A homage to loading screens.
In which things get back to normal
Today has been another plain, ordinary day. Nothing out of ordinary in the news. Nothing exciting has happened. Which is, you know, just as it should be.
I didn’t even manage to be awake at seven minutes past seven this morning, to note the pleasing symmetry of the timestamp. I think I was awake at ten to nine, but that passed without notice too. Which is, in a way, just as it should be.
In which travel is a bad idea
Well, I’m glad I’m not going anywhere today. Not just in a plane, but anywhere that might involve driving past an airport, because no doubt the traffic around them will be awful too.
Today demonstrates the horror of 24-hour news. I’m just as bad as everyone else, refreshing the BBC News site every five minutes to get the latest on the Terror Alert. The news reports, meanwhile, are filled with hyperbolic phrases such as “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.* No it isn’t. People have imagined it. To quote The Princess Bride, “I do not think you know what that word means.”
The government seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to statements. “We have arrested everyone involved, apart from the ones we haven’t”. “This is nothing to do with race, but we’re talking to Community Leaders about it.” How do you become a Community Leader, anyway? Are there elections?
No doubt bottled liquids will be confiscated on planes for the next few months, before everything goes back to normal, and the next terrorist attack comes along with something completely different. The ones that get through are never the ones you expect, after all.
* To be fair to the media, it was a police spokesman who came up with that exact phrase.
In which we get back to work
You can see, now, why I wanted to end the London post series early – I didn’t want yesterday’s post to merge into it. Yesterday’s post was prepared some time ago, and the last of the London series was written nearly a week early too – see, there is planning involved in some of this.
Not many people at work observed the two minutes silence yesterday, as far as I could tell. I found a quiet part of the building, where I wasn’t on the security cameras and wasn’t likely to be interrupted, so I could spend a few minutes with my own thoughts. From what other people have said, it seems that most of the people I know who were personally affected did something similar – rather than join in some sort of group silence, they found somewhere quiet to sit and think on their own.*
It’s been a bit stressful at work, coming back from a week away and trying to catch up on everything. “That’s nothing,” said Big Dave, “I was working 12-hour days while you were off. And I’ve been told I can’t take any holidays until the end of the month.” Fortunately noone has said anything like that to me since I returned.
Scanning got so boring that I’ve given in and bought an expensive digital camera. I’ve signed up for a Flickr account too, to try to avoid running out of disk space on this site; when there’s more on it than just daft test-shots of myself in the mirror, I’ll link to it.
(and with that, I’m going off out for the weekend. See you next week)
* and eat cake, which is the best way to remember someone who loved baking.
In which we fail to complete Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross
Books I Haven’t Read was supposed to be a regular sequence of articles, but has been on pause since – ooh, last November, by the look of things. It fell by the wayside because of a post I never wrote, about a book I couldn’t finish because I came across a passage in it which seemed to have been blatantly lifted from an obscure Victorian memoir. I’ll manage to write about it, one day. In the meantime, here’s another book I haven’t read. Iron Sunrise by Charlie Charles Stross.
I’m not someone who reads much SF, but I do read some selected things. Iain M Banks, for example, because I liked his Iain Banks books* and wanted to expand. Neal Stephenson, because I liked his historical novels and, well, ditto. And Charlie Stross, because – although I don’t know him – we used to drink in the same pubs.
So, last July, I was heading down to London for work, for a week. Planning it all in advance, I bought an unread Stross book – Iron Sunrise – to read on the train. I was catching the train down to Kings Cross on Sunday, July 10th.
I got onboard my train at Doncaster and opened the book, hoping that it would distract me from worry. Unfortunately, it opens with a mass terrorism attack, one which destroys an entire planet. I struggled to read it until Peterborough, and gave up. I haven’t looked at it since then.
