Taking Out The Trash

The stuff of life

The latest edition of E&T magazine from The Institution of Engineering & Technology is out and the lead article is by me on how technology is looking to deal with water shortages.
In researching the piece I went over to the University of Surrey's Centre for Environmental Health Engineering and talked to its affable deputy director Brian Clarke.
Fascinating place with access to their own satellite network and doing some good work in developing countries puttign place sustainable water systems.
Our focus at the moment is on the battle for energy security but water security is rapidly becoming as vital.
One of Surrey's scientists is Prof Adel Sharif whose Centre for Osmosis Research and Applications is currently testing som groundbreaking water treatment applications on Gibralter. Everyone jokes that Prof Sharif will be a water millionaire when his technology is perfected.
Prof Sharif grew up in rural Iraq. When Syria put a dam on the Euphrates his village's water supply was suddenly greatly reduced. Its inhabitants agricultural lifestyle was finished.
The young Adel moved to the city, trained to be an engineer and made water his focus. It would be nice if some good could come of that unrecorded skirmish in the long battle for water.

State capitalism

Really interesting post from Newsnight's Paul Mason on some wider economic implications from the current shake out of the banking sector.
As Mason points out:

On top of Northern Rock, Fannie & Freddie and 11 US deposit-taking banks now in public ownership (or "conservatorship") this is turning into a modern version of state capitalism.

Well, except over here where we continue to pretend the world hasn't moved on. Gordon could be crushed by many things and one may be well the fact that the financial order which has ruled for the last 15 years, and through which he made his career, is about to disappear.
Note: Mason's book Live Working or Die Fighting is well-worth a read.

Offensive editing

An American newspaper cut the last line from a paid-for death notice because it was "considered discriminatory or offensive".
And what was that last line?
"In lieu of flower, vote Democratic."
Michael Miner's Chicago Reader blog has the details.
Hat Tip: Utne Reader media blog

Rule of Thumb

My latest post on the Total Politics local government blog is below:

Our village is only eight miles from either Bath or Chippenham but it might as well be 80.
We’ve got a bus service running six days a week into Bath alone but it’s only every two hours and stops at 6pm. For the commercial operator there isn’t the demand to increase the frequency.
Since we’re on top of a hill and connected by narrow and fast country roads, walking isn’t an option for most people.
It’s frustrating to be just out of reach of bus, coach and mainline rail networks and to have to rely on the car so much.
So some parish councillors and green activists in the village have been thinking about how to bring these networks within reach.
We’ve been getting some advice from Community First on options such as a community minibus and we’ve promoted car sharing with limited success.
But what’s caught our imagination is hitchhiking.
Traffic generally uses only three principal routes out of the village and with the bus stops in place there are ideal stopping points. We’ve also got ideas on where to stand when people are heading home.
There are safety issues (we’re thinking drivers should register and carry a sticker in their car) and cutting the waiting time (blanket text alerts so people know someone needs a lift?)
The details are fuzzy but somehow we must be able to match all these people driving alone and all these people who want to travel. Any ideas on how to make this less fuzzy gratefully accepted.
Poland used to have a government-run hitchhiking scheme called the Social Autostop Committee which folded when the Berlin Wall went down. I’m trying to find out more about how it worked. Something about vouchers, Ladas and queuing I imagine.
I like the idea of our parish council adopting a Communist-inspired scheme just for the incongruity of it all - but a simple and informal system is going to work best.
According to Hitchwiki:
“Hitchhiking in the United Kingdom is feasible although the British are a little surprised (especially in England) to see people still doing it these days since it has become a dying trend largely due to the safety worries and very busy roads. You will still manage a ride somehow but you really need to be at the right spot. …For example, the rural mentality in the South West makes it a lot more easier than trying to hitch in the South East or East Anglia.”
So perhaps the scheme isn’t a total non-starter.

