October 2005 Archives
October 31, 2005
A little local difficulty
Local politics round my way is getting more interesting daily. An exciting and incendiary public meeting in the village tonight was about the nastiest and noisiest assembly I've seen since Heseltine swung the mace. The County Council is using a risk-based statistical method (provided by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) to trim fire stations from the county's capacity. Our own mini West Lothian Question means the closure of our little part-time fire station has been approved by dozens of county councillors who'll never visit, let alone represent, Radlett.
Although we're now in what the local authority calls a 'consultation period' the whole thing smells like a done deal. The statistics are in and the council's decision has already been made. I have a feeling that the only hope now is for a lot more of tonight's deliberate and bloody-minded street politics.
Since the only way I got into the over-crowded hall was by pretending to be a photographer, I felt obliged to take a few pics.
October 26, 2005
You can call me guv
Democracy is alive and well, if uneven as to outcome. The Iraqis have – heroically – produced something approaching a viable constitutional basis for the next round of elections. Morgan Tsvangiri has succeeded in splitting and thus crippling Mugabe's only opposition in Zimbabwe. In Britain, Labour's proposed changes to electoral law look like a win for the nutcases and extremists and, in Radlett, the doughty parents of Fair Field Junior School have elected (by a majority of 16) a new Parent Governor: me. Bloody hell.
October 24, 2005
Ancient practices
There's something about a big fire in a big field. In Britain we retain an atavistic taste for making a pile of wood and setting light to it. On Friday night in Radlett the parish council lit just such a big fire and fifty or sixty people came along to watch it burn. We were marking Trafalgar Day but we were also, if you ask me, quietly honouring fire itself... Practically a Pagan rite (and comfortably inside the M25 too).
More pics of the big fire here.
October 19, 2005
The Tories' Messiah?
The Tory leadership fight is the best political entertainment for a decade – and I don't like saying that because it suggests they're closer to a come-back than they've been for all of that decade. I'm hardly an insider but it's obvious to me that the party must elect Cameron. They must elect him for the same reason that a business in terminal crisis must pick the oddball for Chief Exec – the third or fourth on the shortlist, not the superstar at the top of the list or the finance guy in second position.
Cameron is young enough and brave enough to tip the Tory party on its head and he'll either succeed spectacularly and lead the revived party back to power or he'll decisively demonstrate the party's final irrelevance on his way to a job running Glaxo or Marks & Spencer or something. I admire his pig-headed resistance to the print media's phoney-baloney piety and I think he feels the weight of history in a way that Blair must have done in the middle of Labour's wilderness years. He's the nearest to a Blair/Messiah figure the Tories have produced since Thatcher herself – and that's thirty years ago.
The official position of the Labour leadership is relief that the only authentic heavyweight has been knocked out of the race but, if they could be honest (which they can't right now) they'd acknowledge that Cameron gives them the first shiver of recognition they've had since the 1997 victory.
There's something gripping about this moment in British politics. If things go the Tories' way (God forbid) this will be remembered as the moment the circuit was closed and the strange convergence of left and right in Britain completed. Say the Conservatives get this one right and say they're able to convince the electorate of their relevance at the next election (or the one after), in a few years we'll be hearing things like: 'I can't tell the difference between Cameron and Blair. The Tories are just a Labour clone. They're not the real Tories...' blah blah.
Labour has unequivocally owned the middle ground for eight years but we may be surprised to learn, once the Tories are back in power (stay with me here...), that, in the long run, the biggest movement on the left-right spectrum will have been from the Tories. To get back to power their social agenda will have to be sharply liberalised, their antipathy to the public sector pragmatically softened and their economics almost totally reversed. Only Cameron can start this process. God I hope they pick Fox.
October 17, 2005
Harry Potter: the verdict is in (in case you've been waiting)
I know I'm late to this discussion but I've managed, somehow, to fail to connect with the Harry Potter phenomenon entirely. Until now. I'd never read the books nor seen the movies (although the house seems to be half-filled with Potter merchandise). So, this week, I've been reading the kids (well, the older two) the first Harry Potter book at bedtime and – I'm sort of unhappy to confirm – it's not very good.
We've just finished the first three Narnia books and the comparison is not a happy one (tough act to follow, I suppose) and, although I think I'd have been happy to plough on through Rowling's charmless, deliberate prose, the kids have actually vetoed Potter and yesterday we had to rush over to Borders to buy the next Narnia book (Prince Caspian) instead. It makes me feel a bit sad because I really wanted to like the book and I've written before in defence of Rowling against the various whingers (I do love the fact that we can occasionally produce our own super-wealthy global media superstars over here in the drizzle).
