Dangerous Dogs Act to be Extended

Feral chavs: neutering would reduce the proliferation of this dangerous animal.

Afghan War Reporting to be Banned

A complete helmet – wearing body armour.

New site – devbytes

If you used to like the more tutorial based posts on slightlymore then this website might be for you. I will be posting snippets of code which will be highly tagged to try to create a personal delicious-esque code library. This is taken from the (quickly and badly written!) about page (or go straight to devbytes now!):

Welcome to devbytes. I want to build up a personal collection of useful code snippets, programming sayings, paradigms and ‘gotcha!’ moments (like when you first understand the JavaScript closure) for future reference. A bit like an ever evolving personal textbook, library, reference and cook-book.

I decided to put it into blog format because I know how useful it is to stumble across that page which has the solution to my problem on it. Now I’m not imagining for a moment that this will be anywhere near as good as many of the resources out there – but if it helps one person solve one problem then being a public blog rather than a private notebook then it’s all worth it.

Plus, at the end of the day, a blog is far more searchable than paper ;) For this reason, I intend to over-tag each of the posts too (it helps me search through delicious because I super-tag everything on there) but keep the categories relatively tight to separate the posts into things such as thoughts, design patterns, programming philosophy and other distinct types. But I guess I’m not really doing anything groundbreaking there, am I? It’s just that I use the categories in such a ridiculous way in all of my other blogs!

Anyway, I believe that I’ve waffled enough for now – I present to you devbytes.

As mentioned – this is designed as a personal reference – but if you find it useful or interesting too – then all the better! Naturally, it has a twitter account which will auto post when a new byte is posted (@devbytes) or you could subscribe to the RSS feed if that’s more your cup of tea.

Go to devbytes →

Copyright and the Digital Economy

Yesterday there was a little bit of excitement in the digital rights world caused by an amendment to the Digital Economy bill proposed by a Tory and Liberal peer.

The justification of the amendment does make some good points – particularly about bringing any action under the control of the courts rather than just requiring the secretary of state’s say so.

As Lord Clement-Jones points out, the de-politicising of the process is important.

None of this matters of course, because the writing is on the wall for the rights industry. Unfortunately for us its clear they’re going to make a fight of it, which will likely leave us saddled with some very damaging and poorly written laws which will make it increasingly difficult to run a UK based buisiness.

The only thing that is left is to learn from the mistakes they made. Here are some harsh truths…

If your business model relies on digital things being hard to copy, it’s doomed.

The key issue here is one of basic economics. When it is just as easy to make a million copies of something than it is to make one, then the supply of that resource essentially becomes infinite and the unit price of the resource that the market is prepared to support drops to zero.

I’m not making any moral commentary here, but when something is no longer scarce it will be seen as free by the majority of people. Technical and legal restrictions put in place in an attempt to introduce scarcity artificially are going to be resented and are doomed to fail.

Theft is a meaningless concept in such a context, because how can you steal something which is infinitely available?

The only way to handle this situation is to innovate and add value somewhere else – people are still willing to pay for quality, novelty and convenience for example.

The black market is still the market.

Worse still, it is much more competitive (thanks to its lack of regulation) and responsive to consumer demand.

Lets look at Russia as an example:

In Russia, outside of the major cities, it is actually impossible to buy a legal copy of a CD or DVD – due in part to Russia’s perceived reputation on piracy creating an unwillingness for rights holders to provide their product there. There is still the demand of course, which the black market has stepped in to fill, and as a result you can go into a store on the high street and buy pirated CDs, DVDs and software just as you would buy legal copies here.

Not only does the black market provide a product where the traditional market refuses to, it actually provides a better product.

You can buy box set DVDs of films and TV series where none are normally available, entire back catalogues of an artist on a single CD in MP3 format, multiple DVD quality films on a Blueray disk and more.

Worse still for the rights holders, the price point is competitive enough to make it more attractive than downloading and certainly more attractive than importing a legal version, even after you factor in the relative earning power of the average Russian consumer.

This is similar to the current online situation – if I want to watch Caprica for example, I can either wait and hope it becomes available on DVD or shown on TV some time in the future, or I can watch it on channel Bittorrent. There is no legal way for me to get access.

Even when legal online access is provided, it’s product is often substandard when compared to the pirated version – low quality, DRM locked or with a built in expiry date. It is also, in many cases, harder to get hold of – requiring special software, registration and only offer a limited selection of products.

