Pitching the Landline

 

Imagine trying to pitch the idea of a landline phone to a telecoms executive in today’s world where the smartphone is ubiquitous and nigh on indispensable for many people.

“What’s the screen size?”
“There’s no screen.”

“So how do you use the camera?”
“There’s no camera.”

“But it’s got Bluetooth, right?”
“No, no Bluetooth.”

“Is it Android or iOS?”
“There’s no operating system.”

“What’s the battery life?”
“There’s no battery, you have to plug it into the wall.”

“Okay, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Nonetheless, even today the landline phone is essential for many people. People who don’t want, can’t afford, or couldn’t use a mobile phone or the internet; people who live in areas where broadband is slow or mobile signals unreliable. For those people, a landline phone is an essential, so they may have been somewhat perturbed to have heard that from 2025, BT OpenReach, who are responsible for our phone and Internet cables, will be phasing out the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) on which our landline network operates.

This does not mean the imminent demise of the landline. Instead of the old copper wiring that connected us through PSTN, landlines will instead use our internet connection and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) which is how we currently make phone calls using apps like WhatsApp and Messenger. Which is all fine and dandy unless you are one of the million or so UK households currently without an internet connection. While some may simply have chosen not to subscribe to broadband, telephone subscribers in hard to reach areas will hope that the government’s £5 billion Project Gigabit plan to level up broadband access where they live will be completed by the time PSTN is switched off. Ingeniously, there are plans to connect households with fibre optic cables in the water mains, a system already in use in Spain.

 Unsurprisingly, the use of landlines has plummeted in recent years. In 2012, people in the UK made a total of 103 billion minutes of landline calls, but in 2017 that was down to 54 billion. While there are still about 22million landlines in the UK, that is down 15% from the start of the 21^st century, when 95% of homes had one. In the last three years 1.41 million lines have been ditched.

There are times when Val and I have considered getting rid of our landline. We no longer need it for our broadband, and when it rings – which is rarely - 9 times out of 10 it’s a scam call. Just about the only reasons we keep it on are that cancelling it won’t actually save us any money and there are a few times when we get genuine calls. Yes, we could tell callers to use our mobiles, but there’s something of an overhead in working out who only has our landline number if we want to be proactive about that.

When I was growing up, we didn’t have a phone – I think I must have been thirteen or fourteen when my parents got one - and even then I seem to recall there was a waiting list, so it took about six months between applying for one and having it installed. The one we had looked very much like this:

It rang only rarely as we knew very few other people who had a phone; mostly it was used by my Mum phoning her Mum. Prior to our having the phone connected, my Mum would have to walk about half a mile to the nearest phone box. In an emergency I guess we could have asked a neighbour who had a phone. Theirs was a party line, not something that has even existed since the mid-1980s but which was common years ago. It seems odd now that a phone line shared by two separate households would even be considered and one imagines that a few family secrets were revealed when one subscriber overheard another’s conversation. Which reminds me that crossed lines were another peculiarity of telephone conversations back in the day. In the middle of a conversation, you might hear another voice or voices, prompting someone to cry, “Can you get off the line please!”

Even accounting for the landline’s decline, the language that is associated with it lives on, and will likely continue to do so for years to come. Despite possibly never having used a rotary dial phone, people still dial numbers; despite being able to terminate calls simply by pressing a button, we still hang up. One thing that we do lack however, is the satisfaction that comes with slamming the receiver into its cradle at the end of an angry or frustrating conversation.

 What we don’t miss however, is the frustration of having to stay indoors and wait patiently (or impatiently) for someone to ring you back. And somehow they always seemed to choose to call in the couple of minutes when you’d popped to the loo. Oh, and the aggravation of being in another room when the phone rang, dashing to pick up and hearing the dialling tone when you put the receiver to your ear! When we first got a phone it lived in the lounge, so absolutely no privacy when taking a call. Later, after we moved, it was in the hall, which, lacking any heating, was absolutely freezing in winter; still, it kept costs down as no one spent longer on calls than was necessary.

 No one misses the irritation of misdialling the ninth or tenth digit of an eleven digit number, or being interrupted and losing track halfway through. “Sorry, wrong number,” is something that one hears very infrequently these days but which was a regular occurrence with rotary dial phones when there was no way of checking what you’d actually dialled.

 And since rotary dial phones had no memory to store numbers or calls, each redial meant actually redialling, not just pressing one button, and every number had to be looked up in a phone book, or dredged up from memory. The funny thing is though, I can still remember some phone numbers that I called regularly thirty or more years ago, but I have no idea of the mobile numbers of some family members today.

 One day the landline will probably be gone and forgotten, much in the same way as the candlestick telephone and having to ask the operator to connect your call, but probably only those who currently have to rely on it will lament its passing.

A Different Perspective

Years ago, I used to go to football matches as a neutral quite regularly,  usually on days when my team wasn’t playing or were away from home somewhere that I couldn’t get to. Nowadays I rarely go to matches that don’t involve Romford FC. For some people however, going to games without supporting either of the teams involved is how they watch all of their football; I’m not sure that I could do that, as a recent experience proved.

