vivweb01

 Blog first published November 2022. Updated April 2023, January 2025, July 2026. Editors note: After a long period when the 'authorities' seemed to be in abeyance on take-downs of our much loved and well-used shadow-libraries, they re-started their war in early 2025 with a vengeance by taking down two of the most popular (Anna's Archive and LibGen), by forcing ISPs to introduce server blockages. I suspect the timing of this was no coincidence, given the imminence of a new US government regime likely to be less favourably inclined towards to this type of industrial censorship, and the frequent 'spats' between the UK Labour government and the new US regime. The war has continued into 2026, with no end in sight despite Trump's anti-censorship stance. This nonsense has gone on for long enough...and could easily be sorted if vested interests wanted it. High time for a look at reforming the publishing industry model, I think... See update 26.7.26 below for more detai...

  The new occupant of No 11 has a thorny problem on his hands…it's a significant one, and not one he or his new boss can ignore.... We’re all feeling the pinch as a result of the most recent economic shock – Trump’s ill-advised Iran War, and this comes on top of a succession of shocks from Covid onwards. We all knew the economic pain the hostilities would cause; even before they started, a large slice of our population, on low wages but not entitled to benefits were really not able to make ends meet without taking out additional high-interest loans or cutting their outgoings to the bone. For some of them, yet another economic shock could well bring them to the brink of bankruptcy. The excessive electricity and gas price rises imposed by the supplier ‘cartel’ to maintain their profit margins, and sanctioned by a compliant OFGEM, have been particularly injurious. This trend was apparent well before the start of the Iran war, so cannot be blamed on higher world prices as the...