This is somewhat old news but these two articles are worth linking here and linking together for they convey nicely, in the words of AC/DC, how “money talks” and also how numbers can talk about how money talks. One article is Senators who weakened drug bill got millions from industry from USA Today and the other is on a topic that has been receiving a lot of play in the NYTimes Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industry s Role. I am not so much a researcher of numbers in so far as I don’t produce them, and think it is a good idea to cultivate a healthy skepticism of them, but I do appreciate what they can tell us. I think the article in the NYTimes is particularly insightful because it is based on “public reports of all drug company marketing payments to doctors” in the state of Minnesota, the *only* state that requires this access. The authors of the article are careful to hedge and qualify their findings, but many of them do suggest that the more money a doctor gets, the higher the likelihood they will prescribe more meds and of a certain class. Hopefully more states will pass such legislation and more research will be done. This is my favorite quote from the article

“There s an irony that psychiatrists ask patients to have insights into themselves, but we don t connect the wires in our own lives about how money is affecting our profession and putting our patients at risk, he said.”

While working on Gammu, I still wonder why people who want to connect their phone to computer buy phones from vendors who use own proprietary protocol or do not share any documentation. Then they come to Gammu mailing list and/or bug tracker and want Gammu to support their phone. Sometimes the fix is easy, but usually it is quite lot of work to debug unknown protocol. I know this situation quite good from past. I had Alcatel phone, which was using proprietary protocol for access to in phone contacts and events. Fortunately Alcatel released synchronisation software for these phones (it of course runs only on Windows) which had enabled debugging and it was quite easy to understand protocol thanks to logs it could produce. But as newer phones with some extensions appeared, maintaining this became harder and harder. When I looked for new phone, I decided to buy Sony-Ericcsson K750i phone. Writing support for most of functionality (well in fact all I need) was just matter of few days. The reason why it was so fast was that this phones is using open standards (e.g. OBEX, IrMC) and vendor specific AT commands are documented in freely available documents. It's your choice how good will your phone interoperate with computer. If you buy well documented piece of hardware, chance to have it fully supported is much higher.

More than a year ago, I published an election methods library called RubyVote. Interest in the library surpassed any of my expectations: I know of at least one startup using the library heavily in their core business and a number of fun sites, like Red Blue Smackdown, that are using it as well. The point of course, was to make complex but superior election methods accessible in all sorts of places where people were making decisions suboptimally. It its own small way, it seems to have succeeded enormously. Over the last year, I've been asked by a variety of people if they could use RubyVote for their own organizational decision making -- tasks like electing leadership of a student group or members of a non-profit board of directors. Since RubyVote was just a library without a UI of its own, I had to tell them "no." I caved in eventually and got to work on a quick and dirty web-based front end to the library. That project grew into Selectricity which is a primarily web-based interface to a variety of different election methods and voting technologies. You can currently try out quickvotes which can be created in half a minute and voted on in a quarter but which bring all of the power of preferential voting technologies to bear on very simple decisions. Prompted by Aaron Swartz, I also built a mobile phone version that's lets you send a short email or SMS to create or vote in a election. For those that follow research in voting technologies, there's not a lot of new stuff here. What's new is that this project, unlike the vast majority of voting technologies, is interested in the state of the art for everyone but governments. Clearly government decisions are important but they're one set of decisions, usually only once a year. Selectricity is voting machinery for everything and everyone else. It was announced in a variety of news outlets today that Selectricity was selected for grant from mtvU and Cisco as part of their Digital Incubator project. As part of that, I'm going to be working with some other voting technology experts to bring tools for auditable elections, cryptographically secured anonymity, and voter verifiability to the platform (I have only rudimentary functionality today). There are a couple people who will be joining me on the project this summer and we will building out what I hope will be an extremely attractive platform for better every-day decision-making. More than the grant though, I'm excited about the visibility that use by MTV will bring to the project. Most of all though, I'm just excited about more free software and more (and more accessible) democratic decision making. My adviser Chris Csikszentmih lyi put it well:

One of the big arguments against preferential voting, or new voting technologies, is the fear that they would disenfranchise the average person who doesn't yet understand how they work. Certainly, making all voting technologies open source is critical, but the issue of familiarity is worth considering. We re hoping that MTV and eventually American Idol will move their voting over to Selectricity, allowing it to work as both a technical tool but also pedagogically, training future voters. Why not integrate democratic processes into all your software and communications tools? Why not use the best democratic processes available, so long as they're available to everyone?

