Rearing its head (again).

The last phrase of my previous blog could not have been more prophetic. It has slipped out (an entirely apposite way of doing business as far as the current UK government is concerned - they are all so slimy things cannot help but slip out, slide out, ooze disgustingly around our feet giving off a bad smell…) Sorry, where was I (apart from expressing a loathing so deep it makes me physically ill).

Ah, yes. It has slipped out that the ConDems want to review copyright law in the UK. Details are vague, but the gist of it is that they want to make it easier for those poor, suffering, cash-strapped corporations like News Corporation, Sky, Google, Facebook and so on to use work by creative folk and not have to pay for it.

We’ve already had a bout of whining from people who think that creatives should not have their work copyrighted after they die. Thus depriving their families - who have probably lived in poverty for decades - from reaping any reward for supporting someone who has spent their lives entertaining and enlightening others.

In the last few days we’ve had the explosion of wrath over a cookery magazine that has been stealing other people’s work and when challenged the ‘editor’ (who is clearly ignorant about copyright law as it currently exists) had the audacity to try to charge the complainant for editorial work (which did not need doing). That isn’t just ignorance; that is bullying.

Bullying is what the big corporations are good at. They buy politicians to do it for them, but it goes on just the same. The only thing we get to vote for these days is which particular bunch of scum-sucking CEOs we want in charge of us. The rest makes no difference at all. At the moment it is banks and media corporations who call the shots. They don’t want to have to pay us anything, although they do want us to keep feeding them. Perhaps they will eventually realise that a parasite needs to keep its host alive and reasonably healthy - other wise when the host dies the parasite dies with it.

Of course, it is not an equal relationship. The host can exist without the parasite. When the host wakes up to that fact, we can but hope that the parasite is removed and squashed under heel.