marramgrass

Yesterday morning I tweeted that I was “A bit disappointed at BBC Radio Ulster breathlessly cranking the #swineflu paranoia this morning.”

I love the BBC, but there seems to be more and more tabloid creeping into their news reporting.

Yesterday morning, as I was driving into Belfast for an early meeting, I caught a report on Good Morning Ulster. Marie-Louise Connolly was reporting on preparations for the expected swine ‘flu outbreak.

The piece didn’t do much more than play with maybes and ignorance to whip up fear and doubt.

The main point of the report was that while the Department of Health, the BMA and Unison all say that we are well-prepared — and as well-prepared as we can be — for what might happen when a third of the workforce goes down with the pig-death-’flu, we can’t know for sure because their contingency plans ‘only exist on paper’ and have never been proved for real.

I don’t know much about disaster planning, but I do know that the only way you can really, with certainty, tell if your planning and preparation is good enough is to see what happens when they’re really needed. Before then, the best option you have is to run simulations and exercises — which the report said have been run. What more can be done?

It does get better: the report ended with Ms Conolly talking about some more of the “unknowns” that we should be worried about. “Will the virus mutate into something more serious once winter-time comes?” It might. It also might mutate into something that has no ill effects on humans. “Why younger people and middle-aged people are coming down with the virus?” Because that’s what happens in a ‘flu outbreak, and we know it. Younger people and middle-aged people tend to mix more and with larger groups, so they catch more bugs.

I’m not sure what this report was trying to achieve. There was no flaw in the planning that was being brought to light. Instead, without saying as much, it showed that as much planning as can be done is being done. All that we’re left with from this piece is a bit more paranoia.

Face mask, anyone?

(If you get there before next Wednesday, you can hear the report on iPlayer. It starts at 1:05.37.)

My current job is my first one since I left school where I haven’t spent most of my time working with ‘children and/or vulnerable adults’, but I do still volunteer in youth work. Because of this, I have a folder full of official-looking pieces of paper from various authorities confirming that no, I don’t have a criminal record and yes, I am deemed safe to work with children, young people and vulnerable adults.

I have, I don’t know how many times, explained to volunteers why it’s necessary for them to fill in the form — and a new form for every organisation — and get their ID signed off on so that someone in an office somewhere can find out if they’ve ever been noticed by the police and might present a danger to children. I’ve also explained that it depends on exactly what’s on record, and a few penalty points won’t be a problem.

I have accepted complaints that volunteers have felt insulted or accused, especially when their organisations have known them for years. I’ve apologised that even though they have a form from somewhere else, this place over here needs one, too.

I’ve even been heard to say that if someone isn’t keen enough on the role to fill in the form, then they may not be keen enough on the role.

I’ve had long conversations with volunteer managers and with other staff in organisations who are worried about the impact of the new regulations and Vetting and Barring Scheme, both on their time and effort and on the recruitment of new volunteers.

I have become way too familiar with a host of acronyms and titles: PoCVA, Taking Care, Safe From Harm, Access NI, Disclosure, CRB, ISA, VBS…

And while I have had the occasional moan, I haven’t complained too much. Because it’s important. It’s an important system, and an important precaution, to do what we can to keep people safe.

All of which is to say that I’m reasonably familiar with the issues. Onward, then, to today’s news. (more…)

Google are famous for their (unofficial?) company motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Their fun Street View service eased its way into action in the UK yesterday, and then got picked up by the media.

The BBC has been following the story, and has published this series of images from and of the Street View cars — did you spot them anywhere last summer? You’d know if you had. (I spied the car in Dundonald, and it may have taken my picture. I was too far away to be sure that it’s my car in the photo.)

How do you feel about the whole thing?

The Daily Mail reacted pretty much as you’d expect them to, emphasising controversy. Junior was also quick to criticize the availability of imagery around Northern Ireland. I particularly like his suggestion that everyone who viewed a picture of a police station “should be traced by the security services.”

It is possible to ask Google to remove imagery, and they have taken some down already.

The main concerns seem to be that Street View invades privacy and that it may be useful to criminals.

Maybe I’m just not paranoid enough (which would be hard to say about me, really), but surely there’s nothing here that a determined criminal, or — dare I say it — terrorist, couldn’t find out pretty easily elsewhere? The fear of terrorists armed with photographs is almost totally baseless, and surely a simple street map is almost as (theoretically) useful. If you wanted to see what the Google Street View car saw, all you need to do is take a walk or a drive down that street.