I am currently with Optus, and while they were acceptable a few years ago, they have descended in the last couple of years so that they're chair-throwingly obnoxious now. So, as I really, really dislike giving retarded monkeys my money (I'd get rid of govco if I could, really), I'm looking to move. Specifically, I want a telephone communications provider:

• Whose phone monkeys are clueful enough to be able to execute the things I've requested be done, and can actually do what they tell me they're going to do (detailed story there is available on request);
• Who doesn't summarily raise line rental by 40%, and insult my intelligence by telling me that it's better because I get a pile of "included minutes" that I'll never use;
• That doesn't use one of those horrendous, useless voice recognition systems (they're slower and more error prone than just pressing the damn numbers) -- I'd love a real person on the line when I call, but I'm realistic enough to accept that that's just not going to happen;
• Who, if they do decide to outsource their phone support, at least sends it to a call centre who has people who don't have an overpoweringly strong accent;
• That just lists their charges (all of their charges) simply and easily, so I can say "that's what it's going to cost me to use these guys", instead of the endless twisty passages of bundling, "special deals" (which expire a couple of months after you sign up to them), and other customer-confusing effluvia;
• Who employ someone to proofread their website (I'm looking at you, Southern Cross, with your grocers' apostrophe

). Do I really have a hope in hell here? At this point, I'll pay a bit more for phone service if it doesn't involve getting screwed over at the telco's whim, and dealing with incomprehensible Indian call centres. Answers on a postcard, or (if you're feeling really technical) in an e-mail to mpalmer@hezmatt.org. We're talking about Australia here, in case anyone's wondering -- moving to another country for phone service is probably a bit too drastic. Switching to pure VoIP would be an option if I didn't need to have a fixed-line service for my ADSL.

Yes, Microsoft have started swinging their patent bat a little harder. However, before everyone gets all screamy about the "235 patents" thing, read a little closer:

the Linux kernel [...] violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

While I can forgive a journalist the sin of not knowing the difference between Linux-the-kernel and Linux-the-entire-FOSS-ecosystem, can people who should have a clue about this please stop perpetuating the inaccuracy? Yes, 42 patents is still pretty bad, but it's not 235, and getting facts straight is what we do on this side of the debate -- the frothing and bullshit is what the other guys do. Once you start looking at the various categories of patent, it really does make it obvious that there's some straw-grasping going on here. If GUI elements really infringe on 65 Microsoft patents, it seems reasonable to assume that KDE and Gnome have a subset each, so presumably nobody gets the full brunt of that lot. Also, those 68 "assorted FOSS programs" patents probably includes such widely-used classics as this pearler of a program (chosen at random from Freshmeat for it's likely small userbase; no other ridicule is intended or implied). What galls me, though, isn't the bandying around of random inaccurate numbers, it's classy things like this:

[some Microsoft sock-puppet] refuses to identify specific patents or explain how they're being infringed, lest FOSS advocates start filing challenges to them.

