Grombles

and the latest news is that the police have just released some of the details about the fatality that stimulated all this wasted expense. The accident apparently happened at night, in high winds and in a snow storm! It could have bloody well have happened anywhere. So the council effectively lied to us by claiming this massive inconvenience to all residents of Thursley was necessary in the interests of safety. The journey we all now have to take to reach our nearest doctor surgeries, schools and shops is 4 miles longer, includes several roundabouts (including a busy and dangerous leap into the flow of traffic heading from the A281 North onto the A3), a few traffic lights and all that extra traffic - all because the council needed to spend their full road works budget before year end.

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OK so I haven't owned a $multi-billion corporation, but I was a co-founder of a search engine company more than 10 years before Google was started, and I did sell an internet business for several £millions, so I guess I'm closer to Mr Page than most people. Larry's just become CEO of Google replacing wise old steady Eric Schmidt. And I know why, and he's heading for a big disappointment. Larry, like I did, wants everything that he thinks needs to happen, to happen. And happen fast. Everything's a priority. "We're fucked if this doesn't happen...". Larry, it won't. In fact the bigger and more complicated you get, the less likely any of it will happen. All that will happen is you'll get a stomach ulcer. You'll start sacking people who don't deliver what you want. You'll surround yourself with sycophants and staff will become too scared to bring you bad news. You'll be made to think everything's on track, but you know i...

I live in a small village off the A3 in Surrey UK which is a dual carriageway that runs from London to the South coast. About 300 yards North of the slip-road from our village is a lane in the wide central reservation (what Americans call a ramp) enabling you to slow down and wait for a gap to turn right across the opposite carriageways into a side road. That side road leads to our neighbour village and local train station. The only other way to reach that village (together with a couple of local schools, 3 doctors surgeries, post office, pubs, shops etc) is by heading several miles further North past the village, then take a slip road off the A3 up to a very busy roundabout (which cars join very fast from the right, meaning you take your chances leaping onto it), over a bridge crossing the A3 to another roundabout, down to 2 traffic lights (slow ones at that) and then back to where you would have been at least 10 minutes earlier if you'd taken the shortcut. Some total twat on th...

This morning on Radio 4's Today programme, I heard an American officer exhort his men in Afghanistan by saying "If you see someone who deserves to die, kill him". This was greeted by a noise I can only describe as baas of agreement from his marines, not that I am comparing them to sheep in any way of course. Sheep don't kill their enemies. So who do we, the 'allies' in foreign theatres of operation, regard as 'the enemy'? 'The Taliban' I hear you cry. So who are the Taliban? 'Insurgents' you insist. This suggests that in some way we have come to justify these enemies as somehow different not only from us, but also from the ordinary people of Afghanistan. Troublemakers who have left their homelands to train as terrorists in order to kill infidels. We must kill them before they kill us! And if children or other innocents get in the way, it's the fault of insurgents 'using them as shields'. It's their fault for fighting b...

Maybe it's the job of a grombler to see the negative side of everything, or at least to moan about it until you start to believe there really is a negative side. I'm starting to get fixated about the Facebook genie we've released from the bottle. See previous blog. My worry is that there are so many potential social networking dangers the planet is drifting towards, that they're all getting lost under the weight of everyone only seeing fun. So I asked myself what are the ways available to me at least to raise awareness of the potential issues and encourage some debate (where none appears to exists at present)? Well my last blog has been viewed 3 times with no comments. So that's not going to get the planet talking. The key to grabbing the attention of the masses is by making a film about it. Films not only rewrite history, they create awareness in dramatic ways about issues, and in ways that people can readily understand - albeit from a very one-sided viewpoint.... ...

Did you read Evgeny Morozov in the Sunday Times review section last weekend? A similar article appeared in the Washington Journal .  He warns us that secret police and paranoid states are using Twitter and Facebook not only to learn about who might be subversive, but also as a media channel to manage public opinion. Apparently they flood Twitter and the like with high volumes of pro-state announcements in order to divert attention from revolutionary and anti-state campaigning. Witness the green movement in Iran (and I don't mean the tree-huggers). Not only have thousands of supporters been confessing their 'sins' openly online (saves waterboarding them later), but government employees have been flooding the channels with pro-state rhetoric, thereby diluting the voices of the few brave and as yet unsilenced  revolutionaries . It's working. When did you last read of protests in Tehran?  Ahmadinejad's popularity is actually on the rise. Well I believe there are s...