2006s
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The City of London, that is: the Square Mile. ↩︎
Book notes 9: Redemolished, by Alfred Bester
I found this in the local library, having never heard of it before. It is a relatively recently-published (2000) collection containing some of his short fiction, some essays, and some interviews he did with people as diverse as Isaac Asimov and Woody Allen.
The title is, of course, a reference to his famous novel The Demolished Man, and appears to have been chosen mainly because the ‘deleted’ prologue to that novel is included here.
The non-fiction is interesting, not least in showing part of what Bester did for a living after he more-or-less dropped out of SF for a long time (he made most of his money by writing for TV).
The fiction, on the whole, is slightly disappointing. I enjoyed it well enough, but it hasn’t aged well: most of it reads as quite dated.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the stories was the one which taught me the meaning of the word “fugue” (both musical and psychological) many years ago. I recalled that I had learned it from a story, but not what story it was: ‘The Four-Hour Fugue’. Who said SF wasn’t educational?
Book notes 8: The Complete DR and Quinch, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
I found this in the local library. I thought I hadn’t read it, but I remember reading the ‘Something something, oranges something’ episode (AKA ‘DR and Quinch go to Hollywood’) back when I was at university in the 80s. I expect they were reprinted by one of the American companies (possibly coloured in?) and I got some of them.
This is early-early Alan Moore, and of course is nowhere near the quality of his later-early work such as V for Vendetta or Watchmen, or his more recent work like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it’s quite fun.
As a parent of young kids, though, I now see it as surprisingly violent. Not that I’d censor it, or anything: just that it’s something I’m more aware of. Or aware of in a different way. Back when I was a student I’d probably have celebrated the violence for its wild- and cartoon-ness.
Indeed, I discovered that the book used — presumably coined — the term ‘napalm dispenser’, which I borrowed for a round-robin work that I was involved in back in my university days, and which had hilarious, and nearly calamitous results. I should probably write a blog post about that one day. It involved cucumbers.
Heat, streets and beats
I was in The City,1 this morning. The client’s offices were at Vintners’ Court; the street sign next to it says, “Formerly Anchor Alley”. Which is a much better name: almost worthy of JK Rowling herself.
The newer name is pretty good too, mind.
Afterwards I walked across Southwark Bridge and to Waterloo along the South Bank. London sparkled as it sweltered.
In other news, Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses has posted a lovely piece in her blog, ThrowingMusic, about her son’s birthday:
I met a toddler named Ryder in the airport last night, of all things. Then I came home to a six foot man named Ryder that I call my son. Crazy how the past keeps walking out the door and not even saying goodbye. It colors our present images to an extent that allows us to believe it’s real, but it isn’t. It’s gone. Pioneertown is burning. Today is the anniversary of my stepfather, Wayne’s, death. How can Baby Ry, Pioneertown and Wayne be nowhere?
WordPress, this blog, and the Google cache
I doubt that anybody noticed, but my last entry has been missing a bit — in fact, missing most of itself — for a week or more. I don’t know how it happened. I did make a minor edit to it a few days after initially posting it, and I can only suppose that either I or WordPress somehow messed something up.
Unfortunately I had already deleted the draft from my PDA where I composed it. Fortunately there is a behemoth in California that looks after the careless blogger. A bit of obscure Google-diving and my post is back.
Thanks, Google. In future I’ll keep everything in text files.
Welcome to Torchwood
Well, Saturday the 1st of July, 2006 will go down in my personal history as something of a special day. First I manage to end up actually feeling sorry for the England football team (except for the idiot Wayne Rooney) — or more for their supporters, really, in the form of my kids. Then Russell T Davies and the BBC give us the glory that is ‘Army of Ghosts’. Warning: spoilers follow.
Supporters
I am somewhat mystified by the talk recently about what team Scottish people, and various MPs, particularly Scottish ones, “should” support in the football World Cup. There are no “should”s, of course: anyone can support any football team they want to, or none. It’s just daft, at best, that anyone made an issue of it regarding the behaviour of our public servants.
