The Stig - the (not so) great unveiling

Posted by David Hurst in Current Affairs, Motoring on September 2nd, 2010

I enjoy watching Top Gear. Not as much as I used to true, but that has more to do with the retarded pre-pubescent humour than Mr Stig being unveiled. Frankly, the news coverage of this underwhelming event has been way too excessive. I mean, come on… we all knew that there was a guy under the helmet, and many would have had a reasonable stab at guessing his identity. Clearly, it had to be someone with racing experience (and probably not a huge amount of success if he has time to show up at the Top Gear test track throughout the year), so finding out that it is former Formula 3 driver and movie stuntman Ben Collins is hardly a shock.

Nor is it a shock that the BBC should have sought an injunction to prevent the disclosure of Stig’s identity. “The Stig” is not the same as Ben Collins the man. Rather, “The Stig” is a character and the intellectual property of the BBC (and its license payers), and Mr Collins presumably agreed to play along with the secrecy element of the character. The BBC should not be prevented from protecting its assets, provided such preventative action is sensibly priced and with good cause, simply because it is license payer funded.

All that said, I don’t really think this is as much of a disaster as Top Gear’s Andy Wilman asserted in his recent blog post. As he put it himself:

“Everyone who’s ever worked on Top Gear has kept the Stig thing a secret, and the person who wears the suit has signed confidentiality agreements to do the same. So talk about what you like in your own life, but not the bit you agreed not to. Your word is supposed to mean something.”

So where exactly is the problem? Mr Collins has surely breached contract, therefore the contract is at an end. It is time for white suited Stig to be shot off the end of an aircraft carrier in a knackered old Jag, and for a new Stig to arrive in a new colour suit (red or silver maybe?). The Top Gear viewers will love it! In fact, Ben Collins has just written half an episode of the new series for you, and generated huge amounts of publicity for the show.

Really, whilst it must be hugely irritating for the TG team, everybody wins. Ben and his publishers HarperCollins may well be cashing in the BBC’s IP, but the BBC has the opportunity to re-invigorate the show with a new Stig and move on… until the new Stig decides to publish his memoirs that is.

Now, regarding the new Stig - my suggestion would have to be Valentino Rossi, if you can tempt him away from Ducati and stop him doodling on the helmet of course…

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HTC Desire - first impressions

Posted by David Hurst in Apple, Hardware, Reviews, Technology on July 15th, 2010

I’ve blogged before about my various irritations with the iPhone, which last year prompted me to ditch the shiny Apple handset and opt for a Palm Pre. I liked the idea of the Linux based OS, the multi-tasking and the real keyboard. In reality, the OS was a little limited, but the multi-tasking and real keyboard were good. Build quality, not so much.

When a saw a friend’s HTC desire, I was hugely impressed. The large, bright, high resolution screen, excellent app support and good build quality certainly appealed, but it was the impressive 1GHz processor that sealed the deal. I’m sick of sluggish phones, and the HTC Desire is certainly not sluggish.

There are certainly areas where the Palm WebOS is better, and it’s probably not as intuitive to use as an iPhone, but my first impressions are that as an overall package it beats the competition hands down.

I’ve only had mine for a few days, so I’ll do a more in-depth review when I’ve lived with it for a little longer.

Anyone want to buy a slightly used Palm Pre?

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UK Government asks Facebook to remove sympathy group for Raoul Moat

Posted by David Hurst in Current Affairs, Rants on July 14th, 2010

Unless you’ve been living in a vacuum, you’ll probably have seen Raoul Moat’s exploits being mercilessly devoured by the British media. The former bouncer got out of prison after serving a short sentence for assault and promptly went after his ex-girlfriend, who had told him she didn’t want to continue their relationship and that she was now seeing a police officer. The following day, staff at the prison called the police and warned them that his girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, was at serious risk of being assaulted by Mr Moat. The police did their usual excellent job, and shortly after Raoul Moat did indeed assault Miss Stobbart… with a gun. He shot her twice in the stomach through the living room window of her parent’s home.

Sadly Chris Brown, her boyfriend (of just one week), ran out of the house armed with an iron bar, and Raoul Moat shot him dead. There’s probably more to this than has been reported in the media - I can’t imagine anyone being foolish enough to take on an angry gunman with just a metal bar for protection.