Yeah, we'd hate it if the patent system were at all used in the manner in which it were intended. I don't suppose anyone else is getting SCO-style "we've got 100,000 lines of infringing code, but we're not going to tell you which ones" flashback at this point? Personally, I think that if Microsoft ever does starts with a patent smackdown, it won't be 235 patents, it'll be two or three, the strongest ones they can find, and 90 minutes after the plaintiff(s) is/are served the infringing code will be history, and we'll go back to living our lives as normal. That's even assuming that the patents are legit, which is by no means a given (even with the US' insanely broad patent provisions). As the linked article explains, the US Supreme Court has started getting a bit noisy on the subject of over-broad and pointless software patents, so perhaps Microsoft is just getting it's licks in before the Supremes take it's noisy rattle away from it. There's some side-commentary on this issue at Groklaw, and the Patent Law blog has a quick mention of it too (with all sorts of nice frothy comments, to boot).

python-gammu 0.20 has been just released. New features:

• Fixed call information conversion.
• Support for last modified field.
• Support for latest Gammu version.
• Added python wrapper around C module, C module is now gammu.Core.
• Moved some generic data from Wammu.
• Added asynchronous wrapper around StateMachine.
• Added example for async operations, see examples/worker.py.
• Main library is now gammu.Core, but gammu.* still works.
• Support for service numbers.
• New example for service numbers, see examples/service-numbers.py.

I just released new version of Gammu, you can download it from download server. Changes to latest testing version are relatively small:

• Do not use asynchronous I/O on Windows.
• Make USSD work with AT phones.
• Fix setting date on Siemens MC75 (Rudolf Cejka).
• Config file on Windows is now searched in Application Data folder.
• Avoid corrupting vCard when some fields are empty.
• Properly handle OBEX error codes (bug #298).

Stay tuned, release evening will continue ;-).

Paul Dwerryhouse blogs about mobile phone etiquette.

1. Taking excessive calls at a restaurant is annoying, but keep them short and it’s no big deal.


2. Strange ring tones are OK as long as people answer their phone. It’s when they decide that they don’t want to answer a call that the entire Avril Lavigne song annoys people. In regard to this issue wearing headphones in public with the volume turned up high enough that everyone else can hear is a much worse problem - which will incidentally deafen the person using the headphones in the long-term as well as annoying everyone else in the short-term.


3. I used to work with Paul and we had a colleague who repeatedly chose not to answer his mobile phone because he didn’t want to talk to a particular recruiting agent but refused to say so. Eventually the agent tried calling the office and got to me, I told him “if someone never answers their mobile phone when you call it means that they don’t like you, take a hint and stop calling”. There were fewer unanswered calls after that.


4. I have to agree with that, having a phone call in the cinema (or even worse the theatre) is just wrong. If you are on the list for organ transplant (the only time you really MUST have your phone on all the time) then turn the phone to vibrate mode.


5. When on the train the range of things that I can do is limited. Rather than waste time I make calls that I don’t have time to make on other occasions. The only exception is when I was in Japan, in respect of their cultural standards I turned my phone off most times when on the train.


6. Walking and talking? Unless you are crossing a busy street then why not? People who inappropriately use mobile phones while performing dangerous activities will tend to be weeded out by Darwin. They usually don’t give Darwin Awards for mundane things such as not seeing an oncoming truck while talking on a mobile phone.


7. In regard to the issue of whether you have to answer a phone, some people believe that it’s an issue of courtesy to the person who is calling to answer the phone if reasonably possible.


8. Whether “call me back” is adequate depends on who is calling. I generally find that when someone leaves such a message they have been correct in their assessment of the value of their call to me. The people who leave such messages are generally the people who’s call I will return on the basis of such a message. Leaving a long voicemail message adds to the profits of the telco used to making the call as well as the telco that maintains the voice-mail box. My 3 voicemail service charges me to receive the messages and I prefer them to be kept short.


9. Anyone who thinks that having a fancy phone, car, computer, etc will make them a better person or impress anyone has bigger problems than the choice of a phone. Also if the $600 a year that you might spend on regularly updating your mobile phone makes a significant difference to your savings then you will probably never be able to afford a house either.


10. Bluetooth headsets do make you look like an idiot, but they do have some benefits. When doing tech-support it is a real benefit to be able to use both hands for typing. The only reason I don’t have one is that I don’t do tech support enough to justify the expense of buying one or the inconvenience of carrying it everywhere. Note that when you define “tech support” in the most broad sense (which includes helping all your relatives with their computer problems) most computer people do quite a lot of it even if it’s not their job.

