The new zombie generation (3)

They're out to get you... 

Many of the once basic "growing up skills" - a grasp of common sense, an appreciation of personal responsibility, a sense of adventure and risk taking - have been replaced in the ZG by carefully implanted conditioned reflexes, brought about by the many unholy alliances between Big Government and Big Business, to serve their interests at the expense of the constant erosion of individual freedoms.

This brave new world of "Nanny State meets Nanny Business" is effectively crystallised within the ethos of an organisation called  Common Purpose.  Although disguised in various ways to seem less threatening, Common Purpose is the embodiment of Political Correctness incarnate - it has created an ethos of "conform, or risk being ostracised". Many "traditional" majority views are constantly challenged and dismissed as "populist", and the CP ethos is based around the "progressive" presumptions that have allowed cabals of vociferous minorities to deflect attention from key mainstream matters, and dictate the social agenda to the majority. Any specious lip service paid to "tolerance" has become sacrosanct and dare not be challenged or quesioned. But this seems to be more about intolerance than anything, it is about hijacking and shifting the tolerant moral middle ground of society, to enable control by skilled manipulators at the extremes.

As Edmund Burke observed: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Whereas debates about cockup v. sedition conspiracies always used to assume cockup prevailed, modern communications have changed the rules, and it is a lot more probable that conspiracy is now a credible factor. The Bilderberg organisation is widely reputed to be part of a high level conspiracy to re-engineer society to make it simpler for Big Government and globalised organisations to manipulate and control, and there is plenty of evidence online that is worthy of further study before being dismissed as fringe lunacy. Sure there are a number of loose canons involved who may border on paranoid, but that should not be allowed to distract from the inescapable fact that Bilderberg is a secret club for the world's wealthiest businesses, individuals and most discredited bankers. Remember that Savill, Harris & Co. successfully hid in plain view for 30 years with the assistance of the BBC.

A rather more mundane example is that the Big Brother conditioning of the Zombie Generation (ZG) has lead to the meek acceptance of all manner of apparently simple impositions that the grumpies rightly regard as abominations - such as the meek acceptance of 24 month phone contracts paid by direct debit.

Getting shaken down at any transport hub, thanks to Blair's desire to crusade in the Middle East with Bush, is part of a total submission to men and women in peaked caps who are (well) paid to guard us from the many consequences of various Western follies.  The fact that the odds of death by terrorist is somewhat lower than death by choking on a hobnob, is neither here nor there.

There is now a conditioned/resigned expectation in the ZG that attempts to contact any large business for all but the most mundane matters will be thwarted by call centres, manned by people who barely speak English. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time you got to speak to people who could a) speak English b) deal directly with your questions.

So why not just stop supporting companies that grow fat by exporting UK  jobs overseas - and support businesses that use exclusively UK based staff? The people who gain most by continued compliance with the globalisation agenda and tactics are not the (working, indigenous) people of the UK.

It used to be that way, and it could still be that way if enough people raised hell, and refused to be assimilated into the new hives of globalised business and politics.

Another mundane but telling issue: the ZG meekly accepts that a phone they leased/bought for £500 (but cost <£100 to make) is worthless after 18-24 months, and needs replacing. And thus the ZG offers itself for sacrifice on the altar of Vodafone and the rest for the bi-annual ritual of largely pointless upgrades. Much to the delight of the pushers of these shiny things that have become the fulcrum of so many modern ZG lifestyles... and the means by which "Government" now knows where you are and who you are communicating with. But hell, what have you got to hide..?

As Edmund Burke observed: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

The new zombie generation (2)

Although many boomers and generation X readers know what I meant by "zombie generation" in the first part of this series, the zombies themselves seem rather puzzled...

Which is precisely the problem! Their "innate and instinctive skills" that once developed vital individual leadership and self-sufficiency in all things from common sense survival to formation of own opinions - rather than those that are carefully implanted by "the system" - have been neutralised by immersion in a process of mostly state-managed mind control from an early age, based on the principles of political correctness to inculcate what the PC brigade regard as absolute truths about the nature and boundaries of modern life, that cannot be challenged or altered.

