Serviski industries

Travelling the highways and byways of England recently, I stopped a few times at motorway service stations. Every time I stopped, I was served by people who appear to be Polish, or least Eastern European of some description. I'm not saying this to complain about it, far from it, but you can't help noticing that the vigorous growth of our service industries seems to be fuelled wholly by imported labour. When I last went to Scotland, every single person who provided any kind of service -- from the hotel porter to the waitress at the Mexican restaurant -- appeared to be Polish. I'm not sure if the metropolitan elite, who are used to the cosmopolitan nature of the capital, understand the magnitude of this transformation in the rest of country.

I'm not bringing this up in order to pass judgement one way or the other, but I was moved to comment on this because the postman called yesterday morning to deliver a parcel and when I answered the door, she was Polish too. I wonder what happened to the previous Seikh gentleman?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: travel

Help, help, I'm being repressed

My youngest son gave his first ever music recital last week. It was only a few notes as part of an ensemble, but as every parent knows, that's not the point. Unfortunately, I don't have a photograph of this wonderful occasion nor a video clip to show Grandma and Grandad. As I stood up to capture the treasured moment for posterity, I was promptly assailed by an official and told that I was not allowed to photograph my own child at a public performance because the performance was in a school and that it was "County policy" that I was not allowed to take either still pictures or a video clip. I asked her if it was an intelligence-led decision (what do you think -- from Surrey County Council?) on the basis that a known pervert was in the audience and if so, under "Reid's Law" if we shouldn't have been informed, but my wife told me to shut up.

Clearly, my behaviour was, to Surrey County Council, beyond the pale. By contrast, some of the behaviour considered perfectly acceptable was allowing your child to spend the entire recital playing on a Gameboy, only pausing for a moment when (I presume) a sibling was centre stage, as well as talking while the children were playing and -- something that particularly annoys me -- leaving as soon as your child has finished their piece. Outright rudeness and a flamboyant lack of respect for other people: no problem. Wanting to record an important event in your child's life: totally unacceptable.

There was a guy in the row in front of me who had a video camera on his lap and was filming surreptitiously when any of his kids were playing. Should I have shopped him? Let's hope the government's plan to have CCTV cameras everywhere, all the time, will put an end to such agonising moral dilemmas.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, kids

My life in politics

I was very flattered to be asked along to a Conservative party think tank about future technology policy. I was sure they had me mixed up with something else, but I wasn't going to miss a chance to hang out with the big nobs, so to speak. Unfortunately, I couldn't go. I wrote a letter instead and I thought it might be fun to show it here...

Dear XXX,

I received an invitation last week from Mr. XXXX YYYY concerning a Conservative Party event on Xth March. Much as I would love to contribute I'm afraid it clashes with [an important event that] I will be attending. I imagine that the invitation stems from our previous conversation about XXXXX?

Incidentally, I read in the Saturday Telegraph a story concerning House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee chairman John Whittingdale. The story claims that he is a Tory and that he responded positively to an approach from Mr. Edward Clarke, a sometime member of the popular beat combo Motorhead, concerning the extension of copyright for song composers.

I mention this not merely because I am an infinitely bigger fan of Motorhead than Mr. Whittingdale claims to be -- as my good lady wife will testify, because I took her to see Motorhead on our first date -- and not because I have anything against Mr. Clarke personally (in fact, I am second to none in my admiration for "Fast Eddie" Clarke's lead guitar playing), but because I was wondering if this is the sort of topic that your Forum might be discussing?

If so, could you please ask them from me my why on Earth it is Conservative Party policy to extend copyright? I realise that the blandishments of producer interest groups are seductive -- and that the glamour of the pop world might temporarily blind MPs to economic first principles -- but if you are to have a policy on this topic it should be to reduce copyright significantly to the great benefit of everyone else in society apart from [pop stars].

