Citizenfour

– “If they want to get you , they’ll get you in time..”

The astonishing aspect of Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing is the absolute bravery and sacrifice of this young man for the common good. This is even more extraordinary if you think that he did all this despite knowing that his actions would inevitably lead him to be punished mercilessly whilst being branded a traitor. We must not allow it!

Governments, the law, the intelligence network and corporations are not serving us. All of our traditional institutional regulatory bodies are routinely bypassed and in fact complicit. Investigative journalism gives us hope and is doing what these agencies, often illegally, are failing to deliver. However, understandably and legitimately, that’s where the hack’s role has to stop and it’s now really up to all of us folks to take back control!

All wars are economic. One easy way to fight this frightening trend towards the attack on freedom and democracy is to immediately stop buying Apple phones, Exxon and Esso oil, to close your bank account with Lloyds Bank and JPMorgan Chase and don’t buy anything off Amazon, GlaxoSmithKline or that’s manufactured by General Electric. That should just about do it overnight. The second thing we could do is to vote, in numbers and intention, like we have never done before to give the clearest message ever given by an electorate. Don’t put your cross next to the blue or the red team but simply spoil your ballot paper – i.e.  ‘None of the above’ – In other words, we want you to …’Think again and come back to us with a better set of ideas and values’

‘The way they control us is to frighten us all the time. They frighten you, they divide you; men and women, black and white, christian, muslim, jew. Then they demoralise you – you don’t understand and they make you cynical, everybody’s a crook.

If you want to win, you mustn’t be frightened, you mustn’t be divided, you mustn’t be demoralised and you mustn’t be cynical. And once people discover that, then it’s astonishing what can be achieved.’

Tony Benn

Citizenfour – ‘If they want to get you , they’ll get you in time..’

March 7, 2015

Credit cards – Easy cash that’s hard to pay back.

“Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best –
God! but the interest!”

       Paul Laurence Dunbar

You might have noticed just recently how hard it is to get a phone number on big corporation’s websites like Sky or BT. They hide it very well, preferring you to fix your own problems by way of a online chat or e-mail or some other way of registering your complaint or query. Call centres are undoubtedly expensive, it means humans have to be employed and that’s an expense the shareholders could have. If you are old or uninitiated in the ways of the computer, you have become disconnected from your provider, and they seemed so nice and friendly in the advert!

Government as a rule does not interfere with business. The food industry has been poisoning us for years but regulating them would mean lower profits and where would the first cuts be – jobs of course. The betting industry is now rampant and whose interest really does that serve? I can only think the lobbyists are lining the politicians’ pockets handsomely to let these mobsters try and squeeze every hard-earned penny out of a working man’s pay packet before it even gets home. Unless there is a popular campaign that government think might attract a few votes, even the most unethical business practice continues unabated. What’s that you say Starbucks, Google et al haven’t paid anywhere near the tax they should have in this country well I think you’ll find, like Jimmy Carr, they haven’t actually done anything contrary to the letter of the law. The spirit of the law, now that’s a different thing.

We don’t have a car, motorcycle or ship-building industry in this country any more but we are damn good at financial services. Have you ever been financially serviced!? I have banked with Lloyds for over 40 years, I should change but untying yourself from all the administrative tentacles is time consuming and prevents you doing it and they know it. Do you think that loyalty is somehow repaid – No way. It’s naive to think nowadays that any customer loyalty exists at all other than the knowledge that you’re more likely to come back in the future than some other smuck. I wanted to borrow about £3000 just recently. Lloyds don’t do loans for under £1000, there’s the reason why QuickQuid, Wonga etc exist. For loans between £1000 and £4000 the APR is 20%, for loans between £5000 and £7000 it decreases to about 10% and then settles to 6.4% for £7500+. I think that’s disgusting that our banks which are supposed to serve us solely exist to encourage us to borrow more and even penalise us for settling early. So I turn to the great offers to be had from Credit card loans at the moment – 0% for 18 months. It’s a brilliant way of getting a short term loan for virtually nothing but you have to remain vigilant. Look how hard they make it to change your payment per month. Remember you only pay interest if you don’t pay a minimum amount or if circumstances dictate you go over the duration of the 0% offer.