Which brings us to the real rub…

If the customer’s path of least resistance is not the one that gives you money, your business model is doomed.

Human nature is to follow the path of least resistance and this is something you’re not going to change, ignore this at your peril!

Do I click a button and have access to the latest episode of my favourite show in a few minutes? Or do I wait – perhaps forever – for it to be available on TV or in the stores?

Do I buy and re-buy a DRM locked version of my music for each device I own, or do I bittorrent a pirated version which will always work?

Do I go out in the rain to stand in a crowded store in order to get a single album, or do I bittorrent an artist’s entire back catalogue?

When I like some of my friends music, do I write down the name and go to the store, or do I give my friend a pen drive and get a copy right there?

Until a simple and convenient way to provide access to an equivalent or better quality product legally is available, the pirated version will always win.

So in conclusion..

As I said before I’m not making a moral statement here, and I am not calling for copyright to be abolished. Neither am I necessarily stating what should come next.

What I will say is that the current problems besetting the creative industry are not to do with the industry itself – people will always listen to music, watch films, use software and view great works of art - it is a problem with the current business models being used, combined with a lack of will to innovate.

The often bizarre legislation put forward as a solution all seem to be trying to retain the intellectual property status quo, but that isn’t to say that the concept of copyright is flawed – copyright is still a useful tool once certain realities are realised.

We should be encouraging business to embrace the new landscape and innovate, because while people are still wanting to listen to music, watch films and use software, there is still money to be made.

However, no amount of legislation will prop up a failing business model indefinitely, no matter what lobbyists will have you believe – just ask the French button makers. In a free market, business models are not something society or government should be in the business of protecting and they should be permitted to fail.

This is not the first time a technical innovation has rendered an entrenched business obsolete, and I’m sure it will not be the last.

Solving the problem of online gig listings

I’ve been thinking about my quest to define the ultimate band website. It’s a huge topic, so let’s break it down. First up, gigs online: listings, tickets, RSVPs, sharing, feeds…

What are the choices?

• Facebook events
• Myspace gigs
• Upcoming
• Eventful
• Twitter tools like Twtvite and Schmap
• Hand-rolled (eg. Wordpress plugin)

Facebook

Facebook events seems like a good place to start. The way Facebook handles events is great (mostly). It’s tempting to just use Facebook events and embed widgets everywhere else. But it’s not open. Facebook event listings are usually publicly accessible and show up in Google listings, but you need a Facebook account to interact.

Myspace

Unsurprisingly, Myspace gigs gig listings are shit. They look messy, they are annoying to update, you can’t share them easily and they don’t link in with anything useful. Also unsurprisingly, they are the most commonly used gig listings ever.

Upcoming

Upcoming is an event listing site that’s really clever about using hcal, RSS, Flickr machine tags, and other geeky stuff. It’s close to perfect as a solution for the online gig conundrum but non-geeks probably won’t use it, so we would need to feed listings from Upcoming out to other, more familiar, services.

Eventful

Eventful is pretty similar to Upcoming, but maybe not quite as slick. It seems to be a little more US-centric too. On the other hand, it has the “request a band to play in your town” feature, which is what Jonathan Coulton used to plan his early tours.

Twitter tools

Twtvite, Schmap and the rest are great single-use web apps. If your entire audience is on Twitter they are perfect. If not, they will only ever be part of the answer.

In the context of Twitter, I reckon you could do some great stuff with these tools. Something like Schmap is a lightweight layer between the ephemera of Twitter and the static info page. There’s a map built in for instant geographical context, a simple one-click RSVP, a short decsription, a single image and a link to a page with more info. For the Twitter part of the solution you could do a lot worse.

Hand-rolled

There are some good Wordpress plugins and modules for other CMSs that let you post gig listings and make them look cool, link to ticket shops and so on. The problem with all of them is that they restrict the listings to your site. Great for fans, but not for everyone else. How many people look at your site to see who’s playing at their local venue?

The secret weapon

There’s a site called ArtistData that lets you update loads of services at once. You enter the gig details once and they get synced to Myspace, Facebook, etc. We still need to figure out where best to put the listings, but ArtistData will come in handy.

How do we put them together?

Let’s get technical. What are the fixed points?

