Save the World, Live in Fear

It doesn’t get any better. This morning I noticed a new billboard advert that has appeared on the hoardings. It shows a busy shopping street with words along these lines – ‘A bomb won’t go off here because a few weeks ago a shopper noticed someone studying the CCTV cameras’.

Oh great, so we are in possibly the worst recesssion ever, the dole queues are around the block, the high streets only have half the amount of shops that were there previously, and now we’ve got to spot terrorists too. How do we do that? By carefully watching everyone around you… See someone looking at a CCTV camera – call the police immediately – have them sent down for plotting a terrorist act.

Any ’suspicious’ behaviour must be reported immediately. If you see an apparently intelligent person buying the Daily Mail for instance – doesn’t look right – call the police! And it’s not always what someone is doing – it could be what they are NOT doing, or unexpected behaviour.

How about you spy a couple of hooded youths who could possibly be muslim (say one of them has ginger hair and is wearing a kilt – y’know, the obvious signs), helping an old lady across the road. What are they after? What possible terrorist act are they brewing up? You know what to do – call the police.

You’ve got no job, no money and society is falling to pieces. What we all need is a healthy dose of THE FEAR!!

Free Daily Mails for all! Bring on the paranoia!

Google Street View

Recently, Google added their Street View feature to their Google maps service for London. This means that you can look at actual photo panoramas for any part of the Streets covered by the service. Go have a look, it’s very interesting and I think, a really neat feature.  Google have run all the images through software, which whilst not perfect, aims to blur faces and car licence plates etc. Now personally, living in one of the most surveillance heavy countries in the world, I don’t find this too much of a worry.

However, it seems to have whipped up a right frothy lather for some privacy campaigners. They say that our human rights are being trampled over and that privacy laws are being broken. So, being able to look at streets that just happen to have people in them, with blurred faces, is some kind of worry is it? What about if you go to a bookshop and pick up a London travel guide? What about all those pictures in there of streets milling with people with unblurred faces? Why is no-one kicking up a stink about those?

After all, do we really believe that a photographer who has taken a picture of Trafalgar Square has gotten everyone in the image to sign a release? And this is what worries me. The police and private security guards are already giving photographers a hard time, citing the prevention of terrorism act at us for photographing a pigeon on a lion’s head in Trafalgar Square. There is enough nannying going on already and I fear that the feeding frenzy whipped up by these people is not only ridiculously wide of the mark, but will cause further problems for photographers in this country.

If you take this to extremes, we would not be allowed to look up when walking about the streets in case we catch sight of another person’s face and violate their privacy and human rights. Aren’t things bad enough in this country at the moment without everyone having to walk around with their heads down, avoiding eye contact.

Perhaps we should all wear disguises when we go out,  or to keep it cheap and affordable for everyone, wear paper bags over our heads.

Gee up Granny!

The latest idea to sort out London from that fine, trustworthy loon known as Barmy Boris is to speed up the rate at which people cross the roads. The poor dear recently had an awful experience and had to wait in a car in Ealing – ‘There was hardly any pedestrian traffic to speak of and we were being kept at red for minute after minute. The thing was totally crackers.’  Boris, I feel your pain! All that waiting is not good for a man. As Mayor of London, he is in a position to prevent himself from this sort of insanity in future. So what is the solution?

Well, pedestrian crossings are to be fitted with special lights, possibly with a countdown and an ever speeding up beep alarm. There is also talk of making the little green man walk faster and faster to speed people up. Of course the lights will be adjusted to reduce the amount of time the light is actually red. I recently talked to some visitors from Canada and they were amazed at not only the speed of the beeps at our traffic lights, but also how quickly the red light disappeared again. They will certainly be amazed if they visit in the future!

So, from now on, we can expect to have to wear running shoes when we are out and about on foot. Let’s face it – it’s only ‘oicks’ who walk about the streets anyway. And never mind those old people, blind people, the wheelchair bound and anyone else who may not be able to raise a sprint.

Solve our traffic problems and help people who are so poor they have to actually walk to keep fit. What could be wrong with that? Tell you what Boris old bean, why not take it a step further? Attach a starting pistol to every traffic light – when the lights change, there are three beeps followed by the starting pistol being discharged, and they’re off! A ribbon automatically extends on the other side of the road and we have a winner! There could be a cup awarded to the person with the most wins each month. 

Come on, it’s a winner, and with the Olympics looming, we could introduce this new sport to the World.