ian clark

Unusually, the recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding internet access made a lot of headlines upon their release (and a lot of tweets, far more than I usually notice when the quarterly figures are released, particularly from journalists). I say unusual as these figures are part of the ONS’s quarterly update figures and I am fairly sure they haven’t received this much coverage in the past. But these figures are important, particularly in the context of the government’s changes to the social security system and the drive to make all claimants do so via the internet.  As I have repeatedly warned before now, this drive is likely to leave many isolated and, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation argue, trap many in poverty. So what do the figures actually tell us about the digitally excluded?

Well, in light of the government’s Universal Credit and Universal Jobmatch, they certainly raise serious concerns. Take, for example, the age ranges of those that have never accessed the internet. The divide by age is split as follows:

Unsurprisingly, the 75+ group dominates, whilst the younger age groups are relatively small. But what about if we split this chart up between working age and non-working age to make it a little clearer:

Now it is clear from the chart that those of non-working age (ie 65+ and, of course, some people in this group may well still be in employment) far outweigh those of working age in terms of never having accessed the internet, but the working age segment is still quite significant (to be clear on this, “working age” will also include those who cannot work – but they will still be required to access Universal Credit, so the substantive point still stands). Over a quarter of those who have never accessed the internet are of working age. In fact, when you look at the hard figures, over 2 million people of working age have never used the internet. Whilst significantly lower than the overall figure (7 million) this is still quite a sizeable chunk of the population, and perhaps a little surprising too. I focus on this aspect particularly as quite often those who aren’t online are widely assumed to be the elderly, but it cuts across all age groups.  It is also worrying as this group of people are those most likely to be affected by the move to digital by default for benefits claims and seeking work should they be (or become) unemployed. To be clear, 2 million people have never used the internet and are likely to be affected by the government’s “digital by default” policy when it comes to social security.

It is also worth reiterating that all of these figures refer to the numbers of people who have never used the internet, not those who do not have the internet at home. The chances are that the figures for those without internet access at home are slightly higher than the figures for those who have never used the internet.  I think it is important to keep that in mind when looking at these particular statistics.  Furthermore, it is also worth keeping in mind that a recent survey suggested that 16m people lack basic online skills. So even if there are a majority who have accessed the internet, this does not mean to say that they have been able to do so without support or without difficulty.  The divide itself is drawn along two distinct lines: access and skills.  Whilst the divide between those without skills cuts across social boundaries (impacting open rich/poor, young/old etc), the access divide appears to be starkly drawn along income lines.

Dividing those who have never accessed the internet by income raises some serious cause for concern in terms of the government’s “digital by default” policy. This is how the divide stacks up across income groups:

Again, unsurprising that the numbers of those who have never accessed the internet tends to be higher the further down the income scale you go.  For those at the very top, it is incredibly rare to encounter anyone who has never accessed the internet. But, again, what if we divide this up further?  According to the ONS, the average weekly wage in the UK is £444. Unfortunately, this figure falls slap bang in the middle of one of the income groups above. As it is impossible to know how many are immediately above and below £444, I’ve made £400 the dividing line:

The vast, vast majority of those who have never accessed the internet and are of working age, therefore, are clearly among the poorest in society (approximately 600,000 fall in the under £400 bracket – which therefore does not include those earning £400-443 who are also below the average wage). Now all of this is pretty much as one would expect, but I think it is worth laying this all out so we can see clearly to what extent a divide exists between those who have accessed the internet and those who have not.  Indeed, when you look at the hard figures, approximately 5% (616,000/12,515,000) of all of those earning below the average wage have never accessed the internet compared to 1% (133,000/11,878,000) of all of those earning above the average wage. You are, therefore, nearly five times more likely to have accessed the internet if you earn above average wage, than if you earned below.

Furthermore, a sizeable proportion of the disabled have never accessed the internet:

According to the figures, around 3.7m of those defined as DDA disabled have never accessed the internet (DDA disabled refers to those who self-assess that they have a disability in line with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) definition of disability). Again, this is a not insignificant number of people who will be adversely affected by any “digital by default” policy.

What is clear beyond any doubt from these figures is that the poorest in society will clearly suffer as a result of the move to make Universal Credit and Universal Jobmatch “digital by default”, the very group of people the social security reforms are supposed to benefit. With two million people of working age never having accessed the internet before, the consequences of sudden unemployment are stark.  They will need a great deal of support both in terms of claiming benefits and in terms of seeking work, and the current mechanisms in place are not fit for that purpose.

There is a very real and very clear divide here in terms of access to the internet, and the move to digital by default will clearly entrench one aspect of the divide between the haves and the have-nots. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation concluded, Universal Credit could very well trap people in poverty. For those two million people of working age who have never used the internet, unemployment could have disastrous consequences.  With a lack of skills and access to the internet, they could find themselves trapped in poverty and find it very difficult to climb back out.  ”Digital by default” for those claiming social security or seeking employment is simply not a sensible policy.  It is time for Iain Duncan Smith to acknowledge the trap he has created and to reverse a policy that is going to increase poverty rather than reduce it.

Following the previous guest post on the experiences of Jobmatch, an update:

Another day, another wildly inappropriate job recommendation…

So, it’s been a few weeks since I gave my last view on Universal Jobsmash (my…affectionate…name for Universal Jobmatch), let’s see how well it’s done in its task of enabling me to gain employment by giving me access to, and matching me up with employment opportunities.

Now, it can’t really be so hard to get this right. I am in Edinburgh. My specified search categories are “Library and Information Science”, and “Social Media”, with a range of 20 miles of Edinburgh (don’t worry: I’m using real, useful job sites for my actual job search!) . So why it persists in ONLY giving me matches that are completely inappropriate, I cannot understand. Unless, of course, it is an utterly useless site? Well, that’s the only thing I can think of that would explain why, for over 2 weeks now, it’s recommended every day that I apply for the role of an MOT tester in Fife. Or a car salesperson (although at least for variety, this one IS actually in Edinburgh, instead of the previously suggested ones in Glasgow).  In fact, for the last week, those are the only jobs it’s emailed me about with the daily alert service. Strangely enough, I am neither qualified for, nor interested in these positions. You can tell I’m not qualified, as I’ve uploaded my CV to the site, like a good girl. And I’m not interested, as they’re in no way related to my stated interest areas, or my skills.

