Longrider

I love the facile fashion advice dished out by… well… facile fashion journos. Today, it’s advice on sunglasses.

Do I look cool in these? Or do I look a dork?” Every man has to ask this question about his sunglasses. If he has any sense, he’ll make sure that he does it in the shop - with a ruthlessly objective wife, girlfriend, or mate - rather than a week later when the lenses are scratched and he’s blown £150 on eyewear he belatedly realises makes him resemble a low-grade Albanian pimp.

I never realised that there was so much in it. Ever since the eighties, I’ve settled on the classic Ray Ban Aviator. I like the shape, they suit may face and they work. End of. At least, that’s what I thought.

It sounds easy but there’s a major catch: the gap between Steve McQueen embodying cool in his Persols and Alan Partridge embodying a prat in his mirrored shades is an extremely slim one. Which way you end up depends on three key things: your degree of self-confidence, your general dress style and your face shape.

Oh, right. I don’t have a chiselled face. Mine’s sort of heart shaped. I’ll still wear the aviators, though, because I like them. Now…

The self-confidence bit is the most important because it trumps everything. We all have friends who can put on any item of clothing, no matter how ludicrous or outré, and look brilliant. This is because, having no embarrassment or self-doubt, they are able to dress with such infectious conviction that everyone assumes they must know what they’re doing.

Oh, dear… I’ve always had my own dress sense and the willingness to wear whatever I want whenever I want and to hell with what others think. I have never worried about self-confidence and people just accept that my quirky dress sense is, well, just me. And, yes, I do know what I’m doing when I wear a regency style shirt and waistcoat with Levi jeans and western boots. This quality is not valued, though, it seems:

People who do are mostly shallow and worthless and will surely be punished by God in the afterlife, even if in this earthly one they’re destined to have far more sex and fun than we do. So it’s important to choose sunglasses compatible with your general dress style.

That puts me in my place, then. Dunno about the more sex thing – I must have missed that bit… Did I say that the aviator style works well with the regency/western look?

As for trends, Jabolin says that Aviators remain an excellent bet, but that where sunglasses are going is smaller, more intellectual and a bit geeky. “Sunglasses fashions follow clothes fashions, so you need something to go with that high-tailored, slightly gentrified look.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I’ll be sticking with the Ray Ban Aviators and slip a leather jacket over the loose shirt and waistcoat. I might just dig out those knee-length boots…

Thus goes the headline in today’s Groan.

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

Am I surprised by this revelation? Am I buggery. CCTV was always going to be a placebo, a comfort blanket for the hard of thinking and terminally gullible. It makes a certain portion of the population feel safe; it doesn’t actually make them safe, though.

The first and most obvious reason being that the clued up criminals will simply move their base of operations to an area devoid of CCTV. This leaves the more empty headed variety to carry out their nefarious activities under the watchful eye of the CCTV operators. But, even then, it still isn’t working… Why might that be, then? What about all this fantastic face recognition technology? And what about all those cop shows where someone says “enhance that, please” and a pin-sharp image of the suspect is displayed neatly on-screen?

Ah, ain’t fiction wonderful. They can do all sorts of things in fictional TV land – travel through time and space, speak English to aliens and be immediately understood, solve crimes with DNA alone and, importantly, enhance an image that is so dreadfully low resolution that all you should get is a few unrecognisable pixels – but, hey presto! we get a razor sharp picture of the perp with not a pixel out of place. The reality is somewhat more mundane. The reality is that a low resolution image cannot be enhanced because it doesn’t have enough information in the image to enhance. And, frankly, facial recognition is a pile of poo.

So, there you have it, the entirely predictable being announced. The surveillance state has wasted millions on piss-poor technology that achieves bugger all. The low tech solution would be to spend that money on police officers patrolling the streets, but that, presumably, isn’t sexy enough.

Reading on through the article, though, they want to utilise the technology anyway – quelle surprise.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

They also complain that the use of images in court cases has a poor record. Well, given the poor quality of the images, I suspect that a decent defence counsel would drive the proverbial coach and four though it. And, what is it with these people who think that national databases are going to do what good old fashioned policing won’t? Sure, if you have a decent image of your suspect, it will help – but go back to the original point; they are not decent images. They are, frankly, barely recognisable. You have only to see what they put out on news items and Crime Stoppers to get a feel for the poor quality of the pictures CCTV produces. They are little better than photofits.

Why do I get the feeling that the police are looking to make their lives easier rather than making a proper effort to secure safe convictions?

Seumas Milne in comment is free:

But it’s also clear that the kind of progressive coalition and policies that Livingstone favoured - on transport, housing, privatisation and redistribution - are a good deal more popular with voters than the rudderless triangulation currently on offer from Gordon Brown.

Having been trounced because they steal from those who earn and give it to those who don’t, or piss it up the wall on special interest minorities and quangos, because they snoop and pry into our private lives, bully and fine us for petty misdemeanours – because, frankly, they are poisonous bastards, the way back is…

…more of the fucking same?!?

Fuck me, but they are thick.

I notice, too, that Milne is trying the same misanthropic and patronising tack displayed so admirably by Neil Harding and blaming the press. No, you thick fuck, people are not so stupid as to vote on the basis of a headline – they voted the way they did because the Labour party has treated them like shit.

Jesus, but the so called progressive left in this country is a monster to behold. They didn’t get it wrong – the voters, blinded by the evil press barons got it wrong. Listen, chaps; you got it wrong. The voters rejected your candidates. Some genuine introspection – should you be sufficiently intellectually honest  – will provide you with an answer. Don’t blame the press, don’t blame the electorate, don’t blame “posh” people. Blame yourselves, for there is no one else.

