An Immutable Fact

It is an immutable fact that if you enter a store with the sole intention of browsing - perhaps because you just wanted to get out of the rain - you will be descended upon by assistants in the manner of vultures falling on carrion, whereas if you actually want someone to come and help you, they all disappear like snowflakes in June. And so it was in my least favourite store on Sunday. I may have mentioned before (probably more than once) that I really do not like Currys PC World in general and their branch in Romford in particular, however since there are now so few other, similar stores, we inevitably end up there from time to time, not necessarily to buy, but to look at things we may later purchase elsewhere or on-line. We walked in and hovered around the Fitbit display. Since no assistants were in the vicinity, I asked at the Customer Service desk - which is immediately next to the display - if someone could help us. "No, this is Customer Service," was the answer to my request.  I refrained from pointing out that I was a customer and wanted some service as I am certain that such a rejoinder would have gone over the assistant's head, and went off in search of someone more willing to help. In fairness, the chap who  eventually did come to talk to us was helpful and pleasant, which while they  may be fairly basic qualities in a shop assistant, are not guaranteed at this particular store in my experience.

But this is not about Currys PC World, it is however about some of the things they stock and the continual (and unstoppable, or so it seems) flow of more and more connectable devices that we are being told we simply must have. It is widely held that advertising creates artificial needs - one might go as far as to say that doing so is advertising's raison d'être- and smart running shoes, Amazon's Echo, Fitbits, Apple watches, and all manner of other wearables and devices that fall under the category of the internet of things are just some of the products that advertisers are currently bombarding us with and brainwashing us into believing that we simply must have. Not that we need much encouragement, and the fact is that today every home has a plethora of internet enabled devices; research shows that many households have eight or more devices connected to the internet. Alarmingly, the same research suggests that one in ten people in this country do not own a book. According to a study by the insurance company Aviva, about 6.5m people in Britain (one-in-10) to do not own any printed books, and in the 18-24 age range, the number increases to one-in-five people.

While shocking at first sight, these numbers do beg a couple of questions. How do the figures for book ownership compare with twenty years ago, when the internet was in its infancy? How many of these devices are e-readers, like the Kindle? And since figures from Nielsen Book Research show that in the first half of 2016, Britons bought 4m more books than they did during the same period in 2015, and the demise of the bookshop - widely predicted when e-readers first hit the market - does not seem to have come about, this research needs a bit more context before we hit the panic button.  Of some concern, however should be the fact that according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), about 16% of adults in England are "functionally illiterate" (they would not pass an English GCSE and have literacy levels below that of an 11-year-old) while young people in England are the most illiterate in the developed world. Again, a bit of context might be helpful here; how many of the people who make up that 16% do not have English as their first language, for instance? How does this figure compare with historical data on the subject? The answers to those questions would give us a better idea as to how concerned we ought to be.

Reading a book, whether it is a physical book or an e-book, remains one of life's great pleasures. The ability to become absorbed in a world created for us by a writer and our own imagination is something that we should treasure, and nurture in our children. The problem with reading a book - and I use 'problem' advisedly  - is that it requires greater concentration and staying power than idly flicking through some social media app on a tablet or smartphone, or watching a YouTube video, and the era of the smartphone has had a quantifiably detrimental effect on attention span. A study carried out in Canada a couple of years ago discovered that average human attention span had fallen from twelve seconds in 2000 to eight seconds and the link between a shorter attention span and a decrease in the number of people - and especially children - reading has been established following a survey by the publishers Pearson.

The upside of a reduced attention span - according to the Canadian research conducted by Microsoft - is an improvement in the ability to multi-task, although multi-tasking is seen by some people as a myth, and even if it is real, can be a mask for inefficiencies; in other words, creating the likelihood of performing two tasks poorly, rather than one task well. And anyway, the Microsoft study dubbed multi-taskers as people who " consume more media, are multi-screeners, social media enthusiasts." Flicking from a book on your tablet to your Facebook page, to a news channel, can scarcely be called multi-tasking and suggests a lack of concentration and short attention span rather than a positive attribute. It is the reason why, when I decided to buy a Kindle some years ago, I opted for the straight-forward version rather than the Kindle Fire: if I am reading a book and decide I want to visit a website, I have to put the Kindle down and pick up a tablet, or go into another room to use a computer.

