If you will forgive me for posting something that I wrote elsewhere on this, I think you may agree with my line even though its slightly different from yours? What's more annoying: a) ZaNuLieBore nanny staters want to totally BAN frosties and throw people in prison for eating them and stuff - Orwellian huh? or... b) Politicians feel the need to spit out a stream of gestures and signals, be seen to be saying something to please a clueless, oversimplified opinion-on-everything-knowledge-about-nothing commentariat every now and then even going so far as to enact some legislation that is so impractical and badly drafted that it ends up being repealed or quietly removed or modified a bit like the huge, ever-growing perma-updating junk of code that makes up a Microsoft PC? Me? The second one really bothers me. It mildly irritates me that people keep saying the first thing.

While I agree with this post, you seem to be disagreeing with one of your own general themes here Chris. Are you saying that any of the people who could be doing things about this aren't doing so because they're moaning about Murdoch?

Unless the 'nearby neighbourhood' was mine, it could be that someone else shares my views on parenting? ;-)

Really good post - as ever. Two quick observations: 1. Freemium v Affinity Traditionally, we've been able to join clubs (unions, Building Societies the pre-demutualisation AA, the RSPB etc) and been able to qualify for discounts of one kind or another - preferential insurance rates, holiday offers etc. These have been, at least ostensibly, cheaper than the ones on the High St and / or ones where the kickback for our purchase goes to a mutual organisation thereby cross-subsidising the core service. Freemium - the O2 deal on tickets is as good an example as any - is about exploiting this shift in the perceived need for more efficient use of time. And you won't see emerging acts like the Manic Street Preachers were in '94. Instead, it's about getting tickets for what you could call the cultural version of the 'Schelling Point' - acts that people don't absolutely adore, but more the sort of artists that you can easily round up a party for in the office (Tom Jones, Elton John, Duran Duran etc). In so many insidious ways it's part of a general tendency towards monopoly in all things. 2. The 'purchasing window'. On your time / place table, I've spent a lot of my life working in sales - using contact management and CRM software. Trying to match preference to customers and then contact them in the optimum way, ensuring that the salesperson schedules calls in an efficient way - not fannying about wasting time between calls but just banging them out at an hourly rate to ensure a maximum 'effective calls' (actual conversations with a 'qualified prospect' - someone with a budget and a brief to buy what you're selling). And for high-ticket telesales items (say, a 'distressed' page of advertising that costs £10k near to a press-deadline) you want to make sure that you don't forget to make that call at exactly the right time. With voicemail, caller-display, and purchasing policies that are designed to minimise any kind of impulse-buying, this has become more a game of cat-and-mouse than ever. I understand that 'distressed' space isn't as common a feature as it used to be. How will people monetise a commitment by a buyer to take a call, and a tool that will allow sales people to qualify a prospect in terms of if/when they will make the purchase?