A Mrs Thatcher moment...

I suppose that I have this in common with a lot of people... I try not to fill my thoughts with Margaret Thatcher. But, earlier today, I thought about something she said 23 years ago.

I'm currently in mainland Europe, where it has snowed a lot...



(This is Mozart, in Salzburg, coping well with the "big freeze". Coping less well with the fact that he appears to be composing with a pencil, something which wasn't invented until 20 years after he died....)

...and here, they deal with the snow really well. It's 6-8 inches deep and the roads and the railways are all fine. Ahem, even the schools were open...

The fast, fairly luxurious, double-decker train from Munich got to Salzburg bang on time...



(...and that's in a different country. Through some Alps. Albeit small ones...)

And, of course, they get it all the time, so they are used to it. But there must be other underlying reasons why we're so rubbish at snow in the UK...

I wondered how, here, the trains were clean and reliable, how there were still conductors and ticket inspectors (plural) on the stations and on the trains, how the snow didn't bring it all to a grinding halt...



(Here at Ostbahnhof in Munich, this man spent the best part of 30 minutes clearing the snow from a platform and looked like he was enjoying it... He had a very substantial looking machine to help, but the two people doing it on our platform just had shovels, so no major investment needed...)

I'd decided that it was probably something to do with it not needing to make a profit; being a nationalised concern for the good of the people! Damn you, Mrs Thatcher, and your privatisation of all the train companies and the break up of the system!!

But it turns out that Deutsche Bahn is a private comany after all, so does need to make a profit. So that can't be it...

Anyway, I aksed Jon, who now lives here in Munich, why he thinks the public transport system is so good, how it manages to employ so many people, make a profit and not let a bit of (the wrong type - any type - of) snow bring it skidding to a halt. He gave a most complete and accurate answer in just three words...

"People use it..." he said.

And of course that makes sense.

When, in 1986, Mrs Thatcher said "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure," she helped to make sure that, if you have to use public transport in the UK, that's in some way shameful - you're just cattle; too crap to have your own car. She also engineered the system which means that it costs £8 to get to Southampton and back from my house, whereas here, you can travel between Munich and Salzburg (and back) - 180 miles, between countries! - for £5.

Bless her.

(On the down side, the snow here is just something you have to get rid of to make the trains run. It's commonplace, so no-one plays with it - no snowmen, no snowball fights. I don't think that's Thatcher's fault. Probably just miserable Europeans...)

Seriously...

How thick would you have to be...?

I was just thinking about you...

Richard Dawkins explained in a book, several back and possibly Unweaving the Rainbow, but possibly not, how Uri Geller (could be David Blaine or the other one...) makes people believe he can mend their old watches with the power of his mind.



It's all to do with mass media and maths.

The fact that most people are taken in by mass media, believing everything and anything ("Eoghan" is pronounced "Owen"), helps him achieve the (effect of the) supernatural. But mainly it's that people are generally thick when it comes to maths which nails it.

The argument goes something like this... (I've probably got the figures wrong; it's a while since I read it...)

Imagine five million people watch Uri and he instructs them all to go and find an old watch from a cupboard somewhere in their house. Imagine only two percent of the people watching that programme go and find their old watch. That's still 100,000 people digging around in their "paper bag, cling film and fuses" drawer. *

Watches work by winding them up, or with a battery. Eventually, the winder winds down or the battery fails. Some end up in the drawer. When these 100,000 people find their watches and Uri says "hold it in your hand, rub it, think deep thoughts" etc, the heat from their hands changes the temperature of the winding mechanism or the battery and, momentarily, and because of physics, not because of Uri, the watch works for a few seconds.

Imagine this only happens to one percent of the people who actually find a watch. That's still 1000 people whose watch suddenly works because "Uri says it will"- It's a Kind of Magic!

Uri then says "if your watch worked, phone us!" A mere one percent of the people whose watches ticked for a bit phone up.

Uri still gets to talk to ten people. Plenty to fill the show and, more importantly, all seen by the five million people watching in the first place.

