Nature is elegant. It solves problems. In nature we find the ears of the bat, the neck of the giraffe, the legs of the cheetah and the eyes of the hawk. It experiments and finds new ways of doing things. Failed experiments die away, whilst successful experiments reproduce themselves and become more populous. Nature is the way it is because it hosts the greatest competition of all: the competition to survive. That same competition underpins every competition between complex systems. Those complex systems may be countries, as in the cold war victory of the US over the former Soviet Union, or animals, like the gazelle that must flee and the lion that must eat, or the rivalry between businesses competing for scarce resources, market share, and revenues. There is no bigger idea than the simple idea that the fight for survival promotes change, and grants prolonged life to those that make the right changes, whilst killing off those that do not change or make the wrong changes.

So what lessons can be learned from nature right now? The human race has woken up to the greatest fight for survival since Homo sapiens first emerged. Our species has done wonderfully, and has expanded rapidly in living memory, growing from a little over 1.5 billion at the start of the twentieth century to over 6 billion by its end. We have learned to make more and more food from the same amount of land. We survived the Black Death. Our own predilection for war caused great losses, but the human race kept recovering and replacing the dead with more living. Problem after problem has been overcome by science and technology. The irony is that our very success now poses our greatest threat to survival: that we might destroy our climate, torching our Earth and turning it into an inhospitable husk. The battle against global warming is the struggle which will increasingly grip our attention and inspire our creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention, and there is no greater necessity than to preserve our world.

We can wage the war on global warming at both the macro and micro levels, and we will devise plenty of strategies. This will generate an incredible variety of opportunities for all kinds of enterprise, at every scale. By the same token, governments will be increasingly focused on the goal of saving the planet, not least because of the biological drive that says every citizen, whether President or peasant, wants their offspring to survive. Governments will be looking for ways to back potential winning solutions, both big and small. Businesses will imagine, pioneer and perfect many new kinds of solutions to solve energy problems we previously did not know we had. Good solutions, like creating new kinds of renewable energy and devising more efficient lifestyles, will survive beyond what a normal business would call long-term. By recasting the human struggle for survival, we are also redefining the economics of the human race, changing the index for prosperity from increased consumption to more efficient consumption. In the process, we are rearticulating the objectives of every business.

What strategies will the human race explore, as it fights against global warming? Some strategies will be about cleaning up the mess we created, like removing the carbon that is already in the atmosphere, whether through mechanical scrubbers or genetically modifying plant life to breathe in more carbon dioxide. Others will be about doing the same things as we do now, but with diminished impact on the environment. This includes finding replacements for oil as the portable fuel source for vehicles. We will innovate about how to achieve our same overall objectives, whilst doing fewer things that consume energy. This will promote technologies for homeworking, teleconferencing and organizing people in remote groups, so they can work together without needing to be in the same room. It also means organizing ourselves so that food is grown locally, and not transported over vast distances. Yet other strategies will involve supplying our energy needs without using fossil fuels, which involves both harnessing resources like wind, wave and sun but also storing energy efficiently, so we can save the energy we make to be used when we need it. As well as efficient creation of energy, there will also be more enterprising solutions for efficient distribution of energy, through innovations like installing smart meters in homes and businesses, or by improving the cost-effectiveness of microgeneration, so electricity is produced where it is being used.

Nature solves problems through constant innovation in the relentless fight for survival. The human race will do the same; harnessing its innovative gifts and finding ways to keep nature on a constant course, and hence ensuring our planet remains inhabitable. It is the biggest idea of all, as true in a recession as it is during a boom. This single big idea will give birth to countless ideas of every kind imaginable, and probably many more that we currently cannot imagine. The only sure way to fail is to duck the challenge and do nothing to innovate for a low-energy, sustainable-energy future. Some businesses may decide to ignore the fight on global warming, and will only react when energy prices force them to react. The winners in the recession, like in all enterprise, will be the businesses that turn a threat into an opportunity. The businesses that will prosper in the long run, will be the businesses that are in the vanguard of the war on global warming.

This week saw the publication of the British Government’s Digital Britain report. Whatever else it told us, it confirmed one thing: we are living in the soundbyte generation. Somebody in Number 10 probably got a pack on the back for all the snappy phrases they packed both into the report and the promotion that surrounded it. The barrage of 21st century cliches only served to show how deeply out of touch they really are. In the end, the report is a squalid mess that would neither get the attention of the disinterested nor appeal to anybody who cares, with one notable exception. The Gordon Brown vision is that next generation Britain will be a high-tech low-carbon super-fast knowledge economy, where we unlock imagination at this vital tipping point. Sexy phrases. But what a load of tosh. Look past the quotes from Clay Shirky and you find an underlying message that is the antithesis of the distributed, fast-moving, creative, and often anarchic world of the internet. Let me spell out Brown’s vision of Digital Britain in one sentence: Digital Britain is a business, run for big business, by big business, with the Government playing a vital part in keeping big business happy and making sure everybody knows their place.

With a bit of luck, the Digital Britain report will soon morph from blueprint of the future into forgotten historical curiosity. Its sponsor, Stephen Carter, is apparently planning to change jobs soon, and the report may get lost down the back of the filing cabinet when he leaves. It is about time Carter moved on. The Communications Minister has a long and impressive CV for a man of only 45. Impressive, until you realize that means he keeps changing job. Impressive, until you realize he keeps changing job because he was never any good at any of them. Before being Communication Minister, Carter was Brown’s chief of strategy. Brown is now the most unpopular British Prime Minister in living memory, less popular even than Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher just polarized opinion. Everybody is agreed on Brown: they all hate him. Even his own party hates him. Brown admitted in a recent interview that strategic planning had been one of his weaknesses. What does that say about Carter, his former strategy chief? Previously, Carter was the boss of Ofcom, taking on the tough task of cutting waste but largely seeing its importance degraded. Much of its importance had been usurped at European level, and even when it came to British standards of taste and decency, it was repeatedly floundering in the wake of events like the Celebrity Big Brother/Jade Goody ‘racism’ outrage. Before Ofcom, Carter was boss of ntl, the cable operator. When George Blumenthal, ntl’s co-founder, left the company, he sent staff an email that openly criticized “the management consultants, the toothpaste marketers and the other Carterets”. He was also unpopular with ntl shareholders, which may have had something to do with him leaving with a £1.7m payoff after steering ntl into bankruptcy. The only jobs that Carter has done well have all been in the advertising industry. That is the key to understanding the Digital Britain report, and the spin around it. It is one big, clever advert, for a rubbish old product and rubbish old ideas. The Digital Britain report is exactly the kind of marketing made by advertising companies for big business. The people writing the report come from advertising. The message they push is that big business is good. The only difference is that Brown paid for the report from taxpayers’ pockets. If the advice in the report is followed, taxpayers will find themselves paying again and again.

Pulling apart the whole report is going to take a long time, and many people have already torn it to shreds. Instead of emulating them, let us examine the synopsis from the mouthpiece himself: Gordon Brown. Brown wrote an article for the The Times, all about Digital Britain and the report. Of course, I mean that somebody from a PR background, probably a chum of Stephen Carter, wrote an article for The Times, and Brown put his name to it. This is how it went…

The digital revolution is changing all our lives beyond recognition and today we shall set out how Britain must change with it.

How Britain must change with it? This implies the government are somehow leading the way. The funny thing about the digital revolution, and the impact it has on people, is that it has happened without the government leading the way. After all, revolutions involve ordinary people overthrowing governments, not governments telling ordinary people what to do. There is no evidence that Britain’s government has the insight, skills, experience or vision to be telling the rest of us what to do to keep pace with this revolution. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Whether it is to work online, study, learn new skills, pay bills or simply stay in touch with friends and family, a fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water.

