes to the Alabama tax code rather struck me. Their interview with Bruce Cockburn is worth a glance (like most interviews with Bruce) ...

Rather than blog about anything other than apple here today, I refer you to the Grace Lent Blog, where I have covered for Evil Harv (aka. The Cheat).

A 9.40am call to Apple resulted in a 10.50am response and it seems we’re making a little progress. Well. They haven’t located my laptop. That will still take ten days to investigate. But they have conceded that perhaps being without my computer may be a little inconvenient, so they’re going to lend me one in the meantime. From what I gathered it won’t be quite identical, but the only difference will be slightly less memory. ...

So the working day has ended without any further information. That’s despite further phone calls. Hopefully the morning will bring an update.

At 3pm I finally managed to get through to Kevin Walsh in the apple complaints department. He seemed puzzled as to how I’d managed to get his number but has promised to look into the case and get back to me, having been informed that I need the machine by Wednesday. Bizarrely, his records show that the machine had been received at the apple depot on March 26th, which is what I was told all last week and what should have happened. I’m rather looking forward to hearing this all explained….

I had a blog entry half-written about network campaigning. But I don’t think that will get finished today, so it will have to wait. Instead I thought I might use this blog in the manner in which blogs sometimes seem to have been made for. To vent. As many people know, I am rather attached to my laptop. I have a very nice Apple Powerbook, of the titanium variety. It was quite a thing for me to let it go, sending it to apple for a minor repair eleven days ago. They told me it would take seven to ten days for repair and return. ...

The blog world has allowed a number of people involved in

Returning from seeing The Passion Of The Christ with Matt and Fraser last Sunday I attempted to shape some words to describe the experience. They’re still hidden away somewhere on my hard drive, but I think I’ll choose to leave them there. I needed some time to temper my take on the film with conversation and to allow the visceral memories to subside somewhat. It wasn’t until two days later that I first put a response on any sort of record when I commented on Hugo Schwyzer’s blog, as he contrasted his reaction to the film with the reviews in the British press. ...