1. We can’t ignore Facebook. People on Facebook will want to use it for events.
2. We only want to update gig details once.
3. A gig needs to be shareable on at least Facebook, Twitter and email.
4. We want people to be able to say they’re coming and ideally comment, but not necessarily all on the same platform.
5. Each gig needs a single canonical URL which acts as the digital address of the physical event.
6. We want to avoid automated or annoying tweets and status updates.

I think the trick is to separate out the functionality:

• Create one master page for each gig with all the details, links, pictures, flyers etc.
• Automate the creation of an entry on each platform you want to support that provides basic information and links back to the master page. This doesn’t include Twitter, unless there’s a very clever non-annoying natural language solution. Better to automate the creation of the Schmap and update Twitter by hand.
• As a bonus, it would be great if the master page could pull in some stats from the satellite pages (eg. how many Facebook RSVPs or Twtvite sign-ups) and reflect the conversation going on around the gig (which might tie in with Steve Lawson’s post about machine tagging gigs) UPDATE: Steve’s post was about machine tagging beta releases of music, but is still worth a read.

What do you reckon?

The question is, what do we use to create the master page? Facebook might be a contender. It’s tricky to feed stuff out from Facebook, but ArtistData could push the content to Facebook and the others.

What do you reckon? Any thoughts? What do you use?

UPDATE: @garrettc, @quitexander, @platform3, @Jazza_UK and @mondoagogo mentioned Last.fm, GigPress, Songkick and friends as good platforms for and/or sources of gig info. Thank you all. I’ll investigate and report back. ;)

Simon Cowell to be Axed in ITV Shakeup

‘The Axe Factor’: contestants will vie to wipe the smug grin off his face.

Save BBC 6Music and Asian Network

Everyone in a particular demographic will now know that the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, has announced a plan to close two of the most Reithian of radio stations, 6Music and the Asian Network. If you’re up in arms about these closures, you can still do something about it.

Kate Butler has an excellent eight-point plan. You don’t have to complete all eight points: this is not a competition. More specifically, J Hunt has a basic pro forma letter and two email addresses you can send it to. I recommend you actually send it to both, as you won’t get a reply from the “srconsultation” one.

In the spirit of not sending anything entirely pro forma, I’ve written my own as an open letter below (and of course emailed it to the relevant contacts). Feel free to rewrite for your own use.

Subject: Response to Mark Thompson’s announcements – NO to closing 6Music and Asian Network

To whom it may concern,

I would like to address proposals announced on March 2 2010 by the BBC director general Mark Thompson. These suggest the closure of BBC 6Music and the BBC Asian Network, among many other changes.

I am a loyal supporter of the BBC and of the licence fee. I believe that the BBC’s television, radio and multimedia outlet easily justifies the licence fee, and moreover that the two stations earmarked for closure in the proposals are exactly what the BBC is about and what make the BBC worth its fees.

Each station fulfils a remit that commercial broadcasting simply cannot and will not provide for. The stations cater for “sizeable minorities”, which commercial media ignores in favour of massive homogeneities. 6Music’s audience are committed, involved, interested listeners who get a lot out of the service, whereas a large commercial station (or even BBC1) simply does not have that audience buy-in. 6Music, the Asian Network and catering for other “sizeable minorities” constitute the most direct routes to the very heart of Reithian, socially active, life-changing public-service broadcasting. 6Music supports live music and niche genres, and provides an access to the BBC’s archive of recordings, thus offering a service not just for listeners but also for the UK’s arts and culture, for which no equivalent commercial alternative exists.

Having said that, I would certainly not recommend the closure of any other part of the BBC in the place of these stations: I am not writing to you to merely express a preference as to where the axe should fall (although I am myself an avid listener to 6Music.) In an ideal world I would rather there be no axe at all: through ringfenced experimentation and risk-taking the BBC has always fostered new talent and fulfilled social functions that again no commercial broadcaster would care about. Any closure at the BBC makes me, a BBC fan, unhappy.

Yet if cost-cutting is essential, then what’s the point in cutting such vital, heartland services for the sake of some £7m and £21m respectively? Such sweeping cuts make for great soundbites, but when BBC1 has a budget of £1400m, and £600m is being brought back into media production by the closure of online services, then it would surely represent far less of a wrench for £30m of savings to come from that £2000m total – around one percent of that total! – rather than getting rid of 100% of the 6Music and the Asian Network channels.

