Watching You, Watching Me

We are all under surveillance, more so than at any other time in human history. The CCTV camera is ubiquitous, in trains and buses, pubs and shops and in the street. There can be few places in urban areas where one can avoid being on camera, but in the home we are safe from observation; or at least we think we are. Last week BBC's Breakfast programme featured news that a Russian website was streaming live footage from cameras in shops and alarmingly, in people's homes, including from children's bedrooms. The site has hacked into cameras that are linked to the internet and features over 10,000 feeds worldwide, including over 600 in Britain. The hackers are able to do so because although these cameras have password protection, many users do not bother to change from the default password supplied by the manufacturer, and these are readily available on the internet.

 Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, interviewed on the Breakfast programme, has said that getting the site closed down will take some time since it is domiciled in Russia. He was asked if he could contact the owners of webcams which had been hacked to make them aware and for them to be able to secure their cameras, and the irony is that because of the terms of the Data Protection Act, he is unable to do so. If ever there was a case of a law having unintended consequences!

The interconnectivity of devices, including machines which hitherto we would never have considered as being internet enabled, is spreading. The so called "Internet of Things" includes the connection of appliances like fridges, whose software can enable them to monitor levels of produce and their fitness to eat by their sell by date and theoretically place an online order with a supermarket to ensure that you never run out of milk. Hypothetically a hacker could intercept these messages and start spamming you about your diet, or perhaps your fridge could grass you up to the Department of Health if you aren't eating your five a day. Even George Orwell's Big Brother drew the line at snooping on the contents of Winston Smith's fridge.

Not having any cameras at home that could have been hacked (apart from the one on my laptop), I very much doubt that I am being observed in anyway, and even if I were an image of me pecking away at the keyboard would be of no interest to anybody, so I am scarcely concerned about the possibility. That said, there have been occasions, some of which pre-date the widespread availability of the internet, when I have seen or heard something on television or radio and thought to myself that the writer or performer must have eavesdropped on me to come up with a particular line or situation. It got to the point where I almost considered searching the house for hidden cameras and microphones. Was I part of some social experiment that I knew nothing about, or a piece of reality TV a la The Truman Show, I wondered?

On reflection however it appears that I am neither as original nor clever as perhaps I may think I am and the line that I have heard is actually a more famous one that I have picked up subliminally somewhere and repeated in the belief that it is of my own invention. It is only nowadays, by tapping such a phrase into a search engine that I find to my chagrin, that I have been unwittingly plagiarising Oscar Wilde or Charles Dickens.

But recently there have been two instances when Val and I have heard something and at one another looked in astonishment as an incident from our lives is enacted in front of us. We have been lucky enough to get tickets for a number of BBC radio recordings over the last year or so, and recently went to see recordings of a show called Tom Wrigglesworth's Hang Ups[1]. The premise is that Tom, a Yorkshireman living in London, rings his parents in Sheffield every week and then he riffs about the conversations. Well, at one recording Tom's father (played in the show to absolute perfection by Paul Copley), tells Tom that the family are coming to London for the Ideal Home Exhibition, because the dishwasher they bought there 21 years before has gone wrong. 

Tom Wrigglesworth. Picture: The Guardian

Cue sense of déjà vu in Val and me since last year we had cause to return a food processor to the Ideal Home Show (Exhibition as was), because it was faulty. Of course simply returning a faulty item is not funny of itself, the humour in Tom Wrigglesworth's show was that his parents travelled from Sheffield to London by air...via Amsterdam. Obviously actually returning the item to Earls Court and fusing the electrics in the exhibition hall was considered to be too implausible.[2]

That machine again.

Now once could be happenstance. Twice, well twice I suppose is coincidence, because at another recording, it happened again. Tom's parents were considering the replacement of an item of furniture. They had apparently hummed and harred about this for some time because after all, as Tom's father said," less than four years and it's an impulse buy." The audience roared with laughter, as did Val and I, but again with the exchange of knowing looks, because it took us seven years to buy a new sofa. We'd had it in mind to replace our aging sofa for some time, but everywhere we looked we could not find what we wanted; every one we looked at had some defect or another. Finally when we did identify one which met almost all of our criteria, we worked out that seven years had elapsed since we first went sofa hunting. Oh well, you know what they say about buying in haste and repenting at leisure.