Perhaps one reason we are reading less - if, indeed we actually are - is that we are writing more: whether anyone is reading what we are writing remains to be seen. In Nod, by Adrian Barnes, the narrator says of poets, "sensitive souls who submitted their work to literary journals outnumbered those who read those same publications by a margin of ten to one." It is so easy to publish now, be it a blog or through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, that perhaps, everyone is busy tapping away on keyboards producing words no one will ever read.  But to write, one has to read, even if it is simply to research for one's writing, and therefore the art of reading will, we must hope, never die.

Despite the gloomy prognosis on literacy levels and reading in general, every now and then a book, or series of books - take J K Rowling's Harry Potter novels for instance - stimulates the imagination of the reading public of all ages, and for as long as people write, people will read. The time to start worrying is when the writers give up.

The Partwork

Just after Christmas, and in the first few weeks of the New Year, commercial breaks on television feature adverts for a type of product that you rarely see during the other eleven months of the year. I refer to The Partwork, which in the UK are the fourth-best selling magazine type, being outstripped only by TV listing guides and weekly and monthly magazines aimed at the women's market.

Unlike the Radio Times, or Woman's Own, where it isn't critical if you miss an edition, Partworks rely on the purchaser avidly buying every issue, because as they always make crystal clear in their advertising, your Partwork will build into an ultimate collectors series, and being a collector means you must have every single one. And if you aren't building a collection, be it of classic novels or superhero figurines, you are buying these magazines to build a model of something, which could be a steam locomotive or a sailing ship.

Why not collect a set of Star Trek graphic novels which you will never read...

The current crop of Partworks include - among others - a series of magazine billed as "the ultimate guide to discover the secrets of happiness & wellbeing" called Mind Body Spirit; a series of graphic novels devoted to the Star Trek franchise,  and publications that (along with the accompanying magazines), include kits to build scale models of the DeLorean car from the Back to the Future movie and R2-D2, the droid from Star Wars.

...or start building a replica R2-D2 that you will never finish?

Collecting these Partworks - especially the ones that feature models that need constructing - requires patience, dedication and a significant financial investment. The DeLorean, for example runs to one-hundred and thirty weekly parts, or two and a half years, and will set you back an eye watering £1,157.70 while building R2-D2 necessitates the purchase of one-hundred weekly parts at an outlay of nearly nine-hundred pounds. The Star Trek novel collection and the Mind Body Spirit magazines would set you back the best part of £500 for each set: cheap, Partworks are not. No doubt many people start collecting a particular Partwork, but grow bored or conclude that it is too expensive, and drop out - how many incomplete collections of The Art of Quilting and part built models of Mallard there are up and down the country is anyone's guess. And of course the publishers encourage prospective purchasers to subscribe rather than buy through newsagents and other retailers in the hope that inertia will mean that rather than cancel, they will continue to receive their magazines and model parts, even if they simply gather dust in the corner rather than growing into a unique collection or faithful, half-scale model of a science fiction movie prop. But if you are going to collect a Partwork, getting it on subscription is possibly better than  trotting off to the newsagents on a weekly basis, since it has been reported that sometimes, copies arrive damaged and there is no replacement stock at the wholesaler. Sometimes it can take weeks or even months for retailers to get hold of back issues, causing annoyance and frustration to the customer.

Why not start building a model car for hundreds of times the price of a completed one from a toy shop?

On top of all that, and  if an outlay of a thousand pounds for what is effectively just a toy isn't bad enough, the publishers add optional extras, like binders for the magazines or premium 'upgrades' with the promise of gifts that could add a hundred pounds or so to whatever you are already forking out.

Only twice have I been tempted to start collecting a Partwork. About thirty years ago a series of classic novels and other works of literature were published: I bought a few - George Eliot, H G Wells, Shakespeare, Chaucer and the like, before realising that not only was it more expensive than simply buying the paperbacks, but I was building a collection of books that included many I had no desire to read - then gave up. But in the early 1970's I did complete the collection of Book of Football, a Marshall Cavendish publication that ran to seventy-five parts and built into an encyclopaedia on the sport that was a good deal more cerebral than other football magazines on sale at the time. And unlike magazines like Shoot! or Goal, which cost in the region of 9p, Book of Football was a hefty 23p per issue, big money for the schoolboy I was then. Every fortnight I would call in at the newsagents near my school, and instead of parting company with my meagre pocket money in exchange for Blackjacks, Fruit Salads or other penny sweets, would take home my purchase and read it, cover to cover. I actually kept the collection for a number of years, re-reading parts of it from time to time, until eventually consigning it to the bin. In all, it cost me the grand total of £17.25 and even now a complete collection can be bought on eBay for a fairly reasonable two-hundred and fifty quid. I would be quite fascinated to have the chance to read some of the features again, particularly the Fabric of Football articles which were quite prescient: the piece in the first issue was entitled 'The Affluence that spreads Football Poverty' while another predicted the coming of sponsorship in the English game and the effect it might have. My fascination does not extend to bidding online for the set, mind you.

