I saw and heard far too many stirring matters in Europe this month for it to strictly count as a relaxing holiday. It was more like some sort of brisk Victorian tale of moral recuperation, where a malaise-filled city gent, falling asleep at his desk, is shown by his labouring conscience vivid images of model courage struggling against enormous odds while terrible forces swell nearby to depose civilization in the (third) highest corridors of power. Inspired and chastened by his vision he awakes on Sunday morning to sweep himself off to a church revivalist meeting and dedicate himself anew to the cause.
Of course, just as in Victorian times, the inspiration rarely lasts longer than late Sunday afternoon.
But I am determined to be good! For ever and ever! Or at least until mid-August! And you can help me, dear occasional reader!
At OpenTech, I helped the Open Rights Group launch their new membership expansion campaign to double their supporter level from 750 to 1500.
To encourage you to help fund Britain’s own grassroots digital rights group, and to improve my own moral standing, I hereby make a pledge:
If five people reading this sign up for ORG (or increase their subscription from a fiver to a tenner a month), I hereby decree that I will blog every weekday for the next month.
I have lots of things to say, and they are all terrifically interesting, but I am currently too louche and feckless to express them. Your fiver will stiffen my resolve, gall me to action — and support a worthy and fine institution.
Simply send me your ORG “scalp” (the reference code that you get when you sign up), and when I have five, I will start spilling all the beans I have at my disposal.
Or you know, you could just callously click “mark all read”, and move onto the next RSS item.
Oh you wouldn’t. Don’t you dare! I’ll put a javascript spell on you!
Update: Two and half sign-ups! (one of them backdated their increase to the beginning of the year, so I count that as one and a half). You’re so close to obliging me to waste valuable time!