Smart Meter? No Thanks!

Every night, before going to bed, my mother would patrol the house checking that every electrical appliance – apart from the fridge – was switched off, and preferably unplugged from the wall socket too. This applied especially to the television. Whether this was supposed to save electricity or whether it was for safety’s sake, I don’t know.

When I was a child and we went on holiday, every domestic appliance – including the fridge, which would have been defrosted in anticipation – was unplugged. I have a sneaking suspicion that the electricity was turned off at the mains as well.

Mum making sure that everything was turned off reminded me of James Thurber, the American cartoonist and writer, who described an elderly relative as having a great suspicion of electricity, which she believed was dripping invisibly all over the house, and leaking from empty sockets if the switch had been left on.

If there’s a reason for unplugging your television – either when you go to bed, or during the day – then a thunderstorm is it. It is not unheard of for televisions to be affected by lightning strikes, and I did once experience a fried video recorder after a thunderstorm. I have been known to unplug the TV during a thunderstorm, but wandering around the house, unplugging appliances just before bedtime is not an activity I indulge in at present.

In the days when my mum was dutifully defrosting the fridge prior to our annual holiday, our electricity was supplied by the London Electricity Board (LEB), which came into being in 1948 as a result of the nationalisation of the electricity industry. All of the UK’s electricity was then supplied by one of the fifteen regional electricity boards, but under the flurry of privatisations pushed through by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, the LEB disappeared in 1990, replaced by London Electricity plc.

The nationalised, regional, electricity boards circa 1948

There are now around sixty companies from whom one can buy one’s electricity, led by the Big Six:

 

These companies offer consumers a bewildering array of different tariffs, a far cry from the days of my mother’s television unplugging and fridge defrosting, when there was one supplier, and no opportunity to shop around for the best price.

Once upon a time, the quarterly electricity bill could be a shock (pun intended), arriving as it invariably did, between pay days and for an un-budgeted for amount. Those bills were based on meter readings performed by a representative of the electricity board who would root around with a torch in the cupboard under the stairs (where the meter was usually located), once a quarter. Or if there was no one in the house when the meter reader called (which was more often than not), then the reading would be estimated and the bill might not bear any relation to the amount of power used, resulting in the consumer overpaying or underpaying on that particular bill.

Today, my electricity meter is in a box outside my front door; if a meter reader wanted to call to read it, they could do so without me even being aware. Meter readers still call on householders – unsurprisingly, UNISON (the union that represents many of the nation’s meter readers), asked for this to stop as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – but for the majority of us, smart meters, or providing our own readings, mean that visits from the meter reader, and estimated bills, are a thing of the past.

No more estimated bills is a selling point that my energy supplier has been using to try and get me to convert to a smart meter lately.  

“A smart meter means no more estimated bills,” said the lady from the electricity company. “I give my meter readings online as soon as I’m asked,” I replied, “I don’t get estimated bills.” And besides, since I pay monthly by direct debit, I don’t get bills, I get statements, which is not the same thing at all.

The lady from the electricity company then said that all old meters were being replaced for ‘health and safety reasons,’ to which I replied in alarmed tones, “What! You mean my meter is dangerous?” -  I got no response to that. Our current meter was only installed in 2015, so clearly not old enough to represent any sort of safety hazard.

My objection to having a smart meter is based on the premise that there’s nothing wrong with the current system. The idea that a smart meter will make my energy costs more manageable is quite frankly, tosh.

The notion that I can control my electricity costs by referring to the in-home display that is linked to the meter falls down for two reasons. Firstly, smart meters cannot (so far as I can see) allow me to drill down to individual appliances or wall sockets to see how much they are consuming at any given time, and even if they did, daily costs are so small that changes resulting from switching something off (or on) would be unmeasurable. I say that on the basis that in the twelve months from May 2020 to April 2021, we used 3,770 kWh of electricity, which works out at about £1.44 per day, or 6p per hour. At that rate, if I turned off everything bar the fridge, I think a difference in usage might be observable in an hour or two; frankly, what’s the point?

An advertised benefit of smart meters is that they save time as customers no longer have to submit meter readings. That will save me about 40 minutes a year, but I’ll spend much longer checking my in-home display for minuscule changes in expense, and even longer trying to work out which device I should switch off to save me a penny or two. Even the government's own estimates suggest that smart meter savings will amount to no more than £11 per year - that's just 3p per day!

The advertised costs of using certain household devices mean changes
 in use would be almost undetectable under normal conditions.

Although the government has set a target of a smart meter in every domestic property by the end of 2025 (revised from by 2020 for obvious reasons), having one installed is not yet compulsory. Eventually, I suppose I will succumb to having a smart meter because apparently, without a smart meter, I may be denied access to certain tariffs. Why this should be, I do not know, and in fact, I fail to understand exactly why there are so many different tariffs for the same, homogenous, product anyway. After all, whether I pay 15p per kWh as I do now, or £15, the electricity is the same; it’s not like petrol, more expensive power doesn’t mean better quality, doesn’t mean better performance.

With the cost of the programme to install smart meters in the UK around £11billion (which we, the consumers are paying), and given that there are about 14 million domestic electricity accounts in the UK, we are all going to have to save nearly £800 to pay off installation costs before we save any money on the power we consume. 

To save that sort of money I’ll have to become like my dear old mum, prowling around the house each night, turning everything off – oh, and unplugging the telly!