 

In recent years, the only non-Romford games that I have seen have been England v USA in 2018 (I was lucky enough to get a complimentary ticket, otherwise I doubt I would have gone), and the 2019 FA Vase and FA Trophy Finals between Chertsey Town and Cray Valley PM, and AFC Fylde and Leyton Orient respectively, but this week I took a trip to the seaside to see Eastbourne Town play Little Common in the Southern Combination.

 

Not being invested in the result, I was able to watch the game in a way I don't normally. It gave me a different perspective on the sort of incidents that may provoke a sense of injustice if they happen in a Romford match; it definitely makes me aware that no matter how impartial and reasonable I think I am when watching Romford, I am not!

The charming turnstile block, sadly not in use.

 

My main reason for going to watch Eastbourne Town play was the ground. The club’s home, The Saffrons, is also home to Eastbourne Cricket Club, Eastbourne Hockey Club, and Compton Croquet Club, while Eastbourne Bowling Club are next door, and the view beyond the bowling green takes in the Renaissance style Victorian Town Hall, built in 1886. The Saffrons was first used in 1884, and includes a beautiful turnstile block which dates back to 1914. It was damaged in a fire in 2004 but has been fully restored. Sadly, it isn’t in use – the actual entrance is a slightly more prosaic gap in the fence in the opposite corner of the site.

The view from the entrance with the Town Hall dominating.

For a Southern Combination League club (that’s five steps below the English Football League, nine below the Premier League) Eastbourne Town are quite well supported – there were 220 there for the game I saw – and have not one, but two groups, of ‘ultras,’ Pier Pressure and The Beachy Head Ultras (although neither were in evidence at the Little Common match), who have plastered the scaffold like standing accommodation behind one goal with the sort of stickers these groups tend to go in for.

The visitors, Little Common, hail from Bexhill, nine miles or so along the coast, but play their home games at Eastbourne United’s ground, and they were not without support on the night. Officially, the capacity at The Saffrons is 3,000 although it’s difficult to imagine that sort of number being accommodated comfortably and safely. It’s mind boggling to discover that back in the 1950s, for an FA Cup tie against Hastings United, 7,378 people squeezed into the place!

 

The game was entertaining without being especially engaging. As a neutral I felt somewhat detached because there was no jeopardy; because I didn’t mind who won, I didn’t really care either. Watching Romford play can be stressful at times, heart breaking sometimes, but thrilling and joyful at others. Supporting a team is emotional, watching a game uncommitted is a bit hollow.

There was no score at the break, but Eastbourne went in front in the first minute of the second half when a forward finished from close range after a good move down the right wing. Little Common equalised after a free-kick was deflected onto a post and the rebound was slotted home. Common then took the lead when a forward skipped past the last defender on the left and bent a shot past the keeper.

 

In the celebrations after Little Common’s second goal, an Eastbourne player ended up on the floor holding his head (I presume he was clobbered by an opponent; I didn’t see what happened), and a 21 man brawl broke out.

 

The scuffle - which came dangerously close to involving members of the crowd – was quite well handled by the referee and his assistants. When the dust had settled, one player from each side were sent off, although it could quite easily have been more.

 

Both teams seemed upset at having a player dismissed, although it was difficult to see why other than because of the perpetual sense of injustice teams feel when they have someone sent off, no matter how bang to rights the player is, and they were also equally aggrieved at a number of yellow cards that the referee had to issue as the sides became increasingly fractious as the game wore on. As a neutral, it seemed to me that the referee got those decisions right, although had the team in yellow and blue been Romford and not Eastbourne Town, who knows how I would have felt?

 

Eastbourne snatched a point with a goal from close range after Common failed to clear. Of the two sides, Little Common would have been the happier to have taken a point.

 

I had heard good things about the Eastbourne Town programme, having seen a number of cover illustrations online including a Halloween themed edition and one with a retro-style FA Cup Final cover, and the cover for the Little Common game was in anime style. Sadly, the cover was the best bit as the contents comprised a few photos and some stats, but nothing to read except for the history of each club.

Many people believe that the football programme is an endangered species, and more and more football clubs are producing online programmes instead of the traditional printed version. In these days when all the statistical information you can want is easy to find online and more up to date to boot, a programme needs to have something you can’t get online, some sort of unique selling point, and the cover apart, Eastbourne’s doesn’t really have that.

 

Well, that’s my view anyway, I guess there are equally people for whom Eastbourne’s programme is perfectly good, but given that it is well produced and looks attractive, the lack of original content seems a missed opportunity.

 

My evening’s football at The Saffrons was enjoyable enough, but it made me realise that watching football as a neutral is not something I’m bothered about enough to do on a regular basis anymore.

