Andrew Marr and Journalism

I have been reading Andrew Marr's Book entitled "My trade" off and on for the last year. For those of you who are unaware he is a British political journalist.

His book is all about journalism and although I haven't read much of it one of the quotes in his history of journalism resonated through the years with some of the points I have expanded on in the relationship between the press and government.

W. T. Stead was a Victorian editor described by Andrew as a bearded, blazing eyed and riotously sexual editor of among others the Northern Echo and The Pall Mall Gazette. In 1886 he had this to say about what he called government by journalism:

I am but a comparatively young journalist, but I have seen Cabinets upset, ministers driven into retirement, laws repealed, great social reform initiated, Bills transformed, estimates remodelled, programmes modified, Acts passed, general nominated, governors appointed, armies sent hither and thither, ware proclaimed and war averted, by the agency of newspapers.

-W. T. Stead 1886

That was in 1886 when the general populace still respected government and politicians. One can only surmise that since then the press have become more powerful, where today entire elections can be won or lost on the front page of the Sun newspaper(1992 general election - election day headline "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.").

Next year there will be a general election, which way will the press vote?

Which brings me onto Andrew Marr himself and how he asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown whether he used prescription painkillers in a recent interview. I thought I would analyse this question and the journalism behind it.

Before we get to the question itself we have to decide whether it is correct to ask a question about the prime ministers health. In the 'for'corner we should be entitled to ask any question if it impacts on his ability to do the job, as in the extreme he could take this country to war. Although you could argue that he could not take this country to war by himself and therefore his individual health is immaterial.

In the 'against' corner, his personal life is his own business, just because he is prime minister doesn't mean that every single detail of his life should be public knowledge. After all would we want to know that the prime minister is constipated and might not be fully concentrating in a cabinet meeting? There is also the argument that why should we expect our politicians to be supermen without any fault. What do we want a human being or a robot?

There is an implied contract of trust between the electorate and the government that the prime minister is fit to govern at any time. Even if this contract is weakened should the press act as final arbiter?

I think it can be safely assumed that asking the simple question are you fit, well and capable to carry out your role as prime minister is a valid question. However this is not what Andrew Marr asked, he asked:

"something everybody has been talking about in the Westminster village... A lot of people in this country use prescription painkillers and pills to help them get through. Are you one of them?"

Some technical points first. The "Westminster village" is what most of us would describe as the rumour mill. The use of the word "use" which is close to drug user which had many socio - negative connotations. You use heroin but you take medication.

"Help them get through" - again suggesting that people aren't coping and giving the question an overall negative tone.

So did Andrew ask about the prime ministers health or did he imply that the prime minister was not competent to do the job?

In my opinion he chose to ask this question on his own authority because he wanted to imply that Gordon Brown was taking pain killers which meant that he was not fully capable of carrying out his duties.

It could also be described as a leading question. In answering "Yes" the prime minister would confirm much more than just that he took prescription drugs. Even if he went on to explain , it would be the initial yes that was shown on the Six O'clock news probably with an image of Gordon looking really tired from 2002 to emphasise how pain killers had effected him. Again the picture would imply a negative view of Gordon Brown. All of the negativity would be implied and may distort the reality of the situation.

After Gordon had politely told Andrew it was none of his business Andrew asked the question again. Perhaps not your finest hour Andrew.

In a guardian article interestingly a BBC spokesman is quoted as saying:

"Andrew was asking a legitimate question about the health of the leader of the country."

Was he? Or was he implying that Gordon Brown was unfit to hold office because he took pain killers? Surely if he was in pain we should be more worried if he didn't take painkillers?

References:

Andrew Marr: I have no intention of apologising over Brown question (guardian)
'I do not roll over,' says Brown(BBC)
1992 General election (wikipedia)

Asteroid attack: How would we cope? (New Scientist)

When an email like that hits your in-box you cant help but race across the desktop with your mouse pointer and click it.

The answer apparently if you want the short answer is "Not very well".

Then the article is full of more questions such as

"Should we panic?"

A. Not really, a killer impact strike would only happen once every 2000 years and the odds of hitting a populated area are even smaller.

"Can we nuke it?"

