]]>I uploaded some seascapes, landscapes, cute pictures of my dog, some pictures of London, of run down industrial building, telephone poles, and other things that i thought made a good or interesting picture.
I also uploaded a couple of pictures of supermarket shelves from when I worked for a retailer. Almost immediately, I was invited to load the picture into a group which displays pictures of supermarket shelves, so I loaded a picture of some special offers displays and a picture of the cereals shelves.
These two pictures are my most popular pictures on Flickr by a very long margin. They beat my cutest dog pictures, moody low light pictures, the sun setting over deserted welsh beaches, and curiosities created by the industrial decay. I am baffled.
]]> ]]>A shopping mall and bus station has been knocked down to be replaced by a shopping mall and a bus station. I'm not sure what we have achieved. It did get me thinking about the grand construction schemes that seem very often to be short term ego and career boosts for politicians. Otherwise they are grotesque wastes of money which leave us all with a legacy of financial, social and ecological debt.
What do I have in mind? Most obviously, the collection of Olympic villages across the world. I would add the Channel Tunnel, the Millau bridge in France and, if I could be bothered to do the research, a series of other mega-schemes. You can do your own research to get a good strong list!
These monstrosities seem to me to be pointless adventures where politicians posture and strut like peacocks to show how virile they are. It seems very 18th century in outlook, it seems as though the south east Asian Tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake, the destruction of New Orleans and other events haven't quite convinced us that we are not in control.
In London, we are building the Olympic complex at huge expense. We are reclaiming some spoilt land that no-one could otherwise afford to develop. Why? Because it's London. Actually, I think London would benefit more from a "green lung". I also think almost anywhere in the country needed investment more than London. However, there are more votes in and around London. And that battle is lost.
The next one is CrossRail - building a mainline railway underneath London to connect the east and west. The benefits will be shorter travel times and easier commuting. I was initially in favor because I suffer from long travel times and difficult commutes using multiple trains. But thinking about it, these are really disbenefits. We are investing more money into a massively overcrowded region. We are encouraging more jobs into the region which requires either more housing or more commuting. The pressure on land drives up prices which drives up salaries which drives up inflation which means we have to think of ever more expensive ideas to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure which takes us into a vicious circle.
If we need to improve the travel infrastructure, then what about improving travel to neglected regions away from London? How about building communities? How about eliminating much of the need to travel? This won't happen because its not a grand scheme, it requires thought and votes aren't there.
We lack true leaders who can see the real needs and are prepared to tackle them. We lack real leaders who do what is right out of conviction and who trust the people to follow them because they are right. But it is our own fault, we value style over substance. We like our politician to be celebrities instead of effective stewards of our resources and freedom.
Do I have a solution? No! To change the race, you have to join the race, to join race is to be corrupted by the race. We are in a trap of our own making - maybe we need a catastrophe of the scale of the tsunami or the Pakistan earthquake to the hit the west to get some sort of change - perhaps New Orleans wasn't big enough!
]]>
There is a car park in mid west Wales where I park fairly regularly. I was sitting in the car next to a recently upgraded ticket machine. The scene was like an sketch from a candid camera show. This car park is used mainly by local people so they come prepared with the right money. People would approach the machine with their money in an outstretched hand and pause a couple of meters from the machine, their jaws would drop in bewilderment and then they would take one of the following actions -
This is the machine in question:
The central bank of 37 buttons has the digits 0 through 9 followed by the alphabet listed A through Z with a delete key at the bottom of the second column. There are additional silver, green and yellow buttons above this bank that do not have labels.
The text on the left of the machine tells you how to use the machine including what the unlabelled green and yellow keys are for. This is a bilingual area and yellow key is quite important since it changes language.
The shiny buttons catch the sun and dazzle the user. They also protrude which means that for a tall user the button text is obscured. As a user interface design, this must be among the worst example out there.
However, I think there are more important points that this machine highlights. The purpose of this machine is to enforce parking rule 1:
“Parking tickets are not transferable”. Imagine if McDonalds instituted a similar rule – food is not transferable. You can’t eat all your fries and give them to your kid. The manager walks over to you and tells you that you and your child are to be prosecuted for stealing a meal. I’m not clear under what moral principle that the use of the parking bay that I have purchased is confiscated.
But much more importantly, if you pay for parking time and do not use it all then you are prohibited from making an act of random kindness to a passing stranger. We should be encouraging random acts of kindness, we should be encouraging generosity of spirit and considerate regard for our fellow human beings. Surely the loss of revenue is worth the smiles, the thanks, and the small increases in well-being created.
]]>Raising animals for food is basically an inefficient use of grain compared to direct consumption of grain. This reduces the supply of grain driving its price upwards. It also requires increased industrialisation of farming which uses that key limited resource, oil driving its price upwards too. Animal flatulence, I am not sure expected to use that phrase in a blog, is apparently a major contributor to green house gases driving climate change. Assuming we accept that climate change is happening then we are all paying for every disaster and for every measure to reduce it.
I believe that the move to protein is hitting me in the pocket right now and is also hitting every one else. I could talk about about helping starving people who can't afford food, I could talk about the damaged world we are leaving our children, I could talk about the health benefits of lower meat intake.. However, I thought the appeal to the wallet may have more impact - a sad conclusion perhaps.
A high protein diet is, I believe, a largely western fashion. As countries around the world become richer, we export our fashions to get a cut of their increased wealth. The great thing about fashion is that it is controlled by the customer. The marketer makes a proposition, but we choose to buy or not. The Internet gives us the opportunity to deliver counter marketing and democratize the buying process.
Part of the answer to our reduced buying power and climate change is to reverse the move to protein. And the answer is in our hands. We can set an alternative fashion that is less about meat. Smaller steaks, quarter pounders not half pounders, or even turn veggie...
]]>One office is just off Piccadilly, near Leicester Square and theatre land. It is in the bustling heart of the west end, full of tourists, cosmpolitan. It is colourful and lively. There is a mixture of people dressed for fun and for work. There is a mixture of ages from little children in prams to elderly people and every age in between. There is the whole diverse spread of humanity.
The other office is in an area of London regenerated in recent years. The area is a monotone, monoculture. It is a work place, yes there are houses but they are houses for workers. There are green areas, relaxation areas for workers. Shops for workers, buses for workers, trains for workers, eating places for workers. Where is it, I don't know. This micro-city of steel and glass is devoid of any sense of place, a joyless desert devoid of humanity.
]]>