There’s little point in me browsing for jobs by region, as Jobsmash only recognises one region in Scotland. That region is: Scotland. There are 9 regional search options available for England, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are just big, homogenous masses of “people not in England” to Jobsmash. So browsing for local jobs (since you never know when a job title may hide a good job in the details) is a pointless activity, as jobs of interest may be hundreds of miles away from my location. Added to this is the fact that many of the unvetted adverts going onto it are nonsense. Did you know that Blackpool and Manchester are located in Scotland? No? Me neither, until I saw these adverts in the Scotland browse section. Is this helpful to jobseekers? No. It’s a blanket spamming of the site by people looking to employ agents, possibly on less than minimum wage (can you see an actual rather than potential salary in those adverts? No? Me neither). Woo-hoo – feel my trust for this site just building up!

So – what I’m continuing to receive from Jobsmash are totally wrong job recommendations that are a waste of my time, and the provision of completely unuseable location browsing options. Brilliant. A site to avoid at all costs.  But I wonder whether at some point my “advisor”* will ask me why I’m not using the site. I’ll have to explain to them yet again that it’s beyond useless. And then maybe, if I’m really lucky, I’ll get the chance to try out their new time-wasting effort: the personality test.

Oh my! There’s another waste of time, which won’t have the least impact on anyone’s ability to get a job, or to use the Jobsmash site, but will instead take up time that could have been spend, ohhhh, I dunno – actually applying for jobs? This is a particularly important point if you have restricted access to the internet: what’s more useful, an unemployed person filling in a questionnaire that will tell them they’re lovely and should have a job, or an unemployed person filling in a job application to attempt to actually get a job? If you have limited time on the internet, I know which task I’d prioritise…but what happens if your Jobseekers advisor informs you that if you don’t do the test, you don’t get your benefit? Is it a choice you’d want to have to make?

*An odd name that, since I haven’t had one iota of advice from any of the 4 different people I’ve met with in my 6 weeks of being on Jobseekers Allowance thus far – in fact the second advisor had to correct the errors the first advisor had made with my details. I feel like I’m in such safe hands….

Remember the early days of the internet?  When start-up companies seemed to be, somehow a different breed from the companies that we had grown accustomed to? “Don’t be evil” appeared not only to be Google’s mantra, but the mantra of a whole host of companies that emerged in tandem with the growth of the internet.  Whereas we had grown accustomed to companies that were focused on shareholder profit over rather than the interests of ‘consumers’ or society in general, these companies seemed to be benign, friendly, sensitive to their social responsibilities.

In contrast to the growth of these ‘benign forces’ of the internet, governments and politicians have become increasingly suspicious of the technology, predominantly because it is an area over which they do not feel they exercise sufficient control.  In the UK, this has manifested itself most obviously and most recently in the Data Communications Bill (or Snoopers’ Charter).  A particularly invasive piece of legislation that was seriously considered by the coalition, it proposed to grant powers to the Home Secretary (or another cabinet minister) to order any ‘communications data’ by ‘telecommunication operators’ to be gathered and retained, effectively collecting ostensibly private data on citizens for whatever purpose they deemed worthy.  It appears, on the face of it, that these proposals have now been abandoned, although that is not to say they won’t come back in a slightly modified form.  If one were a cynic, one might suggest the Liberal Democrats applied pressure to drop the legislation in advance of the local elections to ensure they were case in a positive light? Unlikely perhaps, but my cynical mind can’t help but believe there is more to this than simply a matter of principle, after all Nick Clegg wasn’t always so opposed…

This suspicion, however, doesn’t begin and end at the Snoopers’ Charter. There was also, for example, the introduction of the Digital Economy Act, which enables the blocking of website access for anyone who is deemed to have infringed copyright laws but, consequently, also risks penalising those entirely innocent of any such activity.  Then there is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) used to investigate Osita Mba, a whistleblower who uncovered a “sweetheart” deal with Goldman Sachs.  Using Ripa:

…HMRC can see websites viewed by taxpayers, where a mobile phone call was made or received, and the date and time of emails, texts and phone calls. According to the revenue website, these powers “can only be used when investigating serious crime”.

And it doesn’t end with proposed or existing legislation; individual politicians have also made calls for illiberal and unhelpful restrictions on the internet. Back in 2011, following the riots, one politician called for Twitter and Facebook to be blacked out during any further disturbances.  Needless to say this was a particularly stupid and disturbing suggestion, not least because the very same social media helped people in the area affected by the riots to communicate with others and ensure their own safety.  There’s no doubt that the freedom provided by the internet frightens those who believe it threatens existing power structures, underlining that, from their point of view, freedom only goes so far…

The desire to highlight some of these illiberal measures isn’t solely restricted to organisation such as the Open Rights Group, many of the giants of the internet are quick to point the finger at the role of government as a threat to the freedom of the individual. Take, for example, the largest of all the companies to emerge in the internet era – Google.

Last week, in an article for The Guardian, Eric Schmidt (executive chairman) and Jared Cohen (Director, Google Ideas) warned that global governments are monitoring and censoring access to the web, which could lead to the internet becoming ever increasingly under state control.  The usual examples are rolled out of authoritarian regimes seeking to restrict what their citizens can access online.  Curiously, however, there is no mention of the United States or Europe (Russia appears eight times, China seven), it appears that we are not affected by the government monitoring or censoring access to the web – oh, apart from the Data Communications Bill, the Digital Economy Act, Ripa etc etc.This omission seems curious considering an admission by Schmidt in a separate interview with Alan Rusbridger, also in The Guardian.

During the interview, Rusbridger notes:

But [Schmidt’s] company collects and stores an extraordinary amount of data about all of us, albeit in an anonymised form. Which is all well and good, until government agencies come knocking on Schmidt’s door – as they did more than 20,000 times in the second half of last year. The company usually obliges with US officials. (It’s more complicated with others.) This will only get worse.

Clearly, as the legislative examples shown above demonstrate, attempts to monitor the web are not only restricted to authoritarian regimes but are also a problem in Western, (supposedly) liberal democracies as well.  When the US is making 20,000 requests in six months (around 100 requests a day on average), it is clear that the problem is not restricted to just China, Russia and other authoritarian regimes.  But there’s another side to this equation. A side that Schmidt and others in the business community seem to be reluctant to talk about, for very obvious reasons.