This has created a generation that is more compliant for manipulation by big government and big business agendas. The ZG will dutifully accept the orders of the ever expanding armies of jobsworths who seem to have been granted endless power over our lives. So take your shoes off at the airport scanner; put that dog on a lead in the woods, eat 5 types of fruit and vegetable a day, allow any company that wants to direct debit your bank account; sort that rubbish into those 6 separate bins for recycling. And accept new taxes that are allegedly to help mitigate "climate change", without question or proof.

Thanks to the paranoid notions conveyed by a media, ever more frantic to draw attention to itself (cf the BBC and the already infamous Cliff Richard "raid") and promote the idea that there is a pervert lurking behind every bush, most kids no longer grow up in a world where they go out and play in the woods together to learn about life, and instinctive reactions to emergent situations and people. Their lives are carefully conducted, conditioned and cocooned - starting by being strapped into all manner of safety seats that us children of the reckless parenting of the 50s and 60s would scoff at. (Some of us might even suggest that the best Darwinian contribution to road safety would be a large spike on the steering wheel boss, that reminded the driver not to crash into the vehicle in front).

Kids up to the age of 7 are carefully conditioned and influenced by the principles of "Disney" marketing - endless product-placement TV shows, designed to spare frantic parents the duty of continuously amusing their children, or risk being deemed "inadequate".

The Jesuits knew the value of early indoctrination long before Disney and marketing came along to raise it to a science: "Give me a child until the age of 7, and I will give you the man". That's how most dominant religions have always operated, so the effort on getting kids at ever younger ages away from parents and into state approved early learning facilities (aka nursery school), is very much a part of the "we know what is good for you, better than you do" ethos, and a cornerstone of meddling government policy.

We all live in the brave new world where minds are controlled by messages "pushed" via screens (1984 got that right). Kids are no longer allowed to find out that competitive sports mean there are losers; girls no longer know they are supposed be subtle about the fact they are generally smarter than boys, and use that knowledge to manipulate the men in their lives. When did getting rat-arsed in public on girls' nights out become de rigeur? The old rules of a once orderly society built on years of working with the nuances of human nature, no longer apply.

The ZG has been conditioned to think in the way that the system wants them to think - so that they will put up with the many impositions that blight modern existence to make life more convenient for big governments and big businesses: everything from foreign call centres that consume our lives at 6p-40p a minute, to banks that are too big to fail and companies that are too big to pay taxes. They know no better, and accept their fate rather too willingly and less rebelliously than us grumpy old types, who can still remember a world of proper bank managers, and bustling high streets with more than just franchised coffee shops and mobile phone emporia as far as the eye can see.

Am I showing my age?

The new zombie generation

Some of us who are older than we want to admit look around at modern youth and marvel at just how effective the social engineering strategies introduced by the 1997 Labour administration have turned out to be.

The process was mostly achieved by infiltrating quangos, education and the civil service  - and the results have changed the face of the nation using these unelected stormtroops, and thus quite difficult to displace, as the Coalition quickly found out.

Like it or not, a lot of this was the result of the Common Purpose organisation's tireless effort to brainwash over promoted civil servants and give them a sense of their own self-importance as warriors in the struggle towards what they pompously pretended was a fairer and more tolerant society. But all the measures show Labour left society more unequal than ever, as long standing tools of social mobility like Grammar Schools were hacked away - and smothered by more petty laws controlling every aspect of existence.

The worst legacy of the lot is an over abundance of public servants whose sense of entitlement to 6 figure salaries is quite staggering - the poster girl for which is probably Sharon Shoesmith; and whose brain-washed stewardship of the nanny state is exemplified in endless specious "green" laws and new powers to harass the public at every step of their existence.

Oh for a time machine to go back and sort it all out.

Is 4k the new 3D?

Despite gargantuan efforts in the broadcast equipment industry - and some subscription broadcasters who hoped there was a premium to charged -  the 3D home TV fairy's light is all but extinguished. And no amount of wishing by the likes of LG, Sony and Sky has been able to save it. But without pausing to try and understand why, the equipment business is ploughing straight into something that is even more costly and demanding to deliver.

