Monday 28 October 2013

Monday Moan 70


BIG BROTHER IN HERTFORDSHIRE?
In Watford they are trialing an electronic speed warning sign which flashes up the offending driver's car number.  The intention is said to be to get motorist’s to reduce their speed and the data will not be collected or drivers fined or otherwise punished.
 
I have been pondering on this.  Surely if such signs are to be used then you would expect them to be sited in places where speed is a real danger, as evidenced by a history of accidents. But if that’s the case then either there would be cameras there already or drivers should not be let off with what amounts to just a warning?  If the signs are not situated in such dangerous places then what’s the point?
 
Of course, there is no general agreement on whether such warnings are a good idea.  On one side we have people saying it’s just another example of big-brother watching you and on the other we have people who say we need this because of the high number of deaths on the road.  At this point statistics are usually added in order to help prove the viewpoint being expressed.  Someone said we need the signs because 5,500 people are killed on our roads every year.  In fact, the true number is around 1700 - every death as a result of a motoring accident is a tragedy, but the number killed in these circumstances in the UK has been falling since the mid-1980s and is now at its lowest level since 1926.  Just under 25% of those deaths are as a result of exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for the conditions.
 
Some may see this speed indicator development as a rather effective deterrent. Others may wonder about the further loss of freedoms to go about your daily business without the ‘authorities’ keeping a watching eye on you.  It all depends on your viewpoint. 
 
How will this all develop in the future? I imagine that in the labs they have prototypes that will show pictures of cyclists who jump red lights and of drivers who fail to signal at roundabouts. An even more exciting version will flash up the names and addresses of drivers who are not following the most logical route home after work. 
 
Just imagine how much more successful those old totalitarian states would have been if only they had survived long enough to benefit from today's technology.

 
 

WEATHER CHAOS
The UK has been on high alert today because of a major storm battering the south of the country. 

Of course, what constitutes a ‘major’ storm in the UK is not necessarily what people in other parts of the world would see in the same way.  Some might even consider that we have overreacted and been a little wimpish about the whole thing.

It must be good to be Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT transport union, since he is a man who never has a moment’s doubt about the cause of any problems.  He goes through life certain in the knowledge that it was all management’s fault.  

So, Bob knows that  the decision by the rail companies to cancel morning services today was not because of the weather forecast, but because the number of employees on the railways had been "hacked to the bone" by management. 

Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, thought otherwise, saying that “it was impossible to run services in hurricane-force winds and that lives would have been put at risk if trains had operated".  At 08.40 they said that they had discovered over 100 trees on train lines in the South East of England.

No doubt Bob would have condemned management as being irresponsible and cavalier with people’s lives had the trains run and an accident occurred.  See, that’s the beauty of being Bob – whatever happens you can have a go at someone else.

 
 

IT DOESN’T HELP TO SELL IT TO THE REST OF US
Last week saw the death of Sir Anthony Caro, said by many to be the most important British sculptor of the last century.

There was the obligatory Will Gompertz piece on the BBC news and viewers who might previously have been unaware of Sir Anthony and his importance were given a brief opportunity to see for themselves the kinds of things he produced, such as this one. 

Some viewers may have concurred with the view that he was a genius, Others may have wondered why anybody would think some railway sleepers painted yellow should be so highly regarded.

But few, if any, will have thought along the lines of the following explanation from the NY Times of why Caro was so revered:-

“Caro took sculpture off the pedestal, stretched it across the floor and expanded it into airy concatenations of brightly coloured lines and planes made with industrial metal sheets, pipes, tubes and beams. Perfectly composed yet seemingly freshly improvised, they gave the impression of color liberated from physical support, like paintings in space, or jazz.”
 
Nor will it have helped people to understand his position in the arts to be told that his second most famous contribution to the world was as co-designer of the Millennium Bridge in London (cost of £18.2m; closed after three days because of excessive swaying, arising from the apparently unforeseen fact that people would walk on it; reopened months later after spending £5m on a redesign and rebuild).   Probably want to keep quiet about that one.
 

 

MORE ALARMING TOILET NEWS
In Moan 68 I mentioned the shock to the system from experiencing the sudden noise and suction caused by the unintentional triggering of a sensor activated flush whilst sitting on a toilet.
 
News from Norway last week made me realise how trivial this was in comparison with other events.
 
