I called 999 and told them what I could see. You can imagine the sort of questions: Road name? Who are you? Where are you? I was dealing with it quite well, there was a bit of adrenaline and my heart thumped a bit more loudly, but overall I was just being calm and reporting what I saw. Until. Until the 999 operator asked me how old the man was. I looked up and said ”about 20 at a guess” then it hit me. So young. So so young.

I only took the police five minutes to get to him and as soon as they did the 999 operation said goodbye. At that point we moved on, no sense in either getting in the way or running the risk of seeing him actually jump. However, his plight stayed with me and I couldn’t shake the image of this young man stood on the edge of the flyover.

I checked the usual websites, but all simply said the road was closed due to ‘an incident’. The next day, however, I saw that he’d been arrested under the mental health act, a standard practice I’m sure, hopefully he’s getting the help he needs.

Often, I suppose, people don’t think anyone cares about them when in reality that’s far from the case. I thought to myself what on earth can have happened in such a short period of life to push a person to such a decision. How hard, how terrible must their existence have been to get to that point.

Obviously, I don’t know the back story – he may have been a serial time waster often bothering the police with his antics, he might have been overreacting to something nonsensical like Manchester United not winning the league, or, he may have had serious issues that lead him to the conclusion that death was a logical choice. No matter what led him to the edge I’m glad he did not go over it.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails,

at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Right now if you want to have a long unsolvable and generally tedious conversation on Twitter about mags on the iPad then simply make some off hand comment about lazy PDF shovelware or bemoan the lack of innovation in the apps themselves.

Sure, that’s an argument to be had and over time it’ll shake down and some platform or other will be used in preference, but until then how you make an iPad magazine for the iPad isn’t really something I lose any sleep over. Of course, I’m impressed by those making the effort to roll their own, but I’ve seen magazines using Mag+ (no sniggering at the back) that seem perfectly passable and entertaining to me.

I’m not overly bothered by the lack of innovation (whatever that is) in iPad magazine creation. What irks me more is the seeming lack of products for the iPad. Hold on you say there are loads of iPad magazines! Well, yes, but so few of them are iPad magazines they are existing print titles put on the iPad.

Naturally, as the launch editor of Padder (so short lived a title that even ’short lived’ seems a bit generous) I think that new titles are what the iPad should get. A quick look at the top ten Newsstand publications however shows that what publishers want to sell is iPad versions of their print titles. That, in my opinion is a bit sad. Your website is nothing like your magazine so why is your iPad App mag? You can solve all you ”how can we parse our existing print product content on to the iPad” problems by not using that approach. (and yes I know the people looking at budgets are cackling with thunderous laughter at this point)

I’m not particularly moved by innovation when it’s simply being used as a means to shift one product format onto another. I completely understand why existing titles are going to the iPad. I just wish there were more ground-up iPad magazines is all.

Commons authorities are due to decide later whether all MPs should be issued with iPads or other tablet computers.
The Commons Administration Committee has recommended a roll-out of the devices which it said would ultimately save the taxpayer money.
Currently, every MP is provided with three desktop computers and two laptops for office use.
But the committee said tablets could make it easier for MPs to do their work and save paper.
The House of Commons Commission will consider the committee’s recommendation in a meeting on Monday evening.
According to the Daily Mail, a total of 70 MPs have so far bought Apple iPads on expenses.

“The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold?the strongest iPad launch yet,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Customers are loving the incredible new features of iPad, including the stunning Retina display, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of even more customers around the world this Friday.”

The US media says intelligence officials believe it is unlikely that al-Qaeda had the capacity to launch such an attack in the US, and have not seen evidence of any preparations.

BBC News

People with a natural dispensation to support Apple use the stories of his lies as a stick with which to beat him. They are outraged at the things he said to belittle their beloved company. They’re not wrong, of course.

None of this helps build a better picture of the social impact or the realities of the lives of production line workers in China or elsewhere. All it does is keep the focus on Mike Daisey and what he did or didn’t lie about.

Apple works really hard on its supply chain issue and I’d happily tell people that, in many ways they are better than others, but it’s still not doing enough. Arguments over Mike Daisey and ethics don’t help to make the situation any better.

Look at Twitter and the usual blogs and you’ll find lots of news and opinion about Daisey, not much of it is about the supply chain issues or the plight of the people who work and live to build our electronics. That’s the real problem with this one man’s lies he’s hidden their plight.

The problem is not so much the impact his lies will have on him or his reputation, but the social responsibility narrative and the lives of workers in places like Foxconn. Social responsibility is a difficult issue and it runs through many channels from rich western consumers all the way back to poor workers in China.

The issue is more that some will hear of his lies and assume that things aren’t that terrible. After all, if he had to lie to get his story how bad can it be? The opposite is also true and the fact he didn’t tell the whole truth could be just as destructive. Not everyone will hear that he made some of his meetings and evidence up and assume it still to be true.

He hasn’t just fucked up his own career he’s made it more difficult to tell the real story, the story without the reckless over simplifications or gross hyperbole.

Also, it will make the job of people trying to tell the full story, from all sides, much harder. If spokesmen or individuals with knowledge of the situation are thinking ‘what if this guy is like Mike Daisey and lies about it and I’m associated with the piece’ then how much and exactly what they are likely to tell journalists will almost certainly be tainted by Daisey and his lies.