UKIP Would Shrink Without The Internet
This was the title of an article in The Times yesterday by Hugo Rifkind, in which he comes to some interesting conclusions. I particularly liked this bit.
The decline of traditional media — of printed newspapers, limited radio stations, and everybody watching the same TV news — is best understood as the end of media deference. No longer must we gain our understanding of the world via information collected, curated and presented by others. Instead, we can go looking for whatever we like. Consciously or otherwise, we each build our own little online universe.
I think that Rifkind is right and the world will be a worse place because people will not hear any views opposed to their own.
Boys With Be Boys
There is a lot of speculation in the media, as why Muslim men are flocking to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Was it ever any different?
Go back to the Middle Ages and it was rape and pillage in the Crusades or with Henry the fifth, and later it was piracy with Drake and Grenville.
Nelson And Wellington were not short of volunteers and in Victorian times, it was all about Empire building, with a small personal fortune thrown in, if you were lucky!
Perhaps the nearest parallel to that of Syria and Iraq today, was the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Many of those who fought in the Brigades or openly supported them went on to be important figures in later life.
You could also argue that both the First and Second World War was an outlet for many men, who had an excess of testosterone.
I also remember a General, saying that the Falklands War did a lot of good for Army recruitment.
I am a pacifist or more likely a coward, but we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn those, who go to fight in Iraq and Syria.
The ones we should condemn are the countries and arms dealers, who are giving the likes of the odious President Assad, the weapons they are using to kill their own people.
The Police Workload Due To Social Media
According to this article on the BBC, social media crimes are at least half of all frontline Police work. Here’s the first two paragraphs.
Complaints originating from social media make up “at least half” of a front-line police officer’s work, a senior officer has told the BBC.
Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of crimes arising from social media represented “a real problem”.
I’m not against reporting these crimes to the Police in any way, but I do think that this is a rather large load on the Police.
As a programmer, who has worked in data analysis for many years and as I feel I understand the Internet very well, I do not feel it is beyond the wit of programmers and companies to create a robust and trusted Internet-based system to deal with all the annoyances of the modern age.
Obviously, you could still go to the Police directly, but if say forwarding an offensive message to a semi-automated system had a sensible outcome, you might find this less trouble.
There are very few things that because of my physical and mental make-up that can be said to me as abuse. Although, I do get fed-up with some spam messages that seem to come to me every day. But I can understand how some people get offended and need their tormentors stopped.
I believe that a well-programmed system could handle much of the abuse and unwanted messages we get. If it became trusted and the sanctions it had taken against persistent nuisances were respected, people would think twice before sending offensive messages.
It might even stop crime and disrupt terrorist networks. As I write this, it has been said on the BBC, that you can follow what is going on with ISIS in Iraq through Twitter.
But then politicians don’t understand the power of technology and especially don’t like being bypassed by it. So we are more likely to see draconian laws on social media.
Sheringham
I spent an hour or so in Sheringham, but sadly I didn’t find anywhere suitable for lunch.
I was too late for lunch and too early for supper, so I just had half a pint of Aspall’s cyder and walked back up the hill to get the train back. I could have got plenty of unhealthy food and judging by the size of many of the visitors, there was an answer to “Who ate all the pies?”
It was a lovely day as the pictures show, but quite a few cafes and restaurants were closed.
It is also a town, crying out for the main street to be pedestrianised, as the traffic and the pavements crowded with the obese made walking up and down to the beach a real obstacle course.
My Musical Taste
As a teenager growing up in North London in the 1960s, I saw a lot of the bands of the time. I saw the Stones, the Animals, Adam Faith and quite a few others at the Regal Cinema in Edmonton.
We also mounted a school outing in 1974 to see the Beatles, supported by the Yardbird, at Hammersmith Odeon.
At Liverpool in the 1960s, the University always had the best bands and I saw such as the Who, Manfred Mann, John Mayall and many others on Saturday nights at the Mountford Hall in the Student Guild.
At that time, I also went to various concerts in London and saw Eric Clapton with John Mayall at the Manor House, with to say he got paralytic would be a severe understatement. I was also at Cook’s Ferry Inn, when the Animals tried out the possible replacements for Alan Price.
My going to concerts stopped around the late 1960s, as I was married and as our children were born in 1969, 1970 and 1972, we went out less and less.
It was about that time, that I discovered Dory Previn, for whom I have had an admiration ever since. I actually saw her in concert at the Donmar Warehouse sometime in the 1980s.
It is true to say that Liverpool, the 1960s and Dory Previn defined by musical taste.
I have only ever been to the occasional classical concert over the years, although C and I did go concerts featuring such as Cleo Laine. But she wasn’t a great concert goer either. In her last years, she did listen to classical music in her car.
I have never listened to music, whilst I work, usually I’ll be watching sport on television, or listening to it on the radio. If it’s not sport, it’s either news or a documentary. I make it a point not to watch any drama series these days, although, I’ll go and watch a film or a play. But I never watch films on television or at home.
Now, I don’t even have a DVD player. And I’m not even sure where the DVDs are!
The only concert I’ve been to, since I moved to London, was to see Kate Dimbleby sing Dory Previn, although I did see the Glasgow Citizens Theatre production of Backbeat.
Where music is concerned, I’m probably a lost cause.
Worst Day For Films?
I thought it might be nice to see a film, but The Times has reviewed ten films and gives them an average of 2.4.
So not much joy there!
Does Our Talking About Them Encourage ISIS?
The insurgents called ISIS in Iraq are very much driven by clever use of social media and the news, to put forward their violent psychopathic philosophy.
So does our worrying on news programs and in the newspapers, actually encourage them to do something even worse in the UK?
We should not ignore them, be vigilant and have plans in place, but perhaps to keep quiet in public might be the best course of action? All we’re doing is perhaps encouraging disaffecting people to join the organisation and various other elements to take direct action.
The Robert Hooke Biodiversity Bell
I passed this work by St. Paul’s Cathedral.
It is mentioned on many web sites, but it doesn’t seem to have a serious entry on the web. This blog gives a good explanation.
To me Robert Hooke is best known for Hooke’s Law, one of the basic laws of physics, that anybody who studied that subject will probably know. But Hooke did a lot more than find the law that bears his name.
He is one of those amazing characters that populate the history of science.
A Worry For Scottish Fund Managers
I had lunch with an intelligent lady yesterday and the subject of Scottish devolution came up.
She said that she had money invested with Scottish Funds and would be moving the money to London before the devolution referendum.
So how much sensible money will be removed from North of the Border?
I certainly wouldn’t allow any of my money to be managed outside of the country in which I live. I moved my pension away from a company controlled by the Bank of Santander for just that reason.
Several of my friends have lost savings and their pension over the last few years. I wouldn’t put all or any part of my money in an overseas basket!
Fighting Talk In The BBC Radio Theatre
I took some pictures of the programme inside the theatre.
They aren’t the best, but they give a flavour of the programme. The panel was Justin Moorhouse, Dougie Anderson, Henning Wehn and Mina Rzouki. The podcast is here.
The Anonymous Widower 