TV set makers have had a pretty good run as we all migrated from VHF 405 to UHF 625 line displays; then adopted colour; then adopted widescreen. And then HD - although most of these adoptions have been painless because Moores law of the decreasing cost of tech advances, has meant the next generation tech costs little or nothing more than the old generation. The end of analogue broadcasting in the UK was a pretty big incentive to trade up at the same time that HD broadcasting was being promoted.

625 line standard definition TV is inescapably fuzzy when compared to 1080 line HD in the average living room on a 30-40" screen. But the analogue transmission format (and analogue video recorder formats like VHS) result in "pixel jitter" that exacerbates the lack of crisp definition. A digital 625 line picture (had one been available) would look considerably sharper than the analogue version.

The bad news for set makers is that modern TV sets last upwards of 10 years, where back in the days of valves (up to the 80s) , it was very rare for a set to go 3 years without a major breakdown. When LCD displays first appeared, no one really knew how long they would last. 3-5 years was a rough guess by the pioneers, but 10 years was easily achieved.

The 2014 NAB event in Las Vegas went all-out to try and promote the 4K or "Ultra HD"... since it's the only hope for the core technology providers to get a big boost in re-equipment sales. Regular HD equipment is now at commodity prices - and a £150 consumer Panasonic camera produces perfectly good results in most applications. Professional TV crews mostly avoid them for reasons of client credibility - not technical shortcomings; you simply can't continue to charge £5k to shoot a corporate promotional video on a £150 camera.




So I have to say I am suffering from 3D deja vu, and wonder if the industry has still not learned that longevity is all about the content, not the pixels. Good enough has got YouTube where it is today. 4k means 15-20Mbit of (dedicated) IP bandwidth, and it's not just the line speed to punters to consider, it's the exchange pileups where the aggregate amount required becomes humongous for probably not a lot of commercial return since only a very few will see the difference between HD and 4k.

Do we really need it? Content is king, and a duck on a skateboard still gets a gazillion YouTube views at 240x360 on a phone camera. Yes, the $250m blockbusters probably obliged to use the medium - but the rest of us?

News is only news once...

...  not when the same story is repeated 360 times a day. 

I am weary of seeing the same pieces repeated endlessly on all TV news channels.

So here's a radical idea: only allow the main news radio and TV "channels" to broadcast the same story once.

Yes, we know.....

If there is a breaking story then the broadcaster can now easily spawn another "red button" channel to deal with that specific topic.

I appreciate that the ability of one story to dominate the news is "the way it's always been", but there has been a sea change in technology at both ends of the link.

Broadcasters have massive technical resources that can deliver live video from just about anywhere on the planet in real time, and consumers have devices in their pockets capable of displaying it.

We need to force lazy traditional broadcasters to address the development of better online solutions. Just because there is a problem in one country like the Ukraine, it does not mean that all activity has ceased in all other parts of the planet, does it?

Lord Clarkson of Top Gear

I love the BBC and have done for a very long time. But now it's very much a grand British institution that has lost its way under poor management - which is much like another struggling stalwart of the British way of life, Lloyd's Bank. The loyal troops on the ground (and the paying customers) are long suffering victims of some of their arrogant and "disconnected" bosses' incompetence.

We are still finding out more all the time about the rate and scale of that BBC incompetence. The "far too easy come" money that went (just as easily) on greasing the various exits of already well over-paid executives is simply astonishing. It ought to be a resigning or dismissal (with no compensation) matter for any high level executive involved in the decision.

But we can at least commend the present leadership for not trying another logo change, and sticking with the one above since 1997. At the time the change of "corporate branding" to the simple thing above, from something not a different was as an ego trip for the DG, and costed estimated to have cost £1m, then £1.7m a year over three years of implementation. At 1997 prices!

We can all envisage the meetings of sincere and intense arty types to discuss and insist on this crucial landmark in our cultural history. I'm terribly sorry, I would have been beastly and taken all but £500 of that out of the main board's salaries.