If the BBC can work with its audiences of “sizeable minorities”, rather than neglecting them when the time comes for cuts; if the return of £600m into programme-making can be visibly demonstrated to float 6Music, the Asian Network and even other digital channels; if the BBC Trust rejects the proposals to close these passionately loved stations; then it will find that the listeners to these stations will be active and reliable supporters of the BBC for years to come.

I therefore strongly urge the BBC Trust to reject these proposals, for the good of musicians, of the BBC and of the listening public.

Best regards,
J-P Stacey

Mar201002

Dungeekin

0

UK ‘Ready to Mediate’ in US Territory Dispute

Friends don’t let friends abuse Botox.

The United Kingdom ’stands ready’ to mediate in a dispute between the United States and Russia over the ownership of Alaska, Foreign Secretary David Millipede has said.

The announcement follows a statement from US Secretary of State Hilary Thyroid-Imbalance that the United States would assist in the ongoing territorial dispute between the UK and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

Speaking as she met Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Mrs Thyroid-Imbalance said, “wWe would like to see Argentina and the UK sit down and resolve the issues between them in a peaceful and productive way.”

Mr Millipede said, “we welcome the offer from the United States. However, in return for their offer to get involved in mediation about handing over British territory – territory that is, I should add, British by the choice of its occupants – we would like to offer our services in a similar vein. For example, Alaska was purchased from the Russians for an absurdly cheap price. Obviously the United States views this land as their territory, yet it could be said that Russia has a valid claim. Therefore, the UK stands ready to mediate in negotiations with Russia for the return of this oil-rich land.

“Additionally, We are more than willing to assist in negotiations between Canada and the US over Machias Seal Island, the Northwest Passage and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.”

Mr Millipede added, “alternatively, the Secretary of State could realise that we have managed this issue perfectly well before without the assistance of the world’s policeman, and she might like to keep her pointy proboscis well and truly out of British affairs and British territory.”

Mar201002

Ben Walker

0

The ultimate band website revisited

I’m going back to an old topic from a new perspective: the ultimate band website. Having thought about it for a year I have a load of random ideas, but I haven’t yet put them together into a coherent structure. This is an attempt to find out what I think about band websites – an essay in the true sense.

What’s the point of a band website?

Most bands want a website that looks cool, in the same way that they want their album art to be cool and their gig posters to be cool. Album art and gig posters have a very simple purpose: the one-way communication of a small amount of information. A website has a complex purpose: it has to be a social object¹ around which people can gather and converse, a point of engagement between fan and band, and a shop (if not more). And it has to look cool.

As with all this internet stuff, there’s no single answer that will suit every band. I rarely find band websites that I think are good, but when I do it’s always because the site completely fits with the band. Pomplamoose’s main internet presence is their YouTube channel, because they make Videosongs and that’s where their fans go to engage with them. BareNakedLadies have a full-featured website with multi-author blogs, behind-the-scenes videos, and shedloads of content², because their fans are geeks and enjoy getting involved with all that stuff.

What about bands that aren’t geeks?

There’s a problem when a band doesn’t use the internet in the same way as its fans. If a band only wants to use MySpace I’m never going to notice them. If a potential fan isn’t on Twitter they are unlikely to hear about me. If a band wants to communicate by post (I’m looking at you, Islet ;) they are going to have trouble engaging with the digital geeks who want to be involved.

There’s a part of me (the wannabe rock star) that sides with the stubborn bands. I stopped playing live gigs completely last year and just played online in various weird and wonderful ways. I love the two issues of The Isness that Islet have posted to me (in the actual post – on paper). I understand that as a band you want to define the rules of engagement and make your artistic statement. I understand that a lot of bands don’t spend all their time online. I understand that maintaining an element of mystery and theatre can make for an amazing magical live show.

But there’s another part of me (the music fan) that’s only ever had really deep positive experiences with bands when I’ve been able to get past the show and find out about the people and the story behind the music. At first it was from my Dad telling stories about records in his collection. As a teenager it was through books and films about rock stars and music scenes that I’d missed by decades, and endless conversations in record shops and issues of Record Collector. Then people started posting MP3 bootlegs on forums³ and making websites about otherwise mysterious legends. Now people recommend music on Posterous, tweet Spotify playlists and the conversations about music are easier to tap into than ever before.

