Regardless of the truth of the bullying allegations surrounding Brown and Number 10, they appear to be creating an even less savoury picture of goings on with our friends in the international community.
Apple Daily runs an online news channel called Next Media that, instead of using actors, animates its newscasts in order to make them more exciting. Launching simultaneously on 26 November 2009 in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it quickly courted controversy with parents complaining about explicit, erotic and violent content. If you are interested, Media, the marketing and communications newspaper for Asia-Pacific carries an interesting article on the rows surrounding Apple Daily on its website.
In any event, the sales-boosting bullying furore around Rawnsley’s new book, The End of the Party, has clearly attracted attention in the Asia-Pacific region and has made its way into the most extraordinary news bulletin I’ve yet seen on the matter:
It is difficult to know quite what to make of the provocative way in which Next Media presents current affairs. Suffice to say that their coverage of the bizarre legal dispute in Colarado over who owns the head of Mary Robbins (the Robbins family or Arizona’s Alcor Life Extension Foundation) suggests they like to sensationalise sensational stories.
At dinner last night, we talked about the way that the experience of war imprints itself on the experiences of individuals and societies differently, according to the war and the immediacy of its domestic impact.
Reflecting on that conversation, it struck me that growing up with the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction hanging over us left its own imprints. Less immediately dramatic, perhaps, than the years of evacuation, rationing and lights out of World War Two, but no less terrifying in its own insidious way, the Cold Waroffered plenty of sleepless nights to this over-active imagination.
I remember panicking when we were told that total annihilation was just four minutes away. Whenever the sirens were tested I found myself wondering if the radar I now know was based at Jodrel Bank had picked up inbound enemy missiles that would destroy my school and my family and the small world of Langdon Hills that I inhabited. I imagined Soviet tanks trundling through my childhood stamping ground of the Fränkische Schweizand rolling across Western Europe, destroying everything in their path.
Television films like Threads and the Day Afterdepicted the horrors of a nuclear Armageddon in chilling detail. I remember lying awake for nights, terrified of what would happen.
I also remember taking the bus to Romford to see Rocky IV in 1985 and being reassured that we would always beat the bad guys. How could we not be? Our plucky little hero was avenging his friend’s death and completed his training montage in the frozen Russian countryside with just a few logs at his disposal.
Drago on the other hand, his giant of an opponent, was wired up to the most sophisticated computers and pumped full of steroids – yet our man still triumphed and, in doing so, won the admiration of the Russian President.
Gloriously awful nonsense, but now, looking back, the parameters seem so much safer. In much the way that my father’s grandparents reflected on the unique camaraderie of the Second World War, the sense of social obligation and national community, I catch myself thinking back fondly to the geo-strategic certainty of a time when two superpowers leaned in on each other. The USA and the USSR were the hammer-beam roof of our geo-politics, creaking and immobile under the weight of their respective nuclear edifices.
In this changed world of terrorist cells, underground bombers, dirty bombs and cyber-warfare, such certainty seems oddly nostalgic. For me, that surreal stalemate of infinite nuclear escalation has woven itself into the fabric of memory, mischievously tangling itself with normative childhood archetypes of safety, and I find myself prompted to rueful reflection by the architecture of redundant physical structures or the clumsily amateurish animation of public information broadcasts.
They each harbour the childhood ghosts of lingering summers spent wondering on the end of the world.
The Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch is a local example of such a building. I find a certain poignancy in the way that this extraordinary structure, disguised beneath a simple cottage and chillingly significant in its original purpose, has been reduced to such a level that it can now be hired out for parties. If you click the picture below you might see what I mean in the gallery that I have pulled together on Flickr.
In a similar way, the series of Protect and Survive public information films retain their ability to shock, despite their amateurishness. I still wonder if hiding under some doors and suitcases would ensure my survival in the event of a nuclear strike.
But perhaps the greatest reminder that this period in our history is dead and gone is the strange news that Latvia recently sold Skrunda, an entire Soviet-era town, now completely deserted. Click on the photo below and you will be transported to an eerie gallery on Flickr that paints a haunting picture of decaying urban sprawl – its architecture, posters and purpose abandoned to the past.
Here the ghosts of my childhood nightmares can still play amongst the radar stations and the tower blocks and the crumbling, brick-strewn classrooms.