The privacy question is more complicated. I was quite surprised, in a not altogether good way, when I saw how detailed the images of my parents’ house are. What Google says is true: they don’t show anything that isn’t in clear view of the public roads, which means technically there is no legal concern. Indeed, by my non-professional but I hope well-informed understanding, the contention in that Daily Mail article that this is using people’s likenesses commercially is irrelevant: “commercial use” generally refers to advertising, where you could be seen as endorsing a product, and Google obscure faces anyway. Making money using images is incidental to this sense of “commercial”. (Of course, IANAL, so don’t go by what I say.)

Legally it seems fine, and, according to the articles linked above, Google have been in dialogue with the Information Commissioner to make sure of that. That doesn’t make it completely comfortable, though.

That said, while I get uncomfortable with the accessibility of pictures of my family’s homes, I enjoy looking at other places on Street View. That makes it complicated.

It’s like many things Google does: they’re handling and controlling a frightening amount of information (they get all my email, my RSS subscriptions, my searches, everything any of us writes online), but they do it so well. Perhaps we’re alright, as long as they stick to that motto: don’t be evil.

Whatever you think of Jeffrey Donaldson, he has a reputation as a decent constituency MP. My wife wrote to him a couple of years ago, and he regularly sent her letters updating her on what he was hearing about her issue. (“Her issue,” that sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it? The thing that she wrote to him about.)

Three days after firing him off an email from the Parliament website, I got a letter back saying that he shared my concerns with Harriet Harman’s comments, and would raise them with her. The letter was quite definite in its tone, which is nice. Speedy service indeed.

Of course, I doubt that it will actually change her attitude in any way, but there you go. Government can be at least slightly accessible.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to my MP.

I say letter. You can send emails through the Parliament website, these days. It makes it very easy. Also, you’d think it would lead to getting ignored, but apparently not. I’ve done it once before, you see — only once, my wife’s more of that kind of agitator than I am — and I got a substantial reply. I may occasionally fill a pen with a nice green ink, but I don’t make a habit of writing as Concerned from Culcavy.

I am, though.

RBS goes from being one of the biggest banks in the world (whatever that means) to needing a barrow-full of money from the Treasury to keep going, so the head of the company did the decent thing and resigned — taking with him a pension that in any given year will provide him with quite probably more money than I will earn between here and my own retirement. The Government, as represented by Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, are determined that he won’t get to keep it, even though that’s what he was promised, contracted and given.

Both Mr Brown and Ms Harman have been very vocal in the press, with the latter being quoted as saying:

It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.

That’s what bothers me, and I’m of the sort of political leaning that tends to like government involvement in things.

It’s like this:

• Thing’s went really wrong on Sir Fred Goodwin’s watch, so he resigned. That’s as it should be.
• The amount of money he’s being given as a pension is horrendous, but it is what he’s entitled to by his contract (I am not a lawyer, of course, and this is based purely on press coverage).
• Nobody, except possibly the man himself, thinks it’s fair or reasonable for him to take it all, but the decision is his and he seems to want to keep it. Honour, justice, whatever, might suggest that he shouldn’t, but it’s his call.
• Prominent folks in Government are hinting at intervention to see that he doesn’t get to keep it.

It’s pretty objectionable in this case, but the contract of employment can be one of the major things that protects employees from abuse (assuming that contract is fair and just). Suggesting that an employee’s entitlements in a contract can be reduced after the fact, just because we don’t like them, is worrying. Even more so is the idea that Government will get involved in a specific individual case like this. After Sir Fred, who will be the next one to have the rug pulled out from under them?

The damage is done; learn the lesson (a clause along the lines of “If you make a hash of it then you don’t get quite as big a pile of money”?) and move on.

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and of Abraham Lincoln.

Also, it’s 125 years today since Lewis Waterman was awarded the patent on his design for the fountain pen, one of the key innovations of which was the feed — the hard rubber or plastic bit under the nib which regulates the flow of ink to the nib.

Fountain pens are one of the slight anachronisms that remain in my life; they go well with my insistence on photographing on film. They’re half-way between simply being the tool of choice when I write (given that almost everything I do begins life with a pen and paper) and being a small hobby in themselves. I hesitate to say I’m a collector, but I will tell you that I have more than one.