Why not let the fans make all the content?

The old music industry model created social objects (records, magazine interviews, press releases, tabloid stories) to feed the conversation, so the artists didn’t have to. Now people want to engage with bands outside the mainstream press, and either the band creates the social objects or the fans do. A lot of bands are building websites that allow fans to create stuff, but it’s not that easy.

Jonathan Coulton fans make loads of videos, cover versions and remixes of his music, but he gave them loads of stuff first: he posted a song a week and blogged the whole thing. He also spent half his time answering email.

So why not let the fans make all the content? Because in almost all cases they won’t. Not unless the bands make way more first.

Why do fans go to band websites?

This may be the wrong question to ask, because I’m not sure they do. I certainly don’t (well, almost never), and in my straw poll of random people in pubs over the last few months nobody else did either. Let’s figure out the reasons why I very occasionally visit band websites:

• I visit Steve Lawson’s site for the blog. But only occasionally, because I read it in RSS and only ever click through to the site if there’s a funky embed that doesn’t show up in Google Reader.
• I went to Pomplamoose’s site after I’d watched all their YouTube videos to see whether they had anything else to offer. They don’t. Their site is just music players, the latest video, iTunes links and an about page.
• I follow links from Twitter to blog posts on bands’ or artists’ websites sometimes. If it’s an amazing blog post and I’m absolutely overwhelmed with respect for the author I might listen to a track or two.
• That’s it. I may not be a representative music fan, but I’ll bet that if you asked random music-liking people⁴ which band websites they visit regularly (or ever) you’d be met with blank stares. So…

Where do fans go to engage with music online?

Me first. Here’s what I’ve used recently to discover, share, research, listen to and talk about music (not counting my own music):

• @solobasssteve just recommended a band to me on Twitter, after I mentioned liking Pomplamoose.
• Earlier today I checked out Chris TT’s tour schedule after seeing him talk about his upcoming gigs on Twitter. He doesn’t pimp his gigs often – I follow him because I enjoy reading his tweets – so when he does I’m interested.
• Also today I saw Richard Walters tweet about Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue, and sent him a link to the fan website where I originally read about it years ago (before it was reissued⁵).
• A few days ago I listened to some tunes by The Monroe Transfer on their Bandcamp page, after I had a conversation over Google Chat with Nick about releasing music online.
• I’ve watched a load of songs on YouTube that people have recommended, embedded, tweeted, Facebooked or emailed recently – maybe 30 this year.
• I’ve listened to Miriam Jones’ Solitary Songs on Bandcamp because I keep meaning to buy them but haven’t got round to it yet.
• I’ve embedded an occasional YouTube video of a song on my Tumblr blog.
• I’ve listened to maybe a dozen tracks that people I follow have posted on Tumblr, but only when there’s a story or at least a hearty recommendation to go with it. There’s nothing less appealing than a lonely Flash audio player.
• As I was editing this post I listened to three tracks by a band called Physical Education because they flattered me on Twitter.

I don’t really know what other people get up to, but off the top of my head:

• People still seem to be using Spotify quite a lot. This year I’ve only opened it to get a couple of invites to send to people, but then I don’t listen to music radio either so let’s not read too much into that.
• I see quite a few links fly by on Twitter to blip.fm, last.fm and the like.
• Andrew Dubber is making Dubber’s Weekly Jazz (“Like a weekly specialist radio show – but on Spotify”), a weekly Spotify playlist posted to a Posterous blog.
• Steve Lawson is embedding Bandcamp players on a Posterous blog to recommend new music (he even recommended my album!)

Any conclusions?

I’ll let this lot compost for a while and see if I can come up with anything useful, but here are my initial thoughts:

1. I’m an edge case in the big picture of listening habits. But now that the homogenous glob of “audience” is fragmented into a whole load of individuals, I guess we’re dealing with an entire dataset of edge cases. I know that can’t exist (except maybe on a circular graph – anyone?), but you know what I mean.
2. Maybe a band website just needs to link to all the other stuff (sort of like flavors.me, which I used to set up benwalkersongwriter.com yesterday).
3. Maybe a band website needs to be a blog to be interesting. That’s certainly what draws me in to a band (and what I’m leaning towards with my own site).
4. Maybe a band doesn’t need a website at all.
5. Bands need to create shareable stuff. For me as a music fan that means blog posts, YouTube videos, music on Bandcamp or Spotify and MP3s for Tumblr.
6. Mysterious bands never appear on my radar. They may be getting great reviews or appearing in Sunday supplements or being on TV or making the best album ever, but I won’t know about it. And if I don’t know about it I won’t miss it.