A. No, not unless we had several years warning. At the moment our early warning systems just aren't good enough. One asteroid last year was only detected 20 hours before impact. 2008 TC3 detonated over Sudan and was too small to do any damage anyway but millions of asteroids that could do some damage are out there and we are not yet tracking all of them.

The exciting questions over with, I can tell you about what the article is actually about. The US Air Force ran an exercise in 2008 where they played out a scenario where a killer asteroid was heading straight for earth. Straight out of Hollywood there were two parts of the asteroid, one heading for a splash down in the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of America and the other heading for Washington DC. Cut to people screaming and running past notable Washington monuments and running past electrical shop windows with President Obama on screen urging people to remain calm all the way via satellite from Air Force One currently flying over New Zealand.

Back to the studio where CNN have bought in whoever answered the phone first, to pretend to be an expert on asteroids / politics. "Its all the governments fault they should have seen it coming years ago. They cut funding into asteroid destruction technologies and invested in free health care for all. What were they thinking?"

Sorry, digressed suddenly there, too much thinking about life according to a Hollywood movie script.

Commenting on the scenario outcome which demonstrated that the US was woefully unprepared for such a disaster Peter Garreston (organiser) had this to say:

"As a taxpayer, I would appreciate my air force taking a look at something that would be certainly as bad as nuclear terrorism in a city, and potentially a civilisation-ending event."

He wasn't just talking about the X-factor rejects from the first round who with their off key singing destroyed several world heritage sites yesterday.

Simon Cowell responded with these comments directly to the planet killer asteroid:

"I am just not convinced by your planet killing performance, I just didn't feel it. Your just too small this year, you need to come back next year... Danni Yes or no?"

Normal service is being resumed ... please hold while we connect you to sanity.

US Air force 0 - Asteroid 1. Final Score.

Anyway, moving on. Having pretty much determined that being able to avert disaster was pretty much impossible the assembled team turned to disaster management. Somebody had forgotten to get coffee from the supermarket and everybody knows you cant deal with a disaster without some serious black coffee.

The primary concern in the disaster management scenario was to stop the public who were in the path of the asteroid from panicking. In my opinion the only way you could stop the public panicking is to shut the media up. You only have to look back to the credit crunch to see how good the media are at proclaiming the end is nigh. Their doom scenarios would cause the public to panic within about three seconds although you might have 30 seconds of grace while they come up with a suitable two word caption for the screen.

Cue movie voice. "It was a time of darkness, the media had the biggest story ever, the story to end all stories, the story to end it all..."

A bland boardroom is shown on screen with a number of men and women in power suits.

Random media type 1: Yes, but what's the caption.
RMT2: How about "earth crunch"
RMT4: Sounds too much like "credit crunch", crunch doesn't spread fear as much as it used to.
RMT3: How about "Armageddon"
RMT2: No, that is only understandable by the AB1 demographic and its only one word.
RMT1: How about "Fatal Friday"
RMT3: No sounds like another stock market crash.
RMT2: How about"End of the World, as we know it"
RMT1: Too long it will appear over the station logo.
RMT4: How about "We're screwed"
RMT1: Well its direct, two words, but it just doesn't have any zing.
RMT3: How about "Rocky: The final return".
RMT2: No, that's already been copyrighted for the movie of the disaster.
RMT1: I know, how about: "Mankind's Annihilation"
RMT2: Works for me.
RMT4: Excellent.
RMT1: OK that's agreed, now lets talk sponsorship, are we thinking Coke or Nike...

Back in the reality created by the US Air Force which one can only assume didn't include a simulation of the media machine.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts who has also probably been watching two many Hollywood blockbusters suggested this scenario.

"I'm picturing people panicking and driving the wrong way on the freeway, screaming 'Oh my god, it's going to kill us!'"

We are not just talking republican policies on health care here either (little current affairs reference for my American audience). In true Hollywood fashion he forgot to mention the two teenage virgins by the side of the road getting busy as they certainly don't want to die a virgin. I am thinking American Pie meets Armageddon, now that would be worth going to see.

The outcome of the exercise was a realisation that there is no asteroid emergency plan beta 6 and Bruce Willis is not on 24/7 asteroid destruction call out. However the earlier the warning the better the response would be.

