Scary eyes in Stratford?

Stratford-upon-Avon has suffered a lot recently.  The Bancroft Gardens have been covered in heartless concrete and stained granite.  The art deco interior of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s home theater has been gutted and bizarre tower raised.  Fields and terraced cottages have been dug up and demolished, turned into rat-runs of flats and Americanised three story town-homes.  World Class Stratford has spent millions on harebrained schemes while Holy Trinity Church has been reduced to begging for donations to repair its historic structure.  The town center’s local shops have been priced out, the tourist tat and sandwich shops that filled the void have been hit by the credit crunch and now  many empty shells and vacant storefronts line the streets.

What more could happen to bring infamy to the town?  How about this…

A firm called Internet Eyes will be allowing members of the public to monitor CCTV footage taken in the town and offer up to one thousand pounds if the “viewers” spot a crime in progress.  If this sounds like 1984 meets bingo it gets even better because on the Internet Eyes website they state:

Users are individuals watching random video feeds. Users can register for free with no recurring fees.

The locations of the feeds are not disclosed and users reporting remain anonymous.

So the cameras are monitored by members of the public, who are not trained professionals, aren’t licensed or insured, and have not had a background check carried out. So basically any Peeping Tom can join in the fun, but that is okay because the “locations of the feeds are not disclosed” except unfortunately that isn’t completely true because:

The private company scheme – due to go live in Stratford-upon-Avon in November – aims to stream live footage to subscribers’ home computers from CCTV cameras installed in shops and other businesses.

- BBC News – Public to monitor CCTV from home

and

The project will be trialled in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warks, next month, but the consortium behind the idea hopes that it will eventually attract a global audience of viewers monitoring Britain’s 4.2 million security cameras.

- The Telegraph – Snoopers could win £1,000 prizes for monitoring CCTV cameras on the internet

Wow, I’m fairly certain there aren’t that many CCTV systems in Stratford but they’ll soon be available to a global audience of spies watching for crimes and prizes!  Now I know that in this modern world of heightened security cameras have been the silver bullet for so many fears of the age, but I agree with Charles Farrier, director of the No-CCTV pressure group, who said:

“It is an appalling idea for a game and will create a snoopers paradise.

“It is something which should be nipped in the bud immediately. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality by turning crime into a game but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.

Especially when James Woodward, head of the technical team for Devon-based Internet Eyes, is quoted in the Telegraph saying:

“Whoever has a CCTV camera, be it the police, local authorities or business or home owners can sign up to have their cameras watched. We hope to include police cameras very soon.”

Who exactly will be monitoring the monitors?

In September 2009 Britain had 4.2 million CCTV cameras

– the equivalent of one per 14 people.

Yet another reason why bees are amazing

One of my ambitions is to keep honey bees.  There are many reasons for this strange desire; firstly I love honey, and secondly they form an essential part of the natural world by pollinating a wide variety of plants, and finally they are amazing creatures with complex communication and construction skills.

So when I saw an article in today’s Telegraph about “Sniffer honey bees trained to detect bombs” I was fascinated.  The concept is really simple and straight forward, bees are highly sensitive to scent trails using them as they do to find food sources.  Therefore by using positive reinforcement to associate the scent of chemicals used in bomb making with a sugar treat makes the bee rapidly respond to any exposure to those chemicals.

It is possible to train a bee very rapidly, with a number of exposures over the course of a few hours being enough to invoke a response to the chemical contaminate. This is obviously far faster than the in depth training over several months required to train a sniffer dog.  I don’t think the bee will replace the dog in all cases, but it does provide a rapid response solution with a high degree of reliability.  Who’d have thought bees would make us safer!

In Remembrance 20 years after Deal

Please visit the Deal Memorial Bandstand Trust, and remember the young musicians murdered by the IRA on this day in 1989.  The Royal Marines killed that day were not armed soldiers but young musicians relaxing after band practice in a music school surrounded by the homes of members of the public in the small town of Deal, in Kent.  11 died, and many more have lived on with injuries sustained that day.

We will remember them.

• BBC “On this Day In History” 22 September 1989
• Wikipedia – 1989 Deal barracks bombing

Warwickshire Fire Service Closures

The Telegraph is reporting that Warwickshire Fire Service is to close 7 stations and retire from service a third of their fire engines with a loss of 100 retained firefighters.  The Telegraph – Warwickshire fire service ‘to close stations’

So what does this mean if you live in Warwickshire?  Well for a start it means that the number of fire stations in the county drops from 19 to 12 and as Mark Rattray, the FBU’s Warwickshire brigade secretary, is quoted as saying:

”The removal of fire engines from these stations will greatly increase the risk to the public and to firefighters.

”If they go ahead we could see towns and villages being left without any effective emergency rescue cover.

“This will impact on all the work we do in every part of Warwickshire, not only in the areas close to these stations.

”The result of these cuts will be far fewer firefighters spread much more thinly across the county.

These are needed stations, their need seen only two days ago when 5 engines from local stations attended a serious blaze in Studley, one of the locations marked for closure: BBC News – Crews tackle portacabins fire.

The following map is an updated version of that found on the Warwickshire County Council website but this version shows the closures marked with a black “X”.

Fire station closures are marked with a black X

The fire authority spokesperson said no comment would be made before a press conference later today.  Expect an update then.

Mark Rattray, the FBU’s Warwickshire brigade secretary, said: ”The removal of fire engines from these stations will greatly increase the risk to the public and to firefighters.

”If they go ahead we could see towns and villages being left without any effective emergency rescue cover.

”The modern risks we prepare, plan and respond to go well beyond dealing with fires. This will impact on all the work we do in every part of Warwickshire, not only in the areas close to these stations.

”The result of these cuts will be far fewer firefighters spread much more thinly across the county.

Short Week – Grey Day

With Labor Day making this a short week you’d think things would be easy, but no this Tuesday is a Monday and a steely grey sky glowers at those of us toiling in the office.

Looking out over Herndon beneath a steely grey sky