The old conservatory before it fell down was replaced

Our next planned expedition into furniture buying involves a sourcing a couple of chairs and a table for our newly renovated conservatory. The old one, single glazed, wooden framed windows with Perspex roof, would surely not have lasted another winter of strong winds. Even last year some of the roof panels came adrift and we were concerned that a heavy fall of snow could be catastrophic, so we had it replaced with one with double glazed uPVC windows. Just as well considering how easily the old windows and roof were dismantled. Anyway, we now need some new furniture and given our previous track record there is a good chance the conservatory will need renovating again before we buy some, so I was wondering, if Tom Wrigglesworth is listening, perhaps he could answer this question. Do his parents have a conservatory, and if so where did they get the furniture for it?

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[1] If you haven't heard it, seek it out on the BBC Radio iPlayer app, it is hilarious.

[2] See http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-scariest-domestic-appliancein-world.html. The Scariest Domestic Appliance.....In The World!

Sblatter! Are FIFA Beyond Parody?

Imagine if the chief executive of a multi-national corporation said that his female employees should wear skimpier clothes to work. Imagine if that same chief executive said that he was surprised to hear that there were allegations of bribery and corruption in his company's European operations but unperturbed to hear of these practices in Africa. Imagine that this same man then went on record and said that his gay customers should refrain from any sexual activities in certain countries, but that it was acceptable, indeed that it would be applauded in some nations, if one of his employees had an affair with a colleague's partner.

Your new uniform, miss.

Now imagine that the multi-national corporation this man runs will only do business with nations who are prepared to change their local laws at the whim of the corporation and willing to grant them charitable status, thus enabling them to make multi-million dollar profits and pay not one penny in tax. Imagine that the company will require the governments of the countries with which they do business to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure especially for the company's purposes but which become a redundant white elephant a month after completion.

One might expect that chief executive to be reprimanded, or perhaps asked to consider his position and resign, or perhaps he would be removed from his post. One might anticipate that many countries and other companies would be reluctant to deal with this man and his company. Unless of course his name is Joseph "Sepp" Blatter and the organisation is the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) of which he is President, because all of the above have been attributed to Herr Blatter and his organisation. [1]

Unless you have no interest in football or have been hiding in a cave over the last week or so, you will probably have heard of the fallout from the claim that the winning bids by Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups have come under scrutiny following allegations that these bids were less than straightforward and above board. FIFA appointed American lawyer Michael Garcia to investigate and it came as no surprise to many people when FIFA announced that there was no case for Russia or Qatar to answer, although criticism of England's failed bid was something of a bolt from the blue. While it didn't surprise some people, one man who was astonished was the investigator, Michael Garcia himself, who said that the report  contained "numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations." 

See no evil...

In this regard FIFA remind me of Humpty Dumpty; when Humpty Dumpty said a word  it meant " just what I choose it to mean" and no doubt FIFA firmly believed that if they said a thing then it must be so and that everyone would simply accept it. 

Perhaps surprised by the outcry and downright incredulity that their announcement was met with, FIFA have now submitted a criminal complaint to Switzerland's attorney general, although they have not gone as far as suggesting that the bidding process will either be re-opened or even investigated.[2]

...hear no evil...

This volte face by FIFA is quite a shock; one might even say it is a welcome surprise and that perhaps FIFA are acting honourably and placing this matter in front of the Swiss authorities...except. Except that FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert (who published Garcia's findings and cannot understand the American's criticism) still says that there is insufficient evidence to question the entire bidding process. FIFA steadfastly refuse to publish Garcia's report in full [3] saying to do so would violate their own laws and state laws, but meanwhile a whistleblower who provided evidence to Garcia has had to quit her position and says she has been discredited (Eckert ruled her evidence unreliable). Furthermore the woman says that her safety has been compromised. Sadly it is typical of a large organisation which is able to effectively act as judge and jury over allegations against itself, then simply insist that it has no case to answer while simultaneously monstering its accusers.

...speak no evil.

Should any of this surprise us? FIFA are, like any large, transnational organisation, vulnerable to allegations of corruption, of chicanery, of wrongdoing of one sort or another. For example, in all my years with HSBC we consistently had the core standards of behaviour which the bank expected  drummed into us. We were regularly reminded of the ethics, integrity and probity that were expected of us, so was I surprised to hear that the bank were one of six being fined a total of £2.6 billion for attempting to manipulate foreign exchange rates? No, not really. The reality is that at the sharp end, where the money is made, large organisations cannot afford to be especially squeamish about how things work. Management inevitably adopt a JFDI[4] attitude because claiming to be meeting certain standards of behaviour when your organisation is not, is easier to fudge than profits. If we see this sort of behaviour in banks and other transnational corporations should we expect an organisation like FIFA to be any different?

