So Barack has done it. He has another four years in office. Let's hope without pandering to get re-elected he can try and play genuine hard-ball with any of the Republicans who mess around in the House or the Senate. After all, the \“\best is yet to come\”:

Angela Epstein has written an article in the Daily Fail complaining about the coming changes in child benefits. In part I agree with her, the fact that one household where both parents earn less than £50,000 can still receive full benefits but a household with one parent working earning more than £60,000 will receive no benefits is absurd. Angela further argues income shouldn't come into it.

On this I disagree, household income should be considered. You may ask why should the children suffer, as she does:

But why should my children lose out, simply because their parents have had the temerity to work hard and earn a good living?

This is where I have a difference of opinion with Angela. I agree that children shouldn't lose out. However, Angela, you are in a position where your children shouldn't. How about you buy one less pare of Laboutin shoes per year, or go on a one week holiday as oppose to two week holiday.

The point is, you have choices to make so that your children don't suffer. A poor house hold doesn't. They can't afford to fully and completely provide for their children. It is absolutely right that we provide assistance for them.

We can have discussion as to how exactly is the best way to means test and their will always be a small number of people who are at the cutoff point and thus feel hard done by. Thats just a fact of life.

But I humbly disagree that child benefits shouldn't be means tested at all.

Recently Facebook decided to expand their Timeline feature. Timeline was introduced to replace a user\’\s wall. It is meant to be a history of a user\’\s time on Facebook. So they started putting posts from earlier on the Timeline. Now when you go onto someone\’\s Timeline and go back a few years you will see posts by them and to them from back then.

This freaked people out. They thought private messages were being made public. This simply isn't the case. No-one is yet to provide categorical evidence that it is. Instead people are finding that these 'private' conversations were actually public.

I think what we are seeing is evidence of a shift in our interaction with social media. Back in 2008 it was really just students on Facebook and we were much more relaxed with how we conducted ourselves and what information was visible and what information was hidden. As Facebook has gotten bigger, and as of June 2012 Facebook has 955 million active users, people have become more careful about the information they share.

Then they are presented with how they acted back in 2008 with this new Timeline feature, and they can't believe they could have been so careless with regards to privacy.

Privacy is going to continue to be one of the key issues. As we enter the Information Age it's going to be more important that we can control what information is shared an what isn't. I don't think this bodes well for Facebook. They don't answer to the users, they answer to advertisers. I draw hope from more open services, like Diaspora or App.net.