Goal was 9p a week, Book of Football was 23p per fortnight, but a much superior publication.

The success of Partworks - and the fact that every year more and more are published suggests that they must be a lucrative line for the companies like De Agostini, Hachette, Marshall Cavendish and Eaglemoss Publications - can probably be in part explained by the fact that people - especially men it seems since the majority of these publications appear to be aimed at them - like to collect things, whether it is stamps, football programmes, coins or Beanie Babies, and once they start, vast numbers of people like to complete their collections. Apart from the cost, Partworks also sometimes come in for criticism when - particularly with the models - editions are unavailable, meaning that collections cannot be completed. Imagine spending months and hundreds of pounds building a scale model of RMS Titanic, only to find that the final instalment, containing a crucial part, like a funnel or one of the propellers, cannot be bought for love nor money!

Hobbies ought, by definition, to be fun, but for me, the potential for a set to remain incomplete creates more stress than enjoyment - I suppose that at heart I am something of a completist, and I would rather not embark on collecting something than have an unfinished collection. Quite apart from the extortionate cost, that reason alone means it will be a cold day in Hell before I start buying another Partwork.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

It's possible to have too much of a good thing, even too much of 'The greatest show on earth' as the World Cup has been described (although not by me), and in 2026 the already bloated competition will be over-inflated to a mind-boggling forty-eight teams. Rumours had been circulating for some time that new FIFA president Gianni Infantino (who replaced the discredited and banned former incumbent, Sepp Blatter last year) favoured increasing the number of nations competing in the finals by fifty percent: "We have to be more inclusive," he said at a sports conference in Dubai in December 2016. Football federations were "overwhelmingly in favour" of the expansion, he said, adding that a 48-team tournament was the most "financially appealing," which rather gave the game away. Infantino maintains that the decision was "a football decision," and that, "Every format has advantages in financial terms. We were in a comfortable situation to take a decision based on sporting merit." Like his predecessor, Infantino is comfortable with the Orwellian double-speak much loved by bureaucrats and administrators, where language obscures, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words.

FIFA president Gianni Infanto

It was no surprise that this week FIFA voted to add sixteen new teams to the finals when they are held in 2026, increasing the total number of finalists to forty-eight and while part of the justification is that it allows more countries to make their dream of competing at the finals come true, my view is that it is about one thing and one thing only...money. For most of the sixteen extra countries that will qualify for wherever FIFA decrees that the 2026 jamboree will be held, this is going to be a chance to play in a World Cup Finals competition that they might not otherwise have had, but most will not be good enough to be able to really compete. And competition is what sport is about; without jeopardy, without the fear of defeat, then victories are cheap.

The current format may have grown - from sixteen in 1978, to twenty-four in 1982 and most recently, to thirty-two in 1998 - but has the competition got better, or is this just another case of 'never mind the quality, feel the width?' The current group stage format, with four teams in each group remains fairly interesting and competitive, but the new format raises the prospect of a group stage that will be a procession not a competition. FIFA's plan for a forty-eight team competition starts with sixteen groups of three countries, so it is entirely likely that in a group that consists of say, Spain, Chile and Senegal (with all due respect to Senegal), if both European nations beat Senegal and play each other in the last game, both know they will have qualified: potentially there are sixteen dead rubbers - one per group. Oh, FIFA have hinted that even group games will be played to an outcome, with penalty shoot-outs possibly deciding drawn games to avoid any non-aggression pacts allowing teams to play out toothless draws in their final games, but the reality is that this format promises more bland, uncompetitive games.

