watch tHe skies

Now I’m not one for commenting on current affairs really. Okay maybe flatulent cows and other environmental disasters, yet politics, terrorism and the like are events that generally I try to ignore in an effort to keep my own personal view that the world is cuddly and fluffy and people are essentially nice, even the ones who think that NLP is a load of old codswallop.

And yet, in recent weeks, it seems to me that what it means to be British has taken some serious beatings. Our society is based on the ideal that certain pillars of society are unfallible. The two that come to mind are Doctors and the BBC. When we need something signed or authorised, in the eyes of our law, you can’t really get better than a Doctor (perhaps a Vicar) as an endorsement of the truthfulness of the information you have placed on whatever the written document is. And yet suddenly the role of Doctor in our society has taken a serious battering with the revelation that even this proud and trustworthy profession has been infiltrated by those seeking to cause harm rather than save lives.

This in isolation is a shock to the foundations of our society, yet we are strong enough to survive such a paradigm shift. Yet when another pillar, that of the BBC, which in my eyes has always stood for fairness, trust and a step above the gutter that is the media in all of its forms, to be revealed as a common fraudster, is perhaps too much for our society to take. I wonder what the long-term repurcussions of these events are, how we can maintain our proud identity in the shadow of such events, and how we can know who to trust in the future?

I watched the news with absolute amazement yesterday when they explained to me and countless others how cows and pigs are making global worse by virtue of the methane that they, er, trump in to the atmosphere with alarming regularity and volume.

So scientists are now experimenting with additives to cattle feed to reduce the amount of methane that these gentle creatures emit.

And I wonder how this train of thought ever began, because it seems to presume that cows are the problem, when in fact the process of developing and manufacturing the additives for cows across the planet will probably generate a far bigger carbon footprint than the cows themselves could ever possibly trump between birth and beef wellington.

And of course once tested and working on cattle, the next offender will be, that’s right, you and me. Before you know it, anti-fart additives companies are top of the FT100 and our god-given right to break wind and blame the dog will be replaced by a state-sponsored money making machine that has a carbon footprint bigger than the hole in the ozone layer.

It seems to me that us humans aren’t thinking holistically about this whole global warming thing… the trouble is, there’s money in them farting cows and screw the fact that the net carbon footprint grows, as long as someone can buy a nice new 4×4 as a result.

So I wonder what hair-brained eco moneymaker will next hit the headlines… dragonfly powered micro-windmills or the use of the human body as a battery to power a big virtual reality machine… they both rate the same level of craziness as addressing the farting cow problem.

Last week I was jetting around the US drumming up some business. For part of my stay I was down near Norfolk in Virginia, not far from Virginia Tech which has been in the news following the terrible shootings. Clearly many people there are hurt and upset at the event, and some people I met had either attended the school or had children there, so it was a tough time for everyone, including the poor Englishman looking for business at that particular time. My heart goes out to a nation of kind people affected by the tragedy.

Staying in hotels as I was, I found the debates on television about the situation and what to do about it fascinating. Strangely, most of the ideas involved providing better defence against such events occurring in the future - better armed guards, arming teachers etc etc, were serious suggestions on major TV stations. It seemed to me that there was a much simpler one:

Ban guns

This is of course easy for me to say - I live in a society where it is supposedly very hard to obtain firearms. That’s not to say that we don’t have problems with guns - of course we do, but our incident rate is considerably lower even when pro-rated by population and I would like to believe that this is mostly attributable to our culture and the greater difficulty in obtaining firearms.

And I did speak to people about this whilst I was over there, and I got an almost unanimous reply.

“You can’t ban guns - it’s part of the Constitution - the right to bear arms”

And then it dawned on me - this right to bear arms is buried so deep down in the foundations of their society that they can’t consider it as a possibility. (more…)

I read this great article on the BBC website this week, regarding alleged plans to install X-Ray scanners as CCTV in key places to detect terrorist actions. Firstly I’ve seen this technology in action and it is COOL - it’s not X-Ray in the traditional “broken limb” sense of the word, but the use of high frequency waves that penetrate clothing but not skin and bones.

Personally I think that if this technology is ready (the machine I saw was pretty big, you can read more about it on Qinetiq’s website) then why not utilise it to make the streets safer? I don’t carry weapons about so I have no problem being scanned by the machines, and if everyone else on the tube has also been scanned then I won’t feel so nervous when I see a shifty looking bloke skulking in the corner of a carriage with a holdall. Sure it could be considered a violation of privacy but so is being blown to bits for someone else’s cause, so you have to fight fire with fire.

And of course, on a lighter note, it means that those Beano X-Ray specs are one step closer to reality, imagine the possibilities…..