That is a sexy soundbyte. ‘As indispensable as electricity, gas and water’. Many journalists repeated or paraphrased it. Keep it in mind, because we will come back to it later.

Just as the bridges, roads and railways built in the 19th century were the foundations of the Industrial Revolution that helped Britain to become the workshop of the world, so investment now in the information and communications industries can underpin our emergence from recession to recovery and cement the UK’s position as a global economic powerhouse.

Investment is key. Nobody argues with that. But who is doing the investment, and why? Picking bridges, roads and railways is far from the most obvious analogy. The most obvious analogy would be the investment in the telegraph. The Victorians spent tremendous amounts of money in laying the infrastructure so the whole world could communicate for the very first time. Because of the telegraph, messages could be sent almost instantly across the world for the very first time. Huge ships laid enormous lengths of cable along the seabed, spanning the vast distances between the continents. The greatest investment in the international telegraph network came from Britain. So if we want an analogy that is about Britain investing in pioneering communications infrastructure, the telegraph is the obvious choice. Brown and Carter must employ at least one person with enough knowledge of British history to appreciate that. So why talk abut roads and bridges instead? Because the state builds roads and bridges using taxpayer’s money, but the state had nothing to do with the telegraph. Private money set up the enterprises that laid the telegraph wires all around the world, and they did it without needing help from taxpayers.

Today the Government will publish its Digital Britain report, which firmly places the digital economy centre stage as it is core to our future industrial capability.

The UK’s digital economy at present accounts for about 8 per cent of our national income. Its continued development is fundamental to the productivity and innovative capacity of so many other sectors and, with that, the creation and protection of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The digital economy may well be core, but that still does not explain the government’s role…

I am determined that Britain’s digital infrastructure will be world class. For me, it is all part of building Britain’s future beyond the difficult, short-term economic conditions. We must continue to invest to become a world leader in the new high-tech, low-carbon industries of the future by reigniting the British genius for invention, discovery and trade - to capitalise on our strengths.

Brown is a determined man. He is determined that we must invest. It has something to do with carbon apparently (presumably if we spend all day using computers, than global warming will be the problem of the Chinese with all their factories etc…). But what is this? The British genius needs ‘reigniting’. Did the flame go out? Maybe it was a coal fire…

Whenever I travel abroad, I see the presence of British products and services that testify to our national strength in the emerging high-end manufacturing industries, the information and communications industries and creative industries such as advertising, film and television.

I guess Brown never sees me when I am abroad. I work in one of those industries and do most of my work abroad, bringing money back into the UK. If I saw Brown, I would be telling him how mighty hacked off I am about how so many of his policies seem designed to hinder me, not help me. But, like Brown, I am straying off the point…

These are the dynamic sectors that we need to back and promote. So, like other leading economies, we must develop the next generation of communications networks - fixed, mobile and broadcast.

That was quite a leap. One minute we were abroad. The next we are building networks in the UK. Let us not even talk about how the low-carbon objective fits into this globe-hopping whilst home-stopping equation. We may have some ideas how this could fit together, but there is nothing in this article, nor the Digital Britain report, that makes any attempt to reconcile them.

The private sector is rightly leading the way and investing significant sums.

The private sector is doing what the private sector does. Good evidence that the government is irrelevant… but wait…

But there is also a role for targeted, strategic action by government. We can create the right framework, for example, for the release of wireless spectrum - a national asset - while also liberalising its uses and extending mobile broadband coverage.

Tosh, tosh, tosh. Hypocrisy. We got 50% of the way through the article, and when we finally discover something specific that the government wants or should or may do, it is a load of hypocritical nonsense, the reverse of what they did in the past. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, pocketed £22bn from the sale of 3G wireless spectrum. He did that by utilizing an auction mechanism designed to squeeze money out of big business at the height of the dotcom boom. Did he spend the money on investing in Britain’s communications infrastructure? No. He took £22bn that might have been better spent on communications infrastructure, and which had to be recouped by charging higher prices to British customers. Did he spend it on any infrastructure, like roads and bridges, or for health, or for education? No. He used the money to pay down the national debt. Yes, there was a time when Gordon Brown took money from big business and used it to reduce the national debt. Obviously, the world has changed a lot since then. However, it rather proves that asking Brown to make investment decisions for the future is like asking Brown to end the cycle of boom and boost. It may sound like a good idea, but do not bet your house on him actually doing it.

In our fibre optic and cable networks, which will provide the next generation of superfast broadband, the Government must also complement and assist the private sector to move farther and faster.

Now we are getting to the point. Government must ‘complement and assist the private sector’. That is a nice, roundabout way of saying Government will ‘force taxpayers and/or customers to subsidize big business’. I can see why the spin doctors picked their wording, and not mine. The Government’s proposal seems straightforward. Take a rubbish business like cable operator Virgin - formerly known as ntl - and make sure the market is rigged to suit their interests. Meanwhile, Virgin announces some “unlimited” music download package to raise the question of why anybody would ever download illegally. Presumably the answer is that the chain of cause-and-effect is illegal downloads force reductions in retail prices. If retail prices had been low in the first place, there would not have been the incentive to turn to illegal downloads.

ntl started out by getting a lot of money from private investors, were very badly run by management, went bust, and their investors lost almost everything they had put into the business. Private investors are not so stupid that they will do that again. So the Government has the solution. Because ntl has a new name, and hence must now be a really good and efficient business, it makes sense to ensure they have a safe place in the future market and guaranteed profits for ever more…

The government’s protection will not just go to Virgin/ntl. The government has long been negotiating the subsidy it will guarantee to BT in exchange for building superfast broadband networks. Should we fear that BT might waste that money? The relevant division is run by Steve Robertson, a man who has spent most of his career avoiding competition by working for the nationalized BT, apart from a brief time when he jumped on the dotcom boom bandwagon and jumped back again when things got rocky. BT is now privately-owned, but the broadband infrastructure division, Openreach, is still a monopoly, protected from competition. Now the government will guarantee the Openreach division will be profitable by taking money from ordinary people and giving it to Openreach to build the infrastructure that will enhance its monopoly position. And why is BT Group not able to pay for this infrastructure investment from its existing profits? Well, one major reason is that the only division where BT actually faces open competition from equals - BT Global, which sells IT services to multinationals - loses so much money that it consumes the profits of all other BT divisions. Which means every BT customer is already subsidizing their inept IT services division and hence underwriting their big contracts to their big business customers. Sounds fair? No, I do not think so either.

BT’s management can only run a profitable business when they are in a market skewed in their favour. That does not sound to me like the kind of semi-monopolistic, badly-run, inefficient business that the ordinary British citizen should give be giving huge amounts of money to. BT is not the part of the private sector that ‘leads the way’, to use Brown’s words. This is the part of the private sector that hides from public eyes, only willing to spend when its profits are guaranteed by promises from government, only willing to innovate when it has a sure-fire hit. Worst of all, we have been down this road before. The government had a wonderful boast it would computerize patient records for the NHS. Years later, and that project is well behind schedule and well over budget. The main supplier for the NHS contract, BT (see a connection?) has been suffering huge losses on the deal. Do we really expect the same combination of big business and big government will do a better job with building our next generation of broadband networks?

Modernisation of our communications infrastructure is vital to take advantage of important shifts in technology. The public sector, businesses large and small - and those who work in them - need access to both fixed and mobile high-standard, high-speed networks.

But I am clear that this transformation must benefit us all, business and consumers alike, in every part of the country. Digital Britain cannot be a two-tier Britain - with those who can take full advantage of being online and those who can’t.