Which brings us nicely on to early warning systems. The good news is that two out of the three early warning systems are in Arizona where during the months of July and September you cant see a thing because of the cloud cover. Excellent, I can see that makes everyone feel better. Lets hope no asteroids turn up at that time of the year, perhaps they will just leave a calling card and come back later.

Even better news, the US Air Force have imagined a scenario where an asteroid could start world war 3: The final showdown. If an asteroid detonated over a politically sensitive area like the middle east then it might be interpreted as a nuclear attack and governments may retaliate.

Of course NASA has put a lot of money into funding projects to track potential planet killers but in a selfish approach they only focus on the Northern Hemisphere which is perhaps a bit short sighted as a planet killer in the Southern Hemisphere could still destroy all life on the planet as we know it.

NASA and the European space agencies are working on it though, so hopefully things will improve in the future.

NASA are also working on an Asteroid ship which will help defend the planet. Exclusively, here now I can reveal the working prototype:

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination part 2

The spiders web that is Oxfords road network.

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination

I find myself strangely fascinated by coloured lines intertwined together, especially if it is a pattern based on something man made or familiar to me.

This is a hand drawn colour line copy of a 1914 clearing house railway junction diagram of the area around clapham junction (the big confusing area over on the left). If you want to you can compare it to the original over here on wikipedia.

Maybe I have discovered a whole new art form with which you can experiment with on any map or satelitte photgraphy, just drawing designs. Today the web tommorrow Tate Britain.

Misconstruing BBC news article part 2

Wireless power system shown off

Well surely someone should have turned it on for the demonstration as

Wireless power system shown on

would have more effectively demonstrated its capabilities.

I am probably the only one in the universe that finds that even slightly funny... I shall get my coat.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

I re-read this book recently, it is a work of fiction which introduces the premise / theory that the environmental lobby is just another method by the establishment to keep us in a perpetual state of fear, following on from the cold war came global warming. This state of fear creates spending and political power but the book using scientific references to support the fictional plot suggests that global warming is at best inconclusive and suggests that we are yet to learn so much about are environment that any theory about global warming is little more than a guess.

However as the character in the book suggests just because you don't agree with global warming doesn't mean that you don't want pollution controls and CO2 reduction. I have to say Michael Crichton creates a compelling argument. One of the best simple comparisons is that despite all the investment and technology we cannot accurately predict the weather beyond 5-10 days so how can we consider a prediction for a 100 years hence to be accurate.

There are loads of other rational arguments in the book but with the alternative view I find it difficult to believe that global warming is a global conspiracy. I suppose one of the problems is that until it happens we wont know whether everyone is right or wrong.

The precautionary principle also mentioned in the book means that if there is the slightest change of the catastrophic scenario occurring then we should not take the action that would cause it. Therefore the precautionary principle would suggest that because scientists have found a potential risk we should do everything to eliminate it. However you could use the precautionary principle to say we should live 50 ft underground all the time because every time you go outside there is a risk of a plane falling on your head.

Then I reach the thought in my head that says "Do I believe in global warming?". Then my second thoughts kicks in and realises the framing of the question suggests there is a belief factor rather than relying on cold, hard, undeniable facts and truths.

"Do I believe in doing something to protect the environment?". No facts required this time but how do you protect an environment, again it raises in the book that you can only manage an environment and we still don't know how to manage land to protect something. The ecosystems around us are ever changing we cant protect and preserve but we can manage it in a direction. In the books it talks about nature not having a balance but oscillating between different factors as species rise and fall.

Finally the book finishes with the premise that they should set up a new environmental group which basically looks for problems and fixes it, so take land management, you accept you do not know how to do it, so you take 8 similar parcels of land, have a different management policy in each one. Try things out get them evaluated by outside consultants and by trial and error find out what land management policies work and don't work.

One character talks about scientific journal authors talking about simulations as if they were real world data and suggest that such articles should be labelled "Warning: Computer Simulation - May be erroneous and unverifiable" and then suggests a label for newspaper articles as well "Warning speculation - may be fact free".