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Dave.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, technology

Security risks

I've been in Lisbon for a few days, which has been very pleasant. It's a lovely city and the company and conversation has been excellent. On the way back, though, I started to get nervous about security, and not just because I heard on the TV about the car bombs in London (one of which was towed away for a parking violation, not for being a tool of indiscriminate mass murder -- shades of J.G. Ballard again). When I went through the security check to get on the plane, I forgot that I put my toothpaste in my carry-on bag in clear violation of the posted procedures. No-one noticed of course, and nor did they seem concerned that there were six mobile phones in it either (I'd been running a seminar that needed phones for demonstration purposes). I only remembered when I was waiting to pick up my bag the other side of X-ray and the security guards were making an old dear in front of me empty out all of her stuff until they discovered the offending item: a small bottle of orange juice. Then, on the way back, I forgot to turn my phone off. I didn't realise until I was back at terminal one at Heathrow and I went to turn it back on again. Amazingly, though, it didn't appear to interfere with the aircraft's navigational systems and we didn't crash, despite the dire warnings on the in-flight announcement. Why would terrorists drive cars full of explosive around when all they need to do is get off a plane but leave their mobile phone switched on an hidden in the seat pocket in front of them?

I decided to leave that last sentence in, despite the fact that five minutes after I got home and was making a cup of tea in the kitchen while chatting with the family, there was a newsflash on the radio concerning terrorists trying to drive a car full of petrol into Glasgow airport.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, travel

Sur vs. sous

People are always going on about surveillance, but they spend less time thinking about sousveillance. This is just as much of a problem and it is uncontrolled: when everyone has cameraphones, all of us are under sousveillance all the time. This isn't a major problem for nonentities like me, but it must get a bit wearing for anyone with the slightest degree of celebrity as they wouldn't get a private moment to the themselves anywhere. We have to wonder what sort of society this will create, if you ask me.

Anyway, here's noted BBC television celebrity Tony Hawks in the Apple Store in London...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: technology

Keep off the grass

It's that time of year again. Glastonbury has become an English institution. I haven't been for twenty years, and have no intention of going ever again. For a start, camping out for the weekend at a pop festival is a rite of passage, part of the process of shifting from childhood the prolonged childhood that is post-modern adulthood in an affluent society. I went a few times and it was great: sitting here typing I can recall some of the happiest times of my life. Jumping up and down singing along to the Paul Jones and The Blues Band's version of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" (I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more) a couple of years after my working class first-time Tory vote had brought Mrs. Thatcher to power. Laughing myself into a pharmacologically-assisted vegitative state after watching John Cooper-Clarke deliver the Daily Express (This paper's boring, mindless, mean / Full of pornography, the kind that's clean). Yes, great days: look at the 1981 line-up (when it was still only 24,000 people, including me -- see below) and then tell me that today's is better.

Now the tickets are proto-ID cards, the bog rolls are recycled only and it can only be a matter of time before Glastonbury bans smoking as well as drugs because they will get the field designated a place of work. How long before they confiscate booze, too, on the basis that it’s bad for the liver - and junk food, because, as Jamie Oliver warned, that’s bad for us and the environment, too? It just doesn't sound very much fun to me, and that's without the continuous Green hectoring and Saga motorhome campers.

I don't want to sound like Victor Meldrew in every paragraph, but now that Glastonbury is the new Glyndebourne (not that the old one has gone away), I can't imagine anything more hideous that standing soaked to the skin in a field, surrounded by management consultants and their spouses, and watching Shirley Bassey while stone cold sober.

What youthful rebellion can be accompanied by tickets that cost 150 quid, policemen with spy cameras and Lily Allen? No thanks. And while I can see "the kids" wanting to go and see The Arctic Chiefs or whoever, if you wanted to see The Who, then you should have gone to see them at Charlton Athletic Football Ground in 1974 like I did.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, pop stars, nostalgia

And about time too

Well done British Airways. At last! I've been moaning for years that there's no free wifi in the Executive Club lounges. I've never understood why someone paying thousands of pounds for a business class ticket should have to screw around trying to buy wifi time with a credit card in an airline premium lounge. I typed this sitting in an Executive Club lounge (location withheld) on the free wifi network. Simply, easy solution: you get a username and password on a slip of paper, given to you when you check in at the lounge. It would have been a perfect 10 travel experience, if it hadn't been for the guy from Accenture sitting across from me and talking loudly on this mobile phone to a friend about a project they're doing for Lloyds TSB and how many air miles he was racking up.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, travel