This is classic BrownSpeak. It is also another kind of BS. The bulk of the market distortion in the Digital Britain report is not geared to ensuring some access for all. Most of it is geared to ensuring faster networks for some. Not surprisingly, big business wants to spend money where it can make money. Strangely, the government wants to give them more money to help them make money, as if the free market did not give enough incentive already. That is like subsidizing an airline that only wants to fly on the most popular routes. The superfast network that would be built by BT is geared around better speeds for urban dwellers. If we really want to avoid a two-tier strategy, Brown should stop kissing the backside of big business and put the taxpayer’s money into doing the big things that big business does not want to do. The losers in two-tier Britain are the rural poor, who are left behind. Their post offices get closed down, yet we expect them to be happy whilst disconnected from the huge advantages of the modern internet. Meanwhile, our cities are overloaded and riven by anti-social behaviour. The Government’s solutions are routinely and depressingly oppressive. They deal with symptoms, not causes. Never mind Tony Blair’s mantra: ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Now the message is just: ‘tough’. The government wants more spying on people, more congestion charges, more handing out of ASBOs. Digital Britain was an opportunity to think, in a far-reaching way, about how technology could change Britain for the better. It was an opportunity missed by people lack the imagination.

The Digital Britain report is small in outlook, because it shares the same outlook as big business, which also likes to control people and keep them under scrutiny. Big business likes to keep a close eye on people because it cannot find a better way of managing and working with them. Britain’s big government and big business both suffer from woeful management, who prop each other up and help each other stay in their cosy positions of power. A digital revolution could offer a radical alternative, using technology to really change our way of live for the better, and solving multiple ills at the same time. Our government’s idea of regionalization is to move jobs out of urban offices in London into urban offices in cities in the North, or Scotland, or Wales. We need to be move jobs to the countryside. We need to encourage youth to stay in rural areas, and encourage working people to move into rural areas, by giving them a wider range of opportunities. With technology, we can move jobs out of cities and give people freedom to do the work they love in the place they love. Digital Britain could be the enabler for that. Instead of asking how we stop the countryside from falling too far behind, we should turn the problem upside down, by using public money where private money will not go, and letting private money pay for the rest. Let us prioritize fiber-to-the-cabinet for rural dwellers, and encourage the building of lots of small and super-connected villages as an additional way to deal with the shortages in housing. Let us use tax incentives to encourage homeworking, in recognition that homeworking helps us reduce the costs of congestion and carbon emissions. The creative and knowledge industries are ideal for homeworking. Instead of kowtowing to big business, which always prefers to assemble its workers in urban offices (BT recently forced some homeworkers back to the office) let us give business the incentive to change and improve management, so the same work is done even though people work from home.

So the first step must be to make the existing broadband network truly available to all. Just as we remain committed to a universal postal service, we pledge today to give every home, community and company access to broadband internet.

If you are like me, you must be bemused by Brown associating his dismal failure to protect post offices with his plans for a universal internet. That rather suggests it will be a universal internet, but only if you live in the right places.

These technological advances will be accompanied by a revolution in content, which they allow. We must develop and sustain public service content, such as commercial regional news, which we all value and rely on, ensuring that it can be delivered across multiple digital outlets by a range of providers accessible to all.

These are difficult times for local newspapers, TV and radio and, as Ofcom has said, a regionalised TV news network is no longer financially viable. However, competition in news - as in business - is vital to provide consumers with the highest quality and we cannot allow a monopoly to take root. Remaining in touch with local issues and holding councils and regional bodies to account is the lifeblood of our democracy.

Brown is once again confused about the boundaries between this country and the rest of the world. He has made that mistake before. He used to say he fixed boom and bust for the UK, only to discover that Britain’s economy is not independent of the global economy. The same is true for content. The revolution in content is taking place, and it is global in nature. Brown’s vision of public service content is outdated, because it assumes a connection between content and scale, between content and geography. We already live in a world where listeners of Invicta Radio in Dover could just as easily get the headline news from Al Jazeera in Doha.

Broadcasting on a local level is in terminal decline, for the same reason that Brown is closing post offices - not enough people need or use the service to keep it viable. The solution is not to use public money and public intervention in the market to create jobs that serve diminishing audiences. As mini-broadcasting shrinks, it will make room for two trends that will fill the gap: micro-broadcasting and macro-knowledge sharing. Micro-broadcasting means that, instead of getting the news from somebody sat in an office in the biggest nearby town, who have themselves got most of their content from a bureau, more of us will come to rely on a patchwork of smaller, informal, charitable, volunteer and semi-professional broadcasters. You will get your news from a mix of podcasters, bloggers and professional sources. Some will be friends who act as informal information hubs on social networks. Universities can provide info for their students and surrounding residents. There are many possibilities for how micro-broadcasting will grow, the only certainty is that it will grow as it becomes cheaper and easier. That may represent a scary future for some, who prefer their broadcasting regulated and controlled. These same people would like to control the internet, and struggle to understand why you cannot. I can see why the Government would rather deal with dozens of small radio stations instead of thousands of people sharing content from their bedrooms or home offices, but that does not mean the Government of preserving the past and forestalling the future.

The partner trend to micro-broadcasting is macro-knowledge sharing. Ordinary people, or the micro-broadcasters, will increasingly get their information by mining valuable data sources, managed over the internet and available for free. There are plenty of examples of ’serious’ journalists caught copying and pasting from Wikipedia, so we should expect more and more broadcasting will rely on reuse of public information provided on the internet. This is not bad for democracy, despite Brown’s insistence we need local journalists to decipher local events. I am already more likely to get good, detailed and useful information about the internet than from the local radio. I do not want to listen to the local radio every day, just in case they say something relevant to me. In contrast, I can monitor my MP by getting email alerts from TheyWorkForYou.com and can both see, and report, local problems using FixMyStreet.

We also need to help Channel 4 to secure its future. In its short history, the station has produced Oscar-winning films and some of the most popular and highest-quality programming. But it now requires long-term stability to develop as a truly global player.

I cannot imagine a more confused paragraph. The confusion is accentuated by presenting a national television broadcaster as a potential ‘global player’. Content creation is not the same as broadcasting, though they used to be vertically integrated. Now I can watch Virgin One on Sky’s satellite network, the BBC on Virgin’s cable network, and Channel 4 over the internet. When Channel 4 was launched, it increased viewer choice by 33%. You used to have three TV channels, and Channel 4 added a new one (at least in the evenings - it was a long time before they started broadcasting during the day as well). It was a broadcaster in the traditional sense, when broadcasting was the way to that content got from the maker to the viewer. Now, Brown is suggesting its future role is as a content creator, making films and programmes. But content creation does not need to be linked to broadcasting. For every hour that Channel 4 broadcasts, it needs an hour of content. Some will be made by Channel 4, some by independent producers with commissions from Channel 4, some will be bought in from elsewhere, like US TV shows. Broadband ubiquity means that there is no need for an intermediary like Channel 4 to be involved in screening US TV shows or distributing independently-produced content. All the mainstream channels will find they decline in importance as broadcasters, and will need to shift their focus to content creation in order to survive. That does not mean the taxpayer needs to help them survive. Public money for content should be just that - open to all content providers, not mediated and managed by increasingly irrelevant broadcasters. The ‘channel’ part of Channel 4 will increasingly become an anachronism. Rather than wasting money on sustaining old distribution models, it would be better to speed the transition to universal broadband.

Improved communications technologies from the progressive digital switchover will enable the Government and local authorities to provide taxpayers with improved individually tailored public services offering the greatest value for money, and increasing efficiency for citizens and businesses. We must also introduce a robust legal framework to combat digital piracy and secure the rights of Britain’s creative talent.