The extract from Rusbridger’s interview with Schmidt reveals two facts that everyone concerned with the internet and the free flow of information need to be worried about.  First are the actual requests from US officials for data from Google. The second is the data that Google collects and makes available to US officials.  There are, I would argue, two concerns about the future of the internet: government control and corporate control. The former Schmidt is keen to talk about, the latter not so much.

Google’s business is data.  They collect data from users to ‘enhance the user experience’ (a brilliant phrase used to suggest that the collection of your personal data is actually doing you a favour).  The volume of data collected is vast and is collected for a specific purpose: to make money (to “enhance the user experience”). These services do not charge you to make money, they use a commodity you are giving away for free and then selling it on to advertisers. The transaction is different from the traditional service model (consumer purchases goods from service provider), but it is effective and relies on your data to ensure profitability for the service provider. For example, Google was making $14.70 per 1,000 searches in 2010.  Some services do not even require you to visit the service itself to obtain your personal data.  Facebook, for example, has been known to track light users of the service across 87% of the internet.

The sheer volume of data handled by many of the largest internet companies should be a cause for concern. Indeed, not only is the data collection itself a concern, but also the willingness with which they give it up to government agencies (note in the aforementioned interview, Schmidt suggests that Google usually say yes to government requests for data).  Of course, many would argue that there is nothing to fear about the collection of personal data: if you have done nothing wrong etc. But you are not in control of the personal data and the rules that govern its use, corporations and governments are. Imagine for a moment a different type of government, a different set of rules, a different environment altogether, would you be so keen on US officials demanding your data and it being handed over as easily as Google do now? And what if Google engineered this change in government? Sounds far-fetched doesn’t it? Maybe it’s not as far-fetched as it might sound…

A recent study by United States-based psychologists, led by Dr. Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, revealed the disturbing amount of power at the hands of companies like Google. Epstein’s study found that Google has the capability to influence the outcome of democratic elections by manipulating search rankings.  The study (available here – PDF) presented three groups of eligible American voters with actual web pages and search engine results from the 2010 Australian general election. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, two groups were provided with search engine rankings favouring one of the candidates, the remaining group were provided with rankings that favoured neither:

Beforehand, individuals reported having little or no familiarity with the candidates at all. Based on short biographies, they were asked to rate each candidate and say how they would vote.

They then spent time gathering information using a mock search engine, after which they again rated the candidates in various ways and again said how they would vote.

Before their Internet search, there were no significant differences in how they rated the candidates. Afterwards, however, two thirds of the people in the first two groups said they would vote for the candidate that was favored in the search rankings – a dramatic shift that could easily “flip” the results of many elections, especially close ones, concludes the report.

Now, there is nothing to suggest that Google have actually weighted search results in the way suggested in the study nor that they ever have the intention of doing so, but they can. Not only can they do it, but they can do it without our awareness of such manipulation.

Governments may attempt to monitor us through the introduction of ever more illiberal regulatory measures applied to the internet, but it’s important to remember that the corporations profiting from the internet also benefit from our manipulation.  It strikes me that there are two crucial considerations that we need to remember when we reflect upon the role of the corporation (as opposed to that of the state) in the development of the internet:

1)      The relationship between the user and the service.  Unlike traditional relationships, we are not simply the consumers purchasing goods from a service provider.  They are taking data from us and selling it to advertisers to make money.  Our data is the product and we are the vendor.  The problem is we are not remunerated for this transaction, only permitted to use a service under the terms stipulated by the service provider.  They are not acting out of kindness in offering such services for free, they want more data from users to increase profits.  Users need to be more aware that they are the vendors in this relationship, not the customers.  Of course, we believe and trust them because we are not ‘buying’ from them, we still see them as providing us with something for free when actually they make their money using our data.

2)      Considering the volume of data given away, there is a need to remind ourselves of the nature of government and corporations.  Like governments, corporations are not fixed.  Corporations change.  They change either because of a need to increase profits, or they change because they have been bought out by a rival.  You may well be happy giving Google all your data, but what happens when it is no longer Google?  What if your personal data fell into the hands of a company you were not comfortable gaining access to it?  What then? And whilst a takeover attempt of Google may seem far-fetched at this point, remember that that the very idea that Time Warner would merge with a company called AOL was a fanciful notion towards the end of the last century. Nothing remains static in either the worlds of business or technology.

Above all else, however, we need to remember that companies like Google and Facebook are just that: companies. Whilst they appear warm, fuzzy and less stuffy than traditional corporations, they are still corporations.  Corporations that are acting the same as every other corporation before them, lobbying government to lighten regulation, maximising profit and, where possible, shift the focus onto government shortcomings in the hope that their own activities won’t be subject to scrutiny. They are, after all, just corporations like any other and we should treat them with the same scepticism as we treat older, more established corporations.  For when it comes to the internet, we need to keep a close eye on both the governments who regulate it and the corporations who profit from it.

I’ve just recently started reading David Graeber’s The Democracy Project. A History. A Crisis. A Movement, an interesting look at the Occupy movement by one of the leading figures involved in its emergence. Graeber explores the rise of the Occupy movement and explains why he felt it struck a chord with a broad cross-section of society in the fight against neo-liberal economic policy. Unlike many other protest movements, it drew support beyond the traditional middle/educated classes and tapped into something that other movements had failed to manage, despite the similarity in aims and objectives.

It’s an interesting read and has much to say about organising protest movements in the face of dramatic (and unnecessary) cuts. One section particularly stood out for me [pg. 27]:

“The main thing that stuck in my head about the talk about Bloombergville,” I volunteered, “was when the speaker was saying that the moderates were willing to accept some cuts, and the radicals rejected cuts entirely. I was just following along nodding my head, and suddenly I realized: wait a minute! What is this guy saying here? How did we get to a point where the radical position is to keep things exactly the way they are?”

“The Uncut protests and the twenty-odd student occupations in England that year had fallen into the same trap. They were militant enough, sure: students had trashed Tory headquarters and ambushed members of the royal family. But they weren’t radical. If anything the message was reactionary: stop the cuts! What, and go back to the lost paradise of 2009? Or even 1959, or 1979?”