Faced with the inevitable backstabbing that goes hand in glove with the world of politics, Gordon Brown tells us he isn’t for quitting. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

Gordon Brown has for the first time been forced to address questions about his leadership, insisting that he has no intention of quitting in the face of internal sniping and media criticism.

Pressed three times in a Sky News interview about his future, he finally said: “I’m starting a job that I mean to continue.”

There’s a delicious irony that his decade of fiscal incompetence has come home to roost just at the moment that he takes the top job. Coupled with this is the dithering last November over the election that never was and his bumbling from one bad news story to another, this statement has all the hallmarks of a dead man walking.

I do hope not, though. I’d like him to stay on; preferably until the next election. The longer he blunders about, the greater the damage he causes to Labour’s electoral prospects. Brown in Number Ten come election day is the best chance we have of seeing this nasty bunch of control freaks crashing to a well-deserved defeat at the polls. So, go for it Gordon, you hang on in there.

Not that I believe the Tories will be any better, mind. It’s just that a change will give us a breathing space before a newly elected Cameron government gets its trotters in the trough and the whole sorry, corrupted cycle starts all over again.

Cynic? Me? You must be thinking of someone else…

Via The Englishman; this comment from Rachel Johnson in the Times:

I don’t get blogging. It’s not only that I’m reluctant to write for nothing.

Mm. I write occasionally for money – for a bike magazine. Then, I expect a decent rate for my words. I write here for nothing because I like writing and it gives me the impetus to hone my skills. If you enjoy writing, the being paid is largely by the by – writing doesn’t make us rich; or at least that is the case for most of us. We do it because we enjoy it, just as others enjoy watching sport, flying kites and building model railways. It’s a hobby. We don’t need a deep reason for doing it, we just do. No one expects you to understand or “get it”.

There are all those people who ask, “Do you blog?” at parties (our own sad neutered version of the “Do you swing?” question), and who warble about “wikis” and “web presence”.

Rachel must move in strange circles. No one has asked me if I blog, let alone swing. Perhaps I don’t go the the right parties. Any chance of an invite next time?

Still, a few weeks ago I started to write one. It’s very easy - even a middle-aged woman can do it. I wrote about what I was making for supper that night. And food shopping in the Portobello market. Then I checked to see the global response to my debut. Nothing. On my next five posts? Zero comments.

She really doesn’t get it, does she? I was rattling away at the keyboard for months before my first comment and even now, several posts can pass without any interaction from others. It doesn’t undermine the activity though. Ultimately, I am writing for me, because I want to, because, hopefully, my craft will improve. Comments are nice – unless they are trolls – but not essential.

Then I really pulled out the stops. I wrote about how my husband shouted, “Free Konnie Huq!”, and I gave an eyewitness account of how a former Blue Peter presenter, that is, a celebrity, was actually touched by a civilian. And after all that unpaid work, was the web on fire? Once again – nul comments.

Perhaps no one is interested? Frankly, the Olympics and everything to do with them are a dull, tedious and mind-numbingly banal waste of time. Perhaps I am not alone in that assessment. I don’t even know who Konnie Huq is (let alone care) – well, I didn’t. I do now (know, not care – I still don’t give a toss). I’m not sure that I feel enlightened by the knowledge, though. Why, therefore, should I be bothered if Konnie Huq is touched by a grubby little prole? You people are so far up your own arses you could lick your tonsils.

I don’t get it. There are the blogs that work – such as Judith O’Reilly’s brilliant blog turned book Wife in the North, or the riveting Petite Anglaise, or our own Alpha Mummy (on Times Online; a treat) – where you sense that the authors are releasing themselves with feeling into the ether. This is because blogging is about regularity, I presume. You have to post every day. You have to be totally committed.

Er, regularity helps – people will be looking for fresh material – but, and if Rachel doesn’t get this point, she is in the wrong job; you have to write something that is fresh and interesting. And, importantly, you have to build a body of work so that the search engines start to pick it up and so that people drop by and start linking. Then, when you’ve been at it a few months, people will look upon you as someone they want to visit on a regular basis and engage in conversation. A bit like real life, I suppose. It doesn’t just happen, you have to put in a bit of effort.

In California people have started to blog themselves to death and The New York Times is reporting stress, sleep disturbance and exhaustion among the “blogging community”.

More fool them.

Well, there is no danger of me having a coronary at my laptop triggered by exhaustion and anxiety about page hit rates. It’s quick and easy to start a blog, as I’ve discovered. It’s even quicker and easier to stop.

That, m’dear, is because you never really started, did you? Once more we have a professional journo making asinine comments on a subject on which they are staggeringly ignorant. No change there, then.

I know others have commented on the Conservative Posters archive, but this one struck me as particularly prophetic:

This was printed back in 1929 – how accurate was their prediction.

It seems that teenagers are increasingly regarding themselves as hardcore greens:

A recent survey by the Future Foundation found that 20 per cent of the teenagers questioned saw themselves as “hardcore greens”. With climate change centre stage and eco-living no longer a fringe issue, it has become acceptable for teenagers to promote green matters both in and out of school.

Mrs Longrider and I do not have children. If we had, they would have been encouraged to ask awkward questions, to challenge and test hypotheses before blindly accepting hysterical hyperbole presented as fact. Chances are, we would have become so disillusioned with the state propaganda machine schooling system that we would have become home educators, but that’s another matter.

Any teen who tries nagging me about eco-matters will at best have their cherished illusions about global warming severely challenged and at worst will be in receipt of some suitably scathing invective about minding their own business. It’s just a shame we cannot deliver a swift kick up the arse to drive the point home that nags are not appreciated.