So I understand that today, the government will announce who has won the bid to have the UK’s first supercasino.

The eight councils named on the shortlist by the Casino Advisory Panel are the favourites Blackpool, as well as Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and the London boroughs of Brent and Greenwich.  The winner will be allowed to build one uber casino with over a thousand slot machines, with unlimited jackpots!

The rationale behind this, and the new gambling bill, is the belief that new casino projects will support urban regeneration by creating jobs and encouraging tourism. But this puzzles me, because none of the income from such a casino will be brought in from overseas, in fact it will come from those people that can least afford it - in an effort to wipe out their haemorraging debts (the average household debt in the UK is ~ £8,765 excluding mortgages and £52,811 including mortgages, the average owed by every UK adult is ~ £27,180 including mortgages). The growth of gambling in the UK (and everywhere else?) is the result of playing on the “get rich quick” concept that is so alluring, particularly to those that can’t see a way out from under their growing loans, credit cards and car financing. As Yoda so wisely said “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice”.

So whilst yes perhaps this supercasino will regenerate an urban area, it will come at the price of cash-strapped people heading to it from all areas of the country in the hope that they will get one lucky break and win a jackpot, when the reality is that most of the money taken to a casino stays there. Just for the record - I’ve done the whole Vegas thing and it was good fun, in fact I actually won enough money to have a very entertaining evening that, if you ask me, I would be pleased to tell you about. However I realise that the only way I’ll ever beat the casino is not to go back in. I was just lucky, unlike the thousands of people in Vegas every day pumping their life savings in to those machines and on those card tables.

So it’s a long shot, but I hope that the Government’s announcement today is that they have changed their minds, and that we really don’t need an more casinos at all thank you very much. However I get the feeling that I hope in vain.

So I read and watched with amazement the news on the BBC website that crackpot genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein has been found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

Wow

I mean I didn’t know that people still got hanged. On hearing the verdict my mind shot back to old Robin Hood movies, the thought of a public execution. I wonder whether it will be televised - after all the execution of the guy who had such a tight grip on the lives of so many people for so long could have a massive impact on the stability of the nation - something that would benefit both the US and the UK given the increasing domestic unrest with the cost of the operation in terms of money and lives lost.

Of course a public execution means that YouTube would have the busiest day of its relatively short life.

Would I watch someone being hanged? Interesting question that, and I don’t have an answer. After all the hanging of Saddam will be a historical moment, something that people will talk about for many years to come, until the Americans finally catch up with Osama. However I’m not sure I want to see someone hanged, and yet some part of me wonders what it really looks like…

Enough has been said and written about the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks without me trying to add something new. My thoughts are with the many innocents that lost their lives that day, and their friends and relatives.

I guess 9/11 is one of those days that you remember where you were when you heard. For Jenny and I, it was Bangkok Airport, waiting for our flight home. It is hard to remember what the world was like before that day, perhaps it was no different at all and it was simply that I wasn’t aware of the political undercurrents that led to the events of that day.

As you probably know by now, I am a big supporter of Oxfam’s work. So here is a message that I am sure you will all think about reading.

The Middle East conflict has claimed hundreds of lives and forced more than 900,000 people to abandon their homes in search of safety.

Please give to our appeal

If you have already given to our appeal, thank you. Even during the fighting, we were able to reach and help more than 12,000 people.

After 34 days of conflict, the ceasefire means that much more aid can begin to reach families. That’s why we need your help now.

Oxfam is there

Although some people are still sheltering in schools and public buildings, many have begun the difficult journey home, often to discover that everything has been destroyed. We are already beginning to provide clean water and sanitation - essential to meet people’s basic hygiene needs.

Please give online today - a donation of £35 can buy hygiene kits for two families containing towels, soap, toothpaste and more – simple but vital items for those shocked and deeply traumatised at what has happened to their daily lives.

We are committed to helping those suffering in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel and beyond. Families have been separated and thrown into turmoil. Homes and livelihoods wrecked. Read the latest reports from our Response Team.

So my trip to Edinburgh wasn’t quite as painful as I had expected. Moments before we went airside, Birmingham Airport relaxed the rules on electronic devices, which meant that I could take my phone and avoid getting withdrawal symptoms spending a day out of the office incommunicado.

Security was still tight - every car entering Birmingham Airport was being questioned as to the passenger’s intentions on the airport. At the security check we had to remove belts, shoes and jackets, but to be honest the queue wasn’t that much longer than the week before. What was good to see was that the security staff were being very open and polite to passengers, who, in return, were compliant and helpful (aah Cialdini’s first principle of influence in full effect). (more…)

Thanks to Andy for this. Comedy.