Football administrators in both England and in Germany have been talking about a potential boycott of the next World Cup. Were it simply England doing the talking I suspect that FIFA would shrug their shoulders and call the FA's bluff; there is little love lost in that relationship.  But once the Germans, the World Champions, start talking in those terms, then FIFA have to listen, have to be seen to be doing something, hence their complaint to the Swiss attorney general. Personally, I feel it is little more than a sop and that little will come of it and the bandwagon will continue to roll on its merry way in exactly the same manner to which we have become accustomed.

There have been calls for greater transparency in future World Cup bids and on the face of it that might be a good thing except it will inevitably drive the sort of behaviour that Garcia was investigating allegations of deeper and deeper underground. In some respects the only way to achieve total transparency is to endorse the payment of inducements to officials to look favourably on nations bids to host the World Cup. In the topsy-turvy world FIFA inhabit that is not as incredible as it might sound.  After all, in the same way that people like Richard Branson believe that the war on drugs has been lost and  advocate decriminalising them as a more effective means of control, so perhaps if payment for bids is inevitable it ought to be accepted and regulated.

"Bad, inconsistent, incoherent propaganda" according to one critic.

Finally, and with absolutely no relevance to the allegations about the Russian and Qatari bids, how can one take seriously an organisation that spends £16 million on a vanity project  like the film, United Passions, as FIFA has done and in which the heroes are FIFA's administrators? 

Some things truly are beyond parody.

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[1] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/15781405

[2] At the time of writing. This whole affair is such that by the time you read this, events may well have moved on.

[3] Again, by the time you read this they may have changed their mind, although I am doubtful.

[4] If JFDI means nothing to you, then Google it (carefully).

888,246

"If we don't end war, war will end us."  H G Wells

For over a quarter of a century I commuted into central London, so you might be forgiven for thinking that I would not care that I no longer have to, however in all of the time that I did that journey day in, day out, I never became bored by or blasé about the sights. Crossing the Thames, seeing Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral and the like on a daily basis was not something that I tired of, so despite the fact that I no longer have to, I still enjoy the occasional jaunt into the city. Add to that my love of walking and going for walks in London is a thing that I indulge myself with now and again.

There is something very calming about walking by water; even walking by the sea on a stormy, winters day can be a restful experience in a hypnotic way. Walking along the banks of the Thames is something that I find both calming and stimulating, because there is always something to see, and often something new and different. Over the last couple of years I have walked from Canary Wharf on the north bank of the river into central London and along the south bank from Greenwich on more than one occasion, however I have never, before this week, strayed further west than Lambeth Bridge.

Ancient and modern. Southwark Cathedral and The Shard.

With autumn now upon us and the weather less reliable, it was a spur of the moment thing to go for a walk along the river on Tuesday as the day dawned bright, mild and blessedly dry. It being Armistice Day, 11th November, I contemplated visiting the poppies at the Tower of London, but having seen them a couple of times during the summer and considering how crowded it was likely to be, I decided not to. I set off from London Bridge on Tuesday morning with the intention of seeing how far I could walk before either my knee gave out or the river path did. Often on these walks I have Val for company; being on my own I did wonder if I would have the discipline to walk as far as we usually do together. As it turned out, I did a smidgeon under ten miles before heading home, a couple of miles shy of normal.

London, indeed a lot of the UK, seems to have fallen in love with sculpture in recent years, especially themed sculptures. There has been Gromit, seen below at Paddington Station a couple of years ago, and now we have a trail of London buses and Paddington Bears, a couple of which I passed on the South Bank. [1] As I mentioned earlier, we also have the poppies, all 888,246 of them at The Tower of London and I will return to them later.

London's South Bank is a vibrant, lively place to walk even if it can become very congested around the London Eye, especially in summer. On Tuesday the crowds were thinner. By design rather than accident I reached Westminster just before eleven o'clock, standing in silent contemplation as Big Ben chimed the hour. At one time it was de rigueur for London's traffic to come to a halt at this time and while it might now be less practical than it was years ago, it was nonetheless pleasantly surprising to see how much traffic halted on Westminster Bridge. 