E-Week has an article about the popular computer hardware review site Tom’s Hardware (tomshardware.com) being hit by a trojan in a banner advert. From the article it’s not clear whether a criminal paid for a banner advert under a legitimate business name or compromised the advertising server run by an innocent third-party who paid for advertising on Tom’s Hardware. But really it doesn’t matter very much for users. The facts that are clear are that Tom’s Hardware is a very reputable site (that I personally visit regularly and recommend highly) that apparently did nothing wrong. Yet Windows users who visited the site who hadn’t applied the latest patches had their systems compromised (and presumably used for other criminal activity). Apparently a month ago there was a patch released for the bug in question. One thing that has to be noted is that large corporations often don’t apply patches immediately. Spending a month testing a patch before deploying it widely is not uncommon in an enterprise environment. The general thinking in an enterprise is that the employees are almost always prohibited from visiting porn sites, and often prohibited from using forums, and webmail services. With these things prohibited the risk of attack is dramatically reduced. Now there is evidence that even the most reputable sites run by the competent sys-admins can be vulnerable to such attack. One possible method of alleviating such attacks would be to have sites that are supported by advertising also allow ad-free subscriptions. So if an enterprise wanted to use a site such as Tom’s Hardware without the risk of advert based attack then they could pay for an advert free subscription. I’m sure that it would be easy for an enterprise to pay Tom’s hardware more money than they would ever be likely to get from providing advertising to the employees of that company while still not having any impact on the IT training budget. But the best solution is that a Windows machine that is used for main desktop work should not be used for web browsing (to any sites). A Linux or Mac OS/X desktop machine could be used for such web browsing with less risk due to having less security holes in the OS. Another option is to use VMWare, Xen, or another virtualisation technology to use a virtual machine for web browsing to make it a lot harder for an attacker to break out and compromise the main environment.

It's voting time in the lunacy that is the Eurovision Song Contest. Here is a summary, including some strange bits of Euronglish:

1. Bosnia+Herzegovina - nice but no chance;
2. Spain - 4 guys in tight white and pink lights - creepy;
3. Belarus - Medallion man with a rock ballad to bukkake - "when you cast your loving potion over me";
4. Ireland - Folksie, charming, dark yet jolly;
5. Finland - more noisy dark rock with drums;
6. Republic of Macedonia - up/down ballad with drums;
7. Slovenia - Opera in black with drums;
8. Hungary - Bluesy rock angst. No drums. Phew;
9. Lithuania - Guitarry song with "lonely shades walking";
10. Greece - an odd disco/dance at the "heart of attention";
11. Georgia - a nice slice of trance;
12. Sweden - revenge of 70s glam! Maybe "with my head in the can" was deliberate;
13. France - Franglais pop. How did monoglots follow this?
14. Latvia - a singalong. In Italian. But it looks like Italy aren't here this year. So how's that help?;
15. Russia - another fun girl band, singing different (ruder) lyrics to the official song sheet;
16. Germany - sexism swings;
17. Serbia - a red up/down song;
18. Ukraine - dance nonsense - the first song I walked out on this year;
19. UK - an example of Britishness and why I call myself English, not British;
20. Romania - a fun little polyglot guitar song;
21. Bulgaria - drums, dance, squeaking;
22. Turkey - "How much I crave for you" - a dancey whirly song;
23. Armenia - the tearful stalker's song;
24. Moldova - gothest song of the night - "each people will gnaw our wishes no more"???

I can't pick a winner from that. I only voted to try to stop Ukraine.

When I have a longer comment on someone else's blog post, I usually write it up on my own site and then send a pingback or trackback. I've written my own really basic pingback and trackback clients and servers, which seem to work. I'll package them up Real Soon Now. Sooner if anyone asks for them. I don't have much sympathy with people who complain about losing comments because their Javascript or Cookies died when their own blog post has a stupid eyetest on it and its trackback settings are a bit screwed-up. Update: Cord Beermann commented:

"If you have a problem with the trackback function of my blog, then please be more specific what is wrong with the trackback function, because the software may be part of Debian soon."