Here is the really important paragraph, the reason for the report. Or rather, here is the importance sentence, which comes after some impenetrable waffle about ‘tailored public services’ (surely some kind of oxymoron?). There will be an election in less than twelve months. Gordon Brown would quite like it if some big media companies - the ones that own newspapers and the like - would support him in that election. To get their support, he will do something they like, by using the law to bolster their big business profits. Pure and simple. It sounds better when you say call it countering piracy (like sending gunboats to chase Somalis with speedboats and AK-47s) and say you are securing the rights of Britain’s creative talent. It sounds less convincing when you point out that even the Digital Britain report makes it plain that Britain’s creative talent does not own the rights to the work it produces. It sells the rights to big business, very often foreign-owned big business. So this legal framework may be of great benefit to big business, but is largely irrelevant to the majority of creative artists. Those artists are just as likely to get screwed over by big business as the rest of us.

Broadband is at a tipping point. High-speed internet access will soon be essential for everyone. Only a digital Britain can unlock the imagination and creativity that will secure for us and our children the high-skilled jobs of the future in a global economy.

Broadband is at a tipping point. Sounds good. What does it mean? What are transforming from, and what are we transforming into? Per this report, it sounds like the government is doing everything imaginable to keep things just as they are, and just how big business likes it. Change would be wonderful, but change is disruptive and change means risk for big business. Just like banks, the big telecoms and big media big businesses are run by people who love to be paid like they are risk-takers, whilst relying on the poor old taxpayer to pay for a safety net that protects them for the consequences of their own inefficiencies and mistakes. To keep big business happy, all mention of net neutrality was erased from the final version of the report. There is nothing in here about investment in small business, only big business. There is nothing in here about ensuring the rights of the ordinary person. That sounds not like a tipping point, but big government colluding with big business, as usual.

Brown is correct that high-speed internet access is essential for everyone. It is vital for the economy. It is ‘as indispensable as electricity, gas and water’ (I told you I would come back to that). The problem with this article, and the Digital Britain report, is that it gives absolutely no guarantees to anybody other than the big businesses that Government has been negotiating with. It makes no promises to the ordinary person that they will have broadband access. Sometimes governments do make promises to people, and they keep them too. Those promises can be made even if it involved big business. Water is big business. Gas and electricity is big business. However, ordinary consumers have rights to water, gas and electricity. Those rights are protected in law. The utility providers must and do respect those rights. The Digital Britain report, however, offers no genuine rights for internet users. It is hypocrisy to say broadband is as essential as water, whilst also pushing proposals that are designed to forcing ISPs to cut off paying customers. It is hypocrisy that high-speed broadband is called essential, whilst the government is intending to force ISPs to waste their money, interrupt their customer’s services, and turn high-speed into low-speed or even no-speed broadband, not because customers had failed to pay their bill, but because customers used the service to do things that another, different company does not like.

Amidst all the advertising-speak from Brown’s buddy, Stephen Carter, the word essential it twisted and manipulated until it looks like a pretzel. It is essential that you pay for the service, not once, but twice, and possibly three times or more. You must pay your ISP for the service, and must pay the network operator to build the network. Because of the incompetence of the Government and the operators, there is every reason to believe you will end up paying a third time, through your taxes, and a fourth, as the Government protects big business profits by blocking competition. On the other hand, it is far from essential that you receive the service you paid for. That is why the report does not confer a genuine right to broadband, like the right to water, and gas, and electricity. In this regard, it already seems to be out of date. Just like in his Ofcom days, Carter is rendered irrelevant by events on the European stage, which suggest the courts will interpret that internet connectivity is a right. Doubtless, when the Europeans force the consequences on Britain, the British politicians will turn on the smiles and congratulate themselves, whilst brushing Carter’s report under the carpet.

Brown’s vision for Digital Britain is a road that leads nowhere. It lacks imagination. It looks backwards, not forwards. It talks in the language of the internet, but walks the walk of monopolistic big business. That is no surprise when you realize its author is Stephen Carter, the advertising guru who makes a good living from impersonating someone who understands the future of technology and communications. To a dinosaur like Brown, Carter probably looks like he is evolved, but Carter is nothing more than a warm-blooded rodent that toadies to his master. This is from Carter’s introduction to the report:

I would also like to record my particular thanks to …. and most importantly for the political leadership of the Prime Minister, whose recognition of the importance of this sector and the need for a coherent strategy are what has made this work possible.

What a masterpiece of hollow. Carter praises the leadership of a man who looks backwards. He hails coherence as if the coherence of big business greed is more important than the creative anarchy of the internet, the vitality of freely exchanged ideas or the unpredictable dynamism of genuine free market competition. It is just another aspect of the merry-go-round of corruption that keeps spinning round and round. Corruption involves more than MPs fiddling their expenses. It runs deep, and it includes this shameless collusion between government and business interests. Carter is the inverse of Robin Hood. He schemes to take money from ordinary folks and to give it to the rich and powerful elite. And then he condescends to tell you why that is in everyone’s best interests. These are slick words, used to package corporate greed and political backscratching and make it look like a gift. Swapping one main party for another will likely make no difference. Stephen Carter is on first name terms with the Tory leader, David Cameron, and the Shadow Chancellor, George Osbourne. It is reported that Carter could very well reappear as a hanger-on to a Tory government, if they got into power. Just like the war in Iraq, it seems ordinary voters are stitched up again. That is why I am joining an international movement to reform the law and create the vibrant and free economies that politicians like to talk about but work against.

The Pirate Party is rapidly establishing itself in countries all over the planet. The Swedish Pirate Party paved the way, and shown that the issues they raised are deeply important to many people. In the European elections, it was supported by over 7% of Swedish voters, an incredible result for a new party, started from scratch less than three years ago. The Swedish Pirate Party is being joined by sister parties in other countries. The German party did well enough in its elections that it qualified for official recognition and state aid. Parties are being founded in such diverse countries as the USA, Brazil, Australia and Russia. I am joining the Pirate Party UK and helping to establish a new voice that speaks up for ordinary people and understands that the impact of new technology is too great and too important to allow it to be dominated by the interests of big business. Gordon Brown’s blinkered vision is of digital division. That division will be between vested interests and the rest of us. Stephen Carter, who scuttles backwards and forwards between big business and big government, thinks that balance is achieved by finding compromises that suit both his paymasters. In his world, the only role for ordinary folk is to hand over their money and believe his advertising lies. Remember, his old company helped to spur internet activism, by being so bad it provoked frustrated customers into launching the infamous ‘nthell’ forum. We need to organize and stand opposed to Brown, Carter, and the interests they serve.

It will be a hard fight, but one we must fight. Neither big government nor big business will look after the interests of the common person. Sometimes, when the law is corrupt, and the rulers more corrupt still, you have to become an outlaw, a rebel, or a pirate. Now is the time to secure our future, keep the internet free, and ensure everybody can access the internet for personal, social, cultural and commercial gain. In the 21st century, the internet is as essential as water; the Pirate Party will campaign to ensure everybody has the internet as their right.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lefty, and he does not know it. Or maybe Arnie is one of those righty freedom fighters that end up so far off to the right they end up going full circle and re-emerging on the right. Or maybe the Governator is just a simple Hollywood movie star from a little village just outside Graz, who wants to apply some old-fashioned common sense to the way his state is run. That is the problem with new technology. It tends to mess up your old perspectives and makes it hard to tell up from down, or left from right.

It all has to do with the tiny little US$24bn deficit borne by the state of California. To help solve the problem, Arnie’s banned the buying of books for school, in the hope of saving a few bucks. This is his argument:

“Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion. For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach exactly the same way. Our children get their information from the internet, downloaded on to their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their phones. Basically, kids feel as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons.

So why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?”

