Month: May 2011

Up The Injunction

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Like many, I spent a little time at the weekend playing a game called ‘how well do you know Google’, in which I tried to get to the name of the ‘Top Flight Premiership Footballer’ in the injunction case with as few Google searches as possible. Got it on the second page of the second search, so obviously I score pretty low on the Google capability. Anyway, the point of the search was not so much to enjoy the salacious gossip around Who’s Bedding Who And Keeping It Out Of The Public Domain, but more to understand the workings of the footballer’s brain.

So, I’ll try to explain that last bit. After all, you might think this is an elaborate bluff to justify a good leer at Busty Welsh Big Brother Beauty Imogen Thomas (28), and it’s not.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how long the press can continue in its current form; not just with the takeover of printed media by online, but in the whole area of traditional journalism. In times gone by, the journalistic right to privilege was very tightly bound to the media group that they were representing. In some areas where you might least expect it (the NoW’s phone tapping case, for example), this is still the case, and we see charges levied against the business rather than the writer. But these times will soon be behind us, and the concept of journalistic privilege, where conversations can be off the record, where confidential anonymity can be protected, and where journalistic opinion is protected by the publisher, will no longer exist. Some of this is a good thing. The media in this country has long been dominated by some pretty extreme views, which might purport to represent the readership, but do far more to influence it politically. And in an age where the internet allows individuals to be, well, individuals, then it’s absolutely appropriate that people can source their own news sources, mixing, for example, the relative independence of the BBC with their favourite blogs, or what’s trending on Twitter. All of which, I think in general is a good thing.

Which brings me back to the weekend, where I was listening to a very worthy legal expert describing the Criminal Justice view on following up on ‘name & shame’ Twitter Tweets. In the unlikely event that you’ve missed this, the idea is that a celebrity takes out a ‘superinjunction’ to suppress any mention of their name with a gossip story, lest it damages their reputation. And when there’s a threat that it might leak, through the crowd-power that is Twitter, they look to take the information’s source to court. Anyway, this chap was justifying the action against Twitter by using a rather charming analogy.

“Let’s just say that we were receiving abusive mail from a PO Box*”, he said, “We’d be completely within our rights to ask the post office to name the sender”

The problem is, that this is so far and away the wrong analogy to use, that I do wonder where such people have been for the last ten years. Sending a Tweet is not the same as sending a letter. At All. If you wanted to use a more appropriate analogy, think about the way that rumours used to spread around – one person would tell somebody something in a pub, that person would tell someone at work, and before you knew it, the next week it was being relayed back to you, often with lots of embellishment. Well, that’s kind of how social media like Twitter works.

And only a completely out of touch dimwit would try to sue the equivalent of chatter in a public bar, showing themselves to be so far out of touch with reality (and indeed, their own importance) that they’d be made a laughing stock.

And that’s why I was keen to find out who it was. And now I do.

*No, I don’t know who would send abusive mail from a PO Box, either

Brutal Youth*

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

When my Sister was 17, my Father, like the kind soul that he was and is, sat her in the car for her first driving lesson.

“Remember”, he said solemnly, “that when you get in a car and drive, you’re basically being put in charge of the most dangerous weapon you will ever control”.

We were keen to remind my sister of these wise words as, over the next couple of years, she emerged relatively unscathed from a number of scrapes and near misses involving cars, boyfriends, trees, whiplash and on one spectacular occasion, two Japanese exchange students. In fact, this last incident caused something of a diplomatic incident where we lived, and it took a good couple of months before the entente cordiale between the North and South ends of the village was re-established. I experience the concept of car as weapon a couple of years later, during my first attempt at hitch-hiking, which resulted in wedging a Mini directly underneath the front of a large lorry in Northumberland.

But all of these stories will have to wait, because this blog is about yesterday morning’s bike ride, and what it tells us about the way the world is turning.