I am trying to open an online credit card account which might help me regulate the terms of the loan.

Firstly, I have a 10 digit ID number which you can’t change.

(OK admittedly the computer can remember it by checking box)

Press continue

I have a unique image (elephant) and phrase combination (Bizarre)  to choose. It will be shown on this page to indicate that I am on the genuine Online Banking site. This is set up by me along with the 3 security questions:

Where were you born?

What was the name of your first school?

What is your mother’s middle name?    All three chosen from a choice of 6/7

Next I have to enter the 6th 9th and 3rd characters of my password sent in Letter 1 of the login details, That’ll be 84381329

and then…. the 4th 2nd and 5th numbers of the 5 digit security number sent in Letter 2 of the Login details. That’ll be 16354

Give up yet?

Then I’m compelled to change the supplied password and security number to one of my choice. The restrictions on what the password and security number are unusually tough.

I’m through at last. I choose Set up/amend direct debit

It seems to be easy until I learn that all amendments to my account will only be sanctioned if I relay a 3 digit number which has been sent to me by text. (the text was sent the next day without any 3 digit number included!) I comply only to find the online programme goes on to refuse many times my request to either increase my direct debit monthly amount or let me pay off the full balance. My fustration and this deliberate avoidance is not a one-off, hence this rant!

I take to ringing now. On the 28th of March, I pass through the usual several menus of the telephone call centre exchange. My first minimum payment of £6.75 went through on 25th March and I want now to increase it considerably to say £250!. In other words I want to do what they don’t want me to do and that is to firstly pay way over the minimum payment so as to definitely not incur interest on the sum I owe and furthermore make sure I give myself every chance to pay off my debt early.

I ask if I can pay off the entire balance, an option clearly given on the online account. No comes back the answer, you must contact your bank to do that.

Can I increase my payment to £250 then – Yes you can but that will only come into operation on the 25th May!!  So much for instant access and being able to have instant effect on my financial affairs. Them are the rules and we know why they’re like that don’t we?

I know I must expect pain if I want to benefit from a 0% offer, but I can afford to take on the big banks and corporations in terms of money, time and technology know-how. What about those who can’t and hence will pay over the odds? The financial service brigade know what they’re doing in playing the big numbers probability game. That is to sting that inevitable proportion of clients who they know will be either too busy/confused or not as determined as I will be to keep an eye on what is happening. – Bastards!

Credit cards – Easy cash that’s hard to pay back.

March 29, 2014

Never Mind the Feelings

A few years ago I was at a ‘Big Noise’ Coldplay concert at Exeter Castle held in aid of Mencap. Dubbed as the homecoming gig and hosted by Jo Whiley, the Radio 1 broadcaster and music journalist, a small lucky audience enjoyed a fantastic night. I was standing next to the presenter for a very brief time and watched how patiently and generously she posed for photos with fans. She struck me as a very warm unpretentious lady, a feeling confirmed a little later when she appeared with sister Francis in a memorable touching moment to introduce the supergroup.

I couldn’t have been the only person that night to have watched ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ Dr Who Special three days earlier and listened to Jo Whiley give a different summation of Coldplay’s talents.

Remind you of being back at school? Well – I suppose if I could earn the type of appearance fees got by appearing on NMTB, HIGNFY and such like, I might default to such scathing congruous behaviour. Historically, the presenters of these two programmes, for example, Simon Amstell, Mark Lamarr, Angus Deayton aided by the likes of Phil Jupitus, Iain Hislop and  sadly Bill Bailey for a long while, used to assume the roles of provateurs to generate levity from making targeted guests feel uncomfortable. I think the basic justifications are they know what they’re letting themselves in for and getting good money for it. After all, it’s like sitting in the front row at a comedy gig, you’re asking for it. There are numerous celebrities on Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton who are more deserving of such honesty, instead of the usual sycophantic endorsement, but are sadly sacrosanct. Sir Elton, Sir Terry, Sir Brucie, Sir Cliff, Cher, Arnie, Sly…,Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Justin Bieber….and other smiley beautiful people who have brilliantly uniform perfect teeth, but of course, this is tellyland.