Last October, Eric Pickles, Chairman of the Conservative Party, made a very bold pledge:
However, the stricture from Eric Pickles doesn’t appear to have been picked up in Solihull. Sophie Shrubsole, Conservative Future Area Chair for Birmingham, Solihull and Coventry, excitedly marshalled her student troops after a request from Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to encourage students across the country to gather in Warwick and disrupt last speech by the Prime Minister:
More specifically, I would imagine that Pickles has at least two courses of action he should consider:
An inquiry to establish which party official at CCHQ was encouraging such dirty tricks and sack them;
Disciplinary action against Shrubsole as a party officer for continuing to organise this planned disruption in clear contravention of his instructions.
The sad fact is though that, despite his pledge, Pickles will do nothing and the Conservative Party will seek to ignore this first clear example of dirty tricks – or explain it away as student hijinx.
There really is nothing quite so grubby and hypocritical as a Conservative Party desperate for power at any cost.
Just a little reminder that for Basildon-based readers of “Fragments and Reflections” there is a survey running on basildonFOCUS regarding borough status. It is the first item with a nice big blue banner headline!
Please do go and have your say so that as local councillors we can make an informed decision about whether or not to support the proposal when it is put to Council next Wednesday.
I am not usually one for these circular emails, but I received one today that made me smile a little.
We live in a world in which councils rip out public art because they are concerned people will climb on it, fall off and then sue; where teachers are castigated by parents for the indiscipline in class-rooms, yet are prevented from any physical contact to restrain or assist children in case they are sued; where local residents tell me that Council employees have warned them not to grit footpaths to help make them safer because if someone slips, the resident who did it is liable; and where people seem determined to ensure that as well as blaming someone else for their idiocy or misfortune, they are also allowed to profit from it.
This latter point is one that irks me most.
The ever-present threat of litigation undermines the need to ensure that serious failings of responsibility are properly and swiftly reviewed and, if appropriate, recompensed. At the same time, to minimise the chances of being sued, play equipment is removed, public art is pulled out and fenced off, and life loses its spiky richness. Much more dangerously, it allows those who are absolutely opposed to the concept of fundamental human rights to hijack the discussion of responsibility and blame a compensation culture increasingly characterised by lack of personal responsibility on the Human Rights Act or simply “Europe”. It is mendacious politicking at its insidious worst: using people’s misinformed fears to further reinforce those fears and, by so doing, undermining necessary protections for the weak, the vulnerable and those who find themselves in a persecuted minority.
So don’t get me wrong.
There are plenty of times when blame should be very squarely apportioned on the shoulders of someone else or – more usually – some other organisation. However, there are also far too many excuses for our own inability to follow the instructions we are given and our failure to use the judgement that life’s experiences have given us.
It’s corny, trite even, and there’ll be plenty who’ll simply groan and roll their eyes. But maybe a few will agree that it’s worth a little reflection. I don’t agree with all of it (I want to make that clear before I get a liberal backlash!). I do, though, think that in its own, gently humorous way it captures a sentiment shared privately by many people, in all walks of life: one that contains at least a degree of truth and that requires a common sense political response.
Anyway, I doubt the author or the person sent me this was expecting me to take it so seriously!
Common Sense – an obituary
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
Why the early bird gets the worm;
Life isn’t always fair;
And maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the religious organisations became businesses – and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his spouse, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his four stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame and I’m A Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realised he was gone.
If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.
At last night’s Council Meeting I moved the following motion (see item 13):
“The Council welcomes the demonstration of public support for reinstating The Woodsman in St Martin’s Square, recognises the talent and generosity of Dave Chapple in giving “The Woodsman” to the people of Basildon, and commits to its restoration and reinstatement in St Martin’s Square at the earliest practical opportunity.”
I regretted that no administration had looked after “The Woodsman”. However, I pointed out that “The Woodsman’s continuing neglect, taken together with what they had done to other pieces of public art and Cllr Tony Ball’s comments on the funding of “Progression”, showed that the Conservative Party in Basildon (not nationally) had a clear position: they are not supportive of public art. I said that this seemed inconsistent with their Conservative colleagues at County Hall, their own press release and survey – and the public response on Facebook to “The Woodsman”. (I pointed out that “The Woodsman” had more than ten times more friends on Facebook than Stephen Metcalfe, the Conservative PPC, on his campaign page – and that the page for “The Woodsman” had only been running for a few weeks.)
