What a load of bollocks. An hour in the pub watching how a round of drinks works could have saved a lot of time and effort.

Kwikfit: http://www.kwik-fit.com/
(but in doing so, and giving four levels of cookie control it's way too complicated)

It's just wrong. It's like saying the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted as riot police and as detectives, protected the Governors, tracked down fugitives, and functioned as a paramilitary force at various places in the United States of America.

"English Heritage, the organization that runs and manages various historical sites in the UK, such as Stonehenge"

No, English Heritage only manages sites within England (clue is in the name). Other bodies cover the other countries on the UK; for example Historic Scotland (Scotland), Cadw (Wales) and Environment and Heritage Service (Northern Ireland).

No it's not. They can take care of themselves - it's a waste of money.

If you create conditions where someone makes an app for smartphones (open government data), and it only gets used by people with smartphones, this is a net gain for the society

Nonsense. The folk with smartphones are typically those who'd already interact with government. You are doing absolutely nothing to interact with those who are totally disenfranchised. You know - the ones who cannot afford the net, cannot afford a fancy phone?

4: They end up in the dust. There are a lot of unemployed journalists, it it wouldn't take much impetus for a startup news site to start up that is lean enough to run on ad revenue, perhaps having additional revenue streams for back article searches. No, this startup news site may not have enough money to pay for an AP wire, but those stories can always be come by other ways.

As an example take a look at the Caledonian Mercury: http://caledonianmercury.com/

FFS... "In the UK, a Victory For Free Speech" - what sort of bastardised subject is that? Perhaps stick the important bit up front, with the qualifier at the end?

Victory for Free Speech in the UK

You'd be surprised. It is trivial for spammers to get a gmail account. Anyone who genuinely wants to contribute to a forum will have another email address, if not they will be able to explicitly email...

On phpbb boards I run the most productive things are:

1. Do not allow external links in profile of newly registered / non validated users

2. Do not allow registrations with gmail.com email addresses

3. Ensure "valid" timezone and country settings are selected by users.

L/