Of course, this is entirely the case. The popular movement against cuts has not really been particularly radical. All it has done is called for a halt to cuts to public services, hardly a radical perspective. Since when has maintaining the status quo been a radical proposition? Indeed, when one considers the broader spectrum, maintaining public services at pre-2008 levels (or arguing against the cuts) is a relatively conservative (small ‘c’) position. The radical positions, it seems to me, are to argue for the cuts with increased deregulation of the private sector or to argue for increased spending coupled with a reversal of thirty years of deregulation.

That said, even the argument to increase investment isn’t really a radical notion. It certainly wouldn’t have been considered radical in the pre-Thatcherite era when Keynesian economics was the dominant force. Recent evidence certainly furthers the argument that the programme of austerity undertaken by the coalition is both unnecessary and damaging.

The programme of austerity owes some of its existence to a study published by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in 2010. The study concluded that “median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower.” In other words, countries with a debt to GDP ratio above 90% have a slightly negative average growth rate.

However, it has now emerged that the study was filled with errors as revealed in “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff,” by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. As the Roosevelt Institute notes:

“[The authors] find that three main issues stand out. First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth. Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries. Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries. All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don’t get their controversial result.”

(You can read a further explanation of the flaws on the Roosevelt Institute blog.)

In essence, the premise behind the programmes of austerity around the world have been based on, as the Roosevelt Institute put it, “someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.”

Of course, most of the rhetoric around the need for austerity was deeply flawed even before the news that Reinhart and Rogoff’s conclusions were built on shaky foundations. Take the infamous, oft-repeated, national debt is the same as household debt claim. Leaving aside the idea that a household has the ability to print its own money (don’t try this at home!), the argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

When looking at household finances, is taking on more debt always a bad thing? Or are there circumstances where it is both justifiable and logical? Take, for example, someone in a job earning £20k. They don’t own a car and rely on public transport. They are offered a job paying £40k per year but the job is located further away and public transport is not feasible. They then decide that the best course of action is to take out a loan to buy a car, substantially increasing their debt. The car enables them to travel to their new job and double their annual salary. In the short term they have substantially increased their debt, however now they are earning twice as much, this debt will be cleared within a few years of earning a greater income. Once the debt is cleared, they are clearly in a much stronger financial situation. The debt is gone and they are now £20k better off per annum and their standard of living is sufficiently higher. So was the greater short-term debt burden worth it? The answer is obvious.

And I think this underlines part of the problem. Capitalist systems seem to lend themselves towards short-term measures. Instead of looking to the long term and building long-term stability and prosperity for future generations, it lends itself to short-term solutions that will yield immediate profits, until the next short-term plan is required. Of course, it doesn’t help that the political cycle also lends itself to short-term solutions, solutions that can be used to aid re-election without dealing with long-term effects.

It is certainly clear that the current strategy isn’t working. Borrowing has increased by £245bn more than was originally planned. Consider that for a moment. If £245bn had been pumped into the economy in 2010 to support infrastructure projects and build public services, would our economy still be suffering? Would such investment have sparked growth as money flowed into the economy, into people’s pockets and encouraged greater spending? Quite probably. And yet £245bn has been borrowed with no real purpose or plan. That is a catastrophe and a worrying sign of economic incompetence.

So I look at the current picture and I wonder, what is the radical position? For me the radical answer has got to be to increase spending and reverse deregulation of the private sector. For library campaigners it means the fight needs to be more than against closures and de-professionalisation. The argument needs to be about increased spending. It needs to be about investment in libraries. It needs to be about laying out a clear case for what libraries can offer communities if money is pumped into them rather than taken away. It’s about proposing what can be built rather than simply preventing their demolition. And not just libraries (before anyone thinks I am suggesting cuts to other services to enable spending on libraries – I pick libraries because that’s an area I am particularly focused on). All services should argue the case strongly and persistently for investment. We should not accept that cuts and austerity are a necessity and must be accepted. We need to argue that the reverse is true: spending and investment are the answer.

This may be seen as naïve (who am I kidding, it will be seen as naïve), but the argument should be made and with great vigour. Rather than meekly accepting cuts as an inevitability and buying into the “greater debt is bad” argument, we need to take the battle to those arguing in favour of austerity. They are not expecting an assault on these terms but rather that the opposition will take the moderate halt (or slow) the cuts position. The position for increased investment should not be allowed to crumble when it is faced with the arguments used by the austerity drivers. Instead, the argument should be intensified, not abandoned. The longer people suffer as a result of austerity measures, the more they see wages stagnating and opportunities restricted, the more recovery seems a distant unobtainable fantasy, the more that alternatives will begin to appeal. The trick is to maintain the argument, consistently and coherently. It is this very trick that the right have used to convince people to accept policies that are counter to their own interests. The persistent drumbeat will build support in the long-term and pressurise those driving austerity. The longer we persist in arguing for greater spending, the louder our voices become and the greater support we can mobilise.

But then again, maybe I am just a naïve dreamer…

I’m a big fan of ebooks. I bought a Sony PRS-505 way back in 2008 (still in full working order). I was  on a task group for the local authority looking into the introduction of ebooks to public libraries across the county and was an enthusiastic advocate for their introduction.  Last year, as a reward for completing the MSc in Information and Library Studies, I treated myself to a Nexus 7 – a device I have used for a mixture of social networking and reading both books and magazines.  I am, I think it is fair to say, enthusiastic about the format.  Bearing all that in mind, what I am about to write is, for me, a stark reminder of one of the serious problems with ebooks.

Last year, I bought a copy of Michael Sandel’s “What Money Can’t Buy“.  It’s an excellent book exploring the influence of the market and its impact on society (go read it).  This morning I switched on my Nexus to have a flick through it, it came up in a conversation last night and I was going to recommend it to a friend, only to discover that whilst it was listed it could not be read.  Initially I thought I’d made an error, so I went online and headed to the “My Books” section on Google Play.  It had mysteriously vanished from the list of books I had bought.

I have no idea why this book has mysteriously vanished from my library.  I’m not sure if there is a copyright issue or whether the item has been temporarily removed for whatever reason.  However, regardless of reasoning, I have not been informed by Google of the reasons why I can no longer access this particular title.  But, more troubling than not being informed, I cannot access a book that I have paid for.