Experts? What Do They Know?

The soundtrack of Sunday afternoons when I was a child was provided by neighbours tinkering with their cars, although I was never sure how much good they were doing to their vehicles as most of the tinkering seemed to comprise of opening the bonnet and whacking bits of the engine with a hammer.

In those long-ago days of the 1960s, it was possible for most car owners to perform running repairs and maintenance. It was both possible and necessary because cars were far less reliable then. The motorist of the 1960s didn’t need to be an expert at car maintenance, but a little basic knowledge was invaluable.

Modern cars are so complex that anything over and above the most basic maintenance is beyond ordinary people. A few years ago, I managed to replace a headlamp bulb in a Vauxhall Astra, but I couldn’t do the same with my current car, a Nissan Note. When a brake light bulb needed replacing a couple of years back, a mechanic at Halfords needed half an hour and some tools that I don’t own to do so.

As well as not being competent enough to indulge in most aspects of vehicle maintenance, or plumbing, or a whole plethora of other manual tasks, I also have what I suspect is a peculiarly British trait of being embarrassed and awkward when dealing with car mechanics and plumbers.

Research has shown that two in five British people (probably all men) change the way they speak when engaging with tradesmen. Generally, men become more ‘blokey’ and start using colloquialisms and jargon they don’t normally use. Despite the handicap of not knowing one end of a carburettor from another, nor knowing the purpose of the manifold or pressure relief valve in our central heating system, we nod knowingly as the mechanic or plumber describes the problem with one or all of these things, and take as gospel his assurance that we need a new one, and while we’re at it we might as well replace at least one pump (both cars and central heating systems seem to have an inordinate number of pumps).

We do this because although we rely on these men and women to do the things we cannot, we like to maintain the fiction that we could probably do the job ourselves if we chose to. We prefer not to admit our ignorance of motor car engines or central heating boilers, although in recent years I have become increasingly less bothered and now willingly confess that I have no idea what my car mechanic or plumber is talking about. I’m neither revelling in my ignorance, nor ashamed of it, after all, I doubt that my plumber could explain to me how a Nostro account works, nor the difference between a SWIFT MT199 and an MT999.

But the funny thing about experts is that while there are some who are held in high esteem, there are some who are not.

When it comes to practical things, like plumbing or car maintenance, most of us are happy to accept that there are people who will know much, much more than we do, and we trust them (up to a point, there’s always that nagging thought that our ignorance is getting us ripped off), but strangely, when we get to more complex matters such as climate change, or Brexit, or coronavirus, many people will listen to experts and then completely reject what they say, not from a position of greater knowledge, but actually from ignorance.

The Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people are unable to recognize their lack of ability, comes into play here, as what often happens is that because we do not understand something, we refute it. Our common sense tells us that what we are being told must be wrong because we cannot comprehend it.

As we have found in the last year, despite having numerous relevant qualifications, despite having worked in the field for many years, and despite still practicing medicine, the opinion of our Chief Medical Office, Chris Whitty, is often derided by radio talk show hosts, celebrities, or random people on social media, because they get it into their head that he is wrong, largely because what he is saying is beyond their understanding.

The derision thrown in the direction of experts stems either from the fact that, for many people - politicians for example - their opinions are inconvenient, and oppose their favoured direction of travel, or because, not being infallible, experts still get things wrong. An expert can get one hundred things right and that will never be mentioned, but get one thing wrong, and they are immediately deemed useless, and that mistake is wheeled out for ever and a day afterwards as justification for not trusting what they say.

It is easy to criticise the experts when one doesn’t have to take any responsibility. Pooh-poohing the ideas of social distancing, of wearing masks, and declaring that lockdowns don’t work is easy, after all you or I can say these things in the certain knowledge that we won’t be held accountable for those opinions if they turn out to be wrong.

Apart from coronavirus, Brexit, and climate change, there’s one area where most men think they are experts, where they believe that their opinion is worth as much as the people who make a living from it, and that is football.

Jose Mourinho (who was manager of Spurs when I started writing this blog, but had been sacked by the time I finished it), recently said of his critics, "I don't think anybody is going to discuss rocket science with the guys from NASA, but everyone around the world thinks they can discuss football with one of the most important managers in the game."

And it’s true, almost everyone who has watched football, regardless of the fact that the local park is the highest level they reached when playing the game, feels that their opinion is valid, and carries as much weight as that of people who have played the game, or been managers, at the highest level. As with those who disagree with the experts on subjects like coronavirus, these armchair experts are never going to have to put their money where their mouth is. Which means they can brag about the times when their view turned out to be right, but can conveniently forget about the more frequent occasions when they were wrong.

People will defer to a plumber or car mechanic and say, “You’re the expert,” but with epidemiologists, virologists, and football managers it’s more likely to be, “Experts? What do they know?”

How tolerant would those who question and criticise experts like Professor Chris Whitty be if they were mocked, challenged, or criticised by a complete stranger with no background in their field of endeavour? Not very, is my guess.

Weird, isn’t it, the arbitrary way we regard experts?

Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong

No matter how the BBC covered the death of Prince Philip last Friday, the corporation was always going to come in for a bashing. Journalist and former MP Chris Mullin was typical: He described the coverage as “North Korean-style” (he was by no means the only person using the hermit state as a comparison), and said that it would “alienate more licence payers at a time when it needs all the public support it can get.”

