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| How to be a stingy santa | Ariane Sherine Regifting is a resourceful use of unwanted goods – nothing to be ashamed of. Just don't get caughtTwo Christmases ago, my 84-year-old grandmother gave me a pair of ostentatious clip-on earrings and a necklace, all the size of two-pence pieces. They were the kind of big, sparkly crystal adornments favoured by old ladies, small girls and magpies and, though I loved my gran and tried the jewellery on in front of her, telling white lies about how much I liked it, I also planned to take it all to the nearest charity shop.At the time, I was looking after a nine-year-old girl at weekends. I had already bought her Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials book trilogy for Christmas, despite her preference for "games for my Nintendo DS". Maybe, it suddenly struck me, giving her the jewellery would compensate for my lack of electronic generosity? It seemed so. When I handed over her gifts, the nine-year-old ignored the books, tore the paper off the rewrapped box and gazed at the jewels, resplendent in their faux-velvet casing."Wow!" she gasped, eyes wide. "These must have cost at least a million pounds!" I decided it would be unfair to disabuse her of this notion. "Mm," I replied. She beamed, asked me to do up the clasp on the necklace, then declared, "This is my best Christmas present ever!"I felt warm and Christmassy inside. All was right with the world, as the nine-year-old paraded around in sparkling splendour. Granted, she forgot about the jewellery just weeks later and reiterated her request for Nintendo DS games, but that's what nine-year-olds do.Time went by, and soon it was spring. On a visit to my grandmother's, I showed her a picture the girl had drawn. "Bring her round!" she suggested, before starting to plan what she could feed us.And so, a few months later, I arrived at the nine-year-old's house, ready to take her to meet my grandmother. She came bounding down the stairs, wearing her best dress, patent leather shoes – and, for the first time in months, the jewellery I had given her at Christmas.I gulped hard. This, I suddenly realised, was the peril of regifting. I suddenly felt less like a resourceful redistributor of unwanted goods and more like a fraudulent cheapskate who was about to sadden both a kindly old lady and a trusting small child. The latter would find out the gift hadn't been a special million-pound purchase, while the former would discover that her carefully chosen present had been carelessly bestowed upon another.There had to be a solution that would save everyone's feelings – but what? If I asked the nine-year-old to take off the jewellery for no good reason, she would get suspicious and refuse. I couldn't claim that my grandmother didn't like jewellery, because she always wore at least four items – and if I said she didn't like jewellery on children, the nine-year-old would definitely ask my grandmother why. My grandmother would reply that she didn't mind at all – at which point, the nine-year-old would pull out the dreaded regift, explaining that "Ariane got this for me for Christmas". And, despite being 84, my extremely astute gran would be bound to recognise the jewels.It was a nightmare of potential awkwardness. I considered cancelling the visit altogether, before remembering that both the nine-year-old and my grandmother had been looking forward to it for months, and the latter was probably cooking samosas and chapatis right now as I wrestled with my conscience. Postponing and lying that I didn't feel well enough would make me an even worse person.I thought quickly. We had to pass my flat on the way to the bus stop. "That jewellery looks really nice with that dress," I began, "but I have some jewellery at home that looks even better."The nine-year-old looked intrigued. "What's it like?" she asked. "It's newer, and even more sparkly," I promised. "Tell you what, let's go and get it."When the girl took off her earrings and necklace, I hid them round the back of a plant pot. The jewellery I replaced them with wasn't really newer or more sparkly, but it had a novelty value that the three-month-old gift lacked.That day, the nine-year-old and my grandmother got on famously, and even bonded over their love of big jewellery. Meanwhile, I learned a valuable lesson about the spirit of Christmas: always regift your presents to someone who will never meet the giver. ChristmasNintendoAriane Sherineguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Don't blame the system for winter travel chaos. Stay put | Simon Jenkins Hypermobility is now the opium of the people, an obsession that wrecks communities and planet. There are no free tripsNature loves irony. As Copenhagen's Glastonbury of gloom ended last week and the global warming groupies jetted home, they were greeted by, of all things, a freeze. "Road, rail and air chaos as UK grinds to a halt," cried the Guardian. The Times shrieked, "Worst driving conditions in years." The BBC asked: "Is the government doing enough?" Britain was paralysed by a little ice. It was "the curse of the fluffy French snowflake" – and all the fault of the French.My solution to winter travel chaos? Don't travel. Stay indoors. Build a fire. Live and shop within walking distance of civilisation. Associate with neighbours. See distant relatives some other time of the year. Above all, do not complain if you insist on laying siege to motorways, stations and airports and the weather or the labour force let you down, as they do every year. It is not their fault, it is yours for being there.Of all human activities that bring out the selfish in mankind, nothing compares with travel. The externalities of travel economics should be on every school curriculum. We see mobility through our own eyes alone, with no view of the similar demands of others. I am a free and independent spirit innocently enjoying the right to roam; you are a travel-mad lemming who thinks he has a God-given right to tarmac, train or plane just when I am there. Get out of my way.I need not dwell on the miseries of Copenhagen, except to suggest that it illustrates the problem rather than the solution. The