At the time, I didn’t even make the connection as to why I couldn’t read it. The planet-destroying opening was distressing for me to read, with characters in the midst of planning their lives, suddenly realising that their world is being completely destroyed. I didn’t draw the parallel, though, between the characters in the book, and the friend I was worried about.*** The thought would have been too raw at the time. Looking back, though, the connection is obvious.
I’m planning to go down to London again in a few weeks, and I’ve bought a different Stross book to read this time. Hopefully, I’ll be able to. Hopefully, too, I’ll be able to finish Iron Sunrise one day. I’m not sure I’m ready to try reading it again, though.
* in case you’ve never heard of him: he writes his SF books with his middle initial,** and his “literary” ones without.
** although you might think it would be easier to write them with a word-processor.
*** The characters in the book – at least, the ones who were worth writing about – realised exactly what was happening to them. I still hope, whenever I think about her, that the friend I’m talking about here didn’t know what was happening to her. Back on that train, it seemed certain that she must be still alive and in hospital unidentified somewhere.
In which we know what people are going to say
Today, in the news, reports will be released stating that the July 7th attacks* were not preventable.
That in itself stirs up all sorts of thoughts and feelings, but I don’t want to write about those just now. What I want to talk about is the phrase there “will be released”. The habit people have of saying: “later, I’m going to tell you this”
When I say “people”, I don’t mean ordinary people, of course. It’s something I mostly notice politicians doing, but I presume they were poked into it by their PR people. I’m sure that companies also send out press releases saying “later, we’re going to tell you this“, but when ordinary companies do it it doesn’t make the news.
I’m sure there was a time when people listened with bated breath to, say, the keynote speech at a party conference, waiting together to hear it for the first time. Nowadays, though, it doesn’t happen – the synopsis, or at least the speech itself, is always released beforehand. Nothing is a surprise, because everyone watching already knows what the speaker is going to tell them – it was on that morning’s news. This is, I think, yet another reason why the ordinary public cares less and less about politics.** There’s no real reason to do it, given the speed of modern newsgathering. The only reason it’s done as standard, I suspect, is that most publically-visible politics*** now is just another branch of PR, and putting out a synoptic press release in advance is standard PR practice.
It’ll never happen, but I just wish that for once, a politician would get up on stage, in front of the autocue, and say: “This morning, all the news reports said I was going to tell you X, Y and Z. Well, I’m not. That’s all nonsense, in fact; I just wanted to make sure all the correspondants listen to my speeches properly in future. What I’m actually going to talk about is…” It may never happen, but it would be wonderful if it did.
* “attacks” is such a nice euphemism for “death and destruction caused by psychotically religious madmen”, don’t you think?
** The Budget is one of the last big speeches or reports not to be released to the press in advance – and that may be partly why it’s still the biggest political event of the year.
*** Most consultation and bill-writing goes on discreetly behind the scenes, after all.
In which we consider heroism
People often say that the honours system is old-fashioned and out-dated. There are many good reasons to criticise it: the unofficial system of honours-for-cash,* or the automatic medals given to high mandarins of the Civil Service. I don’t even see the point of awarding honours to sportsmen, or celebrities.
Sometimes, though, there are people who do deserve to be recognised. Occasionally, during an ordinary day, some people do something heroic. Even though I only have a very slight link to those events, it’s still painful for me to think about what they had to deal with, and what they saw, heard and smelled.
One thing I know, though, is that many more people than these 20 were deeply involved, and have received nothing. If anything is wrong with the honours system, it’s that there’s always a cut-off point. There’s always a point after which people stop being officially heroes.
* which was a much more serious problem in the 1920s, when the Liberal government even had a price-list for various honours.
In which we despise the authoritarian instinct
I’ve said it before, I’m sure, but I generally dislike pretty much all politicians. Some, though, I dislike more than others.
I particularly dislike it when people tell me that draconian and illiberal laws are necessary For Your Own Good. When people tell me that removing my right to freedom from arbitrary detention is really part of preserving my right to a greater, more nebulous freedom, which always remains mysteriously vague.