Of course, my objections come a bit late – Harry's mystical realm has already expanded to consume pretty much the whole of popular culture. On the radio the other day I heard that the once-huge UFO sub-culture has been practically wiped out by the wizards and elves – conventions that used to book the biggest hotels are now lucky to fill a room above a pub (tip: file that Roswell script you've been working on since you left University).
The painful lesson for Brit Media is that, although the books are 100% British, the larger Potter phenomenon is not a British creation at all – it's a solid-gold creature of American media capitalism and, in fact, there's something crappy and amateurish about the British end of the thing. Luckily, though, credulous American exploitation experts were suckered into promoting it on the basis that there was something quaint and British about it.
And there's worse news. We rushed – like you, I bet – to the preview screenings of the Wallace & Gromit feature the other day and – this is quite hard to say – it's no good either. It's half-baked. Neither one thing nor the other. Running a pretty good Dreamworks short based on Madagascar beforehand is a huge mistake to begin with – the contrast is unsettling. By comparison with the near perfection of the American product Were Rabbit looks like something the cat dragged in. British eccentricity (or amateurism or contrariness or whatever) must not be summoned in justification of this mess either.
The characters are as beautiful as ever (although I'm suspicious about the prominent big close-up thumb prints on their cute plasticine faces – overdoing the 'authenticity' if you ask me) but the barely adequate script and practically incoherent direction are unforgivable. I feel terrible saying this sort of thing with the ashes barely cool in Bristol but there's no point coddling the film-makers. If mainstream British animation is doomed to this kind of second-rate execution then the future looks grim. We've reduced ourselves to a subservient craft economy capable only of providing services to the shiny perfection-factories of the American industry but without the ambition to produce finished masterworks ourselves.
October 14, 2005
Cameron's drug hell
I honestly wouldn't have dreamt of getting my oar in here (private grief and all that...) if the Tory Party leadership contest hadn't become so God-damn entertaining. Cameron's refusal to confirm or deny is the only politically acceptable response to the drugs question. Everyone (I mean everyone – we are all, after all, sophisticated political semioticians these days) knows that a refusal to confirm or deny is effectively an admission.
Everyone knows that an actual admission would have torpedoed Cameron's campaign with the league of blue-rinsers who control the fate of the final two. Everyone knows that everyone of Cameron's generation has at least tried drugs and everyone knows that his carefully executed strategy is intended to protect him from both the wrath of the Tory grassroots and the risk of a run of 'Cameron always hogged the bong' or 'David rolled an awesome spliff' Sunday newspaper stories. Give the man a break. No politician of Cameron's age could do anything else.
October 10, 2005
Dodgy country reports send refugees back to their doom
Important journalism from Dominic Arkwright on the BBC's Broadcasting House Sunday Morning news show. It turns out that the 'country reports' produced by the Home Office on which immigration service deportation decisions are based are partial and inaccurate. Arkwright says:
"Some of the so-called Country Reports are so flawed, it's said, that they're virtually useless as a source of information for the caseworkers who have to decide whether it's safe to send people back. Some reports are so selective in their use of materials that critics say they paint a deliberately positive picture, justifying the removal of asylum-seekers."
I'm shocked. The officials responsible for making these life-threatening decisions have almost nothing to go on and, once a case is before a judge, these flawed country reports have the weight of independently-produced evidence, although they're really anything but.
People are being returned to dangerous places on the basis of inaccurate and biased information and, presumably, so-called bogus applicants are being given leave to stay on the basis of equally useless information. It's a genuine scandal that warrants immediate attention but I've seen no mention of these dodgy 'country reports' anywhere else in the mainstream media.
Saving Radlett Fire Station
Radlett, the nice Hertfordshire suburb in which I live, is famous for many things – swinging, prostitution and credit card theft, for instance – but it also has a fire station and rather wonderful one too. It was built in 1907, paid for by a local subscription, and it's staffed, to this day, by a band of retained (part-time) fire fighters who can often be seen sprinting from their homes or their day jobs to the station to attend a fire.
My kids visit the station for open days, the cubs and brownies try out the hose in the yard and the descendants of the station's founders still live here. This is a profoundly important community resource with psychological as well as practical value. Naturally enough, the local authority now wants to close Radlett fire station and the community has risen against them.