There is however a profession that for pure sociopathic behaviour can eclipse the red carpet brigade and that is journalism. I have two first hand accounts of hard-nosed hacks getting the copy at all costs. Firstly there’s the television crew that visited my wife’s primary school to report on the effect of the impending Iraqi conflict on children with dads serving at the nearby military base. The school’s courageous headmistress, noticing as the day went on that they were going past their remit and trying to get a story that just wasn’t there, – tears on the carpet – , chucked them out at lunchtime. That news team were from the BBC flagship ‘Newsnight’! And secondly the treatment that Joe Church received at the hands of the Daily Express in 1970. when I was 13 and a stage-hand at a seaside summer show of which Joe was the main stand-up comedian. Joe Church was visited by a reporter and photographer doing a feature on the typical ‘end of the pier’ variety show that was popular in those times. The publicity would be very welcome and they spent all day with him. Nobody could have predicted the malevolence of the double page spread article that came out.. He had been duped, cruelly set-up with a photograph of him wearing a red nose and depicted as the sad out of date clown by quoting lines from his act. His fellow entertainers rallied round but you could tell he was a broken man. Humiliated. It left a lasting impression on a young boy how people could be so predatory and vindictive especially to someone who didn’t ask for it or deserve it.

Same with Chris Martin –  What do you think, Jo?

Never Mind the Feelings

January 16, 2014

Asteroids

Except for the last three words ‘Pass the Salt’ the following extracts are entirely from the amazing book, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ by the brilliant Bill Bryson.

‘Suppose that there was a button you could push and you could light up all the Earth-crossing asteroids larger than 10 metres across, there would be over a hundred million of these objects in the sky.’ In short, you would see not a couple of thousand twinkling stars, but millions upon millions upon millions of nearer, randomly moving objects – ‘all of which are capable of colliding with the Earth. It would be deeply unnerving.’

Well, be unnerved, because it is there. We just can’t see it.

Although it’s only a guess based on the cratering rates on the moon, some two thousand asteroids big enough to imperil civilized existence regularly cross our orbit. A meteor the size of a house could destroy a city and the number of these relative tiddlers in Earth-crossing orbits is almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions, and they are nearly impossible to track.

The first one wasn’t spotted until 1991, and that was when it had already gone by. Named 1991BA, it was noticed as it sailed past us at a distance of 170 000 kilometres – in cosmic terms the equivalent of a bullet passing through one’s sleeve without touching the arm. Two years later, another, somewhat larger asteroid missed us by 145 000 kilometres – the closest pass yet recorded and it too was not seen until it had passed and would have arrived without warning.

An object a hundred metres across couldn’t be picked up by any Earth-based  telescope until it was within just a few days of us, and that is only if a telescope happened to be trained on it. This is unlikely because the number of people in the world actively searching for asteroids is not much more than the staff of a typical McDonalds restaurant. The first time an unnoticed asteroid would become visible to the naked eye would be when it warmed up when hitting the atmosphere, just about a second before it hit the Earth. You’re talking about something moving many times faster than the fastest bullet.

