Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

Do a Good Deed Everyday

The title of this post was part of the Boy Scouts' motto when I were a lad. I still try but sometimes I wonder why I bother…

I was at the airport a few days ago waiting for my luggage to appear on the baggage reclaim carousel. As usual I'd been watching everyone else's bags go round and around for ages when an elderly lady moved towards one of the largest suitcases I'd ever seen and peer knowingly at it. My Boy Scout training kicked in and I asked her if she needed a hand retrieving her case. She accepted my offer and I reached over to grab the monstrosity, wondering how on earth she'd managed to get it this far already. Imagine something that Charles Darwin might have packed for a his two year voyage on the Beagle after being told he could only take one bag. It weighed even more than it looked, never mind the kitchen sink - this appeared to have the oven and fridge in there as well, I almost did my back in getting it to the ground. She stood looking at me quizzically and then came out with:

That's not mine!

Apparently she originally thought it was but then changed her mind, I never found out why she hadn't mentioned any of this when she saw me removing it from the conveyor belt.

When her actual bag did arrive I feared for her eyesight, it was a fraction of the size and a different colour, at least I had no problem lifting it – after checking twice that it was hers.

You Cant' Say That!

Quite a worrying item in the news recently where a lady, Lesley Kemp, complained on Twitter about an unpaid bill. She hadn't been paid for work done and moaned about it online. There were further problems when only part of the bill was [paid but eventually it was settled. The firm though, Resolution Products, has started a case against Ms Kemp for defamation. They don't claim the story was untrue, just that their character was damaged. Seems to me that stating the truth in this fashion should not lead to this sort of case. Hopefully the case will be dismissed and costs and damages awarded against the company.

I await their charge of libel against me for writing about this.

Only In England

I often write about bad news but here's something to warm the cockles of your heart.

Oswald Laurence recorded the Mind the gap announcement heard at many tube stations in London but that particular recording has all but been phased out in recent years. Following a request from his widow the recording has been brought back at Embankment station which she regularly uses.

Dr Margaret McCollum is delighted by the move and says it has cheered her up considerably, she lost her husband in 2007.

I'm sure this is the sort of thing that would only happen in England.

Tisztességtelen?

Okay, a raft of bonus marks if you understand the title of this post…

Give up? - it's Hungarian for unfair which was the question I asked myself when I read that law changes in Hungary may be undemocratic. Some of them do appear to a be harsh, for example homeless people being fined for, well being homeless.

On the other hand a proposal that those claiming a university grant must work for sometime in Hungary after getting their degree seems quite sensible. Most UK companies have a similar rule, if you leave shortly after a training course that you requested to attend then you need to contribute to the cost of the course. I'd rather take the work in my home country option than the be saddled with masses of debt on leaving university one. Am I missing something?

I Put It To You

The case against Vicky Pryce, Chris Huhne's ex-wife, has had to be restarted because the judge decided the jury was too inept, well that's my reading of his words. In case you didn't know she is defending the charge of agreeing to accept his speeding points by claiming he forced her to take them.

Some have questioned whether juries are becoming less intelligent but as juries are picked at random then that would suggest that people in general are becoming thicker. The government has certainly had thoughts along these lines, pushing for complex financial frauds to be run without a jury as they cannot be expected to understand the law well enough to give a verdict, that's another post on another day but in this case my thoughts lead to different conclusions.

Firstly people nowadays are more empowered to challenge and ask questions of their "superiors". The class system still exists but not to the extent that juries are in total awe of a judge and will sit silently. Some of the questions they asked are very difficult to answer. For example what exactly is reasonable doubt? Surely it means different things to different people? The case against two suspected muggers that I was part of the jury relied on mistaken identity as a defence. the two claimed they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and the real muggers had ran past them leaving their stolen goods behind. It seems reasonable on the surface but broke down because of their striking looks, two very large Africans, both very tall with unusual hair. But it was a doubt, fortunately some more evidence was presented which made it an obvious guilty decision. Other questions refer to what can be considered. Although in law only what is presented in court can count it's the classic case of don't think of an elephant; neither can you expect people to disregard that last remark as the judge can often instruct. It's also difficult in such a  technologically advanced age to keep information away from juries in a practical manner.

The judge also told them that drawing inferences from evidence was okay but speculation was not, again there is a fine line dividing the two. The whole system is fraught with danger and part of the problem is the adversarial nature of the English court system. I strongly believe that a system whereby the objective was to find the truth and lawyers took a very secondary role, especially in criminal cases, would lead to a much fairer outcome. The idea of two opposing counsels fighting a game and coming out as winners or losers is not one that encourages the truth to come out. The system in Scotland is a step advanced from this but it's still could be centred around finding out exactly what happened when a crime has been committed.

Of course the other big legal story is that of Oscar Pistorius, who has admitted killing his girlfriend. Speaking personally if I wake up in the middle of the night and my wife is not there and I hear a noise in the bathroom I don't need Sherlock Holmes to tell me she's probably gone to the toilet. Perhaps it's fortunate I don't own a gun, that stops me from drawing the inference that it's a dangerous burglar and shooting her. We shall see how Oscar fares with that defence.

It's Just Common Sense

I received a number of books for my birthday last November, that's the stock present for me, either a book or a bottle. I was very pleased as I'd been skimming through this particular tome in the shop only a day or so previously and had decided to get it on my Kindle.