Of course, this is not the first time that a book has been removed from an ereader device.  Back in 2009, in a move of stunning irony, George Orwell’s 1984 was removed from Kindle devices as “illegal copies” had been added to the store, raising a whole series of questions around the extent to which a corporation can ‘pull’ books from your library.  This would not happen with a print title.  Neither Amazon nor any other vendor would turn up at your house and demand to inspect your library as it believes you had bought an ‘illegal’ copy of a book.  Once you purchase a print edition, it is yours. And therein lies the difference between ebook and print (aside from the obvious).

In most cases, ebooks do not belong to you. You do not own it, you are purchasing a license to access that ebook, which is very different.  The only way you can ensure that the ebook you own can legitimately be claimed as yours is if the Digital Rights Management (DRM) is stripped out of it. So long as DRM is built into the text, it is never really yours and can be removed or reclaimed at any moment.  As a result, you have no control over the content whatsoever.  Indeed, the terms of service for Google Books clearly state:

If Google or the applicable copyright holder loses the rights to provide you any Digital Content, Google will cease serving such Digital Content to you and you may lose the ability to use such Digital Content.

My copy of “What Money Can’t Buy” has clearly fallen victim to Google (or the copyright holder) losing the rights to provide the digital content, meaning that I can no longer access the text, despite purchasing access to it at more or less the same price as a print copy.

Now, I guess in many respects I shouldn’t be surprised by all this.  As I noted at the beginning, I have owned an e-reader for some time and I am well aware of the perils and pitfalls of ebooks embedded with restrictive and regressive DRM. However, it is an annoying reminder (as if needed) that ebooks do not belong to the reader, but to the vendor.  You are merely paying a fee to borrow it from Google or from Amazon or from Waterstones for as long as they permit you to borrow it.  It remains the case that if you want to purchase a book and be sure that you can pick it up and flick through it whenever you wish for as long as you draw breath, you are better off buying it in print.  At least until DRM becomes an embarrassing footnote in the history of the ebook.

Regular readers of my blog know that I have a somewhat obsessive interest in matters concerning the digital divide and its impact.  Just recently, this has manifested itself in concern about the impact of moving benefit claims online as part of the broader benefits reforms towards a new Universal Credit.  As I explained here, the reforms had the potential for trapping thousands of people in poverty, making it more difficult to re-enter the workplace and, consequently, see a severe decline in their income.  This was further exemplified in the recent post by a current jobseeker on the Universal Jobmatch website.  But there are encouraging signs ahead.

Earlier today, I stumbled upon this report by the Local Government Chronicle:

The government has rowed back on its ‘digital-by-default’ stance on universal credit, which expects the vast majority of benefit applicants to make and update claims online, LGC has discovered.

One source said officials employed the term “digital as appropriate” during discussions.

The government had previously insisted the credit would be “digital by default”, and set a target for 80% of claims to be made online by 2017.

The shift comes amid growing concern among senior local government figures about the government-commissioned universal credit IT systems.

The report goes on to add (unsurprisingly considering recent government IT projects):

A second source from one of the ‘pathfinder’ authorities, which are expected to pioneer the new welfare regime, said the technology was “not “fit for purpose”.

The department appeared to be “in disarray” as it grappled with the scale of change, the source said, and added that such uncertainty was “alarming” for councils which will be expected to offer face-to-face support for claimants.

And it was clear, as I have argued, that the system had the potential to trap people in poverty as one councillor observed that “people will lose their home and we have a duty to house them” as their income is restricted due to an inability to access or utilise the technology.  However, a DWP spokesperson claimed that:

“Claimants to Universal Credit will engage with the new benefit online, and our digital by default emphasis has not changed. Since the very beginning we’ve known that some people will not be able to manage their claim online, and that’s why they will be able to get help from us over the phone and in person. We have been working with local authorities on the best ways to help people get online and be digitally independent for a number of months now.”

So what does this really mean for Universal Credit? Well, I suspect that it is slowly beginning to dawn on both central and local government that the move to “digital by default” would actually result in an increase in costs as measures would need to be taken to ensure those without access to the internet (more likely the longer term unemployed or those living in poverty) were on a level playing field with those with access.  That’s possibly a generous reading of the potential shift. But regardless, the possibility of a shift in policy is an encouraging sign because there is no doubt that pursuing this policy would trap thousands in poverty.  The coalition is keen to talk about the benefits trap, but their benefit reforms would undoubtedly create a poverty trap.

However, it also emerged earlier this week that the government is launching a cross-government fund of £400,000 to help social housing tenants improve their online skills. Landlords have until 3rd June to apply for funding (will be interesting to see how many do apply).  Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform, revealed the fund and announced that:

Many tenants in social housing don’t have access to the internet. So we are launching Digital Deal to support those who want to get online so they can access the opportunities the internet opens up – for example to help search and apply for jobs, find out about community services and to manage their benefits online.

Of course, there is already an infrastructure in place to provide people with support in accessing the internet: public libraries. But given the extent to which they have been cut (and continue to be cut) the funding is not there to provide the support many require. It will be interesting to see if this fund has any impact at all (given it relies on landlords applying), or whether it is just a cheap gimmick.  In truth, we probably need much more detail about the fund, what it hopes to achieve and how before we can draw any real conclusions.

Fundamentally, I don’t think we are going to see a substantial change in government policy in terms of addressing the digital divide. I see little evidence to suggest that there is a serious will to address the divide and ensure the gap between the information rich and information poor is bridged.  However, there is perhaps room to be optimistic that the extent of the damage by the government in these areas might not be quite as bad as we feared. Maybe.

So, it emerged today that Paris Brown has stepped down as the country’s first youth police commissioner, before she had even really started the job.  I cannot condone the comments that she had made on social media, they were appalling and insulting, but I think it is worthy of note that these comments were made before she was revealed in the post and, crucially, by a teenage girl.  Let’s be clear, this does not mean that I believe all teenagers make stupid public comments, but I think we can all accept that very few people went through their teenage years without saying something they later regretted (not to mention in adult life).  However, there is one thing that stands out for me above all else in the way this story has been reported, and that is the disreputable actions of the Daily Mail.