On one of the islands of Hvaler, in the South East of Norway, a 70 year-old man was quietly sitting on the toilet in his holiday cottage, perhaps thinking about the day ahead, or maybe reading the newspaper.   He would not have thought it necessary to put on his bullet-proof vest, even if he had such a thing.  But had he done so then he would have avoided being air-lifted to hospital in Oslo, having been shot by a stray bullet from a hunter, apparently unable to distinguish between a moose and a holiday cottage.  
 
Makes sitting on the auto-flushing toilet seem like a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

 

Wednesday 23 October 2013

(Monday) Moan 69

 
MY KIND OF COFFEE SHOP
I walked into a Costa coffee shop the other day and, for just about the first time ever, this one was devoid of any other customers.  No queuing for ages to get a drink, no trouble finding an unoccupied table, no pushing past the parked prams of the neighbourhood, no need for ear protectors against the noise of a thousand conversations, of chairs being scraped over the floor, of the coffee machine screeching away …….. Wait a minute, no coffee machine noise and no smell of coffee either …… what was going on?
 
It turned out that the coffee machine was broken and had been for two days. So no customers but a spotlessly clean shop and instant service if all you wanted was a cup of tea.
 
As a non-coffee drinker what could have been more perfect!  Thank you to whatever it was that caused the coffee machine to break. 
 
 
 
NOT MY KIND OF LOLLIPOP
I set off from my home the other day in my car and immediately I tried to turn out of my road there was a traffic jam.  Someone let me out when traffic eventually edged forward and 20 minutes and a few hundred metres further on I found the cause of the problem – a pedestrian crossing on which a lollipop man was taking his duties very seriously indeed.  
 
As I understand it, a lollipop man is supposed to help provide safe passage across the road for children going to school.  I’m OK with that.  But does this mean that the lollipop man needs to spring out onto the crossing (the use of the word “spring” is actually a bit of artistic licence, since the person in question seemed even less athletic and mobile than me) at the first sign of each and every individual child approaching?  Does this mean he should continue to hold up the traffic because he has spotted another child sauntering along who may reach the crossing in another thirty seconds or so?
 
I don’t think so.  Maybe some commonsense training would be in order so that everyone can go about their business in a more efficient way?
 
 
 
DRIVING ME MAD ON THE MOTORWAY
I have done a lot of driving this week, much of it on Motorways.  It seems to me that the irritation of the middle-lane blocker has abated considerably, no doubt as a result of the publicity earlier in the year around the introduction of new powers to fine people for lane hogging.
 
Good.  Not so much effect as far as I could see on  being in the wrong lane and then pushing into a queue of traffic when approaching roadworks or exits – where fines are also now possible.
 
Everyone has their favourite gripes about driving, and there is a very long list of things that can cause us angst.  My pet irritations remain the idiots who continue to hold their mobile phones in one hand whilst driving with the other – van and lorry drivers negotiating roundabouts being a particular gripe.  But on the motorway I have seen nothing that irritates me more than the lorry drivers who insist on holding everyone else up by trying to overtake an equally large and slow moving vehicle, particularly when approaching a hill, thus guaranteeing that they will lose speed and any chance of getting past for the next couple of miles or so.
 
Oh, and those people who ‘forget’ to switch off the variable speed limit signs for hours after the original cause of the restriction has cleared or been cleared away.
 
 
COMING SOON …….
Have you noticed the sudden proliferation of those large traffic condition indicator boards?  You know, the ones that warn you of a lane closure on the M62 when you are driving 200 miles away on the M25?  And when they have nothing to report from anywhere in the whole of the country they resort to safety slogans like ‘Take a rest’?
 
These boards are appearing everywhere – almost as if designed to clutter the landscape for no good reasons other than that the authorities can place them where they like and they have a bit of cash left in this year’s budget so want to spend it rather than give it back.
 
‘Take a rest’?  I’d say ‘Give us a break’.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

(Monday) Moan 68

 
IN A DIFFERENT WORLD
I was watching a programme about building houses the other day – The House That £100k Built  – in which presenter Kieran Long and his ally, architect Piers Taylor, are on hand to help/advise/guide those poor ordinary individuals who have decided, for one reason or another, to spend their hard-earned money on building their own houses.
 
