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welcome to simon's blog. on it i'm mainly commenting on the news stories of the day - mostly i'm commenting on whether i think it really was a true story or whether it just seemed to be something put in the programme or the paper just to pad out the space on a slow news day, but since it's my blog, i reserve the right to put my own articles in it too.
These are my most recent blog posts; you can also subscribe to an rss feed 
if that's your thing:
Animated Graffiti
http://www.vimeo.com/993998Generally I don't post links to other creative work or whatever here, because that isn't really the purpose of this blog.
But I thought this video, made by Graffiti artist Blu was so absolutely brilliant I had to share it:
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
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CCTV boom 'failing to cut crime' - 6 May 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7384843.stm"Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned. Det Ch Insp Mike Neville said the system was an 'utter fiasco' - with only 3% of London's street robberies being solved using security cameras".
It just so happens that the other week I did have the idea that if it could be demonstrated that CCTV genuinely does reduce crime - especially violent crime - then I'd modify my objection to it. So I carefully constructed a freedom of information act request to try to get figures going back over the last 10 years to find out if CCTV had made any difference - basically, to compare convictions for violent crime with and without CCTV evidence, and to track the level of violent crime over the years of the gradual proliferation of the cameras:
Dear West Midlands Police,I also offered several easy get-out options if it would have made answering the query easier.
I would be grateful if you could supply me with some information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act:
- Number of reported instances of 'violent crime' (muggings, robberies, assaults etc) in public areas (including 'private public space' such as eg Bull Ring centres & Paradise Forum etc) of Birmingham city centre (as defined as being within the divisional areas of Steelhouse Lane and Digbeth police stations) during 1987.
- Number of convictions secured for above offences during the same year.
- Number of reported instances of 'violent crime' (muggings, robberies, assaults etc) in public areas (including 'private public space' such as eg Bull Ring centres & Paradise Forum etc) of Birmingham city centre (as defined as being within the divisional areas of Steelhouse Lane and Digbeth police stations) during the years 1997 - 2007, broken down by year.
- Number of instances of violent crime in public areas (as defined above) viewed and recorded by operatives on CCTV routinely accessed or operated by West Midlands Police during the years 1997 - 2007, broken down by year.
- Total number of convictions for offences in (3) above, broken down by year as above.
- Number of convictions for offences in (3) above where CCTV evidence was submitted in evidence to the court, again broken down by year.
- Number of acquittals for offences in (3) above where CCTV evidence was submitted, again broken down by year.
Here is their reply:
Your request for information, received 15 April 2008, concerning violent crime and CCTV, has now been considered.Or to put it in simpler terms, "we don't actually know if CCTV makes a difference, and it's too much like effort to look at the records and find out".
Firstly West Midlands Police can only provide data back to 1995.
Secondly, West Midlands Police do not specify whether a crime has occurred in a 'public place' or not. We do have a marker for 'public place violence', but this does not record all violent crime. This marker is used
Thirdly we would not be able to tell whether crimes have been recorded on CCTV, unless we have used it as evidence. However our databases of recorded crime do not record which evidence was used. We therefore cannot easily identify where CCTV evidence was utilised.
The only way to identify those crimes would be examine the records for each individual crime. Please note that researching each individual crime file would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12 (1)). For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.
However, the Home Office does have some statistics on violent crime nationally, without necessarily recording whether CCTV has made a difference to the conviction; according to their published statistics violent crime nationally has been on the rise since 1999, with an apparent levelling off in 2005/06 (no figures there for 2006/07 or 07/08).
If the ability to have one's movements be closely monitored throughout the whole area of a city centre is so good 'for our protection', why hasn't there been a clear decline in violent crime over the years that CCTV has proliferated ?
Was this a story or a non-story: story
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What kind of Facebook person are you? - 30 April 2008
![[List of Facebook groups a certain unknown person is a member of]](/birmingham/db/images/albert/162.jpg)
When I first started using Facebook I very quickly noticed that in most of the Facebook groups in existence have very little actual traffic in them; basically, most Facebook groups seem to be treated by people as badges to pin on to the sides of their profile pages to tell people a little bit about what they're into, what kind of person they are.