But what really disgusts me, is when people use innocent deaths, horrific deaths, deaths that deeply affected you and me, to push for ever-greater authoritarianism. No amount of detention without trial would have prevented the July attacks.
That’s just a few reasons why I smiled when I heard today’s news.
(and, incidentally, anyone who does think that we do need 90-day detention without trial “because of the victims” should read what Rachel from North London has to say about it)
In which we suggest some healthy and Government-approved alternatives
It’s November the 5th, and so it’s time, of course, to celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, the cunning plan to murder the King, the government and the parliament, 400 years ago today. I’ve always thought the November timing to be a bit convenient for an event involving warm fires and pretty explosions. What would we do if the Opening of Parliament was in, say, June? You can’t have a nice big effigy-burning in June – that would be silly, and everyone would overheat. You’d have to stay up damn late to see the fireworks, too.*
Just remember, though, if you’re at a bonfire or if you’re watching the fireworks, to make sure you don’t make any jokes along the lines of “we could do with fewer politicians anyway,” or “shame they didn’t finish the job properly.” That would be glorifying terrorism – you can probably get away with saying it now, but this time next year comments like that will be strictly illegal and liable to land you with a lengthy prison sentence. Instead, the Symbolic Forest management would like to suggest the following alternative, appropriate Government-approved phrases for use at fireworks displays:
“God save the politicians!”
“Hurrah for torture-extracted confessions!”
“Look at that nasty terrorist burrrrrn!”
The legality of using the phrase “Wooo!” when a rocket explodes is, at present, unclear.
* Yes, I know that both the French and Americans manage to have firework celebrations in July. It gets darker earlier in France and America, though. So there.
Or, how to get arrested
In today’s Guardian, an interesting article with a firsthand experience of being arrested as a terrorist suspect, for trying to catch a tube train whilst carrying a rucksack and wearing a big jacket. And, interestingly, it includes a list of things that the police are looking out for that mark you down as a potential terrorist.
They’re all very mild, innocuous things that anybody might do – looking at other passengers on the platform, not looking at policemen guarding the station, appearing to enter the station with a group of people. What amazed me even more, though, was that suspicious behaviour includes keeping your luggage with you at all times. Given that, if you travel anywhere in Britain by train, you’re constantly being told to do this – because if you don’t, stations get evacuated and trains stopped for hours – it was quite surprising to hear that doing it is a good sign that you might be a terrorist. You have to ask just how many people don’t look like terrorists to your average police observer.
Update, September 24th 2005: more about this story on Going Underground and on Slashdot.
In which we discuss an evil man
The other day, Peter of the Naked Blog said he thought the BBC should not have given as much attention to the video of the suicidal murderer Mohammed Sidique Khan:
MSK didn’t justify anything. What he did was demonstrate his religion-related fanaticism. By airing and promoting his views like this, you are guilty of leading thousands of ignorant assholes to follow in his vile ways.
Now, his first two sentences I agree with. I don’t think, though, that the BBC should just have ignored him. Mohammed Sidique Khan was, we can clearly see, a twisted, insane, brainwashed murderer who had fallen under the influence of evil, cold, vicious men claiming to be “religious leaders”.* You can’t explain to people how sick and twisted his views were without telling people what they were.
It’s impossible to negotiate with people as mad as MSK was. You can’t pull out of Iraq, because Iraq isn’t really the issue here; and if Iraq wasn’t an issue at the moment then MSK would have been told he was killing himself in the name of Palestine, or Kashmir, or Afghanistan, or any country in the world which doesn’t have a Talibanesque government. One of the main problems politicians have is that by and large, they are intelligent people; but they have to deal with people who aren’t intelligent, people who are stupid, people who don’t think, and people who are downright insane. There is nothing we could have done to save Mohammed Sidique Khan from becoming the deluded murderer he was, other than making him less stupid and gullible to start with.
* I admit to being slightly biased on this.
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