As you can see, response was low. 220 people offered an opinion. (I’ll state it again, despite the Council saying this survey had wide coverage, I saw nothing and so didn’t take part.) However, whilst it does show that 74% of people thought “The Woodsman” should be replaced, it also showed that a majority of people wanted a piece of public art in St Martin’s Square: either “The Woodsman”, another piece by Dave or a newly commissioned piece of public art. Just to be clear, I say a majority as if you take the totals for “The Woodsman”, “King Edgar’s Head” and a new piece of public art you get 130. That is 59% of 220 – a majority. Sadly, though, I suspect this survey was just another cynical manipulation of figures to present the result they wanted: “The Woodsman” gone and purple squid lights installed instead. (They are actually going to be putting the Town Clock where “The Woodsman” used to be. It’s a marvellous and unique piece of engineering, as Cllr Horgan said, but surely it should be put back in the Town Centre – where it was designed to be?)
Whatever people’s views on public art in general, I made the argument that “The Woodsman” was different: made from material from Basildon, made in Basildon, by an artist from Basildon, in front of people from Basildon and then handed over to Basildon – for free.
Finally, earlier in the meeting, Cllr Ball, talking on another item, had said that his Conservative Council was a listening administration and that they would hear what the people wanted and then deliver. I concluded by reminding the Council of what he had said, pointing out that 162 people had said take “The Woodsman” down in their consultation – but more than 1500 people were now asking for it to be put back. The people would be waiting for him to listen and deliver.
The Conservative Councillors commended Dave Chapple on his work. However, during the meeting I was accused of electioneering, making politics out of “The Woodsman”, and was told that the Conservative administration would take no lessons on support for public art as they had repaired the “Mother and Child” fountain. I was also told that that Dave had always wanted to see “The Woodsman” in Wat Tyler. They had consulted the public – and the public had asked for it to be taken down (all 162 of them).
The motion was defeated with every single Conservative Councillor present voting against – the three Liberal Democrats and the Labour Councillors present voting for.
I am a little wrung out with it all now to be honest. How sad to think that we are in this mess because no-one could be bothered to put a bit of teak oil on “The Woodsman” as Dave had requested.
I didn’t know Dave and I don’t know his family. I know one or two of his friends, but not very well. I simply want to see the “The Woodsman” repaired and restored and put back on display, either in St Martin’s Square or a suitable location that is actually in the town, not tucked away like some unofficial sculpture museum (graveyard?).
Let’s hope that the years of neglect have not left it damaged beyond repair.
And if they are not going to put him back, at least listen to what the majority of respondents were telling the Council in that survey: they want a piece of public art there.
I am definitely not the first person to have blogged about the wince-inducing news that the American military have developed robots that can power themselves by eating organic material. However, I’ve not read much that speculates on what interesting things could happen if you marry this robot technology with several other recent developments in the field of computing – like “adaptive behaviour” for instance. (I use “interesting” in that very British way: gross understatement, superficial calm and underlying blind panic all at once.)
DARPA has been responsible for lots of sci-fi military technology.
They sponsored the development of the MQ1-Predator. This is the un-manned drone missile platform that costs $4.5 million a pop and that enterprising Iraqis hacked using a €30 piece of software called SkyGrabber – PayPal accepted. (If you are not quite sure yet what you’d do with your very own MQ1-Predator there is a trial version here).
I first became aware of EATR in a report by Stephen Sackur on Radio 4, excerpted from a report he prepared for the BBC World Service. (If you’ve time, have a listen. It is chilling.)
In it, the scientist behind the technology explains rather lamely that its diet would be restricted to a vegetarian one as eating human corpses would be against the Geneva Conventions.
Really?! I am glad they are straight about that!
Considered in isolation, I can fully accept that the problem we are dealing with here is one to do with the ethics of the individuals charged with programming these robots. There is only a problem with the Geneva Conventions if someone set the parameters for their diet too widely. (I am not entirely convinced on this point. I am diabetic – and I know something about the vagaries of diet control.)
