1x48: Say You Want A Revolution

Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge return from the brief summer hiatus to bring you Bad Voltage, in which what we want is not what Google want, we might be more outside the mainstream than was previously thought, and:

  • 00:04:25 Politics and outliers: the UK and the US are both seeing challenges to politics from people outside the establishment -- Donald Trump for president of the USA, and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK challenging for leader of the Labour party. Are people sick of politics? And will this sort of outsider challenge shake up the grey consensus currently running the world?
  • 00:24:33 Stuart reviews the Meizu MX-4 Ubuntu edition, the latest smartphone running Ubuntu, and talk about this new handset and the Ubuntu phone software
  • 00:42:51 Lots has gone on over in Google world recently: the creation of the new Alphabet holding company, the release of the OnHub router, and a change in focus for Google Plus not least among them. What's going on with G+, and what does Alphabet mean for all of us?

We're doing a live show, and you can be in the audience! See details of Bad Voltage Live, in Fulda, Germany on September 30th 2015, at badvoltage.org/live!

Download the show now!

First of all Iā€™m glad we went all politika.

As someone who hears ā€œJeremy Corbynā€ flood youtube with ā€˜sensibleā€™ pub politics, Iā€™m finally happy that all of the ā€˜bozoe-politiciansā€™ are getting weeded out of the labour party here in the UK.
Iā€™ve also heard some of the other ā€˜social-celebritiesā€™ talk of Comrade Corbyn.

e.g. Billy Bragg , The Trews , Owen Jones amongst others.

Finally although heā€™ll never get into power, I think we need a lefty to keep things in check. Fuck me, heā€™s anti-monarchy, and after this debate weā€™ll finally get the House of Lords out.

Heā€™s got the ā€˜Iā€™m not irrationalā€™ charm about him, and thatā€™s something you canā€™t buy.

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Just how serious are people taking the US election, with a mere 445 days now left? A 15 year old is running under the name Deez Nuts. Heā€™s now polling 3rd in North Carolina.

ā€“jeremy

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Hard to be further outside the Establishment than that :slight_smile:

Itā€™s so bloody sad that Ubuntu Touch doesnā€™t allow stuff to run properly in the background, so no XMPP. To me, a complete show stopper.

Also, I think the biggest appeal was the demo where you could drop it into a docking station and have a desktop; thatā€™s a real USP.

If @jonobacon grill were used to send smoke signals, wouldnā€™t that be pretty well one sided? If that is the case, then wouldnā€™t it be more appropriate to load up that bad boy and haul it to @bryanlunduke? :smile:

Edit: Jono, please, tell us, how do you really feel about your grill? :smile:

XMPP is possible: see https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/3hpsg8/partial_jabber_on_ubuntu_touch/ and specifically sporfā€™s comment on how itā€™s being worked on with push notifications. Iā€™d like to see this happenā€¦!

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Well, from time to time you can hear some off remark in every podcast that starts burning your ears. Some bullshit like ā€œbuilding a giant wall to fend off Mexicans is a left wing ideaā€. And you start thinking how to respond. Was Caesar a left-winger when he famously built the wall to stop the Gaul migration? Was emperor Hadrian a left winger when he build walls, like, everywhere (but is known mostly for his wall in Britain)? How communist was Qin Shi Huang in the third century BC when he started the construction of the Great Wall?

Donā€™t get me wrong. Someone suggesting that building walls to cut out a certain population from a certain area is right-wing only would be a bullshitter as well.

Really, made my morning dogwalking a lot funnier. :stuck_out_tongue:

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To correct a slight error from @sil the full fee for being a member of Labour party and hence eligible to vote for the next leader is Ā£15 a year not Ā£10. I am a member and I will be voting for Corbyn.

I would take issue that Jeremy Corbyn is a whacko Marxist communist. If you take the time to study his policies Iā€™m sure you would agree that he talks a lot of sense even if donā€™t always agree with him. I think a lot of the reasons people are turned off by politics is because by having a first past the post system and this leads to a rush towards the middle especially in what is essentially a two party system.

I think Mr Corbyn has done a lot to expand the debate and he appeals to the traditional Labour party voter. If he wins we will have a much stronger and more effective opposition. There is a danger however that because he represents the centre left of the party a Corbyn led Labour party may find it more difficult elected.

I would suggest that both the UK and the US have systemic problems and a much wider debate is needed.

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Perhaps, but the point isnā€™t ā€œget the Labour party electedā€. Itā€™s ā€œget policies which actually fix the world enactedā€. If Labour, in order to get elected, just become Tories with red rose badges, then who cares who wins? If the country will honestly only elect a centre-right party who cut taxes on the rich and impose mass surveillance on everyone, then thatā€™s the problem.

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@sil I couldnā€™t agree more which is why Iā€™m calling for a wider political debate, not necessarily here on the Bad Voltage website but in general. If we are not discussing the issues and the alternative options available we are not going to find the right policies and convince enough people to get these policies enacted.

As I said in my previous post I will be voting for Corbyn: He has a passion for doing what he believes is right for everybody not just the few. I stand behind most of what he has to say and I believe he has the policies that will help fix the world.

Iā€™m just recognising that we have a struggle ahead of us that we win one vote at time by discussing them with other people and convincing them our argument is the better one.

I agree that in recent years the Labour have become Tory light and could easily imagine any of the other 3 candidates being members of the Conservative party. Only Jeremy is offering a real alternative and I am prepared to continue the fight.

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Thatā€™s pretty hot off the press!

Iā€™ll give it a go.

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When I was in middle school, people at my school, for some reason, almost all used Google+, possibly more than they used Facebook, so Iā€™d say that it did catch on in some smaller communities. However, towards the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, activity started moving over to Facebook, and at this point I use Google+ basically only for tech stuff, and Facebook for everything else, not out of preference but because thatā€™s where people are.

Not sure I know anyone who isnā€™t a tech person. :slight_smile:

Iā€™m still a user of G+. Itā€™s a rare signal in the noisy sea of social media. As @sil pointed out to me, @bryanlunduke is not on G+ at the moment so Iā€™m pinging him here to say Iā€™ve not got a box oā€™crap yet :). If youā€™ve sent a second one, you might want to double check with the other yank^Wfolks from the land of freedom and peace what form of words they used to address it.

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Yo! @bryanlunduke! Your integrity is being challenged. Step up.

Good show. I was a little surprised, in all the discussion of nutcase politicians and public disenchantment, that @sil didnā€™t draw any comparisons between UKIP and The Trump. Though I guess I just did :smile:

Mainly 'cos Iā€™d have had to explain Ukip to @jeremy and @bryanlunduke, which is more effort purveying their story than I really want to put in :smile:

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Isnā€™t that redundant?