I have more than twenty, actually. They range from decades old to brand new, and from a couple of pounds’ worth to… a bit more than a couple of pounds’ worth. Best not to ask in too much detail. I have pens that were made in the USA, in Italy, in Japan, in Germany and in the UK, some made by one-guy-in-a-workshop outfits, some by small companies, some by huge global operations. It’s a nice variety, and every one of them gets used regularly.

My first pen as an adult was a birthday present from my wife a couple of years after we were married. I discovered then that a well-made (which is often not the same thing as expensive) fountain pen, when handled with only the slightest amount of care, doesn’t leak, blot, run dry or otherwise cause hassle. I also discovered that that slightest amount of care was much less than you think. Who’d've thought?

My third discovery was that they’re slightly addictive. It could be worse. As obsessions go, it’s quite mild and mostly harmless.

Inks, though, are a whole different world.

I thought carefully about that title. It’s not hyperbole. As I wrote after the election last November, the leadership of the USA has influence around the globe, especially in Western Europe. So, yeah, I think the world has changed.

(It happens every day. It certainly happened on 20th January 2001, and it happened on 20th January 2009.)

I thought about pulling a few words from the new President’s inaugural address, but I’d have ended up copying and pasting most of it. You’ve probably read it or listened to it by now, but if you haven’t then you really should.

Of course, words are easy. The ability to move and inspire with words has never been a guarantee of any form of goodness. And yet, even with an Ulsterman’s cynicism, Mr Obama’s words give me hope. I may be on the other side of the Atlantic, and I may never have visited the States, but I was glad yesterday.

No man, no government, is perfect. At some point in the next four (or eight) years, each person currently celebrating will be disappointed. That’s okay. It’s not a criticism of Barack Obama. It’s a truth we can be sure he’s aware of, and one the rest of the world had best remember. At every decision to be made, someone will disagree. Sometimes doing what’s right will mean upsetting a great many people. That’s part of government’s job. It needn’t banish hope.

I’ve no idea how the next days, weeks, months, years will shake out, but yesterday I was glad, and today I hope.

In a few hours, the Free World will have a new Leader. Or something like that.

November seems a long time ago, and since then there have been some mutterings, although how fair it is to criticize the man for his handling of a job that he hasn’t started yet, I don’t know.

On this side of the Atlantic, I know a few folks who will be glued to their TV screens/internets today, enjoying the ceremony and pageantry. I probably would be if it weren’t for the whole work thing.

There has been and will be plenty of talk about what an Obama presidency will mean for this little corner of the world. While Mr Obama and friends will have many weighty decisions to make and consequences to face, VM offers a reminder of the very local nature of working politics:

Just as I believe that we didn’t need a Northern Irish Mandela and De Klerk ten years ago, I don’t believe we need a Northern Irish Obama now. But we DO need a clearly articulated vision for a new Northern Ireland and someone to articulate it… And people prepared to give that someone the political cover to do so…

For that to happen we will need to learn one thing from the new USA: hope and faith that politicians can accomplish good. May it be so.

I had a post planned for this evening, but then I checked in on Google Reader and saw this thoughtful piece from Alan in Belfast on the travails of the Presbyterian Mutual Society.

I’m inclined to describe his comment as containing a little of the prophetic — in the sense of the Biblical prophet speaking out to identify both what has gone wrong and what can put it right.

Alan cuts deep, identifying the inconsistencies in the actions of the Presbyterian members of the Mutual, whose Presbyterian identity is surely built around notions of grace, community and mutual concern.

Instead the mess at the Mutual has come about thanks to the same thing that has been happening on a global scale: “If I put my money over there then I might come out of things with just a few pennies more,” and we’d rather not think about the consequences of all this. The problem is that we’re all too connected to and dependent on each other for that to work…

Here’s a question for you:

Earlier this week, the interwebs were buzzing with the leak of a list of members of the British National Party. It didn’t take long for a police officer who was included in the list to be suspended and investigated.

How do you feel about this man’s employer specifying that he can’t be a member of a particular political party? Or, how do you feel about his membership of a certain party precluding him from serving as a police officer?

“Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe has reiterated our position that membership of the British National Party is totally incompatible with the duties and values of Merseyside Police.

“We will not accept a police officer or police staff being a member of BNP.”

While I would be very surprised to find anything at all from the BNP I could agree with, I’m finding this question a bit tricky.