Your page includes trackback:ping="" which seems obviously wrong.

"The 'stupid eyetest' however is a personal decision for my blog."

So what if it's a personal decision? It's stupid and I'm going to say that it's stupid. Are you the sort of guy who takes a personal decision to kick guys in wheelchairs, but then protests if they run over your foot in return? I'm disappointed if more stupid software is going to be in debian. Update 2: the image test seems to have been replaced by some numbers now. Thank you for removing the eyetest, but it still won't save a comment for some reason.

"However: both isn't related to the initial problem."

I think the broken trackback/pingback support is related to your initial problem. If your trackback/pingback support worked, you could use a real editor on your own site instead of a web browser on someone else's. In other news, here's Alexandre Vassalotti's review of Emacs weblogger-mode.

Apparantly not everyone knows binNMUs. Sometimes bugs are filed when binNMUs can solve the problem. Some people even wonder about breaking NMUs without any notice. A binNMU:
* no source changes * sheduled on the build daemons by someone with wanna-build access * for versions of packages which already exist in the archive * can be requested on debian-release@lists.debian.org, no bugs should be filed So a binNMU is used often for library transitions with ABI changes but without API changes (libFOO-dev has not been renamed, but libFOObar has been renamed to libFOObaz) or to fix an upload of a package that was not built in a clean environment. Note that it is a good idea to contact the maintainers of packages that reverse depend on your library before starting a library transition in any case so people know why their packages don't build/install anymore and maybe can even coordinate uploads they were going to make anyway. Informing the Release Team about library transitions of more than a couple of packages would also be appreciated....

Did you know that it's the last day of Compost Awareness Week today (Saturday 12 May)? No, nor did I. I was pretty aware of the compost bin when it flew across the lawn before I bricked it down. Maybe that's not what they meant. Getting a compost bin has reduced our rubbish to less than a bag a week, but we've yet to get any compost yet, after six months of winter. So last week, I tried a coco peat brick that you reconstitute in water. Easy to transport, but it seems to need mixing with regular compost to give a decent growing soil. Are you aware of your compost? Go on, give it a hug. Update: Alex Hudson wrote:

"Actually, I was aware of compost awareness week! We have a nice local website which many local groups use, including EcoLocal - they were doing build-your-own compost bin today, and handing out soil conditioner. I actually built our composter out of fence panels which blew down in winds a while ago, and I like the idea of using wooden/constructed bins than plastic (though I suspect plastic is much more efficient)."

I moved recently. I seem to have some random tiles and bricks, but I left all the wood behind in King's Lynn. The fence panel that was lying around when we saw the house was cleared away before we moved in. I'm not sure that I'm good enough at woodwork to build-my-own anyway. I don't know if plastic is better - I guess it insulates better, but they still tell you to wrap it up in winter, which is nuts: any wrapping would blow away in a storm.