This tweet (which can no longer be found as the account has been deleted) underlines the disgraceful nature in which the Daily Mail has behaved:

Note the date. 6th April 2013 (ignore the time on the datestamp, Twitter sometimes gets that wrong for whatever reason).  The very next day, the Mail splashed its exclusive.  Think about that for a moment. On the very day it was planning a story designed to destroy her reputation, it invited her up for a photoshoot and a chat with one of their journalists.  All the while, they must have known what was being planned.  Frankly, I find this absolutely disgraceful behaviour by all those concerned.  I’m not surprised she was devastated with the story.  She had been lulled into believing that the lovely Mail were giving a 17 year old girl some positive coverage for doing something for her community.  Instead, she was being made to look a fool.  I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by this, but still…

I have been trying all day to ask the journalist responsible for the story, Russell Myers, why the Mail acted in this way. Despite having only 400 followers (and therefore fairly unlikely to be inundated with tweets), he has continually ignored my question.  Maybe he feels ashamed.  Maybe he doesn’t give a damn.  But either way, I think both he and his colleagues have behaved disgracefully over this story.  Of course the press are right to investigate and scrutinise.  But to abuse in this way is disrespectful and outrageous.

One last thing I would add, it also emerged that the police are investigating her tweets. This seems to me to be a spectacular waste of time and tax payers’ money (ironic given the Mail’s actions led to the investigation).  And I sincerely hope they do not pursue it any further. (Edit 9/4/13 20:51pm I didn’t make it very clear here but, as pointed out in the comments, the police are obliged to investigate where complaints have been made. The police are not at fault for this, they are merely performing their duties.)

So well done the Mail. You treated a 17 year old girl as a fool and brought about a police investigation into some distasteful tweets. So much for standing up for taxpayers and freedom of speech. Not doing a good job of proving that Leveson recommendations shouldn’t be implemented are you?

I’ve repeatedly contact the author of the story for an explanation as to why they felt it was necessary to invite Paris for a photo shoot and a chat when they were already planning this story.  If I get a response, I will post it here.

@rjmyers Have repeatedly asked you but had no response so I blogged about it instead. If you want to respond, let me know.

— Ian Clark (@ijclark) April 9, 2013

EDIT (13/4/2013): This blog post refers to actions that were believed at the time to have been carried out by the Daily Mail. The story was, however, written by a Mail on Sunday reporter and published in the Mail on Sunday, not the Daily Mail.

I guess in many ways there is no real pressing need to share my thoughts on the death of Margaret Thatcher.  At the time of writing there have been countless other personal contributions and there is probably very little to add on top of the blogs, news coverage, tweets etc etc.  But I’m going to have a go at committing some of my thoughts to writing.

I should start by saying that I was born in 1976 and whilst I didn’t directly feel the impact of the Thatcher government, I was aware of it.  Up until the age of 14, all I knew was Thatcher as Prime Minister.  Even after she left office, it was only when I hit 21 that I saw the end of one Conservative Party, and the beginning of another.  There is no doubt, however, that her premiership had an impact on me and it still does to this day. I grew up in a town in the south-east that had a strong socialist worker presence and, despite having a Tory MP, I don’t think anyone could accurately describe it as a town of the right (indeed, it has fluctuated between left and right for decades).  I worked with people who had a visceral hatred of her. People who were desperate to see the back of her.  She was a divisive character, provoking extreme emotional responses.

The news of her death today provoked a mixture of responses from me.  I felt that her passing would mean a sort of closure for many people whose lives had been destroyed by her destructive economic policies.  But I was also well aware that her death is, in many respects, meaningless.  The ideology she espoused of Friedmanite economics, the shrinking of the state, expansion of the private sector and assault on workers’ rights live on to this very day.  Indeed, so powerful has this corrosive ideology been, that even the party of the left has caved in to the neo-liberal agenda.  Thatcher may have died, but her ideology lives on and will, sadly, live on for some time to come unless progressive forces challenge it effectively and coherently.

But I was also angry. Angry because of the way history is currently being re-written.  Throughout the day, right-wing commentators have been acclaiming Thatcher as one of our great Prime Ministers.  Not only acclaiming her, but demanding that opponents keep quiet as a mark of respect for her passing.  Of course, this was not about a mark of respect, but presenting the right with an opportunity to whitewash her record and present her as a modern-day Churchill - a hero who saved this country from destruction.  I even saw John Major claim that he can’t think of a single peacetime prime minister in the twentieth century who comes even close to her impact (to which I screamed Attlee at the TV – a man who introduced social security and a National Health Service on the back of the economic crippling of the Second World War…a man who created, rather than destroyed). All the while, her opponents were supposed to remain quiet and allow this whitewash to proceed unhindered…standing by whilst history was re-written before their eyes.

Well, Thatcher wasn’t the great Prime Minister that some would have us believe. The truth about the miner’s strike is gradually coming out, with allegations emerging that the police provoked a riot to justify their brutal crackdown on the strike .  A crackdown that helped pave the way for the brutal economic policies that followed.  Of course, this has all been presented rather differently by Thatcher’s supporters.  This isn’t seen as an assault on decent, hard-working people, but as part of a clinical, necessary process to turn the country around.  Never mind that public support was won on the back of smears and possible MI5 involvement, this was, as far as the right would have us believe, a regrettable but necessary move.  And no matter how hard you try to argue with them, they will remain convinced it was justifiable because, in their minds, it was a crucial step towards ‘saving the country’ and building the Great Thatcher Myth.

But it’s not quite so easy to bat away all aspects of her record.  In 1999, Thatcher spoke of the ‘debt’ the UK owed Augusto Pinochet and thanked him for bringing ‘democracy to Chile’.  Pinochet, a man who came to power on the back of a coup against a democratically elected government. A man who murdered many thousands of left-wing opponents of the coup and his subsequent military dictatorship.  A man who, alongside other right-wing dictators in South America, had suspected communists murdered across the entire continent.  And Thatcher considered this man a friend and a man that she felt the UK was in debt to?  A vicious, murderous dictator? And some believe this support for a murderous dictator warranted receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Amongst all the talk of Thatcher as being a great and powerful voice for freedom and liberty from her supporters on the right, I have never come across any who have been able to explain away or whitewash her part in enabling the vile Pinochet regime.  Sure, they bat away the other criticisms with great ease, claiming that those who argued against them were somehow beholden to vested interests or were simply enemies of progress.  Whilst I disagree with that, it’s hard to argue against it (which has perhaps been a general failing of the left, a coherent argument that the vast majority can rally around).  I can’t possibly comprehend how anyone can put forward a coherent, moral defence of her support for Augusto Pinochet. This support will, for me, always be her legacy.  And it will be what I tell my children of her.  Because I don’t want that aspect of her record to be eradicated as part of a drive to present her as a ‘great leader’.