So let me, as Lloyd Cole would say, introduce you to the rest of the crew. Four of us have been training together on Saturday mornings now for a few years. Apart from myself, we have:

1. the mysterious ex-government agent who, for obvious reasons, cannot be named. Let us call him Mr Bean, largely because we do.

2. Chuckle Brother #1, whose athletic ability at the front of the pack is normally limited slightly by a challenging bladder problem

3. Chuckle Brother #2, who combines cycling with gym work and generally lifting heavy objects for a living, which means he’s ideal for the front of the pack, so we can all shelter behind him.

More of CB#2 later, as our interesting tale does rather revolve around him.

So, off we pedal at a bracing speed, heading off towards the coast on the back roads. And worth mentioning at this point, that this was proper idyllic stuff. If you ever want to rattle around country roads in the style of Julian, Dick, George, Ann and Timmy, just get yourself to Norfolk and go off the beaten track. Just don’t go with Bean, CB#1 or CB#2, as they tend to travel a bit faster than the FF. Incidentally, what did they do with Timmy when they were on their bracing bike rides? Anyway, this is yet another meaningless tangent, so back to the bike ride, and about 40 miles in, when we were on the coast road, whizzing along towards Cromer.

This is a brilliant section of road, with views out to the sea, a bit of up and down, and a good surface; the roads can be a little narrow, but they’re open enough. Or so we thought…

On a fairly straight stretch, a couple of cars overtook us; there was nothing coming the other way, so that was fine, and I was surprised to see the second car slow down and drive alongside me. The driver, who was on his own, had the passenger window open, and was pointing and shouting at me. Sadly, years of playing pub-rock, travelling along in the wind, a noisy car and a rather attractive snood that I was wearing that morning rendered me pretty much deaf to what he was saying, but, for reasons best known to himself, he was not at one with the universe and apparently it was our fault. So I gave him what I thought was a special look, which is fairly close to that in the picture at the top of this blog.

CB#2 was rather less controlled in his reaction. Hearing what was going on behind him, he suggested very loudly and very directly that the driver might want to go…off. This provoked an interesting reaction from the driver, who pulled back a bit, made to overtake again, then steered directly towards CB#2. He pulled out of the collision at the last moment, just before CB#2 was forced off the road, and just avoided making contact.

Let’s just play that one again. A car overtakes a cyclist on a clear stretch of road. For some reason or another the driver is unhappy. An altercation occurs between two complete strangers, where neither can actually hear what the other is saying. Then the driver aims a half ton piece of metal, at speed, directly towards a cyclist who is travelling at some pace, held to the road by two narrow tyres and with no protection. Then drives off. It is, frankly, unbelievable. It’s one thing giving a driver possession of a dangerous weapon. It’s quite another when they decide to use it..as a weapon.

Fortunately, CB#2 had managed to retrieve his balance, and somehow stayed on his bike. At which point, rather ambitiously, he chased after the car, shouting in a style that was a lively mix of ‘half-time Delia’ with extreme Tourettes. The car put his brakes on, at which point we rather feared for the worst. There are certain people in my life who I’m very grateful to have as friends rather than enemies, and CB#2 is definitely one of them, and had he caught up with the car I think there’s a reasonable chance that he might have lifted it over the side of the road single-handedly. Pretty quickly, the driver changed his mind and drove off, and I think if I’d seen CB#2 bearing down on me through my rear view mirror like a rabid cage fighter on a bike, I might have done the same.

As regular readers may know, the Emu exists partly to making sweeping generalistic statements about the state of the world from the minutiae of everyday life. And, reflecting on this on the way home, I decided that if we bottled down one thing that is wrong with this country at the moment, it would not be the lack of trust in the establishment, the corrupt politicians, the failing infrastructure or a crumbling economy that seems increasingly based on moving around objects without any intrinsic value. I think it’s that we appear to be breeding generation after generation of irresponsible no-marks who have taken selfishness and a lack of consideration to a whole new level. I really, really, really, hope I’m wrong.