I have long argued about labels for news articles, some kind of evaluation of the source:

How about this the Zephryist- Morton coding
(the highest number would be taken in each code)

8 - Video evidence
7 - Sound evidence
6 - Multiple eye witness accounts
5 - conflicting eye witness accounts with some commonality
4 - Single eye witness account
3 - written evidence
2 - Multiple eye witness conflicting accounts
1 - 2nd hand source no eye witness accounts
0 - opinion only no verifiable witness 1 or second hand

4 - Known as giving previously reliable evidence
3 - No previous record of evidence
2 - Questionable record of giving reliable evidence
1 - interpretation of known facts with own opinion on conclusions or extrapolation
0 - own opinion - few known facts with open interpretation.

3 - Expert / professional in field
2 - Media expert in field
1 - Amateur in field
0 - Unknown knowledge status in field.

So with this you could evaluate any news source such as the BBC news website which would be a 8 by 4 by 2 site, one of the highest rating with video evidence, known to give reliable evidence in the past, and with media experts.

You could also rate a blog, my highest rating would be a 4 by 4 by 1 unless you felt I was merely giving opinion where my blog would be rated 4 by 1 by 1. Of course with a fully functioning system the ratings would be given by peers.

The beauty of the system is that the lower the number the more questionable the source, it would help any reader instantly be able to separate fact from fiction without having to read pages of previous articles and compare them with other sources to determine the reliability, with a peer reviewed system other people have already done the leg work.

You could go further and break down the rating system more by breaking each section into a series of questions almost an acid test of reliability.

I may return to this some day or like many other posts on my blog it may just be a random thought that sits on the shelf collecting dust.

The misconstruing BBC news article game

I may have invented a new game. All you need is to look on the news pages of the BBC, I use the top 10 article lists. Pick an article title and come up with an alternative story behind the headline.

So for example from today:

WHO warns swine flu 'unstoppable'

I did not realise the rock band "the Who" were experts in pandemic viruses.

I may post some more as I see them.

Firefox 3.5

Well firefox 3.5 is finally here and to be fair about time too. i was beginning to loose patience with 3.0 as java never seemed to work well.

Having used firefox for the last couple of days it seems slightly faster. There is a nice feature similar to IE where you can add a tab from the tabs which is nice.

So first impressions are definitely good.

Sorry for ... adverts in london on tubes, trains and railway stations

You may like me have been puzzled by a couple of adverts appearing all over London with white text on a back background, with a symbol of Eros in the corner or more precisely the London Evening Standard logo.

The adverts are white text on a black background and are in various different text versions:

Sorry for losing touch
Sorry for being negative
Sorry for taking you for granted
Sorry for being complacent
Sorry for being predictable

The text is so generic that it could relate to a lot of different organisations, I guess the advertising agency are banking on the fact that Londoners will recognise the Evening Standard symbol. They have missed a trick though as I thought it was one of those adverts where you had to look up the text on line. However you do that and you find nothing. It was only when I remembered the symbol was for the Evening Standard that I got the hint, but then even when I went to the Evening Standard website I found nothing about it. Some missed opportunities there, some people will see the adverts and not even connect them to the Evening Standard.

Then there is another set of white text on a red background with a rose in the corner:

Sorry for putting Gordon Brown in Charge
Sorry for the MPs second home allowance
Sorry for the Iraq War
Sorry for Youtube announcements
Sorry for Hazel Blears

Then there is a third set of whit text on a blue / green background with a black horse in the corner:

Sorry for the credit crunch
Sorry for the housing crisis
Sorry for unfair overdraft charges
Sorry for investment banking bonuses
Sorry for a precipitous fall in our share price
Sorry for everything really

OK I might have made the second and third group of adverts up but it might be a good idea, anyone from the labour party or the banking sector (Lloyds was the bank if you didn't catch the colour / logo references) if your reading this or perhaps someone from McCann Erickson who came up with the campaign, feel free to borrow my ideas.

Back to the original Evening Standard adverts, this is unprecedented media territory with a media outlet effectively apologising for the style of reporting that I have long railed against. A newspaper is now suggesting that they might be positive about the news, be less sensationalist and maybe just maybe, more socially responsible. It has been a brave new world for the print media ever since blogging came on the scene. Is this change of heart driven by pure economic necessity or is it a drive to raise editorial or reporting standards and the start of an evolution in the print media?