Big Yellow Bus

It is an image that newspapers seemingly can’t get enough of.
The American-style yellow school bus has been pictured endlessly in print and online along with the same article about them coming to Britain soon.
The BBC in particular cannot get enough of these cute-looking buses despite the fact that they are used by approximately 1% of all school children in the UK.
It’s been a remarkable PR coup for transport giant First Group whose logo subtly adorns these buses.
But now, there is actually a story to write about and it comes from the Yellow School Bus Commission.
It sounds like something from Sesame Street, but is chaired by former Home Secretary David Blunkett with cross-party membership and was “established to examine and quantify the environmental, social, educational, time and cost benefits of a nationwide network of dedicated home to school transport.”
This commission seems to be driven (forgive the pun) by the bus industry with actual passengers not represented. However it has several local authority transport people on board (these puns just write themselves).
And the commission has produced a report which says a nationwide network of, wait for it, yellow school buses, would offer primary and secondary school pupils by giving them a safe journey to school, reducing congestion, reducing pollution and improving attendance times.
It says that the number of children being driven to school has doubled in the last 20 years. I’m sure we can all think of reasons why this has happened and agree that it is “not a good thing”.
Many schools have transport plans which they draft with help from their local authority.
However the school transport issue in my village is not lack of buses but lack of money.
There are three secondary schools which children can attend and all are far enough away to warrant free travel. However only one school is designated for receiving a travel subsidy so the children attending the other two have to pay their own bus fare. The county council is not obliged to extend its free travel policy and, for cash reasons, will not make an exception.
This term fares on schools services without subsidy haves gone up for the second year running and, again, at far more than inflation. There are often more children on the bus than there are seats so some are standing. The bus company isn’t a big operator and concentrates simply on keeping its small fleet going – passenger service isn’t at a premium. Unsurprisingly this has led to complaints about poor treatment of children.
The commission’s report is useful in highlighting the issue of school transport. I think it is spot on when it highlights the social, environmental and economic enormous savings that could accrue from improvements. It’s just that I’m not sure it has any answers.
When I flicked to the bit where it said how this was going to be paid for it says: “Acceptable fare levels will not generate all the required funding but given the clear safety and decongestion benefits, there is a strong case for a contribution to dedicated school transport services from the public purse.”
Yes, and...
A fuel duty rebate is one, or “local authorities should consider new supplementary funding opportunities such as local business sponsorship.”
Which seems a cop-out.
A political decision needs to be made that proper funding of school transport by the local authority is a priority and a larger proportion of your council tax will go towards it. We’ll all pay towards the cost but we’ll all reap the benefits. Let's not go cap in hand for business funding which could be cut when economic times are tough.
Meanwhile First Group’s PR campaign roles on. Expect to see a yellow bus picture in a newspaper near you soon.

Green Bay Day

Like this idea for edging out cars for a day and creating a bit of green space.
International Park(ing) Day is Friday week (19th) - so start picking you public parking spaces, get some turf and a bench and prepare for some urban green squatting.

The future is now

Interesting report from the civil liberties monitoring group Statewatch on EU surveillance proposals.

The EU is currently developing a new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014. The proposals set out by the shadowy "Future Group" set up by the Council of the European Union include a range of highly controversial measures including new technologies of surveillance, enhanced cooperation with the United States and harnessing the "digital tsunami". In the words of the EU Council presidency:

"Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts."

You can see the press release, an eight page conclusion and the full report.
But if you're thinking of posting (or that this post is) some loony EU conspiracy claims - any government is going to try this on if it's got the capability and we're looking the other way.

Mould doesn't make great pictures

Nice piece by Tom Clark in today's Guardian on media attitudes to poverty.

Whenever newspapers are charged with peddling a pernicious line, they plead that they are merely reflecting their readers. But does middle Britain really see Vicky Pollard as representing the poor?

You can read the rest here.
As Clark points out - many top journalists are simply unfamiliar with poverty. Your average Fleet Street salary is nudging £40K and for seniors, and commentators especially, having only three foreign holidays a year and two nannies is considered slumming it.
But it is the news values which rate celebrity fluff and avoid 'complicated' stories which are truely to blame.

Getting the story

Alison Gow over at the Liverpool Daily Post has written a nice post on the different approaches to sourcing, writing and publishing news story for old school print and new school web 2.0 journos.
Meanwhile this post breaks rule 88 on Paul Bradshaw's list of 1000 things he's learnt about blogging.

Summer's finished, Porter's back

Summer is officially over when well-paid columnists return from their hols, tanned and invigorated, having read widely and considered deeply and bend to the task of illuminating our lives with new thoughts.
Unless you're Henry Porter.
It is somehow very right that after a crap summer, Henry Porter should return to The Observer today and offload the same pompous crud that he was shovelling before he went away.
Yes, it's the "we're all doomed to live in a world like The Matrix because nobody will listen to my warnings about the surveillance society" theme. Again.
It looks like he popped back in the office, checked his Google alert box for "surveillance gone mad" stories, cut and pasted pars from a couple of political features he read over the summer and there you go.
I'm waiting for a magazine called Flipside to run a feature I've done on children and surveillance and the way we catalogue young people in all sorts of different ways. Meanwhile the IT project for one of these systems has just gone pearshaped. (Janet Murray has a good piece on it).
Porter - if you're going to write about this stuff endlessly give us a new tune and some facts.
(BTW: his mugshot on the Observer website looks like he should be holding a card with a row of numbers on it. Very scary.

Update: donpaskini points out one glaring contradiction in Porter's column. Sadie's Tavern has taken a stiletto to Porter previously. Anyone else want to join the gang?