Author Archives: mjr

#coops14 sees last days of Downham Food Co-op

2014-06-27 by mjr

While  cooperatives fortnight is mostly a celebration of how well cooperatives are doing in the UK, this year is tinged with sadness for me because it sees Downham Food Coop stop trading. This Friday and Saturday will be their last … Continue reading →

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New comments methods

2014-06-25 by mjr

After years of resisting it, I’ve added the least evil Twitter/Facebook comments plugin I could find to this blog as a test and updated the comments policy a little. Please kick the tyres and try commenting to see if it … Continue reading →

Posted in Wordpress and Blogs | 6 Comments

The Kelly Lessons in About 1555 Characters

2014-05-01 by mjr

So the Kelly report “of the independent review into the events leading to the Co-operative Bank’s capital shortfall” was published yesterday. During the day, I was putting odd bits from it out in 140 characters with the hashtags #coops #kellylessons. … Continue reading →

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Request for West Norfolk to Complete the PCC Consultation

2014-01-09 by mjr

Please excuse the intrusion to your usual software and co-op news items but vine seems broken and as part of my community and democratic interests, I’d like to share this short clip quoting Norfolk’s Deputy Police Commissioner Jenny McKibben about … Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Democracy | Leave a comment

About Co-ops & Governance

2013-12-09 by mjr

There have been some dark days for UK coops recently – the crystal Methodist and all that – and I have not been able to talk about it much because of the amount of work that I want to do … Continue reading →

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The 2012 Update to the Worker Co-op Code

2013-10-03 by mjr

We like guidelines. In our work, things like the Debian Free Software Guidelines, pep8 and Koha Coding Guidelines are quite useful. I follow guidelines for how I work, too. In addition to the financial reports required by government, our co-op … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperatives | 1 Comment

Send updates to live cycling news reports to the speech synth

2013-09-29 by mjr

The BBC coverage of the UCI Women Road Race World Championship wasn’t starting until 3pm, BBC Radio 5 Live had football and Sports Extra was playing an advert loop (really BBC?), Eurosport wasn’t covering the race at all, RAI Sport … Continue reading →

Posted in GNU/Linux | 4 Comments

Upgrading to Debian 7 wheezy

2013-09-13 by mjr

So I have upgraded my main workstation at last, but there are a few things I wanted to figure out. Some of these I found an answer to, but others I haven’t and some answers open more questions: Where did … Continue reading →

Posted in GNU/Linux | 3 Comments

Misusing a Royal Baby and Child Porn to Censor The Internet

2013-07-23 by mjr

There’s been some media coverage at the start of this week about blocking child porn. Except it’s not about child porn – that’s a trojan horse. People who want to access pornography that is already illegal (Protection of Children Act … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, Education, Training and Information, SPI | 1 Comment

Cooperatives Fortnight 2013

2013-06-21 by mjr

Cooperatives Fortnight 2013 starts tomorrow. Our co-op is taking part in a few activities this year. Come along and meet us, or find other events on the national website. This Sunday, I’ll be riding 50 miles in support of Leonard … Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Cooperatives | Tagged , | 1 Comment