UK Star Wars Day - May the fourth be with you

Yes soon you can amuse colleagues and friends by greeting them with the traditional greeting on the UK Star Wars day (May 4th)

May the fourth be with you.

Earth Day - 22 April

Today April 22 is Earth Day and in the usual way I find out about these things it was because Google has redesigned their logo for the day.

According to wikipedia earth day is a day to inspire awareness and appreciation for the earth's environment. First observed in 1970 now it hardly breaks the news (at least round here, except google of course).

So lets take a second and think of something beautiful in our environment that we might want to protect for future generations.

For me the humble cherry tree and the humble bumble bee, two things that are natures marvels and without protection, life would be a little bit less bearable. I for one would not want to be old telling my grandchildren that in my youth we had cherry trees with blossom just like confetti and we had bees that went buzz and made honey. If that future comes to pass, as an old man I could not bear to speak of what precious things we took for granted and lost on the tarmac path to progress. In my old age I want to sit under the cherry tree letting the blossom fall against my wrinkled skin as the bees buzz round the granchildren and me. I would want to reflect on the sea change in the first few years of the 21st century that lead to sustainable growth policies which worked in harmony with nature.

Think Tank - New ideas for the 21st Century - Your call up the civil action squad (The Sunday Times)

Charlie Edwards writing for the times suggests it is time for a civil protection volunteer force (CVPF). I have to say the name is quite important and the acronym even more so, I may have to think of something more suitable by the end of the article.

Not a month goes by where there is not an emergency in the UK. In almost every case emergencies threaten to overwhelm local and national resources, whether it be the emergency services or local councils. Most emergencies are dealt with by bringing in all available staff and working long hours. In the worst case with a prolonged disaster or emergency operation this would not work. Most organisation can only deal with an incident over the short term until national or more resources can be brought in. Alternatively due to the stretched resources emergency services sometimes only deal with life threatening emergencies.

According to Charlie this is why politicians from across the political spectrum are calling for a new civil protection force. A network or organisation of volunteers that are prepared for the threats and risks to the population.

I think Charlie has hit the nail right on the head. I work for a government organisation, part of which deals with emergency situations such as the snowstorms in Jan / Feb. I work in HR, while the snow storms were raging and one part of the organisation was struggling to cope with the unfolding crisis I was just struggling to get to work and all I did when I got there was to do the same as I ever do. In fact if there was an even worse crisis, as far as I know there is no official plan to redeploy me to the operational side of the organisation. There is a staff helpline to call in case of emergency but I have no idea what I might be told apart from to report to my nearest local office where I would, I guess, be given a job to do but as I am untrained in any useful task how much use would I actually be?

So my first point is that any public sector organisation which has any kind of an involvement in an emergency situation should have plans to redeploy all their staff to where the operational demand is greatest. In a sense all staff should have a secondary post which they would deploy to in a given emergency. Admittedly you might have a different post for each type of emergency but when the call goes out either in advance or as it happens, on national tv and radio you would know exactly what you would have to do and where to report to. Even if this was done on a voluntary basis it would double the capacity of these organisations to deal with incidents.

What Charlie suggests could double the capacity again with the a team of volunteers specifically trained to deal with emergency situations. The real fourth emergency service. I have been thinking about this and in a sense it is a civilian army. You might have the following platoons or units.

Command and Control: High level command and control officers to direct the volunteer response and liaise with other agencies.

General grunts: Units of extra people who would be an extra pair of hands, they could help out with anything.

Engineering corp: Builders, plumbers, electricians and anyone with any building or labouring experience.

Medical corp: all of the usual doctors, nurses, first aiders etc.

IT corp: Special IT units to repair IT infrastructure

Transportation corp: A vast fleet of lorries and drivers that could be co-opted in an emergency. Also cars, boats, helicopters and planes.

All of the corps could be trained to a basic level such as first aid and basic disaster management perhaps with specific courses for each type of incident. The Command and control and team leaders would receive specialist training courses to prepare them for emergency management. In terms of training compare the corps with the TA, every member would given up say 15 days a year to complete training.