Here’s a plausible scenario of what it may/will be like if we have an impact of a big asteroid.
a)  An asteroid travelling at cosmic speeds entering the Earth’s atmosphere would compress the air causing it to rise to some 60 000 Kelvin or ten times the surface temperature of the sun. At this instant of arrival, everything in the meteor’s path – people, houses, factories cars would crinkle like cellophane in a flame.

b) On impact, the meteorite would vaporize instantly and the blast would blow out 1 000 cubic kilometres of rock, earth and superheated gases. Every living thing that hadn’t been killed by the heat with a range of 250 kilometres would now be killed by the blast.

c) The initial shock wave would travel outwards at the speed of light sweeping everything before it. Within minutes in a surrounding area the size of Northern Europe every standing thing would be flattened or on fire. People up to 1 500 kilometres away would be knocked off their feet and showered with a blizzard of projectiles.

d) The associated damage would be brisk and global. The impact would set off a chain of devastating earthquakes, volcanoes, tsanumis. Within an hour, a cloud of darkness would cover the Earth, burning rock pelting down everywhere setting much of the planet ablaze.

e) It has been estimated that at least one and a half billion people would die by the end of the first day.

And in all likelihood, remember, this would come without warning, out of a clear sky.

– Pass the salt!

Asteroids

January 12, 2014

The Anastasia Question

The Anastasia question is a concept I have been thinking about for many years.
Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Tsar, you’ll remember, was executed with her family by the Bolshevik secret police in 1918. Persistent speculation arose, after her death, as to whether she might have survived leading to several women falsely claiming to be Anastasia, of whom Anna Anderson is the best known. Conclusive proof finally confirmed that she was not Anastasia when DNA testing in 1994 on available pieces of Anderson’s tissue and hair showed no relation to the DNA of the imperial family.

This is my question, it’s my game if you like!
What is the one question or fact about yourself that would convince the most incredulous scrutineers that you are in fact who you claim to be. Now you wouldn’t believe how stringent my rules are for this profound secret. In my testing of this ‘Rosebud’ I think of myself as a secret agent being trained over many months to penetrate the network of a fiendishly suspicious and sceptical enemy. Their questioning of who I am is based on them holding every piece of detail of my life and knowing that professional fraudsters can be trained to be completely convincing replicates. This question easily transcends DNA testing. It is absolute. There was and never can be any seepage of this fact between you and the questioner. The Anastasia game of mental solitaire is actually the search for the fact, the question never gets asked! In short, it is what question is the very key to your soul?

Let me give you an example of a near miss for me, lest you think well that’s easily done – just think of something that happened in your childhood.

We have in our kitchen a ramshackle excuse for a crockery set that we everyday try to home on a three-tier small wall shelf system. The cereal bowls, dinner and side plates are all different sizes and colours. The sort of miscellaneous collection you get when you break a piece or two from a set, renew but don’t throw away the existing members. It’s difficult to place each member onto the shelves because there are certain O.C.D. rules to observe. You can’t, for instance,  put a bigger plate onto a smaller one or have our favourite mugs, the thin rimmed ones, on the top shelf where you would have to momentarily exert wasteful energy and go on ‘tippy-toes’ to retrieve! Anyway, it works for us and like doing a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, I enjoy the swapping and repositioning of the pieces to get them so they fit. The singularly important point in this ‘invisible’ mundane action that nobody else would discern, let alone record, is that the same word always pops into my thoughts when I am in the process of doing it and that is ‘Cravat’. This is interesting solely for me in that there is only one person, (I think!) in the whole universe who would know what the significance of me saying that word in that situation and that is my brother Richard even though we have not uttered this word together for what must be nearly 50 years.

Does this qualify for an Anastasia question? Well since the advent of the internet which makes it clear to us all how individual how unique we are so not, no not necessarily. Thinking in computer-speak, the password security strength of Cravat is compromised by the assumption that nobody else remembers playing Cravat, a card game for two players in which you strive to re-position cards in an array in the minimum number of moves, to which your opponent challenges you with a cry of ‘Cravat’ if he sees a way of doing it with fewer.
– It’s good mind but nowhere near 100% impervious and spy proof.

Happy searching!!

The Anastasia Question

Significant Figures?