Or rather, that is half his argument. The other half is that books are expensive and he can save money by giving students the tools to read digital content. Critics may scoff Arnie is cutting the budget for books but not spending on the electronic gadgets to replace them, but the argument itself is sound. Why spend money on textbooks if it is cheaper to give school pupils an electronic device with all the texts on them? Why keep replacing those books, if it is cheaper and easier to get new versions of texts by buying the content digitally, without wasting money by paying for unnecessary paper?

We live in cruel world. Books do not cost money because we value the fine words inside them. Books cost money because it costs money to make books, and because somebody wants to make a profit after going to the trouble of printing them. When you buy a book, you are not just paying for the paper it is printed on. You also pay for all those vehicles that were used to get them from the printer to you, and paying for all those warehouses and shops where it rested along the way, and paying for all those other books that nobody bought but were printed as part of a big run and which end up being pulped and recycled into paper. I nearly forgot - a tiny amount goes to the person who wrote the book. Zapping the words to you, without needing an actual book, cuts out a lot of costs. Yippee! That makes Arnie Schwarzenegger a lefty for taking on all those entrenched capitalist business interests and a righty for cutting budgets and advocating free competition at the same time. But it goes further than that.

“Possession is nine points in the Law.”

Listed as a common saying in 1616 by Thomas Draxe, Adages. Presumably derives from the legal principle where the satisfaction of ten points legitimated ownership; hence ‘nine points of the law’ was close to full ownership.

He may not know it, but Schwarzenegger is speeding up the process by which we change our views on what is property. People used to buy books, and they knew what they were getting. Even Baldrick knows what a book is…

Blackadder: Excellent. (to Baldrick) Nice fire, Baldrick.

Baldrick: Thank you, Mr. B.

Blackadder: Right, let’s get the book. Now; Baldrick, where’s the manuscript?

Baldrick: You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?

Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick — the manuscript belonging to Dr. Johnson.

Baldrick: You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?

Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick — Dr. Johnson.

Baldrick: So you’re asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is.

Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick, I am, and if you don’t answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers. For the last time, Baldrick - Where is Dr. Johnson’s manuscript?

Baldrick: On the fire.

Blackadder: (shocked) On the *what*?

Baldrick: The hot orangy thing under the stony mantlepiece.

Black Adder III, Episode 2: Ink and Incapability

If you went to the bookshop and bought a book, you used to come out with a big papery thing. Not any more. Now you can buy disembodied words. Or do you? No, you rent them. You and only you. For example, Kindle’s licence agreement states you have a:

“…non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy…solely for your personal, non-commercial use…

[Kindle users may] not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to…any third party.”

Walk around a stately home, and chances are the library will be one of the finest rooms. That was when it cost a lot to acquire books, and a library would be a valuable inheritance, passed from generation to generation. The owner of the house owned the books within it. But with an e-book, you may only be renting the words. The intellectual property is owned by the publisher. When you die, the words have to vanish into the ether from which they came… anything else is stealing. The same applies to other kinds of intellectual property. Suppose you buy an app for your shiny new iPhone. The next day you get run over. Shame, but what everybody wants to know is: who gets your iPhone? It turns out that you left it in your will to your favourite nephew, Johnny. He receives the iPhone, thinks fondly of you, and is about to launch the app you downloaded… STOP!!! STOP, LITTLE JOHNNY!!! Johnny forgot to read the relevant bit of the licence that you agreed to when buying the app:

This license granted to you for the Licensed Application by Licensor is limited to a non-transferable license to use the Licensed Application on any iPhone or iPod touch that you own or control and as permitted by the Usage Rules set forth in Section 9.b. of the App Store Terms and Conditions (the “Usage Rules”). This license does not allow you to use the Licensed Application on any iPod touch or iPhone that you do not own or control, and you may not distribute or make the Licensed Application available over a network where it could be used by multiple devices at the same time. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Licensed Application. You may not copy (except as expressly permitted by this license and the Usage Rules), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works of the Licensed Application, any updates, or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or to the extent as may be permitted by the licensing terms governing use of any open sourced components included with the Licensed Application). Any attempt to do so is a violation of the rights of the Licensor and its licensors. If you breach this restriction, You may be subject to prosecution and damages.

You, dead person that you are, bought a licence. Little Johnny did not. That licence is non-transferable. It died when you did. You can leave your iPhone in your will, but the apps expire when you do… or else little Johnny is a CRIMINAL.

Hmmm… not entirely satisfactory, is it? Somehow we went from lovely libraries that people cherished and added to over the centuries, to little Johnny breaking the law the second he launches Sims 3 on your old iPhone. Maybe that would not be so bad, if the cost associated with the intellectual property is really low. Johnny could just buy his own licence to play Sims 3, available for the reasonable price of… £5.99!!! Hold on!! The same device, the same data, no extra cost to Apple, or to the game’s authors, Electronic Arts, yet Johnny has to pay £5.99 for it. Does that seem fair…?

“If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . . . Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?

Now Proudhon was a pretty extreme lefty, so I am not blogging to suggest we start some collectivist binge, in case there is any doubt. However, Proudhon’s argument has some resonance in this digitized era. Just because we can pass a law to say something can or cannot be owned, does not mean we can morally defend that law. People used to own people. People used to be property. Not any more. If we can emancipate the slaves, might we not emancipate our intellectual content?

Right now, the business interests that want to rent you intellectual property, whilst never selling it to you, have the upper hand. They are taking full advantage. When you buy a book, a big chunk of your money goes towards covering the costs of making that book and getting it to you. In fact, there was a good chance that somebody made a loss on that book, somewhere along the way. If book makers and sellers could lower costs to compete with digital content, they would. Their trouble is they cannot. You could reduce the unit cost of making a book by making more, but then there would be higher risk of unsold books, or books being held longer in storage and on the shelves of stores, so the equation is far from perfect. The cost of making and selling books may have gone down over time, but the benefits were passed to the consumer. Making a profit from books can be very hard. Governments have previously been willing to intervene in the retail pricing of books, just to ensure the publishers would remain profitable. Otherwise, if some went bust, there would be fewer suppliers and, in the long run, either less books or higher prices. So, by and large, customers were paying an equitable price for what they got. Eliminating all the costs associated with physical products has blown a hole in the original equation. Now, only supply and demand determines the price of the product, yet we seem happy to be paying pretty much similar prices as before. Why are we not complaining, and shopping around for providers who take a far smaller cut?

The marginal cost of production is approaching nil, except in as far as the talent that writes a book or sings a song deserves a fair reward. However, prices are not coming down as they might, because there is insufficient pressure for them to do so. Remember, when you bought a book, or a vinyl record, you could resell it and recoup the cost, or you could give it as gift, or leave it somebody in your will. In contrast, we are renting digital content, and cannot gift it or sell it to anyone else. Many people could have owned the same CD, but everybody must buy their own individual licence for a song that has been downloaded. This alone should mean prices would come down if they are fair. Licences you cannot trade are of less value than equivalent goods that you buy and can sell again.

One problem is big business likes to moan, but it only moans about its rights, as if the legal person that is a company is deserving of more rights than the real, natural people they like to exploit. It is exploitation when they replace one product with an alternative, only to force you or little Johnny to pay twice for the same thing. You could argue big business would not be so unreasonable as to punish little Johnny in real life, but the fact that they are turning Johnny into a criminal lies at the heart of this problem. Only a morally corrupt law would make Johnny a criminal, even if, in practice, Johnny is not punished for his crimes. Only a corrupt law would suggest that Johnny had done something wrong. That law is still corrupt even when not enforced. From this one loose strand, this one obvious corruption that is so clearly morally offensive, so plainly wrong, we can unravel the rest of the legal fabric that has been wrapped around intellectual property.

