Why can't people just let things go.

What is this slavery reparation bollocks?

Sure, discuss it by all means if you have to, but for gods sake, don't apologise on my behalf, I or my ancestors did nothing. We were in the workhouses or being used as cannon fodder to prop up some feudal lord or baron somewhere. Taking the logic of wealth built by exploitation to its logical outcome, you may as well argue that all wealth accrued by land ownership or bestowed by the crown was to the detriment and enslavement of those who lived and work the lands. How about a bit of reparation for the relatives of those too.

Grab all the wealth from old Duke of Westminster and share it out. Or what about the royal household. Redistribute all theirs too?

200 years ago bad things happened. Slavery was an awful thing, implemented by ruling class greedy bastards who had the capacity to see people as animals and commoditites.

The same people exist today, they go by the names of George and Tony and Vladimir.

Sony Gamers get a free HD TV. Nice little bonus eh? A £2500 quid HD telly.

They had just been told they had been rewarded for their patience and loyalty with a free £2,500 high-definition TV on which to play their shiny new console.

Personally, I wouldn't dream of queuing all night for anything, let alone a £500 games machine.

I've got an xbox360 that I picked up cheap for the boy and am pretty impressed with the quality. Gears of war is scary, trust me.

Becky makes an interesting point about Digg today.

For those of you who don't know Digg is a social media site where people 'digg' or 'bury' stories.

 Becky noticed that a lot of her blogs or dugg stories are often buried by the same groups of people. She looked a little further and found that the same people appeared to be doing the burying.

If you get a story on the front page of Digg it can get your blog a lot of attention. The greater the number of diggs, the higher you go in their system. Other people as a result will blog about what you say, especially if its interesting/noteworthy. Links are a currency, lots of links can earn you lots of attention and raise your importance/authority in the blogosphere and search engine scoring systems. Where money or influence can be bought cheaply and sold on for greater value, then some people will seek to exploit/ manipulate it.

As Becky shows, political groups and individuals are getting the hang of this web 2 stuff. They realise that certain platforms used correctly, can be useful tools for promoting their agendas.Heavily trafficked sites that push  messages out based on user metrics are popular because people believe that they are in some way democratic. The theory goes that if say 1000 people who use a system have felt motivated to click a button whose subtext is 'this a great site/story', then it must be worth a look.

I guess ultimately, people will always try and game systems.If its exploitable and people feel they can get away with it without causing too much observable harm, then people will act out of self interest and do what they do.

We are all on some level political animals; we will use our friends and networks to achieve our aims, be they benevolent or otherwise. Its how life works.Be it newspapers, tv shows, radio, and of course now the internet, people will look for ways of pushing their agendas and getting their mesage in front of your face.

Knowledge is power dudes