The role of the corps would be simple, protect life and limb, support the emergency services and restore critical infrastructure and supply lines quickly. Some of this would include supervising other volunteer organisations with the command and control units representing and co-coordinating all volunteer help. On this, having just one contact for all volunteer help will make it easier for the emergency services and easier to co-ordinate a volunteer response to incidents.

This would strengthen our response to any incident and increase the safety and security of our communities. Ultimately it would save lives and perhaps make us appreciate the emergency services for the hard jobs they do and perhaps even help us to take responsibility for our own actions in an emergency so that the emergency services can deal with those really in need.

And finally, all we need to do is come up with a name and an acronym, how about the Civil response Emergency Volunteers (CREV). OK may need to work on that one some more.

One last thing, count me in, I will be happy to be part of the command and control unit to help supervise the deployment of CREV in an emergency.

Petrol, major rail projects and poor government policy

Gordon Brown is busy at the G20 summit trying to push a spending agenda to bring the world out of recession.

On the same day Gordon is saying that, there are two minor stories to suggest that he might need to get his own house in order before telling the world what to do. This is not to suggest I don't agree with Gordon's plan to use government spending to boost the economy but that doesn't stop me pointing out what are really some quick wins that have been missed.

After all the role of the voter is to hold the government to account.

Fuel Duty

Today there was a 2p rise in fuel duty which had been planned all the way back in November at the beginning of our darkest months / downturn / credit crunch whatever those media people want to call it today. I fundamentally agree that the price of fuel should reflect the true cost of car use in terms of the environment and emissions.

What I would argue is that the duty rise should have been postponed by six months. This is coming at a time when consumers and businesses are already suffering from a squeeze on their finances. This is just a kick in the teeth.

It is also money that will go straight into the treasury rather than be used on the high street. Think of it as a Vat rate cut in reverse, if you reverse the argument that the government used for the Vat cut then surely putting on the fuel duty raise will take money out of people's pockets and therefore stifle economic growth.

Taxation is often about smoke and mirrors but this is perhaps a step too far.

Major rail projects

A big aspect of the agenda is to invest in capital projects, several of which could be major transportation and railway projects. The good news is that the government nationalised the infrastructure of UK railways some time ago. So all it would have to do is loan money at very favourable rates which could be spent on major projects. There are lots of projects to spend the money on as well, several projects are in the planning stages and the government could bring several forward or just create new projects. The railways will happily make use of any money that the government cares to give it.

So are they doing it? The article would suggest probably not. Jarvis one of the main railway contractors who work on infrastructure projects has just cut 450 jobs citing network rail spending reductions as a trigger. Network rail have delayed projects and reduced spending causing a downturn in business for Jarvis and therefore Jarvis are having to trim there business to suit the new economic climate.

So if the government are not putting money into planned existing capital projects where exactly are they going spending this money they keep on talking about?

Great British Disaster movies

Yesterday I may have perhaps suggested there was no such thing as a genre of British disaster movies, so here are a few suggestions that might make up the Genre.

Great British End of the world / Disaster movies - A list in no specific order of anything in particular

Flood (2007) - Its coming straight for us.

A Freak North Sea super storm threatens London leaving Robert Carlyle to save the day.

28 days later (2002)

Virus sweeps the UK wiping out most of the UK population, this is the story of survivors

The Day of the triffids (1962)

99% of the population go blind and rabid aliens (experimental plants in the book) take advantage and start attacking people.

28 weeks later (2007) - It all begins again.

Robert Carlyle in another disaster movie has survived the original version of the virus from 28 days later (he wasn't in the original film) gets rescued only for the virus to escape yet again.

Shaun of the dead (2004) - It's just one of those days when you're feeling a little...dead.

A now undisputed cult horror comedy, British and best, Hollywood could not write and certainly would not produce a movie like this. No list would be complete without Shaun of the dead.

Population of London catch a virus, die and then return from the dead to eat the living. Shaun and friends must survive and escape.