You rent a licence, but if you lose your copy of your data then the supplier’s attitude is that is your tough luck. If you want the same content, you have to pay for the same licence again. Hang on, you think, you already have a licence. Why are you paying twice for a second licence? You just need a new download, not a new licence. Why is the supplier not charging you separately, one big fee for the (totally intangible) licence, one small fee for the work involved in supplying the download, if they really want to be fair and transparent? Why is the supplier not allowing you to buy one (non-transferable) licence and then allowing you to download more than once, should you set fire to your house and destroy all copies of your data at once? Because they do not want you to think about how much they make off the back of the original artist’s work, just for acting as middleman. They want to think like you still pay for something with substance, like a book, and not for something made from thin air. Selling licences is like printing money, but without the expense of the paper used to print actual cash. Just imagine walking up to a business and starting this conversation:

Shopper: Hey, I got a licence, let me have another copy of that song I downloaded last week.

Store: I don’t know you. Get outta here.

Shopper: (Holds up a copy of the licence) Look!! Here’s my licence! Somebody mugged me and stole my laptop. Now I want another download of that song I paid for last week. It’s legal - I got a licence!!

Store: You’re crazy. You could be anyone. How do I know you bought it?

Shopper: We signed a contract, that’s why. Don’t you know who you sign contracts with?

Store: No.

Shopper: Okay. Have it your way. If you don’t care then I’m going to give all my other music on my other laptop to my friends for free.

Store: If you do that, me and my lawyers are gonna make you real sorry you messed with us.

Shopper: But, but…

Store: You signed a contract buddy, you got to respect it.

Shopper: But you don’t even know who I am. And you don’t take any notice that I got this licence here…

Store: I don’t care who you are. I’m only interested in enforcing the terms of my contracts, not meeting any obligations you may or may not think should follow from them. That means you don’t do anything it says you don’t do. I don’t have to do nuttin’ to keep you happy.

We should be expecting prices of digital content to be a lot lower, or we should be demanding far better rights as licence holders, like being able to transfer them or at least having the right to obtain replacement copies of digital content at preferential rates. Instead, we get a terrible deal all round. Why is that? The answer is a ridiculous mix of consumers not realizing what a bad deal they are getting, and sour grapes about the illegal sharing of digital content.

The average consumer has failed to realize that just because they were willing to pay a certain amount for a physical book, does not mean they should be willing to pay a similar amount for the words. Yes, the customer gets the same pleasure, but one was far cheaper to make than the other, and the customer has not factored that in yet. Worse still, the suppliers are not giving any clues away by engaging in any meaningful price wars. They own their rights to their specific sequences of words or notes, so if you want a particular book, or a particular song, they can hold you to ransom because you cannot legitimately buy it from anyone else. The only person or business with a justifiable claim to avoid being screwed by competition is the person or business who actually made the original content. That means the person who wrote the words, or the group that recorded the song, or the team of people who filmed the film. Everything else should be open for competition. However, it is not. Middlemen saddle up to the source of content and attach themselves like limpets, so you cannot tell where the creator ends and the middleman starts. In short, they work to ensure there is no effective competition to drive down prices in supply and production. They do this by hiding behind laws that fail to distinguish what the middlemen actually do, affording them the same protections as the real people who made the content, whilst often giving little or no real protection to small, real, but disenfranchised creators of actual content. This is about law, and law costs money. Big business can afford it. Everyone else can go to Hell. Meanwhile, big business moans and moans about losing so much revenue from the illegal activity of those who just ignore the rules and do what they like.

The modern market for digital content is like shopping at a crazy supermarket. Half the people are paying well over the odds for what they put in their trolley. The other half are shoplifters, walking out of the door with their pockets overflowing. The supermarket owners moan about all the shoplifters, and how much they lose as a result, but they keep prices high to exploit the honest customer. Everyone can see at least one partial solution to their problem. Cut prices, and you remove some of the incentive to steal… but big business makes even less money that way. Which is why they would rather endure lots of stealing than give up on milking the most money possible out of the remaining honest people.

Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.

John Lennon, Imagine

So where does Arnie Schwarzenegger come in, I hear you say. Well, the market for digital content is dysfunctional. There is no genuine competition to drive down prices. Legal protection is all skewed towards the owners of the intellectual property. They moan and moan about theft, whilst the thieves think of themselves as Robin Hoods, morally justified criminals who rob the rich and give to the poor (aka themselves and their friends). The Governator, bless him, has just stumbled upon the one thing that might shake this market up. It is called consolidated bargaining. If he can make big purchasing decisions like not buying textbooks, he can also drive down prices of the electronic texts he will be replacing them with. The motive to cut costs works equally well for physical and virtual textbooks. The state of California has every reason to save every penny it can, when it spends money on intangible licenses. In the crazy supermarket, there were too many thieves and too many daft people happy to be overcharged. There was no hope of building consensus by sitting down, talking, and realizing they could force prices down by co-operating with each other. The Robin Hoods got what they want by stealing, and the Honest Joes had more money than sense. But Arnie is neither Robin Hood nor Honest Joe. Arnie cannot steal, but he has no money to waste, either. What he does have is a big budget. If he, and other big budget holders in governments all over the world, worked to bring down prices, we might all see the benefit. Imagine going to the bookstore and realizing your school got a 10% discount for the same book you bought. Probably you would be happy enough about that. Then imagine they got a 90% discount. You would feel like you were being exploited. If big buyers force down prices, retail prices for ordinary people must follow, at least part of the way.

Arnie is the Terminator. If the suppliers will not reach a deal, he can could always threaten to unleash the holocaust on them. If he bought the equipment for every schoolkid to read digital content, he could also sidestep the suppliers of digital content, by paying for new content to be made for those schoolkids. If margins on digital textbooks are excessive, it would make economic sense to pay an author to write a new textbook. This would cut out the middle man entirely. Instead of being forced to pay eternal licence fees, the Governator could simply pay an author a one-off fee, leaving the state of California owning its own intellectual property and not needing to pay anyone else to use it. It could happen. The argument is no different to arguments about healthcare providers paying unreasonably high margins to pharmaceuticals companies. At least pharmaceuticals companies can argue they reinvest in research and development. I cannot see how you could rework that argument for school textbooks, or most other digital content, especially where the content can be created at low cost by individuals or very small businesses backed by minimal investment.

Sometimes the only forces that can defeat big, powerful, vested interests are other big, powerful, vested interests. You and I, buying our MP3s or ebooks, cannot do it. Most authors and musicians cannot do it, or else they may get elevated to a level where they no longer see any self-interest in doing it. It takes exceptional artists, like Radiohead or Paulo Coelho to disrupt the cosy market that gives hefty rewards to a few creative types, whilst making slaves of the rest. It took a coalition of mutual interest between healthcare, insurance and government, and some very enterprising lawyers, to take on Big Tobacco. A similar coalition of educators and government has the chance to do something similar to Big Publishing.

Arnie Schwarzenegger is little Johnny’s best hope. The Governator is about to start a process that will so upset the logistics and legalities of digital content that future historians will long debate where to place Arnie on the political spectrum. The best part is Arnie does not even know he is doing it. Consolidated bargaining is rather like forming a trade union, or using big government to control big business, so you could put Arnie in the vanguard of the old-fashioned left. Eliminating corrupt monopolies and oligopolies, who buy political influence and use it to ensure the law suits them, that sounds like the kind of thing a libertarian or right wing neo-con would want do. Making intellectual property worthless, by implementing your own means of production and distribution, that sounds like communism or even anarchism. This is where you end up, when you start down a route that tries to preserve an outdated legal framework and apply it to property that is totally divorced from any physical substratum. The new properties of new property will inevitably force a rewrite of law, even if the lawyers and legislators have not worked that out yet. The intellectual property laws are now as lacking in moral justification as were laws that governed the slave trade at the time they were repealed. Intellectual property laws can and will be bent, broken, changed or made irrelevant over time. Human nature will see to that, just as human nature thankfully saw that human slavery need not and should not be perpetuated just so one man could profit at the expense of another. Governor Schwarzenegger is only starting this process, but he, and others like him, will be back. Budget pressures and the competition for popular approval from voters will see to that. Demands for less taxes, and better schools, will make it happen. Each time they come back, they will be wanting more for less. It is the beginning of the end for intellectual property as we know it. For intellectual property, judgment day is coming. The verdict? To terminate, of course.