Chaos Theory and “adaptive behaviour”
All well and good.
However, a few weeks ago, I was among those who marvelled at Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s programme “The Secret Life of Chaos”, a scientific tour de force which sought to outline the role played by chaos theory in producing the order we see about us every day. Whether or not you accept his assertion that the simple yet unpredictable rules of chaos which underpin evolutionary theory are the sole reason for our existence (rules best depicted by the infinitely variable intricacies of the Mandelbrot set) his analysis of process and the role of mathematics in revolutionising our understanding of biological processes was simply brilliant. (As it happens, I disagree with his assertion that this understanding takes science beyond philosophy and religion – for even if you argue this understanding to be true, there is still no scientific explanation for the existence of this behaviour-dictating rule-set in the first place. Btw you should really watch the Mandelbrot set zoom sequence above. It is incredible.).
One fascinating part of that programme was a demonstration of evolutionary behaviour in successive generations of computer avatars. Games software has often been at the cutting edge of computer technology. The increasingly complex coding necessary to create more life-like games enjoys a symbiotic relationship with computer hardware manufacturers producing faster and more powerful computer chips.
The software development company Natural Motion grew out of work at Oxford University, commercialising research into human and animal movement. Co-founder Torsten Reil, described as an “animating neural biologist”, worked on creating simulations of nervous systems based on genetic algorithms. He and his team set out to teach stick figures to walk using virtual neural networks analogous to that bit of the nervous system in the spine, something described in computer terms as “adaptive behaviour”. (It’s important to distinguish between this “learning” process (complex) and simply programming a computer avatar to walk (simple). This was the former, effectively the computer-generated avatar teaching itself how to walk).
Reil’s team started with lots of neural networks. By their very nature, those in this first generation were going to behave in a random manner. However, a genetic algorithm selected those examples that showed some promise, for example the avatar managing a small step rather than falling over, and then included that behaviour in the next generation of avatars. In twenty generations, the avatars had taught themselves to walk in a straight line. If you are interested, there is the most phenomenal video available at Technology, Entertainment, Design: Ideas Worth Spreading, in which Reil gives an inspirational and fascinating presentation to a live studio audience:
Natural Motion’s white paper on “Dynamic Motion Synthesis”, published in March 2005, sums up the power of adaptive behaviour technology:
This technology is now an integral part of computer game design in some of the world’s largest studios. Natural Motion’s endorphin technology is used by firms like Sony and Electronic Arts, whilst its morpheme software is used by Codemasters and Eidos, amongst others.
What if?
The moment I heard Sackur’s piece on Radio 4, I found myself asking the “What if?” question.
What if some bunch of loons, with a multi-billon dollar budget, thought that there might be some merit in at least experimenting with a synthesis of EATR and adaptive behaviour technology? Could those be the sort of loons that spend millions on bot-bees and robo-rats? The very same techno-brilliant weapons nerds you might find digging into the deep pockets of DARPA?
Throw the robo-rat technology into the mix and suddenly the prospect of a corpse-eating robot, that adapts itself to its fighting environment and, from time to time, turns captured soldiers into DARPA’s version of the “Borg” (or even EATR’s version of the “Borg” – the ones it doesn’t eat, anyway), and suddenly it all looks even more alarming.
Is it really too fanciful to conceive of robots that are imprinted with an evolutionary artificial intelligence and that then calculate it is in their best survival interests to over-ride the protocols relating to the Geneva Conventions, eat the corpses of dead soldiers to remain fuelled and re-deploy captured enemy combatants by remote control to bolster their offensive capabilities? After Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Project MK-ULTRA and Binyam Mohamed, reliance on the programming ethics of human beings seems a rather flimsy defence. It seems even flimsier in a context of unconventional warfare, billion-dollar research budgets and ever-diminishing physical resources.
Tech-heads and Terminators
James Cameron’s Terminator franchise depicts a world in which an artificially intelligent computer, Skynet, takes over the world, with computer-controlled robots deployed to destroy humanity. The long trailer for Terminator 2: Judgement Day gives you a pretty good idea of what it is all about. Not even Cameron had Arnie eating the corpses of fallen fighters for fuel. (Incidentally, for all you conspiracists out there, Skynet does indeed exist as a family of military satellites providing strategic communications to the UK Armed Forces and its NATO allies on coalition operations).