Naturally, increasing the number of finalists makes qualifying a bit less stressful too, but no decision has yet been made on how the extra sixteen places will be allocated, but it is possible that Europe would provide three additional teams, Africa an extra four and that six South American countries would qualify - at present four are guaranteed qualification, with a fifth competing in a play-off against an Asian country. CONCACAF (Central and North America) would gain one additional qualifier. But even three additional European nation still means that with UEFA having twenty-seven of the top fifty football nations in the world, there will still be some top sides watching rather than competing, while so-called minnows are able to take part. On the other hand, and as I already mentioned, making qualification easier takes away some jeopardy; the danger is that in making it harder not to qualify than to do so, the whole thing gets devalued further than it already has been.

The Mane Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia, Brazil (shown here in April 2014), was the most expensive of the stadiums — at a cost of $550 million — and is now being used to park buses.

And where is this shindig going to be held? We've already had immense controversy over the venues for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which are scheduled for Russia and Qatar respectively, and since those venues debar European or Asian nations from bidding for the 2026 finals, the smart money is on the USA hosting again although a three-national finals with Mexico and Canada also sharing the duties has been mooted. And frankly, the US are one of the few nations that could afford to host a 48 team finals, which would require a similar number of state-of-the-art training centres, and since twelve stadia were needed for the 2014 World Cup, one imagines that around sixteen stadia will be required for a forty-eight nation competition. The 2014 World Cup required Brazil to build seven new grounds; the 2010 World Cup in South Africa needed five new stadia, and the legacy for both countries has been debt and stadiums that are subsequently unused. While the last two World Cups have been significant financial burdens for the host nations, FIFA's gravy train carries on blithely however and sixteen additional teams in the finals means 80 matches instead of 64, which FIFA forecast will generate $1 billion extra income at current rates from broadcasting and sponsor deals, plus ticket sales, compared to $5.5 billion revenue forecast for the 2018 World Cup in Russia; an increased profit of $640 million. The fiction that these plans are driven by anything other than the pursuit of profit is entirely transparent, despite any claims to the contrary from Gianni Infantino.

With 48 squads of 23 players, the Panini sticker album for 2026 is going to be massive!

The World Cup finals used to be essential viewing, but in all honesty, I haven't watched a tournament with anything more than mere passing interest since Italy hosted the finals in 1990 and the prospect of a 48 team tournament does nothing to enthuse me. No doubt FIFA will declare the 2026 World Cup Finals a roaring success regardless, giving them an excuse to expand the tournament still further, until the point is reached when the number of nations reaching the finals exceeds the number not qualifying: fortunately by that point I should be unable to take any interest in it anyway!

England take on Germany in the 1990 World Cup Semi-Final

If FIFA really had the interests of the game at heart and were more concerned with the quality of their 'product' than the amount of money it generates, they would heed the expression, 'less is more' and reduce the number of teams in the finals. I'd like to see them go back to the sixteen nation format that served the competition so well in the days when it was about football and not profit, but sadly I know that there is no possibility of that happening.

The Crossing We Bear

By road it is less than seventeen miles from my home to the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Greenhithe, a journey that ought to take no more than thirty-five minutes, and in fairness, it often takes little more than that to get there. Getting home, however is another matter. As anyone who has travelled north from Kent into Essex using the Dartford Crossing knows, what ought to be a simple matter of driving just a few miles can be immensely frustrating; delays are not only common, they seem to be compulsory. Returning home from Bluewater just last week, and having  found myself in a line of traffic that moved at one car's length every ten minutes or so, I took a detour through Dartford, along the A2, through the Rotherhithe Tunnel and home via the A13 rather than endure the interminable queue for the Dartford Tunnel. I doubt it took any longer than going the conventional way in the end.

Queues like this one, northbound for the Dartford Tunnel are the norm these days.

It didn't used to be this bad.  When the first, single bore tunnel at Dartford opened in November 1963, the toll was two shillings and sixpence (12.5p) and traffic was expected to be approximately two million vehicles annually; by 1970 it had reached eight million. The original two-way tunnel was supplemented by a further tunnel in 1980, and the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge which opened in 1991. By March 2014 the number of vehicles using the crossing annually had reached fifty-million and charges for cars had increased to £2, and £5 for multi-axled vehicles. Original suggestions that tolls would be abolished when the crossing had paid for itself never materialised - it was anticipated that the tolls would be removed on 1 April 2003 however the Highways Agency decided that the tolls would become a "charge." The charge - collected online now that the toll booths have been removed - now stands at £2.50 for cars, albeit that a discount can be had by paying through Dart Charge's auto top-up scheme. Removing the toll booths came with a major reorganisation of the road network on the Kent side of the crossing and it's probably fair to say that many people anticipated that their removal would improve traffic flow and speed up journeys. The reality (whatever the government might say - and more of that in a minute) is that while travelling south over the bridge is generally quite good, travelling back into Essex through the tunnels has become the stuff of nightmares.