Past Lambeth Bridge it was new territory for me, but Battersea Power Station and Albert Bridge apart, the river west of this point has less of interest, not that the walk is any less pleasant, with Battersea Park and Wandsworth Park oases of greenery. Eventually I crossed the Thames at Putney and headed home. The alternative, to carry on walking, would have meant either turning back or carrying on to Hammersmith Bridge, which I know now was just another two miles, but on Tuesday I decided that enough was enough.

Having dipped out of visiting the Tower of London and the poppies in the morning, I thought that having come to London on such an historic day, it would be daft not to go, so I got off the tube at Monument and walked along the river to the Tower. This proved a good decision as the crowds were thinner; as I walked away from the Tower towards Liverpool Street, the crowds were much denser.

Now much has been written about the poppies, most of it positive, however there have been a few dissenting voices. Jonathon Jones, writing for The Guardian, describes them as "fake, trite and inward looking," which "lets Ukip thrive." He says that a memorial to war ought to be "gory, vile and terrible to see," that the moat of the Tower  "should be filled with barbed wire and bones." I do not find the poppies fake or trite and nor it would seem do the estimated four million people who have visited them, but there again I am not an art critic, so what do I know? Jones's point that a better memorial would be barbed wire and bones has some merit and there's no reason why some like minded person could not have done something of that nature; the fact that no one has tends to place Jones in something of a minority. Critics like Jones perpetuate the Emperor's new clothes syndrome whereby anything popular is deemed to have no artistic merit but pretentious nonsense that no sane person could find entertaining or attractive is lauded to the heavens.

The actress and author Sheila Hancock has said that "a tank should mow down the poppies and leave them shattered and broken like the bodies of the guys that died." Symbolically this would be extremely powerful, moving even, but not immensely practical given the fact that the people who have paid for the poppies expect to receive one intact once they are uninstalled.

Perhaps next year Mr Jones and Miss Hancock could collaborate on a display of barbed wire and bones that are demolished by having a tank driven over them, although I can't shake the image of the opening scene in the Terminator  film which that so strongly resembles and which would forever trivialise the whole thing in my mind.

Why does The Great War, 'the war to end all wars,' still resonate so much? Perhaps because of the numbers who died, or because so many who survived have been with us in our lifetime; perhaps because of the horrors of this war, which surpassed any that had preceded it.  Perhaps it is because this war was the first that saw extensive media coverage, the first that spawned any real dissent (certainly the first that received any public acknowledgement) and the first on mainland Europe that was so extensive, so all encompassing and which affected so many non-combatants.

The war to end war sadly did no such thing; each year when we remember the fallen in The Great War and in subsequent conflicts we might do so in the hope that there will be no more in the future, but it is a vain hope. It does not make our remembrance any less important, though.

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[1] See http://www.visitlondon.com/paddington/ and https://www.tfl.gov.uk/campaign/sculpture-trails

Two Pints Of Bitter And A Bunch Of Bananas, Please

Ask me directions and the chances are that the landmarks I will use to guide you with will be pubs. "The Post Office? Turn right at The Flying Horse, left at The Red Lion and it's opposite The Railway Tavern," that sort of thing. Except today The Flying Horse is a Tesco Metro, The Red Lion is a Sainsbury's Local and The Railway Tavern is a block of flats that resemble an art deco battleship and has a pretentious name like The Matrix or Prometheus Court, because Britain's pubs are closing at a rate of 31 per week according to the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA).  Britain had over 67,000 pubs as recently as 1982; by 2013 that number had fallen to 48,000.[1] Remarkably though, the names of many pubs live on long after they close. In Dagenham people still refer to "the Fiddlers roundabout" even though the roundabout has been replaced by traffic lights and The Merry Fiddlers pub closed in 1992.

It might seem a cliché, but there are plenty of fine old inns like this, but for how long?

The supermarkets are voracious converters of pubs into small versions of their major stores. Tesco have 1,600 Express stores and 190 Metro outlets and it seems that almost all of them are located in what were once pubs. In walking distance of my home, The Railway, The Cherry Tree, The Beacon, and The Marlborough have all converted to Tesco in recent years and there are doubtless more that I have not thought of. It isn't just Tesco, Sainsbury's do it too. They recently bought and refurbished the Elm Park Hotel and converted it into a supermarket despite a campaign by local residents who were keen to save the pub. Ironically not so many years ago the local residents were campaigning for the pub's closure as it had something of a reputation.

The Marlborough in Romford, now a Tesco express.

