Journal Entries
That's Progress
Posted Nov 28, 2008
I live on the edge of town in a nice, quiet cul-de-sac. A new hospital is being built across the main road and my neighbours and I have been watching progress with interest. The hospital is huge, designed to centralise medical facilities for 3 other hospitals in the area which will be closed down when it opens. However, the new hospital will have 80 fewer beds than the combined total of the hospitals it replaces. It's also going to be a teaching hospital, so 50% of the rooms are for offices & the like. The car park doesn't have enough spaces for the staff, let alone visitors so no doubt cars will spill over into the surrounding streets. Which is why our quiet wee cul-de-sac is getting parking meters according to the letter I got today. £2 an hour, max 2 hour stay. Residents will be invited to apply for resident's parking permits which are first come first served, max one per household. 20 permits are available for the 36 houses. They cost £80 a year.
Great >
I've got 3 cars, what am I going to do with the other 2? My neighbour has 2 cars - one for himself to get to his work in Grangemouth 5 miles away and one for his wife to get to Glasgow, 16 miles away. There is no public transport that fits in with their shifts.
For the "priviledge" of living next to an inadequate hospital, the locals are going to be severely inconvenienced and will be"allowed" to park their cars if they're lucky for £80 a year.
Oh what a frickin' joy.
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Latest reply: Nov 28, 2008
Politicians hate bloggers
Posted Nov 10, 2008
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7711562.stm
Hazel Blears has attacked internet bloggers for "fuelling disengagement" by the public from politics. Well, she would say that wouldn't she? She probably hates the fact that the breathtaking hypocrisy politicians regularly indulge in is exposed by bloggers.
No doubt we can expect more control freakery from a government that banned demonstrations near Parliament where there was an outside chance they might notice them. Or used the Serious Crimes Act to arrest a woman for reading out the names on the Cenotaph (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4507446.stm)
I can't see how they can stop bloggers though. Unless it's part of a plan to licence public access to the internet and I wouldn't put that past them.
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Latest reply: Nov 10, 2008
The strange places H2G2 takes you
Posted Aug 13, 2008
There has been an issue with rendering this post, please contact the editors.
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Latest reply: Aug 13, 2008
CCTV, Data and Privacy
Posted May 17, 2008
There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every fourteen people. But that figure is already woefully out of date. As I write this, more CCTV cameras are being installed in shops, blocks of flats, on street corners and over motorways, so that figure rises by the day. In an average one of those days, you & I will be recorded over 300 times.
Why?
The big argument that CCTV cuts crime is hollow. Never mind the argument that cameras deter crime, which is rather spurious in any case, a constant feature of crime reports on the TV is that "Police are examining CCTV footage". But over 80% of crimes still go unsolved. Surely criminals are also filmed 300 times. If CCTV met the claims put forward, the UK should have the lowest crime rate in the world. Of course CCTV is a vital tool in the "War on Terror"(c) as the mantra goes. After 7/7, the public eagerly awaited the release of the CCTV footage and when, with a fanfare, it finally was released there was a great collective sucking of teeth and nodding of heads in a wise fashion as people said "See - without CCTV we would never have seen this". So what? Did it stop the bombings? Was there anything in the film that enabled other loonies to be caught?
I think the great CCTV scam is designed to scare the public into accepting ever more draconian laws. If we see real crime being perpetrated by real criminals 24/7, how can we argue against the need for more police, more CCTV, more invasion into our lives by faceless civil servants. Is it any coincidence that reality shows, video clip shows, police car chase shows and Crimewatch are the some of the most viewed programmes in the UK. We are obsessed with watching other people do wrong.
Occasionally we hear people protest about this invasion of privacy, but really, we don't care. How can people seriously object to ID cards when the phenomenon of the 21st century has been sites such as Facebook and Bebo. These are sites where people display the inane minutaie of their petty lives for anyone and everyone to see. Even message boards like this one - it isn't hard to get a helluva lot of personal information on the people here. Freely offered.
Government in the 21st century has more information on the population at it's fingertips than any other in history. And it wants ever more. Not content with knowing your every movement and financial transaction, it wants your DNA on file. Not just yours either, it wants EU-wide access to the personal information of over 700 million people. Why? Has this increase in available information made things better for anyone? Are Govt policies so much better now that decisions are made with the benefit of so much information?
And there is just so much information held by government that there is no way on earth it can ever be fully utilised. Trillions of hours of CCTV held in limbo that will never, ever be seen by the human eye. Skyscrapers of computer servers stuffed with every detail of our lives that will shuffle endlessly in an electronic loop. All this has to be managed - an army of clerks interminably sifting and sorting to no visible result. Each year the Government hires more and more people to sift more and more information in it's insatiable desire for "more Input". Where does it stop? Will every room of every building have it's own CCTV suite? Will every foot of every pavement and road be scanned constantly? Will every tree have a UAV hovering above with it's glinting Zeiss eye recording?
Is this navel-gazing on a societal scale?
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Latest reply: May 17, 2008
Have you ever been caught bonny?
Posted Jan 7, 2008
I was helping out with a charity hospital radio station. They asked me to cover the afternoon shift and I would be handing over to a blind guy. He arrived early and I was being Mr Considerate, making space for him & his dog, moving things around, getting his playlist. I was probably laying it on a bit thick to be honest. But he got me with a cracker. As it was early evening, it was getting a bit dark in the studio so I thought nothing of it when he asked me to put the lights on as I left.
I was halfway up the road before I realised. 
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Latest reply: Jan 7, 2008
swl
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