Then the following day, Raoul shot police officer David Rathband through the window of his vehicle whilst he was on duty, after calling the police to tell them that they weren’t taking him seriously enough. Shooting a police officer certainly got their attention if the previous murder hadn’t, and there ensued an enormous man hunt at a cost of many millions of pounds to the UK tax payer.

Raoul Moat was finally tracked down on the 9 July, where a long stand off with the police resulted in Raoul being tasered (electrocuted with a stun gun) at least twice, before he finally “shot himself” in the early hours of the 10 July. At least, that’s what the police tell us and we’ll probably never know if that’s completely true or not. Interestingly, the taser guns used had yet to be approved by the Home Office.

I can’t envisage any scenario where tasering a man who is holding a gun to his neck could ever be considered a good idea. Electric shocks cause involuntary muscle contractions - not ideal if the person receiving the shock has their finger poised on the trigger of a firearm. In any case, how did they manage to taser him twice without actually managing to subdue and take him into custody? Why not use a tranquiliser dart instead?

It seems like extraordinarily harsh treatment of a man who clearly had severe mental instabilities, that would only ever have had one outcome. Some people are upset at the way this has been handled and as a result a Facebook group in sympathy of Raoul Moat has emerged, which David Cameron has rushed to denounce and is seeking to have Facebook remove the group. He may well have been getting all chummy with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder - report here) recently, but I think he’s barking up the wrong tree here. Facebook is hardly about to start censoring its users’ activities - not unless they are in breach of Facebook’s terms at least.

In fact, it’s pretty outrageous that Mr Cameron or anyone in the UK Government should be seeking to stifle free speech in that way. Raoul Moat is certainly not a “legend” (as described on said Facebook group) and he may well have been a “callous murderer” (as Cameron put it), but I think some of the sympathy being shown is not necessarily for the actions of the man, but the way he came to a miserable end that might well have been avoided. The more sensationalist comments are no doubt posted by people who are simply hoping to provoke a reaction. Regardless, free speech and free thought are essential foundations of civilisation. We are not robots. We are not all the same. Some people say things that we find vulgar, offensive and distasteful, and we must let them say what they will because that is their right. Allowing them to say their piece, however unpleasant, is not the same as condoning or supporting their beliefs. The UK Government has no right whatsoever to police the Internet or freedom of speech - though of course they keep on trying.

In any case, much sympathy must go to Mr Moat’s family (who are completely innocent sufferers), to the family of Chris Brown and to Samantha Stobbart and Pc David Rathband as they start on the slow road to recovery.

Perhaps in future, the police might take more notice of proffered advice from their colleagues in the prison service.

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How personal should your company website be?

Posted by David Hurst in Guides on July 2nd, 2010

The thing about companies is that they’re made up of individuals, and individuals have personalities. A company is the sum of its parts, and in the case of a service company  those ‘parts’ are people. This is a good thing, unless one personality becomes too prominent in the overall mix.

This is a problem experienced by a website development company local to me recently - one I once worked at. The dominant personality there is the MD, a man with strongly held opinions. There’s nothing wrong with that of course - we’re all entitled to our own opinions. Sometimes though, it’s best just to keep your opinions to yourself. The aforementioned MD, thinking he was having a private email conversation, expressed some particularly strong opinions (in a somewhat unfortunate way), and sadly for him, the email correspondence found its way to a national newspaper and received copious amounts of negative press coverage.

Whilst I was working for this guy many years ago, I recall recommending that he kept his strongly held opinions to himself and desisted from publishing them on the company website. He ignored my advice, but I still stand by it, and am perhaps somewhat vindicated in light of recent events. Strongly held opinions, particularly those of a political or divisive nature, are best kept totally separate from a company website, lest a potential client’s opinion of your company be coloured by their distaste for your personal viewpoints.

However, I have worked with many clients who have enjoyed success by personalising their company websites to some extent. People like to deal with people, and the Internet hasn’t really changed that. When you make an order with an online shop, don’t you like to know that there are real human beings at the end of a phone line who can help you in case something goes wrong? What better way to humanise a company online than feature a staff blog, or some staff profiles? For single owner and small businesses, it’s really not worth trying to pretend your business is something else. I once worked for a very small company that advertised numerous regional phone numbers and tried to give the impression of a huge operation when it was anything but. I’m just not convinced this has any benefit. Why not embrace your small business status and advertise that fact by personalising your company website. Just don’t get too personal.