A friend recently emailed me a screenshot from a profile page he'd recently come across. It is reproduced here without further comment…
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Proud to be English... - 25 April 2008
Last week on the Stirrer forum I asked - about St George's day - "wouldn't it be nice if England's national symbol actually existed?".We all know the story of St George & the Dragon (as my mother will tell you, I was once the dragon in a primary school production of it); most of us probably assume the story's a myth, but amongst the English at large, how many know anything of the real St George? The patron saint of England is surely English isn't he? Isn't George about as English a name as you can get? But in fact he was born in what is now Turkey, and died in Palestine in the 3rd century AD. Not only did he never come anywhere near England during his life, but England as we know it didn't even exist. At least St David really was from Wales, St Patrick worked in Ireland, and there's the legend of the relics of St Andrew being brought to Scotland centuries after his death.
But when I think about it further I realise St George - or rather our adoption of him as the patron saint of England - is a perfect symbol of Englishness. Our adoption of him as our patron saint sums up everything which has ever been great about England. Why? Let's take a look at some of our other 'national symbols'.
Take what used to be said to be our national dish - the Great British Fish n Chips. What could be more English than that? Erm, potatoes. About as English as a bald eagle, they were brought over here from America by Walter Raleigh. The idea of cutting them up into fingers and deep frying them? Belgian. Or we could talk about the new national dish. Erm, curry. Or is it a kebab? Or Chinese takeaway?
Never mind, look what we've given the world as our gift - the English language. What we think of as the 'old' English words, which are usually described as Saxon (from Germany), are actually Dutch; Friesian to be exact. Ever heard the phrase 'double Dutch'? The derivation being about how close, but not quite understandable, to English Dutch is. Then of course there are all the Norman, ie French, words from the middle part of our language's history. Most of our modern English idioms come from either Shakespeare (the working class lad from Warwickshire), or the King James bible. Shakespeare actually wrote most of his plays not for good queen Bess, as we are always led to believe, but King James. That's King James the Sixth - of Scotland.
What about the great English musical tradition? Notwithstanding the comment Pierre Boulez once made about England having not fielded a decent composer since Purcell, we know English music started off in the middle ages. When the crusader knights came back from the Middle East bringing the exciting new exotic rhythms, scales, and instruments they found there. Which 800 years later became the roots of the great English rock & roll tradition - itself also imported from America.
"But wait", I hear you cry, "what about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, who are as we speak laying in wait buried underneath the Crystal Isle to rise again in the hour of England's greatest need"? There has been much historical speculation about the possible roots of a historical Arthur, but the legendary tales, of Arthur, Lancelot, Percival, and the Holy Grail? First written in the 12th century by Chrétien de Troyes. The French bloke.
What does this say about England, and Englishness? Coming right back to St George, and our adoption of him as our patron saint - what is great about Englishness is our cultural openness, our celebration of other cultures and traditions, our way of taking them and making them as our own - our very celebration of diversity. In fact, the way we rise above the stereotype of the island nation, far from being insular the essence of Englishness is to look for the great that is out there in the world and adopt it for ourselves. And thinking about that legend - St George, the man who slew the dragon, who championed the underdog, who fought for the oppressed against the mighty, who defended the weak.
Next April 23, I might just fly the cross of St George myself in celebration of all this!
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Comments:
simon - 15 May 2008
Bruce Lawson, a man more noted in the interweb world for his excellent advocacy for web standards & accessibility, also posted his take on England & Britishness last year.
Alison - 26 April 2008
Adopt, steal, it's all good :-)
It's one of the things I find most bizarre about nationalism in England (when you do actually find it). Foreigners go home! So that'd be...... everyone in the country then? And where are we going? Tell you what, I'll send my legs back to Ireland and one arm to Germany and one to Norway and the trunk of my body can go back to France and my head can camp out in Ludlow trying to decide if it's English or Welsh.
And don't forget tea! What could be more British than a cup of tea??!! The teafields look lovely this time of year, don't you think? I'm amazed the sheep don't eat it all.
And lo, we show our true British colours - sarcasm and self-deprecating humour :-)
I am feeling oddly compelled to discuss the weather...
Councils using 'anti-terror' laws to snoop on us - 14 April 2008
http://tinyurl.com/42v2ur"A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form [...] More than 1,000 covert surveillance operations are being launched every month to investigate petty offences such as dog fouling, under-age smoking and breaches of planning regulations. Council officers equipped with digital cameras and binoculars are spying on dog walkers".
Those of us who like to bang on about the infringement of civil liberties always talk about the possibility of abuse of legislation in terms of the possibilities of Government to use Stasi- or Zanu PF-like tactics to silence legitimate opposition, but at least - for the most part - do admit the UK, even at its worst, is highly unlikely to become like Zimbabwe or East Germany.