Had the BBC not cleared the schedules of its three principal TV channels (BBC One and BBC Two simulcasted programming covering the Duke’s life and his passing, while BBC Four went off-air), but instead devoted some air time to the news, before showing regular programmes, no doubt they would have been castigated for being ‘disrespectful,’ probably by Chris Mullin. Channel 4 were rebuked on social media for doing just that, but responded by saying that it had "a duty to offer an alternative to others."

Criticism of the BBC’s coverage reached such a level that they introduced a page to their website solely for logging complaints about it. Both the BBC and ITV (who don’t seem to have attracted the same level of criticism as the corporation, despite giving similar coverage), saw their audiences vote with their remote controls. ITV lost 60% of its normal Friday night audience, BBC Two lost 66%; BBC One actually lost just 6%.

One commentator remarked that the BBC’s blanket coverage was unfair on the older generation who relied on the BBC for their entertainment as they did not typically have access to cable channels or streaming services, a view that collapses under the weight of argument.

No one was compelled to watch, but 94% of BBC One’s normal audience (of all ages) carried on viewing. Second (and this is stereotyping, I admit), the typical audience for programmes about the royal family would normally comprise more of the older generation anyway. Finally, this argument might have been valid in 1971, when there were just three channels, but fifty years on, even the viewer limited to terrestrial TV has access to over 140 channels through Freeview.

Maybe the BBC (and ITV) did get it wrong, maybe they did go overboard, but comparisons with North Korea are laughable and in any case, watching TV is not compulsory. I would hazard a guess that many people who complained might not have watched the normal programming offered by the two principal broadcasters anyway.

The TV and radio coverage of Prince Philip’s death did not inconvenience me in any way, and there is only one time that I can recall being seriously upset because the TV schedules were affected. That was in August 1968, when five Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and our national TV channels (and we had only three then) cleared the decks to cover the news. I was ten at the time, and was distraught as the already limited amount of air time devoted to children’s TV was wiped out. That this followed a strike by ITV technicians which lasted several weeks and resulted in several days of blank screens, and then weeks of nothing but repeats, did not help.

Prince Philip’s funeral is this coming Saturday; the last comparable royal occasion on a Saturday was on 6^th September 1997, when Princess Diana’s funeral took place. The funeral of the Queen Mother in 2002, was in midweek and for the life of me I cannot recall any controversy over the media coverage of her death and interment, not compared with that of Prince Philip, anyway.

On the day of Princess Diana’s funeral most sporting events were suspended. Football, cricket, rugby, horse racing and motor racing were all postponed. In the case of Prince Philip’s funeral, most sport is having its start times rescheduled rather than being postponed.  Fixtures for grassroots football in England have only recommenced recently, so while on one hand another temporary hiatus would make little difference one way or another, a further postponement of fixtures would be frustrating for sportsmen who have only just had the opportunity to restart playing the game after five months.

On the day of Princess Diana’s funeral I was at work. Working on Saturdays was not normally part of my job with HSBC, but in the mid-1990s I was seconded to an IT team, and Saturday working became necessary sometimes. The sixth of September was picked as a User Simulation Day for the IT system that was being installed in the department I normally worked in well in advance of the death of the Princess of Wales. The day was to be used to familiarise the users with the system (not all had been exposed to it at that time), and as a stress test on the infrastructure.

When the date and time of Princess Diana’s funeral was announced, and found to clash with our simulation day, a lack of alternatives meant that we had no choice but to go ahead, despite the fact that a lot of people who we needed to be in wanted to watch the funeral on TV. To avoid the possibility of people not turning up, a few TVs were wheeled onto the floor and tuned into the broadcast to allow people to watch. At its peak, the broadcast was watched by 32.1 million people, although apart from the occasional glance at a screen as I walked past, I was not one of them.

Only the 1966 England v West Germany World Cup Final can top those viewing figures, although the 32.3 million people who are supposed to have watched it may not be comparable as audience measurement methods were different then. Since Princess Diana’s funeral, only the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2012 Olympic Games, along with Boris Johnson’s statement on COVID-19 in March 2020, come close.

I won’t be watching Prince Philip’s funeral, but then again, I rarely watch any royal occasions. The last one I can remember watching for more than a minute or two was the investiture of the Prince of Wales, in 1969 and only then because I think we had a day off school and I have a vague memory of watching it with my grandmother.

I don’t avoid watching royal occasions because I am in any way anti-royal, but simply because I don’t have strong feelings about the monarchy one way or another.

I’m sure that the programmes broadcast by BBC and ITV last Friday, along with the coverage of Saturday’s funeral, will be a comfort to many royal supporters, but for those who are opposed to the monarchy, or like me, are indifferent, a few hours of TV devoted to something we don’t want to watch is not worth getting exercised about.

Unlike me, millions of people do have strong feelings about the royal family - for and against - but whatever your views, the royal family has - like so many other thousands of families in the last year -lost someone who was much loved by them, so I find it hard to sympathise with people who are apparently upset enough to actually complain to the BBC because last Friday’s editions of EastEnders and MasterChef were rescheduled as a result.

 

 

Vaccine Passports: Reasonable or Not?

When a politician says that they, or their party, or the government they are part of, have no plans to do something, the one thing you can rely on is that you cannot rely on what they say.