Paul Graham makes some interesting observations about taking risks to achieve career benefits. One thing he doesn’t mention is that the risks have to match your life situation. If you are 21, living with your parents, and single (typical for a CS graduate) then you should take the riskiest options in terms of your career (apart from working in Iraq of course). If you don’t have much money then you don’t have much to lose. If you live with your parents then you still have accommodation and food even if you have no money. If you have no dependents (SO or children) then there’s nothing compelling you to earn a certain income. When you get older you may get a mortgage, a SO, and/or children. Also you won’t live with your parents forever. Most career risks that you might want to take aren’t possible if you leave them too late. Finally if you do something risky such as starting your own company and it doesn’t work out then it’s still going to look good on your CV. If you already have a lot of experience in the industry then the CV improvement may not be worth the time and effort invested in an unsuccessful company. When I was 22 I (along with two business partners) started an Internet cafe. It went reasonably well (by the standards of small businesses), it lasted for a few years before cheap net access at home killed most of the business. At the time the cafe had to close the ISP side of the business was doing reasonably well and one of my partners bought the operating ISP business. This buy-out caused me to approximately break even out of the entire business which is a lot better than most small businesses do. When I was 26 I moved to London (I have dual nationality, UK and Australian). The experience I had gained from running my own business allowed me to immediately get contract work for large ISPs in Europe. Most of the risks in my career were ones that I took while living with my parents. At the time I didn’t think through the issues of mortgages etc, my thinking was mostly along the lines of “it could work, I’m bored, so why not?”. ;) Update: While in the process of writing this blog post I forwarded the URL of a dating service for scientists (sciconnect.com) to some friends. The main page has pictures of single people wearing lab coats and using laptops which I found amusing. I have no idea whether it’s a good service or not, but the pictures on the main page made it worth a look. It seems that I accidentally pasted the wrong URL into my blog post so people who were looking for the Paul Graham article ended up at the dating service instead. But I guess if you are the type of person who reads my blog and who is interested in a link to Paul Graham’s blog and you happen to be single then a dating service for scientists might be of some interest. Thanks to MJ Ray for pointing out my error.

I beat my last record: the last time I killed my keyboard was 2 year and 1 month ago. Yesterday, some beer decided to go between keys... Argh, another Keytronic dead. Now I'm looking for a good keyboard for typing every day (please don't recommend me IBM model M or Keytronic, or tell me where to order them ).

I beat my last record: the last time I killed my keyboard was 2 year and 1 month ago. Yesterday, some beer decided to go between keys... Argh, another Keytronic dead. Now I'm looking for a good keyboard for typing every day (please don't recommend me IBM model M or Keytronic, or tell me where to order them :-) ).

While I usually agree that users are idiots and we know better than they do, I must recognize that the developers of the instant messaging program formerly known as GAIM are being totally wrong in their crusade against protocol icons. Hello? If I wanted a simple-minded client I would install gossip. When many people in a few days take the time to find and reply to a closed bug report then maybe they have good reasons to want a feature. And please refrain from serving us bullshit like "a preference would add too much complexity to the code", some of us actually know about pointers and switch statements. (Advanced preferences is something which the gajim developers got right. It's too bad that the Jabber transports lack many protocol features, are resource hungry, highly unstable and generally crappy.) One of the reasons for requiring native protocol icons is that each protocol has subtly different presence values, whose exact semantics are now lost. And in some situations the protocol used by your contacts has a semantic value in itself. Yes: I know that you already replied to these arguments, but you are still wrong.

Sam commented:

"Quality motion. This is exactly the point that I raise at just about every committee meeting I attend, but to have it formally supported by the wider membership is a good step. If things don't improve soon, we should try that line of attack in the Central and Eastern region."

One suggestion in the debate was to have a co-operatives fortnight, similar to the fairtrade fortnight, to promote the Co-operative Group (tCG) membership, other tCG businesses and other local cooperatives. Let's see whether SW can lead the way again! ;-) The question-and-answer session was pretty interesting. All of the questions were submitted in writing. Some of them were submitted in advance and others during the lunch break. No spoken questions were taken and most Insurance (CIS) and Bank questions were held back because no-one from financial services was there. The answers were grouped under a few headings.

Ethics, answersed by Catherine Staveley

1. CIS's voting record is public, but some details are buried under sustainabiliy on the group's corporate web site.
2. The panel were asked to define a few terms. By ethical, tCG means generally being "a good neighbour". Materiality is how much a business relates to tCG's aims and they think shelf penetration is how much space and promotion a product gets in the stores. The financial services profits aim to be all-ethical.
3. Members were asked to please take part in the consultations about the new food retail ethical policy.
4. tCG has a "triple bottom line" - in addition to looking at profits, we also consider our effects on our communities and sustainability.
5. tCG is leading the way on packaging minimisation: onion nets are already biodegradable, work continues on developing biodegradable fruit nets and a new light-weight (but still strong) whiskey bottle has just been launched. We'll see whether it's possible to give more dividend points for buying less packaged goods.