What we also frequently mention however is the notion of 'function creep'; where or initiatives brought in for one purpose - usually described as 'prevention of terrorism' - end up being quite convenient for other purposes, and used accordingly.
When we point the problem of function creep out, we are roundly turned on with responses such as 'oh don't be so stupid, that will never happen here', and 'if you oppose this piece of legislation you are obviously a friend of the terrorist', along with the old classic 'if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear'.
The particular bit of legislation used in this instance is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) - an Orwellian title if ever there was, since rather than 'regulate' covert surveillance it legalised it and brought it into the mainstream - which as well as being about anti-terrorism was about catching child abusers.
How ironic then that the example of function creep quoted was of somebody from the council's education department spying on a three year old.
Was this a story or a non-story: story
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Comments:
simon - 21 April 2008
you've still completely failed to read the paragraph in question (or at least understand what it actually says). & you still apparently support everything the government dreams up which takes us further in that direction.
Alec Macpherson - 21 April 2008
No, Simon. The Stasi was a monstrous tool of political repression and intimidation. Not investigating allegations of benefit fraud as this, reasonably is: the parents *knew* they were shortly about to be outwith the catchment area, and tried to find a loophole. Whether you agree with the RIPA or not, it at least provides accountability and traceability: under the system, or lack thereof, which was in place before, we simply would not have heard about it because chances are, there would have been no record.
Plus, if Poole Council were really employing Stasi tactics, the children would now be under state-care and their parents at an 'undisclosed' location undergoing 'interrogation'. Nor is the assertion that Council officers are using Police tactics, as implied by the Liberty spokesman [1], accurate. This was a gumshoe on the street corner, who did not have breaking and entering powers and did not have the authority to call in armed-police or owt like that.
But, if we have to compare practices to the Stasi, accusing me of supporting a certain [Government] line because I didn't come out in full opposition to it could apply. It is possible to express concern at increasing state-monitoring powers, and still think we have a long chalk to go before Erich Hoennecker is in charge.
[1] Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Again, holding to account of state-power is vital, but Liberty (which would not have existed in East Germany) is no more immune from the allure of power as the next self-selecting liberal. Their cases recently have included speeding cameras and frequently involve lucrative terrorist trials... long with juicy expenses... before pro bono cases such as exploited immigrant/unskilled workers (unless there's a salacious attempted deportation) or elderly in sub-standard care-homes. Style before substance.
simon - 21 April 2008
as we can see as usual, alec fully supports everything the government does, & cares nothing for civil liberties in the uk. & as usual fails to have read the post properly with his stasi comment.
Alec Macpherson - 18 April 2008
I was wondering when you were going to get around to mentioning this. Point of fact, it was the parents, not their three year old child being monitored. And the investigation was launched at the request of *other* parents.
Whilst a case could certainly be made that a climate of suspicion engendered by the current government caused other parents to happily report them, as far as I can see the sprog's mummy and daddy *did* try to juggle their two addresses to wrangle a play-school place. I don't so much have a problem with the understandable desire to help one's sprogs (although there are attested cases of quite ludicrous extents being reached) as I do with the chutzpah of, who moi? What did we do? Those other parents should realize just how important our sprog is.
Plus, as digital cameras in 2008 are as exotic as "jetting off" is.
Plus, anyone thinking the Stasi or ZANU-PF can be mentioned in the same breath as this case really ought to watch The Lives of Others or be ordered to unload firearms at Durban Docks. There are similarities. There are more differences.
Sex offenders face website bans - 4 April 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7328170.stm"Sex offenders' e-mail addresses are to be passed to social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo to prevent them contacting children. Under government proposals, offenders who do not give police their address - or give a false one - would face up to five years in jail. Websites would be expected to monitor the e-mail address usage or block them accessing the sites".
When this idea was first proposed 14 months ago, it was a stupid one then - and not only does it continue to be stupid - for exactly the same reasons - but it is even more stupid, because of the additional bluster about how social networking sites will be expected to police it.
The problem being, only sites which are operated from / hosted in the UK can actually be legally compelled to follow UK law. Last I looked, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter, and just about every other social networking site were based in the USA.
There also comes the problem of what actually is the definition of 'Social Networking' anyway?
Is this, or any other, blog a social networking site?
Are news sites which allow comment, and have developed their own communities of followers such as The Stirrer or The Guardian to come under the rules? What about Flickr?