But the stranger thing, really, is that anyone might expect a Scotland fan to support England under any circumstances.
I don’t mean here, a Scot who takes little interest in football between World Cups, but might enjoy watching some of what should be the best examples of the game. I’m talking about your actual, dedicated football fan. Some people suggest that such a Scotland fan ought to support England because we are neighbouring countries, and part of the same meta-country.
But consider this: Spurs and Arsenal are neighbouring teams, and part of the same city; the same can be said of Liverpool and Everton, Manchesters United and City, and perhaps most significantly, of Celtic and Rangers. Now, tell me this: if Spurs were in the European Cup (as I still think of it) , would an Arsenal fan support them? Would anyone say that an Arsenal fan “should” support Spurs?
Well, I can’t speak for any of the English teams I mentioned above, but I come from a family of Celtic fans, and was quite a dedicated fan myself in my younger years (before I grew out of the whole thing, and put my interest into music instead), and I can tell you that there is no way on this Earth or beyond that a Celtic fan would ever support Rangers in anything. My Dad’s saying about it not mattering who wins, only had a tangential application to the national teams. Its Platonic form was, “It doesn’t matter who wins, as long as it’s not Rangers.”
I’m quite sure that Rangers fans feel just as strongly about Celtic’s successes.
The logical extension of this interclub rivalry is to the national teams of Scotland and England; and no doubt, to those of various other pairs of nations. I imagine that French fans are unlikely to support, say, Germany against Brazil, just because they share a land border with one, and only a planet with the other.
So really, expecting a Scot to support England is crazy. Supporting the opponent of your greatest rival is perfectly natural behaviour
Book Notes 7: Nova Scotia, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J Wilson
(I haven’t stopped reading, nor writing these notes: I just haven’t got round to posting them, for various reasons).
I actually started reading this back in October last year, but, it being a collection of short stories, I took it slowly, over months. Since I finished it this year, it belongs in my 2006 Book Notes.
Before I get much further I should declare an interest: one of the editors, Andrew, is an old university friend of mine.
So it might come as no surprise that I am more impressed by the very existence of this boook than by its content. Which is not to dismiss or belittle the content. There are some very good stories here, by some top authors and fine newcomers. But the overall sense of it is less than overwhelming.
Perhaps the most surprising letdown is a sin of omission: where is Scotland’s most famous SF author; indeed, probably its most famous living author? No doubt the good Mr Banks has other things to do — I doubt that he writes short stories at all, these days — but you’d think he could have done an introduction or something.
The introduction in fact is by David Pringle, the former editor of Interzone: I had no idea that he was even Scottish. But there you go: we get everywhere.
I’m not going to go through all the stories, just hit a few high and low points.
In a way the most disappointing story is Hal Duncan‘s ‘The Last Shift’. Not because it’s badly written or anything. Rather, because it’s not SF, fantasy, or speculative in any way. It’s a sadly-commonplace tale of the last day of a factory whose company is “outsourcing” or “offshoring” all the work. The fact that the characters all have wings and horns like the demons of our world’s mythology (and that the location doesn’t exist in our world) neither adds anything to it nor detracts from it in anyway: those factors are just irrelevant.
Which is a shame. I’m a keen reader of Hal’s blog, and look forward to reading his first novel, Vellum (I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve so far been put off buying it by the price: it’s a full-price hardback at £17:99, and that just seems a bit too much for an essentially unkown author).
The high points for me are probably ‘Sophie and the Sacred Fluids’ by Andrew C Ferguson (another disclaimer: I also had a passing acquaintance with this Andrew); ‘Deus ex Homine’, by Hannu Rajaniemi; and ‘Snowball’s Chance’, by Charles Stross.
In conclusion, I’m very glad it exists, and I’m glad I read it; but I hope the next volume, if it happens, is better.
