Cherry-picking a few choice tweets from private individuals which are pretty unrepresentative of what is in fact an eight-year campaign isn’t quite right, Rob.

I for one have written a number of factual articles about Gary McKinnon for precisely the reasons you suggest. And I happen to know I am not alone in that either. On Twitter, if you look, large numbers of #garymckinnon tweets are about the facts of the matter, not to mention the painstaking efforts to convince people of why the extradition is unjust. Tweeter by tweeter.

I also happen to know that the Home Office and Buckingham Palace have both been overwhelmed with the volume of letters and phonecalls. Twitter is only the most readily visible aspect of a campaign which has so far been successful in keeping McKinnon in the UK, and has gathered cross-party support in Parliament, a single recorded by Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, David Gilmour and others, a barrage of individual complaints to MPs, the Home Secretary and the Queen, and other things in the pipeline which I am not at liberty to publicise just yet.

As for the recent protest outside the Home Office (attended by no less than 8 MPs, including Nick Clegg and Keith Vaz), many of those attending were in fact recruited via Twitter. Perhaps even including yourself, Rob, but certainly including people who travelled to London from the West Country, from East Anglia and even the Netherlands especially for the occasion. To say that Twitter doesn’t translate into action is therefore false. How do you think *I* got involved with it? Seriously. I for one am living proof that Twitter “works”.

And you have to bear in mind of course, that the Gary McKinnon campaign has no budget, no employees, and consists of public-spirited well-wishers who have their own lives to conduct. Not bad for a bunch of hobbyists, I would say.

In any case, raising awareness is a vital first step. And I don’t think it’s very nice to knock it. Your mother would do the same as Janis Sharp, I am sure, especially if she weren’t a professional campaigner. Which the vast majority of Gary McKinnon’s supporters are not.

What IS interesting is how people generally are more ready to vote for a christmas single or a Big Brother contestant than they are to act on matters of any actual significance. It’s not as cool or new-fangled, maybe, as purporting to debunk a web 2.0 “myth”, but it is *people* that do this stuff. Or don’t do it. Just as they have since time immemorial.

Ordinary people making art of various kinds and getting them out to the whole world, basically for free. And none of them are what you might call capitalists, nor are they being capitalist. They’re making art and sharing it, for free, with the whole world.

Because you can do that now, for the first time in human history. And capitalism hasn’t demanded anything of any of them.

Here is the piece in question:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas

Oh and FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!

What’s hashtag?

ummmm, okay.

A triumph of capitalist technology: excellent.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Exactly. Is it really necessary for RATM (as all the cool kids are calling them) to don sack-cloth and ashes? Is it more important that Sony DON’T profit from this than that Shelter do?

As to the article’s title, hacking the pop charts is a little more simple than getting the world’s leaders to agree to measures which, if they were implemented, would probably see them lose the next election.

It was a great campaign in the truest Alinskyian sense, it galvanised but worked within the mainstream, it raised money that will make a real difference, and it made an exceptionally radical song the anthem of Christmas and the last tune of the year and decade.

And to answer the post title, it’s because ordinary people organised and mobilised not politicians seeking to serve ‘national interests’.

– then go and download some music from a truly ‘independent’ artist who might actually merit a personal financial stimulus package. I provided a starter list of folk I like, and invited suggestions to add to it…

http://andyhgilmour.blogspot.com/2009/12/state-of-independence.html

Loads of people have read it, and a whole…none of them have bothered to add any musicians’ names…

Don’t care what they thought of my argument (I was, of course, completely correct, always am…!), but just a shame the list hasn’t been expanded, because there are thousands of brilliant people out there making incredible music…(and mediocre clatterers like me, naturally).

The idea that the NHS is something to love is presumed, and the campaign becomes about forming a huge group of people around a slogan for a fleeting moment only…

Of course – it was a sleazy attempt to cash in on the fleeting anti-Tory sentiment that followed Daniel Hannan’s Foxy antics. That, it seems, is how the government sees twitter: a useful device for aquiring angry mobs.

Did you see the top Twitter “news events” trends of 2009? #1 was #iranelection. Ah, that takes us back. Everyone was turning their icons green and retweeting the latest 140-character samizdat from the streets of Tehran. Keep up the pressure! the optimists cried. The green revolution is within our grasp!

Now see where we are: Iran is still a dictatorship, and Billy Kristol is back to thinking up new reasons to invade it.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/12/why_this_decade.php?page=4

By the way, this one has so far raised over £77,000 for Shelter, to whom RATM are donating their profits.

I understand what you have to say, and indeed are saying – yet, while you rant and rage against the internet you sit and ask why others are not doing anything about it.

My question is why aren’t YOU doing something about it. Get on the phone, tweet, email, whatever to George and organise a general strike or something.

The middle-class lovies, drinking whatever year they drink, tutting at the state of the country quietly getting pissed and wondering where “England” went – all the time electing a Tory government, what do you expect to happen?

You won’t get ‘people-power’ on the side of global agreements until the people are listened to – and governments do that every 4 or 5 years, full stop.

At least giving Cowell a kick on the bollox is a start!

So it’s not a valid comparison _at all_!