Economically speaking, there is no doubt that the Thatcher legacy lives on.  We see it all around us, in the world that she has created for us (a world, incidentally, where she gets the credit for the positive consequences of her actions, but must not be criticised for the negative consequences – social breakdown etc).  We see it in the way those on benefits are demonised on a daily basis.  We see it in the way the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are hastening the end of the National Health Service (a service created by a truly great and courageous leader).  We see this in the way that the poor are divided between those who are deserving and those who are not.  We see it in the way that those who must pay for the banking crisis are not the bankers or the financial sector, but the poor.  We see it in the way that democratic accountability is eroded as public services are shifted to the private sector and removed from public scrutiny.  For me, Thatcher will be remembered both for her support for vile regimes and for her destructive economic policies.  We must ensure that her public record is not whitewashed to present her as the great leader the right demand.  But, more importantly, progressives must make a concerted effort to undo the Thatcher Legacy rather than adopt a watered down variant (Labour). Her legacy should be confined to the history books, but only as a footnote.

I recently wrote an article for The Guardian exploring some of the ramifications of Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to make the Universal Credit system online-only.  As I have demonstrated here many times, there remains a very real digital divide for many millions of people; a divide not simply in terms of a lack of access, but also in a lack of skills to make full use of the technology. Unsurprisingly, many of those of working age caught on the wrong side of the divide tend to be the poorest in our society.  As a result, the intention to push the social security system online led to some very serious concerns, which in turn led to my article for The Guardian.

Since writing that article, I have spoken to a number of jobseekers who have personally experienced this drive to force them to use government web portals in order to seek out employment.  Their experiences are worrying and underline the fears raised by so many about the impact of forcing jobseekers online.  So I thought, rather than just repeat my concerns borne out of my understanding of the impact of this system, I should just ask one of them if they would be willing to write about their experiences for this blog.  They agreed. The following underlines, in my view, that neither Universal Jobmatch, nor the Universal Credit System, is fit for purpose.  The government needs an urgent rethink of its policies towards jobseekers because the danger is that government policy will trap them in poverty, not help them back into employment.  I only hope that the Opposition wake-up and challenge the poverty trap being created by the Coalition.

Anyway, here is one jobseeker’s experience of the new systems introduced by the coalition government…

Do you want to know how easy it is to become unemployed, and fall into that delightful category so beloved of this government of “skiver”, and be tagged with all the implications of laziness and fecklessness that it implies? It’s simple: all it takes is for your employer to make some bad business decisions, and there you go – you and everyone you work with can become instantly unemployed. In my case, this was done within 2 days, and we were all out the (securely locked behind us, hope you carried out everything you needed already) door, with the joyous additional factor of being given no notice or redundancy pay. What do you mean, you have financial commitments dependent on that pay packet you were expecting this month? Well: tough luck, you’re a Skiver now. A New Skiver.

Trying to struggle through the numbing shock in order to leap into action to fill out endless forms and kick off various processes was horrendous, but the good thing is that I’m pretty well educated, and I have the skills that mean that although the whole experience has been traumatic, I’m fairly confident that I’ve given the right information to the right people, at the right time, and I have the skills to find the right places to look and apply for jobs.

Now, I registered as a Jobseeker using my laptop, and my home internet connection, and I printed out confirmation materials and other documents that I needed using my own printer/scanner. I was lucky: I could do this comfortably at home, but it was a demanding process in many ways, asking me for information I either had to dig out of my household file folders, or that I had to log on to other sites to get, like the details of my bank savings and current accounts. It’s not something I would have wanted to do with strangers around, or in a public space. But what are your options, when you aren’t lucky enough to have these facilities at home? You go to a library, and make use of the facilities there…if you have a library…and if they have public computers…and if you can get time on them…and if you can input the information needed within that time…and if you have the computer skills to be able to understand what’s being asked of you by the forms, and how to respond appropriately. That’s a lot of elements that need to come together, in order for you to be able to get online.

As for the government websites that are meant to be getting people into employment…oh my!  Universal Jobmatch is the official government website for Jobseekers. It’s useless. Utterly, utterly useless. To start with, you have to be able to log in. As I’m writing this, it’s spent 25 minutes NOT logging me in, and I’ve had to give up and leave it. Ok, that’s not a huge problem for me, sitting at home, but what if you’re using a computer that you only have limited time on? That’s 25 minutes that could have been put to better use, but instead has been wasted waiting for a clunky website to decide to let you log in.

The site also insists on sending me alerts for jobs that haven’t even a tenuous link with the categories I have marked as my interests (the suggestions of a telesales role or a care home assistant are my personal favourites, when I’m looking for information professional or social media work), yet when I log in to look at them, and it asks me why I’m not applying for them, there’s no option to say “because this is utterly irrelevant to my requirements, your system is awful”. I’m waiting to see how long it is before I get told off for not trying hard enough in their systems. It’s actually so bad that I refuse to use it if I don’t have to, but that’s because I have other, better job sites available to me to use. What about the people who’ve been told that they MUST use the site, and don’t have the skills to know where else to look, or how else to do things? The site is so bad it’s almost certainly losing people the chance of employment, rather than helping them to find it.

So, what’s the future for us New Skivers? Apparently, one where we’re fighting for space in a library, wedded to a computer, spending frustrating and pointless hours wrestling with the Universal Jobmatch site, wasting time trying to get into a site that we can use to apply for jobs that closed weeks ago, using a format that the potential employer won’t accept. That’s definitely going to help people move from Skivers to Strivers….right? And anyone who doesn’t think the Universal Credit and Universal Jobmatch are amazing must just be happy being a skiver, and they’re loving the decadent lifestyle that their £71.70 a week Jobseekers Allowance enables them to live on.