[tags]books, book notes 2006, nova scotia, sf, scotland, science fiction, scottish fiction, scottish literature, scottish sf, scottish writing[/tags]
The Water of Life
Or at least a container for it. It’s Bike Week this week, and as I happened to be cycling through Islington anyway, I was caught up by the members of the local LCC. They were offering a free cyclists’ breakfast, and a Dr Bike clinic. I had already had breakfast, and my bike was serviced recently, so I didn’t stop for that (though it is making a strange noise again, so perhaps I should have).
However they were also handing out free water bottles, which is just what I needed: I just noticed this morning that mine is cracked, and in any case it’s very prone to making the water taste plasticy. So I accepted that gratefully, and am giving something back by adding what tiny amount of Google juice I can to the URL that is printed on the bottle: Islington Borough’s Green Travel page.
Now get on yer bike, everyone.
It doesn't matter who wins...
I found myself feeling curiously left out as my colleagues left work to watch the England match yesterday. This despite the fact that I didn’t want to watch it, I purposely avoided watching it, and I intended/hoped to take advantage of the reduced commuter traffic (not much reduced, as it happened: such is London’s diversity) to get home easily, and collect my kids from school.
Where they were watching the football, of course, courtesy of the after-school club.
Above all, if I had intended to watch it, my sympathies would have been with the other side anyway: I am Scottish, after all, and as my Dad used to say, “It doesn’t matter who wins, as long as it’s not England.” Plus I’m a sucker for an underdog (I mistyped that as “undergod”; there’s a story in there, I’m sure).
But despite all that, as my colleagues left the office for the pub or wherever, I still felt a slight echo of the thing I felt as a kid when I was left out of something that “everyone else” was doing.
We all want to be part of a tribe, I suppose.
In the end I watched he last half hour or so at the school; from just before the scary personality-cult chants of “Rooney, Rooney!” to the end. The cheers, as you might expect in a primary school, were very high and shrill. I was pleased, though, that Trinidad and Tobago’s goal (before it was disallowed) got almost as loud a cheer. This was Hackney, and of course, there are a lot of kids with Caribbean ancestry.
And maybe a lot of good sports, too. Maybe I should learn from them, and support England. But I can’t see it ever happening: there are some early-learned prejudices that die impossibly hard.
So I guess I’m still part of a tribe.
Eye Contact, or: Pay Attention to the Web Behind the Curtain.
Eyes in the sky
There is a strange and mighty power to eye contact, it seems.
I’m not talking about the effects of making — or not making — eye contact while talking to someone, though of course that does indeed have a great symbolic strength and communicative ability. Rather, I’m talking about the effect of making eye contact at a distance; specifically while cycling.
As you might imagine, cycling round the streets of London has its hazards. It’s not as fraught with danger as some believe (fear of the dangers is one of the main reasons people give for why they don’t, or wouldn’t, cycle; which is a shame, because it’s good for the individual, and good for the environment), but that’s another discussion.
Most potential problems can be avoided with a suitable degree of alertness. But the necessary alertness isn’t all on the part of the cyclist: it’s important for other road users to be alert to the presence of cyclists, too. Who remembers “Think once, think twice, think bike!“, the road-safety campaign on British TV during the seventies? That was intended to make other road-users more aware of cyclists (and motorcyclists).
That is where one of the biggest dangers lies: quite frankly, there are a lot of road users who just don’t notice cyclists. And it’s not just the BMW drivers and Royal Mail vans (in my experience the two most dangerous types of motorised vehicle, from a cyclist’s point of view (though all generalisations are false, of course)).
No, any motor vehicle can be a problem, and pedestrians and even other cyclists are almost as bad. Indeed , the two accidents I’ve had in all my years of cycling in London were both caused, at least in part, by pedestrians. There is, however, a simple technique that can — almost magically, it sometimes seems — make other road users notice you.
Look them in the eye.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Just make eye contact with the driver, cyclist or pedestrian, and suddenly they realise you’re there.
Which is not so surprising: it’s hard to not be aware of the presence of someone who is looking you in the eye. What is strange, though, is the way in which it works at a distance. You don’t have to be able to see the other person’s eyes, or even to see the person. Innumerable times I have been hurtling along a road and seen a car or van about to pull out of a side road and smash into me (or at least, make me brake sharply). I can’t see the driver because of distance or dark windows, but I aim a hard stare at the area where I know the driver’s head must be. And the car (or van) suddenly brakes, and lets me sweep past.
