Author: Ian Mason

Posted on November 16, 2019

An interesting article on The Correspondent about social media and politicians – If a politician can say something in 280 characters, perhaps they shouldn't say it at all.

I’m not sure that I agree with the conclusion that politicians should not engage with social media but there are certainly a number of valid examples of how it (or at least Twitter) can and has been misused.

The comments on the article are also interesting, comparing social media to newspaper headlines, soundbites and a TL;DR culture. I have more sympathy with some of those points of view.

Posted on November 15, 2019

**The Great NHS Heist**, a documentary film that I supported on GoFundMe, is being released online on 30th November.

>The Great NHS Heist is a powerful account of how the nation’s proudest achievement, the National Health Service, has been fundamentally reshaped and undermined by successive governments in preparation for privatisation. The evidence of the heist is presented with a stark warning of the risks ahead through interviews with health care professionals, patients and experts in England and America.

A trailer is also available on YouTube.

Posted on November 14, 2019

Last night I took part in a Labour Party video webinar with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Faiza Shaheen. Both were impressive speakers, coming across very well and appearing passionate and knowledgeable about the issues of the current election campaign.

Labour Webinar

There were around 3000 people taking part, using Zoom video conferencing software – it worked well.

The format was a half hour discussion by the two main panellists plus a couple of guests, a 15 minute presentation of some Labour Party campaigning software, then a short Q&A session with John and Faiza answering questions raised by participants. Text chat was enabled for all participants.

It was good to see a new way of electoral candidates presenting their ideas in a political campaign. I only had two criticisms – the Q&A session could have been longer and the chat needed some moderation (it was spammed sporadically by a few users).

Posted on November 12, 2019

Good that I can still use my old iPod touch as a music player to some extent. Catalina syncs my music library with iOS 5.1.1 so long as tracks are ripped from CD, manually added audio files or purchased from iTunes. Tracks downloaded via Apple Music subscription do not sync.