Conclusion

After that I cant really think of any more British disaster movies and five films hardly makes a genre, however if anyone can think of any more I shall add them to the list, over to you Bobbicus.

Gone in 90 Seconds (New Scientist)

In searching around for something to write an article about I return to an old favourite of "the end of the world". This is one that keeps popping up every so often and is about how susceptible our electricity transmission grid is to solar storms. Its not just the electricity network either, its satellites and communication systems.

Of course there is a bit of movie fake realism to the start of the article, you can imagine movie voice over man coming on and saying:

"It was a time when our best friend became our worst enemy... it was a time when the life giving light became the plague of darkness...mankind at its darkness hour... a future in which people fear the dawn... Solar Storm 2012 coming soon to a screen near you. Certificate 15 with mild violence and on screen nudity."

Any way ... returning to reality and the new scientist article they have a much more sensible scene setter:

"It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south and their fascination is short - lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs (note from zephyrist: is that as opposed to gas bulbs?) dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment (Another note from zephyrist: or in one word "blow"). Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds the entire eastern half of the US is without power."

Just like in Hollywood the rest of the world doesn't seem to exist as usual the world ends in New York. Seriously can a UK director not come up with an end of the world film set in Bristol or something that isn't cheesy or just a comedy. Why is the British film industry based on period dramas or rom-coms with Hugh Grant or cheap comedies or gritty low budget crime thrillers. Where is the British block buster disaster movie?

Any way back to New Scientist again, rather than just a ramble through a myriad of thoughts about nothing much in particular.

The article goes on to mention 3 big hits about the days and years after the solar storm when the electricity network fails in the US:

4-10 years for the US to recover
72 hours of healthcare remaining
30 days of coal left (although if no power grid why would you need coal for power stations)

A Solar storm will spew out plasma balls from the surface of the sun which will hurtle towards earth and create a massive interference with the earth's magnetic field which in turn induce currents in wires of the electricity grid. Which will in effect overload the system blowing virtually every transformer in the system. With few spares and every transformer needing to be replaced it could take up to 12 months to manufacture and replace them. In the mean time how would we survive without a fully functioning grid network. Every aspect of our lives from fuel, transport, food, healthcare, water and heat depend on the electricity grid. It would be the end of the world as we know it.

Such events have happened before all be it before technology was so embedded in life. In 1859 the Carrrington event disrupted telegraph networks across the globe. In 1989 six million people went without electricity for 9 hours in Quebec during a minor storm.

Solar storms follow a cycle and the next maximum after this current period of calm is expected in 2012 and the question that new scientist asks is are we prepared?

We do have NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer(ACE) which can give us up to 15 minutes of warning before a solar storm hits, just enough time to minimise the effects of a solar storm on an electricity grid. However, ACE is coming to the end of its life, it becomes less reliable as time goes on and eventually it will fail. With no imminent replacement on the cards our early warning system would be gone and we might loose our last chance to avoid planetary disaster and the end of the first technological age of mankind.

Until then lets face the moonlight and dance...

February and the Customer Service Manual

February

It has to be said I cant remember much of February, I have worked two Saturdays out of the last three weeks, my full time day job, two evenings and for the last week I have had a really rotten cold. It amazed me quite how much snot a human can produce, at its peak I could have been selling two pints of snot a day.

Anyway I can now feel myself returning to normal and hopefully march should not be so bad.

The Customer Service Manual

I was in homebase shopping for light bulbs in my ongoing campaign to replace all the light bulbs in my house for energy efficient bulbs. The campaign is going well, all normal bulbs have been replaced and at homebase I secured replacements for the candle bulbs in my art deco lamp which just leaves some GU10 halogens and some R50 spots to be replaced. All can be replaced its just a question of finding a shop that sells the right bulbs.

Hence my trip to homebase which I have to say if you want a 60W replacement bulb which is a standard energy efficient stick then they have enough to refurbish Buckingham Palace. Everywhere you turned there seemed to be a bottomless 1 m square bucket. If that is repeated in every homebase in the UK then homebase must have billions of them, which given they last ten years is a bit pointless. Have I uncovered the great European Lightbulb mountain, are they unable to turn off the machine that makes them and every shop in the UK is having to hide them instore to avoid a national calamity?