It all rests on these tiny percentages, where coincidences happen, and their effect on the large percentages of people who are open to any suggestion, however stupid, because of their previous experience, ignorance, personality flaws, special needs, religion etc. (Including the very unlikely scenario in which Uri Geller mends your old watch through the TV by pulling a concentrating face and talking with an accent. **)

"Engineered" coincidences for the purposes of entertainment, coercion, gain etc. are one thing, but I guess coincidences don't arise spontaneously all that often. We only think they do because we're more likely to single them out from the background chaff of our lives and remember them.

I only mention this because I seem to have been the on the receiving end of an unexpectedly high number of them recently. Picking just three, some of them were to my disadvantage...

• the woman in the Post Office to whom I complained and whose cloud of "customer un-service" still surrounded her when I saw her again in a restaurant in the evening. So much so that the waiting staff ended up throwing a glass (nearly) at me...

...some of them were to other people's advantage...

• Someone I sold a raffle ticket to won the very prize he took the piss out of. (If it needs mending, Chris, see above...)

...and some of them were to my absolute advantage...

• My nephew was born, unexpectedly, two days ago, in the brief window of time I was around in the North to see him...

Perhaps that was just 2008.

But I'm going to be monitoring in 2009... Happy New Year.

(* "Man Drawer" / ** "I'm sorry, I can't do the accent" - Both © Michael McIntyre - unaccountably missed last year and caught only on DVD...)

Currency...

After a summer spent computing exchange rates in my head and getting to grips with foreign notes and coins......



(Hong Kong notes: some these appear to have been printed by my bank, which I wouldn't trust to produce anything secure or technical...)



(Australian notes: all of which have a see-thru bit and have gone "polymer" meaning they can be recycled into bins and other stuff at the end of their life...)(not my fingers, by the way...)



(Australian coins: which have kangaroos and koalas and echidnas on the one side, but are reassuringly royal on the other...)



(She looks really grumpy, doesn't she...?)

It seems bizarre to come home and find the money is just as foreign...



2ps and pennies seem to be very prevalent already, but haven't seen the rest yet...



...only in the picture.

If you get asked what's on the front on a ten pence piece, you might hesitate then say "Britannia" or "portcullis" or "lion" or something else really random because we're a bit ignorant about something so common which we handle everyday, yet hardly look at.

Of course, what's really on the front of the ten pence piece is the Queen's head, because that's what's on the front of all the coins (something else most of us forget - the front is really the back and the back is really the front...)

That hasn't changed with the new designs, but the answer to what's on the back of the coins will now always be "a bit of shield...", which might make pub quizzes easier, but surely lacks a bit of variety...

Currently...

Currently have this view...



...as I type, from 25 floors up.

(Ab)Normal service will be resumed here in September. For goings-on in August, see the other side of the world.

OZ -6 (HK -3): Wired up...

I am in the process of not-quite-packing.

This is a procedure which involves gathering together things which might be necessary for my holiday without actually packing them into anything. The suitcase is still in the loft.

It's a very useful phase of the proceedings as I am also getting a number of other jobs done as a by-product. For instance, sorting out my "home file" (a product I swore I would never possess) while trying to find my passport in it. This involved a trip into town to purchase A4 filing wallets (or "slippy dippies" © Chris Kilby 1990s). These were cheap, which is good, because I could have just lifted some "used" ones from work... This led to several hours sorting out contents of aforementioned boxfile and categorising and shredding and wondering why, in the light of the advice I give my Dad, I still have the receipt for a printer I bought in 2001 and threw away in 2002.

Anyway, here is the collection of electronicage I have to take abroad...



USB cable, another USB cable with slightly different end (in white), camera batteries (why it can't take ordinary batteries, that you buy in a shop, I don't know...), charger for camera batteries, earphones for iPod, memory card for camera, USB stick to back up photos to avoid what happened to Tina's Australia photos, socket adapters to turn safe, earthed three-pin plugs into wonkily angled, two-pin, flimsy death-trap plugs, phone charger...

That's the luggage allowance gone then.