Similarly, a burst of laser-like staring swept across a group of pedestrians can stop them stepping off the kerb and into my path. It’s quite remarkable, really.
I’m reminded of the story of James Dean’s death. He crashed his car into another car that was pulling out of a side road, and supposedly Dean said to his passenger, (who survived the crash), “It’s all right, he sees me.”
Clearly, the other driver didn’t. Perhaps if Dean had just tried looking at where the other driver’s eyes were, the strange, near-telepathic effect might have happened, and he could have lived to make many more films.
The effect is, I suspect, related to the “feeling of being watched” that most people have experienced at some time. There’s no obvious mechanism for it, but it does seem to be the case that, when someone is looking at us, we become aware of the fact.
Attention surfeit disorder?
When some one is looking at us, or is paying attention to us. Which brings me to another angle on this. That is the idea of attention.. Up here in The Future, in the days of the development of “Web 2.0″ (which, by the way, is pronounced “two point zero”, not “two point oh”, as I heard them saying on Newsnight the other day; we are, after all, scientists) we are often told (though perhaps mainly by Doc Searls) of how important our attention is.
Indeed, the phrase “the attention economy” is in use by some. Of course, the expression “pay attention” has been around for a long time, but only now has attention taken on some of the other trappings of money. We can “pay” for a web site’s services with our attention. Any site with adverts effectively meets this model, though there are more direct examples, such as Salon‘s premium content, for which you can get a “day pass” by sitting through a short advert — as an alternative to paying actual cash for a subscription.
The force of our attention — of looking — is powerful in multiple ways.
Pachyderm Prestidigitation
Like much of the rest of the London Blogosphere, I went with the family to see The Sultan’s Elephant on Sunday. I had had a quick look at it on the way home from work on Friday, when it was just standing still at the end of Pall Mall. Then, it was clearly impressive; but wasn’t clear quite how glorious, how majestic it would be once it was moving among crowds.
We drove in to Holborn and took the Tube to Green Park. The Tube was crammed, and I assumed (and feared) that everyone there would have the same aim as us. But no, it was just a commonplace weekend crowd, with many destinations in mind. When we got out, Piccadilly was busy, but not obviously in an unusual way.
We could see that the road was partly closed in the direction of Piccadilly Circus, so we headed that way. In the distance we could see crowds of people, but no obvious forty-foot elephant (and it’s hard to imagine a forty-foot elephant being anything else). One of the stewards told us that it was going to turn down Haymarket and then into Pall Mall.
Then, as we got a bit closer to the Circus, I caught a glimpse of a large leather ear flapping, and soon we could all see its head. But Piccadilly had never seemed so long, and it began to feel as if we wouldn’t catch it, though it was obviously going very slowly.
I hoped to get a picture of it with the statue of Eros in the same shot, but it was not to be. By the time we got to Piccadilly circus, it had already turned into Haymarket. So we decided to cut down Regent Street and get ahead of it. Guess what? We weren’t the only ones to have that idea. By this time we were among crowds, but not so dense that it was very hard to move; just dense enough to make us keep a tight hold on the kids.
A bit of zigzagging through back streets and we found ourselves on Charles II Street. Iit was clear from the music coming from Haymarket that the elephant hadn’t passed yet, and from the layout of the crowd that it would be coming along that way. So we positioned ourselves at the edge of the pavement and waited.
Sure enought, after a few minutes some stewards came along the street asking people to stay back on the pavements. Another few minutes and several police officers came along with the same message.
It’s worth pointing out both how good a job the stewards and the police did, and how little they actually had to do (from what I saw of it). It just goes to show that you can stage a big event with minimal crowd control. Treat people with respect and give them something interesting to watch and you don’t need to herd them through crash barriers like cattle in a slaughterhouse.
