May 9, 2013
UK authorities win exemptions from offices to homes planning changes
Following our report in February that the majority of London’s boroughs had applied to be exempt from plans to relax planning laws on the conversion of offices into homes, the government has today exempted most of central London and some UK regions from the new rules. Local authorities were asked to apply for exemptions earlier in the year and now cover areas within the jurisdiction of 17 local authorities including the City of London, Camden, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Westminster, Newham and Kensington and Chelsea. Nationwide, exemptions have been granted for parts of central Manchester, the Vale of the White Horse, Stevenage, Ashford in Kent, Sevenoaks and East Hampshire.
July 18, 2013
Baltimore residents offered a “guns for laptops” exchange
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Technology
Growing concerns regarding the incursion of connectivity devices into our everyday lives ignores the fact that many people have little or no access to these tools. Access to the Internet may have been ruled as a UN human right, but that doesn’t really help those who can’t afford devices that connect them to the web in the first place. So, while for most Europeans the recent story in the Baltimore Brew that locals could turn in their guns in exchange for a refurbished Dell laptop is pretty jaw-dropping, it’s a good example of the difficulty residents in a deprived area have in, as the organisers describe it, “bridging the digital divide.”
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