In More Empire Strikes Back: Parallel Universe we left our alternative heroes in gloomy times. Han, Chewie, Leia and the Falcon have flown into an asteroid field. Yoda and Luke are stuck in the swamp. Read on for more from a parallel universe that lies somewhere between George Lucas’ imagination and the more familiar world around us.

[In a hovel in the swamp on Degobah, Yoda is encouraging Luke to sit down and eat.]

Luke: Look, I’m sure it’s delicious, but I want to begin my training now…

Yoda: Patience, for a Jedi it is time to eat as well, hum? Hm-hmm. Eat! He-he-heee. (Luke takes a bite of the swamp stew. He pulls a face.) Good food, good, hm-hmm?

Luke: (Bangs head on ceiling as he makes room for Yoda) Ow! Your ceiling is so low. You can’t have many visitors.

Yoda: My home, this is not. Dump, this place is! Rent this so you had somewhere to stay whilst here. I lodge with Jedi Master Tanah Lot at his house. Will present bill for rent on this place when training, you have completed.

Luke: Couldn’t you have got me somewhere nicer?

Yoda: No. Peak holiday season on Degobah, it is. Booked ahead, you should have. Not just arrive and expect to find somewhere to stay. Lucky I found this, you were. Nearly had to put you in the YACA.

Luke: YACA?

Yoda: Young Alien’s Christian Association. Clean beds but full of aliens with moustaches and tight leather trousers, if know what I mean, you do.

Luke: (Tips his bowl out of the window whilst Yoda is not looking). Look, Master Yoda, I’ve finished eating (shows Yoda his empty bowl as proof). Can we begin the training now?

Yoda: Eager are you. Why must you become Jedi?

Luke: Mostly because of my father, I guess.

Yoda: Father? Powerful Jedi was he… hmmm… powerful Jedi.

Luke: Aw, come on, how could you know my father? I’m wasting my time (throws bowl away in anger).

Yoda: I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.

Obi-Wan: (Disembodied voice) He will learn patience.

Yoda: (Turns to look at Luke) Much anger in him, like his father.

Obi-Wan: Was I any different, when you taught me?

Yoda: Yes, you was only twelve years old! It took another thirteen years to complete your training. This one wants to be trained in just five weeks!

Luke: I’m ready! Ben, I can be a Jedi, tell him, I can be a Jedi!

Yoda: A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one, a long time I have watched. Never his mind on where he was (pokes Luke with his walking stick). Adventure, hah, excitement, hah, a Jedi craves not these things.

Obi-Wan: Be reasonable, Yoda. It’s not like we learned light sabre skills so we could sit in an armchair and watch telly whilst eating chocolate digestives, did we?

Yoda: (Pokes Luke with his stick again) You are reckless…

Obi-Wan: So was I, if you remember.

Yoda: Yes, and look what a mess we are in now! You decided you had to train this one’s father. I warned you! You trained him to come back and hunt us all down! Trained him to kill you! Trained Vader to eat hob-nobs and watch ‘X-Factor’, you should have.

Obi-Wan: You got me on that point.

Yoda: (Looking at Luke) He is too old.

Luke: But I’ve learned so much.

Yoda: Really? So you already know how to leap thirty feet in the air?

Luke: No.

Yoda: Into the future, you can see?

Luke: No.

Yoda: Then you know how to persuade the feeble-minded to do what you will? Like, with hot chicks, how to get dates?

Luke: I wish.

Yoda: Then what, so far, have you learned?

Luke: I can make things levitate.

Yoda: Show me.

Luke: Here goes. (He reaches out with his hand towards a bowl on the table. The bowl shakes a little, rises up an inch above the table, then suddenly falls down again.)

Yoda: (Sarcastic) Hmmm, impressive! Almost complete, your training is!

Obi-Wan: He’ll pay double the going rate.

Luke: Yes, I’ll pay double, just train me.

Yoda: Will he finish what he begins? Not that it matters, I want payment up front, and no refunds!

Luke: I won’t fail you. I’m not afraid.

Yoda: (Sticks out ears) You will be. You will be.

Obi-Wan: But Master Yoda, you used to say: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

Yoda: Who’s teaching the boy, you or me?

Obi-Wan: Sorry. You are.

Yoda: Good. (Turns to Luke) Time to begin your suffering… I mean your training.

…

[In the Asteroid field, two TIE Bombers repeatedly drop bombs on to the surface of the asteroid that the Falcon is hiding within. The bomber pilots are talking to each other over the radio.]

Bomber Pilot 1: This seems like a shocking waste of bombs. I can see there’s nothing beneath me but this stupid asteroid. I can’t see the ship we’re supposed to be chasing. So why are we dropping bombs?

Bomber Pilot 2: I think it’s meant to be like scaring crows. They’ll hear the noise, get frightened, fly off, and then we can chase them again.

Bomber Pilot 1: That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

Bomber Pilot 2: I’m just following orders like everybody else. They say ‘drop bombs’ and I drop bombs. But I admit, it’s going to blow a hole in our munitions budget.

Bomber Pilot 1: You know what happened last time someone overran their budget like we’re about to? It was when they were building the Death Star. All they needed to do was fit some cheap, lousy safety grills over their exhaust vents, but they ran out of money. Then the next thing you know… boom!

…

[Inside the Falcon, Leia listens to the distant rumble of the bombs exploding far above the subterranean cavern where they have landed. Something flits outside the window. Leia gets up and looks closer.]

Gandark: (Smacks itself against the window, oozing a white substance from one of its orifices) Squeak, wibble, squawk.

Leia: Argh! There’s something out there!

Gandark: (With one of its tentacles, it smacks a piece of paper against the window screen) Squawk.

Han: I’m going out there. (Puts a mask on and goes outside. Outside, he walks around to the front of the ship and confronts Gandark.) Hey, what’s the problem, buddy?

Gandark: Squawk Squawk (translates as: “You can’t just park here. This a private parking cave. I can’t see no permit on display on the dashboard. That’ll be a two hundred credit fine. If I was you, I’d pay up before we tow this hunk of junk away.)

Han: (Looks around, noticing all the other spaceships parked in the cavern) So where do all these other ships come from? And why are they allowed down here?

Gandark: Squawk Squeek Squawk (translates as: “Jabba the Hutt’s private collection. Let’s just say he doesn’t want them becoming part of his divorce settlement.”)

Han: Look, it’s not like I want to park here. We’re having some problems with the engine.

Gandark: Squeek Squawk (translates as: “Then call a repair van, and get them to tow it away before I get someone else to do it for you.”) (Gandark flies off.)

Han: (Climbs up and removes the parking ticket from the windscreen of the Falcon) To hell with Jabba the Hutt. (Rips up the ticket) If he wants me to pay a parking fine, he’s welcome to come and collect it in person.

…

[Luke runs through the swamp, with Yoda on his back.]

Yoda: A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never attack.

Luke: Wow, that’s an impractical rule.

Yoda: How so?

Luke: Well, what if I see some people beating on old woman in the street, can’t I attack them?

Yoda: No. Defend the old woman you can, but not attack her attackers.

Luke: Okay, what if two guys are creeping up behind you with guns, can you attack them?