Or what about other sites which are 'social' in nature, but not explicitly about 'social networking' - such as a Quaker website I made back in 2003, before the term 'social networking' was even coined?
So basically what we have is a headline grabber, with no actual substance behind it at all.
Does that surprise anybody?
Was this a story or a non-story: non-story
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Perceptions 'affected by accent' - 4 April 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7329768.stm"Accent could affect how intelligent people are thought to be, a new study suggests. The study, which matched accents with perceived intelligence, found speaking in a Birmingham accent gives a worse impression than saying nothing at all".
In our office at work, when speaking about 'the outside world' (especially those who phone up for whatever reason) there are a number of stock characters we adopt, with the appropriate accent according to the key feature of the person concerned.
If we're being a good, salt-of-the-earth, honest, working person, then the accent adopted is one of a Lancashire / Yorkshire person.
If they are 'hard', then it's a Cockney accent.
Needless to say, a thief or similar rogue or costermonger gets a Scouse accent.
If we're representing a person who appears to be thick, well, I hate to say this, but...
...they get a Birmingham accent.
"Oi day knowabout vis, orl I knowis it just day work, ayit?!"
Was this a story or a non-story: story
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Comments:
simon - 9 April 2008
miner to major, surely, after maggie closed all the pits & jonny replaced them with cones hotlines...
Alec Macpherson - 7 April 2008
Apparently, the Brummie drone is due to the major to minor shift.
Andy Derrick - 4 April 2008
Thank God you don't use West Country accents, or is that for dealing with each other?
Taking lots of pictures and doing techy things with your mobile phone? You must be a terrorist - 2 April 2008
http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm
"The five-week campaign asks members of the public to report any suspicious behaviour in confidence to the Anti-Terrorist Hotline. The press ads seek to raise awareness of some of the items/activities which may be needed by, or be of use to, terrorists. It asks the public to consider whether they have seen any activity connected with them which may have made them suspicious".
Now, of course it's a good idea to make people aware of the threat of terrorism; getting people to be on the look-out for unattended baggage, swarthy men wearing big black puffa jackets in the middle of summer etc.
But to suggest that anybody who likes taking lots of photographs or has more than one mobile phone is a potential terrorist? Puh-leeese!
Stupid, moronic, idiotic campaigns like this do nothing to help keep our streets and buildings safe for decent folks to walk down and work in. If anybody pays any attention to it at all, the only effect this campaign is likely to have is to just make everybody feel that bit more afraid, increasing the climate of fear and provoking the kinds of responses likely to increase the threat.
The terrorists don't need to plant bombs to make people feel afraid; the Metropolitan Police are doing the job for them.
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Comments:
Alec Macpherson - 2 April 2008
I would have thought it were obvious, Simon. The guilty party is the Muslim/Zionist (delete as appropriate to suit individual prejudice) taking photographs and celebrating on 11/9.
Harman defends wearing stab vest - 2 April 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7324123.stm"Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has defended her decision to wear a stab proof jacket during a police walkabout in her south London constituency Ms Harman, also Commons leader and Labour chairman, rejected newspaper claims it suggested she did not feel safe on the streets".
Presumably this story was the Daily Mail's go at an April Fool.
It's almost certainly correct to say Harman was... 'ill-advised' by her media adviser when she donned the jacket for the walkabout, for not predicting the likely reaction - for the job of a press officer is to be on the lookout, thinking "how can X willfully misinterpret this in the worst possible light?".
But, as anybody with any sense can see, she wasn't actually wearing the vest out of any sense of fear for her safety; she was doing what any politician does when visiting a workplace - putting on the uniform of the workplace in order to look cool and blend in with the workers. Like wearing a hard hat on a visit to a building site, or white overcoat, hat, and gloves on a visit to a factory - or indeed donning camo gear when out visiting the troops in Iraq.
Was this a story or a non-story: non-story
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MobiPad - Control Your Nokia N95 With WiiController - 25 March 2008
http://www.symbianv3.com/mobipad-control-your-nokia-n95-with-wiicontroller"If you have a Nokia N95 and a Nintendo Wii, you are lucky.. You can use Nokia N95 and Wii Controller together with Bluetooth connection".
There's an obvious question here - what on earth is the point of that?
There's also a slightly less obvious question which only a select few n95 owners will actually be aware of - what on earth is the point of that, since the n95 has built in the same motion detector that the WiiController has anyway?
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