Anyway, a few minutes after that, and the elephant’s head began to appear round the corner. It was, as I said above, majestic: that’s the word that came to my mind as soon as I saw it.
I don’t know if it was the beauty of the beast, or the fact that there were bagpipes among the music that was playing (the pipes always get me like that); but I felt a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as it approached.
Then the fucker sprayed me with water.
Actually, being sprayed was quite fun. Fortunately it was a hot day. But I got hit so directly that I could almost hear the operators saying,”Get the guy in the orange t-shirt and sunglasses.” If you don’t want to get hit, don’t dress up like a target, I suppose.
As the beast itself passed next to us, and I got a brief chance to admire the action of the legs (it moves on wheels, but the leg movement is very convincing), I realised that the music was coming from a truck behind it on which a live band was playing. I had assumed it was just recordings, but the band added an extra touch, and we got to listen to them up close. They were good, and I’d like to find out who they were.
After it passed, and the crowd thinned a bit, we decided to head round to Waterloo Place to see the Little Girl’s crashed space capsule; not realising that it had been moved. No matter, though: it meant we got another view of the elephant as it turned onto Pall Mall.
And so to home. We didn’t stay to see the finalé, so we didn’t see the Little Girl at all; nor did we see her spaceship. All that was left on Waterloo Place was a hole in the road, which people, in their infinite capacity to make a mess, had already started dropping rubbish into. As it turned out, the ship had been moved to Horseguards for her to leave in.
It was a fabulous thing to see, though, and I’m so glad that the Mayor and the GLA saw fit to have it here.
My son asked me at one point, as the music surrounded us and the elephant towered over us, “Why did it come to London?” I answered with joy and almost without thinking about it, “Because this is the best city in the world.”
Sometimes it is.
Calling all Green Wing fans
Would any kind person out there have a copy of last Friday’s Green Wing on video they could lend me? I had an accidental-taping-over-disaster before we had watched it.
Other formats are acceptable too, of course.
Thanks.
Who the hell do we vote for?
It’s my custom prior to elections to write a post giving “voting advice”. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to take this advice: I’m just thinking out loud, really.
But now, with local elections happening tomorrow, I’m in something of a quandary. It’s always been easy in the past — or it was, before the last general election: vote Labour. There, that was easy, wasn’t it?
But now; now.
Now Labour are the ones who are bringing in ID cards. They’re the ones who are trying to allow themselves to make laws without parliament. They’re the ones who’re putting a new face on sleaze by selling peerages.
There is no way I can vote for them while they support ID cards; nor could I vote for any other party that did. Nor, no matter how cuddly and environmental David Cameron appears, there is no way in hell I could ever vote Tory.
In the last general election I voted Liberal Democrat, and I suppose it might have to go that way in tomorrow’s locals. The thing is, I’m not totally sure that I would want to enact a change in our local council. Things have been getting quite good in Hackney’s services recently, what with their roadside recycling and what have you.
The Respect Party‘s candidate for Hackney’s mayor is the father of a friend of my daughter, so I kind of know him. He came to the door last night, and I asked him about their position on ID cards (not a local issue, of course, but still). Totally against, which is good. So voting for him is tempting, but I have my doubts about the party leader, George Galloway. His performance at the US senate was genius, but there is still the “indefatigability” speech, and the way he campaigned against Una King in Bethnal Green.
Then there’s the Green Party. Always a possibility; but I have my reservations about their positions on everything but the environment.
You know, I might not actually decide until I step into the booth tomorrow.
[tags]politics, elections, voting, local elections 2006, hackney. respect party, green party, libdems, liberal democrat party, mayor of hackney[/tags]
Clarke and the convicts
The fact that some of the ex-cons who are foreign nationals have offended again should come as no surprise whatsoever: many convicted criminals re-offend after their release. It should be nothing more than expected. Nor is the fact of their re-offending in itself part of the scandal.
Furthermore, as has been said elsewhere, these thousand or so released offenders pose no greater or lesser threat to society than any other random thousand offenders. Their only difference is that they are not British citizens. Contrary to the belief, perhaps, of the Daily Mail and its readers, that does not inherently make them worse people — nor, indeed, any more likely to re-offend — than those of us who were born here.