Whenever you see a big number ending in zeros, it’s very probable that the number has been rounded. It could be on the basis that the receiver either doesn’t need to know the exact value, (it’s not important) or the informant doesn’t know what the actual number is.
In the following example, a football attendance, let’s say, has been given to varying levels of accuracy, said to be rounding to a specified number of significant figures.
76 537 = 80 000 (to 1 s.f.)
= 77 000 (to 2 s.f.)
= 76 500 (to 3 s.f.)

The number of British troop deaths, at the time of writing, has reached 446. No zeros there and understandably so. We care what the actual number is and the relative low size makes it still possible to individualise each member of the set.
In contrast, I have heard many times, even opponents of the war in Iraq, refer to the 100, 000 Iraqi civilian deaths there have been as a consequence of the illegal war. The magnitude of this number seems to be undisputed but do you see the use of the zeros. Is it because we don’t know the actual truth or simply we don’t care? I honestly don’t know but there’s good news for if you visit the Iraq Body Count website one can access a far more accurate figure.
The concept of big numbers is a difficult one for young children to grasp. If you counted a million pounds, one pound every second, it would take over 12 days and nights to do it. It’s a really humongous number. Ask the Great Train Robbers of 1963 who hadn’t planned into their schedule the time involved to count their booty! The relative size of a million, billion and trillion are beautifully demonstrated by this film called, ‘What does a trillion dollars look like?’
Think about it. It would need 44 000 articulated trucks to take 1 000 000 000 000 real dollars to the bank. The truth is that it’s not and never will be real. I doubt if such an amount has ever been printed in the history of the world. Capitalism knows no limit and my fear is that many people don’t realise the immensity of such illusory ‘monopoly’ numbers, like the UK National Debt
Journalists know that 1 000 000 people killed is a statistic whereas one person’s plight is a story.
So History teachers, how about this way of getting over how many Jews were killed in the holocaust. 6 000 000 is the statistic that everyone knows, lots of zeros there, mind, remember our two rules?
I took a Year 7 class into our Drama hall and by lying head to toe, we estimated that we could fill the hall, sardine-like by 25 x 20 x 12 (= 6 000) bodies. The bowl volume of Wembley stadium is 1.1 million cubic metres which is conveniently about 1 000 times the size of our hall, …trust me I’m a Maths teacher!
Now what this means is that if you filled Wembley stadium, sardine-wise, with bodies to the top, that’s how many Jews were killed in the extermination camps. The slightly smaller Millenium stadium in Cardiff should be big enough to carry the slightly less important
2 – 3 000 000 Soviet POWs
1.8 – 2 000 000 Ethnic Poles
220 000 – 1 500 000 Romani (interesting range!)
200 000 – 250 000 Disabled
90 000 Freemasons, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses

Anyway, do you see that steward in the florescent jacket in the foreground for scale? (Click on picture to enlarge)
Geddit! – Is that significant enough for you?

“What’s that Danny! – there’s a puppy in the playground?
Have you been listening to a damn thing I’ve been saying, boy?
Ok, chairs under, off you go.”

Significant Figures?