Update

I have also been sent the following which I felt should be attached to the bottom of this post. It’s taken from a booklet called “Jobseekers Allowance: your responsibilities” and appears to be rather authoritarian in tone:

Note: you must tell us if you leave your home, even if only for a day.  Seems rather unnecessary to report on your whereabouts if out for the day…

I’m not normally into writing down my reflections on things, but I thought I’d jot down a few things I’ve learnt over the past couple of years as a result of my involvement in library campaigning.  Whilst it is borne out of my (fairly limited) experience of library campaigning, it might possibly be of interest to those who are thinking of getting involved in campaigning in general.  And with the current climate as it is, the likelihood is that more people will start campaigning for the things they care about…joining existing campaigns or starting new ones.  So, here are some of my thoughts based on my experiences so far…

1)      It’s hard. Well, best get this one out-of-the-way first of all.  I ain’t going to beat around the bush, it is hard work.  Hard and often demoralising.  You deal continually with a drip, drip, drip of bad news.  That’s the nature of the beast unfortunately.  When you are fighting for something that does good, it stands to reason that any attack on that is inherently depressing.    However, this can take you in one of two ways.  It can either galvanise you and make you more determined to push on and fight for what you believe in, or it can slowly grind you down until you can’t take it anymore.  Some people thrive on it, some don’t.  But it would be wise to be conscious of this before you commit to something. Don’t let it stop you, but make sure you are prepared for it and have some kind of coping mechanism.

2)      Some people on your own side will try to shoot you down.  Again, another depressing one I am afraid and one that I have personally been victim to.  No matter how much you fight for people, some people won’t appreciate your efforts.  They will disparage you, they will ridicule you and they will make it quite clear to you that they would rather you went away.  Whether this is borne out of guilt from not doing anything themselves or whether it is simply pure malice, there will be those you are fighting for (yes, fighting for) who will try to bring you down and damage your spirit.  It will hurt and you will dwell on it every time you look for reasons to give up.  But they are best ignored.  The vast majority will be behind you.

3)      Learn the art of compromise. In any campaign you will be dealing with a wide variety of individuals with different outlooks and different political viewpoints.  If you all pull in your own direction and refuse to compromise, your campaign will fall apart quicker than you can blink.  Instead you have to accept that sometimes the group will take decisions that you are not comfortable with.  That’s tough.  You chalk it down as a defeat that time, but there will be times when people will make sacrifices to support your proposals.  If you don’t work as a team and make those concessions, you will not succeed.

4)      Language is important. This is particularly important for when you are engaging in debates with people who either disagree with you entirely, or who are possible converts.  Language and how you use it is absolutely key.  It is the difference between a successful campaign and an unsuccessful one. To take an example from my own experience, I am aware that some people think the phrase “save libraries” is unhelpful.  Perhaps in some respects this is the case, it’s hardly a positive phrase to rally people around.  But then some other options are not much of an improvement.  For example, I’ve seen talk that “support libraries” is an improvement but on closer inspection it is a rather superficial alternative.  When opposing privatised or volunteer run libraries, “support libraries” comes across as a confused rallying call: “we support libraries but not these types of libraries.”  “Save libraries” isn’t perfect by any means, but it doesn’t paint you into a corner like some alternatives.  So, choose your words carefully!

5)      Campaigning is good for you! Ok, this is a little superficial but there have been some heavy points up until now so I wanted to balance it with something that might actually encourage people to campaign!  There is a perception that campaigning will be negative for your career.  You will be seen as a trouble-maker, someone who speaks their mind, a member of the awkward squad.  But the reality is that as well as the satisfaction in fighting for something you believe in, you develop a huge number of skills.  In my time involved in fighting for libraries I have chaired meetings; delivered a speech at a rally; been invited to talk about “breaking out of the echo chamber” for a national librarians’ conference; been interviewed by local radio, national radio, French radio and the national press; built contacts with national media and helped co-ordinate a number of nationwide events.  If you don’t think these things are good for your development, well…you’re way off the mark. So, that’s the superficial one out-of-the-way.

6)      You need to manage your time effectively! As I said at the beginning, campaigning is hard.  It takes up a fair amount of your time if you are not careful.  If you have a family, this can create some serious problems.  So, you need to develop your time management skills like a pro.  Ensure you have time away from doing any campaign type stuff, go out, see friends, go to gigs, get drunk, have fun, anything other than spending every waking hour fighting the good fight.  Sure, you’ll get the urge to spend a couple more hours on this or that, but you will do yourself and the campaign some good if you keep yourself fresh and enthused.  Bog yourself down too much and you will soon tire and create substantial problems for you and your family.  And this is also where teamwork comes into play.  Not only is it important to compromise with your fellow campaigners, it is also necessary to share the workload. If you don’t, stress and resentment will soon grow.

7)      Move fast. One of the key things I have learnt about campaigning on anything is to be quick out of the blocks.  This is the case particularly when making public statements.  Be the first to be seen to respond to an announcement or an action and you will have the ear of the press who will want to get stories out quickly to meet challenging deadlines.  Leave your response until 24hrs after the announcement and you will be ignored.  Be clear, be concise and be quick. This is easy if you are a small nimble organisation, much more difficult if you are a large national body.

8)      Exploit social media. The opportunities for campaigning organisations starting out now are manifold.  Whereas before it was expensive and time-consuming to campaign on an issue, now it is relatively easy to get a campaign started and draw attention to your cause.  If you aren’t fully up to speed with the range of social media tools out there, make sure you make that a priority.  Good campaigners are good social media operators.  Used effectively, social media can also play a big part in helping to manage your time more effectively.  A lot of social media tools enable things to be posted automatically without the need to spend an awful lot of time updating all your social media channels (Buffer is well worth checking out in this regard, as is IFTTT). Social media is your friend, learn to use it effectively and you will garner attention.

9)      People will get behind you! Whilst some on your own side will try to shoot you down, this is easily outweighed by the people who get in touch with you to voice their support and appreciation for what you do.  Each time you receive such support, it is a major boost to your energy levels.  You can be drowning in a sea of negativity, but just one message from someone saying they appreciate what you do can lift your spirits like nothing else.  Hang on to those moments and reflect on them when you can.  They will get you through the hard times.

10)   It is worth it.  Yes it’s hard.  Yes people shoot you down.  Yes people criticise you for your tactics.  Yes you will have to make compromises.  But you know what, you are fighting for what you believe in and there is no greater feeling than that.