Trainspotting...

I'm not sure if this is classed as one of the Great Railway Journeys of the World, but me and my Dad went on the Settle -Carlisle Line on Friday. Didn't get much time in Carlisle (probably enough...), but that wasn't the point.

The line is now more widely used than it was when it was under the threat of closure in the 80s. This is mainly to do with the fact that it's been well marketed as a tourist attraction. It's a great way to see the western Yorkshire Dales...

This map shows the stations all the way from Leeds as captured by GPS along the route... (Just got geeky new phone which does that...)



The journey takes about three hours, heading up the Ribble Valley to Ribblehead where the famous viaduct is...



..and where we stopped for a look round. There's a great restored station with a very knowledgable live-in railway enthusiast station master. You can buy a postcard and other paraphernalia...

The viaduct is really huge. You only get how huge it is if you're standing underneath it, or when you see a train going over the top...



The line then goes to through Blea Moor Tunnel, into Cumbria and to Dent Station, which is at the head of Dentdale and the highest mainland station in England, and then past Ais Gill, which is the highest point on the line.

As you might expect, the views are spectacular all the way... the three peaks of Pen-y-Ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside, many more viaducts other than (but none as big as) Ribblehead, beautiful dales and villages, plunging waterfalls and raging rivers, and the forests in the Eden Valley.

And then you get to see the other side on the way home!

I might become a trainspotter yet.

OZ -15 (HK -12): Too hot...

I am very excited that it's going to be winter in Australia. I like it being cold. (Actually it won't be cold, but it won't be boiling. It'll be comfortable.)

I've been so busy looking forward to the winter evenings, dark early etc that I totally failed to appreciate how hot it's going to be Hong Kong...

I realise there are ways of coping, but I really don't want to have to wear linen and sandals...

Branded...

I finally went to the Minnellium Dome last night...

Yes, I know, only eight years late, but nearly everything they planned for the minnellium was late. And still doesn't work. It's a British thing.

In those eight years, I've flown over it, driven under it, sailed past it, tubed through it, but never actually been in it.

It's bloody clever actually. On a very narrow peninsula they've managed to thread the Jubilee Line under the Blackwall Tunnels - that's four tunnels under the Thames in total - and construct this very iconic building on top. (Although I suppose it's not really a building - just a big tent - and the buildings underneath it are fairly ordinary.)



And, of course, for about the last seven years of the eight, no-one in their right mind wanted to go there because it was an ill-conceived, publicly-funded white elephant full of crap. It was all cultural - Mind Zone, Body Zone, Spiritual Zone - and no-one wanted to spend their "lee-zhure" time doing all that nonsense, even if it was inside a triumph of civil engineering...

So what happened?

Well, firstly, someone decided it would be better if it were full of things people actually wanted to do - shop, eat, go to cinema, see Bryan Adams in November (OK, not the last one...)

Secondly, someone else decided it would be good if people could actually get there, so they built the aforementioned tube line...

But most important, branding happened.

Someone, probably in what Eddie Izzard calls one of those "4 o'clock in the morning, stroky-beard meetings", came up with the ludicrous suggestion of calling it after a phone company.

O₂ is one of the most successful marketing exercises of all time. The phone company used to be BT Cellnet - deeply untrendy and lagging massively behind the likes of Orange and Vodafone. No clear identity and losing money and subscribers.

But now, the strength of the brand is overwhelming. It can be identified by the subtle blue fade of the corporate colour, the little subscript ₂, the bubbles, Sean Bean being all northern and reassuring on the ads, etc.



And now, not only has it made the Dome very cool and trendy, every person who goes there (23 000 watching Kylie last night, not to mention all the people eating and drinking and watching films) gets the brand lasered right through their eyeballs into their brains at every available opportunity.

The branding is so successful that The O₂ is the only fully commercial organisation to have what is effectively a free advert on that other icon, the tube map...



Now that is bloody clever...

Mammoth...

I think it's the warm weather and the long summer evenings (both of which I really can't be doing with) which have resulted in my house becoming a haven for wildlife. (Again.)