In September 2020, when asked about certification to prove that people had been vaccinated against COVID-19, Michael Gove said, "I certainly am not planning to introduce any vaccine passports, and I don't know anyone else in government who is." More recently – in February 2021 – Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi said that vaccine passports would be discriminatory, and that “we are not planning to have a passport in the UK.”

Opposed to them in September 2020, Michael Gove now believes that
the government must take the lead in the introduction of vaccine passports.

It was scarcely a surprise then, that ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Downing Street briefing on Easter Monday (5^th April 2020), media speculation suggested that vaccine passports would indeed be introduced domestically. Even less of a surprise, therefore, that at that briefing, Johnson confirmed as much; a Covid-status certification system would be developed over the coming months, he said.

And the next day (6^th April), Nadim Zahawi’s opposition to a passport had evaporated to the extent that he said that, “exploring the idea of some form of COVID certification is the responsible thing to do as a government”.

As U-turns go, you could see this one coming from the moment that Michael Gove made his remarks on Sky News last year, and if not then, ever since the vaccination programme began. It has been a slow-burning idea whose time would eventually and inevitably come. And naturally, it does not come without controversy.

It is possible to argue that a vaccine passport or certificate is both necessary and reasonable, prudent and practical. It is equally possible to argue that such a thing is an abomination, and a gross infringement of our rights and civil liberties, another step towards the country becoming a police state. Equally, one could argue – with a foot in both camps – that the temporary introduction of such a passport is a proportionate response to the challenges of easing lockdown, albeit one that ought not to last any longer than is necessary and reasonable, that is to say, not indefinitely.

Your vaccine passport may look something like this.

Where do the great British public stand on the idea of vaccine passports? So far as I can tell from social media (not the most accurate barometer of public opinion, but as good a place to start as any), the only people expressing an opinion are those who are opposed to the idea.

It seems that many fear a dystopian future in which there will be random spot checks on members of the public’s vaccination status.

On the other hand, an opinion poll by Ipsos MORI of 8,300 people aged 16 and over, found the following percentages in favour of vaccine passports for certain activities:

·        78% - Foreign travel, visiting someone in a care home.

·        74% - Visiting someone in hospital.

·        68% - To go to a theatre or indoor concert.

·        63% - To visit a gym or leisure centre.

·        61% - To attend open-air concerts or sporting events.

·        58% - To use public transport.

One thing that leaps out about the likely uses of a domestic vaccine passport is the inconsistency of approach.

If this came to pass, I could travel from home to the other end of the country by train and bus, stopping for refreshment in pubs and restaurants, stay overnight in a hotel (all indoors), all without having to show a Covid passport, but upon entering a sports stadium (outdoors), I would need to.

Like so much of the response to coronavirus, the message is contradictory. When Matt Hancock appeared on ITV’s This Morning last week, he said that people “should minimise travel, but if you want to travel to see friends and family then that is absolutely fine - no matter where they are in England.” In other words, don’t travel, but travel as far as you like.

Even before Boris Johnson’s announcement on vaccine passports, individual venues were stating on social media that they would not require customers to produce such a document or display an app on their phones, and the UK Cinema Association reiterated their opposition to asking customers to prove their covid free status. Government plans to introduce a vaccine passport will not run smooth, it seems.

In much the way as we have become used to decanting our liquids into 100ml bottles, and removing our shoes and belts as we pass through airport security, the vaccination passport is as much about the Government being seen to do something as it is about actually achieving anything practical. It is possible that the Government might lose a vote on introducing a passport (if there is one, I’ve seen conflicting reports on whether one is necessary), or the court of public opinion may result in another volte-face, but opponents of the scheme will see it, along with any continuation of mask wearing, social distancing, and regular testing, as an aspect of increasing and continuing control of the people by the Government.

The control we are asked to believe that the Government is exerting in ever increasing ways intrigues me. Control usually has a purpose, it is normally a means to an end rather than an end in itself, but I have yet to hear of a coherent explanation of what this hypothetical control is supposed to achieve beyond control itself. Besides, the chaotic response to coronavirus the world over (with notable exceptions like Singapore and New Zealand, among a very small number of countries) suggests that national governments globally are not competent enough, nor their people pliant enough, for such control to be effective.

If a government really wanted to bring in controls on its people to the extent that the conspiracy theorists believe, why dress it up as a response to a pandemic, even one the conspiracists believe is manufactured for the purpose? Why not just do it?

I foresee a scandal brewing over the procurement of an app for a vaccine passport, though. More money will be spaffed on some Tory’s mate’s IT company for the privilege, although given that billions have been lobbed in Serco’s direction for the Track and Trace app, and there is – and was, even before covid – a perfectly usable NHS app, there’s no real reason why a passport couldn’t be bolted on to one of those with minimal development costs, and no need for new public money to pay for it.

On balance, I suppose that I am ambivalent about vaccine passports. If a smartphone app, or a physical certificate, is required to get me into events I want to attend, then I will have one; my desire to see a band or a sporting event will probably outweigh any concerns about the Government’s supposed desire to oppress me: I feel more oppressed by not being able to go to a gig or a football match than having to have an app to prove I’m healthy enough to do so.

England Beat San Marino: As Tedious As it Was Inevitable

Tedious: That’s the only word to describe last week’s England v San Marino World Cup qualifier played behind closed doors at Wembley Stadium. Considering that I have watched very little football on TV in recent months, you may wonder why I bothered with this game. I’m actually wondering that myself.