Food retail, answered by David Parker (regional food), Gary Metcalfe (operations), Clive Netherway (top 100 stores) and Nick Lowe (sales and support)

1. Local stores: Minehead Post Office contracts have been exchanged and planning permission granted in Budleigh Salterton - both sites should be ready in a couple of months.
2. There are new small stores at Amesbury, Ilfracombe, Perranport and Lyneham (where it's hurting Tesco Express more than anyone). tCG have also acquired 7 stores from Higgins, one from Savages and a petrol station with minimarket in Bath. Dawlish has just opened, giving a total of 14 new stores. In addition, 50 stores are being refitted in the south-west region.
3. The Falmouth store is a bit of a puzzle: whether to split the existing store or develop a nearby site.
4. tCG stores have outperformed the The Institute of Grocery Distribution index for 15 months in a row and is now seeing growth-on-growth.
5. Problems with product stocking should be taken up with store managers first.
6. Home delivery has been trialled and failed several times, but is being trialled again in the new OCO stores. (What does OCO mean? There's one at Portishead.)
7. Supply problems with RSPCA Freedom Foods meats will be investigated.
8. The Westbury-on-Trim Stoke Lane store will only be expanded if its turnover increases.
9. Suppliers are still letting some stores down on delivery times. This will be re-checked.
10. The best response to the crocodile community projects of other companies is to strengthen tCG's community project funding in areas before other supermarkets open new stores.
11. Local produce is rarely stocked because of problems with availability and meeting tCG technical standards (I could almost hear the hackles raise at this answer!). Organic is only usually stocked in areas where surveys suggest the target audience lives (which I guess is why my tatty 60s store has more sweets and sugar drinks than fresh food). Similar biases exist for other ranges.
12. Missing product complaints will get written answers: Clipper tea and sugar-free Mintoes.
13. There was a complaint about the lack of notices about the unique status of co-op milk. (In short, we own our farms so our milk had better not be getting abused.)

Corporate questions, answered by Frank Jones

1. Compensations of the merged tCG/United Co-op societies are shown on page 12 of Stronger Together.
2. There was a question about a 10% profit target which I didn't understand. The answer was on page 13 of the annual report.
3. Party politicians were in the hall.
4. The results of the merger meetings were unknown at the time.
5. The Co-operative Funerals are derecognising the GMB union, which has worried many members. The comment from the floor was "there's usually one motive for derecognising a union"!
6. There's a 16% pay increase for executives who don't join tCG's pension fund, which is what would have been paid into the fund for them. Whether it applies to all employees will be checked and a written reply given.

Strategic questions, answered by David Doyle

1. Travel offers will be promoted in the food stores. tCG wants to avoid "silo" businesses which don't cross-promote with other businesses where appropriate.
2. Leaflets of other tCG and other co-ops should be stocked, particularly at festive times.
3. Offsetting CO2 is not a complete answer to climate change, but it was the only one of five suggested actions which was approved. Is the Co-operative Travel chain underperforming because it doesn't offer enough ethical choices? Some shouting from the floor about them still not offering European rail tickets.
4. The regional view of the United merger... This was nicely controversial, as it bloody well ought to be... There's no requirement for a tCG membership vote, so there will be no tCG membership vote. There was a hierarchical vote: very few of the Cornwall area turned up at the regional meeting in Bristol, but Devon and Somerset turned out in numbers and the south-west's delegates to the national meeting voted against 5 of the 6 merger resolutions, which were passed anyway. The chair stepped in and cut short the debate, stating that everyone knows the south-west is unhappy about certain aspects, like not having a choice on the first merged chief executive, but what's done is done.

Finally, a list of questions being sent for written answers were given by Andrew North and the chair (was it Colin House? It's annoying to find one name and lose another).