If you want any other kind of bulb they had a few bits and pieces but no GU10 replacements or R50 replacements. Eventually I gave up and headed to the till with two candle bulbs, a plant and a pair of oven gloves.

The Checkout assistant had obviously been on the mandatory customer service course and was well briefed on the Customer Service Manual. The Conversation went as follows:

Checkout: Did you find everything you needed today?
Me: No, I was looking for some lightbulbs but your selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.
Checkout: Yes our selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.

Great, so the trick is to agree with the customer. The manual probably states sympathise or affirm the customer's comment to give them validation.

Although in this case they actually achieved less than nothing. Good Customer Service might have been to ask me what I had been looking for and would I like them to order some for me, or hold some when the next order came in. No, they let a slightly peeved customer walk off into the sunset. I will pop back there another time to see if they have the light bulbs back in stock but chances are they wont and so I will just have to order them off the internet.

If you are trying to improve customer service a half hearted by the book attempt is worse than nothing at all.

Snow watch snow day

Wow for the first time since I moved to Oxfordshire I have been unable to get to work by public transport. It was touch and go yesterday with a bus finally turning up. Today the bus turned up got half way there and then the bus drivers says the service is being suspended due to the heavy snow and it was heavy and they would be turning back so we would not get stranded. I would think I must have been on one of the last running buses in Oxfordshire this morning. Services were suspended at 0945 and I think I got back about 0900.

"Updated 06/02/09 0945

All services except the Oxford Tube have been suspended due to heavy snow."

-Oxfordshire Stagecoach buses website.

So here I am having a snow day, so who knows what I will get upto. Probably more posts later.

What a snow week

Well what a week it has been, finally got a solid three inches of snow last night, lots of good powder snow to wake up to this morning. It was the good fall of snow that was forecast in the linked article. Ok so Oxfordshire only made 3 inches but it was still good and who knows what tonight will bring.

Some useful tips from the AA in that article:

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means you are on ice."

-AA spokesperson

Of course there are other options that can be considered in such an eventuality if you are not on ice:

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means all that nagging about driving too fast by your passenger has finally burst your eardrum."

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means that your car is flying into open space having just driven over a cliff edge obscured by snow."

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means that the RAF have just airlifted another damn fool that tried to drive to work in 10 inches of snow."

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means that the hamster has run out of energy."

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means that you have adapted and installed skies on your car."

"If you are driving along and you cannot hear your wheels turning that probably means that your dreaming of the days when the roads were gritted."

I could go on, but I wont. By the way the standard disclaimer applies, these sounded funny in my head by the time they escaped out onto the internet they may have been the equivalent of a pair of Bermuda shorts in a snow storm. Just not funny or cool.

Then Barry Gromett, forecaster at the Met Office, indicates he needs to go back to college when he suggests:

"We're certainly not out of the woods yet"

I personally wasn't aware I was in a wood. Perhaps he means that next we will get a heavy wood storm with logflakes as big as your fist. Mr Cliche himself goes on to talking about fighting and cooking:

"It looks like the cold air will win the battle and it's a recipe for some more snow. "

The Winston Churchill / Gordon Ramsey approach to weather forecasting. We shall fight snow on the beaches, we shall fight snow on the landing grounds, we shall fight snow in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight snow in the hills; we shall never surrender unless you live in Gloucestershire in which case you surrender when you run out of salt. The Gordon Ramsey recipe approach of seasoning the snow with a bit of salt and some grit for texture just wont work any more. Plus the Gordon Ramsey approach of shouting at and shaming the snow is just a waste of time .

That it for now, I am off to battle the camera for some snow pictures which may be a recipe for blogging success.

More Snow heading our way

From Wednesday night through Thursday and Friday we can expect more heavy snow including a low risk of an exceptionally severe weather event in Oxfordshire, whatever that means. Although indications would suggest that it means between 10-20 cm of snow.

Watch this space. Photos from the early part of the week to follow soon.

Cold snap with possible snow showers ahead

Now we are moving into the traditional snow season the met office is making an early forecast for snow showers across the UK on Monday and a moderate chance of a severe weather event for the east coast.