All's well with the realm

There are seven ravens are in permanent residence in the Tower of London; their wings have been clipped so that they can't fly away. A superstition dating back to the time of Charles II claims that when there are no longer ravens in the Tower, both the White Tower and the kingdom will fall. The Ravenmaster -- one of the Yeoman Warders -- tends the birds; they even have their own pens. Well, the good news is that I was at the tower on Tuesday and they were still there....

Aren't you comforted?

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: travel

Royal visit

I was wondering what was going on as I pottered down to Woking station this morning. There was a police helicopter overhead and I saw a bunch of policemen wandering around and a policeman with a sniffer dog on the other platform. At first I just assumed that someone hadn't paid their fare and South West Trains were going to make an example of them. But then I thought that because of the sniffer dog some exciting anti-terrorist action was in progress, or that a drug lord had been cornered on Platform 1, trapped by the late running of the 09.58 to Waterloo. Turns out that Prince Charles was visiting and he came by train from Waterloo. How exciting. It turns out that some people had turned up to watch Al Gore's movie and the Prince was giving a talk about it. Anyway, I hope that he found time in his busy schedule to ask what on Earth is going on with the stupid canopy that the council is still building outside the station. Because of this, buses can't stop outside the station. Normally, I'll wait near home and take the bus, because the bus stops right outside the station. Since it can't, it takes as long to walk from the bus stop to the station as it does from the car park. The inconvenient truth is that because of this, I've been driving instead of taking the bus.

Apologies for posting this a month late, but I didn't realise that I hadn't posted it at the time.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, travel, woking

Amsterdam in the morning

A relaxing breakfast in the splendid dining room at the Hotel Krasnapolsky on Dam square. I like Amsterdam -- I used to live in the Netherlands -- and find it very pleasant to stroll around on a mild Spring day like today.

It sets you up for the day, breakfast in grand style like this. I always regard a massive cooked breakfast as my compensation for being away from the family, not sleeping well and (in this case) missing watching the F.A. Cup quarter-final live on TV.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: travel

A random act of kindness

Not by me, obviously, but I did witness one with my very own eyes. Outside a Starbucks in London this morning. There was an old tramp -- although it's hard to tell how old he actually was, he was probably 30 or something -- who was filthy and decrepit. He was mumbling incoherently about not having had anything to eat for days while people were wandering past ignoring him. As I did. But as I walked past, a guy dressed in a smart suit (this was in the City) came out. He walked past the tramp for a few paces, then stopped and turned back. He took out of his wallet what looked like a £20 note gave it to the tramp. All day, I have been wondering if this was simple charity, part of some wider philanthropic exercise, a means of assuaging guilt over city bonuses, bizarre performance art, or what? I have a firm policy of never giving "beggars" anything...

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning

The Prague spring

A lovely day couple of days in Prague. I think I heard on the BBC that there hadn't been a government here for seven months, which may be one of the reasons why it is so energetic and prosperous. Went out to dinner at a super restaurant overlooking the river and the castle and had my first Czech food: some kind of meatball soup that was delicious and a steak in cream sauce with cranberries and dumplings -- just typing it out is making me swoon. When you have some really, really nice meal that you've never had before, it's what passes for excitement at my advanced stage of life.

Technorati Tags: travel

Traditional London street scenes no. 1

Ah, spring is almost here. It's a lovely day down at Waterloo Place...

A bearded gentleman looks on while brightly decorated policemen search his car, assisted by a friendly golden-coated bomb squad sniffer dog.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning

Identity card rant

The government here has decided against building a new national identity id card system. Instead, the Home Office and their management consultants decided to knock one up from some old databases they happen to have laying around at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Home Office and the immigration and passport service. That would be the DWP who were responsible for the biggest computer crash ever in the U.K., the Home Office that has spent ten years building a computer system for the police that is still not working and the Identity & Passport Service where staff have already been sacked for looking through personal records. I started to think about this today because on the BBC there was a piece about the DWP sending 26,000 people's personal details (including bank details) to the wrong people.

Still, not to worry. The government says that all of the data from DWP database will be checked again before it is put into the new "National Identity Register". The architecture of the system is rock solid and completely secure because according to Peter Wilson, a spokesperson for the Home Office, "It's rather like a filing cabinet that DWP owns and maintains... We have our own shelf, which is empty, and which we will populate with our own records and which we have our own key to." What could possibly go wrong?

One or two other aspects of the new architecture are a little surprising. I found a comment from Graham Titterington from Ovum. He points out that the role of biometrics appears to have been downgraded. There is no mention of iris recognition, apart from a brief sentence, and the report talks in general terms about 'biometrics such as finger prints' and appears to have given up on creating the 'gold standard of identity' originally proposed. He notes that "Whilst, the government is still placing heavy reliance on the role of biometrics in preventing a person from making multiple registrations in the NIR, this objective seems unlikely to be achieved without the use of iris scans".

I've seen some commentators call the new Home Office strategic action plan to introduce ID cards from 2009 a step in the right direction. I disagree: it's a giant leap in the wrong direction and it will make the current situation (ie, no ID card) worse in almost every respect. This is very disappointing for people like me who think that a properly thought out identity card would be a good idea in the modern world.

How can giant projects like this rumble along without any inspiring vision of how they are going to deliver 21st century services that will transform the lives of citizens rather than half-baked, crappy, "computer says no" emulations of the 1950s?

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: technology