That they should have been deported if the court specified that as part of their sentences is self-evident. As indeed is the fact that those who were released on licence should have been properly tracked by the appropriate authorities. These are problems in the systems for which the Home Office is responsible, and as such, they should be investigated and corrected.
The real scandal, though, is that the Home Secretary apparently did nothing to correct the problem after it had been identified: he is said to have known about it for some ten months, and only in the last week has he taken any action. And then only because a diligent opposition MP kept asking questions until he found out about it.
In a sense the actual problems are minor: the supposedly-lost offenders have been located by the Police and Parole Service. Most of them are now to be deported (which strikes me as verging on double jeopardy, since they have already done their time, but I wouldn’t expect this government to let a little thing like that bother them). Steps have been, or will be, put in place to prevent the same thing happening in future. If that proves not to be the case, there will be plenty of opposition MPs and journalists quick to point out that the problem still exists.
What we are seeing is largely an excuse for a mass exercise in xenophobia by the media: a depressing and frankly disgraceful display, which can only help to fuel the arguments of the vile BNP in tomorrow’s local elections.
And maybe that is why Clarke should go: for (inadvertantly) giving succour to fascists.
But if Blair did accept Clarke’s resignation, who would we get in his place? Whoever it was, I can’t imagine that they would be much better.
[tags]clarke, charles clarke, politics, deportation, foreign offenders, convicts, ex-cons, local elections[/tags]
In which Martin meets annoyances at Waterloo
I don’t mean to come over all disgruntled again, but on arriving at Waterloo (by bike) this morning, I found two changes which seemed designed to inconvenience travellers, with no obvious gain.
First, at the entrance I usually roll in by (the wide one next to the Costa Coffee shop), they have added two bollards. Quite widely spaced, so no immediate problem for cyclists or pedestrians: except that anything unnecessary in the way is a distraction and just adds to the complexity of a journey. And what purpose do they serve? All they can possibly be for is to stop cars and vans driving in that way. And while that is something that has been technically possible until now, I wasn’t at all aware that we had a problem with it.
Indeed, apart from floor-cleaning machines and those little luggage carts, the only motorised vehicle I’ve ever seen inside Waterloo is an ambulance. I do hope they haven’t stopped those from getting in.
Perhaps more significantly, they have added some sort of tall rack containing, I think, paper timetables or other leaflets. But they’ve put it in the middle of the floor near the the departures screens. So not only is it in the way, but from certain positions it obscures the view of the screens.
Screens which have been hard enough to see since they were introduced, replacing the old big boards. The screens’ main fault is that they are in the wrong places: over some of the shops which form islands in the concourse, instead of over the entrances to the platforms. As well as that, the text on them is smaller than the old boards, so you have to stand closer to make them out. This last will have the effect of amplifying the blockage caused by the rack (this can be proved by a simple piece of geometry, which I won’t go into).
At least the rack looks as if it should be easy to remove; but bah, grumble, etc.
Transport against london
I take a couple of weeks off (a week at home with the kids, a week in Dorset: very nice, thanks, since you ask) and when I first get back to posting, I find I’m channelling the excellent Disgruntled Commuter. This morning’s journey into work was a vision of madness and chaos straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
I exaggerate, of course. The Waterloo and City Line is a key link in my standard route to work, when I go purely by public transport. Hackney to Wimbledon is not the simplest route between two parts of London, but it doesn’t have to be insane. That line, though, is currently closed. Until September. If we assume it won’t reopen until the end of that month at the earliest, that means it will be closed for half the year. I understand that things wear out and break down and have to be maintained: but it only goes between two stations. There’s not that much to it. How long can things take?
So for two days this week I cycled to Waterloo (I work at home on Wednesdays) which is the best way to get in anyway, for all the usual reasons why cycling is best1. But lately I’ve fallen out of the habit. To break myself back in gently (in other words, to give myself a rest from it today, or out of sheer laziness), I decided to chance public transport today.