It's by Duncan J. Watts and called Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer. It covers a lot of ground but concentrates on topics such as how predicting the future is inherently impossible. Most people (me included) look back on events such as government cock-ups and calmly describe how they were bound to fail because of X. The author argues that such hindsight is just fitting the appropriate facts to the event and shows why this is a fallacy. We tend to think, when things go wrong, that it is usually because we didn't have the full facts at our disposal whereas in truth we can never have all the facts and even tiny changes in one area can have dramatic effects in another. There are lots of examples comparing successful business strategies with failures and Mr Watts tries to show how these were largely a matter of luck, good or bad.

In another chapter he attempts to explain why the Mona Lisa is the most famous, admired, and valuable painting in the world and why, in his opinion, it's really just famous for being famous.

One of my favourite stories concerning hindsight and those who criticise such things as government research for pointing out what they consider the blindingly obvious. It concerns a survey of the military in the USA on those returning from World War II. One of its findings was that soldiers from a rural background fitted in better and adapted to the rigours of army life better than those from the city. Many complained of the obviousness of the results, of course these people would do better, they were more suited to outdoor life and rougher conditions than city types. There were other results published that were equally obvious to anyone with common sense. Afterwards the author of the report came clean, he had changed all the results to be the opposite of what they had actually found, it was in fact city dwellers who fared better in the army than their agrarian counterparts. Of course many now claimed that they suspected this all along, townies are more used to a chain-of-command in their jobs which fits in more with the military was one explanation.

I would recommend the book to anyone, it's a real eye-opener about the workings of the mind and how the actions of a crowd do not mimic the actions of its individuals, not can be predicted by such analysis.

JoinedUpGov.co.uk

I was quite impressed recently when I went online to request a replacement passport. After the usual account creation process I was issued with a Government Gateway ID which, I was assured, would enable me to access other government services. And so it proved. When I needed a new driving licence I accessed the site using my ID and it even asked me if I wanted to use my passport photo for my licence. Finally, I thought, they're getting their act together. As you may have guessed my enthusiasm was short lived.

A couple of days ago I tried to login to the HMRC site to complete my tax return. It asked for my Gateway ID and password and proudly informed me that one or both was incorrect. After a couple more attempts, which included trying to login to the DVLA site to make sure I hadn't got the details wrong, I gave up and contacted support explaining how my credentials worked for other sites and not their one. Of course I first got the usual email response, a link to the forgotten password page, so I had to send a second email asking them to actually read my first email. The next day I got a response, I would need to get a second Government Gateway ID just for the Inland Revenue site.

It beggars belief, it really does…

I'd like to speak to Jass, Hugh Jass

Of course it's sad when someone takes their own life, as appears to have happened with the nurse involved in the prank phone call to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was staying.

At the end of the day though the vituperation directed at the Australian DJs is misguided. Thousands of people have played such practical jokes over the centuries without such dramatic effects. Dom Joly is well-known for his stunts, if his famous snail crossing the road had backfired, perhaps delaying someone from rushing to their mother's deathbed in time to say goodbye, I presume there would have been an outcry about that? And that's the problem, no one cares unless something bad happens. So berate the DJs if you will, although perhaps their anonymous bosses would be a better target, but try and put it in perspective. It's hard to believe that this incident was the only reason the unfortunate lady took her life, perhaps we should be asking if she was reprimanded by her work superiors over the incident or had she been equipped to deal with identifying phone requests? One can imagine that the pressure to not upset a member of the royal family would be very great. That's how these calls work - social engineering at its finest.

I can already see the cries for legislation to outlaw such acts, please don't let it get that far, first establish exactly what happened and precisely why, if it's possible, that such an extreme reaction was the outcome.

What's This Cloud Thingy? Part III

The last planned instalment on the cloud deals with calendars and general information that you may need anywhere.

As I use Gmail for email it makes sense for me to use their calendar too. I have had to force myself to use the calendar exclusively though, it's all too easy to also have a paper-based version but then you end up with not trusting either. Better to religiously put everything in the internet calendar and have it available almost anywhere via your phone. Occasionally I also use Google's Task application for those things that don't really have a specific time to action but need to be done before a specific date. There are plenty of mobile apps that sync with Google Tasks.

The other main gadget use is Evernote, which is cloud-based note-taking application. It's free for the basic version and again you need to make an effort to use it initially rather than jot things down on random scraps of paper. It soon pays off though, for example I keep stuff like present lists on it as well as instructions on how to manage our burglar alarm. It saves so much time being able to search and find rather than hunt through drawers of rubbish at home. With Evernote you can also attach files to a note as well as tag them. I have a number of different notebooks that contain information in different categories such as Family or Purchases.

There is also a Chrome browser app that saves the current page to Evernote. This is great when you get a booking reference online and want to keep proof of payment that can be easily shown to someone, when you go to collect tickets for example.

As I think you'll see judicious use of the cloud can save you time and trouble. I'm still ironing out some kinks and try to make sure that all apps I use have an offline mode so that they can be used when there is no internet connection. The other main caveat is security, don't store stuff in the cloud that is unencrypted if it's something private, such as your bank access details.

Please let me know if you have any cloud-based experiences you wish to share.

The Latest Gossip

I was at the hairdresser yesterday and suddenly, due to one of those general silences, the conversation in the next booth became audible to everyone in the place:

Customer: "… and I've got a new man."

Salon owner: "Ooh, that's interesting, so tell me more."

Customer: "Well there's not much to tell really, sort of white and ordinary."

At this point everyone in the room was probably thinking the same as me, it's a strange description of a new beau, then the conversation continued:

Customer: "Well what do you expect, it's just a van?"

At this point the whole room began to giggle…