craving to move and to congregate – not least by those who bore all and sundry on the glories of the internet – has been the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions over the past half century, above all from the internal combustion of carbon. Total greenhouse gas emissions from homes (24% of England's total) are now equalled by road transport emissions. Travelling does as much damage to the earth's atmosphere as all other domestic activities put together. Yet powered movement is a craving no government is willing to curb. Hypermobility is the totem of personal liberty. New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has been very indulgent of mobility. Under Blair the cost of private motoring fell to the lowest for a quarter of a century. Sir Rod Eddington's 2006 report calculating that vehicle congestion charges could raise £24bn was rejected. So, too, was his conclusion that better management of the railway could handle demand with no need for new lines. Rail subsidies (which burn carbon too) have quadrupled. Air travel remains largely duty free. Airport construction continues apace, despite some 90% of air travel being discretionary or leisure.Meanwhile the government pursues a policy of closing such local institutions as primary schools, cottage hospitals and post offices and encouraging out of town shopping and rural housing estates. All lead to an increase in the need for motor travel. If a hospital visit requires a drive of 50 rather than five miles, the NHS does not pay but someone does; indeed everyone does.At the height of this year's recession, the only industry accorded the lifebelt of direct subsidy, courtesy of Lord Mandelson, was cars. They alone were protected from the plunge in general demand orchestrated by Alistair Darling to find money to rescue his beloved banks. I noticed no bicycle scrappage scheme, let alone a walking-boot one.As the geographer, John Adams, points out, mobility may seem "liberating and empowering for individuals", but it also destroys the propinquity essential to more efficient living and to community and civic cohesion. Like the internet, which paradoxically appears to boost travel by making it more efficient, hypermobility has replaced real neighbourhoods with pseudo ones. People rush anywhere that delivers a new experience, from a weekend break to a global warming conference. Hypermobility is the opium of the people. It panders to instant gratification while dulling a sense of community.Before the invention of jet travel, the idea of a winter holiday was unthinkable for any but the very rich. It was near certain that some hazard would make any journey a dice with disaster. Not for nothing was Cherry-Garrard's "the worst journey in the world" a snowbound one. Today we expect the travel industry to be on a war footing for our personal convenience all year round, and we blame government for some regulatory failing if performance is not up to scratch. Ban the BA stewards from going on strike. Strip Eurostar of its contract. Why are more trains not running? Where were the gritting lorries? Someone should be fired.Since hypermobility both dilutes a sense of place and (mostly) increases carbon emissions, governments should be charged with curbing or at least not promoting it. This means planning the town and country so as to minimise the need for ever longer journeys. It means rationing travel capacity by congestion or by price. Since governments are scared of price, most choose to ration by congestion. Summer and winter "road and rail chaos" is the result, with blame conveniently attaching to operators. Everybody thinks it is cars, trains and planes that cause gridlock – when in reality it is people.I do not see how policy can avoid curbing by price, in transport as in domestic energy consumption. This is the more appropriate since travel is seldom a necessity and usually a luxury. Just as courses and conferences are business perks, ways of burning off surplus overhead, so weekends away and second or third holidays abroad are a discretionary option, a dream that somewhere the grass will be greener than at home.The extension of that dream to millions of poorer people is one of the most obvious outcomes of prosperity. But it has come at a price, now recognised as higher than previously understood. That price should be acknowledged in fuel duty, road tolls, rail fares and airport taxes, anything to curb demand.There are no two ways about this. Travelling must bear the global externalities that it imposes on other users of the planet. There is no absolute right to roam. There is no free trip. We must initiate the rebirth of domestic space.Transport policyTransportClimate changeTax and spendingTony BlairGordon BrownAlistair DarlingWeatherEnergyAir transportAirline industrySimon Jenkinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Nestle rules out bid for Cadbury Food giant Nestle says it does not intend to table a bid for Cadbury, while Kraft changes the terms of its takeover offer. news.bbc.co.uk |
Will Google stand up to France and Italy, too? | Rebecca MacKinnon The stand against China will rightly be lauded. But western states also imperil internet freedomGoogle's stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance – triggered by suspicions that China had been trying to hack activists' accounts – will be rightly lauded by defenders of human rights. But when it comes to upholding Google's vow not to "do evil" by its users, China is by no means the company's only headache. Before those of us in western democracies get too high on our horses about Google and China, we should remember that the Chinese are not the only ones putting pressure on Google in ways that are arguably harmful to freedom of expression, even when intentions are honorable. A growing number of governments – many democratically elected – share an attitude that internet companies should be expected to act as "net nannies" for their citizens.In the past several years, internet censorship has spread rapidly throughout a range of political systems. According to the Open Net Initiative, a consortium of academics and computer scientists who track censorship trends, the number