The moral of the story is to ensure that anything personal presented on your company website has been duly sanitised. If you’re not sure, seek the opinions of others or just don’t publish. And remember, email is one of the most insecure forms of communication, so never use it for really confidential messages, and never commit anything to writing that can be misconstrued, used against you, or cause offence if the wrong person saw it.

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An Open Letter to the FA and Team England

Posted by David Hurst in Rants on June 28th, 2010

Dear Sirs,

In light of the recent abject failure of the England team at the 2010 World Cup, the English public deserves answers to a number of questions. I suspect that these answers will never be forthcoming as all involved hurry to cover their collective arses and appoint an official England scapegoat. Who shall it be this time? The manager?

Fabio Capello
Why do you persist in appointing foreign coaches to the England job? Mr Capello can barely speak English, so how can he possibly deliver a stirring team talk to the players? Where is his track record of working with English players and teams? Are you seriously expecting England fans to believe you are incapable of selecting a suitably qualified English manager for the role? What about Harry Redknapp, Sam Allardyce, Roy Hodgson, Terry Venables, Stuart Pearce et al? And why the hell did you give the man a 4 year contract without even seeing if he could do the job?

Clearly, Mr Capello is at least partially to blame for the dismal performances. His stubborn refusal to build his team around the best players has drawn confusion from the fans, the media, the pundits and even foreign players. There are tribes of people deep in the Amazon jungle as yet untouched by civilisation, and even they know that Gerrard needs to play behind Rooney and not on the left wing. Mr Capello picked his stupid old fashioned 4-4-2 system and doggedly stuck to it in spite of the clear evidence that it simply wasn’t working.

I may not be a FIFA qualified coach, but it’s plain to see by looking at the world’s best teams, that you build the team around the key players, and not around a system. England’s best players are Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and John Terry (although you’d be forgiven for mistaking them for Sunday League amateurs based on performances at the World Cup), and the team should be built around these players. John Terry should be allowed to play in the exact position he plays for his club. Why would any sane manager make him swap sides to a less familiar position for a crucial game against Germany? Why is Gerrard constantly pushed out to the left wing in order to accommodate Frank Lampard in the team? Gerrard is the better player, put him in the middle behind the strikers where he knows how to play. Lampard can play behind or sit on the bench when needed.

Rooney has been hyped up mercilessly by the media. Sure the guy has talent, but he is not Ronaldo or Messi, and he needs decent service, from say, Gerrard playing just behind him?

And who is England’s best goal scorer at the moment? Peter Crouch. Why did he barely feature at the World Cup? Instead, we played Emile Heskey - a great player, don’t get me wrong, but not a striker or goal scorer. We already have a guy who can play off the strikers - Gerrard. Crouch would have given more alternatives and more goals than Heskey.

So Fabio is definitely culpable here.

The Players
All the players should take a long hard look at themselves and their contribution at the World Cup. With the exception of David James, not one of them can hold their head up high. If I was in charge of England, I would sack the lot of them and bring through the youngsters. In 4 years’ time, they will be a more cohesive and dedicated team than this bunch of overpaid underachievers could ever expect to be.

Fans paid thousands of pounds to be in South Africa to support England, and in return the England players simply couldn’t be bothered. As one of the German pundits aptly expressed, if England has some of the best individual players in the world, why can’t they win anything as a team.

The FA
The players don’t play as a team because money gets in the way of the pride that should be on display when they pull on that shirt. Money in the Premier League prevents the team from getting together as often as they should. Look at how many games the South American national teams play compared to the few miserable friendlies England arranges (usually against hopeless opposition, and usually with two completely different teams in the first and second halves, ensuring no team spirit is ever built and nothing is ever learned). The vast sums of money the players earn ensures that they need never worry about winning a national game. The FA could never supply a win bonus of sufficient size to motivate any of these players.

Young English players can never progress through the ranks because the Premier League has become a bloated corporate animal having very little in common with the actual game. The influx of foreigners is embarrassing. How about investing in the English youth? Why not limit the number of foreigners included in games? Why not make it mandatory for every Premier League and Championship club to field 1 or 2 home grown under 21 players in every game?

You are responsible for the collapse of English football. You created the conditions in which the game can only flounder. You employed the overpaid foreign managers, who will never have the passion of a home grown manager. You ruined our World Cup and shamed a nation.

The senior members of the FA, the manager, and the senior players must all resign. Bring in people that actually give a toss. Change must be brought in. Without this, England will forever be a footnote on the history of the game.

Not good enough.

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