WRITTEN ON December 3rd, 2004 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Across the Board

Amparo points to an excellent (but off-topic) article in Wired about Gilberto Gil and Brazil’s approach to IP drug patents and Creative Commons licensing. It’s very exciting, it’s an important policy matter etc but it’s not about e-enabled public services. She also sends in a good (but again off-topic) poem – see below.

I thought this “esoteric” poem by Brian Patten (from his book “Armada“) would have no place there either:

Dear Thief

You dress in silence
And tiptoe down the stairs
Never to return to this bed,
Still hot with longings.
It’s six in the morning.
The bed creaks and clinks
Like an oven cooling.

Dear thief, I wonder if you realize
What it is you have stolen?

[Seems a good poem to me. But reminder that the purpose of ideal government is to understand the reality of public services in the UK, and to consider how they could be better especially when e-enabled – W]