*A very very fine work indeed. And something of a find for the cover photo

Brass In Pocket

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes I fear that this blog is just turning into a whole load of middle-aged, middle-England, middle-class whines at the state of the nation. So the next time I sit down with my laptop and rattle off a few choice thoughts, they will be either about a lifetime experience of pub-rock shenanigans, or possibly why the internet is set to fail us, by virtue of the idiots that seem to have claimed it for themselves. I would very happily take a vote on this, and choose the subject accordingly; just write to me at the usual address.

And speaking of voting, what a huge surprise that the country should have vented its spleen, in the first referendum for years, on what appears to have been a direct vendetta against Nick Clegg. Personally, I’m not ashamed to say that I voted No, which is the first time I’ve ever sided with a Tory policy in an election. Well, I say I voted No. Actually what happened was that my first choice was No, and my second one was Yes, tee hee.

I don’t think I have the energy to go into the missed opportunity that the AV referendum presented for some sort of democratic change in this country. But while I’m here, a couple of thoughts…

I don’t understand why we don’t have some sort of proper proportional representation in England (we manage to do so in Scotland, after all); although I do think we could manage a bit of fun into the bargain. My suggestion would be simply that the number of MP’s be cross checked after each election against the number of votes. For parties not adequately represented by constituency MP’s, a number of reserve MP’s without constituency would be added to parliament. If, on the other hand, a party was over-represented, those MP’s with the smallest majority would be publicly shot. I really think this would make people consider their commitment to politics. Incidentally, I wonder whether we could spice up our more boring athletic races in the same way. The 10,000 metres on the track, for example, is a tedious 25 laps around the track, with usually only the last couple raced at pace. Think how much more fun it would be if the last runner on each lap knew that he or she would be physically damaged for being last. I’m only thinking about an air rifle, although I’m aware that our enthusiasm for extreme sports would cause a bit more of a demand for something more dramatic eventually.

I digress, so on to this week’s blog. For one reason or another, a couple of weeks ago I had to withdraw a reasonably large amount of cash from my bank. So I called them in advance on the morning I needed the money. Three times. Each time the phone rang for several minutes, wasn’t answered, and I hung up. I was phoning largely to check to see if I needed any extra ID to take out five grand in cash, and, of course, to see if the branch was open. I decided to chance it anyway, and cycled down to the bank. To my surprise and pleasure, it was indeed open. So I went inside, where I was delighted to see three tellers, uniformly staring into space, and two other staff, presumably engaged in some sort of meet & greet (or possibly meet, greet and inappropriately sell) role. There were no other customers to be seen.

“Good morning”, I said to the first teller, because largely it was.

“I’d like to withdraw five thousand pounds please. Should I make the cheque out to cash?”

“Good morning”, the teller parried (and at this stage the morning was at its shiny best)

“You don’t need a chequebook for that…I can sort that out on your debit card.” She smiled, and I could hear small birds chirruping outside.

“But you can’t withdraw that amount of money without calling us first.” The small birds stopped their chirruping.

“But I did call you. No-one answered.”

“Well, we’ve been really busy this morning.” I looked around for signs of busy-ness, and saw none.

To my delight, just at that point the phone rang. And rang, and rang. And the four other members of staff in the branch ignored it. The phone, incidentally, was in the middle of the branch, on a table, under a poster extolling the virtue of the bank’s customer charter.

After a certain amount of backward and forwardness, we established that I could withdraw £4,995 without telling them in advance, but not £5,000. So I did. I was tempted to go outside and call the branch number to get the full amount, but was worried that my call wouldn’t be answered.

“Are you doing anything exciting with that money then?”, the Teller asked.

“Not really, just paying off my dealer”, I replied. Which was a joke, and not terribly well received.

And this week, I found myself at an event to discuss the future of digital banking. One of the key messages was around the maturity ‘tipping point’ for successful customer interfaces through internet and mobile devices. And one of the contentions was that this maturity could never be reached until digital transactions could have the same level of personal interaction as that delivered in branches. Well, for all the wrong reasons, it seems to me that the future is already here.