I’m a great fan of public transport generally, of course: but there are times and services that… don’t show it in its best light, let’s say. The North London Line is one that has a bad reputation at best: indeed, the aforementioned Disgruntled one has written about it in the past. Yet gettting that line to Highbury and Islington and then the Victoria Line to Vauxhall for the last leg to Wimbledon seemed the best alternative route for me.
You’ll have guessed, since I’m writing this, that it was not.
The North London Line is characterised by infrequent, jam-packed services, and it deserves the characterisation. Don’t get the idea that this was a surprise to me: I knew perfectly well what it would be like. What do you think was the biggest prod to get me back onto my bike?
So that wasn’t really the problem (though the difficulty of seeing the station name signs when you’re jammed in standing up makes it extra hard for the infrequent user to be sure they are at the correct station). No, the problem was my old friend2 the Victoria Line.
It was, in short, fucked.
So I got on that curious bit of non-Underground underground line that also runs out of Highbury and Islington (and that I can’t remember the name of), and got a train to Moorgate. Thence by Northern Line to London Bridge and Jubilee to Waterloo. I left home at about 8:15 (significantly later than I originally intended to, admittedly) and the train from Waterloo pullled into Wimbledon at 9:35. Bah!
1. Exercise, knowing fairly exactly when you’re going to get there, and not being at the mercy of the transport network chief among them.
2. Before I lived in Hackney I lived in Walthamstow. You get on at the start of the line (and thus are almost guaranteed a seat) plonk yourself down, open your book, and don’t look up until Vauxhall.
Sleepwalking into a police state
I’m thinking of declaring the 29th of March 2006 ‘[tag]Freedom Day[/tag]‘, because it is the day that freedom died; or at least started to.
Maybe I’m being over-dramatic — even melodramatic — in these posts; but I don’t think so.
The House of Lords has been doing sterling work in standing up to the [tag]ID Cards bill[/tag], as have the few sane voices in the Commons: Liberal Democrats, some Tories, and a few brave Labour rebels. But yesterday the Lords accepted a ‘compromise’: from 2008, when we get or renew a passport, our details will be placed on the [tag]National Identity Register[/tag]. However, we will have the option of opting out of getting an [tag]Identity Card[/tag].
Err, excuse me? Is it possible that their lordships have totally missed the point? The database is the whole problem. The database is the thing we can’t step back from. The database is the single point of failure. An identity card — just a card with some personal information, such as our parents or grandparents had during the second world war — would be bad: but the real problem in the modern age is that the card itself is just a key to the database1.
What were they thinking of? For that matter what were the Commons thinking of in letting this through, and what were the government thinking of in introducing it in the first place? Are these people so dazzled by power — is the Labour party so intoxicated by its brief2, unfamiliar taste of it — that they can think only of exercising it in more and more repressive and restrictive ways?
Welcome to the police state, people: maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.
And while it might not be the end of the world — many people all through history and into the present have had to live under far worse conditions than we can expect here in Britain — it is the end of something we might call the British Dream. The idea of Britain as one of the oldest modern democracies, governed by ‘the Mother of Parliaments’; of Britain as any kind of bastion of freedom: that idea died a bit yesterday. And it will die a little more today, as the legislation is passed; and a little bit more in the future. It is dying by pieces; we may not live to see it choking its last breath out in the gutters; but our children will. And by the time that last gasp happens, it will be too late to do anything about it.
I only hope that our children will be able to find some way to resurrect it.
1.Perhaps not just a key to the database: presumably a smartcard, it will actually be able to hold a lot of data itself.
2.Even at nine years it seems pretty brief to me. Especially compared to what came before. Though even Thatcher never tried anything like this.
[tags]ID Cards, police state, freedom, uk government, politics, single point of failure[/tags]
Stanslaw Lem
Just heard on Radio 4 that Stanslaw Lem has died. He was 84.
I’ve only read Solaris, but I recall it as being very good.
[tags]books, writers, stanislaw lem[/tags]