January 1, 2014

I Found a Dead Body Today

I found my elderly neighbour dead in his living-room this morning. When I say I found him, that’s not entirely true because it was Warren who had ten minutes previously discovered Robin and had rung our doorbell to use the phone. Warren seemed in shock so I very sensitively volunteered to take over and deal with the situation. The emergency services wanted me to go into Robin’s flat, phone them from there to confirm some details. So this is exactly how I found myself for the first time in my 56 years on this earth face to face with a human corpse. For those who have been to many a wake or worked with the elderly, fatally injured in accidents or terminally ill in hospital are justifiably entitled to think, you’ve led a sheltered life, welcome to my world!
Robin had probably died the night before whilst recovering from a long stressful car journey returning from spending Christmas with his son. It looked like he was getting ready for bed when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was partially undressed, his face had turned purplish blue, his eyes were wide open and the indignity of his position for such a proud bon-viveur gentleman was what struck me most. Except for those first dutiful inspections of Robin’s corpse, I found it hard to look in his direction while I waited for the ambulance service to arrive. My emotions were of no great sadness, upset or physical queasiness (Robin had survived cancer surgery and endured severe respiratory and heart problems) just enormous respect and reverence to be present at an extinguished life. I have to admit that in sensitively volunteering to witnessing Robin’s demise, I had probably seized an opportunity to finally confront such an ordeal.
The paramedics took over and they with the police went through all the procedural paperwork and protocol with their usual considerable professional efficiency. Warren was questioned for the details needed. I made tea and my thoughts, rather less selflessly, turned increasingly to the afternoon’s football programme, as my use and need to the proceedings diminished.
You see when I was in my early twenties, I witnessed my own father’s gradual and painful demise over a difficult month but missed the merciful final passing. I only have had the memory of the frenzied panic as he grasped the oxygen mask to steal a breath that his lungs couldn’t manage to supply and that orange liquid that I felt obliged to encourage him to take that the medical staff briefed us was the only sustenance his body would not fully reject. Even the psoriasis that had blighted him all his life had departed his skull and joints, no longer being able to be hosted by his skeletal frame.
I expect no more of others who will later find me. Cart me off and waste no further time in getting on with the rest of your remaining days. I have after all, like Robin, had a great life for which I’m grateful.
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I Found a Dead Body Today

December 30, 2013

The Road to what We’ve Lost

Some years ago, I found myself in rural India, visiting newly-formed schools, 200km north-east inland from Calcutta. A long train journey followed by a invariably uncomfortable jeep drive took me past increasingly smaller settlements.The last dry, dusty rutted road we travelled along would have been impassable by any driver other than our well-initiated host. Over the next week or so, I met beautiful wonderful and essentially grateful people who had experienced very little or no contact with the outside world and who were absolutely delighted to greet us. Adjectives ending in -ful are fitting words to use as your lasting impression is that these humble people live such full rich lives and still uphold values that we have sadly lost.

Usually in these circumstances, whilst being overwhelmed by the hospitality, warmth of welcome and the garlands, it is easy to just take pictures and not reflect enough on the incredible significance to one’s thinking about your own life. If there was very little sign of seepage of laudable western civilisation’s influences, there was refreshingly less evidence that the worst traits had reached this hinterland. From my Jeep’s window, I observed the commonplace use of shadoofs in the fields for irrigation. I remember learning at school how the ancient Egyptians had used these primitive levers to water their crops. The question I posed myself was if I was in an extensively farming area where working practices have not changed appreciably in thousands of years, then I shouldn’t be surprised if ideas, attitudes,beliefs and lifestyles haven’t evolved accordingly. Civilisation used to be laid down in incredibly thin veils, I think of this when I come across such provisions as statutory wheelchair access and surrogate teaching assistants for pupils with learning difficulties. You won’t be surprised to learn that I didn’t see any evidence of these luxurious amendments. It takes time for these changes to take place, millennium, centuries or as little as decades if you’re an awakening giant like China or if you’ve had occupying colonialists leave to free up the process.
On the night of our arrival, one of my fellow travellers pointed to a faraway hut from our hostel balcony and suggested we might walk there to have a beer.Taking into account that our evening meal was cooked on a wooden fire and the only drink available was water because only the essentials to life are in use, I doubted the profit would accrue from such a walk.
“There’s nothing of luxury value in that hut, Chris. Do you know why? – because there’s nothing coming up that bleedin’ road. No non-essential goods, no people, no ideas, no influences. If there were, that hut would changed into a hovel over time which would have progressed into a shack, which in turn would have evolved into a house. We would be looking at a Manhattan skyline but we’re not!”
To build a road means to connect people to the outside and time does the rest. Be careful though to have a checkpoint so as to not let in those veils that cause you to lose what is important to preserve.

The Road to what We’ve Lost

December 27, 2013