Nothing wrong with the concept at all.  I haven’t seen the other programmes in the series and may well do so now that my appetite has been whetted.  But what struck me most about the episode that I saw was how, once again, it was clear that those ‘in the know’ about a subject had what can only be described as a narrow, missionary-like zeal for their view of the world and what constitutes the ‘right’ way to do things.  Long and Taylor were appalled at the plans of Ruth and Tony, two Shropshire farmers who were building their own house.  They wanted a break from the ramshackle nature of the farm buildings in which they had lived and worked throughout their lives.   Long and Taylor, on the other hand, wanted them to embrace that very ramshackle and rural look so that their house ‘fitted in’.  They couldn’t understand why the farmers did not want to use rusty, ‘wriggly tin’, such as can be seen on any farm in the country.  In what I though was a compelling and unanswerable response, Ruth said that rusty, wriggly tin was fine if she wanted to live in a barn, but she wanted to live in a house. 
 
Long (journalist of architecture, critic and teacher) wanted Ruth to understand what he meant by architecture that fitted into its surroundings, so he took her to Dungeness, where he waxed lyrical about the “amazing landscape” and the way that a weathered grey wood box fitted in.
 
Oh really?  ‘Amazing’ – well yes, I suppose so, but I’d find it hard to get as excited about it as Long managed to do.  And whether or not ‘fitting in’ with such a landscape was as good an idea as trying to improve it is something that wasn’t considered.
 
Sometimes it seems to me that there are multiple parallel worlds in which ‘experts’ live alongside the rest of us, where what makes sense in their worlds makes no sense in ours.  Which of them is the ‘real’ world is, of course, a matter for debate. 
 

 
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
In New York at the weekend a street graffiti artist tried to sell his work for $60 a time to the unsuspecting public.  The public’s response was muted, to say the least.  Eight paintings sold, four of them to someone who just wanted to cover the wall of his new flat, and some of them at half price.
 
Ha ha!  The reporters delighted in letting New Yorkers know that they had been too dim to realise that they were being offered works by the most famous of all graffiti artists – Banksy no less.  If only they had realised then they could have bought these nondescript spray-art pictures and made a fortune by selling them to collectors and experts who valued them at $20,000 each.
 
Or looking at it another way, the public gave its verdict on the intrinsic value of such vandal-like street paintings and the experts who would rush to snap up anything by Banksy were made to look like fools just waiting to be parted from their money.  Could it be that there really is no real merit in these works and it is all just hype, or can you really see the Emperor’s new clothes?
 
 
GET ME A PICTURE!
It seems that no TV news item can now be presented unless it includes some illustrative video footage.  Apparently, the viewing public will lose interest or not be able to follow what is going on if it is just someone speaking to them - although isn’t that how radio does it?
 
Anyway, the BBC decided that it would include a short item on the publication last week of the new Immigration Bill.  Now it seems to me that for any video footage to be useful it ought to be possible for someone watching it with the sound muted to be able to make a good guess as to the subject being covered.  In this case it looked as though the show’s producers had given up on this and decided to use 30 seconds of people walking the streets, only in order not to cause any kind of offence we were shown only the lower halves of the people doing the walking. 
 
How ridiculous.
 
 

NOT ALL TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES YOUR EXPERIENCE
I’m all for using new technology when there is a point to it – where it improves your experience of whatever it is you are doing.  However, there are cases where using new technology does not necessarily do this, or where the way it is used needs to be considered very carefully.
 
For my first example of what I mean I give you the humble act of using a public toilet.  Most of us will have experienced the frustration of waving our hands around wildly trying to get the water to flow from a sensor activated tap or the air from a sensor activated hand-dryer.  What fun it is to see someone else struggling with these contraptions, especially if the one you are using has worked as it should.
 
And I can see the merit of a sensor activated flush mechanism for a toilet.  However, the placement of such sensors should be such that they do not operate if the user simply shifts slightly on the seat.
 
The anxiety of that inadvertent flush is not something I’d wish to repeat!

 

Monday 7 October 2013

Monday Moan 67

 
FRUSTRATING?  FOR YOU, PERHAPS, BUT NOT NECESSARILY FOR ME
Patrick McLoughlin, somehow Transport Secretary in the UK Government, used the Conservative Party Conference to announce plans for improved mobile broadband on trains.  According to McLoughlin, “there are few things more frustrating than trying to phone a friend or access the internet, only to be thwarted by bad signal.”
 
Oh really?  Few things in life more frustrating than that?  This is a pretty broad statement he’s making - taking everything into consideration, a dodgy mobile connection whilst on a train is right up there as one of the most frustrating things about the world today.  
 