I suspect that the local Fire & Civil Defense Authority has picked the wrong prosperous, connected and media literate suburb, though: the web site is up, the PR agency appointed and the village festooned with nicely printed banners and posters. I think we'll be keeping that fire station.
October 08, 2005
Piece of cake, this futurology
I feel obliged to draw your attention to September's disastrous fall in sales of SUVs (4x4s as we call them here) in the US, not least because, back in May, I told you it was going to happen.
(picture from HybridCars.com).
October 06, 2005
Real Cowboys & Indians
I bookmarked the National Cowboy Museum's amazing rodeo history archive at del.icio.us but the site has many other amazing assets, including an excellent library of photographs of native Americans by late Nineteenth Century Western photographers.
Enfranchising prisoners
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Britain should allow prisoners the vote. I've always felt uncomfortable with denying prisoners the vote. It's an arbitrary, petty and outdated gloss on the withdrawal of liberty and, worse, it grants unelected judges a quite inappropriate role in the democratic process. Taking the right to vote away from those who've already lost their liberty is incompatible with larger and older liberties that we should be more enthusiastically defending.
Get over it
A genuinely free market will produce whatever you need whenever you need it. so here you can create your own church signs. And why not?
October 05, 2005
Links are back
So I spent about two months fiddling with my blogroll and tried a few ways of keeping it up-to-date and now, at last, it's back. So, if you're one of the people who's been writing to me complaining, then you can shut up now. Of course, the thing I'd forgotten was that most of my own blog browsing is driven by the links in my blogroll, which explains why I've not been browsing lately.
More Japanese corporate history
I love these Japanese corporate history sites – in fact, I'm becoming a bit of a connoisseur. Nikon's is a treat, and all the better for the wobbly translation:
I, the author of this article, used to work in Nippon kogaku's designing department, felt a bitter feeling when asked by a sales representative of an electronic parts company "Isn't Nippon Kogaku K.K. going to make a "Continuous Shooting SLR"?"
A site like this is a testament to the depth and breadth of a business like Nikon and a tribute to its people. Do businesses here, in Britain, honour the creativity and diligence of their people and the historic value of the things they make in this way? No. They don't.
October 03, 2005
Go analogue
Will digital cameras ever acquire the butch glamour of the classic mechanical bullet-stoppers of the 35mm era? Common sense says 'I suppose so' but I can't see it myself. Digital cameras are as feathers next to these old copper-alloy lovelies. It's like comparing one of those crappy nylon and tin sliding door commuter trains to Mallard. Speaking of copper-alloy lovelies, you'll probably be wanting this one for your collection.
Some things are only possible on the radio
Three beautiful and evocative examples of the art of radio from the Radio 4 treasure trove. Last week's Open Country, a really fascinating programme about East Anglian Churches and Chapels, evoking an era of simplicity, piety and ugly class brutality.
A terrific insight into the work and thought (and language) of theatre directors: John Caird and Max Stafford Clarke talk about putting on Macbeth (I think you'll need my MP3 because the programme's probably been overwritten by now).
The best of the lot, if you ask me: John Killick's spent the last ten years talking to people with Alzheimer's and turning what he hears into poetry (likewise, you might need this MP3 if the Real stream's gone).
Is Wolfowitz going native?
The World Bank's 2006 World Development Report (download the report here and the overview here) provides at least some evidence that Bush crony and super-hawk Paul Wolfowitz hasn't taken advantage of the top job to wreck the place or to overturn the bank's commitment to the planet's poor. It's hardly evidence that Wolfowitz has 'gone native' but I'm pretty sure that his job at the World Bank can't help but influence the man. Could the World Bank actually change Paul Wolfowitz more than he changes the bank?
October 01, 2005
Real live card fraud
So this is how those card skimming ATM false fronts work: the device is very simple, made from moulded polystyrene (or similar), engineered to fit one ATM model and spray-painted in a colour close enough to the real thing with all of the appropriate card logos glued on.
The business end of the device (behind the thin polystyrene front) seems to include a card reader for recording stripes (and, presumably storing them in a simple, time-stamped format) but no way of recording PINs. Of course, the scary thing about that last bit of information is that it requires the skimmer to hang around and watch you type in your PIN and then record it (write it down, I suppose), with an approximate time stamp, so that it can be matched up with its stripe later on.
The thing obviously doesn't have a radio so it looks like the only way to harvest its store of stripes is to recover the false front itself, which, given what happened at Tesco in Radlett yesterday, implies a certain redundancy – they must have a stack of these things in a lock-up somewhere.