Many pubs are now restaurants and there are some that have been demolished altogether  to make way for blocks of expensive apartments, particularly in the South East where the demand for housing is reaching absurd proportions. There are housing developments on hospital sites, colleges and even what were once petrol stations. I appreciate that the area around London is popular but I fear for local services and infrastructure as a result of the rapidly increasing population.

Even more sadly there are plenty of pubs that have called last orders for the final time, closed their doors and now sit idle and derelict[2]. It is not uncommon to drive around and see a boarded up pub that was apparently thriving just a few weeks before. There are many reasons for pubs closing, economic and social. A former publican friend of mine has told me of the unrealistic targets set by the brewers, of the changes imposed on managers that can cause pubs to fail. In pubs like any other business ,management set targets and if you meet or exceed them and you can bet your last penny that those targets get increased next year. Eventually they become unreachable. Economically pubs also suffer because supermarkets sell beers, wines and spirits at discounted prices that many publicans cannot compete with. There is now a changing culture in British drinking habits and people consume more at home and less in pubs. Oh sure, of a Friday night many pubs are heaving (sadly, a lot of the clientele are too, but that's another story), but many are virtually deserted at other times. It is strange that the relaxation of the licensing laws, meaning that pubs can open longer, has actually made many pubs uncompetitive. Whereas a pub might have had to close during the afternoon previously, they can now stay open and many probably feel obliged to even though between three in the afternoon and six in the evening the bar staff rarely see more than a couple of customers. There must be many publicans who keep their doors open because they fear  if they close they will lose trade later on even though they must be losing money.

It isn't just the economic factors that account for pub closures, demographics play a part too. The traditional East End boozer, catering for factory workers and dockers is under threat because the customers no longer exist. London's Docklands may be a vibrant commercial centre but the traditional 'local' has been supplanted by upmarket bars for the office workers. In place of the factory workers and dockers spending their wages over the bar of The Prince Regent, we now have a very different community in much of London's East End, for the majority of whom pub culture is alien. Faced with a local populace who have no interest in their product, the pubs wither and die.

In my local area we have some very ancient and venerable public houses. The Golden Lion in Romford dates back to 1440 and The Ship in Gidea Park is over five hundred years old. Now you would hope that these incredible old inns would carry on forever, but age is not a guarantee of permanence. Take The Old Spotted Dog in Forest Gate, a 16th century inn that was one of Henry VIII's hunting lodges. It was still going strong at the end of the last century, but has now been closed for more than a decade. As a Grade II listed building it is fortunately unlikely to be turned into flats or a supermarket, but will probably lie abandoned and neglected for many years to come despite the best efforts of local campaigners[3]. The Dog is in the area I described where the demographic has changed; the continued outward spread of London's East End could mean that pubs like The Golden Lion and The Ship eventually go the same way, although hopefully that is many years in the future.

The Golden Lion, Romford. Photo: John Winfield

 

What remains of The Old Spotted Dog

It isn't all bad news, however. J D Wetherspoons opened their first pub in 1979 and now have over 900 up and down the country; it is difficult to find a High Street without one and they have opened in what were once banks or Post Offices as well as traditional pub premises. Wetherspoons have remarkably managed to satisfy both the casual drinker and the real ale enthusiast, with their reasonable food and drink prices and their range of cask ales. They do have their detractors; a blog on The Guardian's website cites the charge that some people make against them as being " soulless, big, cheap city-centre drinking pits, dominated by televisions and many lone, drunk men ready to tell you where this country went wrong. " And yes, they are a bit samey, in the same way as McDonalds and Starbucks are, but you know what you are getting and at least they are bucking the trend and opening pubs where others are closing, albeit that you could argue that their discounted prices are hurting some smaller pubs.

Wetherspoons' "The Peter Cushing" in Whitstable, in what was once the town's cinema.

The Eva Hart, another Wetherspoons pub, in Chadwell Heath. The building was previously the police station.

I love the English pub and over the years have spent many happy hours in many of them up and down the country. It saddens me to see so many closing but like so many other things, the closure of England's pubs is emblematic of the changes in our culture, society and economy.  With all of the pubs that are now a Tesco I must just make sure that the next time I walk into what I think is a pub and try to order a pint I don't find myself walking out with a bunch of bananas and a box of washing powder!

Cheers!

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[1] Source http://www.beerandpub.com/statistics

[2] The Derelict London website at http://www.derelictlondon.com has many pictures of London's old pubs and other buildings that are no more. Read it and weep.

[3] See: http://savethespotteddog.org/