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1. Blair has forced the unions to realise that their constant wish for legal/market protectionsm is incompatible with globalisation, high employment, general election victory and low inflation. That the sole answer to globalisation is increased skills, innovation and IP development & enforcement.

2. For the first time I think he also had the guts to tell the unions that the public wants value for money and cares not about who delivers services (private/public/voluntary providers), merely that the end product is of high quality and is delivered free of charge and rapidly i.e. the taxpayer and governement don't exist to fund public sector employment.

3. Blair made labour electable. The smart unions realise he's right to say they have more influence if labour is re-elected than if the conservaties regain power. Some crow but won't ever listen to that reality and care more about their membership than employment levels or the issues they promote. The crows have had their day and policies are changed via constructive dialogue not 70's grandstanding.

4. But most of all this speach was a business case for why the unions must get behind any new leader and if they don't they will be heckling the leader of the opposition and not the PM.

5. For the first time in 10 years the labour party has no electable leader of the calibre of tony blair. Brown has the brains & substance, but not the skills/style; whereas cameron has the skills/style but not the ideas, brains or substance. Blair recognises this is a very dangerous time for labour and the smart unions will rally round and remember that leaders always listen to "friends" far more than percieved enemies & critics. That is evident from the comments of some of the leaders of the largest unions.

I watched the entire speach. It was a minority of people who protested / launched a PR stunt; and heckled and yet most of the mass media reports otherwise. I think its obvious to anyone why this man is prime minister and I felt whilst he waffled in places some of his comments were tough love, brutal and succint; and frankly what the unions need to hear.

If the unions and labour want to remain in power they need to learn from blair's tough life lesson today.

I thought Blair performed well. I hope that the Trade Unionists that protested, childishly held up posters and particularly Bob Crow and his ilk, really do take some time to relfect on what Tony said in his final comments - after 10 years of a Labour government its all too easy to forget what 18 years of a Tory one was like!!

The piece on Apple wasn't very good was it?

The presenter waved a nano around a few times and said the screen was now "stronger" so it could play video. No, nanos can't do that. The 30 and 60 GB iPods have had this capacity since last year. The nano now has an aluminium case and is available with more storage space.

He claimed that buying music from iTunes Music Store locked you into an iPod. Also not true, you can put music onto as many CDs as you like. iPods are capable of playing mp3 files (and many other types) but he didn't mention that. This would include the eMusic service which he was so keen to tout.

He mentioned restrictions on the number of machines you can play files on but didn't mention that the Amazon unbox service announced last week only allows you have movies on 2 computers and you can't move it from one to another, you need to redownload it. Apple music and video files can be moved around on disk, memory stick and networks. So long as the machine is authorised you can play the files. If a machine is lost or damaged they allow you to reset the authorisation. They allow up to 5 machines to be authorised at one time and it is easy to change them online.

Strangely he didn't comment on the upcoming MS Zune. This also meant he could ignore MS signed drivers and how this relates to playing media on 64 bit machines and all the DRM features which will be included with MS Vista.

A few quick Google searches would have made this piece so much better... but then he couldn't have done such a great surly tonto act, could he?

Paul Mason’s article about the future of the iPod shows little knowledge of Apple and the iPod.
You can use an iPod without ever buying content from the iTunes Store just as you can buy content from the iTunes Store and not owning an iPod. When you wish to buy content from the iTunes Store and listen to it on a MP3 player, it will only play on the iPod. This works exactly the same when you buy content from say, Napster because the music they sell is encoded with WMA that will only work on MP3 players that support WMA. Both systems are closed systems with the only difference that there are more manufacturers that make WMA supported MP3 players. That’s all.
People want something that looks good but more importantly that works. And the iPod works exceptional well just as the rest of Apple’s products do.

aedan mcghie, you're right on the mark!
I got a little upset when I saw his story. What a lousy job he has done. It clearly shows he hasn't done any research, has no idea what he was talking about but repeating things that simple aren't true.
I suggest he does some research first and then rectify todays "report" with a new, correct and balanced one.

A bad night for Newsnight with Jeremy TOO laid back & seemingly indifferent to those he iterviewed! The only thing i learned from the viewing ,was that Bob Crow let it be known , despite being a non member union,when challenged "why not ask questions of the PM "rather than just leave... he said Qs at the Q&A session had to be lodged 24 hrs in advance & therefore it was irrevelant...
Final Chapter for Blair, who has never been a REAL Labour minister..& a sorta "good riddance" type speech. So the event was a non starter & self evidently not much love lost there then!

The iPod story was all spin. The iPod pre-dates the iTunes store and I would guess that the vast majority of music stored on people's iPods was not bought from iTMS. And Steve Jobs has never been in favour of DRM anyway - it's there because the music industry required it. If the model changes to non-DRM then Apple will go with that. Apple makes its money from selling iPods, not downloads, which is why it doesn't have to worry too much about those struggling to make downloads pay.

I was most amused by Baroness Greenfield's little rant on how children can't see abstract concepts on a TV screen, as if you can go outside and watch them dancing around with sociological constructs and moral absolutes.

'Back in my day all we had to play with was abstract ideas, but now it's all icons. Icons, I tells you!'

You can see abstract concepts on TV, its just that the best film makers who speak in a non linear visual language (not beginning middle end) rarely get shown and are mostly not understood - we are not a visual country.
Who gives a damn about Antonioni these days.

Seems to me you should get the bloggers on here to do a piece on ipods, watching films on a tiny screen? fundamentally flawed by size I rather think.

With regards the death of childhood. I mentioned the work of lewis hine in another blog, look him up and be reminded of how things were in early 20th century and for sure still in some parts of the world today.

Dear Eric (no. 6)
The point about an iPod is that if you are stuck on the bus in traffic for half an hour you can then listen to Sibelius to comfort you. And there aren't any interruptions if you haven't downloaded them in the first place - it's not a radio.

Collected Eric in post #6 mentions the Morning Star. I too wondered why this paper warrants a mention. Does it even have a circulation as big as the Daily Sport?

In today's spirit of equality shouldn't we also be told what the Daily Sport is leading with?

PS how does Collected Eric manage to get a light blue background on his message? Is he important or something?

JPseudonym (13) I think the Newsnight Editor likes to please Collected Eric's ego and give him a light blue box.

Personally I believe Collected Eric should have gone the same way as the Gordaq. Why should one Newsnight viewer be more important than another?

Irather enjoy Eric,but it does help that I can pick up the odd insignificant quote.His die-hard fans have spent a wasted youth on literature.