I need to have at least half a dozen more pub conversations about this before it will start to make sense. If you can help clarify any of it, or just add an example to my painfully narrow data, please comment. I’m intrigued to know what you think. ;)

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1. I’m using the pretentious phrase “social object” in the way that music industry commentators use it, to describe an object around which social interactions happen, and without which they wouldn’t. For context, read The Song/Artist Adoption Formula on Music Think Tank. ↩

2. I’m using the annoyingly glib, but rather useful, internet-specific meaning of “content”. I know, it’s almost unforgivable to talk about the beautiful and unique expressions of someone’s consciousness and identity as “content”. Forgive me. I spend my days making websites and I’ve been brainwashed. ↩

3. At one point in 1999 I had 185 Ben Folds (Five) concert bootlegs, burned onto CDs because hard drives weren’t big enough yet. ↩

4. Coldplay/Keane-liking isn’t music-liking. We can’t let our ad hoc data be skewed by people with no useful opinion. ↩

5. I’m not saying this to show off that I knew about the album ages ago. Well, that’s not the only reason. It’s also a great example of how I got excited about an album (and an artist) before I ever heard it because of the story behind it. ↩

Mar201001

Dungeekin

0

On Existence

I’ve been pondering this weekend, and I have reached an important conclusion that I feel I must share with you all.

I am not real.

And, if you are reading this, then congratulations. You are not real either. You don’t exist, except in your own imagination.

Look around you. Look at the person next to you. Your co-worker, your wife, your child. They’re not real. They don’t exist.

We don’t exist, because Labour have decided we don’t exist.

When the GP told me I would have ‘a significant wait’ to get a referral for my hip problems, he and his words did not exist. The same is true for my mother, while she awaits referral and scheduling for major surgery. And the hundreds who died needlessly in Mid-Staffs NHS Trust and at Basildon – they didn’t exist either.

We do not exist because Labour’s statistics have decided that we don’t. Their carefully-crafted numbers tell them that it can’t possibly be happening. Their targets don’t reflect the real needs of real people in the real world, so we are statistical anomalies, who can safely be ignored. So we don’t exist.

When my friend gets burgled. When an elderly couple are burned alive in their own home. When a popular local shopkeeper is murdered, when a victim of crime cannot get his property back due to health-and-safety risks, we don’t exist.

We do not exist because Labour’s crime figures, carefully calculated and with enormously detailed specifications as to what constitutes a reportable crime, say that offending is at its lowest since records began. Therefore, the crime we see – the yobs, the antisocial behaviour and so on – are all Tory lies to decry the socialist Utopia in which we reside. In their statistical world there is no crime. Crime does not exist, so those who are victims of it do not exist either.

When the pound collapses, when the debt is unmanageable, when our bonds are junk and when the Government are the first in the reign of our Monarch to preside over a FALL in GDP – we do not exist.

We do not exist, because in the statistics of the Government we are only numbers on a balance sheet. For them the numbers are not real either – simply shadows, virtual values to be manipulated, massaged and concealed at will. We are the little sheep who unbleatingly pay the cost, thus we do not exist.

This Regime (as I’ve said before, I find it hard to credit them with the name ‘Government’) no longer see us as people, if they ever did. We are the numerals on the latest set of exquisitely-engineered statistics they use to confound us, and to convince themselves that they are justified in their grip on power.

A million people didn’t exist when they demonstrated against the Iraq War. Their plans for electoral reform will ensure that the votes of millions don’t exist when the next Election comes around.

For the Labour Party, there are only two types of people who exist. Those in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and those who fund the Parliamentary Labour Party. They care solely about their own power – they don’t care about the people. We don’t exist.

I don’t know about you, but I do exist. And so do those I care about. And I don’t want my child burdened with a debt created by a Regime that don’t care that he exists. I don’t want him educated by a system that cares more for statistics than education. I don’t want him treated in hospital by an NHS that prioritises surveys more highly than sickness.

I want my voice to be heard, and real change to be made.

I want a Conservative Government.

And if you exist, so should you.