This doesn't bother me much - I am not mottephobic - but there is a big difference between moth being at rest and still, and moth being flappy and confused and fast and in your face, trilling away like some tiny, winged pneumatic drill.



This one had an appreciation of art and sat (? stood??) long enough on The Great Bear for it to be captured using the time-honoured glass/piece of card technique often used on spiders. And then it got let out of the window.

It will probably twitter back in again if I put any bright lights on.

And then I might get fed up and swat it.

We fill your homes with lots of groovy things...! *

It looks a bit like they are building IKEA in Southampton like most people build IKEA furniture.

In other words, they're ignoring the instructions completely, not checking they've got all the bits and going with a bit of gut instinct and hoping for the best.

This can be the only reason they've put the name up on one side before they've finished building the other side.



Or perhaps they are taking the obvious marketing opportunity of getting the sign up early to suck people in with anticipation. As if the several million square metres of blue wall didn't give you the clue as to what it was.

The Swedes are coming...

• IKEA Southampton Store info
• Latest photos (better than this one I took with mobile phone...)

* Mitch Benn...

OZ -21: Apparently...

...people do person does read this blog, which is all very encouraging and spurs one on into making a bit of an effort.

With this in mind, I have invested time and coffee in producing the very nascent map below.

It shows the basic route and main destinations and its creation, in that it was bloody hard to do, gives the lie to Google's corporate "do no evil" philosophy (see number 6) and drives a cart and horses through most of its design principles (especially number 3).



(You can zoom in pan about and look at an aerial photo of Heathrow, if you wish...)

I intend to add those groovy little place markers in various colours and styles to bring some actual tourism to what is currently only flights, and they may (or may not) appear on this map (see number 5).

OZ -22: Countdown has begun...

With only three days officially left at work now (but probably about seven or eight left unofficially) and with some other people (who had sensible Easters actually at Easter) having finished work for the summer completely, I thought it was about time to start looking forward to the holidays.



The last time I did this properly was in 2005 when I went off to New Zealand and it's been really good to look back at the blog and the photos from them to remember what we did and saw, what with memory failing through age, early onset Alzheimers etc.



Being as I'm going nearly as far again this time, I have decided to "temperately"* interrupt this blog (no imposition as I haven't written on it since April and no-one reads it anyway...!) and produce a self-contained "interactive postcard" of...







(I really spend too much time on the computer...)



There are several good reasons for this:

1. It's cheaper than phoning people;


2. You don't have to master any foreign language to buy stamps for real postcards (in this case, Australian...);


3. It's a good back-up for all the photos in case the memory card goes tits-up;


4. It saves making a real scrapbook like I used to do when I was little (my OCD meaning that I would only ever buy John Hinde postcards...);


5. It will give Ann Crocker something to read (I still have a dog in my boot that's hers... fluffy, not real, so don't phone the RSPCA...);


6. It will divert attention away from the fact that I have failed Project366 (but kept going longer than some...).

* © Nicola, Pinkney Hydro (someone will get that....)

Meet your chickens...

As Magda said...




..."it's bad enough having to read most of the crap that's written, without 'avin to look at a photo of the bastard that wrote it..."

Well, now it's poultry with egos too...



All I can say to Tesco is that I feel it's ethical enough to buy the locally sourced, Shiny Happy Farmers Free Range eggs, without 'avin to look at a photo of the chickens that laid 'em...

Papering over the crack...

It's not often you get to see an art work destroyed, but here it is....



It's Shibboleth again.

To create the crack, Doris Salcedo had to destroy the floor, so it can't be moved or installed elsewhere. Mending the floor destroys the art work. Destroy to create, create to destroy... It's, like, totally an aesthetic paradox and that....

It does, however, appear as though they are mending it with giant duct tape; which seems to be from the same school of civil engineering as the repair of the Huka Falls footbridge with a tile adhesive gun...

I think it was all a bit too clever for its own good. At least with the slides you were meant to fall down them...

* Thanks to Paul for the photo.