It is a particular mark of the curious and profound relationship that the BBC has with the licence payers that its own "Logo history" page has been obliged to use content from one of those die-hard nerd sites (sorry, no other words conveys as much in so little) who has being doing the BBC's job for it.

The BBC has also relied on other TV aficionados to turn up long lost recordings of old shows that the BBC management in its wisdom had deleted or otherwise misplaced.

Could anyone have known back in the 70s that the internet would come along and give an extended lease of (commercial) life to just about every recording of anything ever made? The BBC hierarchy has not shown conspicuous prescience in matters of the future at any time since the very early days when it actively engineered that future with its own resources for the benefit of the nation; and the founding visionaries, talent and engineers were replaced by paedophiles, journalists and accountants, who now seem to buy-in just about everything from foreign suppliers.

Clearly there are many at the core of the BBC would also wish that Jeremy Clarkson could have been dumped for his robust and non-PC approach to life,  and broadcasting - but the international sales footprint of Top Gear is simply astonishing. Much to the chagrin of many delicate BBC egos, Jezza & Co have given the entire WORRRRLD what it wants.

Never mind just a Knighthood, maybe Lord Clarkson should be put in charge of the whole thing?

Phoney wars: Are you listening, Vodafone?

Regulars will know I am not a fan of BT or Vodafone in particular - but just about every telco deserves a decent kicking and berating for dodgy practises and outrageous marketing that is designed to confuse and prevents customers from making simple choices and switches. Worryingly, they seem to go to great lengths to ensure that they are all as cynical and outrageous as each other. There appears to be a general agreement not to offer any sort of customer service beyond that which a trained monkey can provide.

News that the EU commission has now forced all EU telcos to stop reaming their hapless customers with cartel-rigged rates for data (now "only" a maximum of 37p a MByte!) is long overdue. And as ever with heavy handed political intervention in technology, it is too late and quite pointless - but perhaps the idea that the EU get involved is enough to cause these outrageous monopolies to think their tactics out more carefully in future.

Vodafone pre-empted the EU move with its Eurotraveller product last year. This is actually a very fair proposition indeed - but when I went to Majorca recently all the outbound calls dropped a second after connecting. Vodafone's effusive twitter "support" was less use than a rubber hammer, and I even managed to reduce them to terseness by rejecting their various hopeless suggestions for me to find my own fix.

The US may be even worse since it has a generally more primitive cellular scheme than Europe, as a result of a very slow start; but the way that some hapless travellers got home to huge bills (as much as $201k!) is legendary. There is even a vast Wikipedia entry on the topic of EU roaming charges.

The whole point of a phone network is that once the network is in place, the cost of providing services is marginal to negligible. There is barely even any more electricity used on the network when a call is made. Once the fixed costs (like the outrageous licence fees - a vast stealth tax on the users) are covered it's almost all profit. Maybe all the execs are too busy working out their offshore taxation plans to notice their general services are so patchy.

This is a typical Vodafone customer reaction:

I'd like to give Vodafone credit for leaving this online, but I think its just because they can't be arsed to manage the forums closely, hoping that their users will talk amongst themselves while Vodapeople do more important things - like devise specious and arcane marketing propositions to confuse customers.

3rd party reviews are just a brutal.

And the way google thoughtfully suggested search phrases tells another tale that Vodafone PR would be advised to note. To be fair, I also I tried to find evidence that  "Vodafone is terrific"... but this is all the suggestions Google gave me.

Overall, it doesn't seem terribly encouraging for Vodafone, does it? I expect that all networks are about the same (although Google (UK) gave Virgin Mobile an almost clear rating in the above tests), and they will argue that they have so many customers that statistically there are going to be a large number of dissatisfied customers whatever they do.

It's just that Vodafone spends so much time "in my face" telling me how great they are, occupying costly shops in otherwise empty high streets, and spending £gazillions of F1 sponsorship, that I feel obliged to remind them that their own view of their wonderfulness is one that not widely shared.