 

Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear

Among the many conspiracy theories that have arisen during the coronavirus pandemic is the idea that the vaccines contain some sort of microchip designed to track the movements of the vaccinated. If it wasn’t COVID-19 it would be something else, as there are constantly evolving theories about how ‘they’ (governments, big business, shadowy but unspecified other groups) are tracking our every move, recording our conversations, building up vast amounts of data about us.

 

The one thing that these theories usually lack is what the explicit purpose of this information gathering exercise is: ‘Control’ is often given as a reason, but with limited explanation of how this control will be exercised or what purpose it serves, unless control is the end and not the means.

 

It is true however, that virtually everything we do is tracked, traced, and recorded somewhere by someone. If you own a car, have a bank account, store loyalty cards, or mobile phone, just about everything you do, everywhere you go is logged. And that is before we even get to the estimated 4-6 million CCTV cameras in the UK.

 

Almost everyone will have a story about the somewhat unsettling, spooky online incidents where an advert for a product or service pops up in our social media feeds for something we have been talking about: Coincidence, or is your mobile phone or virtual assistant like Alexa spying on you? Goodness knows, but for most of us the thinking must be, if we’ve nothing to hide, we’ve nothing to fear. If I’m going to see adverts on Facebook for example, they might as well be for things I might actually have an interest in.

 

But news coming from the United States about a plan by Apple to study images that iPhone users upload for storage in iCloud Photos takes matters a step further.

 

Before I go on I must clarify that Apple are only reviewing images to look for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and only in the USA. The creation and distribution of such images is so abhorrent that most people would consider it reasonable to justify almost any method of detecting such offences and bringing those responsible to book.

 

Apple’s process works by comparing images that are being stored in iCloud Photos with known images of CSAM, and if a potential match is found, a human reviewer will assess the images and report the user to law enforcement agencies.

 

Where we start to enter somewhat more uncertain waters however, is how this technology might spread, how it might be abused or misused. Yes, we could quite easily and justifiably defend and support the use of this sort of technology to combat the sexual abuse of children. But then law enforcement agencies and governments will inevitably ask the question, what else could we use this technology for, what other offences could we detect and prosecute using it?

 

Terrorism? Yes, obviously terrorism. If wholesale surveillance of mobile phones could have prevented 9/11, or 7/7 in London, or the bombing of the Bataclan in Paris, then surely it would be justifiable. Or people smuggling and trafficking? Or the drugs cartels? Or what about gangs planning robberies like the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary, surely we can justify using technology to combat that sort of thing too? I could go on, but that would risk straying into Monty Python’s ‘What did the Romans do for us?’ territory.

 

To some extent it already happens. Phones have been tapped for years if potential criminal activity is suspected, but only by going through a process to justify individual instances that ends with a senior politician or judge authorising such activity. Terrorist offences have been stopped through mobile phone surveillance, but what we are looking at with Apple’s photo scanning process is the possibility of blanket coverage of everyone’s phone at all times.

 

You might shrug your shoulders and say, I have nothing to hide, so I’ve nothing to fear. And if you are not inclined to commit offences that involve CSAM, and you aren’t located in the United States, then at present that’s true. But what Apple have done here is to open a door which they themselves had previously locked, barred, bolted and declared that they would never open. There have been cases in the past where law enforcement agencies have been stymied by Apple’s refusal to unlock phones that have been used by terrorists, even for the FBI, but now they are proactively saying that the data on iPhones is fair game.

 

Matthew Green, a security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, has raised concerns: “They (Apple) have sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users' phones for prohibited content. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong on that point hardly matters. This will break the dam — governments will demand it from everyone."

 

This sort of technology would enable an oppressive regime to clamp down on even the mildest form of dissent and suppress any form of protest, making criminals of even the meekest opponents.

 

And that is the point that defenders of free speech and civil liberties, and those who love a conspiracy theory will latch onto, and for once possibly with good reason. Who gets to decide what constitutes prohibited content?

 

In Britain, and in much of the world, people like to think that they live in benign democracies, where their rights are respected, where they can travel and speak freely, and that criticising the government and other authorities is acceptable, where free speech is protected, and civil liberties unlikely to be curtailed except in extremis, COVID-19 being a case in point.

 

But not everyone lives in a benign democracy, and even in countries that purport to be so, governments are not above suppressing dissent – take a look at the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which was passed in the House of Commons by 359 votes to 263 on Monday 16th March, and under which it will become an offence to cause someone ‘serious annoyance,’ or merely put them at risk of being caused serious annoyance. That could merely be a step on the road towards a government deciding that, in the interests of national security, they should start interrogating people’s phones for all sorts of material, including simple, straightforward, currently perfectly legitimate, criticism of government, its policies, and its ministers.

 

At the moment it’s just Apple, in the United States, targeting a particularly narrow, detestable group of people. But the line that has been drawn is not fixed; it can and probably will, move. Things we don’t have to hide today may be proscribed tomorrow. One day, that merry little jape you made about the Prime Minister might land you in very hot water indeed.