The crossing with toll booths in place, pre-2014

Barely a day goes by without a report on local TV or radio of delays northbound: sometimes it's due to an accident, other times there appears to be no explanation, but whatever the cause the delays seem always to stretch for hours and the queues for miles. Some people have a choice - an alternative route or simply not travelling are options unless you commute that way, in which case you have to grin and bear it, like Mr Anand Surve from Orpington, who travels daily to his work in Brentwood via the crossing and says that he gets stuck in traffic for an hour at least twice a week. So frustrated has he become that he has started a petition to propose that just as commuters can claim compensation for seriously delayed rail journeys, drivers should similarly be compensated for delays at the crossing. As much as I can appreciate Mr Surve's frustration, I sadly don't think that he's going to get very far with his campaign, although if you have a mind to add to the number of signatories to his petition, you can find it here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/174299

In with more of a chance of success is the petition started by Alan Pattison calling for an enquiry into the performance of the Northbound Dartford Crossing (you can find that one here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/167168). The petition describes the changes that have been made as " a botched scheme which shows no evidence of improvement." In response, the government claims that the changes that were implemented in 2014 - altered road lay out, removal of toll booths, introduction of Dart Charge - have reduced journey times for drivers. I am sure that the government have statistics that prove this, and doubtless at three o'clock in the morning it's an absolute breeze passing through the tunnel, but for normal commuters and other travellers, claims that journey times have improved will be greeted with disbelief.

Highway England's own website makes the case for a lower Thames Crossing.

It always seems that new road schemes ultimately generate yet more traffic,  and the M25, the two lengths of which are joined by the Dartford Crossing, although now not new (it was completed in 1986, with parts having opened in 1975) is a prime example. Like Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the amount of time available),  traffic volumes increase to fill the available roads. The M25 was supposed to reduce congestion, but as anyone who drives around it, or indeed the North Circular, South Circular or any other road within the confines of the orbital motorway knows, congestion in the London area is getting worse, not better and by the end of 2015 a five-mile journey through central London took, on average, nearly 30 minutes — almost five minutes longer than at the beginning of the year. Highways England (HE) acknowledge that there is congestion at the Dartford Tunnel in the very  same breath as they say that journey times have improved, and as someone who regularly drives close by the approaches to the bridge I can attest to the fact that snarl ups north of the river are a common occurrence too, so it is clear that the whole, current Dartford Crossing mechanism needs an urgent review. To which end, HE consulted on a lower Thames crossing proposal during 2016 with three different routes under consideration. Naturally, there has been plenty of opposition from residents on both sides of the river and while it's understandble that people are less than enthusiastic about major road building programmes on their doorsteps, no doubt many of these folk are equally unhappy about the frequent gridlock that their neighbourhoods descend into.

The route preferred by Highways England for a new, lower Thames Crossing.

The misery that regular users of the crossing face was perfectly captured by spoof news website Southend News Network with their comic Christmas song "Dartford Tolls" - watch it here http://southendnewsnetwork.com/news/dartford-crossing-song-hits-one-million-views-now-for-the-christmas-charts/ but take care, one version is very definitely NSFW - but it's no joke for anyone within a five-mile radius of the tunnel entrance. However, there is a solution to this congestion nightmare, and frankly it's such an obvious one that I am amazed that Highways England have not already thought of it - make the M25 one way, clockwise. By eliminating the capability of traffic to drive north through the tunnels - both of which would be southbound only - the problem goes away. I concede that the journey for HGV's from say, Erith to Thurrock could increase from eleven to one-hundred and seventeen miles, but that's an awful lot more tax revenue on diesel sales which could be pumped into new road building schemes. That's bonkers, you might say, but when one hears of drivers taking two or even three hours to get through the tunnel while a whole circuit of the M25 can take as little as an hour and three-quarters - maybe it's not such a bad idea after all!