Mike Meredith

The Tassimo System – The Late Review

 General  No Responses »
May 132010
 

This appears somewhat over a year since I bought a single-serve coffee system based around the Tassimo system. For those who are not aware this is basically an automated way of making “real” coffee (and in many cases other hot drinks) from a kind of capsule with a bar code on top to indicate what method to use when brewing. For those who are prepared to pay a little more for their morning coffee … and cannot justify the waste and hassle involved in brewing from ground coffee, a single-serve solution is brilliant.

The Tassimo system should be brilliant  – in theory it is technically superior to the other systems as it allows greater freedom to the capsule makers in determining how the drinks should be brewed. Different drinks like different water temperatures, different pressures, different amounts of water, etc.

But the Tassimo’s biggest weakness is the lack of choice of prepared drinks compared with other systems.

So why in the name of the Great Cthulhu do the Tassimo people restrict the distribution of the T-Discs to certain markets? There are coffees available in the UK which are not available in the US, and likewise for Europe. A number of examples follow :-

  • Whilst in the US there are five different Starbucks varieties whilst the UK has just one.
  • In Europe there is a “3-cup” variety of Jacobs coffee which is approximately the size of the coffee cups that Americans use whereas in the UK there is not a single large US sized coffee available despite UK residents being much more likely to encounter US-sized coffee and to like it.

There is an argument that those in the US would not like European coffees because they do not match their preferences and visa versa – in particular the size of the normal coffee cup. But why not give us the choice ?

In addition I suspect that it is very difficult for independent manufacturers to produce T-Discs – indicated as such by the absence of any products on the market. Sure I can understand a manufacturer wanting to promote their own products, but when you have a new system you need to attract the early adopters who are more likely to want a great range of products. Sure the ordinary shopper is just going to pick up what is available at their local supermarket – which is always going to be the products with the famous names rather than specialist products, but he or she won’t choose your products if nobody buys your system.

I can see the Tassimo system failing – not because it is poor, or because the other products compete better, but simply because the management behind the Tassimo product are incompetent

Hung Parliament: An Undemocratic Coalition Of The Defeated ?

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May 112010
 

There are those who claim that the possibility of the Tories and the Liberals combining into a coalition, or worse Labour and the Liberals combining into a coalition is undemocratic because it would not be what the public has voted for.

Perhaps, but it is no less democratic than a parliament with a clear majority. We do not have right to select the Prime Minister, just our representative in parliament. We expect our representative to vote for (actually technically it’s not vote against) the leader of his or her party. It is interesting to note that there is nothing in our system that allows for MPs changing parties – if you voted for a Labour party candidate, he gets elected and then immediately joins the Tory party, there is nothing to be done – your representative has been chosen even if you do not agree with his defection!

In reality, it is the elected MPs who decide who the Prime Minister is to be. What effectively happens is that the Queen (or King) selects a candidate Prime Minister. Although the Queen could pick whatever MP she wants as Prime Minister, in practice she selects the obvious choice – basically the leader of the majority party (or coalition). The Prime Minister then takes a “Queen’s Speech” to parliament and the MPs either vote in favour, or against – in which case the Prime Minister basically isn’t accepted by parliament so has to resign and force another election.

The key worry of those who claim that we could end up with an undemocratic result is with the possibility of a Labour-Liberal coalition – a “coalition of the defeated” – forming the next government. Is this fair ?

If you put add together the Labour, Liberal and nationalist MPs, they more than outnumber the Tory MPs, so even under our current electoral system, the hypothetical Labour-Liberal coalition is actually more representative of the will of the people than a Tory government.

After all, all the major parties have lost this election – Labour, Liberals, and Tories. The Tories have the largest number of MPs but not a majority. They cannot claim to have won this election any more than Labour can, because under our system “winning” is effectively having more than 326 MPs. And they do not.

If we end up with any coalition, it will be a coalition of the defeated. And yes the possible Tory-Liberal coalition is just as much a coalition of the defeated as a Labour-Liberal coalition would be.

Photographers And Anti-Terrorism Legislation

 Photography, Politics  No Responses »
May 112010
 

THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

It may seem a little over the top to quote a famous poem/speech by Martin Niemöller in relation to the use of anti-terrorism powers against photographers, but repression starts with small things that gradually build up. Are we seeing the beginnings of a repressive state where many ordinary activities are made effectively illegal ?

Photographers (although not myself as I’m not an urban photographer) have continually encountered the anti-terrorism laws being used to harass their profession or hobby. Some police are using said laws to stop activities that are perfectly legal – even going beyond their powers and confiscating equipment and deleting images! And in some cases they are co-operating with overly zealous security guards who are contacting the police to “protect” private property from being photographed from the public highway.

There may well be a case for increased police powers to combat terrorism, but the misapplication of such powers to curtail legitimate activities is the first step on the downhill slope towards a police state. Once we get used to being stopped and searched for quite normal activities, we become more accepting of additional powers that go further – short term detention for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, detention without trial for those suspected of links to terrorism, detention for those who might someday have links to terrorism, detention for those related to those suspected of links to terrorism, executions when the prisons get too full, etc.

The following links provide more information :-

UK Election 2010 – Gordon Brown Should Go ?

 Politics  No Responses »
May 092010
 

There are those who say that the election result is a clear defeat for Labour and Gordon Brown should immediately go. Actually that would be unethical and irresponsible. Gordon Brown is obliged to remain the Prime Minister until such time as a new Prime Minister emerges from the confusion of the current discussions on whether a coalition is possible.

Formally, the Prime Minister stays in power until the first parliament after an election takes place at which opportunity parliament can express its’ new views by voting down the old government’s Queens Speech. At which point the old Prime Minister is effectively forced to resign. In modern years, it is common when there is a clear result for the old Prime Minister to ask the Queen to appoint the new Prime Minister.

The whole point of the process is to avoid leaving the UK without a government for anything more than an hour. As such, Gordon Brown cannot resign in favour of the next Prime Minister because nobody has emerged who will take his place. If he were to resign, the current Labour deputy prime minister would take over.

Crime And Punishment

 Politics  No Responses »
May 082010
 

Many people believe that those who commit crimes should be punished as a sort of simplistic attitude – after all we punish children when they do something wrong – and for old testament style vengeance. Perfectly understandable, and to some extent I agree as I would quite happily see those who burgled my flat locked up for a very long time in a small sewer.

But does it work ? No, of course it does not.

After all these are adult criminals we are talking about, and prisons to them become little more than criminal universities where they take a brief break from a life of crime. And what is more, it is expensive keeping criminals locked up not just in terms of what it actually costs to keep them in prison, but also because prisoners are not ordinary productive members of society contributing to the cost of society (through taxation!).

Going back to the prison conditions, there are those who will have you believe that these are almost holiday camps with all sorts of funky facilities to make life pleasurable. Perhaps (although I would dispute that), but the cost of providing a prisoner with a place in prison is dominated by the cost of security.

Those woolly liberals would have you believe that non-custodial sentences where offenders serve some other kind of punishment such as community service, and especially are provided with a means to correct their life choices are more effective. This is particularly important when it comes to drug addicts – help them with their drug addiction and they no longer have to commit crime to support their habit.

Being nice to criminals is not something that sits easily with the vengeance brigade – they would rather see them suffer. But if being nice to offenders achieves results, I say it is worth doing. I would rather see the number of victims of criminals fall than to see the punishments made worse.

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