I put it on because there was nothing else worth watching on live TV, and I wasn’t inspired enough to troll through the catch-up services for anything else. And there was a sort of morbid fascination in watching a mismatch between the team ranked fourth in FIFA’s men’s football rankings, and the team ranked bottom (210^th).

The game followed the usual pattern when England play one of Europe’s lesser lights at Wembley. These games normally comprise twenty minutes of missed England chances, two or three quick goals and a comfortable half-time lead. Rinse and repeat after the break. The second forty-five minutes of these games usually see the England boss introduce a few new faces (one match wonders and ‘pity’ caps along with a genuine prospect or two), breaking up any rhythm and flow that the team had.

England celebrates debut-making Ollie Watkins's first goal for his country.

As games go, this was as predictably one-sided as one would expect; England had 85% of the possession and 32 shots at goal compared with San Marino’s two, neither of which were on target. The fact that England only won 5-0 was thanks to a combination of poor finishing, good goalkeeping, San Marino’s objective of simply keeping the score respectable, and England seemingly just wanting to see how many passes they could string together.

As the match stats show, this was a procession, not a contest.

England’s record against San Marino is seven wins from seven fixtures with 42 goals scored and just one conceded. San Marino’s record in full international’s is Played 175, Won 1, Drawn 7, Lost 167, Goals Scored 24, Goals Against 735. Of Europe’s lowest-ranked sides (San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Andorra), only Luxembourg (shock winners over the Republic of Ireland on Saturday) has a record that can be described as better than abysmal, and between them, those four nations have lost 929 of the 1,154 internationals they have played.

Some people think that the lowest-ranked nations should play among themselves and qualify for the right to play in the qualification competition proper. Gary Lineker is one such, but his tweet prompted some somewhat self-righteous responses, with his suggestion called “condescending and sneering” in one reply.

A pre-qualifying tournament involving San Marino and Europe's other also-rans might at least give these teams the opportunity to record a few wins and score a few goals because unless I am mistaken, the objective in a football match is to score goals and none of these sides are doing that particularly well. Countries like San Marino (average, one goal every seven games) do not set out to score goals, but simply to concede as few as possible. If they and England were boxers the referee would stop the fight. Actually, they would never be allowed in the same ring in the first place.

You could argue that San Marino are as worthy of their place in the World Cup qualifiers as are the non-League sides that reach the First Round of the FA Cup, except a non-League team that reaches that stage earned that right; the First Round is appropriately called the First Round Proper, because it follows the Qualifying Rounds. FIFA pit countries like Andorra against Germany or Spain as apparent equals and the sole reason that they do so is financial, to create an ever-larger pool of games for which they can sell the television rights. If the broadcasters ever decided that televising these qualifying matches was no longer financially viable, San Marino and Luxembourg would find themselves consigned to a pre-qualifying competition.

Since Uefa created the Nations League, there is no room in the football calendar for a pre-qualifying tournament for lower-ranked sides, and there is no possibility of Uefa abandoning the Nations League. Nor will FIFA sanction a pre-qualifying tournament for the World Cup, or the European Championships, because the Nations League features both the top sides and the weaker nations and generates income from broadcasters. A tournament in which the side ranked highest in FIFA’s rankings might be Luxembourg (98^th) would not provoke a stampede of sponsors, broadcasters, or advertisers to FIFA, or Uefa’s door. If it isn’t generating income, neither FIFA nor Uefa seem interested.

You may – like critics of Gary Lineker’s suggestion – find the idea of a pre-qualifying tournament for football’s lesser lights patronising, or disrespectful. There is a point of view that the smaller nations should have the same opportunities to qualify as the stronger ones, except they never do qualify for the finals, and they never will.

The odds are stacked against San Marino et al even before they kick a ball, because with the draw being seeded, they will rarely be in a group that contains a team they can beat. Neither FIFA nor Uefa will ever do away with seedings – can you imagine the anguish if a group consisting of say, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and England was ever drawn out, thus guaranteeing that three or four of those countries would be absent at the tournament finals? There will never be a group consisting of more than one or two of Europe’s weaker nations, hence at the end of this qualifying tournament, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Andorra will, as usual, have racked up no more than the two wins they got between them at the 2018 qualification stage.

Another view is that they should have the chance to improve by playing the stronger nations, except getting soundly thrashed and not scoring any goals is not a route to self-improvement. The opportunity to play teams of a similar standard on a more regular basis, to score more goals and actually win some games, would be more encouraging to the Sammarinese than playing Germany and getting beaten 13-0 as they were in 2006. In all, the Sammarinese have played Germany four times; the aggregate score is 34-0; what, precisely does anyone learn from that; how do those scorelines improve Sammarinese football? 

Other sports, and even other football competitions, recognise the disparity between teams of differing strengths and don’t expect them to compete as equals (if they did, we might witness Manchester City entertaining Skelmersdale United in the Extra-Preliminary Round of the FA Cup on the first Saturday in August). But once we get to international football, it seems perfectly acceptable to tolerate such mismatches as the 2001 World Cup qualifier in which Australia beat American Samoa 31-0. Other than a novelty, that sort of game benefits no one.

Football authorities, especially in England, frequently make decisions or implement policies in the name of the integrity of the game, or of a competition; it doesn’t strike me that there’s much integrity in watching a country play 175 matches and lose 167 of them.