Yoda: Defend yourself by striking first you can, but attack them, you cannot.

Luke: It seems to me you’re making a pedantic distinction between what is attack and what is defence. Why…

Yoda: No, no, there is no why!

Luke: How long did you say you have been training Jedis?

Yoda: Eight hundred years.

Luke: It’ll take me eight hundred years to understand what you’re talking about.

Yoda: (Climbs down). See that spooky cave? In you go.

Luke: What’s in there?

Yoda: Only what you take with you.

[Luke goes into the cave. Half an hour later, he comes back.]

Yoda: Well?

Luke: Well what? I was in that stupid slimy damp cave for half an hour, waiting for something to happen. Then I got bored and came back. You didn’t say what I was supposed to be doing in there.

Yoda: Did you not see Darth Vader? And then chop his helmet off with the light sabre? And then your own face see behind his mask?

Luke: No! Don’t be so silly. How corny would that be - me chopping off Vader’s head and discovering it’s my face behind his mask. Geez.

Yoda: Strange, that kind of thing always happens to me in that cave. Perhaps ready to be a Jedi you are, after all.

Luke: Not so fast - I paid for a five-week course. I’ve still got another three weeks to go…

…

[On board his Super Star Destroyer, the Executor, Vader gives instructions to a line-up of Bounty Hunters.]

Vader: I’m glad you could all make it in person. They’ll be a substantial reward for the one who finds the Millennium Falcon…

Bossk: How much?

Vader: Excuse me?

Bossk: How much is the reward? It’s customary to agree the bounty in advance.

Vader: Twenty thousand credits?

[The bounty hunters all laugh amongst themselves.]

Boba Fett: It cost me more than that just to fly here.

Vader: Two hundred thousand credits?

Bossk: Plus expenses, right?

Vader: Okay. Plus expenses. But I expect to see receipts.

Boba Fett: We’ll show you the receipts. We have a code of honour. We’re bounty hunters, not Members of Parliament.

Vader: Very well. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive. No disintegrations.

Boba Fett: Of course. We’d hardly get paid for returning some disintegrated ashes to you and saying, ‘look, here’s your man!’

Admiral Piett: Lord Vader! My Lord, we have them.

Vader: Where?

Admiral Piett: Look, out of the window. (Points) There they are.

[The Falcon is being closely chased by the Executor.]

Boba Fett: Wait, wait, I saw them first. I claim the bounty!

Bossk: No, I saw them first! The bounty is mine!

[The other bounty hunters start arguing that they should each have the bounty.]

Vader: (Aside to Piett) You were right, we really don’t need their scum, do we?

…

[The Falcon is managing to hide from the Imperial Fleet by hanging on to the side of a Star Destroyer.]

Han: (Looking out of the window) The Fleet’s beginning to break up. If they follow standard Imperial procedure, they’ll dump their garbage before they go to light speed, and we’ll just float away…

Leia: … with the rest of the garbage.

C-3PO: Sir! Your referring to a rather outdated Imperial procedure. The Imperial Fleet has adopted a policy of 100% recycling - no more dumping of garbage. It’s the cornerstone of their environmentally-friendly policies.

Han: We’ll just have to risk it. Here we go Chewie, standby… detach.

[The Falcon detaches moments before the Star Destroyer jumps to lightspeed.]

Han: Those dolts - they never saw us. Heh heh - they should have kept a better lookout.

[The Falcon's engines fire up, and they fly towards Bespin. Boba Fett's ship follows them from some distance.]

Boba Fett: Easy money. I’ll have these clowns captured in no time. But let’s follow them for a while and bump up the mileage claim first.

…

[At Jedi Master Tanah Lot's respectable three-storey, four-bedroom abode on Degobah.]

Tanah Lot: (Ring at the door) Coming, coming!

[Opens door to see Jedi Master Bora Bodur and Jedi Master Chechen Itcha. Bodur is holding a bottle of wine whilst Itcha has brought a box of cigars.]

Tanah Lot: Master Bodur, Master Itcha, I knew it was you! I sensed your presents.

Bora Bodur: Very droll. I would ask if everybody is here yet, but I can sense that we’re the first to arrive.

Tanah Lot: Come, sit down at the poker table. It’s always the same. You tell people the game starts at nineteen hundred hours, but they saunter along at nineteen thirty. No wonder we lost the war.

Chechen Itcha: We won the war, but were fighting for the wrong side.

Bora Bodur: No, we were fighting for the right side, but were betrayed by the Emperor and by our troops, who swapped sides.

Chechen Itcha: Yeah, but they swapped sides after they’d already won. So how does that work?

Tanah Lot: Master Bodur, Master Itcha, please, let’s leave off the argument of how we lost the Clone War, shall we? Why don’t you sit yourselves down at the poker table.

[They go through into Lot's living room, and seat themselves around a circular poker table, with card decks and chips already laid out neatly. Chechen Itcha motions to hand out a cigar.]

Tanah Lot: Thanks, but you know we can’t smoke inside. You know what grumpy-guts Yoda is like when there’s smoke around.

Chechen Itcha: Where is Master Yoda? I can sense he’s not here already.

Tanah Lot: You won’t believe this, but he’s got a new apprentice.

Chechan Itcha: What!?!?? That old duffer’s persuaded someone to train with him? Obviously they haven’t heard about his reputation…

Bora Bodur: (Impersonates Yoda) ‘Judge me by my size?’ ‘There is no why!’ ‘Do or not do. There is no try!’ What a lot of rubbish.

Tanah Lot: I know. Seriously old school.

Bora Bodur: Eight hundred years old school. But you can’t teach an old frog new tricks. (Laughs)

[There is a ring at the door.]

Tanah Lot: Come in! It’s open!

[In walks Jedi Master Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong. He has brought a cake.]

Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong: Master Lot.

Tanah Lot: Master Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong.

Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong: Master Bodur.

Bora Bodur: Master Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong.

Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong: Master Itcha.

Chechen Itcha: Master Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong.

Tanah Lot: Where’s your friend, Master… erm… what was his name again?

Sha-na-ram-a-lang-a-ding-dong: Bates? He’s visiting relatives on planet Pugwash.

Tanah Lot: Let’s cut the deck and start dealing, should we? I sense Yoda will not be here for hours. He’s doing his ‘lifting the spaceship out of the swamp’ thing.

Chechen Itcha: That old trick? Why doesn’t he just call the breakdown service and get them to tow it out like everyone else?

…

[The Falcon touches down at Cloud City. The heroes exit the ship. Lando Calrissian arrives to greet them.]

Lando: (Hugs Han) How you doin’ you old pirate? So good to see ya! What’ya doing here?

Han: Repairs. (Gestures to the Falcon) I thought you could help me out.

Lando: What you been doin’ to my ship? You cheap chiseler, can’t you afford a decent breakdown service, like everyone else? I’ll have my boys take a look at it. And how you doin’ Chewbacca, you still hanging around with this loser?

Chewbacca: Growl. (translates as: “Yeah, I’m still hanging around with this loser.”)

Han: Thanks.

Lando: (Sees Leia. Pushes Han to one side.) Hello, what have we here? (Licks lips.) Welcome, I’m Lando Calrissian, and I own this whole city. Big, isn’t it? Isn’t it so groovy and white and high up in the clouds? We call it Cloud City. And who might you be?

Leia: Leia.

Lando: (Kisses Leia’s hand) Lay ‘er? That’s just what I was thinking.

Leia: Huh.

Han: Hey, wait your turn!

Leia: What?

Han: I mean… I mean… that’s no way to speak to a lady!?

Lando: (Turns towards to Leia again) So when should I take you to Cloud Nine?

Leia: Puh-lease. You won’t even be getting to first base.

To be continued…