How many eejits does it take to run a council?

Parking Meter
Originally uploaded by adambowie

Quite a few, in the case of Westminster, it would seem.

Whilst the media focus was on other aspects of politics in the area, the council were busy being generally daft. They've come up with a wonderful (*ahem*) new idea for replacing parking meters. Instead of putting coins in a machine next to the parking space, you phone up a number, enter your credit card details, and a code for the area that you're parked in.

Aside from the bleedin' obvious issues of 'what if you don't have a mobile phone?' and 'what if you don't have a credit card?', there is just so much wrong with this idea. What if the number's constantly busy? What if the system that's supposed to update the attendants' hand held computers crashes? (Do you really think motorists will be given the benefit of the doubt?) The article says that for those without mobiles can use a pay and display system nearby, but a TV news report I saw said that this would also be card based. Never mind the fact that it's not especially difficult to use an intercepting device to obtain information from mobile phone calls, and thus obtain someone's card details. I must say, it takes quite a lot of skill to devise a scheme so thoroughly riddled with problems.

Oh, and I also found out that a friend who organised a charity concert at St John's, Smith Square, has had £250 deducted from the proceeds by the very same council, on the grounds that they were 15 minutes past the end of the license when they were packing away equipment. Niiiiice.


PS. I must say, I am amazed at just how many photos of parking meters there are on Flickr's Creative Commons site!

Foul Play

So you're in charge of a football club. Both your men's and women's teams are in the highest leagues in the country. The women's team in particular are very successful - they finished third in the league and were runners up in the cup.

In contrast, the men's team have been slipping over the last couple of years and come the end of this season they actually get relegated. It's probably not entirely a bad thing - they could do with a year with less pressure in order to sort themselves out. It means a drop in income, but they've never been the sort of team to be wildly extravagant in their spending.

Nonetheless, the powers that be decide that they need to raise some more money for the next season. There are some good players that will be sold, because they can't really justify keeping hold of them when they're not in the top flight. But still they want more money. So what do you do? Get rid of the entire women's side. Everything from the title winning first team down to the training academies at the bottom.

Sound a bit daft? Well, it's exactly what Charlton Athletic have just done. As the (now ex-) captain of the women's side said, "the men get relegated and we get punished".

Hmph

Britain's Finest Minds

There are certain expectations when you tell people you're doing a PhD that you're reasonably bright. I think a fair number of tax payers would be rather dismayed if they knew the reality. Someone came to service one of our centrifuges at work yesterday (comme ça). It's been playing up rather. We presented the technician with a list of problems, and hoped that he would be able to fix them. When he was finished, he called us in to explain what he'd done:

• The reason the display was in German, not English, was most likely because nobody had ever read the manual to see how to change it from the factory settings.
• The reason that the display was also virtually unreadable was not that the backlight had gone - someone had probably lent on the button that adjusts the contrast.
• It helps if you clean/oil the parts. Maybe weekly as he suggested. EVER would be a good start.
• He also retrieved a shard of plastic and a couple of wooden beads from the interior. The former may well have come from the time I set the machine spinnning without realising there was a loose tube inside. The latter was definitely from when one of my colleagues changed the sticky mat next to the machine and jumped up and down on the clean layer* with such enthusiasm that her necklace snapped.

All things considered, I'm not sure that the future of biomedical research is in safe hands.

*It sounds childish, but I bet you'd do the same if you were there.