We may laugh about these things, but as we do, teams of DARPA boffins are beavering away in the classified bowels of the U.S. Department of Defense. If EATR, robo-rats and mind-control target acquisition are declassified, we can only wonder at what is going on behind DARPA’s firmly closed doors – and suddenly Cameron’s Skynet is looking distinctly ZX-81 compared to what could be coming down the military technology track…
And now for something (not) completely different…
In the meantime, rest assured that it’s not just the DARPA boffins that risk losing the techno-weaponry plot. Deep in the badlands of Texas, the gun nuts of Mil-Spec Monkey™ have discovered a need for flash-lights that double as submachine guns.
I kid you not.
Watch… And snigger. Or groan. And be glad you don’t live in Texas.
The first “Basildon Arts Forum” is to be held at St Martin’s Church Hall, Basildon Town Centre on Monday 1st March at 7pm. Anyone interested in seeing a thriving artistic community in Basildon is welcome. As spaces have to be limited for health and safety reasons please drop an email to Liz Grant if you are intending to come: lizzy_grant@btopenworld.com.
Also, in the best traditions of anti-establishment art, the irreverent Old Man Stan has decided to share his views on the fate of “The Woodsman”. He really is the most incredible creation, sort of like Alf Garnett crossed with Statler and Waldorf and “Grandad Trotter”. I hope that those it lampoons remember that satire in Britain has a handsome pedigree – and take it in the spirit of Fousgasse and Hogarth.
It is good to see that the local and regional media have been taking an interest in the Motorboat Museum, even if Basildon’s Conservative-controlled Council is no longer bothered what happens to the nation’s foremost collection of motorboats. Interestingly, the Council have confirmed to me that they made no effort to find a private sponsor and set aside no money to promote the museum (the budget for promoting it came out of the general countryside services promotion budget – so I guess it didn’t get very much).
Most of us would not have much time for the excuses made by a company that complained about falling sales having not advertised its products, so it strikes me as a little rich for the Council to complain that visitor numbers were falling when they did nothing to tell people the museum was there!
Before going on, I think I should make it clear that I see this as a matter of political will and prioritisation – and not something that is the responsibility of a countryside services budget already stretched to capacity. To that end I think it appalling that in the coverage I have seen, no administration councillor has seen fit to defend this decision publicly, instead choosing to hide behind officials and spokespersons.
It is probably all too late, at least in terms of saving the collection in Basildon, but this local and regional media coverage has been impressive.
Sophie Edwards had a good piece in the Echo which featured George Sawyer, the former world record holder who lives locally and who is a member of the Friends of the Motorboat Museum. He sums it up very well:
“He said: “If the collection is broken it will be a disaster.
“Basildon has really lost something. This museum was the only one of its kind in the world, which traced the history and evolution of motor boats.
“Hopefully the museum won’t be lost altogether, even though it will be sadly lost to Basildon.””
I was rather less measured, not least of all because I am fed up of tip-toeing around issues which are too easily dismissed as a minority issue or of limited significance:
““I don’t believe the council has invested any serious effort in maintaining the integrity of the collection.
“I have nothing against taking funding from Government for a new green education centre.
“However, if the council was bothered enough, it could have sought to preserve this nationally-significant collection.””
ITV’s London Tonight programme visited Basildon yesterday and spoke to George and Nina Sawyer at the museum. Whilst it is not on their main website, ITN sells clips of its footage and you can see it as a preview on their page.
And today, John Hayes featured the fate of the Motorboat Museum on BBC Essex’s prime-time “Drive Time” programme. The three minute feature on the Motorboat Museum is exactly 43 minutes into the programme.
Until the end of last year, school kids on their curriculum museum visits could see examples such as the Fairey Huntress, the boat that James Bond and Tatiana Romanova use to escape from SPECTRE at the end of From Russia With Love.
That is one of the most iconic chase sequences in any Bond film and I remember it fuelling many a childhood secret agent fantasy.
Now?
I am left wondering sadly how on earth Basildon Council can rationalise that the preservation of a nationally-significant collection like this simply doesn’t matter any more.
Fragments and Reflections 