of countries that censor the internet has gone from a handful a decade ago to almost 40 today – and the censorship club's fastest growing membership segment consists of democracies.Google's woes in many countries have to do with something lawyers call "intermediary liability": the intermediary service – which serves as a conduit for customers to post videos, photos or blogs, send messages, search for web content, or whatever – is held liable and can potentially be sued, prosecuted or otherwise punished for what its users do on its service. In the US, intermediaries are not held directly liable for users' postings and communications. If they were, Google executives are quick to point out, it's unlikely that YouTube, Facebook or Blogspot could have got off the ground. The risk of getting sued into oblivion or being sent to jail for aiding and abetting crime would have been too high – or the staffing costs required to monitor content in order to prevent those two things from happening would have been prohibitive for a startup company.China's system for censoring domestic websites – including domestically operated versions of foreign-branded sites like Google.cn – relies on intermediary liability. Websites located outside China that the state doesn't want people to see are blocked by the infamous filtering system known as the "great firewall of China". The Chinese government has no influence over what actually appears on those sites because the people running them are not physically in China and the data isn't being kept on computers in their jurisdiction. Websites operating inside China, however, are controlled more directly – by holding them liable. Operators are held legally responsible for everything appearing on or passing through their services. They are expected to delete offending content in a sufficiently timely manner, or risk being shut down.Dozens of Chinese web and mobile companies that failed to police their content adequately have been forced to close their doors over the past year for this reason. Google.cn, as a domestically operated service, has likewise been held responsible for what its users search and find. It has been under growing pressure from the authorities over the past year due to its failure to remove objectionable links from its search results to their satisfaction.Ironically, David Drummond – Google's chief legal officer who penned its stunning announcement this week – is facing criminal charges in Italy. Why? Because last year YouTube staff failed to act quickly enough to remove all copies of a video clip of an autistic child being bullied by his classmates. The core issue is a tough one for democracies: when awful people put ghastly video on the internet, with devastating consequences to innocent people, who should be held responsible and punished? Google's lawyers argued that staffers acted in good faith and removed the offending video as soon as they were made aware of it. The Italian prosecutors countered that Google had failed to do enough to prevent harm to an innocent child.In France, President Sarkozy's government has created a new agency called the Higher Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Copyright on the Internet. It requires internet service providers to monitor users for piracy of copyrighted music and video and send warnings to violators. A violator who ignores all warnings and persists would be brought before a judge and, if found guilty, could have their internet service cut off. While free speech activists pushed for a court hearing to be included in the legislation – the original bill didn't even involve the due legal process of a court hearing – serious concerns remain about the extent to which ISPs will be required to monitor the actions of their users, and whether these surveillance functions could be abused.The UK's digital economy bill would involve similar measures – sparking similar concerns from civil liberties groups about privacy and surveillance, and whether there will be sufficient public oversight and accountability of the system to prevent abuse.In India, a law that went into effect last October holds domestic and international internet companies – including Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – accountable for helping to maintain "public order, decency, or morality". Companies are expected to be proactive about removing potentially inflammatory material. Failure to comply can result in jail terms for executives of up to seven years. The main impetus behind the law is religious violence – an ongoing problem in India that can be inflamed by hate-filled postings.YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking services have become powerful tools for opposition parties, political dissidents and whistleblowers around the world. But their power may be constrained, even in democracies, as intermediary liability is seized upon as the easy way to fight crime, porn, defamation and intellectual property piracy.Voters in democracies are understandably appalled at the ways in which bad people can use these sites to do awful things. Companies are understandably seeking government help in dealing with piracy. But if democracies decide that the primary solution to all these internet-era problems is to hold internet and mobile companies heavily liable for policing users – rather than finding some other way to fight crime and address other socially undesirable behaviour – authoritarian leaders around the world can also breathe a sigh of relief that the so-called free world is moving in their direction rather than the other way round.So, for that matter, can incumbent politicians in many democracies, who would rather not have to face internet-organised grassroots citizens' movements empowered by YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and whatever innovations might come after them. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.ChinaInternetGoogleCensorshipFranceIndiaItalyRebecca MacKinnonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Paraguay footballer Cabanas shot Paraguay's international striker Salvador Cabanas is in a serious condition after being shot in the head in Mexico City. news.bbc.co.uk |