Everyone who has been ranting about Gary Lineker's comments, or takes issue with what I've written here can rest easy, however: Nothing will ever change, especially since San Marino et al are probably happy to have the chance to play the top nations regularly, even if they are trounced each time (and be better off financially by doing so), than they would be playing in a group where they could actually win a game or two.

 

 

 

What If They Held A Protest and Nobody Came?

No world event has affected me to the same extent that coronavirus has. The same goes for the vast majority of people on the planet. Even hugely significant events like 9/11, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, or Chernobyl directly affected relatively few people, albeit that they affected them more profoundly than most of us can ever imagine.

Even Brexit, possibly the most significant political and economic event of our lifetime, will not directly affect most people in the UK on a day-to-day basis. Cheese exporters, fishermen, and many businesses in Northern Ireland will live with the consequences every day, however, and there will be people whose lives will be fundamentally changed by Brexit, some maybe for the better, some maybe for the worse.

The rest of us may notice subtle differences if or when we next travel abroad and there may be other relatively inconsequential changes, but the opinion that you or I hold about how beneficial or detrimental Brexit has been and will continue to be to the nation as a whole will be shaped not by direct experience, but from what we see in the media, from our own research, and yes, from our prejudices.

Similarly, The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed in the Commons by 359 votes to 263 on Monday 16^th March, is very unlikely to impinge on my life, your life, or indeed the lives of an overwhelming majority of the country, yet it has provoked more debate and controversy than many other bills proposed in recent years.

Critics of the bill have been asked how they can oppose a bill that proposes longer sentences for violent offenders? That question misses the point on two fronts. It is entirely possible to support some provisions of the bill - such as stiffer sentences – without supporting all of it (and of course it is one other, very particular aspect of the bill that is the major focus for opposition), and even then, longer sentences are of themselves of limited value given the other very significant failings within the criminal justice system.

There are now more than 56,000 cases awaiting trial in Crown Courts, and while coronavirus is responsible for some of the backlog, the majority of the delays and backlogs have been caused by historic underfunding and cut-backs. In March 2020 - so before coronavirus had an impact -  there were over 40,000 outstanding cases. Some of those cases relate to offences committed in 2018 or earlier, and some of these are unlikely to come to trial before 2022. Justice delayed is justice denied, as the saying goes, and many of these cases will eventually be dropped for a whole host of reasons. There is little benefit in increased sentences if there is little chance of a trial even taking place, let alone there being a conviction.

Banging on about longer sentences, putting the fear of God into criminals, and being tough on crime is a common political rallying cry, and there’s little doubt that it is popular with a significant section of the electorate, particularly those whose hackles are raised by stories in the Daily Mail and other tabloids about legal aid, lenient sentencing, and ‘liberal-elite’ judges. If you are open to an alternative view, may I recommend following The Secret Barrister on Twitter, or reading one or both of their books.[1]

Setting longer sentences aside, the most significant clauses of The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill relate to causing a public nuisance, particularly as it affects the rights of ordinary members of the public to take part in demonstrations and protests.

As someone who has never taken part in a protest march or demonstration (and I think it very unlikely that I will ever be sufficiently provoked or exercised to consider doing so in the future), the chances of this impacting me are slim to non-existent. The same probably goes for 99% of the UK’s population. 

No doubt you will remember the protests by Extinction Rebellion in London in September 2020, and the Black Lives Matters (BLM) demonstrations in June 2020. Those who righteously condemned the vandalism of statues - the daubing of graffiti on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill, and the dumping of Edward Colston’s statue into Bristol Harbour, for instance - will undoubtedly support the proposed stiffer sentences for such vandalism and the proposed restrictions that may be placed on demonstrations and protests in the future.

You may disagree with Extinction Rebellion’s cause, you may disagree with the BLM movement, or you may agree with their motives, but not their methods. In either case, you will probably support The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Equally, as draconian as the bill’s provisions appear – it would be an offence to cause someone ‘serious annoyance,’ or merely put them at risk of being caused serious annoyance - you may suspect that in practice, little will change, and that very few demonstrations or protests will be affected. On that score, only time will tell.

‘Risk of serious annoyance’ is a pretty low bar however, and as Theresa May said during the debate on the bill, “It’s tempting to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable because we all think we’re reasonable. But actually, future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”

A reasonable Home Secretary?

Many people feel that it would be entirely reasonable that protests and demonstrations like those of Extinction Rebellion and BLM last year are banned, and there’s little doubt that both caused inconvenience and annoyance to some people, but that is actually the way in which protests usually work. As others have pointed out, the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and former Home Secretary and Prime Minister Theresa May might not have been able to vote, let alone stand for Parliament and sit as MPs had these restrictions been in place during the early 20^th century when the suffragettes successfully earned votes for women, since there is little doubt that their methods caused some annoyance.

Last year's Extinction Rebellion protest on Westminster Bridge...

...next year's protest.

Anyone who thinks that it is reasonable to ban protests on the grounds that just one person suffers serious annoyance, or is put at risk of suffering serious annoyance, should remember that this will not be limited to protests that they don’t support. Imagine, as implausible as it may seem right now,  if a future government announced plans to rejoin the EU, or to build a nuclear power plant at the end of your garden, or introduce swingeing taxes on private pensions, or privatise the National Health Service. Now imagine that no one could protest about it; what if they gave a protest and nobody came?

It isn’t too much of a stretch for a future Home Secretary to use risk of serious annoyance to even impose a ban on a rally by an opposition political party, fringe or mainstream. But that couldn’t happen here, could it?