It’s nonsense, of course.  On any kind of objective assessment of all the frustrating things in the world today, I’d guess that a poor mobile phone signal would rank somewhere below, for example, not being able to solve the unrest in Syria, Egypt, Somalia or countless other places.  It would be below not being able to find food or water in many parts of the world, or not being able to afford to buy those things in other parts of the world where they are available.  Being unable to care properly for the elderly or sick people you know would rank above the old mobile signal problem, as would being unable to find work so that you can support your family.  You get the point - it’s a pretty long list before you get down to having a bad connection on your mobile trying to speak to someone whilst whizzing through the countryside on a train, isn’t it? 
 
McLoughlin might have had more of a point if he had prefaced his ludicrous remark by saying “for me, …..”.   You couldn’t argue with that, although you might question whether he had a proper sense of priorities.
 
But perhaps we shouldn’t be too harsh on McLoughlin.  A quick check on the internet reveals that there are few things in life more frustrating than the following to a random selection of others:-  
  • unfounded nuggets of biological determinism being presented as fact
  • having to learn the layout of a new-to-me grocery store
  • watching your smartphone’s battery life drain away by the middle of the day when you just put it in your pocket with a full charge that morning
  • being delayed on a train or runway with no idea what is going on
  • waiting for something to arrive
  • having a powerful technological tool give you more headaches than be helpful
  • dealing with a finicky cat
  • dealing with a cumbersome process which will not do what you need done
  • setting up an account, downloading the programme and then finding out that you can't actually run it on your machine
  • an ugly carpet stain that just won’t go away
  • having  broken air conditioning in the middle of August and not being able to get hold of your landlord 
 
 
Life is so hard, isn’t it?
 





GOOD GRACIOUS – IT’S A GOAT!
According to The Daily Telegraph last week Christians in Poland are angry because some goat’s cheese is being sold in one of their supermarkets for 6.66 zloty.  And the problem is?  Well, of course, everyone knows that ‘666’ is the sign of the devil.

Except that it isn’t, at least if you can follow and you believe the explanation of how ‘666’ came into being that has been provided by the entertaining and informative team at Numberphile.  Seems that the ‘devil’ in question was Emperor Nero, and that the number might just as easily have been ‘616’.  It’s a complicated explanation, but stick with it – it’s worth it.

Not content with objecting to the price as being the sign of the devil, in another report those same complainants also found the use of the picture of a goat to be offensive, because a goat is another satanic image.  

Outrageous isn’t it - goat’s cheese with a picture of a goat on it!

 

 

AND ON THE 7TH DAY – THE DRILLING CONTINUED
Is it just in my road, or more specifically in the house next to mine, or is it now the done thing to have your builders work on a Sunday?  

After putting up with drilling, banging, hammering and other assorted noises all week whilst my neighbour (not in residence) was having work done on her house, I was looking forward to a day of quiet on Sunday.  This dream was shattered just after 8am when the dreaded blue van pulled up outside, the bag of tools was unloaded, and the noise started soon afterwards.

Can’t you show some consideration for one day of the week please?

 

 

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC. PLEASE!
I went to a fabulous concert last Friday in the brand new Milton Court Concert Hall in London – the first public concert in this new venue.

Great hall, brilliant performances by the orchestra and chorus of the Guildhall School (whose home it is) and a nearly full house.  

During the interval, a couple of elderly ladies decided to move from their seats at the side into the seats in front of me that had been empty during the first half.  Just as the second half was about to start a group of Italians arrived clutching tickets for those seats.  They enquired very politely of the ladies if they we in the correct places – “Oh yes, these are our seats” they replied, without so much as a blush or a hesitation.  10/10 for nerve, of course, but 0/10 for observation, since the Italians were holding the tickets that showed that the seats were rightfully theirs.  The Italians stood their ground and very politely, but firmly, pointed out that the ladies would have to move.

As the concert began again I was full of admiration for the way they had handled the situation, and settled down to enjoy the second half.  Unfortunately, within a few seconds of the restart, the Italians started talking amongst themselves, and then the younger two of them started kissing and cuddling.  After a short while, the young male comforted the older woman on his right and kissed her hand and cheek – I assume it was his mother, as so many Italian males seem to think it is not right to go out for the evening unless their mother comes too.

Before I got a chance to lean forward and suggest that they might like to keep quiet and stop eating each other, the chap on their right indicated very forcefully that they should behave themselves and they got the message.  That’s not to say they behaved themselves after that, but it was not completely distracting. 

Why did they bother buying tickets?  It was clear that none of them had any interest in being there and the two women, in particular, were bored beyond measure.  Fortunately for the enjoyment of the rest of us in their vicinity, it was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony being presented, so plenty of noise involved, and the quality of the performance was spellbinding.

Wish the old ladies had stayed in those seats though.