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[1] The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken, and Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies

From QWERTYUIOP to NFT

This week I read that 2021 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first email being sent. It is incredible that that was just two years after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, because while the Apollo 11 moon landing now feels like ancient history, the email seems a much more recent innovation.

Ray Tomlinson (pictured below), sent the first email, and the content was apparently something like “QWERTYUIOP,” which, for banality, even beats the first words spoken over the telephone. In 1876, in his first phone call, Alexander Graham Bell addressed his assistant, Mr Watson, thus: “Mr Watson--come here--I want to see you." As an aside, Bell’s preferred usage when answering a phone call was “Ahoy,” which is much better than “Hello” in my view, and a greeting that should be instated as mandatory when answering calls.

It was not until more than twenty years after Ray Tomlinson sent the first one that I became aware of the existence of email. In the early to mid-1990s, home computers were not commonplace, those who did own one probably didn’t have access to the internet, and even at work we relied on more mundane methods of communication than email.

At that time, written communication within the bank that I worked for (HSBC) was by internal memo or fax. With external customers, it was mostly letters, with some faxes, and for banks abroad, SWIFT or telex messages. I first encountered email in 1997 when I was seconded to an IT department, where my manager had an email account. I was delegated by him to send the occasional email on his behalf and although I don’t now remember what system was used, it certainly did not feature the GUI we take for granted today. Instead, it looked something very much like this (except the text was green).

Within the bank, email accounts were like gold dust, and not to be doled out willy-nilly. It was some time before I was deemed worthy of having one, and the email client used by then was Lotus Notes, with its nice, user-friendly interface. I was privileged to be granted an email account that allowed me external access as we dealt with an external software provider, but many staff had to be content with internal email only.

Today, Gmail is the most popular email provider with 1.5 billion active users worldwide, but my first personal email account was with Force9, our first internet service provider (ISP). That first email account ran through Windows Mail on the desktop. Not being a webmail product, it was limited to the one machine we owned, but that didn’t matter as accessing emails on other, more portable devices like phones and tablets was years in the future.

My first email address was, due to a misunderstanding on my part when I created it, a bit of a mouthful; reading it out to people (over the phone for example) was always something of a trial and necessarily accompanied by an explanation of how it was constructed. I’ve since migrated from Force9 to Gmail with a more practical address, but my old account remains active for legacy reasons. Thanks to Force9 having apparently done nothing to improve their email offering in the last thirty years, it is painfully slow, and the only effective way I can still access my inbox is by having Gmail automatically fetch messages.

Our email addresses are now about so much more than just sending and receiving messages; we use them as our logon names for many applications, hence the need for a unique and strong email password to mitigate the risk of credential stuffing attacks. Our emails and their addresses enable us to access tickets for transport, shows, and sporting events for instance, which is why email is one of the most important pieces of technology we have, including on our mobile phones. In fact, the least important piece of functionality on our mobile phones these days is the ability to make and receive telephone calls; perhaps the day will come when we buy phones without a voice call function, or at least with the ability to disable it.

Smartphone functionality – and in particular the range of apps that they can offer – means that apart from rarely leaving the house without mine, I actually need to carry much less when I go out that I did perhaps even a year ago. For instance, I take my wallet out with me but rarely remove a card or cash from it; I use my phone instead, particularly now that the Tesco Pay+ app allows me to spend up to £250, contactless.

In 2019 I bought a ticket for a Steven Wilson gig at The O2, scheduled for September 2020. Paperless it was, using the AXS app. To use the ticket I had to have a smartphone with a 4G signal, with location services enabled, with date and time set to automatic, the AXS app running with the most recent release installed, and the brightness of the screen at a certain level. Covid put paid to the gig, so I didn’t get the chance to suffer the stress of worrying that one of those conditions might not be met and that I’d fail to get into the gig as a result. Or, more mundanely, that my phone battery might die, or I might lose the device en route to the venue.

I’ve been to gigs where I’ve used the Dice app to buy my ticket, and with that app, the QR code representing the admission ticket appears on the phone around two hours before the gig (it’s a tactic that is supposed to reduce the possibility of ticket touting), and that’s a little bit of stress added to the mix right there, being practically at the venue but not having the ticket – yet.

Even where tickets are not held in an app, buying them online and having them delivered by email is now the norm, and even though there is the option to show the ticket on your smartphone, I tend to prefer physically printing it out, because although I am happy to embrace technology, there still remains a risk – no matter how small – of it failing at the crucial moment.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve experienced the minor inconvenience of being out of the house and finding that an app you want to use has logged you out and you can’t remember the password (I checked, and I have 170 separate logons and passwords, and no I can’t remember them all). Fortunately, when it’s happened to me it hasn’t been anything crucial, but one day, it might be.

And that is just one potential flaw with smartphones and our reliance on emails and apps; we risk putting all of our eggs in one basket. When – and I hope it is soon – I can go to gigs again, the last thing I want is to be refused entry because I can’t access the ticket on my phone.

Sooner or later though, even the e-ticket, or the ticket on an app, will become old hat. The next big thing in ticketing could be Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), which use blockchain functionality. I hope it is less complex than it sounds.

 

 

 

 

 

The Time Travelling Sheep

Trypanophobia: an extreme fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles.

I wouldn’t call myself trypanophobic, but I am not over enamoured of people sticking needles in me. I am happier with being jabbed for the purpose of inoculation or vaccination than I am for having blood drawn.

It isn’t so much needle going into the vein that is the problem - although having experienced ‘shy’ veins on more than one occasion and had phlebotomists in despair at finding one suitable to take a sample from, being repeatedly and unsuccessfully jabbed is not my idea of fun – rather it is the sensation (real or illusionary) of blood being drawn that I have the problem with.

The only time that I donated blood was when I was in my early twenties and must be the source of my problem. I can recall that the throbbing sensation in my arm was sufficiently discomforting to put me off repeating the procedure. I have a similar problem with having my blood pressure taken; the prospect of and actual feeling of the blood pumping in my veins makes me very uptight and I am sure that is why, whenever I have my blood pressure taken, it takes at least three attempts before the doctor or nurse is satisfied that I am not in need of immediate hospitalisation.

I went for a routine blood test yesterday, which passed off without any drama, and apart from the ‘shy’ vein incident, the only other time I have had any sort of problem with a needle going in was when I had a seasickness jab, the first time I went on a cruise. The injection –a large dose of anti-histamine – was administered in the buttock. If you ever have a similar injection, I recommend wriggling your toes while it is given as it is quite uncomfortable.

Tomorrow I am going for my first coronavirus vaccination, a little earlier than I expected. When the vaccination process began, the online calculator, which you can find at https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk, suggested that I would get my first dose at the beginning of April. With the pace of the programme, I thought that this would come forward to mid-March, but Val had a message from a friend who is the same age as us, and who works in a pharmacy. She had booked her vaccination, so we went to the NHS website on Friday, and booked our jabs at the ExCel Centre in Docklands.

The booking process was really simple and easy, and from what I have been told by other people, the actual vaccination process is pretty slick too. Side effects reported from people I know who have had the jab range from a brief soreness in the arm, to nasty flu-like symptoms lasting a couple of days. The phlebotomist I saw on Saturday told me that she was unwell for a day. That’s not something that I relish, but we’ll see.

At the time of writing, 19.9million people in the UK have been vaccinated, albeit that only 736,000 have had both doses. With immunity supposedly only conferred a few weeks after the second injection, there is still a long way to go, and it is not until May that Val and I get our second doses. Once we all have had our second doses, we should begin to return to a version of normality, but there will need to be adjustments.

Much talked about is the possible vaccine passport, which has its pros and cons, and raises questions. I think it more likely that a vaccine passport would be required for international travel than for domestic use. International travellers are used to having to have a certificate to prove having had a vaccination against yellow fever, for instance, while vaccinations against cholera, hepatitis, and diphtheria are advisable, if not compulsory for travel to certain countries.

Some destinations may only be accessible to British holidaymakers with proof of vaccination: the Greek Prime Minister has said as much, for one. Entering Covid vaccination details may become as commonplace when booking a flight, or a hotel abroad, as entering a passport number is at present, and I find it difficult to see any reason why anyone would have an issue with that. Some people would object, no doubt, perhaps on the grounds that the vaccine is not mandatory in the UK, but then again, overseas travel and foreign holidays are not a right, and if another sovereign country wants to make a vaccination certificate a condition of entry, then that is their prerogative.

More contentious, however, would be a vaccination certificate for domestic use. Some people object strongly; Ian Brown of the band, The Stone Roses, is one.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has said that the government was looking at the technology necessary to create vaccine passports, but he has also insisted that it isn’t the government’s plan to introduce them. He has said that one reason for not implementing them would be that the vaccine itself is not mandatory; he also said that passports would be discriminatory and wasn’t clear what impact they would have on the transmission of the virus. All very confusing, but understandably so, it’s not a straightforward issue.

The question of technology should be straight forward to address. For smartphone users, a digital certificate could be a simple extension of the existing NHS app, or the Covid app, the cost of which is expected to reach £35million: adding extra functionality to hold a digital certificate should be relatively inexpensive. For those without a smartphone, a physical alternative ought not to be beyond the wit of man.

Of more concern would be how vaccine certificates would be used. Critics say that their introduction would be an infringement of civil liberties, and it is easy to see that certificates could lead to a sort of health-based apartheid. Imagine not being able to go to a restaurant, or the cinema, the pub or a football match, simply for the want of a vaccine certificate?

Back in the day, underage drinkers would borrow an older sibling’s ID to get into a pub and, and fake ID is undoubtedly still used today, so there’s every reason to suppose that fake or forged certificates would be created. Equally, sympathetic door staff might admit uncertified customers to venues, either for a financial consideration or simply because they were known to them.

Covid has inspired any number of conspiracy theories, too many to list here, but the supposed nanotechnology in the vaccine is a major one. This tweet, claiming that the vaccine will facilitate time travel is simply mind-boggling however, and it is not a spoof. (Time travel? Why? would be my first question).

In less than twenty-four hours I will have my first vaccination. When I’ve had my second, I’d be happy to have, and produce when needed, some sort of certificate. Ian Brown and Dr Naomi Wolf would probably see me as a sheep, but who knows, perhaps I’ll be a time-travelling sheep who is able to go to concerts and football matches. Maybe I can get a ticket for Live Aid, or the 1966 World Cup Final.

 

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Picture of Shaun The Sheep and Tardis by Runa on Threads magazine https://www.threadsmagazine.com/readerproject/2009/02/10/tardis-quilt